WARNING: GRAPHIC!
I have a strong constitution. I don't easily get physically sick. This will test the strongest among us.
A Planned Parenthood executive, admitting that they willingly alter the abortion process of late-term abortions to procure "intact fetal cadavers", then an exposition of the latest "specimen".
There is no getting around the evil of this. It's just not possible.
We are taken to the "Products of Conception" (POC) Lab -- or as Abby Johnson has testified, what they jokingly called the "Parts of Children" Lab -- and you will want to turn away from what you see. The tiny, murdered victim, with the staff happily, lightly, almost giddily, discussing his dismembered parts. Oh, the potential for money and "humanitarian research"!
This is the banality of evil, my dear readers. This is a display of deadened consciences.
I don't do a lot of Nazi analogies, but tell me, could we ever now ask, "How did the German people not know?" How can we ask that question anymore, after we have seen this video?
We have no more excuses. We are culpable if we do not speak and share and tell the truth.
We will be accountable before God who is the Father and Creator of all these innocent children.
When that baby's small hand is raised up in the glass dish above the rest of his remains, it reminded me of Genesis 4:10:
“What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground."
When that baby's small hand is raised up in the glass dish above the rest of his remains, it reminded me of Genesis 4:10:
“What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground."
Yesterday, the United States Senate, essentially along party lines, defeated a bill that would have defunded Planned Parenthood. The bill would have ended taxpayers' subsidizing of the butchery and harvesting of children in those facilities, cutting out the half a billion dollars we pay out to this baby chop shop every single year.
Here is what Princeton Professor Robert P. George said about the vote yesterday:
This evening's Senate vote pertaining to de-funding Planned Parenthood reveals that there are 55 senators in favor of de-funding (53 of whom are Republicans) and 45 against (44 of whom are Democrats). Speaking for myself, it's hard to fathom how anyone could support continued funding of this organization, knowing what we know about what goes on in its "clinics" and the attitudes of its people, but it is beyond clear now that Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry owns the Democratic Party. I mean, they own it---lock, stock, and barrel.
Even after pro-abortion forces gained the upper hand in the Party in the 1970s (causing me and countless others to bolt) there remained a substantial and, for a while, far from powerless "Democrats for Life" caucus. Even as an Independent (I hadn't yet joined the Republicans), I was proud to work for the Real Bob Casey when, as governor of Pennsylvania, he was the leader of the pro-life Democrats. We worked with Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedy, former New York Governor Hugh Carey (who had returned to the fold), liberal theologian Ron Sider, Village Voice writer Nat Hentoff, and many others. But those days are gone. The Democrats today are the Party of Abortion, and nothing the abortion industry does, however heinous, and nothing its leaders say, however callous, can shake their allegiance. No Wall Street fat cat or Hollywood mogul ever had a more willing or devoted mistress.
As if to ratify my point and symbolically close the book on the idea of the pro-life Democrat, this evening, Senator Robert Casey, the son and namesake of the Real Bob Casey, cast his vote and his lot with Planned Parenthood. Senator Casey continues to claim to be pro-life, but his claim is now risible. He's supporting an organization that looks for "less crunchy techniques to secure whole specimens" and "crushes a little above, and a little below," to spare desirable organs, because, "you know, people want liver"---an organization that tries to "do a little better than break even" on the hearts, lungs, and kidneys their abortionists extract from "products of conception."
As I said in an earlier post, somewhere the Real Bob Casey is weeping---for his son and for his party.
Lest you think that I am picking on Planned Parenthood, or that they are the only offender, please note that Dr. Stacy Trasancos is gathering copious information on the other half of the equation: Those who are the "demand" side, needing the supply of fetal parts for their research. They are our universities and research labs, and they are legion. This happens every day, in laboratories and teaching hospitals all over the nation. Here is just one company proudly demonstrating the use of human fetal kidneys and hearts implanted into rats:
Good Lord, listen to the inspiring music! Hey, this is humanitarianism, folks! Nothing to see here except life-saving research! Move along....
This is cannibalism. How is it otherwise?
One important warning! Don't be depressed or despairing! Be confident in Christ. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. This horror and evil is no surprise, no secret to Him. He's always known. God sees all. There are no new sins, just new and improved ways to commit them.
God is still fully in control.
But our part is still obligatory. Silence is consent. Stop being silent. Speak up, even if that means posting a video on your Facebook wall, or simply by saying to friends and relatives that abortion is immoral and that children are being killed and sold for parts.
Speak. Educate. Expose the Truth.
That is your job here, along with prayer, prayer, prayer. Don't do any of it without prayer.
And do not hate those you see in the video, those who are laughing over the evil that they do. Remember that sin leads to spiritual blindness. We must not concede even one soul to the devil, so pray for the conversion of these souls. Look to Norma McCorvey, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, and Abby Johnson as examples of what happens when love and God's grace overpower the evil in lives and hearts.
Rejoice in the Lord always! It is for the love and joy of Heaven that we fight evil on earth.
God is so good.
And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. -- John 1:5
I am so upset by abortion, people trying to excuse it by saying "It's not a baby", our country, and everything Planned Parenthood is doing. It is so disturbing. How can people be okay with this? It's getting harder and harder to speak up. I recently started posting pro-life articles and photos on Facebook including stuff about what PP is doing and several long time friends deleted me. It hurt me. Yes, I admit I am a bit sensitive. But I am also passionate about my Catholic faith, the unborn babies, encouraging Mom's and Dad's, ect. One of the long time friends who deleted me claimed in a post on her page that she called me "like a pitbull" when it came to my faith and my postings on FB. I thought that was interesting. I never thought of myself as "like a pitbull". I used to be very shy and afraid of offending people, losing friends, and being rejected. As I'm getting older, I find that I am still somewhat introverted, but getting better about speaking up about important things. I feel like I spent most of my life being quiet about stuff except with family and close friends and because I kept my feelings in, that was partly why I developed endometriosis. Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know. Only God knows. Also, I get offended by people telling me they are offended by my pro-life posts and photos and making me feel like I don't have "the right" to post them and say how I feel. Most of all, I always have felt passionate about my Catholic faith, it's teachings, the rosary, the unborn babies, and saving our country and saving souls. If you want to say I'm "like a pitbull" about those things, then I guess go ahead. I'm trying to speak up more and be more vocal. I'm really trying. I feel like I am not doing enough though. Hoping to write a pro-life Catholic fiction novel soon.
ReplyDeleteBy the way Leila, someone wrote on a pro-life group the other day about ideas for pro-life books and wrote that the world needs to hear from couples who couldn't have children, but didn't resort to IVF. Yes? What do you think? I am not sure I feel comfortable sharing my story yet, but I wonder if a book could be written sharing Catholic couples stories and I could share my story in it? Do you think there would be an interest? Interesting, how that idea never occurred to me before, but maybe such a book would give other couples encouragement and hope? Yes? I wonder if anybody would be willing to share their story? I know it's a very sensitive and personal subject. I understand. I've been there too.
Praying for us all! Big hugs!
Hi Maria,
DeleteI love your book idea! I know a young Catholic couple who my husband and I taught NFP to several years ago and they tried to conceive for 12 years! After going through Creighton with Dr. Hilgers they conceived and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl! I'm assuming they wouldn't mind sharing their story and journey. :)
Leila, so beautifully written. As I watched, I felt as if I was somehow desensitized toward casting my eyes upon the body parts, all mixed up together, just like all the shoes at the Holocaust Museum in DC. Don't despair people, if you are not traumatized. This may be more your calling to stand up and fight out loud, a special grace from God, Himself.
ReplyDeleteMaria, I am very proud of you! God is doing something very wonderful in you, making you build your courage and suffer for Him! Truth matters and thank you for standing for the babies! Human life matters!
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree with Tracy, that would be really neat!
April, thank you my friend. I have felt the same way. Can you imagine what the undercover filmmakers must have felt as they stood there in that room of horrors?
Hi Leila,
ReplyDeleteI haven't watched the videos. I've only watched commentary on the scandal. I understand why you're against abortion as a whole but IF women are having abortions don't know why its better to throw the material away than to use it for medical research
CS
CS,
ReplyDelete"the material"?
Why haven't you watched the videos? If you are a PP supporter, you should be very sure that you understand what they do. Please, watch the videos and then come back and comment. I want to talk to you about this.
I forced myself to watch the whole thing and I will never see things the same. This is the most heinous thing I've seen in my lifetime. I truly had no idea. I've always thought life began at conception. I've always been pro-life, but honestly, I thought it was a indistinguishable clump of cells. I had no idea they could harvest the parts for research. I remember years ago an abortion doctor in OKC was put in jail for burning aborted fetuses. I just don't even know what to say. This is absolutely crushing, and like you, I have a strong constitution, but I am nauseated. I appreciate your long and thoughtful post - all the research you put into it and the clarity with which you write. God help us.
