C. Stanley says:

“Our pastor calmly responded to her as she was leaving and then continued- and got a standing ovation from the rest of the congregation.”

This divide is good for the Catholic Church. Although on EWTN, the priests and other broadcasters often complain about a lack of reverence, the standing ovation added to the reverence and showed that woman who was going to vote for a Democratic candidate that she was not welcome in C Stanley’s church.

If more Roman Catholic churches would give standing ovation to priests who calmly answer the hysterical anti-war and anti-poverty people, maybe the fake Catholics would stop attending and form their own church.

And that would be wonderful because the more division the better. And here is a standing ovation to C Stanley and his pure Catholics.

I was being sarcastic.

Being anti-abortion is a good thing. It is also easy to do and it fills people with spiritual pride, just as being antiwar and anti-poverty do.

If someone walked out of my liberal Roman Catholic church after she denounced the priest, I would be stricken with a sickening sadness.

the solution for American Catholics is two Churches. This makes me sad, but when we walk out or are thrown out, you can give a standing ovation.

I won’t. I think this schism is heartbreaking.

By the way, did you notice that Fr. Newman referred to Obama as Barack Hussein Obama. I suppose that was respectful, just as we all call John McCain by his middle name.

In my book, voting for Obama doesn’t “disqualify” you as a Christian. It does seem that Sen. Obama’s stances on the death penalty and the was in Iraq are closer to the Pope’s than Sen. McCain’s. (And I voted for McCain.)

No, I was raised Catholic. though I’m pro-life I’ve always had a problem with the Catholic Church “grading” abortion as something worthy of ex-communication. It seems to be a more political stance than a theological/biblical stance.

If anything, tom, science should be forcing the rest of the world to notice that human life certainly begins in a form worthy of human rights quite some time before the fetus leaves the birth canal.

c3: I don’t really get why people have a problem with it. If anything, the only internal inconsistency I can see is on the death penalty, and the Church is actually more anti-death penalty than most people realize (the Catechism states support for it only in cases where there’s no other way to protect society.)

Overall I find the Church is highly consistent on the central tenet of social justice being the right to life, and the central obligation being the need to protect the weakest of all lives who can’t speak for themselves.

And if one believes that human life begins at conception, then abortion is murder. Why would it be considered just political rather than theological to be unwavering in a commitment to banning murder?

My sentiments exactly, Chris. I truly don’t understand why anyone would want to consider themselves Catholic if they disagree with something so fundamental. This isn’t a social club, you either believe in the teachings or you don’t. I don’t disrespect those with other opinions, but I do resent the attitude that the Church ought to change in order to accomodate them.

And the politicization certainly works both ways, as shown here and here. Why is it not OK for the Church to assert it’s principles as they apply to politics, but OK for political groups to attempt to persuade Catholic voters that the Church teaching is different than what the Church states it to be?

Here is one thing I have never understood.

Abortion is the Be-All and End-All of sin for Catholics. Compared to abortion wars are regrettable, but not a moral issue. That is how Fr. Neuhaus Explained why no Catholic could vote for a candidate who supported abortion, although Fr. Neuhaus would not say the words ” A Roman Catholic MUST vote for McCain/Palin under pain of Excommunication because a vote not cast for McCain/Palin is a Mortal Sin.”

Poverty, health care, the degradation of the environment, wars, inequality, none of those issues are important from a Voting Perspective. Abortion trumps all other moral issues.

So, if one is deeply involved in what the movement itself calls Neo-Conservative Politics, like Fr. Neuhaus, as a priest and as an active Catholic Intellectual, you say that a moral case can be made FOR the Iraq War and, indeed for AY war conducted by the United States. Further a voter certainly should not take into consideration who favors these wars and who opposes them when they go into the booth on Election Day.

Only Abortion matters because it is the extermination of innocents. And only the Republican Party is worthy of any Catholic voters. Fr. Pavone gave a sermon on EWTN that said that while he could not tell people who to vote for by naming names, Catholics had the DUTY to find out who was pro-life and vote for that candidate. Staying home was also a sin.

However, if a bombing campaign, again regrettably, causes the deaths of pregnant women and infants and children, that is NOT a moral issue.

Would it make a difference to the anti-Abortion Catholics that a pregnant woman was killed in war? Now I know you don’t like the word killed applied to actions by American troops, but sometimes civilians do die in battle. Is it ONLY immoral to cause the death of the baby in the womb? Do children count? At what age do people stop counting?

Similarly, if poverty damages people, which it clearly does, do those people who are born matter? What if poverty causes the death of a baby in the womb? Then does poverty become a moral issue?

I would also like to know why the church does not grant funerals to any baby who dies due to a miscarriage?

C Stanley and the other defenders of Father Newman might be interested in hearing that I just read a news article indicating that Father Newman’s statements have been repudiated by his diocese. The link is:

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/11/14/catholic-priest-pummeling-obama-voters/

Among other interesting quotes:
—
“Father Newman’s statements do not adequately reflect the Catholic Church’s teachings. Any comments or statements to the contrary are repudiated,” said Msgr. Martin Laughlin, administrator of the Charleston Diocese, which is currently without a bishop.
—

So it appears that those who voted for Obama might not be as excommunicated as C Stanley thinks they were.

Dave: that article also explains how his comments have been blown out of proportion. I’m not defending him per se because I don’t know the full extent of his comments. But what this article calls repudiation is really just a diocesan administrator (because the diocese is currently without a bishop) trying to tamp down the bad PR.

Again, not knowing the full context of the quotes, what I’ve seen of his actual words seem quite in keeping with Catholic teaching. Supporting abortion, which includes supporting a politician who is stridently prochoice when there is a viable alternative, is an act of complicity with an intrinsically evil act. This would require a communicant to examine conscience and seek reconciliation.

Now, as I understand it there may be one rationale for supporting a prochoice candidate over a prolife one which I believe would be justifiable; that would be for a person who has seriously considered the issue and examined conscience and decided that working toward changing hearts and minds on abortion is primary rather than working through the laws. That rationale would put forward that perhaps fewer abortions would result from a societal change rather than through legal prohibition (but I imagine to be sincere in this position, one would have to actually work toward that end and not just passively endorse the theory.)

I believe that a good confessor would absolve such a person of any sin because the intent is not sinful. But rationalizing that support of a prochoice position isn’t intrinsically evil- or that it shouldn’t trump other political positions on social justice-is not in keeping with the Church’s teaching on the issue. It’s just not, regardless of what some liberal American Catholic bishoops and priests will tell you.

james- you say you were raised Catholic, and when that phrase is used it generally indicates someone who’s no longer a practicing Catholic. If that’s the case for you, then how can you say you’re reaching out to ‘fellow Catholics’? Reach out to other fallen away Catholics if you wish, you’ll find plenty who agree with you I’m sure. It’s a hard teaching, but there’s a reason for it.

I was raised catholic & still practice, although not as ardent as I once was. I don’t disagree with the teaching, that we should not condone abortion, but to legislate from a federal level is wrong. Because I am against a federal ban on abortion, does that mean I support abortion? Have I sinned? Do I need absolution?

This is yet another reason why I could never join a church. Even if I leaned on the believing side, my views are so all over the map that I wouldn’t fit in anywhere.

It’s also part of the reason why I’m not going to be joining a party any time soon.

*Except for late-term abortions, of course, which by definition take place after the first trimester. But the medical procedure that is banned by the “Partial Birth Abortion” Act also sometimes takes place during the second trimester, so that IS an infringement. Aside from the other problems with the ban on late-term abortions.

I don’t think Roe said that no restrictions could be placed….

In the second trimester, but not in the first.

I was pointing this out to james because he already stated that he opposes federal bans on abortion but opposes abortion itself, so I infer (correctly or not, james can clarify) that he is in favor of state legislated reasonable restrictions.

I don’t know what james has said about this yet, or if he has, but setting aside what james in particular may feel on this point, it cannot be assumed that opposition to abortion means support for state-legislated restrictions (I don’t agree that the restrictions we’re talking about are reasonable). The two don’t always go together. There are many people who oppose abortion, believe it’s wrong, consider themselves pro-life, while also believing that it’s a personal, moral, and/or religious matter that the government has no right to poke its nose into. That would be a perfectly logical and consistent position for a limited government-type person to take.

And actually, going back to the other point, about “reasonable restrictions,” it’s not true that such restrictions or no more onerous than the ones placed on other medical procedures. For one thing, many of these restrictions don’t even exist at all for other medical procedures. Do women have to see films on the dangers of c-sections or hysterectomies and receive counseling on other options for childbirth and then wait three days before deciding to have one? Does anyone, of either gender, have to see films on the side effects and possibly dangerous consequences of chemotherapy or radiation therapy, be counseled on options such as organic or alternative treatments, and then wait three days before being allowed to choose traditional aggressive cancer treatments?

Informed consent laws that require patients to sit through films, get counseling, wait several days, and inform family members before being allowed to have the procedure?

I don’t think so, Christine.

I spent a few hours in the emergency room on Veteran’s Day because of injuries sustained after tripping and falling. I had to have three stitches on my lips, a tetanus shot, and about a dozen x-rays of my right hand, elbow, and shoulder. And before any of that was done, I had to sign a consent form. But there were no government-mandated lectures, film presentations, waiting periods, or family notifications that had to take place before I could get the medical care I needed. The hospital emergency room medical staff explained what needed to be done and why, and gave me the form to sign.

