That was a direct quote from the US Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey. It is NOT misleading, if you grasp the core of the battle of the culture of life against the culture of death.
Crucial in the deception of the Court was the purposeful omission of the truth of contraception practice ... the effort to prevent conception of a new individual human being! The Court at once affirmed that contraception is an effort to prevent a new individual human being, then put a demonic stamp of tacit approval on killing a conceived indidivual human because of 'choice' to not bring the already alive individual human life into the community.
Doctor Kopp, I would add to your essay the notion that it was artificial insemination of human beings that actually played a bigger role in dehumanizing the conceptus. Once the artificial manipulation of conception was tacitly agreed to on grounds of 'helping infertile couples to conceive (note, there's that truth again, 'conception'; and what is conceived?), a whole host of procedures followed, with a 'test tube baby born in 1978 (I think) and now millions each year born via such 'artificial' conception.
Interestingly, the very truth of conception in or out of a human body confirms that an individual human lifetime has begun, else the in vitro tech wouldn't implant the newly conceived individual human lives! Embryonic individuals are whole organisms being implanted, not seeds of a future 'to be realized' orgaism. Embryonic individuals are not organs, they are each a whole, functioning, integrated organism, a human organism.
A SCOTUS quote from the essay/article (let's change a word or two to convey the truthful essence of the assertion in Casey):
"In some critical respects, abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception... for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion killing an unplanned individual human being in the event that contraception should fail."
Crucial in the deception of the Court was the purposeful omission of the truth of contraception practice ... the effort to prevent conception of a new individual human being! The Court at once affirmed that contraception is an effort to prevent a new individual human being, then put a demonic stamp of tacit approval on killing a conceived indidivual human because of 'choice' to not bring the already alive individual human life into the community.
Doctor Kopp, I would add to your essay the notion that it was artificial insemination of human beings that actually played a bigger role in dehumanizing the conceptus. Once the artificial manipulation of conception was tacitly agreed to on grounds of 'helping infertile couples to conceive (note, there's that truth again, 'conception'; and what is conceived?), a whole host of procedures followed, with a 'test tube baby born in 1978 (I think) and now millions each year born via such 'artificial' conception.
Interestingly, the very truth of conception in or out of a human body confirms that an individual human lifetime has begun, else the in vitro tech wouldn't implant the newly conceived individual human lives! Embryonic individuals are whole organisms being implanted, not seeds of a future 'to be realized' orgaism. Embryonic individuals are not organs, they are each a whole, functioning, integrated organism, a human organism.
Wrong. You fail to appreciate the moral severity of the crime of contraception. Here is what St. Thomas Aquinas said:
"Next to murder, by which an actually existent human being is destroyed, we rank this sin by which the generation of a human being is prevented."