Why It’s Hard to Dialogue With Secularists and Leftists

[JimR-OCDS]

LoAmmi

It depends on what we define as us. Am I my body? Am I my mind? Am I both? What makes me "me"?

In this world, your body, is certainly part of you and that body began at conception.

Yeah. If someone defines a person as a being with a human soul, then ensoulment becomes an issue and one that can't be argued before a court.

Doesn't have to be ensoulment, but the mere fact that at conception, we begin. It is us at that moment, and will develop into adult humans, as time goes on.

I think the best bet anybody has is to limit abortions. I just don't see it ever reaching the point where it can be eliminated from the country.

I agree and unless the pro-life movement understands this instead of trying to outlaw all abortions anytime, not much will change.


Jim

 

[LoAmmi]

Doesn't have to be ensoulment, but the mere fact that at conception, we begin. It is us at that moment, and will develop into adult humans, as time goes on.

That's basically what my tradition states. The only acceptable abortion in the tradition is mother's life in danger.

I agree and unless the pro-life movement understands this instead of trying to outlaw all abortions anytime, not much will change.

Yeah. An all-or-nothing approach will fail.

 

[MKJ]

And the reality is, without women seeking abortions, abortion doctors aren't needed. So, the culpability of the mother is as great as the doctor who performs the abortion, except that she does it. because she's scared and thinks she has no choice, where the doctor is doing it for money, especially in cases where abortion is illegal.


Jim

Well, I don't think doctors always perform abortions just for the money, any more than they only do other things just for the money. Many are also trying to help people.

In any case, it is also entirely possible for women to have abortions without doctors, so in such a case there would be no doctor to charge.

 

[bhsmte]

IMO, it is difficult to have a reasonable dialogue with extreme thinkers on either the far left, or far right.

Both are so married to an ideology, they have a hard time accepting reality.

 

[MKJ]

I'm not opposing anybody here, to be honest. I merely pointed out that if someone is going to try to argue "life begins", they are using the wrong terms. It hurts the movement to frame the argument in that way.

The argument needs to be personhood. Personhood is when a person is granted the rights of the constitution. If someone can successfully argue that personhood begins at conception, abortion falls apart immediately. Privacy wouldn't enter into it because my privacy cannot deprive another person (key word, person) from the right to life.

The problem is that life is nebulous. Bacteria is life. Dogs are life. Neither of which have Constitutional rights. So even saying "the fetus is life" doesn't really mean anything to a lot of people. "The fetus is granted Constitutional rights" does mean something.

I think you could take the direction that a living human being is a person. And an embryo is a living human being.

I think the problem with defining it more narrowly is that it does not only affect the unborn. You really don't have to go far before it begins to impinge on those with intellectual disabilities, the elderly with degenerative brain disease, people who have had accidents and are brain-dead.

Even people who want to legalize euthanasia in such cases usually argue that it is to preserve the dignity of their personhood - not that they are not persons at all - which would have all kinds of very unpleasent repercussions.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Well, I don't think doctors always perform abortions just for the money, any more than they only do other things just for the money. Many are also trying to help people.

In any case, it is also entirely possible for women to have abortions without doctors, so in such a case there would be no doctor to charge.

When abortion is illegal, only the outlaws perform them and money is the main motivator.


Jim

 

[MKJ]

I agree and unless the pro-life movement understands this instead of trying to outlaw all abortions anytime, not much will change.


Jim

Was the law in the US ever one that banned all abortions under all circumstances? Those kinds of laws seem pretty rare in most places - usually there are some ways to have medical abortions under some circumstances.

 

[LoAmmi]

I think you could take the direction that a living human being is a person. And an embryo is a living human being.

Does that mean a woman who drinks before she realizes she is pregnant and causes damage to the fetus or even the fetus to be aborted naturally (for lack of a better term) should be charged with a crime?

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Was the law in the US ever one that banned all abortions under all circumstances? Those kinds of laws seem pretty rare in most places - usually there are some ways to have medical abortions under some circumstances.

I'm not sure of the data on this.





Jim

 

[Chany]

Does that mean a woman who drinks before she realizes she is pregnant and causes damage to the fetus or even the fetus to be aborted naturally (for lack of a better term) should be charged with a crime?

