Posted on 11/05/2001 4:02:25 PM PST by Notwithstanding
Should have been: Nowadays most pregnant women we see are unmarried...
"abortion surgery", "abortion services" and abortions being "performed" is not neutral language. "Abortion services" is a contradiction in terms, and abortions are not 'performed'; they are committed. "Abortion surgery" has about as much to do with the practice of medicine as electrical engineering has to do with capital punishment by electric chair. Well, less actually. Electrocution of the condemned is a least warranted under real laws passed by a legislature, and carried out after numerous due process proceedings. The same cannot be said for abortion killings.
Cordially,
Who took personhood away from them, and on what grounds? What is the ontological or legal justification for any distinction between "human being" and "person"? There isn't any. The only reason for that deadly semantic sleight of hand was so that the killing of certain human beings (a.k.a. persons) could proceed unabated.
Children in utereo have traditionally had personal status under probate law, for example, so what is this talk of 'giving' them something? They already POSSESS inalienable rights that cannot be rightfully taken away. Their rights are not given to them by any human being, but by their Creator.
Cordially,
This blows a hole in so many other lame arguments of the left, folks generally ignore it if possible.
As explained here by premiere geneticist Doctor Jérôme Lejeune, even the scientists themselves used to think that the mother had some effect on the developing life after conception (beyond nourishment and the providing of the new life's natural and rightful home in the womb of his mother).
As the Catholic Church is not a "faith-alone" sort of Christian sect, it's only natural that they could not with certainty leap ahead of science in this regard.
To wit:
Q: Once fertilization, once conception has occurred, could you tell the Court, anything added after the point? Does Peter or Margaret come into being, so to speak, through additional information?
A: Well, that was a very interesting discovery of modem science. Because for a long time it has been believed that the mother, the feeling of the mother, could do something to the baby. . . . [but] we know now that everything is written inside the first cell.
I have to come back to this concept of conception, because it is a very remarkable fact that in all the languages coming from Latin, we use the same word either to express an idea which comes into our mind, or to a new being coming into life. We conceive an idea. We conceive a baby. A baby is conceived. Conception applies just as well for defining what will animate matter in a human nature or what will animate your mind within your idea.
And that is, so to speak, an extraordinary description of reality which is at the very beginning the information and the matter, so to speak: the spirit and the body are so intimately interwoven that we use the same word to say spirit animated by your ideas, or life of a new human being animated by genetic property-conception.
Now this moment a new human being is conceived is, really, as for the conception of a new constitution, when the whole thing has been spelled out.
Now we know, and I think there's no disagreement among biologists everywhere in this world, that after fecundation no new information goes in. Everything is there, just at the moment after the entry of the sperm, or it is not enough and it will fail. Either the whole information for the human being is there and the human being can develop and organize, or it is not there and no human being will develop at all.
Now nature has invented an extraordinary device to tell us that nature does protect the privacy of the very first stage of the human being. The right of privacy is written in that way in biology.
The egg is a little sphere of one millimeter and a half in diameter. But it is not naked. It has some plastic bag around it that we call from Latin zona pellucida, because you can see through it. And this very curious plastic bag is, in fact, the perfect control of the privacy of the new being because as soon as the head of the sperm who got there first was able to burrow inside the zona pellucida, as soon as the head comes inside, suddenly in a micro-second, this lucida, this transparent membrane becomes suddenly changed physically, and it becomes entirely impermeable to any other sperm.
One of my other all-time favorites is "Abortion and the English Language by Joe Sobran.
Because the damned archives still are down, I can't grab the quote for you in a flash but perhaps you might consider it from a point of view or set of circumstances which changed forever Reagan's view of abortion and made him the last (if not only) GOP president we've had this century who was truly pro-life and could articulate a compelling argument against abortion.
Reagan put this question to his legal advisors and friends while pondering the subject for himself.
If a man died after finding out (and rejoicing) that his wife was pregnant with his child, would it be unlawful for her to abort the child so as to scoop his estate for herself?
Yes but this begs the question of a Divine ... what do you do with folks who believe in evolution and must therefore accept that we can evolve (as well as devolve) these so-called "inalienable" rights.
It also reminds me of Antoninus's interjection on the old "Fisticuffs" thread.
Did you ever hone that list of rights, OWK?
P.S. to S.O.: Hope you'll take note of my point re: science and the Catholic Church as posted above.
The brevity of your response has left me unclear as to whether you disagree with my assertion that 'abortion surgery", "abortion services" and abortions being "performed" is not neutral language', or whether you disagree with my evaluation of those phrases.