I don’t think there’s a reasonable case to be made that this is comparable to what women seeking abortions are forced by state legislatures to go through before they can have one. No other medical procedure is handled that way.

The issue is not informed consent. The issue is that women and their doctors are compelled to take additional steps to prove that informed consent exists. The private professional patient-doctor interaction that results in a signed (or not) consent form, which satisfies the requirement of the law in every other instance, is not enough in the case of abortion.

I should add that this alone illustrates that there’s already generally a special exemption given for this procedure- as I wrote above, you’d actually need parental consent for most any medical procedure if you were a minor but for abortion, to be Constitutional a state can only require parental notification, not consent.

Let me be frank- from both evidence that I’ve seen and read, and personal experience, I am convinced that Planned Parenthood is a highly unethical abortion promoting organization, not one that seeks to promote ‘choice’. There is quite simply only one choice that is touted. Perhaps there are individual locations that vary, but I’ve seen enough evidence that it’s not strictly anecdotal.

Care to share that evidence? I have known several people who worked for/with PP and that is not at all the impression I have.

Christine,

My wife, who teaches ethics, asked me to thank you for that link. She is going to use it in her section on ethics and abortion. It is important even for pro-choice people to grapple with the complexities of the issue and not retreat too quickly to bland axioms and slogans as a replacement for critical thinking. I think Jonah Goldberg makes a good point in an unrelated area when he observes that the dominance of liberals in education forces conservatives to learn to grapple with opposing arguments but often excuses liberals from having to do so.

FWIW, before we were married, my wife also went to PP and reported very much a similar experience — they were quick to push toward abortion as the presumed and automatic reaction to the possibility of a pregnancy. No other option was even considered possible, let alone desirable. IMHO, PP started as a very helpful organization providing information and contraception options for women who lived in communities where those options weren’t even available at the time. In its conversion into a militant advocacy organization pushing abortion as some kind of bizarre political sacrament, I think PP has harmed itself and dis-served women.

P.S. To prevent the inevitable jumping to extreme conclusions about what I am saying here, I should point out that I am pro-choice as a matter of law and policy, though not as a matter of morality or ethics.

I’d like to return for a moment to the issue about which this thread was started: Father Newman’s statement that “Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exits constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ’s Church and under the judgment of divine law.” These are his words. Though they no longer seem to be available on his parish’s web site, a copy of the church bulletin in which they appeared is here: http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/111408_churchbulletin.pdf.

C Stanley says: “No one is saying that Obama voters are unChristian- just that they’ve put themselves at odds with Catholic teaching on abortion.” In a response to my earlier message C Stanley said: “Supporting abortion, which includes supporting a politician who is stridently prochoice when there is a viable alternative, is an act of complicity with an intrinsically evil act. This would require a communicant to examine conscience and seek reconciliation.”

Respectfully, I disagree with both Father Newman and C Stanley as to their assertions about whether voting for Obama constitutes complicity with evil and requires absolution. Assuming we can rely on the Catholic Bishops of the United States to accurately state the Church’s position about the morality of voting, their document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship”, available on their website, is informative.

After an introductory statement (section 7) that they do not intend to tell Catholics for whom or against whom to vote, Section 34 of that documents states: “A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who takes a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion or racism, if the voter’s intent is to support that position. In such cases a Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in grave evil. At the same time, a voter should not use a candidate’s opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity.”

The crucial clauses here are the reference to the intent of the voter, and the duty of the voter to weigh other moral issues regarding human life and dignity. Importantly, the bishops leave this analysis to the voter and refrain from telling Catholics for whom they should vote. In this the Bishops reflect the long-standing respect the Church has for the primacy of conscience. And this is how such well respected Catholics as Douglas Kmiec decided to support Obama.

In light of this, I respectfully suggest that both Father Newman and C Stanley are quite overbroad in their statement of the Church’s position. The test of whether to vote for a candidate is not whether he or she is stridently prochoice and whether there is a viable alternative. Nor is the test whether the voter supports changing hearts and minds over changing the law. The test is whether the voter in conscience and on balance votes for a prochoice candidate in order to support his or her prochoice position, or whether the voter feels that candidate, overall, supports moral issues involving human life and dignity while the other candidate is less attentive or indifferent to those issues.

Also, Dave, note that you’ll find a great deal of discrepancy among the American Catholic bishops and priests- because the leadership of the American Catholic bishops is quite liberal and sometimes defies Rome. The conservatives among the group (and priests who are conservative) then tend to react by defending the more ‘orthodox’ view.

Spousal consent laws have been struck down consistently since Planned Parenthood v Danforth and Coe v Gerstein in 1976. There does not appear any evidence I am aware of that these decisions are being challenged or that a majority of the Court is posed to overturn them. In Planned Parenthood v Casey in 1992, a 5-4 majority struck down even the much milder requirement for mere spousal notification.

Also, spousal consent/notification is a much different issue from parental consent/notification. I think conflating the two in order to exaggerate the potential threat to Roe is more than just a little disingenuous. It is also simply untrue to assume that an overturning of Roe would mean the elimination of abortion rights, since clear pro-choice majorities in state legislatures indicate that most states would enact them legislatively anyway.

It is also fascinating to me how reproductive rights are commonly interpreted by pro-choicers to exist after conception for the female but not for the male. The right of the female to terminate the pregnancy is supposed to be left absolutely unimpeded, but the male is given no say at all AND is forced to pay the bills for whatever decision the female might make. And that is “equal protection under the law” how? Or does it not matter for father’s rights to be considered?

The refusal to consider fathers as in any way relevant to reproduction after the biological act of conception makes pro-choicers complicit in the problem of deadbeat fathers, in my opinion. You can’t expect to tell an entire class of people (men) that their moral input is unwelcome and irrelevant but that their checkbook is essential at the same time. Because of the biological facts of pregnancy, I don’t have a problem making the decision to have or not have an abortion exclusively for the mother, but I think the father should have the legal right not to fund a decision he did not agree to.

Although I agree about the warning not to exaggerate the risk of violent reaction from parents, Jason, I want to point out a couple of things. First, to my knowledge most if not all of the parental consent laws on the books do allow for exceptions- meaning that the teen can petition for another adult to adjudicate the decision if they’re in a potentially abusive situation with parents. If I’m not mistaken, this is generally required in order for a law to pass Constitutional muster. Is it burdensome for a teen in that situation? Sure, and that’s highly regrettable, just as the fact that they’re in a household like that to begin with. Laws are never perfect and can’t be expected to correct for every situation.

Second, the website I linked to earlier contains lots of information about violence as it relates to abortion- and it can be seen that the legal access to abortion does NOT prevent this violence from occurring. You are expressing concern about girls/women who might face a violent reaction for having an abortion, but there are also women who are beaten and even murdered for choosing NOT to have one. In fact there’s one situation where that’s extremely likely to happen- the situation where a young girl has been molested or raped by an older man or relative who wants to cover up the crime via abortion. There’s also evidence of abortion clinic staffers who go along with the girls’ wishes in some of these cases to go ahead and abort without notifying authorities (because they are afraid of the consequences of doing so.) Who is looking out for these girls?

Jason- hear, hear, on the fathers’ rights. I also think that the entire societal view of ‘letting the woman affected make this decision’ permits a huge copout for many men. Instead of stepping up and saying they do not believe abortion is right, many men use the excuse that if it’s what the woman chooses then who is he to say otherwise when she has the greater consequences from the decision. It’s a convenient way of avoiding both the guilt of complicity in the abortion and the burden of the outcome of a pregnancy.

A teenage girl who gets pregnant is not “likely” to be beaten up or killed or disowned or treated abusively by her parents either. Your sweeping demonization of parents is highly irresponsible, Kathy.

Your misleading and dishonest characterization of what I wrote is irresponsible, Jason.

Here is what I wrote:

“Laws that require a pregnant girl and/or her doctor to inform and/or obtain consent before an abortion can be performed are real and serious threats to the girl’s life. And in fact it’s *precisely* those girls who are least likely to tell their parents about an unwanted pregnancy that are most at risk if their do.”

It’s not ALL or even MOST pregnant girls who are in danger of violent or abusive responses from parents. It’s *specifically* the girls who do NOT want to tell their parents. And it’s not all of those girls, either. But as a group, the girls who are most endangered by parental notification laws are those very girls who DO come from abusive families, and who are unwilling to tell their parents because they have good reason to know the response would be abusive or worse.

If you think about this for just a moment, Jason, you might see how very irrational parental notification laws are. Most teens who become pregnant WILL tell their parents or guardians, and DO tell them. Of course, not all do. But most will. Those girls don’t need parental notification laws to force them to tell their parents, because their relationship with their parents that they have had their entire lives has taught them they can trust their parents to ultimately react with love and support. But it is not possible to create trust between parents and children by fiat. And parental notification laws target (as I said) who will not tell their parents, for very good reason. Parental notification laws are irrelevant to most pregnant minors. The relatively subset of girls for whom they ARE relevant are, by definition, the girls most likely to be harmed by such laws.

