Letter to the faithful on the Notification sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Unborn children are smaller and less developed than born children. But born children are much smaller and less developed than adults; does that mean adults have more value than children? Children are human beings with the same value as adults, whether born or unborn.

Unborn children live in a different environment than born children and adults; the former live in a womb, the latter (usually) in a house or apartment. Does the type of habitation affect a human being's value? No. Even people who live under bridges have the same value as those who live in a house, an apartment, or a womb.

Unborn children are more dependent for survival on someone else than most adults. But born children are also more dependent for survival on someone else than most adults. Are adults more valuable by reason of their ability to survive independently? No, otherwise the elderly, infirm, and incompetent adults would have less value.

Adults and children are whole, complete human beings, regardless of size, developmental stage, living environment, and ability/inability to survive independently. Science tells us that these things are true of unborn children and born children alike.

These are all the basic differences between born and unborn human beings. Every human being has value and basic rights, especially the right to life.

Adults generally are better equipped to defend themselves. Children cannot defend themselves, and the law provides extra protections for them (child protective services, etc.) This should be equally true of unborn and born children.

 

That sounds like a real pro-gun, anti-choice stance - shoot the mother while still inside the womb. Wonderful idea. Kill both mother and child.

 

What's your point? All I see here are straw men, red herrings, and non sequiturs.

• The issue with conception-personhood is that fetuses aren't individuals, and personhood as traditionally understood in both the law and in Christianity requires that one be an individual.
• The other - and more important - issue is whether a woman can be made to be a mere means to another's end without her consent. If a woman can be so coerced but a man cannot, that's gender-based discrimination, and a violation of the principle that all are entitled to equal protection under the law.

It makes sense that right-wingers would want to disconnect individuality from personhood, given their full-throated support for Citizens United. What they haven't done is propose any alternative definition that makes any sense. We don't conduct funerals for miscarriages. As for coercing people to be mere means to others' ends, to say that's a slippery slope is a dramatic understatement.

 

No, no... shoot the doctor! Lol.

 

The point is this:
If the unborn child were not a human being, no justification would be necessary to abort him/her.
Because science says (see post #170) the unborn child is a human being, no justification (short of necessity to protect the mother's life) is adequate.

It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being.
Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being.
Therefore, abortion is wrong.

Human beings have a right to life, and that is light years more important than the mother's rights to privacy, convenience, financial freedom, whatever. As I posted previously, the Bible may not speak directly to the question of 'when does personhood attach', but the Bible does say, "Thou shalt not kill" (meaning the taking of human life without just cause). We now know (science proves) that abortion is the killing of a distinct, innocent, human life without just cause.

The straw men were introduced because I anticipate that some people who read this thread may be having one or more of those objections, so I addressed them in advance of their being raised.

 

BTW, the most basic definition in English dictionaries for "person" is: an individual human being. Why the church didn't define the word for centuries is probably due to the fact that its meaning was obvious. Only in more recent times has it been made controversial by those who prefer to exclude a certain class of individuals from personhood: namely, the underdeveloped, highly dependent unborn.

The last time a group of people in this country refused to include a certain class of individuals within personhood, we fought a civil war over it.

 

Actually, a man who's one half of an unplanned pregnancy can be coerced. He doesn't have any say in whether the child is aborted. Unlike the woman, he can't say he isn't ready for a child and opt unilaterally for abortion. The woman, however, can opt unilaterally to have that the child and put the man on the financial hook. Or the man might want the child, but she doesn't and aborts it. Again, he has no say. Either way, it's 100% her choice and he's stuck with either the trauma or the 18+ years of financial responsibility. We could say that he knew the risk, but so did she.

 

Your post is well taken, but those scenarios simply aren't morally equivalent with the case I laid out. In the former alternative, there's no actual coercion. In the latter, the father can opt to terminate his own rights. In neither case is he being compelled against his will to allow his person to be used for a purpose he does not intend.

 

From inside the womb of the mother, killing her to get the doctor and the foetus in short time, in a dead mother? My, my the gun lobby loonies just can't wait to brainwash even foetuses to take up arms against the enemies they are told to kill to protect themselves from. It's a mindset I suppose.

Give peace in our time O Lord -
Because there is none other that fighteth for us,
but only thou, O God. (But not for the NRA who have to defend themselves).
.

 

Do you understand what LOL means? It means the comment was meant as humor, not something to be taken seriously. Have an ale and lighten up!

 

Fetuses aren’t individuals. That’s the whole problem with ascribing personhood to them. That this is so wasn’t controversial until the 20th century.

 

Please note that your use of the word "individual" is as a noun. My use was as an adjective describing "human being"; an "individual human being" is another way to say, "distinct human being," and the unborn child is distinct from both the mother and the father in ways that science recognizes.

 

Ah, yes, I forgot - pro-life unless it is already a living person. Then shoot to kill.

 

Ah yes, because this is such a funny topic.

 

I believe that line should read 'We come in Peace. Shoot to Kill!'

 

Like I said before: Pelosi's ultimate fealty is to her secular faith, not the Christian faith she claims to profess. She wants to continue to wear the "devout Catholic" veil because it's part of her political persona (and she may indeed feel some lingering cultural affinity to the RC church) while at the same time denying the most basic elements of the faith she claims to follow. It's incoherent, but it's par for the course with how many progressives approach religion in general. It's all hyper-individualist, inwardly-focused, idiosyncratic, and ultimately antinomian. (There's a whole lot of "don't put your rules on me, Dad!" to progressive Christianity.)

"Progressive Christianity" is also a great example of the modern progressive mania for branding. As far as orthodox Christianity goes, they like the packaging but not the product. So they put new stuff inside the old package and market it as a new and improved Christianity. All the flavor with none of the calories! And by re-using the "Christian" brand, they don't have to go to all the trouble of building up new markets and recognition of a new brand -- they just trick the rubes into thinking this new-and-improved Christianity is just like the old one. It's an age-old Madison Avenue strategy for launching a product with instant mass appeal.

The problem is that the rubes eventually catch on to the hustle. They realize that the new stuff doesn't taste as good as the old stuff, costs more, and gives you the runs.

EDIT: I should also add that abortion isn't the only issue where Nancy Pelosi goes against the teachings of her own church. She also supports same-sex marriage, homosexuality, heterosexual fornication (sex outside of marriage), etc. To ascribe this whole contretemps to abortion alone is to miss the core of the issue. I am left wondering all over again why she doesn't just take up TEC or ELCA's invitations to join them -- she'd get all the benefits of church membership (the penumbra of being a "religious" politician, which still matters to a lot of voters) and none of the drawbacks (actual fealty to orthodox Christian teaching).

 

One should say it’s par for the course for how anyone terribly political behaves really, whether it’s progressives arguing for unbiblical interpretations of sexuality or abortions, or conservatives arguing for greed that exploits the labours of men and women, unjust systems that hurt the most vulnerable and death sticks that murder children. Brings back an old classic from the Screwtape Letters on how to deploy politics to tempt Christians away.

“Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the [cause] as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which religion becomes merely part of the ‘cause’, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of [the cause]. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity - he is ours - and the more ‘religious’ (on those terms) the more securely ours.”

 

If a doctor walked into the room prepared to put you to death, would you defend yourself? (Assume you are perfectly healthy, but your mother wants you killed.) Or would you allow him to proceed? By your response, I suspect the latter. Turn the other cheek, right?