Think hard. Go back and review. Did I say anything about the legal system, and how that might distinguish the cases? Did I offer any sort of recognition about abortion providers acting in good faith?
Furrow your brow and concentrate. I know you can do it. We’re all pulling for you!
Can I just pick up on this and answer it, leaving the rest of the argument to those who are doing just fine without me?
The answer is: “No. But the right to life is so basic and fundamental that we had better be very, very careful about setting it aside for the sole purpose of avoiding stepping on someone else’s rights. Additionally, the further away we get from a newly-fertilised egg (and, in practice, it’s very seldom we need to concern ourselves with the rights of the newly-fertilised egg), the greater the care we should exercise.”
Any help?
Because I have been discussing your hypocricy in particular. If you can show that I have been wrong, I’ll gladly accept it. I value you as a board member, but on matters of principle I am more disturbed by moral misteps by those I value than by those I don’t.
Appreciated.
Correct.
Incorrect. I merely provided an example of a highly esteemed member of society to make clear that her sex is the only reason to refuse her as a member of your society.
Really?
Is that the same Roman Catholic church where a woman could never be a priest, Bisshop or ‘God Forbid’, Pope? Or do you, brethren, openly support this position as laid out here:
I’d have thought this would lead to all the more understanding of the position of women in society.
Not so obvious to me. A tradition to remember the evils of discrimination that preserves similar evils of discrimination seems flawed, and would have benefited from a better solution to your practical problem, which can be easily found - I thought of one within a minute.
How about changing the requirements for members to be men, to members to be bread-winners?
I cannot believe that you find the PERCEPTION of the legality of abortion so important, that you find it necessary to use such a petty insurance issue to justify keeping a men’s club like this one which really doesn’t need to be, keep up the PERCEPTION of mysogynism.
To be honest, it sounds incredibly … hypocritical.
It is not dishonest and off-topic. You so easily gloss over the position of women being forced to carry a child they do not want for 9 months, and the right to abortion is such an important part of the women’s liberation movement, that a discussion of your personal hypocricy is completely on-topic.
I have a fairly absolute confidence in the merits of the position I am advancing, as I am becoming increasingly certain that my position is based on a lot more thought and consideration than yours. I will patiently await you proving me otherwise.
Who is forcing them? Evil men? Or their own actions in getting pregnant in the first place?
You react to the women’s ‘right’ to have an abortion as if women spontaneously become pregnant with no thought or action beforehand.
If women do not want children, or to be in a position of carrying a child they do not want for 9 months- and men do not want to be in a position of being forced to financially support the mother and said child- perhaps they should involve themselves in understanding and using birth control.
It is? Oh, how the mighty have fallen; once upon a time, the important part of the women’s liberation movement was attempting to gain equity between the sexes in regards to the law and the businessplace. Now it’s about being able to kill children. Whee.
So then the woman’s to blame if she gets pregnant? It’s not birth control can fail or anything…right?
Actually, we were discussing my hypocrisy on the issue of abortion as murder. If it should develop that I inveigh nightly against the evils of alcohol before slipping off to the study for a single-malt scotch over ice, it would not be relevant to this discussion.
No, we don’t support the position that is laid out by womenpriests.org. We contend that the Pope, together with the Bishops, is the teaching authority of the Church. While no one has ever said that as a matter of faith or morals it is impossible to have women priests, the fact is that at the present time, the Church does not permit women to be ordained.
This authority to make this decision, we believe, comes from God. When Christ told Peter, “You are the rock upon which I will build My Church,” he was granting Peter the authority and license to lead His Church on Earth. And that authority in turn flowed through the succession of Popes unto the present day. Similarly, the apostles upon whom descended the Holy Spirit were given gifts. The apostles ordained others by laying on hands, and there is an unbroken chain of laying on of hands from each and every bishop today, back through the years, to that group and Peter.
For this reason, we contend that God has given this Pope and these bishops teaching authority to determine the proper way to run the church. While we may debate the wisdom of their decisions – and properly, since they are men, and subject to failures and foibles – we cannot debate that authority. It exists as a cornerstone of Catholic faith. To be a practical Catholic in union with the Holy See is to accept that as a given.
My understanding is that such a change would, under current tax law, eliminate our tax-free status. I welcome correction to the contrary.
The difference between tax-free and taxed operation is NOT petty. It’s millions of dollars per year.
Au contraire - and it’s common knowledge that birth control can fail. This argues strongly for having sex only under circumstances where it’s not going to be disastrous if it does, of course.
Blame’s an inflammatory word. Say rather that she knew what she was doing before she decided to have sex.
Ok, great. Now we are starting to have a real discussion, with content. Thanks, this is much appreciated.
No discussion here.
Ok, so we’ve established that. I will still dispute with you that the relativele value of a human being varies and increases greatly over time and depends partially on the investment made into it. This sounds terribly materialistic, but that’s often a consequence when you try to apply the most objective of standards.
But first things first. The two sets of right not being equal, how do you deal with the fact that carrying a child always means the mother risks her body and health to some extent? Why should she, for instance, involuntarily risk pre-eclampsia? After all, that only’ affects 5-8% of all pregnancies, and 76.000 women still die of it each year. That’s just one of the more serious risks and trust me it is not the only one - though I hope you will refrain from making me to discuss all of them, preferably, lest I or my SO might lose the courage to put a child into this world … :D.
