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

Why? Did they excommunicate someone?

 

I think this estimation of 99+% may be grossly in error but is anyway unlikely to ever be able to be verified. There are many other reasons for mothers going for a termination of pregnancy, one of which would be poverty and financial insecurity, even while living in the richest country in the world. Though the % frequency of this reason for terminations, though easier to verify, would still be very difficult to prove as a primary cause of terminations of pregnancy, the cause of it could be attributed largely to the political system under which the mothers are forced to live if their citizenship in the USA is to continue.

I use the term 'Terminations of Pregnancy' deliberately because 'Abortions' are either natural events or caused by God himself, depending on what one's point of view is on the existence of God or if one believes God exists, God's Sovereignty and absolute jurisdiction and responsibility for every event in time and eternity that he could either allow or prevent with His Omnipotent will. Abortion just happens. Terminations are deliberately brought about by human intervention before birth would take place.

So the MAJORITY of abortions in the USA and everywhere else are mostly unavoidable, unwanted disasters for the prospective mothers and fathers who suffer them.
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I particularly liked your phrase about abortions being "caused by God himself" in some cases.

I had a miscarriage and it was referred to my medical personnel as a "spontaneous abortion" but I also had to have a D&C to clean out the uterus. I didn't cause it, so did God? That hardly coincides with the idea that God hates abortions, at least IMO.

I never became pregnant again although I desperately wanted a child. God has some interesting ways of doing things. I ended up adopting two older children instead, and although I gave them every love and attention I could, both of them were too damaged by their early childhood to ever bond properly with me (it is called RAD, reactive attachment disorder), so I don't see adoption as the best answer for everything either. I hope I helped them a little by adopting them (not that they would agree) but I know that "parental gratification" was not something that I ever experienced a lot.

It is only my opinion but I strongly doubt that our loving and merciful God would condemn women who chose to terminate a pregnancy for justifiable reasons.

As for @Rexlion, I can't debate this topic with you because I don't see the fetus as you do in the early stages. It is tissue and cells and without a soul IMO, a bit like a fertilised chicken egg, that a lot of us eat. It is not a baby. Men don't menstruate, so maybe they don't understand how some woman see their own body. In the early stage of pregnancy, to me, it isn't much more than another menstrual period. Yes, I know many don't see things this way, but I do. I would not have had an abortion myself, but that is mainly because I wanted a child and could afford to take care of one. Not every woman is in the same situation.

As for the 99+% statistic, I would really have to see actual, documented facts and figures before I believed that load of ***.

I really wish I could write like some of you do on here, you state things so clearly and reasonably. I am more about feelings and opinions so can't argue (or debate) in the same way. But I do enjoy all the postings of those of you who are able to be intellectual and educated about this and not just blindly dogmatic. This is a very emotional topic with very extreme and opposite viewpoints, so I usually prefer to leave the debating to others. But sometimes I just can't stop myself from commenting.

 

About 50% of the US population, going by their recent PR....

Seriously, though: they are a political action committee as much as they are anything these days, and a tax-exempt one to boot. If you want to strip churches of their tax-exempt status for doing things you don't like, then we should be able to do the same to Planned Parenthood.

 

This is a very wise response and I applaud you for it. I too am often carried away by things I feel strongly about. We must speak with love to our Christian brothers and sisters even when (maybe especially when) we disagree.

I am emotional myself on this issue because the issue of preborn "personhood" goes to the person of Christ himself. He was born of a virgin by the Holy Spirit. Was he just a bundle of cells at the moment of conception? Absolutely not! Christ was both God and Man that that exact moment. Luke 1:39-45 tells us that, while Jesus and John the Baptist were yet unborn, John recognized Christ as the Messiah and leapt in the womb! And if this is true of Christ then this is true of all human beings, because Christ is very Man as well as very God.

It frustrates me to no end when pro-abortion people try to put this beyond the pale of Christian doctrine. It lies at the very center of our doctrine as it touches upon the nature of Christ himself, and his birth into the world! This isn't just an issue touching Roman Catholicism; it touches all Christians.

 

I have found the interview with Abp. Cordileone, where he explains everything clearly

 

I'm baffled by this. My original statement was that 99+% of women who abort do so out of selfishness, their motivation being "what do I (the woman) want?" If a woman is financially insecure and decides to abort, with that fact being a leading aspect of the decision, her decision still is rooted in what she wants for herself: that is, she wants to be financially better off (often through a career) and is placing the love of money at higher value than either God's will or the possible interests of the unborn baby. It makes no sense to separate out specific thoughts and reasoning lying behind the self-centered decision to abort; the woman is still acting in selfish self-interest and is part of that overwhelming majority (whatever the percentage is).

