Is Abortion Murder? contains some of the most fatuous reasoning ever presented in favor of abortion.
Daniel C. Maguire starts with a selective bit of "This religious figure said fetuses weren't fully ensouled until X point," so therefore it's hunky dory to slaughter them. He then moves on to display what seems to be a willful ignorance:
Only when [the fetus] is formed could God infuse a spiritual soul. Catholic philosophers Daniel Dombrowski and Daniel Deltete from the Jesuit Seattle University say that modern science would put that at around six or seven months.
Earth to Maguire: The fetus is fully formed at 8 weeks. That's when it officially passes the embryonic stage and enters the fetal stage. Every major structure is present.
He goes back into the "personhood" argument, without any substantiating evidence for why humans, alone of all organisms, aren't fully members of their own species until some arbitrary point.
But here's where he wanders into the realm of the truly asinine:
There may be serious and justifying reasons for killing pre-personal, fetal life. The decision on that belongs naturally to the woman who carries that life. Women have a far better track record than men when it comes to cherishing and protecting life.
The very fact that so many women are undergoing, seeking, advocating, and facilitating abortions is enough to show a pathetic track record for cherishing and protecting life. In the United States, for example, these life-cherishing and life-protecting women kill fully a fifth to a third of the children conceived. The violent men fighting WWII -- including the Nazis, who were slaughtering Jews, Gypsies, and the disabled -- killed fewer than 10% of the people they were bombing, shooting, and gassing. Women are less protective of their own unborn children than an army in wartime is of the freaking enemy.
And even if you don't count the unborn as "life" -- which, by the way, Maguire does -- one writer said very aptly, "That wasn't exactly a candygram that Janet Reno sent to David Koresh." Women are perfectly capable of violence.
Abortion simply proves it.
43 comments:
One pro-abortion Jew is of the opinion that abortion is okay, because the fetus isn't "nephesh" life until it has first drawn breath outside the womb. Going back to Genesis, she says that because Adam didn't become "a living soul" until God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," then that applies to the unborn as well. It's not really murder unless and until the baby has breathed, because that is when the baby "becomes a living soul."
However, it makes more sense to me to say that man was made in the image of God; man and all the other creatures reproduce "after their kind"; therefore, all offspring of man is man, is nephesh life, made in the image of God, and therefore it is murder to kill the offspring of man even before birth.
No words can describe the horrific nature of Daniel McGuire's writings.
The fact that he was at one time a Jesuit priest and continues to teach ethics at a Jesuit institution is enough to make you sick.
Kathy, I've noticed that people who take NOTHING else in the Bible literally suddenly latch onto that "breath of life" and hold on with the tenacity of the damned.
As well they might.
Christina, I think that's because they want to meet prolifers in a language they can understand. Prolifers are mostly religious and refer to tje boble so prochoicers meet them at their level by quoting the bible.
Otherwise they would just use scientific or anthropological studies to substantiate their argument.
Lil, I'm talking about prochoicers who self-identify as Christian. They don't believe in the rest of the Bible, but boy do they latch onto the "breath of life"!
Well, if the rest of the Bible is as subjective as they say it is, then so is "breath of life". Then they turn into literalists -- hardcore literalists who make the Branch Davidians look flexible in their dogma.
Why mention David Koresh??? He was a child-molester and he refused to honor a Federal search warrent issued by a court of law.
Attorney General Janet Reno gave him more time than he deserved. She should have ordered the troops in much sooner than she did. And they shouldn't have made the efforts they did to avoid killing the criminals. They put themselves in greater danger by trying to be gentle. Federal troops have a right to be protected too.
I guess gassing and torching the kids to keep them from getting molested makes sense from a prochoice prospective.
The kids' misfortune was the fault of David Koresh, who used them as human shields, and also the fault of their parents. What kind of parent takes their kids to the property of a law-defying cultist? What kind of parent gives his/her child to a man who brags about molesting children?
I'm really puzzled as to why you seem to blame the Government in general, and Attorney General Reno in particular, for the outcome of Koresh's actions.
Do you think the government should not have raided him? Should we have LET him defy a Federal search warrent?
There is no way to prevent a bunch of cultists from committing mass suicide. These particular ones chose to use the Feds as their suicide weapon. And they chose to use children as human shields.
And you are sticking up for them.
1. They could easily have arrested Koresh any of the times he was in town, away from the people at the Branch Davidians' home. He went to town pretty much every day.
