Posted on 12/04/2011 7:50:15 PM PST by Notwithstanding
The Gingrich campaign contacted me directly last night about the comments that he made to ABC News. The campaign sent me the following statement from Newt Gingrich. (Which is also on their website).
I am very glad that the Gingrich campaign was quick to respond to the fallout from the ABC News interview and that they came out with a strong pro-life statement which reaffirms the scientific fact that life begins at conception....
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicvote.org ...
Unlike Cain, eh? ;)
Problem with your post.
All embryos are potential humans. If they are untested, they should be treated as human life. Perhaps, perhaps, they will become a human being.
But more than 50% of all human embryos, if tested, have chromosomal abnormalities that will not allow the embryo to keep growing much. Most embryos will die before the 2nd trimester, the greatest before impkantation, before the woman even knows she was very briefly pregnant.
If 10 embryos could be tested, one finds anywhere from 40 - 90% of them so messed up chromosomally that they will never ever form a baby, not one with something “different” like down syndrome but never form a baby.
And now that embryos CAN be tested, we have learned how miraculous a healthy, long pregnancy is, even among young women in their 20s. Even such typically fertile women have on the average only 50% or so of decent eggs. It is pretty much only the egg quality that determines the success of an embryo.
This fact needs to be understood by everyone.
Every embryo deserves its CHANCE at life. Not every embryo will ever even be able to become a human. Otherwise you and your husband would be guilty of murder if you ever had an early miscarriage. And most of those you never knew you were pregnant.
Regarding point A: I agree.
Regarding Points B & C: I disagree right from the get-go. First of all, when discussing morality, the use of the words “purist” or “manipulative” often negatively describes those with a firm moral position. The question was, which would you support? Period. There is only one answer. A candidate can explain that that is his PREFERENCE, but that he would choose to support something less perfect if he was absolutely sure he could not get the votes for his PREFERENCE.
Forget NUANCE! We’ve had enough of that with Mr. Obama. “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.” Matthew 5:37
Overall, I understand where you are coming from but I think Americans are hungry for a good deal MORE plain speaking. Within the “nuanced” realm of Washington DC speak, that needs to be very well understood by today’s candidates.
Up until 1929 the universally accepted Christian doctrine was that contraception was illegal because sexual intercourse and procreation were natural sacred acts that should not be artificially manipulated.
Nothing about the sacred aspects of Man and Sex has changed since 1929, and for that reason the Catholic Church still holds the same doctrinal position as she did in 1929.
The rest of the Christian world opted to embrace as good dildos, rubbers, pills, masturbation, IUDs, IVF, and often abortion.
IVF is always the manufacture of a person by doctors in a lab. A child is not born of a sacramental act of intercourse between parents, but rather by dad masturbating to harvest cells and mom getting surgery to harvest cells and lab techs mixing the two together and then doctors doing more surgery to shove the manufactured embryo back into the woman. I know seems harsh to many, but it is objectively true.
Such a process is not a sacramental act that respects God’s power and mystery. For that reason the manufacturing of children through IVF is evil.
The child’s existence is not at all evil (just as the child conceived in rape is not at all evil).
“Otherwise you and your husband would be guilty of murder if you ever had an early miscarriage.”
Huh?????????
I am a purist. I want the laws to ban all abortion and all abortifacients. I want IVF banned. I want all embryonic stem cell lines destroyed and creation of new lines banned. I want embryo experimentation banned.
But I would also compromise in a heartbeat to support imperfect laws that truly advanced any of these bans.
When it comes to issues of life:
Morality - no compromise
Biology/Science - objective facts
Policy - prudence that factors in morality and biology
Prudence does not equal selling out.
Let’s back up:
A spontaneous miscarriage is an unintended death to be mourned.
A murder is an intentional killing.
Why did you equate these two?
The Christian ideal is black and white.
The Christian life is frought with gray - which is why it is so hard. This is a remnant of The Fall.