ReplyDeleteHi Leila,
ReplyDeleteI'm actually not really a PP supporter. To the extent that they are performing late term abortions, the videos might be a cause to reexamine late term abortions. I've watched clips of the video, its gross, in uncomfortable, it's enough that I didn't want to watch the rest of the video. It's enough that I'm not even defending the videos. But you;re not really outraged at the videos are you, your not outraged that the parts or sold or the cruel distance voices of the PP workers, you're outraged at the abortion itself which is why I imagine the vote went straight across party lines
CS
Jennifer, thank you for having the courage to watch. It is life-changing. It is something from the bowels of hell. And I have a very strong suspicion that the vast, vast majority of PP supporters have not seen the videos and will not watch. But why? They "stand with PP", and yet they don't want to know what they are supporting?
ReplyDeleteLet's pray for all involved. My God, that sweet little baby lying in its own destroyed body, and being laughed at.
From the pit of hell.
"But you;re not really outraged at the videos are you, your not outraged that the parts or sold or the cruel distance voices of the PP workers"
ReplyDeleteAre you frickin' kidding me, CS??
Is this a joke? Oh, I am more than outraged. And a just God is more than outraged at what is done to His children.
Oh, yes, I am outraged, because what you see there is "the abortion itself", CS. This is abortion. This is reality, not a slogan. And it is the blackest of evils.
I am pleased that you do not support PP. You did at one time, did you not?
Watch the videos. Own what abortion is. If you support abortion, own it. Watch it.
CS,
ReplyDeleteI'm outraged by it all - the selling of baby parts, yes, actual parts of a baby's body as well as the actual abortion - the killing of the unborn baby. And do you know why I, Leila, and many many others are SO outraged?? What do you see in the picture that Leila included? I see a tiny, tiny hand and arm being picked apart and referred to as a "specimen". Enough with all the word games, may we please start referring to the reality of what's happening? Actual unborn humans are not only being gruesomely killed, which is bad enough, but even worse, people are making money from selling the body parts, not to mention breaking the law by purposely modifying the abortion to ensure the body parts are "intact" so as to get the most amount of money. Humans are NOT products to be bought, sold, murdered, used, etc.
What is it going to take to get through to everyone that this is evil???
CS, forgive me if I lost it with you there. I actually felt my blood boil, and it's a terrible feeling. I can't stop thinking about that little baby lying in his own blood and body parts. Murdered and discarded like trash. This IS abortion, CS. We just have someone who put it on camera. But this happens thousands of times every single day, to thousands of precious little ones who will never be known or seen except by God (and his or her killers). If you want to discuss what I am or am not outraged about, watch the video -- all of it -- and let's discuss it.
ReplyDeleteWhy isn't it enough to say that God shows us through Scripture and revelation that a human person is created upon conception? If someone asks me why abortion is wrong I tell them because God has told us it is wrong. That reason should be enough for anyone who says they believe in God. If it is not enough perhaps that person worships the creature instead of the Creator.
ReplyDeleteBarb, I'm guessing that it isn't enough because many people don't believe in the authority of Scripture. Two of my four children, for example, are atheists even though they were raised Catholic. We have to put forth arguments that will convince everybody, not just Christians. And I hope we do. Like Leila, I have a strong stomach, but even my stomach begins to feel queasy when I see these "products of conception."
ReplyDeleteMy goodness, *I* am a product of conception. So are we all. The mind boggles.
I'm actually not really a PP supporter...I've watched clips of the video, its gross, in uncomfortable, it's enough that I didn't want to watch the rest of the video.
ReplyDeleteWell, if you get the stones to watch it, then you'd be able to formulate something much stronger than, “I really don’t even support” Planned Parenthood.
Because then having seen what you “kind of” support, you’ll be able to draw much stronger contrasts intellectually and make a case for either supporting or not-supporting Planned Parenthood.
Let’s stop bobbing around, suffocating in intellectual jelly with puny derelict opinions that are not rigorously substantiated. You've been on the Bubble long enough to know that a dash of intellectual energy is required to be taken seriously here.
I understand why you're against abortion as a whole but IF women are having abortions don't know why its better to throw the material away than to use it for medical research.
Because the methods used (murder and dismemberment) are Unethical. That means the way in which the babies are used after abortion is irrelevant. It was done in the wrong vein to begin with. It’s doesn’t magically become a noble use for science when it had begun with unjust murder. You cannot assign a blue ribbon to the use of the fetal parts.
I want to see the actual percentages of all the “good” that has come from used fetal parts, to date. Leila, does Stacy know a good reference page where to find this? Or have you seen any references anywhere?
* It doesn't magically become ...
DeleteSERIOUSLY wish there was a "like" button on Blogger.
DeleteHow did we get here?! Watching the PP lady discuss intact fetal cadavers and their dissected parts frightened me because I saw how inhuman a woman can become. It's sadly ironic that the innocents in the PP trash bins and freezers are the ones not given the status of a human being. Leila, I'll speak for myself and say that as I fight the evils of abortion, I could and should be helping the women who seek them. The pro-lifers I know are usually generous and compassionate yet the anti-lifers label us as being against women. You are taking an important role in spreading the truth of what is going on. Some of us should take a different role in helping the women who have the courage to say yes to life when their life situations are so very difficult. None of us should just read your blog or watch these videos and just complain.
ReplyDeleteHere’s one for the friend who says, “It’s not a human until it’s born.”
ReplyDeleteReally, Columbo? Maybe we should deduce the clues together.
That’s odd because the reports that are issued after abortions are performed, and the subsequent requests made for specimens by outside companies, identify the remains as “intact fetal cadavers”.
What’s a cadaver?
It’s a corpse.
What’s a corpse?
A corpse is a body, a dead body.
What kind of dead body?
A human dead body.
So even before the baby is born, when it dies via abortion, the abortionists label the remains as “cadaver”.
Don’t be so daft as to refuse the reality that even the abortionists, harvesters, and buyers all call it “cadaver”.
Barb, that tact usually only moves people who are committed to holiness and living their life for God. One must be docile and die to self in order to immediately wish to do God's will. Plus, as Melissa said, many people do not believe in the Bible or the Catholic Church, and also many believe they can personally interpret scripture for themselves. And people will often interpret it in the way that is most convenient or easy for themselves.
ReplyDeleteNubby yes, yes! And I know that Stacy is quite busy working on some things. Pray for her.
ReplyDeleteMrs. Dant, thank you for all that you do! You are so right. We all have specific gifts, and we all need to work together to end this scourge.
You bet.
DeleteSt. Albert the Great, intercede boldly for Stacy as she pursues her work in the natural and physical sciences. Guide her, lead her steps, grant her grace upon grace to finish her race and answer God's call, for the glory of His name. Amen.
Hi Leila,
ReplyDeleteThe video was terrible. It was much worst than I frankly though it could be. I realize you aren't as concerned with things from the woman's health perspective but the thing that stuck out to me the most was that they alter a medical procedure to make more money.
Thank you, CS, for watching it. Thank you for seeing how horrible it is, with your own eyes. This is abortion. And yes, I am very worried, as are all pro-lifers I know, with women's health. Very worried. That is why the pro-lifers I know watch to see the way that women are treated, and the ambulances that are called to these facilities when they botch things, and the women who die in those clinics for neglect and bleeding out. It's horrific what they do to women. So yes, I care about both the women and the babies. Does it seem to you like the workers care about either? It is sick and evil. I pray that you will challenge your pro-"choice" friends to watch the video. People need to know.
ReplyDeleteThe workers are vastly uncompassionate people, which is the last thing you want to see amongst medical professionals. I think the videos are an enormous tool against late term abortions especially. I don't think the videos prove that all abortions should be illegal which I know you do, but I think if we showed women these videos they would want to have them at infinitely smaller rates, which seems like a win-win scenario
ReplyDeleteWould you please respond to my comment, CS?
ReplyDelete"I'm outraged by it all - the selling of baby parts, yes, actual parts of a baby's body as well as the actual abortion - the killing of the unborn baby. And do you know why I, Leila, and many many others are SO outraged?? What do you see in the picture that Leila included? I see a tiny, tiny hand and arm being picked apart and referred to as a "specimen". Enough with all the word games, may we please start referring to the reality of what's happening? Actual unborn humans are not only being gruesomely killed, which is bad enough, but even worse, people are making money from selling the body parts, not to mention breaking the law by purposely modifying the abortion to ensure the body parts are "intact" so as to get the most amount of money. Humans are NOT products to be bought, sold, murdered, used, etc."
they would want to have them at infinitely smaller rates, which seems like a win-win scenario.
ReplyDeleteThis means abortions go to zero at the pace of infinity, which is basically instantaneous.
That would be a win-win for sure. Zero out abortions in one instant of time, because consciences are pricked after viewing these videos. That's the hope.
CS, what would "prove" that all killing of the unborn should be illegal? What would it take to convince you? Because that baby was not even halfway through the gestational age, so he or she was not even really "late term" at all.