2. The feds had an open invite to visit the place. Serving a search warrant would have been as simple as knocking on the door and going in. The local cops and CPS had been there with no problems.
3. And even if the first two weren't true, again it takes a prochoicer to justify killing kids to save them.
RE: "they could have arrested Koresh, he took walks" AND "open invite"
What are you talking about? The gas-and-fire attack on Koresh's compound was preceded by a fifty-day-long siege/standoff, after Koresh's people killed four FBI agents.
The FBI agents approaching the house were dressed and armed like soldiers, and they started shooting before they ever knocked on the door. (The Branch Davidians had no way of knowing that it was their dog and her puppies the FBI agents had shot. If you saw a bunch of heavily armed men approaching YOUR house, and heard gunfire, would you assume they were just there to serve a warrant?)
The whole debacle started when a US Marshall shot Randy Weaver's dog. That turned into a deadly debacle on Ruby Ridge, and the FBI decided that a spectacular raid on a "compound" would look good for them and get them some nice funding. So instead of just knocking on Koresh's door and being invited in (the way local cops and CPS had done) they staged their "raid" and started shooting and make the Branch Davidians think they were under armed attack.
The Feds lied to the Branch Davidians at every turn. It's deplorable how those people were treated. CPS had found no evidence of child abuse. Local law enforcement had found no evidence of any crimes. But "religious wackjobs", particularly if they fit the popular notion of a "cult", make inviting targets.
After the trial, the jurors summed it up as "The wrong people are on trial here." Just as the jury did after the trial of Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris.
Randy Weaver was a flake. The Branch Davidians were flakes. But this is a country founded on the right to be what everybody else considered flakes and heretics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_6vrep7k9g
Your story is garbage. The Feds don't stage raids in order to "make themselves look good and get funding". They already have all the funding they need. All they have to do is write in for it.
I have had some dealings with the FBI and I have never found them to be anything but near-perfect professionals.
And why are you talking about Randy Weaver??? Randy Weaver was a whole different case! Weaver and Koresh, were two completely different cases, had nothing to do with each other.
You need to go review your history. Also, you need to stop sticking up for cultists and child molesters.
Funny, you demand a high standard of proof that an abortionist did anything to cause a patient's death, yet you're defending the gunning down, gassing and torching of over fifty people, including women and children, based on an allegation against ONE of the men.
And yes, the Waco siege and Ruby Ridge are connected. The FBI was trying to recover from the black eye and thought a nice telegenic raid would make them look good.
The FBI is made up of humans, capable of both good and evil, brilliance and stupidity. And there was a metric buttload of shortsightedness involved in both Ruby Ridge and Waco.
But then, killing kids isn't something you seem to have a problem with. In fact, you're here all the time defending it as an absolute right. So a US Marshall shooting a 14-year-old boy in the back (on his FATHER'S property), and an FBI sniper plugging a woman in the head while she's standing in the doorway of her home with her baby in her arms, well that's just the UTMOST PROFESSIONALISM.
Again, in both Waco and Ruby Ridge, the juries said "The wrong people were on trial here." But defending child killers is your hobby. Go for it. Tell me how Sammy Weaver deserved to die, and how Rachel and Sara and Elishiba Weaver deserved to have their mother's brains splattered all over them as they cowered in terror in their home.
Hmmm, that's like saying all civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki deserved to die because of the atrocities their government perpetrated in other parts of Asia, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Wrong place, wrong time.
Just like all the embryos I killed with my contraception over the years -- although I just can't get upset over that, whereas civilian war casualties and the Ruby Ridge and Waco victims' cases strike me as very sad indeed.
Kathy - I'm curious how they would understand Exodus 21:22-25:
"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
The only way that passage can be understood is based on what happened to the child (given the discussion of premature birth in v22.) If there is serious injury to the child - then it's life for life.
Chris,
From what I've read of abortion advocates who claim to believe the Bible, they interpret this section as "injury" being injury to the pregnant woman, not to the unborn baby. If the woman is seriously injured or killed as an innocent bystander, the offender is injured in the manner in which he injured the woman. If the woman is not seriously injured, though she has a miscarriage or premature birth, then the offender is fined for causing the pregnancy loss. In either case the baby is not considered as not *really* being alive, and therefore not being worth "an eye for an eye".