This is the major point I want to make. But an additional point is that, even when a pregnant minor fears to tell her parents for less life-threatening reasons, or even if a pregnant teen fears a violent reaction and is wrong to fear that, if a parental notification law stands between her and a safe, legal abortion, then she may very well have an unsafe, illegal abortion, or a self-induced abortion, which is very likely to result in serious health complications, or death. That is what happened to Becky Bell, as I’m sure you know since her case is rather famous. She did not fear an abusive reaction; she just felt her parents would be terribly disappointed in her if they found out she was pregnant. So she did not tell them. She tried to abort herself, and a week later she was dead from a massive infection.

So when you express your hopes and concerns about what I said in my own testimony, that’s what I talked about. I told the legislators that I knew what it felt like to watch a coffin holding the body of a child of mine being lowered into a grave (not from a botched abortion; she was 3 years old and it was a fatal genetic condition), and that I did not want, ever, to go through that experience again. Which goes back to what I wrote earlier: that I would rather find out after the fact that my daughter safely ended an unwanted pregnancy than get a call telling me she was dead from a botched abortion. I care about my daughter’s life MORE than I care about forcing her to talk to me if she doesn’t want to.

Now, moving on to Christine’s point about judicial bypass: Those provisions are usually worse than useless, because (a) they require a young girl to tell a total stranger, an intimidating authority figure, and someone who has power over her entire future, intimate details about her life, and many girls will just not do it; (b) the judge can deny the bypass for any number of reasons having nothing to do with the girl’s safety — such as being opposed to abortion. How the hell does the judge know better than the girl herself whether she’s in danger in the first place? (c) some judges refuse to hear such cases, and if choose not to, no one can make them do so; and (d) if the pregnant girl lives in a small town where her family (but not what goes on behind the closed doors of that family) is known to the judge, it would quite likely be not simply very uncomfortable for the girl, but downright dangerous. And the judge might be even less inclined to believe the girl if he is a family acquaintance or knows one or more of the family members professionally.

Isn’t everything I’ve written obvious? I mean, why do these things even have to be pointed out? It’s common sense, in my view.

It is also simply untrue to assume that an overturning of Roe would mean the elimination of abortion rights, since clear pro-choice majorities in state legislatures indicate that most states would enact them legislatively anyway.

And what if they didn’t? Or what if some did, and others didn’t?

If we were talking about the right of women, or African-Americans, to vote, would you be willing to leave that right to the whim of state legislatures because you decide that “clear pro-voting rights majorities in state legislatures indicate that most state would enact them legislatively anyway”?

If the right to choose to continue or to end a pregnancy is dependent on changing majorities in state legislatures, then there is no right to choose at all. It’s not abortion rights for women to be at the mercy of a patchwork quilt of state laws and just pray they live in the right state.

Kathy, I acknowledge some of the problems you list with parental consent and judicial bypass. But do you also acknowledge the other problems I brought up (which I believe are equally obvious, and although it’s difficult to obtain stats I feel intuitively that there are even greater numbers of girls who fall into this category) of sexual molestation/abuse being covered up by males who use the legal availability of abortion to eliminate the evidence of their crimes?

That said, there’s no doubt that some girls (and women) are bullied or intimidated into having abortions, and that scenario is just as wrong as bullying or pressuring a woman into continuing a pregnancy she doesn’t want, or putting legal roadblocks in the way of her procuring one.
Kathy, I’m sure we’ll have to agree to disagree on whether or not it is wrong to ‘pressure a woman into continuing a pregnancy she doesn’t want’ in the sense of women having a right to an abortion for this reason. In the majority of cases, women who have abortions had a window of opportunity to prevent a pregnancy but did not do so. In the minority of cases where rape or other coercive sex acts were committed against her, those acts should be forcefully prosecuted according to existing law. When one has a respect for the right to life of the fetus, it’s impossible to justify the killing of that human being in order to ameliorate the pain and suffering of the victim of the sex crime. I know that you and I do not agree on whether or not the fetus deserves that legal protection, but can you not see that it would be impossible to be logically consistent if one takes the view that a fetus does have the right to life?

And for the sake of this discussion, and even for the sake of progress toward reducing the number of abortions (which the majority of Americans favor, not the status quo abortion on demand), I am willing to compromise on the legal standing of abortion as long as the women who bear the responsibility of deciding on a case by case basis whether or not the products of their conception are human beings are not, are at least going to have to carefully deliberate both sides of that issue. You, however, are not willing to even allow a centimeter of movement in that direction (and no wonder, because it threatens the ability of some women to believe that abortion is nothing but a tonsillectomy.)

As long as you are willing to admit that you’re position is extreme, we can agree to disagree. My personal feelings about abortion are extreme in the prolife direction as well, but because I understand that there isn’t currently a majority view that is the same as mine, I’d rather not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Along with efforts to assist women to make choices other than abortion, I focus any efforts that I make on this issue to support the kinds of laws which you wouldn’t even allow- those that require some extra consideration (and hearing alternative choices and viewpoints) of the women who are making this decision.

I’m sure we’ll have to agree to disagree on whether or not it is wrong to ‘pressure a woman into continuing a pregnancy she doesn’t want’ in the sense of women having a right to an abortion for this reason.

I think you misunderstand my phrasing, Christine. A pregnancy that is not wanted means, to me, a pregnancy that a woman decides she cannot bring to term for innumerable possible reasons — financial, health-related, family reasons, fetal abnormality, rape or incest, etc. The vast majority of women who have abortions do not make that choice lightly, or for frivolous reasons, or because they planned to have a baby next month but not this month.

That is the canard, not the concept of “women’s choice.” Your apparent implication that no woman would choose to have an abortion on her own, unless she was being pressured or coerced, is extremely offensive and insulting. Women are adult human beings the same as men, and are capable of making adult decisions. Women are competent moral decision-makers. You infantilize women when you sneer at the very idea of the validity of a woman’s choice when it comes to decisions about her own body.

It should not surprise you that I “acknowledge” women can be coerced into having an abortion, and that I condemn forced abortion as strongly as I do forced childbirth. That is what “pro-choice” means. If a woman cannot choose to end a pregnancy, because the law forbids her to do so or because others prevent her from doing so by force, then she cannot choose to continue a pregnancy, either. Choice only exists in the context of more than one option. Moreover, the entire concept of morality depends on choice. How can you make a moral decision, or an immoral decision, if you can’t make a decision?

As you have noticed throughout this discussion, I have shared personal information about my life when it felt contextually appropriate. So I will tell you now that I know for a fact it’s not a canard to have a choice, because I chose abortion — twice, and for the same reason. There’s a hint at the nature of that reason in what I wrote earlier, about the content of my testimony about parental notification in NJ, so I’ll only be more specific if you need me to be. But the point is, I had the abortions, I now have a 19-year-old daughter who was wanted and is loved beyond what words can express, and although I have felt much grief over the circumstances life handed me that made the abortions necessary, I do not regret the abortions. If I had it to do over and the circumstances were the same, my decision would be the same. I had the legal right to make that decision. I shudder to think where I would be right now if I had not.

Finally, I do want to make it clear, if it hasn’t been, that I respect your pro-life beliefs and I am absolutely certain those beliefs are deeply felt — as deeply as mine are. I would not want to persuade you out of those beliefs even if I could. What makes me angry (in general, not just with you), and what I object to, is imposing those beliefs on others via the law, putting the government into my private life and the private lives of all other women. You have the right of persuasion but you don’t have the right of coercion.

So that’s where I stand.

When one has a respect for the right to life of the fetus, it’s impossible to justify the killing of that human being in order to ameliorate the pain and suffering of the victim of the sex crime. I know that you and I do not agree on whether or not the fetus deserves that legal protection, but can you not see that it would be impossible to be logically consistent if one takes the view that a fetus does have the right to life?

I keep on seeing statements I missed to which I feel compelled to reply.

My answer to the above is no, I cannot see that. Anyone who would deny a rape or incest survivor the right to have an abortion is taking a position that is as heinous as anything I can imagine. Additionally, I do not agree it is logically inconsistent to posit a right to life for the fetus while agreeing that a girl or woman who is pregnant as the result of rape or incest has the absolute right to end that pregnancy. I think it’s very extreme to take the position that a fetus has a right to be born that can even be compared with the right of a living, individual girl or woman to eject from her body the product of a violent assault on her body. In fact, *that* stance appalls me much, much more than the overall general pro-life mantra that life begins at conception and abortion is murder. Because even if the latter were true, one would still want to make the distinction between the relative moral force of a fetal right to be born when exercising that right means destroying the psyche of the woman or girl in whose body the fetus exists.

If you can live with the belief that torture is wrong but sometimes necessary or unavoidable to avoid an even greater evil, then surely you can live with the belief that abortion is wrong but sometimes must be allowed to avoid an even greater evil — that of forcing a raped woman to bear the rapists’ child.

The ability to make distinctions is, in my view, a key part of rational human behavior.