ReplyDeleteAnd honestly, this concept of "compassion" -- what do you mean? There were no patients there. I am sure that the workers were very kind to the women and did not berate or treat them badly (although some of the abortionists and staff do). So, is it really just the "tone" that is evil here? If they spoke more soothingly, that would be okay? I don't even know what you mean about not being compassionate. Could you explain? I mean, I think that the uncompassionate part is the ripping the baby apart in the first place, not simply the casual reactions and talk later. After all, if you see and do these abortions by the dozens every day, thousands a year, are you expected not to be immune to it after a while? They have to laugh, don't they? Or they might see the horror of what they are doing. And the conscience has to fool itself.
Remember this post, about the avenging conscience:
http://littlecatholicbubble.blogspot.com/2011/10/laughing-at-dead-babies-and-avenging.html
The workers are vastly uncompassionate people, which is the last thing you want to see amongst medical professionals. I think the videos are an enormous tool against late term abortions especially.
ReplyDeleteThey are uncompassionate because it’s all about the bottom line profit at the end of the day. They don’t need compassion to make money. This is business. Bloody, sick, evil business. They need conversion to become compassionate.
Pray and make small offerings for this to come to pass. Give God small offerings and He will multiply them. Without question.
Do you feel compelled to pray for these people? Do you feel compelled to challenge people on the carpet of the horrors of abortion?
CS, will you post the video on your fb page?
ReplyDeleteCS, your voice in the pro-life movement would be astounding. You could do something to help end this evil. God may indeed be calling you to that very thing. Pray about it.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHi Margo,
I didn’t mean to ignore your comment. I think you have a lot of great points. I think the video is a great argument against later term abortion and I think augmenting the procedure and trying to sell the parts like that, is creepy and pretty abhorrent
CS
“CS, what would "prove" that all killing of the unborn should be illegal? What would it take to convince you? Because that baby was not even halfway through the gestational age, so he or she was not even really "late term" at all.”
ReplyDeleteLeila, they are IN women’s bodies. Inside of them. We’ve had this conversation before. But I’m not going to make women keep something/someone in their bodies, changing their bodies making their bodies sick, affected their physical and mental health when it doesn’t benefit them, I’m never going to support that. If you had a fully live walking talking 7 year old clinging tightly to your leg for 9 months tha affected you in the same way pregnancy does and you had to kill him to remove him, In my opinion you would have the right to do that. Now I think if you showed people these videos so many less women would want to have abortions and I think that’s great, but no I wouldn’t fight to make them illegal. We disagree here but I think that’s vastly unfair to women.
20 weeks is certainly later term. Most abortions occur in the first trimester. But I agree with you that it’s important to note that she’s not halfway done. Mostly people myself included didn’t know that development is that advanced at that stage.
CS
The origin of this issue is that people don't recognize a baby in the womb's humanity. They are people, alive people. And all living people have natural rights, the U.S. constitution and U.S. Declaration says so (as well as the Bible for those that believe in Him). The issue that we need to push is getting these innocent people's human rights recognized. Just as those before us had to fight to get people to recognize a slave's human rights and a Jewish person's human rights, during the 1800s and the holocaust in Germany. This is a holocaust that has claimed over 55 million lives because a group of people's natural human rights aren't recognized. There is no reason to put a man or women's right to choose above the right for a person to stay alive. People don't have the right to end a life of another person because that person is dependant on them. For example, if I am stranded in the woods with a 95 year old that can't walk and they depend on me to provide them food and water for a year till help arrives, I can't just kill them so I can walk away and move on with my life. That is murder, just like killing a human when they are at their most helpless, in the womb.
DeleteIf you had a fully live walking talking 7 year old clinging tightly to your leg for 9 months tha affected you in the same way pregnancy does and you had to kill him to remove him, In my opinion you would have the right to do that.
ReplyDelete?????????????????????
Kids DO cling. At many different ages.
And no, we cannot kill them.
That's murder. Very troubling to see that you're pro-murdering someone because they annoy you. Location doesn't even apparently matter to you. "In the womb you annoy me, outside the womb, you annoy me. Hey, murder for everyone."
Do you nothear yourself?
I think we're done here.
I think I’ts great that you are sharing the videos. I think they are important videos ( provided they haven’t been fabricated which is being alleged). But no I won’t share them publically. You have an established catholic network which is great but I don’t. I once got into an argument with several friends because I said I wanted my husband to make more money than me. It wouldn’t go over well on my network.
ReplyDeleteCS
Are you saying your friends cannot differentiate between an economic discussion (salary) and a moral argument (abortion)?
ReplyDeleteYou'd benefit from some down to earth, good-natured, intelligent, Catholic friends, CS.
No Nubby,
ReplyDeleteI didn't say if its clinging to you for a minute you can kill it. I mean If a 7 year was was grafted to the outside of your body the same way its 'grafted' to the inside of your body during pregnancy you could remove it. Same as if you wake up attached to someone else, you can disconnect yourself from that person even if it means they might die.
CS,
ReplyDeleteThose instances are not even reality. No one wakes up "grafted" to someone else. That's just a very weak distraction, intellectually.
Why are you making that reach?
You look at the video. You look at the remains of a child in a dish. You hear the cold calculations of the workers involved. And you are worried that your friends, who cannot even understand that men, in fact, do make more money than women on average, might not like it if you start challenging them on abortion?
I realize their opinion may be important to you, but they don't own you. They may just follow your lead, CS, if you lead instead of cower in fear of what their opinion might be.
Curious, what degrees do your friends hold?
A funny thought occurred to me, a thought experiment, when I read CS's analogy of 7 year olds clinging to legs being allowed to be killed. I wonder how much emotions play into this. What if, say, certain vulnerable minorities would have to cling to the legs of Republican men (possibly a group CS has less sympathy for than "women") in order to make it to age eight. Would she still defend these men's right to kill those 7 year old vulnerable minority children? I know it's absurd, but hardly more so than the original analogy, and perhaps useful in thinking this through.
ReplyDeleteAlso, on a separate note: I am also not weak-kneed, and I watched the videos. But before the camera turned away from the women's faces and towards the babies, I covered the screen with my hand and waited till the background changed. I knew that I could not take this. Is it because I have children myself? How many abortionists have children?
ReplyDeleteHa, Sebastian.
ReplyDeleteIf CS is consistent she’d have to say she’d be okay with anyone killing anyone who is “grafted on”, because the only criteria to murder someone is that they annoy or impede a person, for nine months or whatever time frame (time is irrelevant, the point is, she’s a-ok with offing people).
And to the whole “grafting” definition vs. pregnant:
Grafting is not equal to being pregnant. We don’t graft small people to large people (we graft skin or bone). And we certainly don’t wake up with someone “grafted” to us.
Even if “grafting people” was a completely natural thing (like pregnancy after sex), then natural law and moral law would still apply. The person is a “person”, not a “thing”. It has dignity and value, so you let it hang on and annoy you for nine months. You certainly don’t have license to kill it.
* I should say "let him or her" not "it". We're talking person, so it's he/she.
DeleteCS, I urge you to read the this piece at the New York Times.
ReplyDelete"But to concede that pro-lifers might be somewhat right to be troubled by abortion, to shudder along with us just a little bit at the crushing of the unborn human body, and then turn around and still demand the funding of an institution that actually does the quease-inducing killing on the grounds that what’s being funded will help stop that organization from having to crush quite so often, kill quite so prolifically – no, spare me. Spare me. Tell the allegedly “pro-life” institution you support to set down the forceps, put away the vacuum, and then we’ll talk about what kind of family planning programs deserve funding. But don’t bring your worldview’s bloody hands to me and demand my dollars to pay for soap enough to maybe wash a few flecks off."
CS, you might want to think about finding some new friends. I mean that sincerely.
ReplyDeleteCS,
ReplyDeleteQuestion for you. If pregnancy is soooooo terrible, then why is it the natural result of sexual intercourse? And if a woman really does not want to be pregnant, then why is she engaging in the baby-making act in the first place? Whatever happened to man and woman giving themselves fully to one another, holding nothing back, being completely open to new life? And what exactly is it about pleasure that makes it seem so necessary to have casual sex? Why are we humans so afraid of any kind of suffering?
“Ha, Sebastian. If CS is consistent she’d have to say she’d be okay with anyone killing anyone who is “grafted on”, because the only criteria to murder someone is that they annoy or impede a person, for nine months or whatever time frame (time is irrelevant, the point is, she’s a-ok with offing people).”
ReplyDeleteNubby you have a way of misconstruing what people say. Maybe grafting is the wrong term, I’m not a doctor, but I think you get the point. And no I didn’t say you could murder people who annoy you. Likening pregnancy to an annoyance is ridiculous. Pregnancy is a very serious medical conditions that has all sort of physical and pchycological ramifications. I don’t make people endure medical conditions/surgeries that have no benefit to them for the benefit of others.
CS
You don't seem to understand the biology of pregnancy very well. Pregnancy does benefit a woman... other than the joy of being a mother (which I realize some might not share), pregnancy greatly reduces the risks of a woman developing breast and ovarian cancer and is associated with many other health benefits. Pregnancy, while not always easy, is generally a very healthy state... it is not an illness. My OB (totally not Catholic, by the way) actually lectured me on that with my first.. "Pregnancy is not a disease. It's a natural state. You are not sick."
