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It would probably help your understanding if you didn't work off the assumption that Catholics were ignoramuses.

Well Hermann isn't exactly doing much to refute that assumption, now is he? :P Seriously, people like him repulse and frighten me just as much as the Iranian Mullahs (and the only difference between these fanatics, at the end of the day, is whatever religion they declare is "right"). If I could gather all his posts, show them to the mainstream American public, and somehow convince them that this (e.g. not performing therapeutic abortions because women *should* die in childbirth, it's their "nature") was the Republican platform - Hillary would win by the biggest landslide in American history.

The following quote by C.S. Lewis has been posted here many times before, but it bears repeating, since it tells us why religious fanatics of *any* stripe must never be allowed to come to power:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Well Hermann isn't exactly doing much to refute that assumption, now is he? :P

Please ping me if you wish to discuss me by name.

Seriously, people like him repulse and frighten me just as much as the Iranian Mullahs (and the only difference between these fanatics, at the end of the day, is whatever religion they declare is "right"). If I could gather all his posts, show them to the mainstream American public, and somehow convince them that this (e.g. not performing therapeutic abortions because women *should* die in childbirth, it's their "nature") was the Republican platform - Hillary would win by the biggest landslide in American history.

I never said that "women should die in childbirth" because it is "their nature". I said that the moral course of action is to not kill the child in order to save the life of the mother. One cannot ever morally justify murdering a child (or any person for that matter) to save another person's life.

The end does not justify the means.

I did say that the nature of being a woman entails certain risks - among them is the mercifully now very, very small risk of dying in childbirth.

It is a sad commentary that this position would be an overwhelmingly losing position in American politics. It goes to show that most Americans, including yourself, are philosophical Marxists.

You believe that the end does justify the means.

Therefore, something as horrible as murder, which is certainly the worst thing one human can do to another, and in this case is done upon a helpless infant, can be justified and given a sheen of morality by claiming it necessary to save a mother's life.

Karl Marx would be proud. Welcome to his company.

Do answer me one thing though, because it has always perplexed me. Why is the mother's life more valuable than the infant's that it is to be preferred to kill the infant to save the mother?