Kathy, I’m sorry that I raised something so personal, but please note that your own degree of personal deliberation over the decision does not mean that all or even the majority of women have the same experience. And I will again point you to the website I linked to which provides stats, because that is what I’m basing my statements on. I have no doubt that many women do agonize over this decision, and some deliberate and come to the personal conclusion that you did- but the evidence I’m trying to point out is that many women deliberate but then come to the conclusion to abort only because they don’t feel they have another choice (because they don’t have the support to raise a child.) I hope that my point is clear, that this does not mean that I believe that was your own situation. I’m basing this on the self reported responses of a large percentage of other women. When that many women report that they felt coerced, I’m sorry but your own anecdotal experience doesn’t outweigh that evidence. That’s not a disrespect for women’s ability to reason and make a decision (I’m a woman myself, and believe me, I do not hold a low opinion about the reasoning abilities of our gender)- it’s an indictment of the men who are involved (who use as an excuse for responsibility the idea that it’s not their body that will bear the pregnancy so they can’t make the choice- yet by avoiding responsibility they actually coerce in the direction of aborting) and of society in general which doesn’t provide enough support for women in these situations, and for the abortion clinic staff who aren’t counseling even in a neutral manner about other choices (again, according to these stats reported by women, and also based on my own personal experience and others I’ve heard about.)

And I do still maintain that we each hold extreme positions on this issue. I respect that you had a legal right to make the choice that you made, and I respect that you personally don’t regard abortion the same way that I do. I honestly think that our respective opinions are appalling to each other- and I think we’re both doing our best to keep that in check and not direct the emotion at each other (at least I feel that you are attempting that and I hope I have done so.)

And again- the reason I describe your position as extreme is that you place the primacy on the woman’s right to choose (or control her body, as you put it, a basic point where we disagree), while I put the emphasis much more in the direction of the right to life for the other human being involved in the situation.

I am terribly sorry if my expression of my views is hurtful to you. I think this is a conversation I could have much more compassionately in a personal discussion rather than on a forum such as this one. But as much as I regret any possible pain, I can’t allow that to keep me from expressing my own strong belief in right to life.

I will leave it there too.

Christine, I appreciate your response. It’s thoughtful and sensitively written. I really thank you for it.

It’s true that many women who choose abortion would make a different choice if they felt they had support from the father or from society in general. And in fact, my best friend from college was in that situation. This was many, many years ago now (like, almost 30, if I’m counting correctly), but she had a boyfriend at the time who was a total jerk. I disliked him from the start, even before she got pregnant. Anyway, she did become pregnant, and she had no means of supporting a child at the time. Her boyfriend told her he would pay for an abortion, but she was on her own if she decided to have the child.

She had an abortion. I know it was an agonizing decision for her. I offered to help her raise the child if she had it (a very rash offer, probably; I was just as financially unable to support a child as she was), but she decided to have the abortion.

I was the one who drove her to the hospital, took her home afterward, and supported her emotionally. I was the one who was there for her. Her boyfriend was gone. I say this, not to tout myself, but because it *still* makes me angry that the one person who should have been there for her, wasn’t. I’m realizing that as I’m typing this. I was pro-choice then as I am now and I felt that she had the ultimate right to make that decision, but her boyfriend’s callousness just made it so much harder for her.

I think where you and I differ (well, one of the places where we differ) is in how we view the solution. I think that we (“we” meaning society as a whole) should make it much easier for a woman to choose to continue a pregnancy in such circumstances. That’s one of the reasons I support a national health care policy that would cover all Americans, regardless of ability to pay or employment status. It’s one of the reasons I support a federal system of subsidized child care whereby women, and parents in general, can find safe, quality child care at a price they can afford, which means no-cost if necessary. There are many other areas in which social and economic policy on both a state and federal level could make it far easier for a woman in a crisis pregnancy to have the child.

I much prefer that approach to the coercive option of making abortion illegal and forcing women to have babies they are not emotionally or financially able to care for.

Of course, even if we had such a system, there would still be situations in which a woman would choose to end a pregnancy; i.e., situations like the one I was in, where the fetus had a fatal and incurable genetic condition, or the case of rape or incest, or in instances where pregnancy threatened the life or health of the mother. No one but the woman herself and those closest to her can know when those factors are present. That’s why, in my view, abortion has to stay legal and accessible. But we can make it much easier for a woman to choose to continue the pregnancy. That would be so much better, and more in keeping with constitutional guarantees of personal liberty, than the overturning Roe v. Wade or a federal ban on abortion route.

And perhaps someday we will have the opportunity to meet in person and have that more compassionate and productive conversation. More unlikely things have happened, in my life at least!

Just to clarify- I don’t mean of course that women should be coerced into giving up babies for adoption either- just that that choice should be made more accessible, practical, and less stigmatized for women who would consider it a good solution to an unplanned pregnancy.

We will probably never agree but can at least better understand each other.

And I think that understanding is actually a more profound and meaningful goal than merely agreeing.

Indirectly related: I just saw an article in Time that absolutely floored me. I’m just curious if you’ve seen it, and what your thoughts are about it. I had no idea this was happening.

Again, this is not meant to directly be a part of the abortion discussion. It’s just that I happened to see this article, and it’s tangentially related in that it’s about children and their welfare.

Kathy,
I hadn’t seen that particular article (and have only had a chance to skim it from your link) but I am well aware of the problem and absolutely heartbroken over it. My awareness comes from contact with a lot of families of special needs kids; one of my children has an anxiety disorder (though she’s almost completely overcome it now) and the other (my adopted child) is possibly bipolar. I am involved with a couple of family groups concerning these disorders, and everyone’s pretty horrified over these child/teen abandonment cases. In fact, even when the Nebraska law first passed, before a single case actually occurred, there was a lot of buzz among the parent groups that this was bound to happen. On the bipolar parent forums in particular, there are lots of families dealing with kids who have violent episodes and are VERY difficult to manage, and the parents were all well aware that many families would sadly resort to this when they just can’t cope any longer. It’s incredibly difficult even under the best of circumstances to raise children who have biochemical ‘rage’ storms, especially since the families often bear the brunt of it. What I’ve realized (fortunately while my son is still young enough that hopefully it will help) is to see his anger as a cry for help, so that it’s obvious that any rejection or risk of abandonment for him due to that would be very likely to make the course of the disease much worse. IOW, as hard as it is, the prescription of unconditional love is really, really important. I can certainly empathize with the parents who are giving up, but my heart breaks for the kids too. I hope that the law is amended very quickly, and perhaps the silver lining might be increasing awareness of the difficulties faced by families raising kids with special needs.

I think it is the only logically consistent position. If you believe it is a living child, it is not permissible to kill it regardless of its parentage. If there is a living person, that person is guaranteed the right to life. The only defensible positions I see are based on when personhood begins. Whether it begins at conception or birth or some period in between, when it begins the person should be guaranteed the right to life.

But assuming the validity of your definition of personhood (for the sake of argument), there are TWO persons here, grewgills. That is the essential conflict of interests in abortion that can never be completely resolved. Does the fetus’s “right to be born” (in my view, that’s the right being posited) trump the girl’s or woman’s right to her physical and mental health? Is it right to remove the woman’s right to control whether she continues to have the living product of the rape inside her body for nine months when she already lost the right to control what was done to her body via the rape itself? It’s like being raped twice. Both times she has no say over how her body is used. It horrifies me.

And what about the issue of suicide? I’m sure you remember the case of that Irish girl who was raped by a “friend” of her family and had to fight the government of Ireland even for the right to go to England to have an abortion — *even though* she was suicidal. I think she was finally allowed to go to England and have the abortion after an extended international outcry over the incident. But the question remains: If a woman is physically prevented from ending a pregnancy that resulted from rape or incest, and kills herself, then both lives are lost anyway.

Your point is well taken, Claudia. But if I’m understanding your argument correctly, then pro-lifers who say that:

a)they believe life begins at conception, and that,
b)a fertilized egg, embryo, zygote, fetus, etc., therefore all are the equivalent of a human child at birth, therefore,
c)the only logically consistent position in the case of a pregnancy caused by rape or incest is that the fetus’s right to life takes priority over the woman’s right to her psychological and physical well-being,

They are actually incorrect in their belief that this is the logically consistent position, because they really don’t believe a fetus is equal to an infant at birth. They may sincerely think they believe this, but if they really did, they would want to treat the aborting of an unborn infant, even in the case of rape or incest, in the same way, legally, that the killing of a newborn infant or a baby or child or adult of any age would be treated.

The entire premise of that particular pro-life position — that it is logically inconsistent to exempt women pregnant as the result of rape or incest from a ban on abortion — is incorrect, because they are in effect acknowledging that a fetus is not equivalent to a newborn infant by their inconsistent views on what the legal consequences should be for a woman who has an abortion.

Am I understanding your position correctly?

You are both making an incorrect assumption that those of us who believe that life begins at conception don’t truly believe that the embryo/fetus has the same rights as a born human being. The point where you err is where you infer that such a belief would necessitate the equal punishment of those who abort with cold blooded murderers. There are all sorts of cases where we don’t assign the same kinds of punishment for killing- that’s why there are various levels of culpability including negligent homicide, manslaughter, etc. I don’t know what the exact legal classification should be, but it’s certainly possible to vary the punishment because we take into account the intent and the emotional state of the perpetrator.

And Claudia, you are right to point out that there’s no real distinction between the just born and the about to be born. When you consider it impossible to believe that an unborn child has the right to life, then how is it possible to believe that a just born infant does (particularly one that is premature and requires some artificial means of support?) There’s no bright line there between the moment between umbilical life support and self support- and there’s no moment at which a fetus acquires some level of sentience, or pain sensation, or any of the other arbitrary distinctions that are sometimes chosen as justification for a demarcation of attainment of human rights.