DeleteWhy is pregnancy so healthy? Because it's part of our design for procreation. Disease is a very different thing. I think part of the confusion in the US is that pregnancy has been relegated to the medical realm... but in many cultures and throughout history, pregnancy and child birth were not the domain of doctors, but of women.
(And yes, of course some women develop health concerns when pregnant, but that is the exception not inherent to all pregnancies and thankfully, there are many ways doctors can help both woman and child continue to enjoy the benefits of pregnancy).
Exactly what needs clarification?
ReplyDeleteDid you not say that someone carrying a baby is like having someone grafted on the outside of your body?
Did you not say that a person has a right to "remove" the grafted one?
Why? Let’s see your reasons again:
You said, “But I’m not going to make women keep something/someone in their bodies, changing their bodies making their bodies sick, affected their physical and mental health when it doesn’t benefit them,”
Emotional reasons, CS. Annoyance, yes. Impediment to freedom, yes. Even a temporarily fat stomach, oh dear. The horror. Vanity. That’s your foundation. Vanity.
Your reasons for aborting are not tied to reality. The real numbers, CS, show that the reality of pregnancy being deadly is less than .02%. That means 99.98% of the time, there's no death of the mother.
How real is the fear when you look at the numbers? Or how real should the fear be? Very, very, very, very safe to be pregnant, overall, according to the yearly stats, CS. Nothing to really fear. And no real reason to kill the unborn.
Do you follow the numbers?
Or do you follow your emotions?
And why do you care what your friends think of you?
The reason I asked about their degree is because I was going to take 2 seconds and pull up the gender gap in pay per their degree/career field.
I was going to show you that you can show them the truth of the matter ... which is most likely that the men in their chosen field make more money.
Therefore, they shouldn't argue with you, when you say that you want your husband to make more money than you. It's not only a neutral opinion, it's pretty much going to be the case, anyway, according to gap in pay.
Your friends shouldn't pile on you about that. Don’t take their weak arguments. Stuff their argument. If they’re really your friends, they’ll appreciate it. If they get bent, that’s weakness in them, not you.
Pregnancy is a natural state of health for a woman in childbearing years. Why do you call it a "medical condition"?
ReplyDeleteAlso, CS, and I am speaking maternally here: If you have friends who would be annoyed or even angered with you for posting videos that decry the brutal dismemberment of small children who are defenseless against their aggressors, what kind of friend are those? Why not get friends who understand that it is horrific to dismember human beings? I don't get it. I mean, I could see if they disagreed with you, but if it's enough disagreement that they would get upset with you, I would ask, "What are my friends' values? What do they believe in?"
Also, I don't understand. If you are okay with killing the unborn as long as they are not viable? I am confused. Because you seem to be horrified (and that is the right human reaction) to what you saw was done to that poor child in the lab. But that child was not viable at all. At one point they talk about a 20-week twin, but then they say 18 weeks. But either way, the baby is not viable. So, you would have to be in favor of that abortion. The one that shocked you. You would have to say that because it was "grafted" onto the mom, we are allowed as a society to kill that child (and of course, donate its corpse).
Am I getting that right? I don't want to misstate your position.
Also, what kind of movement pits a mother against her own child?
(If you could address some of the others' points. I know you may not have had time yet.)
“Emotional reasons, CS. Annoyance, yes. Impediment to freedom, yes. Even a temporarily fat stomach, oh dear. The horror. Vanity. That’s your foundation. Vanity. Your reasons for aborting are not tied to reality. The real numbers, CS, show that the reality of pregnancy being deadly is less than .02%. That means 99.98% of the time, there's no death of the mother.
ReplyDeleteDEATH of the mother! Anything less than death of the mother is an annoyance??”
“How real is the fear when you look at the numbers? Or how real should the fear be? Very, very, very, very safe to be pregnant, overall, according to the yearly stats, CS. Nothing to really fear. And no real reason to kill the unborn. “
No really reason to die surely, but there are other pshyical ailments associated with pregnancy!
Most friends have a college degree and up. And I agree with you about the pay gap. I know I’m right. But some fights aren’t worth fighting. I can simply find a husband who makes more than me. And save myself the hassle of arguing
CS
Leila,
ReplyDeleteI’m not afraid to put the videos on my facebook page, I’d just rather not enter into public discussions about it. Have no problem talking to people about them one on one or if I get into a political argument with someone.
I’ll clarify. I don’t think anyone has a right to live in anyone’s body. I don’t think the government should try to gaurentee that right. Given that, I don’t think abortion should be illegal.
I do think that if women see videos like that, they will choose, in large numbers, not to have abortions, and because more information is good information women should see those videos. I think women will have more support if other people see the videos.
CS
DEATH of the mother! Anything less than death of the mother is an annoyance??”
ReplyDeleteEverything you listed was an annoyance and/or an impediment to freedom. It was all tied directly to how, as you say, the m other doesn't "benefit" from being pregnant. Actually, pregnancy has been linked to all kinds of benefits for mom. Science supports this, too, CS.
No need to fear. Have faith.
And the brow beating from friends? I'd give it to 'em and call it a day. They don't sound super supportive of your own goals and wishes, which are morally neutral, in the case of career pay, etc. Don't let them steam roll you with their posturing like some roaring feminists. They'll be eating their words, anyway.
^^ True, that!
Delete"I don’t think anyone has a right to live in anyone’s body."
ReplyDeleteHelp me out.
1. What is a "right"?
2. How is it that a child in its natural, biological habitat has no "right" to be there?
Help me understand how this can be.
Also, again just to clarify. So, you want people to see the videos ("women should see those videos"). So, you see that something terribly wrong is happening on the videos (otherwise, why would it be good that the women see them? If it's morally neutral, and not morally outrageous, then it wouldn't matter if anyone saw the videos). And if you see that something terrible is happening on those videos, what is your obligation (and mine) to make it known to others what is going on? And if it's truly morally outrageous, then what is our moral obligation to end those killings?
ReplyDeleteHeck, even puppy abuse is illegal and makes the populace outraged. I imagine you are good with laws against animal abuse? (I am good with those laws.)
“Also, what kind of movement pits a mother against her own child?”
ReplyDeleteThis is important. What kind of world let’s men put themselves first and doesn’t value children in any meaningful way but cringes when women also put themselves first?
Society understand how important it is to have and rear children. But we don’t value motherhood, we don’t support it. We just want women to do it even though they bear the major burdens of it. That is so misogynistic. And women are saying no. If we want them to say ‘yes’ we need to all once again share in the burden of having children and stop chastise women for making logical decisions. Men chose themselves over women and children and we get it. But women do it, mostly because they don’y want to be saddled with having children alone. We need to stop asking why women are choosing themselves first and start asking why that is such a logical decision.
CS
Logical?? I'm so confused by YOUR logic!
DeleteI am not sure what society you live in, but in mine, men who abandon their child and the mother of the child is a dead beat dad who deserves to be forced to help support the child and mother. There are child support laws for a reason in our society. Those men are weak terrible people, and so are women who do the same thing (leave the child and don't take care of them). There is a great option out there for mothers that get pregnant and don't want the burden of raising the child, adoption. I have adopted my son and would love to adopt many more children. We just have to wait years and years for a child because there is not enough children to fill the loving arms of couples wanting to adopt. If abortion was illegal, we would have many children now. So I have a strong connection and passion to end abortion, because it is simply wrong to murder them, and I feel like some of them were meant to be my children but we're murdered instead.
DeleteHow is it "logical" for a woman to kill her innocent offspring in order to put herself first? First before what, and at what expense?
ReplyDeleteSorry, CS, but what?
ReplyDeleteSo, the justification for women to be able to kill their own offspring is that men are selfish?
Uhhh....?
What moral principle is behind this "logic"?
And, can you answer my question about "rights"?
Thanks!
By the way, any decent society does not "let" (or encourage) women to pit themselves against their children, nor does it "let" men and women pit themselves against each other, nor does it encourage adults to "put themselves" first. A decent society is one in which the weak are protected by the strong, and where the strong do not kill the weak. Where men protect women, women protect children, and all respect each other.
ReplyDeleteDon't set up a false dichotomy.
"How is it that a child in its natural, biological habitat has no "right" to be there? "
ReplyDeleteHelp me understand how this can be.
No one has a right to live inside someone else AGAINST their will. We certainly shouldn' guarantee that right legally. don't want to go around in circles. We simply disagree here
If a woman does not want to be pregnant/have someone live inside of her for 9 months, then she should abstain from the act which causes pregnancy (sex). No one ever died from not having sex, right?
ReplyDelete"So, the justification for women to be able to kill their own offspring is that men are selfish?"
ReplyDeleteThe justification is that women shouldn't have to bear an extreme burden by themselves. that women shouldn't have to have any more responsibility because they are women or just because they are needed.
What moral principle is behind this "logic"?
Goodness. Its a practical principle. Its unfair to only hold women responsible.
