Posted on 10/04/2008 7:11:38 AM PDT by tcg
It is impossible for me to answer all of the objections to the Church’s teaching on life that we hear every day in the media. Nevertheless, let me address a few. To begin, laws that protect abortion constitute injustice of the worst kind. They rest on several false claims including that there is no certainty regarding when life begins, that there is no certainty about when a fetus becomes a person, and that some human beings may be killed to advance the interests or convenience of others. With regard to the first, reason and science have answered the question. The life of a human being begins at conception. The Church has long taught this simple truth, and science confirms it. Biologists can now show you the delicate and beautiful development of the human embryo in its first days of existence. This is simply a fact that reasonable people accept. Regarding the second, the embryo and the fetus have the potential to do all that an adult person does. Finally, the claim that the human fetus may be sacrificed to the interests or convenience of his mother or someone else is grievously wrong. All three claims have the same result: the weakest and most vulnerable are denied, because of their age, the most basic protection that we demand for ourselves. This is discrimination at its worst, and no person of conscience should support it.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholic.org ...
Creator-endowed right to life and liberty is the foundation upon which this nation was founded.
If a nation devalues that concept, basing an individual's right to life and liberty on judicial fiat and a woman or girl's decision, then where is the security for liberty for any?
The elephant in the room in this election is the Radical Left's absolute determination that it, alone, will decide who sits on the Supreme Court of the United States! They talk about "change," they talk about war, they talk about everything else, but the "elephant" is the question of the unfettered right of a woman to destroy her unborn child. To the Left, this is a declared war on all opposition.
Yes, it is time for John McCain to take off the gloves on exposing the real culprits in the government who forced banks to make risky loans to unqualified people, but for the sake of liberty for generations yet unborn, it is far more important that he clarify the importance of the life issue, and the threat to liberty if Obama carries out the Left's agenda. Soft pedaling this issue, as if it is just a personal preference, overlooks a far more significant principle.
"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them."- Thomas Jefferson
"The world is different now. . . . And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forefathers fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God."- JFK, Inaugural 1961
The bishop weakens his case by conflating several types of falsehood.
He is correct that human life begins at conception. That is a scientific fact and denying it is factually incorrect. I don't know of very many "pro-choice" people who argue otherwise. Arguing that they do is somewhat of a straw-man argument.
When a fetus (or anybody else) qualifies as a person under the law is a legal and political issue. Various human societies have answered this question in numerous ways. Under early Roman law only the head of the household was considered truly a person under the law. Even his adult sons were not fully person, with the pater familias retaining power of life and death over the, (and their wives and children) as well as his own wife, children and slaves.
Our present notion that "all men are created equal" is a moral, ethical and political position. It is not a fact.
Denying a human fetus status under the law as a person is not scientifically wrong, it is only morally wrong. As a moral and political issue there is by definition no certainty on this point, unless you accept the writer's religious assumptions, and if everyone did then there wouldn't be a political issue, would there?
Whether some humans may be legitimately "killed to advance the interests or convenience of others" is again not a scientific or factual issue. It is one of politics and morality.
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