At any rate, please stop assuming that you know that people like myself don’t actually believe what we say we believe. I can define my own beliefs for myself, thanks, and I’m happy to answer questions to clarify if necessary. It’s simply not necessary to believe that one type of human being is the same as another type of human being in order to believe that they both have the right to life. If that was a necessary condition, then we’d have trouble ensuring that a lot of types of human beings maintain their right to life as well (the severely mentally ill, those suffering from advanced senile dementia, etc.)

Claudia, projecting how you’d feel if you believed that abortion was murder doesn’t prove a thing about how others feel. Perhaps you could take into account that many of us do feel that urgency, but that this doesn’t justify things that you mentioned (gunning down baby killers) because we know that two wrongs don’t make a right? And because we do in fact know that even if we believe its murder, that doesn’t mean that others agree? And that we understand and have compassion for women who make the choice to abort?

Though it seems unfortunate that something as clearly important as this be up to consensus, it seems to be the only path open given that everyone has their own definition.

Consensus? You mean the consensus (or majority opinion) of the 9 SCOTUS justices?

Kathy, part of the problem there is that I would favor punishment for the abortionist, but not for the mother. That would be a legal recognition of who is perpetrating the murder itself and who is involved in a different way (which would also allow for handling the role of the mother in a different manner.)

Plus, I reject your assertion that abortion has to be handled in the same manner as other murders in order to prove that the fetus has the same right to life as other persons. An infant’s status, or that of a physically or severely mentally incapacitated individual, requires specific care to be given by responsible individuals, and those individuals then have the responsibility of providing life sustaining care. That doesn’t mean those individuals’ different status gives them extra rights as compared to healthy adults who can care for themselves. If we can recognize such differences without threatening the legal concept of right to life, then I see no reason that the abortion laws shouldn’t be able to reflect differences in status while still acknowledging the same basic concept of right to life.

Kathy, I’m not prepared to get into a lengthy discussion of all of the legal implications- I don’t have the time right now, nor the legal training, to do so.

Suffice it to say that my examples pointed out that there are currently differences between individuals’ right to life- I was not talking about cases where infants are murdered due to violent action, but rather when they die of neglect. The law recognizes that the failure to provide for the necessary care of an infant would result in the loss of life which is punishable by law- but not necessarily in the same manner as the charges and punishment for someone who kills with a gun or knife. It would be a step further to say that the person who did so toward a fetus (a mother who takes action to end a pregnancy, thereby depriving the fetus of its life support) would perhaps not be punished at all under certain circumstances.

And in other ways, too, our current laws aren’t consistent- when a fetus is wanted by the parents, then there are certain legal protections that the parents can sue for- suing doctors for malpractice, seeking murder charges (in some states, I believe) if an unborn child is killed in an attack on the mother, etc. There simply is no way to make it all come out consistent because the truth is that the unborn is different in certain ways but the same in others. I recognize the sameness part and argue that that’s too important to put aside, while you recognize chiefly the differences and say that makes the fetus disqualified from the fundamental state protection of right to life.

Since current law contains a number of inconsistencies, I fail to see that the inability to reconcile the exact same punishment for all types of murder (born and unborn) would be a deal breaker. It’s a bit odd IMO to feel that the ONLY possible solution is to make sure that any human fetus that is still in utero or within the birth canal has ZERO rights (oh, except when the parents want to claim some rights) due to the fact that we can’t reconcile the exact same punishment for killing (either active killing or refusing care) for the unborn that we issue for the born. There are obviously biological differences along the continuum from conception to birth, just as there are throughout the child’s development after birth. Plus, I’ll acknowledge that there are differences in the bonding capacity of the mother which should lead to a greater culpability after birth than before. But I reject the idea that the law couldn’t possibly handle the gradations as an excuse for not dealing with right to life before birth at all.

I’m going to have to leave it there for now.

I was not talking about cases where infants are murdered due to violent action, but rather when they die of neglect. The law recognizes that the failure to provide for the necessary care of an infant would result in the loss of life which is punishable by law- but not necessarily in the same manner as the charges and punishment for someone who kills with a gun or knife.

When an infant dies because of neglect, that is a criminal offense. Whether it’s the mother, or the father, or someone else who is responsible for the conditions of neglect that led to the death depends on the circumstances, but it’s still a crime, and *someone* is going to be charged with negligent homicide and be tried in court.

And in other ways, too, our current laws aren’t consistent- when a fetus is wanted by the parents, then there are certain legal protections that the parents can sue for- suing doctors for malpractice, seeking murder charges (in some states, I believe) if an unborn child is killed in an attack on the mother, etc.

Well, I certainly know more than the average person about suing doctors for malpractice, because my then-husband and I tried to file a wrongful birth suit against the medical laboratory that told us he was not a carrier for Tay-Sachs, when in fact he was. We were not successful, because in New York State, where we then lived, there is no legal provision for wrongful birth lawsuits. But if we *had* been able to sue, the claim would not have been murder. Obviously, this doctor did not murder our daughter. He was negligent in analyzing a genetic test, which resulted in my having a child with a fatal disease.

That does not indicate that my daughter, at 11 months old which was her age when she was diagnosed, was not a human person. It had nothing to do with her humanness. It had to do with the doctor’s intent.

Malpractice is not the same as murder. It’s malpractice — literally a bad practicing of medicine such that someone under the doctor’s care is harmed or killed. There’s no intent to kill — unless there is, of course. Then it’s not malpractice; it’s murder.

So where is the connection to abortion, where the woman most certainly does intend to kill the fetus? The intent is there. What’s not there is the personhood of the fetus. You say a fetus is a person at every stage of development from conception onward, so a woman who has an abortion should be charged with murder.

Since current law contains a number of inconsistencies, I fail to see that the inability to reconcile the exact same punishment for all types of murder (born and unborn) would be a deal breaker.

Because whatever inconsistencies there are (and so far I haven’t seen you give an example of a real inconsistency in treating *the same offense*), there is still a legal process of crime committed, person charged with said crime and arrested, person given a trial, and if convicted, sentenced to an appropriate legal consequence. I can’t see any reason for skipping or truncating or changing that basic process in the case of abortion, other than that a fetus is not a human person as someone who has been born, is.

Plus, I’ll acknowledge that there are differences in the bonding capacity of the mother which should lead to a greater culpability after birth than before.

Bonding capacity has, or should have, nothing to do with culpability in a legal sense. If you think about it, anytime a mother intentionally kills her children, there’s something dysfunctional about the bonding, there.

But I reject the idea that the law couldn’t possibly handle the gradations as an excuse for not dealing with right to life before birth at all.

Nobody here (and very few people anywhere) would argue with that. That’s why abortions late in a pregnancy are only done for serious medical reasons. No woman has an abortion in the eighth month because she suddenly decides she doesn’t want to be a mother. By contrast, a woman who finds out she’s pregnant at six or eight weeks gestation and doesn’t want to have a baby or to go through pregnancy and childbirth may choose abortion. And there’s nothing wrong with that. If a woman decided a couple of weeks before her due date that she wanted an abortion, however, I would say something was very wrong with that. And no reputable doctor would perform an abortion that late in pregnancy for that reason.

I’m just pointing out that some inconsistency already exists and yet our foundational rights aren’t threatened by that (to give one more example, we consider minor children to be a different category which enjoys fewer rights- and yet they’re still fully human and their right to life is obviously guaranteed.)

And once again, Christine, if a minor child is killed, there is a legal process from evidence-gathering to trial, verdict, and punishment. If a fetus is to have the same right to life as a minor child, then logically there must be the same legal process. I simply can’t see any rational argument for treating an abortion differently in law from the murder of a minor child, if there is no moral difference between killing a minor child and killing a fetus.

… the differentiation could allow for laws which handle abortion in a manner somewhat differently from murder of postpartum human beings, while still allowing for criminalization of the abortion process in some manner that balances the need to prohibit killing with the need for compassion for the pregnant woman.

Why? As a consolation prize for taking away her body rights? And would you favor laws that handle the case of a mother who kills a minor child while in the midst of postpartum depression? What about a mother who kills her baby a month or two after she gives birth, because she didn’t want the child but was not allowed an abortion? Should the law treat her the same way as it would treat a woman who has an illegal abortion, in the interest of balancing the need to prohibit killing with the need to show compassion toward the woman?

These questions are not meant sarcastically. They are questions that come up as a consequence of the inconsistency in how abortion opponents propose to treat women who have abortions if abortion becomes illegal. I think they are reasonable questions, and I think they need to be answered (in general).

I have sympathy for the point of view that society should not have to wait for all possible problems and inconsistencies to be foreseen and dealt with before correcting a great injustice. But I do think that, at the very least, attempts should be made to anticipate and try to address such problems and inconsistencies, as well as to decide whether those possible problems and inconsistencies are likely to create injustices as bad as the one that you’re trying to eliminate.

Malpractice is not the same as murder. It’s malpractice — literally a bad practicing of medicine such that someone under the doctor’s care is harmed or killed.
I just realized that you’re actually making my point for me here (something I’ve been trying, perhaps not very successfully, to express.)