A person must have intent or will to commit something. If a person has a green bag, puts it down, and accidently picks up a different but identical in appearance bag, it is not stealing.

The only time this rule does not apply is when the person engages in obviously reckless behavior. For example, most drunk drivers who hit someone don't intend to hit anyone, but they are held responsible because they engaged in reckless behavior and set the stage.

 

[Fantine]

Having been a teenager when books like "The Feminine Mystique" were published, and having read those books, I really think that feminist support of abortion is primarily because of a desire to promote equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination towards women.

I know I have related the story to you about the purchase of our first home in 1973. I was 23 and my husband was 24 when we applied for the mortgage. Our salaries were about $1500 a year apart. The overbearing, paternalistic lawyer smiled at me dismissively and said, "No bank will consider your income in determining your ability to have a mortgage, because you will just have a baby."

Or several years later, perhaps 1979, when my husband asked me to go out and look at cars while he was at work. I went to a dealer on Northern Blvd. in Roslyn, accompanied by one or possibly two toddlers, and the salesperson said, "Come back with your husband."

I told him my husband didn't have a lot of free time and wanted me to check out certain models first, but that we would never give his dealership any business.

And so the push for abortion started because of discrimination against women by men. Women felt that they could only compete on a level playing field if they could manage their fertility.

And I'm going into all this history because none of those feminists cared about abortion per-se. They cared about equality. If they could manage their fertility with birth control and sterilization, and if companies gave them European-style maternity (and paternity) leaves and subsidized day care, they could still compete on that level playing field, which is what they really want.

Of course, counterintuitively, religious conservatives oppose birth control. They oppose maternity leaves. They oppose day care. They oppose everything that could end abortion in our life times.

They're a bunch of martyrs--complainers shunning solutions because they're addicted to their whining.

 

[MKJ]

Does that mean a woman who drinks before she realizes she is pregnant and causes damage to the fetus or even the fetus to be aborted naturally (for lack of a better term) should be charged with a crime?

There is no good medical evidence that moderate drinking is a risk, so no, she shouldn't be.

These kinds of questions would not be so difficult if we lived in a society less obsessed with risk and assigning blame for things that happen in life.

 

[LoAmmi]

There is no good medical evidence that moderate drinking is a risk, so no, she shouldn't be.

These kinds of questions would not be so difficult if we lived in a society less obsessed with risk and assigning blame for things that happen in life.

Perhaps, but the fact that it opens up the legal questions does make a difference and it something that needs to be addressed.

How about this:

Should the woman be charged with a crime if she does all the wrong things during her pregnancy because she doesn't want it?

Now, you can bring up a neglectful parent can be charged, but that parent also has the ability to give up the child. So, for those nine (or so) months, is that woman bound to do everything in the best interest of the child she doesn't want, or is she allowed the freedom to do as she pleases (assuming not an abortion)?

 

[MKJ]

Having been a teenager when books like "The Feminine Mystique" were published, and having read those books, I really think that feminist support of abortion is primarily because of a desire to promote equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination towards women.

(.......)

And I'm going into all this history because none of those feminists cared about abortion per-se. They cared about equality. If they could manage their fertility with birth control and sterilization, and if companies gave them European-style maternity (and paternity) leaves and subsidized day care, they could still compete on that level playing field, which is what they really want.

Of course, counterintuitively, religious conservatives oppose birth control. They oppose maternity leaves. They oppose day care. They oppose everything that could end abortion in our life times.

I think you are right about the historical movement on this. Abortion was seen as the only way to level the playing field between men and women economically. (And most thought it would be a seldom used solution, and did not envisage the way it seems to operate today.)

I think that what this points to is a real problem with the underlying assumptions about how women could be treated as persons deserving the same kind of respect and legal treatment as men; they assumed women would have to take on the male model in the domestic and economic sphere, and that model was a good or natural or inevitable one.

That is, they really were just not radical enough - they accepted the larger status quo and tried to work within it, when it was the problem itself.

 

[MKJ]

Perhaps, but the fact that it opens up the legal questions does make a difference and it something that needs to be addressed.

How about this:

Should the woman be charged with a crime if she does all the wrong things during her pregnancy because she doesn't want it?

Now, you can bring up a neglectful parent can be charged, but that parent also has the ability to give up the child. So, for those nine (or so) months, is that woman bound to do everything in the best interest of the child she doesn't want, or is she allowed the freedom to do as she pleases (assuming not an abortion)?

