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I have a question:

If abortion clinics are required to give their patients information about adoption, etc., shouldn't adoption services be required to provide their clients with information about abortion? Should Catholic couseling services be required to hand out information about birth control?

I have a question:

If abortion clinics are required to give their patients information about adoption, etc., shouldn't adoption services be required to provide their clients with information about abortion? Should Catholic couseling services be required to hand out information about birth control?

Well, let's look at it this way: abortion is a medical procedure. That part is not in dispute. With all medical procedures, doctors are normally obliged to give the patient all of the details involving steps in the procedure, health risks, AND alternatives, if there are any. In this case, the alternative would be to have the baby full term and, considering that the nature of abortion is generally such that the baby is unwanted, presenting that alternative would necessarily include what you can do with the live baby afterward (adoption, etc.). This course of action is not unreasonable to expect from a "medical" facility.

An adoption agency, however, has nothing to do with medical procedures. Their primary mission is to place live babies with families. For them to provide information promoting any medical procedure would be inappropriate, let alone a questionable one. Moreover, the adoption agency assumes a live baby and works from there, the two major alternatives being either keep the baby in the family, or give it away. Therefore, they have neither obligation nor authority to insert themselves into the process before the baby is born, otherwise you'd find adoption agency workers running around high schools handing out comdoms.

As far as the Catholic counseling goes, I think the answer to that is obvious. A religious organization should not be forced to violate their own beliefs. For-profit organizations (or even non-profit) that receive government (read taxpayer) money simply aren't guaranteed the same protections under the Constitution. Nothing more needs to be said about that.

A more crucial point, though, is that there is no way to seperate the moral aspect of the abortion question from the procedure itself. It is morally questionable and it violates the core beliefs of a great many people. Asking whether adoption agencies should have to give out abortion info as an alternative assumes that the two things are equal, but they are not, and therfore cannot be treated the same way. A clinic promoting a morally questionable act being required to present the question-free alternative of birth is not the same as an agency which services those who have made that moral choice being required to promote a morally questionable act.

Should doctors be used and allowed by our government to kill unwanted children?

Should Catholic couseling services be required to hand out information about birth control? posted by RonF If abortion is counted a 'rite' of the religion of Secular HUmanism ... but even that would not fit since the state cannot dictate what a religion may believe (that same old church and state issue, don'tcha know).

I have a question:

If abortion clinics are required to give their patients information about adoption, etc., shouldn't adoption services be required to provide their clients with information about abortion? Should Catholic couseling services be required to hand out information about birth control?

Abortion Clinics are secular services. Catholic counseling is not.

It does not follow about adoption services requiring information about abortion. For one thing, abortion is against the ethics of the medical profession (the Hypocratic oath forbade killing and forbade giving women potions for abortions). This aspect of the Hypocratic oath -- almost 3200 years old -- sticks in the crawl of NOW and Planned Parenthood.

In the other place, Christians for 2000 years have been against birth control as being immoral. The exception in 2000 years in that in the 1930's certain prominient Protestant churches decided that Birth Control was okay.

But true Evangelical Christians are opposed to abortion. For Catholics, they have the support of the Pope, their Bishops and most of their priests (though not all).

One of the earliest church documents the Didache, also known as the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, forbade homosexuality and abortion, as well as infanticide.

The teachings of the Didache was rolled into the teachings of the church after the Council of Nicea -- which also gave Christians the Bible -- Old and New Testament.

So from a medical perspective, abortion is wrong (from a 3200 year tradition started with Hypocrates) and has always been wrong with Christians (and Jews) alike. The Chapter after the 10 commandments in the book of Exodus speaks of very harsh penalties for harming a pregnant woman and her baby (Exodux 21:22-26).

Islam also forbids abortion as well.

It is only in recent times that certain "Christian" religions have embraced both abortion, infanticide (Partial Birth Abortion), homosexuality, and birth control.