The point is that in your analogy, medical malpractice which results in the death of an individual (leave aside for the sake of this point whether or not that individual is a fetus, child, or adult) is not legally considered murder. So, there we have an example of how an individual can die as a result of the actions of another individual, yet no one is charged with murder. The right to life of that individual is not threatened by the lack of murder prosecution; instead, the death is handled by the law according to whatever punishment society deems appropriate for the malpractice. And again, I do realize that what I’m proposing (for most women to not be legally charged in fetal deaths from abortion at all) goes a step further- removing them from the culpability altogether. But my point is that if society can handle other wrongful deaths without murder charges, then there is obviously a way to preserve right to life without having to call such deaths murder in the legal sense.

It puts more burden on the woman, not less- and basically tells women that society is willing to look the other way if she feels she needs to choose to dispose of a pregnancy because collectively (and specifically in the case of the fathers) we’d rather not have to deal with it.

Something else on this point. When you say, “collectively we’d rather not have to deal with it,” then logically it would seem that you would agree with the premise that it is a societal responsibility to make sure every pregnant woman, every child, and every mother has access to (1) appropriate and necessary prenatal and postpartum medical care, including for postpartum depression and health problems related to the pregnancy;(2)free or low-cost health care via a national insurance program for her child and for herself; (3) affordable housing, good public schools, and low-cost or no-cost child care services; (3) the means to care for herself and her child in economic crises; i.e., unemployment, disability, income assistance, etc.; (4) government-subsidized tuition, loans, scholarships so the woman can attend school and get the education she needs to get a better job.

If you truly do believe that society has a collective responsibility to make it possible for a woman to choose to continue a pregnancy and care for a child on her own, that’s what I imagine you would want to support.

CS,
I disagree with you about when personhood begins and neither of us will change the others mind on this so I will leave aside that argument. I completely understand that if you believe that personhood begins at conception you must believe that abortion in all cases is unacceptable. To believe otherwise in that case is not logically defensible. Some do try to tie logic in knots to defend both personhood at conception and abortion in cases of rape or incest but I think that one or both arguments fail logically in those cases. Where I disagree with you is the logical consistency of considering abortion as less of a moral or ethical wrong than murder (or at least manslaughter) if you do believe that the aborted fetus is a full person with all the rights of a newborn. Why do you feel that abortion should be treated legally differently than infanticide or assisted infanticide? Is it a moral/ethical or a practical position?
It is not malpractice in any meaningful or legal sense nor is it any form of incompetence by mother or doctor. It is fully intended and what is intended is done. Murder, as opposed to negligent homicide or malpractice etc, is about intent and the intent to end the life of what you consider a person is there in the doctor and patient in abortion. This is where your analogies fail.

Natural family planning is not the old ‘rhythm’ method, and it is slightly more effective than artificial birth control when correctly used.

Could you provide a cite for that. The pill when properly used is better than 99% effective (proper use over the course of 1 year). Even with missed pills it is more successful than BBT, Calendar, Cervical Mucus, 2 day, Standard days. Condoms in conjunction with spermicidal lubricant (often pre-applied) are also more effective than any of these.

Symptothermal birth control requires considerably more effort on the part of the woman and when conscientiously kept up with offers similar levels of protection (w/in 1-2%) to combination pill or condoms with spermicide.

All of the various ‘natural’ methods require extensive monitoring, long periods of abstinence, are considerably less effective for women with less regular menstruation, inhibit spontaneity, and do nothing to prevent STDs (other than limit the amount of sex).

Despite many years in Catholic schools I cannot understand their teaching on birth control. If it is about God’s will then ‘artificial’ birth control is just as amenable to his will as ‘natural’ birth control and both would equally attempt to take for one’s self the choice of conception.

BTW All stats were gathered from the Mayo clinic birth control website.

I?d appreciate if you similarly refrain from conflating some prolife people who would restrict access to birth control from the prolife movement in general, or if you do not accept that distinction than please show me a single mainstream prolife group which seeks to restrict access.

Would you consider Pharmacists for Life a mainstream pro-life group? What is National Right to Life’s (the most mainstream pro-life group there is) position on pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control, even extending in some cases to confiscating the actual prescription form? What is NRL’s position on Pres. Bush’s proposed Department of Health and Human Services rule, which he is trying to implement before he leaves office, that would allow health care workers to refuse to provide health care services that “violate their conscience or religious beliefs,” which would mean in some cases refusing to provide contraception?

Mainstream pro-life organizations need to do better than simply saying they “don’t have a position” on such issues, if they also want to claim that women who don’t want children or for whom pregnancy is medically problematic “have the choice” to use birth control.

Mostly practical, but one that I feel I can reconcile with my moral view because I do understand that the woman who becomes pregnant is forced to bear the entire responsibility for another human being?s life, despite not having the biologically expected bonding which will come later, nor in many cases the means to support the child. This, in my view, justifies treating the woman in a compassionate manner rather than establishing a punishment if she acts out of desperation to end the pregnancy….

How do you know the bonding will come later? The “biologically expected bonding” is not as inevitably biologically based as many people believe that it is.

How do you know that a woman who has an abortion is acting out of desperation? What makes you think that every woman who has an abortion does so because she doesn’t feel a bond with the fetus, or because she doesn’t want to have children?

Of course, if abortion is illegal, then when a woman needs an abortion for ANY reason, it does become a matter of desperation, because the only ways to have one involve grave risk to her life, and/or logistical and financial difficulties in traveling to a country, a state, or a doctor who will perform the abortion. It’s the illegality that creates the desperation, not the woman’s reason for needing the abortion.

I will say it again: If the law forces a woman to bear a child she does not want or cannot care for or that endangers her health, then compassion has been already eliminated from the equation. Telling her not to worry, she won’t go to jail when you’ve taken away the most elemental right any human being can have, is not compassion.

It’s like beating someone up and then sending them flowers and a get-well card. It’s like burning down someone’s house and then putting them up at a hotel.

Logically it would mean no such thing, unless one believes that everyone?s personal responsibility is completely moot when government doesn?t provide for our every need.

Personal responsibility IS moot in the context of forced childbirth. You are imposing *your* sense of personal responsibility on someone else, and then claiming you don’t have to follow through. You can force someone to do or not do something via punishment or physical compulsion, but you cannot force someone to make what you believe are responsible decisions. When you make abortion illegal, you have removed the decision-making capacity. You can talk about “personal responsibility” all you like, but if you force people into situations where your definition of being “personally responsible” is not viable, then you will not get the results you say you want.

You can force a woman to be pregnant for nine months and go through labor and childbirth, but you cannot force her to be a mother. You cannot force her to love her children, or to provide adequately for them if she can’t.

I always want to ask people who talk about a right to life for fetuses whether they think there is a right to love for post-birth babies and children. In effect, there is no such right, because you cannot legislate it.

One atrocity doesn?t help ameliorate another, it?s as simple as that.

I note your choice of words: One atrocity doesn’t help ameliorate another, as opposed to One atrocity doesn’t justify another. You may believe that both are true with regard to abortion in the case of rape or incest, but while the second statement can be justified by reference to a belief that a fertilized egg is morally and legally the same as a girl or woman (an outrageous belief in my view, but one that is sincerely held by a minority of people), the first statement cannot be so justified, and in fact cannot be justified at all, under any circumstances or using any argument.

It is not for you to say that a girl or woman who has been raped — by a stranger, by an acquaintance, by a date, by a spouse, by a father or a brother or an uncle — and becomes pregnant as a result of that rape, cannot regain some sense of control over her own physical autonomy by aborting that pregnancy. That alone will certainly not relieve the torment of being raped — that is a lifelong process, never completed — but it certainly, for many if not most women, will not make the torment worse. And being pregnant with a living, growing fetus that is the result of rape can and does make the torment infinitely worse, for many women.

I would be interested to know if Kathy’s outrage at pharmacists that refuse to dispense abortion pills (relatively few refuse to dispense birth control — that conflation is one of Kathy’s many red herrings) is matched by a corresponding outrage at doctors who refuse to participate in the application of the death penalty by lethal injection. Since both acts devolve from similar grounds of professional ethics (e.g. the doctor’s individual understanding and application of the Hippocratic Oath), I don’t see how Kathy can consistently condemn one while ignoring or endorsing the other, except on purely ideological/partisan grounds.

Insofar as Kathy has appointed herself judge, prosecutor, and cross-examiner throughout this and other threads, I will await reciprocal responsiveness from her on this point.

Oh, and Kathy, you had questioned the fetal homicide laws, so I checked on it. I found that 34 states have such laws on the books (and they’ve survived legal challenges to the state supreme court level; in 24 states the law applies from conception and in 10 states it covers later term of pregnancy) and there’s also a 2004 federal law that applies to fetal death as a result of crimes where there’s federal jurisdiction. Here’s the wiki article (but I’ve also found confirmation from several other sources.)

It saddens me that an institution that has such influence in so many impoverished parts of the world and does so much good there with their medical and poverty missions would concurrently do so much harm by pushing against cheap, easy, and effective birth control that also has the potential to drastically reduce STDs in those areas.

And it blows my mind that anyone would find it inconsistent for the Church to advocate for policies that address spiritual poverty as well as material, but whatever.