So, where would you draw the limits? What do you consider an acceptible risk?
It can be used as such an excuse, certainly. This is not the case here, though.
Not just any human individual, but a living one.
Moreover, of what relevance is your objection? If these experts state that an individual human being is present at conception, then that statement disproves the notion that the unborn is just a lump of cells. If anything, your assertion is fatal to the pro-choice cause.
Not true. The killing of a sperm cell or egg cell does not take a human life. In contrast, if the fertilized egg does mark the beginning of a new human individual, then the extermination of that zygote is the same as killing a human being. This is a completely relevant distinction.
Oh, and I can’t help but notice that you’re still dodging my earlier objection. Let’s suppose that the fertilized egg is not a living human individual. How does this justify abortions that occur eight weeks or more into pregnancy? You keep dodging that question, and I think we all know why.
What circumstances would that be? Marriages fail, lovers lie, people die. What, I should be wealthy before I have sex, in case something disastrous happens and I find myself having to make a decision based on my circumstance?
You’re confusing “human” and “person”. A fertilized egg is human, but it’s no more a person than my pinky is; less, since it’s not even part of a person yet.
Why did a discussion of hypocrisy turn into yet another pointless debate about when life begins? No one’s opinions are going to change and, for the record, for some of us it doesn’t even matter.
Because it’s a fairly one sided debate. Even if they feel that way, not many people are going to admit they want to mass-murder the opposition. Also, if a fetus isn’t human ( or a person, as I would put it ). that automatically causes one side to lose. Killing people to protect a nonperson is indefensible.
It isn’t? Reading below, I see you’ve not even noticed that I’ve answered your question already.
More evidence of not reading my posts. If you had, you wouldn’t have needed to repeat that.
Let’s stick to just the one fertilised cell for the moment, ok? This one fertilised cell is still only a fertilised cell. A tiny speck of dust. Valueless to anyone who does not want a child. Incapable of suffering, remembering, feeling, sensing, acting, and so on. It is where an individual life begins, but at the same time it is practically nothing at all.
That is a relevant distinction, but doesn’t also mean that if you were to ask a biologist whether a (live) sperm cell isn’t also alive, he would say yes. So to understand the value and importance of living, it is important to recognise that a fertilised cell and a sperm cell or any other cell does not differ very much in anything but the fact that they mark the beginning of a new human being, purely by virtue of DNA being exchanged.
I have not dodged it, I have answerd it already before you asked the question. Something to do with 16 weeks, brains forming, memory, etc. Feel free to read back. The value of life is not absolute. Bricker has already understood that, so there is a beginning at least. I feel that people like you too easily want to take away from others the rights to choose what to do with their own bodies, without making an honest effort to fully appreciate what life is and what lives need to be protected. In that sense, I hope discussions like these contribute to a better understanding of life.
Well said.
It’s nearly impossible to draw a bright-line distinction here.
Consider a mother and a toddler. We would punish, criminally, a mother that failed lift a finger to save her child from drowning, even though by offering some help she may put herself at risk. We do not require that she kill herself, but we as a society are comfortable with the mother assuming some measure of reasonable risk to save the life of her child.
I cannot imagine why the same calculus cannot be brought to bear here. If the mother is at some special risk for pre-eclampsia, then that certainly is a factor bearing on her health, as I discussed above. But the vast majority of pregnancies are not at any serious risk. 76,000 seems like a high number… until you consider it’s a global figure, not a national one. How many US deaths are there every year from pre-eclampsia? In a normal, healthy, fertile 18 year old, what are the realistic odds of this problem?
So with all this said… where, precisely, is my hypocrisy on this issue?
What’s the difference, then? What is the essential difference between a human being and a person?
Now, this is the point at which some debaters say, “It’s a person if it’s born, and a non-person if it’s not.” That answer is mere circular reasoning, though. It dodges the question of why personhood should be taken to begin at birth, and what intrinsic qualities make the unborn a non-person.
So please, can you cite some commonly accepted definition of personhood that predates Roe v. Wade, and which firmly establishes the unborn as a non-person?
No, it’s evidence of the incoherence of your statements. You claim that the experts in question argue that the unborn is a living human being – which is certainly true. However, your objection does NOT support your case, which is why your stance is logically incoherent.
Again, more circular reasoning. And, as I’ve repeatedly pointed out to you, irrelevant as far as the overwhelming majority of abortions are concerned.
You have made assertions, and incoherent ones at that.
Then again, you have to also consider that this is just one of the more serious conditions (and I specifically asked you to not make me discuss all of them ;)). Of course there are good odds, or mankind would probably have been extinct by now.
However, your analogy with the responsibility of a mother risking her life to some extent for safeguarding that of her child (not a universal law and where it is penalties vary wildly penalties), does not necessarily equate. The mother, in this case, has assumed responsibility for the child. It has had the option to give the child up for adoption. By not doing so, the mother has wilfully assumed responsibility. By outlawing abortion, this choice is not available to a pregnant woman.
I also disagree that there is anything that needs protection at the very least before the 16th week, for reasons given above. But one step at a time (and I have to run)
I still don’t believe you want women to have a choice in this. And so my stance that your goal to make having the child the better choice is hypocrite. For that, you have to keep it a choice.
While that is certainly my main gripe, I am also fully not convinced that your cited reason for the brotherhood is based on tax. To put it mildly, I don’t think you respect the position of women in this issue as much as you seem to.