Most pro-life advocates would interpret it as you do -- that the "injury" is referring to the baby, not the mother; or to both mother and baby -- if either is seriously injured, the offender will be hurt or maimed in the manner in which he hurt or maimed, and if either dies, the offender forfeits his own life.
One other take that I've read, this time given by a pro-life person, is that the baby would be a victim of an accidental death -- the offender didn't mean to cause the death of the fetus, so would not require "an eye for an eye" -- much like the person who accidentally kills someone because his axe head flew off. It was not an intentional death, done with malice. However, while the men fighting might not know that the woman was pregnant, they would not really have a good excuse for not knowing or noticing that she was there, so would be fined for the unintentional fetal demise, but would not face corporal punishment (an eye for an eye) unless the woman was injured.
Those are the three different positions I've seen taken on that passage.
Abortion is legitimate self-defense against battery from within.
The battery from within may be unintentional, but it's still battery from within.
If pregnancy is "battery from within", are the women who want it some sort of bizarre masochists, akin to people who want to be tied up and beaten until they bleed and scream? After all, who WANTS and SEEKS OUT a battery?
GG, battery BY DEFINITION is done against the will of the victim. So women who willingly undergo pregnancy are not victims of battery.
It's only battery from within if it's against your will, without your continuing permission.
"Without her permission" my ass! She PUT THE BABY THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. You can't put somebody someplace then use lethal force against them on the grounds that you don't like them being where they've been put.
It makes no more sense than arguing that a kidnapper has every right to kill his hostage because she's trespassing in the trunk of his car.
"It's not really murder unless and until the baby has breathed, because that is when the baby "becomes a living soul."
This is asinine. What if your much-wanted baby suffers a traumatic birth with complications and comes out not breathing? Is it not alive?
The Bible is very clear that to separate us from our spirit is to cause our physical death. Life and ensoulment begin at conception. God never does anything by halves, and what possible reason could there be for him to wait to bestow a soul until birth? Everything we are and will be is already present at conception, including our spirit and soul. The only thing added after conception is nutrition and time. Another fail for proaborts here. At least their record remains unbroken, eh?
Life and ensoulment begin at conception. God never does anything by halves...
Of course the biological fact of twinning makes your statement completely false. Unless you believe one of the twins does not have a soul.
Chad
A scripture it would make much more sense for the pro-choice-to-dismember-babies crowd to use is that "the life is in the blood."
Oh, except that that would disallow almost all abortions. There goes that idea.
"Life and ensoulment begin at conception."
Of course the biological fact of twinning makes your statement completely false. Unless you believe one of the twins does not have a soul.
Identical twins, triplets, etc., are rare, so the first statement is generally true. Twinning can be considered as asexual reproduction; and when this "reproduction" occurs, another soul could be given to the second twin. Or that two souls were given in one body which then separated.
Either way, I'm not inclined to take Bible lessons from someone who doesn't believe the Bible, so your statement is "in one ear and out the other," as far as I'm concerned.
"When does ensoulment happen"
You are like little kids arguing about who is stronger, Superman or Green Lantern.
God is a fictional character. Ensoulment is a fictional concept.
What a bunch of kooks you all are!
Who's the worse kook: the kook or the kook who argues with him?
Christina, I am just thinking about your comment about a woman putting her baby in her womb - I presume its because she had sex. I agree with that exept when you look at it the other way ie a woman having sex and trying for a baby but getting nada - I have to conceed that it isn't true. We seem to have very little control either way - as sophisticated as we try to be.
Lilliput, I don't know why you are straining at this so hard. A statement can be generally true without being true in every single instance. "Babies are made by sex" is a statement that is generally true. That doesn't mean that every time a man and woman have sex that it makes a baby; and it doesn't deny the existence of Assisted Reproduction. But the statement is generally true.
You're trying to defy a biological norm -- that sex is what makes babies. I don't know why it's so hard to grasp. Apparently because you *want* life to be different, and for sex not to create babies (in a general way), you're grasping at straws in this. And denying biology in the process.
Two points.
1. The woman did NOT "put the baby in the womb". You cannot put something anywhere if the something does not yet exist. She CREATED it in the womb.
2. No matter how it came into the womb, if it remains there longer than it is welcome, that's battery from within. If I invite you onto my property, you still have to leave when I say so. If you refuse to leave, then you are a trespasser, even though I originally invited you in.
