Trying to understand Catholic arguments for and against abortion
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Anonymous
we have a constitution that protects our fundamental rights to liberty, freedom, and equal protection. |
Anonymous
what? stop lying. the state outlawing a medical procedure is the state doing something to my body. |
Anonymous
Not trying to talk you in or out of it. Just saying that lots of people stay Catholic by simply ignoring the official RC abortion stance -- just as they ignore other "teachings" of the church. Others, in contrast, just don't feel comfortable staying in the church, so switch to a church with similar beliefs/rituals that accept abortion rights, e.g., liberal Episcopal or Lutheran congregations Still other Catholics use the period of reflection on the Church's stance of abortion rights to determine that they question religious beliefs all together and quit attending church. It's hard to know where you will end up, but it seems to me that your questioning is a good thing. |
Anonymous
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Where Catholics really differ is on what we call "prudential considerations" Is it more effective to concentrate on making abortion illegal at an earlier point, or to work on supporting mothers and children with economic support, free or affordable health care, child care, etc
Many women have abortions because they can't support themselves, their families, and a new baby; they don't really have a choice. |
Anonymous
Not every medical procedure is legal. Let us take a hypothetical, internal organ tatoos. Their existence is not confirmed; could be an urban myth. But it is entirely possible, if only at great risk to health and life. Would you object if a state did not permit this? It is, after all a medical procedure (also involving a tatoo artist). Do you support the Supreme Court ruling that no state may prohibit internal organ tatoos? Let us take another, real-life example, physician-assisted suicide. This is permitted by law in a number of states but is prohibited by most. Is the ability to have a physician assisted suicide a human right, one that can be found in emanations of the Constitution? Roe could well be used a precedent for a future drive to require all states to permit physician-assisted suicide, allowing a bit of variation on how sick (or not) you need to be (i.e., on demand or not), how many physicians must sign off, etc. Would you support the Supreme Court mandating physician assisted suicide, a medical procedure, in every state, or is this something voters in each state should decide? |
Anonymous
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Patients should absolutely be free to make their own medical decisions with their doctor without the interference of religious extremists.
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Anonymous
I don’t gaf about your parade of horribles. made up speculation about other cases has nothing to do with my fundamental right to control my reproduction. |
Anonymous
| The question before the country is not what you consider a fundamental right, but rather what is a right that under the Constitution no state may make a law to abridge. |
Anonymous
The Catholic Church is unambiguously against abortion though. There’s zero room for individual choice or prudential considerations or individual conscience. It’s in you doctrine. |
Anonymous
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The wrong science about when life begins and personhood at fertilization pushed by the Catholic Church is my biggest hang up. How can anyone follow their leadership on this issue if they aren't going to be truthful?
"But despite the insistence of anti-abortion activists, the notion that life begins at the bright line of conception is at odds with many ethical traditions. In a number of religions, when an embryo or fetus becomes a person remains a mystery, something that occurs not in a single moment but in a series of moments, none necessarily more important than the next. And, for all the anti-abortion side’s embrace of ultrasounds, the medical community tends to agree. “Many scientists would say they don’t know when life begins. There are a series of landmark moments,” said Arthur Caplan, professor and founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University Langone Medical Center. “The first is conception, the second is the development of the spine, the third the development of the brain, consciousness, and so on.” That perspective, it turns out, has deep roots. It’s also one that resonates for many pregnant women who experience the embryo’s gradual passage to personhood on a visceral level. Many religious traditions, including a number of denominations of Christianity, are ambivalent about the beginnings of life. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and many American Baptists don’t believe abortion is akin to murder. Presbyterians concede that they “may not know exactly when human life begins” and encourage their followers to make their own careful decisions on abortion. Unitarians are more overtly pro-choice and “believe not only in the value of life itself but also in the quality of life.” Among Muslims, there is no universally agreed-upon moment when a fetus becomes a person. “Some say it takes 40 days, others say it takes 120 days, for a human soul to be breathed into a fetus,” Sherine Hamdy, an associate professor of anthropology at Brown who researches cross-cultural bioethics, told Slate. She said many Muslim religious leaders allow for abortion in case of rape before 4 months, and some also allow for it in the case of a prenatal diagnosis of disability if it is seen as “an arduous burden on the family’s well-being.” The majority of Jews do not believe that life begins at conception but instead see the creation of life as something that happens over time. During this process, the fetus is seen as part of the mother, whose well-being, both immediate and future, takes precedence. As with other religious traditions, Jewish ethicists have increasingly become willing to consider psychological threats to the mother in addition to physical ones, when considering whether an abortion is the right decision. “The tradition holds that we enter life in stages and leave in stages,” Rabbi Elliot Dorff, bioethicist and professor of Jewish theology at the American Jewish University in California, told Slate. He pointed to Exodus 21, in which the Bible explains that if a pregnant woman is physically harmed and miscarries as a result, the punishment for her assailant should not be the same as if he killed another person. “It’s clear here that there is real distinction between the status of fetus and status of a woman who is a full-fledged human being.” There are also a number of biblical passages in which the breath, and not the heartbeat, serves as the central symbol for life, including, most famously, Genesis 2:7: “Then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Anti-abortion activists often counter these examples with two other biblical passages, both which suggest that some kind of ensoulment happens at conception. “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee,” reads Jeremiah 1:5. Together, these passages suggest that the author or authors of the Bible were as uncertain as we are about when life begins." https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/04/when-does-life-begin-outside-the-christian-right-the-answer-is-over-time.html |
Anonymous
How can you justify making laws for an entire nation, based on your religious beliefs? |
Anonymous
The fact that modern religions/scientists disagree about when life begins doesn’t mean that all views must or should be held as equally valid or acceptable. For a long period of history many religions and main stream western scientists taught that blacks were inherently inferior or subhuman and slavery held up as a fundamental right to property. |
Anonymous
Exactly. Why do you think your religious beliefs should be forced on everyone else? |
Anonymous
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One of many examples from a report on mi
I'll never forget this; it was awful—I had one of my partners accept this patient at 19 weeks. The pregnancy was in the vagina. It was over… . And so he takes this patient and transferred her to [our] tertiary medical center, which I was just livid about, and, you know, “we're going to save the pregnancy.” So of course, I'm on call when she gets septic, and she's septic to the point that I'm pushing pressors on labor and delivery trying to keep her blood pressure up, and I have her on a cooling blanket because she's 106 degrees. And I needed to get everything out. And so I put the ultrasound machine on and there was still a heartbeat, and [the ethics committee] wouldn't let me because there was still a heartbeat. This woman is dying before our eyes. I went in to examine her, and I was able to find the umbilical cord through the membranes and just snapped the umbilical cord and so that I could put the ultrasound—“Oh look. No heartbeat. Let's go.” She was so sick she was in the [intensive care unit] for about 10 days and very nearly died… . She was in DIC [disseminated intravascular coagulopathy]… . Her bleeding was so bad that the sclera, the white of her eyes, were red, filled with blood… . And I said, “I just can't do this. I can't put myself behind this. This is not worth it to me.” That's why I left. |
Anonymous
| That was supposed to cite to an article on miscarriage management in Catholic Hospitals at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2636458/ |