Wait - why are Catholics opposed to fertility treatments? I would think they’d be all for them. Don’t Catholics consider large families a Good Thing?
I think it depends on the treatment. Anything that increases fertility I would think would be fine, but IVF and the like probably don’t fit the Catholic doctrine. My husband was wondering why it’s okay to mess with nature to be able to have children, but not to prevent them–our Engaged Encounter weekend included a couple who had spent years trying to have a baby the traditional way and who had been through several surgeries to try and achieve that.
The recent Popes have opposed human interference in the “miracle” of conception, pregnancy, and childbirth.
If you look at part four under the document I linked to from the conference of catholic bishops, all will become clear. Some things are ok and some are not, but fertility in and of itself is not necessarily a Good Thing, no. These guidelines only count in the US, other places have other conferences of bishops.
Huh. That’s good to know.
I guess I’m just surprised to see the Catholic Church acting so anti-family. Against Catholics having sex for fun? Typical. Against Catholics producing more little Catholics? Weird.
Artifical insemination and egg donor are a form of adultry by their standards.
IVF often involves multiple eggs being fertilized and then discarded, a form of abortion by their standards.
If a couple wants to use their own eggs and sperm and all the fertilized eggs and put them in the wife’s womb, I think the Catholic Church would allow it.
I think you are mischaracterizing their stance here. Do you have a cite that says that it’s considered adultry? As far as I understand it, the problem they have is confusion of parenthood, not adultery.
They do not allow it under any circumstances. Here is a cite that briefly explains the reasoning.
When people object to vaccinations for religious reasons, I sincerely hope they also reject any modern medical help when their children become ill. After all, it’s God’s will that the child be infected and suffer.
Back to the OP, and the correlation between anti-vax and church-going, via the mushy-brain route.
As much as I relish the opportunity to bash religion, I can’t agree with this. A good example is to look to a comparable country with much less religion uptake: England. As I understand it, people of the age to be parents of infants very rarely attend church in England, but they are at the epicenter of the anti-vaccination hysteria.
And over here in America, in my experience, they seem to be different populations, although my experience with anti-vaxers is limited. But that’s kind of my point - I’ve never met an anti-vaxer in real life (that I know of), but I’m in the most religious part of a very religious country. Possibly the very far extreme of the religious nutjobs are also the conspiracy types, and they would be ideal candidates for anti-vax junk, but they’re the exception. Most anti-vaxers in America seem to be the vegan holistic granola types.
I’ve not gone through the whole thread, so my apologies if this has already been covered.
Not quite. One doctor raised the alarm about the MMR vaccine - falsely as it turned out - and the government here in the U.K. would not allow NHS doctors to give the old individual vaccines separately. So there is fault on many sides, at least in the U.K. Of course, I cannot speak about what happenned in the U.S.
That was the idiot Andrew Wakefield and his infamous measles equals autism study erroneously published in a reputable medical journal.
The sensationalism in the news is a big part of the problem. A few years ago Dow almost went out of business due to law suits over breast implants. It was all over talk shows and the news. Some women actually cut them out on their own they were so terrified. Yet it is now known the implants were not the causes of the physical problems. The health problems that women were experiencing correlated to the general population.
There’s a certain irony in the OP attacking anti-vaccinationists for ignoring hard evidence, and then tying that attitude to “Christians” based on anecdote and intuition.
Don’t Call Me Shirley,
I’ve heard pros and cons to the vaccine debate and can’t say for sure what I’d do if I had children. But I admire the degree to which you want to protect yours, so I thought you might find this of interest. It’s tightly related to your OP, but looking at a different aspect of the problem. I’d rather not hijack this thread, so I’ll just leave it there for your consideration. If you find it of interest, you can easily google additional information.
What cons are there to vaccination other than the very minute risk of a bad vaccine reation?
Ew, I feel dirty just having clicked on that link. Never mind the blatent anti-immigrant rhetoric (Leprosy? Seriously? No one even knows how it’s transmitted, but it doesn’t seem to be contagious), take a look at the sort of disgusting crap being advertised on the sidebars.
Here’s another example of the garbage on that site. Sherri Tenpenny is all over the anti-vax websites. She’s a moron.
Sorry, I guess I worded that poorly.I simply meant what was discussed in the thread. I am not aware of other reasons to not vaccinate.
I didn’t get more than a couple paragraphs in, but I didn’t see anything that wasn’t true of any visitor to a country. It’s not like every tourist has to go through a complete medical exam before coming in. I had to get a TB skin test and prove my vaccinations were up to date, among other things (I’m not sure what they checked for, but they also took a couple vials of blood), to get my green card. But that wasn’t until after I had already entered the country legally on a tourist visa.
Honestly, I’m not sure where she was going with that, but it would seem like a good reason to get vaccinated–“We don’t know what the illegals are bringing with them–get vaccinated so you won’t catch it!”
Thank you, magellan01 for your contribution from such a credible source!
I appreciate their unique views on the evils of both water-fluoridation and vaccination.
http://www.newswithviews.com/HNB/Hot_New_Books17.htm
http://www.newswithviews.com/HNV/Hot_New_Videos6.htm
As always, your idiotic contributions to the discourse on this Board are appreciated.