You haven’t addressed my analogy to a woman who is abused by her spouse. Why don’t you apply the same logic in that situation, where perhaps the sight of her own children that resulted from that union is tormenting her?

Because she can make arrangements for her children, to go into foster care or permanent adoption or stay with relatives, or any of a number of other possibilities. Not that any of that would be easy, obviously — but the answer to your question is that after birth a child has its own separate physical existence, which means that there is no conflict between the fetus’s right to life and the woman’s right to life. If there were a way for a fertilized egg or embryo or fetus to be removed from a woman’s body and grown elsewhere, that would be a great solution. But that technology does not exist as yet.

… I can understand disagreement, but I don’t get your ongoing inability to accept that if a fetus has the right to life, then nothing else can take precedence over that.

Well, maybe because I don’t believe a fetus has a right to life. You’re the one who believes that.

… it always comes down to this, on which we fundamentally disagree- neither I, nor anyone else except for rapists, force any woman to become pregnant. The choice involved comes before the sexual intercourse, not afterward.

I disagree. A woman does not waive her right to make decisions for her own body because she has sexual intercourse. As we’ve seen, contraception is not always available to a woman in any meaningful way — but her body rights remain regardless of what the contraception situation is.

And your position on choice and contraception is inconsistent anyway, since you support forcing women to have babies conceived in rape.

And your point about allowing pharmacists to refrain from filling prescriptions for birth control is no different than any number of cases where individuals can follow their conscience without it resulting in wholesale loss of rights for others.

It does result in wholesale loss of rights for others. A woman who is told that her prescription will not be filled because the pharmacist disapproves of birth control is being denied her right to make her own medical choices for her own life. Contraception is not illegal, you know.

I would argue further that your mantra of choice and responsibility fits perfectly here. No one forces anyone to become a pharmacist. If a person is so opposed to the use of contraceptives that he or she can’t fill a prescription for birth control, then that person should not be a pharmacist.

Would you say that all physicians should be forced to perform abortions?

No, I wouldn’t say that all physicians should be forced to perform abortions. I would say, however, that any would-be physician who is opposed to abortion and does not feel able to perform one, should not become a specialist in women’s reproductive health care (ob-gyn). If you don’t want to do abortions, then find another specialty.

There have always been exemptions for conscience on issues like that.

No, there haven’t. Up until recently, pharmacists didn’t try to pick and choose, on grounds of personal religious belief, which prescriptions they would fill and which they wouldn’t.

When you were claiming that most right to lifers want to restrict access to birth control, I was assuming you meant that there’s a push by large numbers of people on that side of the debate to actually prohibit the sale of birth control drugs or devices- and other than the abortion pill, I know of no such organized movement.

That’s because — apparently — you think that passing a law is the only way to deny someone a right. It’s not. Supporting laws and/or policies that make it difficult or impossible to exercise a right is actually a much more effective way to deny the right without having to deal with the difficulty of changing the law. If you support policies that allow professionals to refuse to provide the service(s) inherent to their profession, then you are supporting making it as hard as possible for individuals to get that service.

A woman has the right to go into any pharmacy in this country and get a legal prescription filled, no matter what it’s for. If a particular pharmacist doesn’t want to fill a particular prescription, and if there is no other pharmacist on staff to whom he or she can hand off the prescription, then he or she must fill it, or lose his or her job.

And by the way, as a matter of biological and medical fact, Plan B contraception is not an abortifacient. It prevents implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine wall, and before implantation, there is no pregnancy. RU-486 is an abortifacient, because it, in combination with a prostaglandin given separately, induces uterine contractions that expel the embryo. Factually, that makes RU-486 an abortion product. Plan B is not an abortion product.

I would be interested to know if Kathy’s outrage at pharmacists that refuse to dispense abortion pills (relatively few refuse to dispense birth control — that conflation is one of Kathy’s many red herrings) is matched by a corresponding outrage at doctors who refuse to participate in the application of the death penalty by lethal injection. Since both acts devolve from similar grounds of professional ethics (e.g. the doctor’s individual understanding and application of the Hippocratic Oath), I don’t see how Kathy can consistently condemn one while ignoring or endorsing the other, except on purely ideological/partisan grounds.

Plan B, or emergency contraception, is not an “abortion pill.” And a growing number of pharmacists DO refuse to fill prescriptions for non-emergency contraception.

As to the analogy to physicians who refuse to perform lethal injections, Grewgills point about relative ease of finding a pharmacist who will fill a prescription as opposed to finding another doctor who will perform a lethal injection is a good one, but I think there is an even more salient point, which is that there is simply no way to compare lethal injection, or capital punishment in general, and filling a prescription for birth control. The latter is a medication which a physician has determined is necessary for a patient’s health care. Lethal injection is not medical care. There is no societal consensus, or anything even close to agreement, on the idea that contraception is taking a human life. Even the most enthusiastic advocate of capital punishment would agree that administering a lethal injection is taking a human life. Lethal, right? I mean, PLEASE.

According to this article, the only major study that’s ever looked at how such women react found that 75-80% choose against abortion. I realize that even if you accept the accuracy of that, you’ll still say that the 20-25% should have the right to make their choice too, but at least you have to admit that this blows away your presumption that all such women would want to terminate their pregnancies.

First: You’re right, I don’t accept the accuracy of that “study.” I don’t even see a study there. All I see is an article from an institute I’ve never heard of which is clearly proceeding from an ideological opposition to abortion.

Second: You’re wrong, I did not say that all women pregnant as the result of rape or incest want to terminate their pregnancies. I said “many if not most.”

Third: It’s still not up to you to decide. Banning abortion is a bad idea anyway, but banning it for women or girls who have been raped is heinous beyond the adequacy of words to describe.

Finally, re the fetal homicide laws: Okay. I didn’t know it was that many states, but if it is, it is. And the fact they survived legal challenge doesn’t mean such laws are sensible or wise.

Well, maybe because I don’t believe a fetus has a right to life. You’re the one who believes that.

Yes, and as I pointed out, other people who also don’t believe that (specifically in this thread, Grewgills and Claudia) can still recognize that those who do believe it would logically not cede the right to life for the fetus in order to accommodate another person’s rights which are subordinate to the right to life.

Kathy, the problem with all of your arguments (which makes it impossible to actually debate them) is that you allow no room for people whose conscience opposes abortion on the grounds that the fetus is a human being with right to life. If you can’t accept that a physician can choose to provide “reproductive services” without providing services that he/she believes are in direct contradiction to the hippocratic oath, then your position does not allow everyone in society to actually exercise ‘choice’. A true prochoice position would allow everyone in society to act according to his/her own conscience with regard to participating in abortion. Your position, however, places such primacy on the woman’s right to secure an abortion without any inconvenience, that you are removing the choice for other people who believe that abortion involves killing a human being. Funny how you reject the idea that a woman ought to opt out of sex if she can’t deal with the possible consequence of a pregnancy (earlier you said that ’sometimes this isn’t a good idea’) yet you’d say that a person ought to opt out of his/her chosen profession if he/she has a moral issue with the medical boards that ignore the obvious contradiction of taking life.

That’s because — apparently — you think that passing a law is the only way to deny someone a right. It’s not. Supporting laws and/or policies that make it difficult or impossible to exercise a right is actually a much more effective way to deny the right without having to deal with the difficulty of changing the law. If you support policies that allow professionals to refuse to provide the service(s) inherent to their profession, then you are supporting making it as hard as possible for individuals to get that service.

Again, abortion is not ‘inherent in the profession’ unless the medical boards mandate it so, against logic in the face of the hippocratic oath.

And no, I do not believe that ‘passing a law is the only way to remove a right.’ What we’re talking about here is a matter of the degree of inconvenience; you won’t allow for one iota of inconvenience, even if that is part of a means to balance OTHER people’s rights or society’s right (obligation, really) to protect innocent life.

Again, when you take such an extreme stance against ANY inconvenience, you make it impossible for the prolife side to fairly debate the issue. Even if I were to cede all efforts to prohibit abortion by law, your requirements for having complete access for abortion without any inconvenience, delay, or provision of information that counters the proabortion information makes it impossible for prolifers to even have a say in the debate or attempt to ‘change hearts and minds.’

In short, you not only want the law to protect the right to an abortion, you want that right to be absolute. That’s the problem I have with the positions of the prochoice lobby in general-it’s not actually about allowing maximum choice according to individual conscience, but instead its about enforcing the view that a fetus has no right to life.

Second: You’re wrong, I did not say that all women pregnant as the result of rape or incest want to terminate their pregnancies. I said “many if not most.”

OK, sorry-so you didn’t say ‘all’; but I don’t think you can support your assertion of ‘many if not most’ either. That’s your projection of your own personal opinion (which is what you have criticized me for doing.)

Yes, and as I pointed out, other people who also don’t believe that (specifically in this thread, Grewgills and Claudia) can still recognize that those who do believe it would logically not cede the right to life for the fetus in order to accommodate another person’s rights which are subordinate to the right to life.

Claudia’s point, as I understand it, was actually two related points: (a) that IF one believes that a fetus is a human life in exactly the same sense as an individual post-birth is, the only logically consistent conclusion would be that abortion is unjustifiable killing in all instances, even rape and incest, with the possible exception of a situation in which it is absolutely certain a woman would die w/o an abortion; BUT (b) Most pro-lifers who *say* abortion is murder because human life begins at conception, on some level do not really believe that to be true, because they will make exceptions for rape and incest, and maybe for severe threats to the life or health of the mother (i.e., it’s not guaranteed she will die w/o an abortion).

