Abortion

[Peter666]

Hi Bluffthis,

You make some very interesting points. But I would like to point out that the Catholic Church has never taught that the death penalty is wrong, or that life begins at the very moment of conception.

In fact, the Church has always advocated the death penalty to protect the common good when a state deems that this is fit. Only some heretical modernists have been toying with this point of moral theology.

Also, there is no Catholic doctrinal teaching I am aware of telling us the exact moment of new human life. The soul is there when there is "life". If the science tells us that animation takes place when the sperm enters the egg, than that's where life begins. If it happens a few days after or something, that is when it happens. Regardless, it probably does begin at the moment of conception or shortly after as Sklansky was mentioning in his post.

[BluffTHIS!]

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But I would like to point out that the Catholic Church has never taught that the death penalty is wrong

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I was stating the position of certain non-religious persons who believe both the death penalty and abortion to be wrong. However the church does teach the death penalty should not be used in most cases.

Catechism: "The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor.
"If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
"Today, in fact, given the means at the State's disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender 'today ... are very rare, if not practically non-existent." link

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or that life begins at the very moment of conception.

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Catechism:"Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains for ever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being" link

"Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception." (see first link above)

Also for those Christians who think they can maintain that abortion is permissible in certain circumstances because the word "abortion" is not used in the bible, they should consult a book called the Didache, also called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. This book while not being part of scripture, was written most likely in the 2nd century A.D. and gives the shortest and most clear exposition of Christian moral principles and life ever written outside scripture, and denounces both abortion as well as infanticide, thus making clear Christians cannot try to imply that the bible only condemns infanticide since early Christians not far removed from apostolic times taught otherwise. link

[Peter666]

The new Catholic Catechism, as everything introduced post Vatican II is seriously flawed. It cannot be held as authoritative as there is a serious modernist influence on the book, and certain passages go so far as to contradict previous teachings, which in Catholic circles is anathema.

Moral questions are best answered by a pre 1963 Moral Theology guide. Fr. Heribert Jone's guide translated by Fr. Urban Adelman is the standard.

The direct killing of a foetus is murder and always wrong. However, the indirect killing of a foetus in a grave circumstance is not sinful.

Those "pro-lifers" whether religious or not, who insist that we should never kill anybody for any reason are wrong.

We are even allowed to kill people for the preservation of temporal goods if a grave reason exists.

[maurile]

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The new Catholic Catechism, as everything introduced post Vatican II is seriously flawed.

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This is very true. It is almost as flawed as the pre-Vatican II stuff.

[BluffTHIS!]

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The new Catholic Catechism, as everything introduced post Vatican II is seriously flawed.

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SSPX I take it?

[malorum]

Yes I think abortion is wrong, but surely the christian argument has a few problems.

1 Samuel 15:3 - Divinely ordained infnticide

"...Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'"


Psalm 137 v. 8-9 - Condoning it?>

"8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us--
9 he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."

Oh yes and we are all looking forward to the day of the lord when he punishes the wicked.

Isiah 13:16

"Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives ravished."

Oh by the way I do actually believe the book is innerrant.
Just trying to understand the 'religious argument.'
The book clearly condones infanticide in certain contexts but abortion is condemned by its later interpreters- what gives.
I personally find both abortion and infanticide abhorrent, but know better than to ask God what he was doing when he wrote the above text.

[BluffTHIS!]

Obviously if God orders something in a particular instance as when he ordered the Israelites to slaughter all their enemies, then it is correct. He however was not giving a general permission for infanticide. Surely this is obvious.

[djoyce003]

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David you have just enunciated an arguement that many would think only religious people would do. However I have know a few non religious people who believe exactly as you have just said regarding abortion, and that furthermore the death penalty is wrong as well. From a Catholic point of view regarding the morning after pill, our church teaches that the soul is infused at conception.

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Well if the catholic church said it, it must be right. Where does the Catholic church teach about molesting 12 year olds and then using donated funds to pay off the families so that the offending priests aren't prosecuted? You happy about the way your tithes are being spent?

[maurile]

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But what about regular abortions. The ones that happen to six week old or older embryos? Is that murder? Well OF COURSE IT IS. To think otherwise is ridiculous. To see this, one need only to admit that there will come a time that we will have the technology to keep tiny embryos alive outside the womb. A womb is simply a well design incubator. The child's physical destiny is determined at the time of conception. (And his consciousness, self, or soul, is determined a few days later.) Everyone agrees that delivering a six week premature baby and then killing it is murder (possibly homicide would be the better word).

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Yes, 'homicide' would be the right word there. 'Murder' denotes an unlawful homicide. When people say that abortion is murder, they generally mean that it's a homicide that should be unlawful. That's a perfectly acceptable usage as well. But in the paragraph I quoted above, your use of 'murder' doesn't fit either of those definitions. Aborting a six-week-old fetus is not unlawful, nor would everybody agree that it should be.

That small nitpick notwithstanding, that is a very good essay on abortion.

[maurile]

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If you believe God injects a soul, he hasn't done it yet [by the morning after conception]. So terminating the pregnancy at this point is different than terminating it later.

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If we don't believe that God injects a soul, then how different is a morning-after-conception abortion from a two-month-after-conception abortion?

Without the soul stuff, I think probably the most important point about the fetus is whether it's cognizant. A two-month-old fetus may be more cognizant than a one-day-old embryo. But is it cognizant enough to make the abortion of a two-month-old fetus much different from using a condom?