I also suggest that "financial insecurity" is a straw man argument insofar as US residents are concerned, because our welfare systems financially reward women with children; the system is set up to provide for young mothers and their kids, and the more children they have the more money and food they get. We have had some budgetary problems during the last 40 years with some single women getting pregnant and giving birth specifically to increase their welfare payments, and they make the lifestyle choice of staying single and having lots of kids outside of marriage while living on the welfare system, never needing to get a job (all of which isn't optimal but it's far preferable to aborting!!). The welfare system also provides free prenatal care and health care for birthing mothers, whether they choose to keep the child or give the baby up for adoption. Since we are talking about US abortion laws in this thread, it seems apropos to point out these facts... not that I'm trying to introduce new issues about the wisdom of our welfare system or our taxation, but to show that there is no valid argument to be made about women in this country being (allegedly) 'forced' to abort due to poverty.

I'm sorry, but this is a gross misconception of God's role in all this. I sincerely hope your theology does not include the idea that God causes miscarriages, cancers, atherosclerosis, diabetes, tornadoes, deadly tsunamis, etc. God takes no pleasure in hurting people and He isn't the proximate cause of such disasters. These are consequences of Adam's sin and the fall of mankind. The land, the whole world and everything in and on it, are under a curse because of the Original Sin. We live in a fallen world, and bad stuff happens as a result. Sin and sinful choices also occur as a result.

You accidentally stated a truth! See, the disaster isn't the pregnancies (most of which are avoidable, given Godly behavior), the disasters are the abortions they choose to have. But because they do choose to abort, these abortion disasters are mostly avoidable. A miscarriage is not an abortion, it's a misfortune of this fallen world! Some medical abnormality, not God, is what kills those babies.

My mother had two miscarriages prior to my birth; she grieved for their loss, she gave those babies names, and they were laid to rest in graves in the family's cemetery plot. She expected to meet them when she passed from this mortal life, and so do I when I eventually vacate this 'tent'. When you think about it, it's only natural for an expectant mother to think of her unborn child (at whatever stage of development) as a person.

 

If a woman had not planned for or felt at all able to carry a baby to full term and add another person to this already crowded world, that she knows she will be unable to feed, clothe and protect from the harms that poverty inevitably brings to those in extremity her natural reaction may be to assist an abortion 'disaster', that other more wealthy folk would have been selfishly or dutifully, happy to see to full term. To label the poverty stricken or abandoned mother selfish and the wealthy mother dutiful is in my opinion bigotted nonsense. To portray the poverty stricken as selfishly uncaring is a typical attitude of those wealthy enough to have never ever had to face extreme, difficult choices during pregnancy. This inability to comprehend other women's predicaments applies to ALL men and many wealthy women, who have never walked even a single mile in those kind of moccassins.

I think this a gross 'bronze age thinking' simplification of God's role in human affairs. Surely there can be no suggestion that The Atonement has only been a very partial and not very effective or far reaching, remedy to Adam's disobedience. Is God still punishing the human race then, with everything that goes wrong for human's in a still fallen world? Or did Jesus Christ actually COMPLETE something and FINISH it?

Not if you follow the teaching of The Roman Catholic church concerning contraception, they aren't.

Here we have a difference, it seems in semantics, maybe between the Atlantic pond. In the UK a miscarriage is an abortion. The medical intervention to terminate a pregnancy is a 'Termination of Pregnancy'.

I quite agree but I also think that you and I, both men, do not have the right to pass judgment on every woman concerning their motives for deciding to terminate a pregnancy. '90%+ selfish' pronouncements are foolish generalisations from those who will never experience being in a position to know. Only God knows what is in the heart of man or of woman, and judgement belongs to him, not to us.
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The biggest problem facing the world right now is a lack of children. This "overpopulation" canard has been debunked for decades. Most of the industrialized nations of the world are in death-spiral demographics. China will have half the population in 2050 that it has now. Russia too. And Japan. If you think that's a good thing, you need to think about that that means in terms of world prosperity and global GDP -- much of the world's poorest populations only survive due to the wealth and excess capacity of the richer nations. The current food-crisis is only a foretaste of what's coming when populations age and die out. Too few young people means a (far) lower standard of living, it means decaying infrastructure, and it means more war as nations contend for regional primacy in the wake of economic crashes.

The US can handle a 30% decline in GDP. It wouldn't be fun, but we wouldn't starve. A nation like Egypt? They'd collapse entirely. Millions would die. Same for Bangladesh, or Pakistan, or India, or China, or any one of a hundred other third-world countries barely scraping by. Haiti is already living that reality; so is Hundras, El Savador, and Guatemala. The only way people can survive is to leave. But where will they go if the rest of the world is just as badly off? Watch Haiti and Sri Lanka -- they are simply the vanguard of much worse things to come.

Be fruitful and multiply, as God commands us. Get married and have kids. You're not only doing God's work, but keeping civilization itself alive.

 

Termination of Pregnancy smacks of euphemism. Why not Termination of Fetus?

One obscures the deed, the other doesn’t. We are very good at hiding behind words.

 

But I thought a man can be a woman if he (she) wants to be? Or a woman can be a man. Or a person of indistinct gender. Apparently men can be "birthing persons" now! If a man can be a birthing person, why wouldn't this person have a say in the process? Many women who have never been pregnant are allowed to have an opinion on it; why not men, assuming that men can also be "birthing persons" according to the new woke dialectic?