“By the way, any decent society does not "let" (or encourage) women to pit themselves against their children, nor does it "let" men and women pit themselves against each other, nor does it encourage adults to "put themselves" first. A decent society is one in which the weak are protected by the strong, and where the strong do not kill the weak. Where men protect women, women protect children, and all respect each other. Don't set up a false dichotomy.”
ReplyDeleteBut our society isn’t decent! Its imperfect. Its dare I say shitty. Men DON”T protect women. Given that, women need to protect themselves. That is what we’re seeing.
There are tons of other areas where the strong can protect the weak. We should start there.
CS
Hi Margo,
ReplyDelete“If a woman does not want to be pregnant/have someone live inside of her for 9 months, then she should abstain from the act which causes pregnancy (sex). No one ever died from not having sex, right?”
If you don’t mind me asking, you’ve never been sexually active outside of marriage correct?
CS
The moral principle behind allowing women to take the lives of their own children is "goodness"? Goodness? I feel like you might have a different understanding of the word than I do.
ReplyDeleteKilling a child is okay, because of the principle of "goodness", since we don't want women to bear the "extreme burden" (extreme?) of pregnancy by themselves.... So, kill the child, don't penalize the man? I mean, my mind is trying to grasp this type of moral reasoning.
And, you can't just say that babies don't have a "right" to be in their natural habitat, and then refuse to explain it. It can't just be your opinion. Base it on something real, something in the natural order, something on the moral law, anything. Why do children not have a "right" to be in the only place that nature puts them? In their natural habitat? Why do they have no "right" to be there? Don't dodge the question, give a reason.
If a fetus does not have a "right" to live in a uterus, then who does? What is the uterus for, CS? What is its biological reason for being?
Also, you didn't answer: What is a "right"?
Finally, you didn't answer. Why is it good for women to see the video? If it is "goodness" to allow abortion, then why do they need to see the video? What is it about the video that they need to see? And what is your (our) obligation once we have seen that video and what it exposes?
Nope, I'm a virgin. But, I don't have to experience something in order to know that it's wrong regardless of how much pleasure it could bring me.
ReplyDeleteSoletmeunderstandthis:
ReplyDeleteMen don’t protect women
And
Women apparently have no self-control (or it’s frown upon, apparently, because NO SEX is out of the question)
And, you don’t see how you’ve just given more power to the men you say “don’t protect women”??????????????
And because women apparently cannot control themselves, or don't want to, even though most men are non-protective jerks, then the instant the sexual act results in a baby, it's baby-be-damned, since the guy's a jerk, and the kid's an impediment to a woman's "true freedom and self identity", which she very obviously doesn't even know what that even looks like, authentically, because she's too busy giving it all away and then yanking it all away. I see.
Hooneyyyy, where's the bourbonnnnn?
Hi Margo,
ReplyDeleteI wasn’t asking to try to convince you to have sex because of all the pleasure it brings haha. I was asking because it’s a difficult to understand the nuance of it all without having done it. The how it just happens aspect which is difficult to explain
CS, plenty of us here HAVE seen the "nuance" and we still agree with Margo that it's wrong to kill babies.
ReplyDeleteAnd, you cannot be saying that because we live in an indecent society, the way to help it is to continue to allow women to kill their children, because men are jerks?
I'm still not getting the logic. And I am not even convinced that you believe what you are saying. I honestly believe (and correct me if I'm wrong) that you are simply scared to death to get pregnant. You have some fear about it, and you want to know that there is a way out.
Also, could you answer the question about "rights" when you get a chance? I would at least like to know what a "right" is. And if we don't have the right to our very nature, then what do we have a right to?
And, why should women see the videos?
ReplyDeleteLeila
I meant goodness, as in oh goodness, not goodness is the principle. Haha
Why don’t Babies don’t have a right to live inside someone against their will? Because no one has the right to use anyone’s body without their permission.
If a fetus does not have a "right" to live in a uterus, then who does? What is the uterus for, CS? What is its biological reason for being?
Um the biolological purpose of a vagina is to fit a penis. Penises belong there. But that doesn’t mean you can put one in there without the women’s permission and claim its fine because that’s a vagina’s purpose
CS
The mother consented to the baby using her uterus when the mother decided to have sex.
DeleteShe doesn't have the right to kill a person because she has "buyers remorse"
"How it just happens?" Actually, I can understand that. Last year, I was passionately in love with a guy for 5 months and we were very affectionate and intimate, yet, we both remained virgins for the entirety of the relationship and we had ample opportunities to go all the way and I am extremely relieved that we didn't. Yes, I am HAPPY that we had enough self control to abstain even though we went farther than we should have. At a certain point, there is a conscious decision (even just a few seconds) where the man and woman choose to get naked and when the man chooses to insert his penis into her vagina. I know all about the "heat of the moment", been there, done that.
ReplyDeleteI was asking because it’s a difficult to understand the nuance of it all without having done it.
ReplyDeleteBULLCRAP. What a cheap shot. I'd so facewash you right now. So facewash.
Very intrusive question. And irrelevant to the topic of abortion.
What exactly are you hoping to tie together regarding sexual experience and the right of child to live in a womb with such a personal potshot?
You have no self control?
Margo's so square to your cultural experience that's she actually ahead of the times, get with it CS.
women's should see the videos because it let's them see what the abortion is and what's happening and to make an informed decision
ReplyDeleteAlso, I am sure that Margo is anatomically the same as the rest of women, and it never "just happened" to her, so the "it just happens" thing is more about self-control and virtue training than anything else. And it certainly doesn't follow that simply because some people give into their passions (outside of a stable marriage), that they then should be able to kill the innocent child whom they create.
ReplyDelete"women's should see the videos because it let's them see what the abortion is and what's happening and to make an informed decision"
ReplyDeleteWhat is the abortion, then? What is it? Why do they need to see the videos, and about what do they need to be informed?
Hi Margo,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you made the best decision for you and remained abstinent. While things just happen in moments of passion, I was mostly talking about thing's just happening under the influence, but again its a difficult thing to explain if you haven't done it
CS
Influence of alcohol? Yup, there was usually a bit of alcohol in our systems during our "moments of passion". And like Nubby and Leila are saying, this is a sidetrack and doesn't change that abortion is objectively wrong. And abstaining (outside of marriage) is best for EVERYONE.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete“Very intrusive question. And irrelevant to the topic of abortion. What exactly are you hoping to tie together regarding sexual experience and the right of child to live in a womb with such a personal potshot? You have no self control? “
It wasn’t a potshot Nubby. This is getting exhausting. I was asking if she’d ever gotten to drunk or too sad or too horny or had a condom fall off or had someone take a condom off or been lied or just inadvertently had sex with the wrong person because she had incorrect information at the time. Because that happens. All the time. To the best of us. I mean come on, we’re just talking past each other, You think I’m ignorin my humanity, and I think you are. Any one can spend 7 minutes with the wrong person. There’s nothing compassionate about making you be pregnant for 9 months and have a baby because you spent 7 minutes with the wrong person. I’m never ever supporting that.
CS
If a fetus does not have a "right" to live in a uterus, then who does? What is the uterus for, CS? What is its biological reason for being? - Leila said.
ReplyDeleteYour answer, CS:
Um the biolological purpose of a vagina is to fit a penis. Penises belong there. But that doesn’t mean you can put one in there without the women’s permission and claim its fine because that’s a vagina’s purpose.
Leila asked about a uterus, not a vagina.
She asked about its reason for being, its purpose.
She asked nothing about “permission being granted to enter a vagina” all based on anatomical purpose.
What in the actual realm of reality are you tying together here?
Your reply doesn’t even reflect the question that was asked of you.
I can’t do Rover-chase-the-bone circles anymore today. Maybe tomorrow after a few stiff drinks. Will you at least pray for conversion of all those in the abortion industry, CS? Can we agree as believers that praying for people in this screwed up callous culture is a good thing?
Leila,
ReplyDeleteThey should see what it does to their baby. Most of them aren’t considering that
Leila asked about a uterus, not a vagina.
ReplyDeleteShe asked about its reason for being, its purpose.
She asked nothing about “permission being granted to enter a vagina” all based on anatomical purpose.
What in the actual realm of reality are you tying together here?
Ughh. I meant the purpose of a body part isn't as meaningful as the fact that the person must agree to their body part being used in that way. A uterus fits a baby, but that doesn't mean one has the right to be there sans permission. Just like a vagina fits a penis but the penis can't be there without the woman's permission.
Night nubs
I was asking if she’d ever gotten to drunk or too sad or too horny or had a condom fall off or had someone take a condom off or been lied or just inadvertently had sex with the wrong person because she had incorrect information at the time.
ReplyDeleteAnd drunkenness and horniness and sadness have ZERO relevance to the idea that a baby has a right to a uterus.
Where is the disconnect? Margo's experience is completely irrelevant. You don't see that? You think she's dim and sheltered and doesn't know anything? Shall we tick off everyone's experience, CS? Would that Color It In For You? It has no bearing on the topic. Klassy, tho.
Good night! Mother Mary, intercede for us all, through your Immaculate Heart, esp those who don't believe and have no one to pray for them. We honor you. We love you. Amen.