Cordially,
"Eight years ago when I became Gov. I found myself involved almost immediately in a controversy over abortion. It was a subject I'd never given much thought to and in a sense one upon which I didn't really have an opinion. In other words as But now I was Gov. and it turned abortion turned out to be something I couldn't walk away from. A bill had been introduced in the Calif. legislature to make abortion available upon demand. The pro & anti forces were already marshalling their troops and emotions were running high. Then the author of the bill sent word down that he'd amend his bill to anything I felt I could sign. The ball -- to coin a cliche -- was in my court. Suddenly the it had become necessary for me to take a position & on a subject I'd never before given as I said on a matter I'd never really ever given any thought to I had to have a position on abortion.
To shorten this down I did more studying, researching & soul searching on this matter than on any thing that faced was to face me as Gov. in all my those 8 years in office. I discovered that neither medicine, law or theology had ever really found a common ground on the subject. a com. any consensus on the Views ranged from those On one hand there were those who Some believed an unborn child was like some kind of no more than a growth on the body female & she should be able to remove it as she would her appendix. Others felt a human life existed from the moment the fertilized egg attached itself to the ovary wall was implanted in the womb. I now Strangely enough Calif. had a law passed almost unanimously by the same legis. that was so divided on th this on this subject couldn't agree on abortion had unanimously passed had passed by a virtually unanimous vote a law making anyone liable guilty of murder it murder to abuse a pregnant woman. to the extent that when so doing to so as to cause the "death of the her unborn child." I found further that an unborn child (called a fetus by those who support abortion) has property rights. Another inconsistency-the unborn have property rights protected by law. A man can will his estate to his wife & children & any children yet to be born of his marriage. Now a law is being proposed that Yet the proposed abortion law would let one person for whatever reason take the life of the that unborn child. deny the unborn the protection of the law in preserving its life.
I went to the lawyers on my staff and verified this property right right of the unborn to own property I've mentioned. Then I asked if there wasn't some inconsistency in deny denying the same unborn child the right to life. I posed a hypothetical question. Wouldn't an What if a wo pregnant woman were widowed and became a widow during her pregnancy & found her husband had left his fortune to her & the unborn child. Under the proposed abortion law couldn't she abort the child she could take the life of her child & inherit not half but all of her husbands estate. the entire fortune & where-in did was that this different from murder Wouldn't that be murder for financial gain? The only answer I got was that they were glad I wasn't asking the questions on the bar exam."
How to do full-text FR searches
Cordially,
Every existing, tangible thing is composed of a substantial form and matter as St. Thomas teaches us.
In the case of a human being, we call the substantial form "the soul."
When a substance changes from one substance into another, one substantial form disappears while another appears, and the matter remains unchanged.
For example, when the substance of water is divided into Hydrogen and Oxygen, the substantial form of water disappears while the substantial forms of Hydrogen and Oxygen appear. The substantial form comes into being at individuation.
Analogously, the substantial form or soul of a discrete human being comes into being at individuation. As stated above, the best medical science of Aquinas' time indicated "quickening" as the point of individuation. Today, science shows individuation to occur at fertilization, since the human being's process of generation occurs only after this point.
For a thorough treatment of substance, form, matter, motion, generation, change and the Four Causes, see The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas
Not sure what you're getting at, but at ten weeks they have tiny little feet with wee little piggies - in fact they are very tiny CHILDREN.
DON'T MINIMIZE THIS VILE ACT!
Pro-choice to do what? You have a subject without a predicate. If you find that telling the truth about things is far more effective, then add the predicate "to kill" to your "pro-choice" slogan. My guess is that you would probably be adverse to employing that particular linguistic convention because to do so would reveal that in the killing, "choice" and "realistic alternatives" are stolen from to the one who is killed, giving the lie to your self-refuting claim to be for choice.
Cordially,
For example, when the substance of water is divided into Hydrogen and Oxygen, the substantial form of water disappears while the substantial forms of Hydrogen and Oxygen appear. The substantial form comes into being at individuation.
When you speak of splitting water into it's component elements you mean that you go through a process of splitting one measureable form (that being water) into two seperate, but still measureable forms. To divide the water you use a recorded and relatively simple scientific process.
But. While a human body is a quantifiable substance, a human soul is not. It has neither weight, nor heat, nor energy to quantify.
Things without quantifiable substance cannot be proved to exist
Therefore the human soul is a matter of belief, not fact.
Therefore the "Splitting water" example is not a good analogy for the human condition.
Cordially,
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