Clearly, that is not the case with you, since you do support making abortion illegal in every single instance, even for 12-year-old incest survivors, with the one exception of a situation in which the woman would die w/o an abortion.

So I absolutely DO recognize that people who truly do believe a fertilized egg is the same as an individual who has gone through birth would find an absolute or near-absolute ban on abortion (only one exception, very narrowly defined) the only logically consistent position.

My point (and if it hasn’t been clear, let me make it so now) is that the above is a religious belief. It’s one part of a specific religious tradition’s doctrine. It is grounded in religion, not in scientific or biological fact. That means you and others who believe this way have the right to live your lives and make your own life choices in accordance with this belief, and you also have the right to express and explain your beliefs to others and try to persuade them of the correctness of your point of view. You have the right to speak about it, to write about it, to publicly rally about it. You do NOT have the right to legislate your belief so that the choices of others are narrowed or directed to be more in line with your beliefs.

Regarding the right of doctors and other health practitioners to choose not to perform abortions or refer people to abortion providers, I can accept that, too, as long as a woman’s right to choose and have access to a safe and legal abortion is in no way significantly disadvantaged. What this means, in my view, in practical terms, is that the supply and availability of safe, legal abortion, abortion referral services, and so on, in whatever geographic area the woman lives in should not be significantly restricted. There should be enough doctors who provide safe, legal abortions and referral services where a woman lives or in reasonable proximity so that the refusal of one doctor to provide abortions (or contraceptive choices that extreme pro-lifers believe is equivalent to abortion) does not make a meaningful difference to a woman’s choice.

Moving on to laws that restrict a woman’s access to abortion or force her to go through punitive and/or onerous extra hoops before she can have an abortion, those are absolutely wrong and unjustifiable in my view. It’s one thing to say, as a health care provider, that you cannot in good conscience perform an abortion or refer a woman to someone who does (as long as there are health care providers there in adequate number who CAN do so). It’s quite another to pass laws allowing people who oppose legal abortion to harangue women about abortion before they can have one. That is an unacceptable infringement on the woman’s rights. You do not have the right to force a woman seeking an abortion to sit through bullying “counseling” sessions that are ideologically freighted and scientifically inaccurate.

OK, sorry-so you didn’t say ‘all’; but I don’t think you can support your assertion of ‘many if not most’ either. That’s your projection of your own personal opinion (which is what you have criticized me for doing.)

Fair enough; on that point I will stick to what I think is, in any case, the more important point: that no one else can speak for the wishes of a woman impregnated through rape or incest except the woman herself, and that her choice in that situation deserves unconditional respect and support.

Jason, Christine herself has written here that she opposes abortion in all cases except to save the life of the mother, and has explicitly argued that aborting a fetus conceived in rape or incest is an “atrocity.”

I’ll grant you the way I phrased it just now is more neutral in tone. I apologize to Christine for the inflammatory choice of words in my previous comment, but not for the meaning, which was accurate.

Does that mean you agree that the state has the right to regulate or even prohibit abortions in the second and third trimester, as outlined in Roe?

Also note that the driving consideration in the entire system set up by Roe v. Wade is the mother’s health not the fetus’s; i.e., “For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.”

I don’t know anything about the feminist theorists, but common sense would tell you that pregnancy is inherently at least a potential danger to a woman’s physical and/or mental health. How could it not be? Pregnancy affects every system in a woman’s body. There’s all sorts of health conditions that can be worsened or initiated by pregnancy.

You’ve also got to understand that no two women are going to be affected the same way by the same health issue. A pregnancy-caused health problem that is easily handled in one pregnancy good be life-threatening in another. Only the woman’s medical doctor knows whether pregnancy is, or is becoming at some point, a serious threat to her health or life.

I honestly don’t understand what you’re getting at when you say “…thus making a mandatory “maternal health” limitation on the power of the state to protect even a fully viable fetus functionally infinite even in the absence of a problem pregnancy and even up to the very last second of the natural pregnancy period.”

First of all, this is exactly what Roe v. Wade says. There already IS a mandatory maternal health limitation, and not in quotes, throughout pregnancy, including late-term or even last-minute threats to a woman’s life or health. What or who determines the legitimacy of that threat! The doctor, of course! Who else would determine it?

Which brings me to the second point, which is that your questioning whether the state in such an instance would limit “the power of the state to protect even a fully viable fetus functionally infinite even in the absence of a problem pregnancy and even up to the very last second of the natural pregnancy period.” is kind of a red herring, or a strawman, argument, because, in fact and in truth and in reality, the medical doctor in such a situation, if the fetus was about to be born, would always try, mightily, with all his or her skill and professionalism, to deliver the baby alive without putting the woman’s life at risk. Why on earth wouldn’t he? What earthly motive would a doctor have to kill an emerging fetus unless he was faced with a choice between that, and the woman dying? I’m not a doctor, obviously, but I know there are situations in which all delivery options threaten a woman’s life. Roe v. Wade’s scheme of balancing the viability of fetal life with interests of the mother and the stage of pregnancy was a recognition of that fact.

Finally, your “Or is that the whole point” is unnecessarily snarky, in my view. I know you don’t want me to impute ignoble motives to pro-lifers (and in fact I shouldn’t), so I don’t know why you feel it necessary to make that snide suggestion about the motives of pro-choicers, or ob-gyns who are professionally obligated to protect the health of their patients.

It sounds like you are confirming that you would place no burden of proof on the decision to abort an 8.5-month pregnancy than the verbal say-so of any doctor that the pregnancy represents a mild mental health inconvenience for the mother. Is that correct? If not, what standard would you say is the minimum “maternal health” threat to justify an abortion?

the medical doctor in such a situation, if the fetus was about to be born, would always try, mightily, with all his or her skill and professionalism, to deliver the baby alive without putting the woman’s life at risk

Insofar as abortion has become a political sacrament for a certain segment of extremists, I know for a fact that what you are claiming here is not true.

I am generally pro-choice, but I am uncomfortable with the extremism of the purist no-practical-limits position that you appear to be advocating. You keep saying that it is relatively moderate, but you offer no evidence that you would accept ANY limitation other than just trusting the no-exceptions goodwill of the mothers and the doctors.

And that’s not good enough for me.

Haven’t had a chance to read through all of these latest comments, but this one struck me, Kathy:
I don’t know anything about the feminist theorists, but common sense would tell you that pregnancy is inherently at least a potential danger to a woman’s physical and/or mental health. How could it not be? Pregnancy affects every system in a woman’s body. There’s all sorts of health conditions that can be worsened or initiated by pregnancy.

The problem with your logic here is that you don’t acknowledge that abortion doesn’t reverse all of the health risks of pregnancy and in fact carries its own health risks- most of which are not accurately reported. In fact the pro-abortion lobby (I’m specifically calling it that because I’m talking about a subset of the ‘prochoice’ movement that truly is proabortion as far as I’m concerned, as defined by this group’s actions and rhetoric) actively seeks to suppress such information. Unfortunately even people who are far more moderate have been propagandized to believe that there is no significant health risk, and few people realize the extent to which this information is simply unavailable; then when groups like the Eliot group that I linked to earlier attempt to report on it their information is routinely dismissed as prolife propaganda.

I find it completely unacceptable that those who argue that a woman’s right to choose abortion hinges on her right to protect her own physical and mental health are unwilling to admit evidence that shows physical and mental harm from the choice to abort.

And from what I’ve read of Jason’s comments so far, Kathy, I agree that we can’t give the benefit of the doubt to all abortionists (and related medical personnel)as though they don’t have a proabortion bias. That is why I believe that informed consent including in some cases films or sonograms are necessary; if society gives the entire choice of determination of a fetus’ human rights over to the pregnant woman and the medical personnel with whom she consults, then those individuals must at least meet the burden of a fair hearing of all sides of the argument; that should include accurate information about the developmental state of the fetus that is potentially going to be killed as well as real health risks of terminating a pregnancy in addition to the information they are already being given regarding health risks of continuing the pregnancy. Without some of the laws that states have now enacted, the women involved are often given only one side of the story.

It’s your call on banning commenters, Jason, but FWIW I agree with Kathy here when she said that she was accurately stating my view. I truly don’t think there should be exceptions to prohibition on abortion except when the mother’s life is at stake- because right to life is right to life. We don’t make exceptions for that in any other instance, and I have no qualms about owning that opinion. Of course, Kathy did choose to use a difficult, emotionally stirring example of a ‘twelve year old incest survivor’ to highlight why she opposes my view, and I think readers can draw their own conclusions about her need to do this It’s funny how many on the prochoice side say that prolifers tend to use emotionally charged situations and rhetoric to sway opinion, yet they routinely use these tactics- not only in this example, but also when Kathy cites cases like Becky Bell (a case in which the facts are far from clear, and even if one accepts that she died of an illegal abortion because parental consent laws led her from seeking a legal one, this one anecdote is equalled by many anecdotes of underaged women who have died of legal abortions after parents were denied the ability to counsel their own child before the procedure was ‘chosen’.)