And, you cannot be saying that because we live in an indecent society, the way to help it is to continue to allow women to kill their children, because men are jerks?"
ReplyDeleteThe way to help women yes is to not make them have children with men who are assholes to them so that they have to be pregnant and raise the child alone
"I'm still not getting the logic. And I am not even convinced that you believe what you are saying. I honestly believe (and correct me if I'm wrong) that you are simply scared to death to get pregnant. You have some fear about it, and you want to know that there is a way out."
No Leila. I think pregnancy is serious but not unreasonably scary. I'm not afraid to get pregnant one day
No one here is saying we force mothers to raise their children. One word: Adoption
DeleteCS, I am trying so hard here. Let me keep trying.
ReplyDeleteFirst: What is a "right"?
Second: How exactly would a child "ask permission" to reside in her mother's uterus?
Third: A vagina actually has other purposes -- expelling menstrual blood, for example. A uterus is a natural habitat for a child. There is no other reason for a uterus.
Fourth: If we don't have a right to be in our natural habitat, then what do we have a right to?
Fifth: I can't grasp the moral principle that if a woman gets drunk and has sex with a man she's not married to, it's the principle of "fairness" that she gets to kill the child. Help me out there.
Sixth: I still don't believe you actually believe this stuff you are saying. Now you have seen the evil.
Seventh: You are a Christian. Who made those children that are chopped up? Is God the author of those lives? If so, how is it that Planned Parenthood can kill them via the principle of "fairness"? (And how is that "fair" to the child?)
Eighth: How is it "fairness" for the innocent child to pay for the sins of the parents, with his own life? How does the principle of "fairness" work for the child there?
Ninth: If the child has no right to be in the uterus, then why is what PP doing a bad thing? Aren't they just meting out justice? They would be doing something good, wouldn't they? It's only "fair", after all, that the child who does not ask permission to be in the uterus gets chopped up and sold.
Tenth: Why, why, why should the women see the video? If it's "fair" for the woman to kill the child (who has no rights), then what on earth is morally wrong about abortion?
I guess that's a big question: Is abortion morally wrong? Is what you saw on that video morally wrong? Yes or no question. Were the child's rights violated by being killed and chopped up? Yes or no.
Sorry, some of the questions were redundant. I just am trying so hard to understand and be clear in my questions.
DeleteWhere is the disconnect? Margo's experience is completely irrelevant. You don't see that? You think she's dim and sheltered and doesn't know anything? Shall we tick off everyone's experience, CS? Would that Color It In For You? It has no bearing on the topic. Klassy, tho.
ReplyDeleteIf I want to tell Margo she’s sheltered I’ll tell her myself. Don’t put words in my mouth. It has a lot of bearing on the topic. Its empathy and compassion for women in real life situations
Please use quotes or italics when quoting others. It gets confusing to know who has said what.
Delete"The way to help women yes is to not make them have children with men who are assholes to them so that they have to be pregnant and raise the child alone"
ReplyDeleteThere is so much convoluted and overlapping thought in this that I don't know what to say. That's like saying, "the only way to help women is to shoot their children when their husbands leave them." Pretty much the same exact thing. Unless you are saying that born children are real children, and the baby in the dish is not a real child. That is no one's little hand up there in the screen shot.
CS, was an injustice committed against that little child in the glass pan? The little baby with the hand that you see being picked out of his own mess of a body?
"I'm not afraid to get pregnant one day"
ReplyDeleteObviously, but you are very afraid to get pregnant in a drunken moment, apparently. Or unwed. I'm trying to figure out why you still are okay with legal abortion after what you have seen with your eyes (and which now you are accountable for knowing about).
CS, I've been married for nearly 14 years. I've been pregnant 8 times. I can assure you that both men and women can live without sex, and that men and women are fully capable of abstaining when necessary. It just takes self-control and common sense.
ReplyDelete"Its empathy and compassion for women in real life situations"
ReplyDeleteI have tons of empathy and compassion for women in real life situations and crisis pregnancies. That's why we give part of our income to help these women in crisis, and their children, and also the men/fathers. That's why my husband sits on the board and volunteers his time for our local pregnancy center that serves low income women (and anyone) for free, unlike PP across the street. Lots of empathy and sympathy for these women.
But having empathy and sympathy and compassion does not translate to supporting the killing of their children.
How on earth do you make a leap from one thing to the other?
And the burning question that I cannot get out of my mind: How does a child "ask permission" to be in his or her mother's womb?
How?
I mean, you have put the baby in a position that is impossible. "Either ask permission to be there, or you will be shredded and sold for parts."
That's like telling a person: "Either flap your wings and fly over that building, or you will be shot in the head."
Then when you shoot the person in the head, you say, "Hey, I told him to fly over that building. He didn't do it. It's his fault for not flying."
Do you not see?
By the way, the thing in italics are my own words, and I was just doing that for emphasis. It looks like I was quoting someone else, sorry.
DeleteFirst: What is a "right"?
ReplyDeleteI’m talking about legal rights. I don’t have a sound definition of a natural law rights and I’m frankly not going to spend the time to find one. We don’t and sounds have a legal right to live inside another person
Second: How exactly would a child "ask permission" to reside in her mother's uterus?
Huh? They have permission if the woman allows them to stay there. They don’t have permission if the woman doesn’t want them there.
Fourth: If we don't have a right to be in our natural habitat, then what do we have a right to?
If we don’t have a right to control what goes on inside our own bodies what do we have a right to?
Fifth: I can't grasp the moral principle that if a woman gets drunk and has sex with a man she's not married to, it's the principle of "fairness" that she gets to kill the child. Help me out there.
I’m not arguing a single moral principle Leila. I’m arguing legal and practical principle. Morally if a man has sex with a woman he has a moral obligation to care for her during the pregnancy. But he doesn’t have a legal obligation, nor should he. I’m not making any arguments for what people should do if they are ideal people, I’m making arguments for what people must do, lowest common denominator here, legally.
ReplyDeleteSixth: I still don't believe you actually believe this stuff you are saying. Now you have seen the evil.
I don’t believe that because you made a mistake 1 time you should HAVE to gestate a baby against your will!
Seventh: You are a Christian. Who made those children that are chopped up? Is God the author of those lives? If so, how is it that Planned Parenthood can kill them via the principle of "fairness"? (And how is that "fair" to the child?)
Legally, the woman made them. Its in her body
Eighth: How is it "fairness" for the innocent child to pay for the sins of the parents, with his own life? How does the principle of "fairness" work for the child there?
It doesn’t. If we must be unfair to one party I’d rather nit be unfair to the woman, who shouldn’t have to bear the burden of both parents alone
Ninth: If the child has no right to be in the uterus, then why is what PP doing a bad thing? Aren't they just meting out justice? They would be doing something good, wouldn't they? It's only "fair", after all, that the child who does not ask permission to be in the uterus gets chopped up and sold.
ReplyDeleteIf they weren’t performing an abortion a baby would be born, and that isn’t the defining characteristic but that is something people need to take seriously and consider.
Tenth: Why, why, why should the women see the video? If it's "fair" for the woman to kill the child (who has no rights), then what on earth is morally wrong about abortion?
Because people have the legal right to do a lot of things. They should see the effect of their actions on other people. Consider those effects and then then decide on a course of action
I guess that's a big question: Is abortion morally wrong? Is what you saw on that video morally wrong? Yes or no question. Were the child's rights violated by being killed and chopped up? Yes or no.
Is abortion ALWAYS morally wrong. I can’t answer whether anything is always anything. Was having that abortion the most moral thing to do, no, do people always need to do the most moral thing, ideally? Maybe. Actually, probabaly not. I don’t know the woman’s story to say she unevically shouldn’t have had an abortion. I don’t know enough about her. Most importantly, the question of what abortion is morally and what it should be legally are two different questions.
There is no way to give someone inside someone rights without depriving the woman rights.
Ohhh! So you are saying that the woman has to give permission for the child to stay in her uterus. And she can rescind her "permission" at any time! Okay... so then, it's not wrong to abort a child. It's not wrong, what you saw on that video. How can it be wrong? The offense is being somewhere where the mother does not want the child. Location problem. Death is fair and just for this "offense". So, what is wrong? It's simple eviction that you saw on that tape.
ReplyDeleteAlso, are you saying that what is legal is all that we need to follow? That laws that say we can kill the child inside us are just laws because they are laws? Natural law is the basis for just laws, CS. Without natural law, then our laws are based only on popular opinion, right? So, slaves once were not considered to have human rights. That was law. But it was a violation of natural law, so it was an unjust law. You can see that, right?
And so for those natural rights such as "life" and "liberty" and the "pursuit of happiness" --those things that come to us from our Creator, and not from the state.... do you care about those rights? If you don't want to define natural rights, then on what basis is the state compelled to protect those natural rights?
You remember MLK's Letter from a Birmingham Jail, right? He thought natural rights were pretty darned important, and that they determined what is or is not a just law:
"[T]here are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law."
"If they weren’t performing an abortion a baby would be born, and that isn’t the defining characteristic but that is something people need to take seriously and consider."