It's amazing how fast the transgender nonsense goes out the window when the issue of abortion comes up....

 

The contrast you make here, and the label "dutiful" you apply to a "wealthy mother," are all your doing. Not mine. So you've erected a straw man just so you can knock it down.

Why, Tiffy, are you identifying as a woman today? As a man, by your own statement you can't comprehend "women's predicaments" any better than I, so you have no logical grounds to contradict me.

But levity aside, isn't it basic fallen human nature to act in selfishness self-interest? Isn't it sinful human nature to seek only one's own good without regard for the good of others or the will of God? I'm not singling out "poor" women exclusively when I speak of selfishness. Besides, only about one-half of US women who abort have incomes below the poverty line; what excuse do we want to cook up for all the other women?

So then, are we no longer subject to sickness, death, pain, sadness, and misfortune? How did I not get this memo???

That is rather disconcerting! Hmmm, you drive on the wrong side (we drive on the right side ), and you have strange word definitions, too! Since this thread was started to center on the US abortion issue in general and on a US senator's situation with her church in specific, I would like to encourage you to use US nomenclature so as not to confuse things. Over here we say (as I believe you know) that abortion is the intentional termination of pregnancy, and miscarriage is an unintended termination of pregnancy.

 

Yeah, that bill Pelosi was pushing (which failed to pass, thankfully!) did not even reference women; other than the bill's title they'd retracted every mention of women/females and substituted gender-neutral terms like "person." Because, after all, enlightened society now accepts the "fact" that men can get pregnant, too!

Passing kidney stones sound tame in comparison...

 

And if you agree with this you would probably agree with Doug Kidd a prominent politician and speaker of the house of representatives when he, as Wikipedia says

In 1983 Kidd's pro-life Status of the Unborn Child Bill (a private members bill) was drawn from the lot. The bill was prompted by Wall v Livingston [1982], which clarified that embryos and fetuses had no legal status in New Zealand and that third parties could not appeal to the courts on their behalf. The bill was supported by groups such as Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (now Voice for Life and Right to Life New Zealand).

One person who disagreed with him was his secretary who went public saying she was having an affair with him and reporting he said he didn't know what he would do if she got pregnant.

Maybe men as well as women have a selfish "love of money" interest in abortion.
Maybe 20 years of child support payments can overcome a dislike of abortion.

 

I can't really speak to Mr. Kidd's circumstance. I've kept my zipper in the upright position. But yeah, there are loads of men who don't.

 

In Australia we have separation of Church and State. In the main a member of parliament's issues with their faith community (if theyu have one) would in the main be considered not a matter for public scutiny, unless they themselves invited that attention. I think that in the main is why we don't get the same level of angst.

A while back our now Prime Minister, then Leader of the Opposition was reported thus:

On Tuesday the Labor leader said that although he had “no intention of making comments on the prime minister’s faith” he objected to “the idea that God is on any political side”. Albanese said that “for me faith is a personal matter. I respect people’s own beliefs but it is also important we have a separation here between church and state”.

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...tian-conference-convention-evangelical-speech​

I the main when we see these kinds of disputes in the US we wonder why.

 

I wonder why you wonder why? It's not as though the church is telling the government what it must do. The church (actually an overseer within the church) is disciplining a member of that church (a parishioner under his spiritual oversight) by saying the member has disqualified herself, by unrepentant sin, from participation in a certain sacrament of the church. This is the church teaching the church what is viewed as sin and what is unacceptable behavior for church members. Pelosi is perfectly free as an individual to vote as she chooses, so the letter does not control her (let alone control the government).

Naughty Nancy demonstrated that fact this weekend by receiving communion in D.C. The Abp of that region, Wilton Gregory, demonstrated the disunity and fractiousness existing within the RCC when he announced that he, on the east coast, would not enforce his westerly colleague's disciplinary action. For her part, Pelosi criticized her own Abp. (Cordileone) for being "against LGBTQ rights" and accused him of hypocrisy in an appearance on MSNBC.

I wonder why any Christian would write a single word in Pelosi's defense? Her actions seem tantamount to Pelosi giving her own archbishop the finger.

 

“I think it’s very insulting to women to have their ability to make their own decision hampered by politics,” Pelosi said on MSNBC.

Don’t women also have a right to decide to shoot grown men? Under Pelosi's logic, they should.

Why do we hamper the woman’s right to choose whether she wants to kill and eat her mate after intercourse, like a black widow spider?

The right to life is paramount and takes precedence over the right to property, the right to liberty, and the right to make any choice imaginable. Pelosi overlooks the obvious fact that any person's “right to choose” is far from unlimited and is always overriden by another's right to life.

 

Whenever I think about the extreme polarities of our American politics I’m often reminded of the quote (apocryphal maybe) of Churchill’s that “Americans always do the right thing… after trying everything else.”

It keep me sane to remember that, especially on topics like this one.