I don’t think that is a fair assessment at all. He is saying that sin lies completely within his religion and is never reason to legislate against something. He believes that there is a reason that exists independent of his religion to legislate against abortion. He has tried to defend that reason in this very thread without making reference to his religion. Seems to me that you are the one unable to separate secular from religious here.
Are you under the impression some kind of revelry accompanies most surgical abortions?
Then why are you talking about “new genetic humans” and meiosis, if that’s not going to be where you draw the line? You’re arbitrarily moving the line where not-murder turns into murder later in the pregnancy, and trying to muddy the waters by not just talking about the nature of the “victim”, but adding the irreverence of the “murderer”.
For what it’s worth, I’m okay with arbitrary legal lines as a concept, i.e. age 18 or age 21 or the 49th Parallel, but I don’t pretend to have some precise scientific justification that I then abandon when it becomes inconvenient. Just say “no abortions after the first trimester” or the eighth week or whatever. Your views will still be short-sighted and impractical, but you’ll waste less time culling wikipedia pages for scientific jargon.
No. Are you under the impression that every example I create to show contrast must be tied in its particulars to the issue of abortion?
I offered the cases of the sniper and the dancing dismemberer to show that two cases of murder may exist with one a worse crime than the other. Period.
So far in this discussion, I haven’t had to rely on Wikipedia. As I mentioned before, as a pro-life person in a largely pro-choice country, I’ve been beset by the same types of objections you raise here many times before. “Nothing is new under the sun,” as the saying goes.
I don’t agree that I’ve created any arbitrary lines not already present in how we view criminal actions. It’s not generally a crime to watch a man drown without rendering him assistance; it IS a crime to start hitting him with a pole to speed up his demise. And it’s not nearly as culpable an act to take a medication which has the effect of thinning the endometrium as it is to reach into the uterus and physically remove and destroy a developing human being. That’s not an arbitrary distinction.
In Catholic tradition, the main divide is between mortal and venial sins, and any mortal sin is serious in that it removes the sinner from a state of grace. But it’s true that even in that context, some mortal sins are worse than others.
Nonetheless, what I’ve explained to you is that I don’t regard sinfulness as a proper basis for legislation. But there are acts which are both sinful and the proper basis for legislation, because there is an independent, secular reason to prohibit the act.
I’m pretty confident that all other readers, except Lobohan, are clear on this, and you and Lobohan alone are puzzled. That’s a shame. What else can I do to help you two reach everyone else’s level?
Yup. See?
I wasn’t asking you. I was merely responding to Musicat.
I just can’t comprehend why it’s so sinful.
What is your perspective on severely poverty-stricken, overpopulated areas that would benefit from some artificial birth control?
Very well said.
Because God said so or it logically follows from something that God said. Is there any other reason for something to be sinful?
Just because there is a good secular reason to enter into behaviour designated as sinful does not make the behaviour any less sinful.
(or so says this atheist).
My perspective is that they should probably use birth control, especially if they’re not Catholic.
If they are Catholic, I think there’s value in finding a confessor who understands the totality of one’s circumstances.
Because the Roman church wants to impose its version of Sharia Law on the rest of us in contravention of the First Amendment.
Are you able to cite some instance of the “Roman church” seeking to criminalize vibrators?
Transorbital lobotomy?
After you asked if I was “proposing we abandon our democracy in favor of a technocracy”, you lost all authority to get huffy when I question your use of metaphor.
But you’re analogizing to a pre-ovulation and pre-implanation interruption of pregnancy, right? It’s easy to compile lists of things that are worse than other things, but you’re implying relevance then backpedaling when called on it.
Well, the saying might go that way, but the King James version of Ecclesiastes 1:9 actually says “…and there is no new thing under the sun.”
Trivial nitpick, I know.
Sure it is. What’s the difference between “thinning the edometrium” (and thus denying critical life support to a “genetically unique human”) and, say, denying food to your baby? Isn’t it your premise that once a genetically unique human (or whatever the terminology) is formed, there’s no difference between it and a born child?
If there is a difference, when does that difference manifest? Why is thinning the endometrium less culpable? Does significant culpability attach the moment the embryo does? If that’s the arbitrary line you want, fine. It’s different from your earlier arbitrary line, but I guess that’s to be expected.
My follow-up questions would be about the consequences of culpability, i.e. what penalties you have in mind for a woman who ends (or through negligence allows to end) a post-implantation pregnancy, but I never get an answer to those, it’s just amusing to see how the questions are ducked.
As an incidental note (and it should get its own thread, but it seems to be current conversational grist), is Catholicism more of an organized threat to American liberty than, say, Evangelical Protestantism? I’d’ve thought the latter was more dangerous, but perhaps just based on anecdotal evidence.
Yes, that would work, but I’m reasonably certain none of the other participants wants a transorbital lobotomy.
Yes, you clearly know they are, but what are you?
Disclosure: I’ve done the same thing in this thread.
After numerous posts explaining that I am a Catholic, what possible reason would I have for quoting the King James translation?
I quoted the New American Standard from the USCCB.
No, that’s never been my premise. It’s been my premise that both should be entitled to the protection of the law, not that “there’s no difference” between them. In fact, that very argument was explored in this post.
Now, there is also a difference between actively killing, and passively denying food. Both are bad – one is worse. That’s precisely how I said the two cases differed in this post:
I don’t have any penalties in mind for a woman who procures an abortion, or one who ends one through her negligence.
I would like to see penalties for medical practitioners who assist in such actions, though.
This is a topic for another thread, but exploring what’s down this road is what leads me to be Pro-Choice.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled thread.
That’s not an exploration, it’s a bare “yes” and a flippant follow-up line about hair colour and then you went back to asserting similarity.
Anyway, there’s nothing “precise” about “bad” versus “worse.” It’s true that you precisely said “bad” and “worse”, but the comparison itself is somewhat limited in its utility.
Like loss of license, jail time…? Since the demand for abortion isn’t likely to go down, have you looked ahead to what happens when trained medical practitioners no longer perform them? Does a pharmacist who supplies mifepristone or something comparable count as a medical practitioner, or would mifepristone just be banned outright?
This is why I used the term “short-sighted” earlier.
And seeing magellan’s response… suddenly my contempt for him is not quite as utter.