ReplyDeletePlanned Parenthood, and Obama, and all the abortion supporters out there already say this: "We trust women to make these weighty decisions" "women can be counted on to make these serious decisions".
But then they fight informed consent laws like nobody's business. And the video that you saw, that you were horrified by, that happens to thousands of children EVERY DAY -- they have a full scale campaign to shame and discredit and sue and obfuscate those who brought it to light. They don't WANT women to know what happens to their babies. Obviously. So, is this a good organization? Should they get a half billion a year from taxpayers?
CS, you have seen evil with you own eyes. You have an obligation to call evil evil.
And no, someone's right to be "not pregnant" does not supersede another's very right to be alive. There is a hierarchy of rights.
CS, just pray and cross over to the other side. There is great peace here, and no need to justify someone else's murder, ever. Innocence always wins, love always wins on this side. Violence against innocents is never the right way. Never, never.
And no, the "woman" did not make the baby. The woman and the man made the baby, and God made them all. You are a professed Christian, yes? What does God think of what happened to His child, on that video? Does He want this evil exposed to the light? I think He does. It's horrific, but evil must always be exposed and brought into the light. And you have an obligation just as we all do, now that you know the evil.
Leila, great post. Sorry, I used the reply button some, didn't see the rule till now. I was always pro-life strongly, but these videos have put a face, so to speak, to the crime against humanity that is abortion. I am very passionate now and want to help stop abortion as quick as possible. I shared this post on Facebook and tagged my family, some of which are liberal and would say they are pro-choice. I was frank with them and said it is time to face the facts. I am no longer pulling any punches and no longer scared of what others may think. These videos have helped me. My primary argument is that we need to get these persons' human rights recognized, just as we had to get slaves human rights recognized in order to free them from the wrong decisions of their owners. We need to recognize unborn people's humanity in order to free them from the wrong decision to murder them. The contstitution protects people's right to life, if we can have people recognize their humanity, then they are protected by the constitution already.
ReplyDeleteAgain and in the clearest way possible: personal sexual experience has ZERO relevance to why a child doesn’t have a right to be in a womb. Try tying two corresponding thoughts together sometimes. It keeps things relevant and makes an actual contribution to the point at hand.
ReplyDeleteAre you a sadist, CS? Your answers paint you as one. Pull the lever, signal the firing squad, inject the baby, do whatever it takes, because the kid had it coming. The kid was not given an engraved invitation. The kid has no right to life. Sad-is-tic to the core.
We’re not talking about “permission” to play in mom’s purse, or “permission” to play in the cosmetic drawer. We’re talking permission to live. We’re talking a “right” to live. You’re hot to pull the trigger and exterminate tiny, growing, humans who are there because a woman freely had sex.
Do you know anything about RvW, CS? Do you understand anything about necessity criterion and clarity criterion? Have you read any critiques or judicial reviews of the decision? Do you understand that because something is a law, does not make it morally right or a moral truth? Do get the fact that once things are in law, society will always look at them as normal and good, regardless if they are or not? "Oh, gee, it's in law! Must be dandy and right! Duuuuuh!" THINK.
Do you know anything about any of it?
Margo is head and shoulders above most of the adults in society, because she is SMART enough to not put herself in comprising, tempting positions. She’s light years ahead of you, even with your “nuanced experiences”. That’s a measure of distance, CS. Don’t ask your friends what a light year is. They won’t know.
Challenge yourself. Get a deeper experience of God by listening to what your heart says when you see babies in dishes and hear callous jokes of adults in clinics.
Have the gumption to explain how it’s such a noble thing, to weed out those uninvited kids and let them marinate in glass dishes.
Explain it, without cowering behind statistics that don’t hold up (pregnancy death or complications being very low), without cowering behind what your uninformed friends think, without cowering behind your flaccid, non-intellectual arguments.
Get some fortitude. Get out of the darkness with your lame excuse- making now that you see what becomes of the "uninvited ones".
To the point of a mother consenting to have the baby be in the womb. If a person chooses to do a certain act then they are accepting the possible circumstances that are a result of that act. That is logic and natural law. If a woman chooses to have sex, then she is consenting to possibly getting STDs or getting pregnant. There is no going back and saying you don't consent to the concecuences after you have already chosen to do the act(have sex). That is the natural order, the natural law.
ReplyDeleteNow to talk about how to deal with the consequences. STDs are microorganisms that attack you in difference ways, since they aren't a person, it is okay to take action to kill them to get them out of your body. A fetus, on the other hand, is a person that is alive. They are in the first stages of life, but none-the-less alive. Since they are a live person, then they have natural rights just as any live person does. The first and most important natural right we all have is the Right to Life.
In conclusion, you can't kill a person just because they are dependant on you because you regret a decision and regret accepting the possible consequences only after seeing that one consequence did happen. You can't do that because we need to recognize the person that is there now and recognize their natural right to life.
jrfjosh, thank you and no worries! Yes, the time for silence has ended. This is no different than the long, hard struggle to end slavery. People were comfortable, they had dehumanized the slaves, they didn't want to face it, they didn't want to change. But that doesn't stop our obligation to oppose evil and expose it.
ReplyDeleteNubby... bravo. Thank you. CS, please look to what Nubby says as an older, wiser women trying to talk sense into you. You know that I have kids your age. Honestly, if my child came to me with the arguments that you have given for allowing the killing of those little ones (especially after what you have [finally] opened your eyes to see), I would speak to them as bluntly as Nubby just spoke to you. We are treating you no different than we would treat our very children, whom we love. But we will not tolerate nonsense from our children. In fact, I have not been as blunt with you as I would be if you were my own child.
ReplyDeleteWhat you are saying is nonsense, it's excuses, it's based in nothing, no moral principle (except "I want"). It brings us to accept the most evil thing. It is nowhere in Christian thought. It is nowhere in compassion. It is selfish and evil and you know it. There is no logic there, unless your premise is: Women get to do whatever they want, even kill other humans, even kill their children, because they don't want to be pregnant for a few months. There is no basis in the moral law for that. There is no basis in the natural law for that. The only basis in which we find such reasoning is in law based on popular opinion (called "positive law"), which is manmade according to the feelings of the times. That is how we got laws accepting slavery, segregation, genocide of Jews, and abortion.
Might doesn't make right. And morality is not determined by who has the most votes today (interesting that the unborn cannot vote; so they automatically lose).
Moral principle: The strong must not hurt the weak. The strong must protect the weak. Those with a voice have an obligation to speak for the voiceless. When the strong harm and marginalize and kill the weak, we call that OPPRESSION.
CS, you have no more excuses. You have seen it with you eyes. You now know. God will hold each of us accountable for what we know.
Biology and nature don't need permission to occur. Our feeble attempts to control either, are shamefully misguided at best, and can stem from much, much worse.
ReplyDeleteFor any lurkers or readers who are confused: CS (formerly "College Student") and "emily rogers" are the same person. That's to help you follow.
ReplyDeleteSo let's talk legal, then. It is never, in any other situation, right, moral, or legal to punish someone for something he or she had no choice in, or for doing exactly what they said they would do when we made an agreement (contract).
ReplyDeleteWe do not punish children when parents commit theft in order to feed and clothe their kids. We don't send the children to prison, and we most certainly do not sentence them to the death penalty. They're innocent.
We do not invite guests into our home for a weekend stay, and then call the cops on them for trespassing on Saturday afternoon when we are tired of the guests for being themselves. And we definitely don't execute them. They're innocent
We do not invite tenants into our property, commit to year long leases, and then evict them after 6 months when we tire of being landlords when they have followed every term of the lease. And no, we don't execute them either. Because they're innocent.
We don't put ourselves in compromising situations (even for 7 minutes) and make decisions - decisions made regardless of influence by heat of the moment, drugs, alcohol, or misguided love; decisions we know full well run the risk, however small, in ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of encounters (barring a known physical anomaly), of creating a 9 month commitment to a child; decisions we alter regret - only to revoke that invitation when it is accepted by God and child. We don't evict that *invited child* for doing exactly as he or she is designed to do (develop INSIDE the mother's body. The horror), and we DEFINITELY DON'T EXECUTE HIM OR HER. He or she is INNOCENT.
The social contract was made when the mother and father decided to have sex, and we don't get to just change our minds on contracts when we don't like how they turn out. That isn't even *legal* (to break a contract), let alone right.
FWIW, morality of evicting a developing child aside, I also reject the assumption that the only way to remove a baby from the womb is to kill him or her. The only reason we kill rather than birth developing babies is to, again, avoid discomfort for the mother.
ReplyDeleteLeila,
ReplyDeleteI was wondering, thanks for clarifying the name change.
To segue a bit; Years ago, this is how our pro-life group solved the problem of whether to carry posters of aborted babies when we prayed the rosary outside of local pp clinic; since it was in a high traffic area, we couldn't subject the little kids in cars seeing it, so when Dr. Nathanson made/narrated the video Eclipse of Reason, we were able to show it to our local parochial high school. Seeing an actual abortion on a huge screen was disturbingly stark and powerful; admin. said the students had never been so quiet in an all school assembly like this; although a few girls did walk out.