According to ABC, Newt went out of his way to say that life began at “successful implantation” and to comment on the problem posed by his “ideological” friends who had not thought out the consequences. What was that about?
I agree with this...but, when it comes to discussions of policy, I want my candidates to be clear and plain-speaking. Overall, I believe that this IS prudent.
;-)
And I still believe that the answer selected on the Right to Life questionnaire was neither moral nor prudent.
The very fact that so many people are talking about this and what it means is proof of that. (Think back about Matthew 5:37.....and there are many similar scriptures.)
The same is true for artificial insemination: it is manufacture via masturbation followed by technicians causing the actual conception.
And let’s face it, IVF and artificial insemination often involves masturbation by some guy who is not even the husband of the mother.
These are cold child manufacturing processes.
I am a prolife purist in the Catholic magisterial tradition.
Frozen embryos are human beings, but they are not persons.
They don’t (and shouldn’t) have the same rights as persons.
That is the point Newt was making.
As a Catholic, the fact that the Church considers it to be immoral for a woman to “rescue” a frozen embryo by carrying and bearing it helps me see that Newt’s distinction is important to make.
But you are right - this all gets lost in mainstream discourse. Most people can’t be bothered with such detail.
Hocndoc: last para was actually meant for SumProVida. It is not sarcastic. I mean that it is hard to address the life issues in any detail because it really is too much for most folks.
It's not objectively true at all. The sacramental act is the decision of the parents to have the child. It is the intent and the follow up action that determines the sacred, not some synthetic BS, manufactured from ignorance. Dogs can perform intercourse, there's nothing sacred there, because there is no intent and no understanding. There is both understanding and intent in the case of the team composed of the parents and the medical team. The effective knowledge, understanding and intent to create life makes the endeavor sacred. Poking away to no avail is simply stuck on stupid.
Well, thanks for the explanation. I don’t feel the same way but I do respect those beliefs.
Then state how that can be accomplished, rather than merely brow beating with vague innuendo. How do you fashion the law to protect the concetion which for some reason unknown to your law does not implant? If you investigate such things, you commit the ultimate invasion of privacy, on the grounds of suspicion of guilt. Unless you can wrtie law which addresses such things successfully. So, tell me how you fashion such law to exist in a nation such as America?
I meant that not all embryos are full humans. Many are not ever going to make it. They cannot. Now if you conceive one of these, with an aneuploid egg, and you believe that stopping an embryo as it attempts to grow is always murder, you would have to call a miscarriage murder. It was a stretch. But it was my point. Most embryos are only potential lives.
Now this is beyond my expertise: does an embryo which can by its makeup only survive for two weeks, and its parents never knew it existed briefly in the fallopian tube, have a soul?
To top it off, you challenge a freeper to expose your deceit, as if you think your agenda is not exposed and you shall continue your 'concern troll' posting in servcie to your agenda, which is likely service to getting Milt Rominy the nomination by default, or serving the DNC agenda to blunt conservative momentum and get little barry bassturd re-elected.
We may be stuck with Newt as the nominee, but for a guy who has spent most of his adult life in politics he should have known better than to come out with this implantation garbage. I think most in the Pro-Life movement agree to the exceptions for rape/incest/life of the mother because they recognize you can not get broad support without those exceptions. Newt revealed a lack of critical thinking by buying into the garbage that the zygote is just a bunch of cells that science should be able to use at it sees fit.
I would urge Newt supporters to think twice about him. If he's POTUS there is no doubt he would be 100x's better than obama, but I don't think he's the small govt conservative everyone thinks he is.
Why did you equate these two?
I do not. But both are from embryos. One, abortion, is deliberately putting an end to any chance at human life. The other, miscarriage, is what happens to most embryos. Thus becoming a human being is special and rare. Most embryos don’t make it. Miscarriage is the norm and no one’s fault.
The ultimate point is that one embryo is not a human being. It’s a potential human being and should be given a full chance. But most likely it won’t work. Any law being written about embryos needs to understand this.
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