I wonder how we would know why she was doing the wrong things, or what those might be? There is an lot of room in "the best interests of her child" - we don't really hold older children and parents to that level of care.

But, in any case, yes, she might under some kinds of probably rather extreme circumstances have some restriction on her freedoms.

 

[LoAmmi]

I wonder how we would know why she was doing the wrong things, or what those might be? There is an lot of room in "the best interests of her child" - we don't really hold older children and parents to that level of care.

I guess we could say without endangering the child. Binge drinking, drugs, chain smoking, jumping up and down and landing on her stomach, etc. I mean, we all know there are plenty of things a pregnant woman shouldn't do.

But, in any case, yes, she might under some kinds of probably rather extreme circumstances have some restriction on her freedoms.

That's where it gets really interesting because it would be the only time I can think of where a person is legally bound to take care of another life without any chance of getting out of that obligation. Kind of makes me sit and think, to be honest.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

No doubt about it, that the feminists saw equal opportunity would only come when they could have full control over their reproduction decisions.

Of course, this was a warped way of obtaining what they saw as equality with men.

It cause the break down of families and of course the millions of aborted children.

Perhaps, the answer to equality would've come from one of those aborted children, if they had the chance to come into the world and grow into productive adults.


But that's speculation.

One thing is for sure, the feminist movement of the 60's and 70's, gave us a two income society and today, most women must work and have strangers raise their kids.

Nothing liberating about that reality.

Jim

 

[AMDG]

One thing is for sure, the feminist movement of the 60's and 70's, gave us a two income society and today, most women must work and have strangers raise their kids.

Nothing liberating about that reality.

IMO, you are right, and IMO it also raised the cost of living sky high--the price of everything skyrocketed through the roof. (For instance before the Feminist movement came to be, most fathers could afford a nice life style plus a home and many children on his ONE salary. Knew a family who lived in a better neighborhood in New York state. Wife didn't have to work outside the home to afford the house and their way of living. She was instead there for their ten children and able to homeschool them all. It's particularly helpful in passing on manners, morals, and the Faith. Anyway, the husband was able to support his widowed wife's mother *at the same time* he was supporting his own large family.) I think that's how it should be. The present two income family has families just one step away from poverty. One person gets sick, or the woman has an unplanned pregnancy, and the family loses their house! And how many families can afford to homeschool and concentrate on their God-given jobs of raising their children now? And we are expected to believe that *this* is progress?

 

[AMDG]

Jim--medicine has come a long way. I know. My husband was just discharged, alive, from the hospital. I got a chance to see what he was admitted for. For all intents and purposes, he had both feet in the grave--heart failure, renal failure, pulmonary failure. Years ago my father-in-law died from less of a heart attack than what my husband had, but I am certain that if he had had that heart attack today, the doctors would have been able to save him.

You claim that an 18 month old fetus cannot be saved. Well a 20 week old fetus has been born and has survived outside the womb several times now. Hmm--18 weeks plus 2 weeks equals 20 weeks. I think the doctors might help the mother to "hold on to the baby" as long as possible to give it the best chance at living. (I know for a fact that used to be done--help the mother "hold on to the baby" until a certain date ensuring survival of the babe outside the womb because that was done with me for my last baby and the doctors helped me to "hold on" much longer than 20 weeks and my daughter did survive.) But that was then (actually in the 70s) and medicine has advanced so much since then to the point where a 20 week old fetus can actually survive outside the womb.

I couldn't figure out the answers to the rest of the questions.

I cannot figure out why since on most, the answers were that "yes" or "no" just like you asked.

 

[AMDG]

I've read the entire court opinion and the dissenting opinion and wrote a report on it for my Constitutional Law class with citations from the case.

The I'm sure you wouldn't mind reading information "from the horses mouth" so to speak. From the original source--Jane Roe.

www.priestsforlife.org has many articles

Here is one:
Abortion - Pro Life - Jane Roe of Roe vs. Wade is ProLife

Here's another (and it includes her own book) in which she tells a different story than the one you were told:
http://www.priestsforlife.org/brohures/whowasthejaneroe.htm

There are also some with interviews between "Jane Roe" and Fr. Pavone.