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To: marshmallow

Sorry, but as much as I am pro-life, by which I mean anti-abortion, I am not pro-stupid.

I think it is right and smart, not evil, for parents to exercise some control over pro-creation and abstaining from intercourse is not the only moral choice to doing so. Such a course might have been fine 2,000 years ago when little but abstinence from intercourse was possible and successful for a couple seeking to have some control over the growth of their family. Condums and their use today is not “evil”.


33 posted on 06/11/2018 6:58:34 AM PDT by Wuli
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To: Wuli
"I think it is right and smart, not evil, for parents to exercise some control over pro-creation... "

True. No argument here.

"...and abstaining from intercourse is not the only moral choice to doing so."

If speaking of veterinary medicine or animal husbandry, you are right. There is nothing particularly sacred about animal breeding, and their reproduction can be controlled by "spaying" or "fixing" or snipping their whatevers.

Why? It's because animals are instinctive and act appropriately to their animal nature: they can't control their breeding behavior or conceptualize any transcendent significance or sacred value for the how's, why's or with-whoms of how they mate.

If speaking of humans, you've got a fundamentally different situation, since humans can both control their behavior AND conceptualize transcendent values.

The reason why human sex requires special, even sacred handling, is that we believe it has a sacred purpose: the expression of sacred marital love and the procreation of beings which personally bear the image and likeness of God.)

Unless you get the "sacred" part, I seriously think it's pretty hard to get the "ethics" part.

Hence acting intentionally against love or directly disabling the procreative potential of the act, is morally problematic for human beings.

As a general rule in ANY kind of medical ethics (not just sexual ethics) it is wrong to act to directly disable a human organ or system, when this disabling is your intent.

For instance: Judicial maiming is unethical. Maiming by cultural choice (e.g. female genital mutilation) is unethical. Transgender body modification is unethical.

BTW, and tellingly, Muslims would disagree with that; this is because Islam teaches no regard for inherent or intrinsic human dignity, has no particular respect for Natural Law, and has no Scripture that tells them they are created in the image and likeness of God.}

But back to our theme of ethics: removing someone's eyes or limbs as sheer preference-based elective surgery is unethical. (I am speaking of "treating" people for Body Dysmorphic Disorder (LINK) --- where an emotionally disturbed person wants to cut off a healthy limb or remove a healthy eye or other organ, not for the therapeutic purpose of removing a diseased body part, but simply for elective choice). That is unethical.

Unethical for humans, but not for animals.

The reason it's unethical for humans, but not for animals, is because animals' bodies are of a lower order than ours. They can be owned, disposed of, used, treated instrumentally.

Human bodies are not to be used in exactly the same way, because we are not absolute owners even of ourselves. We are image-bearers of God.

Hence human dignity requires that we not treat our bodies as pure objects, but as persons whose design is both significant and providential.

And that includes sexual design.

47 posted on 06/11/2018 10:03:47 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (In Ireland I still have left 700,000 who have not bent the knee to Baal nor kissed him on the mouth.)
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To: Wuli
Condums and their use today is not “evil”.

Considering the failure rate of birth control, if God wants you to have a baby, you're going to have it.

Birth control is not going to stop His plan.

54 posted on 06/11/2018 2:01:29 PM PDT by metmom ( ...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith......)
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