Abortion on demand is justifiable homicide.
1. Splitting hairs. She CAUSED the baby to be there. It's still there by HER actions.
2. Again, we're back to the kidnapper with the woman in his trunk. She can't get out on her own, so he has no right to get pissed off at her for being there and killing her.
Landlords have to give notice when they evict somebody. They can't just decide one day they want to rent the house to somebody else, go in and shoot the occupants. And in the case of an unborn baby, it's the woman's dependent child whose well being she is responsible for. If she wants him to leave, it's HER responsibility to make alternative, safe arrangements. Parents can't just shoot their kids because they don't feel like finding a sitter.
I assume Counterstrike et al are against men and women being forced to provide financial and emotional resources and shelter to born children as well. After all, if one decided one no longer wanted one's two year old, and she's on one's property, it is perfectly acceptable to ignore her, kick her off your poroperty (say, into a busy street), or simply stop using your food and clothing to sustain her.
Kathy,
Identical twins, triplets, etc., are rare, so the first statement is generally true.
I’m assumed you realized that frequency does not matter in metaphysical debates.
Twinning can be considered as asexual reproduction; and when this "reproduction" occurs, another soul could be given to the second twin. Or that two souls were given in one body which then separated.
So how many souls are humans given? So what happens if an embryo is given two souls, and then fails to twin? I don’t think you want to makes these kinds of claims – they open up some pretty damaging paradoxes.
Either way, I'm not inclined to take Bible lessons from someone who doesn't believe the Bible, so your statement is "in one ear and out the other," as far as I'm concerned.
Right, so my response to you is to simply replace the word “Bible” with the word “science.” It would go something like this:
Either way, I'm not inclined to take science lessons from someone who doesn't believe in science, so your statement is "in one ear and out the other," as far as I'm concerned.
Chad
Chad,
Do you believe that humans have souls? If so, when do you think humans acquire souls? If not, why are you arguing with me, when we obviously can't even agree on a starting premise?
Not sure why you dragged science into the discussion. A soul is metaphysical so is not subject to science. The existence of a soul cannot, as far as I know, be proven nor disproven scientifically.
Kathy, I don't believe that sex makes babies! I believe that a sperm fertilising an egg which then attaches to the womb. Sex can be done without babies and babies can be done without sex. Gays and lesbians can have sex till the cows come home and still not make babies.
I don't know what you are struggling to understand about this.
Kathy,
Not sure why you dragged science into the discussion.
You’re the one who attempted to give your response a veneer of scientific credibility. You wrote this: “Twinning can be considered as asexual reproduction.” If you’re going to start throwing distinctions around, you had better be prepared to defend them.
Do you believe that humans have souls?
What relevance does your question have? While you committed the fallacy of “appealing to ignorance” when you wrote: The existence of a soul cannot, as far as I know, be proven nor disproven scientifically, I take the spirit of your comment to mean that there is no empirical evidence for the existence of the soul, which I would affirm.
Chad
Lilliput, you're straining at a gnat.
You’re the one who attempted to give your response a veneer of scientific credibility.
No, I was just talking.
"Do you believe that humans have souls?"
What relevance does your question have?
The relevance is that if you do not believe that humans have souls, then you do not believe that ensoulment occurs at all which therefore means that any questions you have for me about souls are not real questions at all.
I was not appealing to ignorance; I was just trying to make heads or tails of your talking of "science" on the topic of a soul which cannot, as far as I know, be proven nor disproven scientifically. Therefore, it is outside the realm of science.
The relevance is that if you do not believe that humans have souls, then you do not believe that ensoulment occurs at all which therefore means that any questions you have for me about souls are not real questions at all.
Your train of logic in this assertion is almost too painful to bear. So we can only ask "real questions" about objects to certain people? Your defensive posture only reveals the shallowness of your claims.
Chad
Then I guess you enjoy pain.
I'm just trying to fix the ground rules of the discussion, and you're sidestepping any attempt I make. I don't much like shadow-boxing.
Then I guess you enjoy pain.
Um, what? I have no idea what this means.
I'm just trying to fix the ground rules of the discussion
So let me rephrase your "ground rule:" If you don't agree with me, I'm not going to talk to you.
And people wonder why there's so much conflict.
Chad
No, it's just pointless to talk to someone about when ensoulment happens if the other person doesn't believe in souls at all. Pretty simple.
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