Later on, we learned that one student, by the grace of God, did cancel her abortion.
In my letter to the editor of our newspaper, I said as a PSA we were donating the dvd to our local library, Of course, the editor just happened to have a pro-choice letter right next to mine. (I frequently checked to make sure it was still available and had not been tampered with).
In retrospect, we should have donated it to the school so it could have been shown every year to the freshman class. Of course now I think it's online, also the Silent Scream.
And CS, I'll leave the online debate to those who have that charism, just know that we love you and are praying for you.
So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants,
Deuteronomy 30:19
I watched the video...sickened. I grew up around peers and in families where abortion was the answer. I have had relationships with the types of men CS is describing. I can understand why CS is struggling with the issue, because abortion represents how she sees the world, unfair and evil, because it is 'of this world'. God sent Jesus to save us from all sins/evilness. His blessings are abundant even though we didn't earn it or deserve it. He blessed women with the gift of giving birth (it is work but a blessing as I have four-two planned and two not) and with the gift comes responsibility. None of us are equal..especially men and women...you just have to look at the transgender community to understand that.
ReplyDeleteAll of us make choices and those choices lead to consequences (have sex-get pregnant)...some we like, others we don't. But we cannot go through life making those choices based on others actions (i.e. jerky guys). By killing the child the mother becomes no better than the father (two wrongs don't make it right). Am I said for the women having to make that choice...absolutely, it happened to my sister, but she chose to ditch the jerk who told her to take care of it and has actually taken care of her son for 7 years and wouldn't change a thing. It was hard but God has given her so many blessings since. And just ask those women using IVF when they consider the 'material' to be a baby...as soon as the stick turns pink!
My brother has stage 4 brain cancer and I can assure you he prays everyday to not only survive but have children with his wife...and he used to be one of those jerks until he found Christ and the churches healing sacraments.
CS I pray that God blesses you so much that you will shed the cynicism of this world and see the promises of the next. Because I used to be you...
*sad, not said
ReplyDeleteCS,
ReplyDeleteIn case, it hasn't been mentioned yet, you might want to check out http://www.feministsforlife.org/; it has real life stories of young adult women dealing with choices during an unexpected pregnancy.
CS, I want to go back to something you said earlier. You said: I understand why you're against abortion as a whole but IF women are having abortions don't know why its better to throw the material away than to use it for medical research
ReplyDeleteLet me quote a medical researcher and scientist who fully agreed with your stance.
"...those brains offered wonderful material, of mentally poor, deformities and early children's diseases. Of course I accepted the brains. It really wasn't my concern where they came from and how they were brought to me..." - Prof. Dr. Julius Hallervorden
Sounds just like what you're saying, right?
This quote (source is here) is from the Nuremberg Trials. Dr. Hallervorden was a Nazi scientist who experimented on the brains of Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Keep in mind that during that time it was perfectly legal under German law to kill Jews, thanks to the Nazi regime. So, given it was legal to kill Jews, it seemed silly to Dr. Hallervorden to let their corpses go to waste. And indeed, Dr. Hallervorden and a colleague, Hugo Spatz (also a Nazi) discovered, through their research, Hallervorden-Spatz syndrome (now called Pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration).
Do you think that Dr. Hallervorden et al were smart and sensible to make use of the "material" legally provided to them, regardless of the origin?
Nubby you are are most insulting and condescending person I have ver talked to. Learn how to talk to other adults with respect.
ReplyDelete“Are you a sadist, CS? Your answers paint you as one. Pull the lever, signal the firing squad, inject the baby, do whatever it takes, because the kid had it coming. The kid was not given an engraved invitation. The kid has no right to life. Sad-is-tic to the core. ”
My God woman. Stop being dramatic.
“Explain it, without cowering behind statistics that don’t hold up (pregnancy death or complications being very low), without cowering behind what your uninformed friends think, without cowering behind your flaccid, non-intellectual arguments.”
I DON’T MAKE OTHER PEOPLE’S MEDICAL DECISIONS FOR THEM. I DON’T THINK ANYTHING THAT DOESN’T KILL YOU IS MERELY AN ANNOYANCE. AT THE VERY LEAST YOU’LL HAVE MORNING SICKNESS AND EXTREME PAIN DURING CHILDBIRTH AND THAT’S ASSUMING NOTHING GOES WRONG. YOUR BODY WILL BE DIFFERENT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. I’M NOT GOING TO DIMISH THE REAL AFFECTS OF PREGNANCY ANF CHILDBIRTH ON SOMEONE’S MENTAL ANDN PSYICAL HEALTH.
No where did I say that just because something is legal that means we should do it. I said that the criteria of what should be legal and what is moral are different criteria.
CS
ReplyDelete“Moral principle: The strong must not hurt the weak. The strong must protect the weak. Those with a voice have an obligation to speak for the voiceless. When the strong harm and marginalize and kill the weak, we call that OPPRESSION.”
THEN APPLY THAT EVERYWHERE. APPLY IT TO CORPORATIONS. APPLY THAT TO RICH PEOPLE. APPLY THAT TO MEN. APPLY THAT TO BENEFITS. APPLY IT TO OUR SOCEITY AT LARGE.
IF WE ABHOR ABORTION SO MUCH WE NEED TOFIRST LOOK AT OURSELVES. WE NEED TO SAY MY GOD, WHAT KIN DOF WORLD HAVE WE MADE SO THAT WOMEN FEEL THE NEED TO KILL THEIR OWN CHILDREN TO GET AHEAD. WHY DO WE MAKE WOMEN CHOOSE BETWEEN GETTING AHEAD AND HAVING BABIES. WHY DO SOME WOMEN HAVE TO CHOOSE BETWEEN KEEPING THEIR JOB AND HAVING A BABY. WHY DO WE HAVE SUCH RIDGID STANDARDS OF BEAUTY THAT WOMEN MIGHT AFRAID TO BE PREGNANT BECAUSE THEY DON’T WANT TO BE ‘FAT’ OR HAVE STRETCH MARKS.
IF WE DON’T VALUE BABIES WE NEED TO STOP ASKING WOMEN TO. IF WE VALUE THEM WE NEED TO ALL GET SOME SKIN IN THE GAME AND ACT LIKE WE CARE.
CS
Nubby you are are most insulting and condescending person I have ver talked to. Learn how to talk to other adults with respect.
ReplyDeleteQuit emoting.
I am not one of your dim college peers. I don’t suffer imbecility well, on the internet or in real life.
If you think that’s rude, too bad.
Reproaches of ignorance and cowardice always seem rude to the ignorant and cowardly. Consider it a work of mercy and open your eyes and ears to learn:
1) Are you educated in American History or not?
2) Do you know what our unalienable rights are or not?
3) Do you know the major difference between the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution or not?
4) Are you interested in learning, as all American college-educated people should be, or do you not want to hear about what you’re intellectually missing in your inept and dismal opinion that the baby has “no right”?
You choose. Show me what you know, since you’re so sure the baby has no right, according to law. Put up. Show me how to reason out of this paper bag.
This? This right here shows me that you don't even know what you are talking about:
No where did I say that just because something is legal that means we should do it. I said that the criteria of what should be legal and what is moral are different criteria.
Do you want this explained to you or not? Do you want to remain in ignorance or learn? Do you want to have your line of thought respected or not? Then LEARN something here.
You realize, we all agree with what you just said. We should be and are working toward most, if not all of these goals. And we accept the fact that we live in a sinful, fallen, world and people do bad things, some for good reasons, some for selfish reasons. But arguing that we shouldn't be actively pursuing to rud the world of the scourge of abortion, because we also, simultaneously, aren't working to rid the world of coorporate greed and corruption is a false dichotomy.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing, stuff like Corporate greed, poverty, the treatment of women, working mothers, unattainable standards of beauty, and yes abortion, they all stem from the same thing. Failure to love and failure to accept LOVE. Working on one, will help the others, but arguing that you can't work on stopping abortion in particular until the others are fixed won't fix any of them. You pick your passion and work toward fixing, while at the same time acknowledging that it's all interconnected, so even if your passion is addressing corporate greed, you have to acknolwedge that abortion is connected and not condone it because it "helps" in some narrow short-term way. In reality, it doesn't.
“You’re hot to pull the trigger and exterminate tiny, growing, humans who are there because a woman freely had sex.”
ReplyDeleteThis really really annoys me. And this is the reason I asked Margo about her sexual experience because so much of sex does not go under the ‘a woman freely has sex category’ and its easier to understand if you have had the experience yourself.
This is difficult to explain but let me try.
Faith was talking about contracts before. Many women are having sex under false understandings which has a huge influence on their culpability ‘or contractual obligation’ if you view it as that. For instance if you have sex with a man who syas he loves you, and intends to marry you, you ARE consenting to sex but specifically you are consenting to sex with a man who loves and wants to marry you. If it turns out he doesn’t love and want to marry you, while you did have sex with him, you didn’t mean to, you aren’t as culpable because you didn’t consent to sex with a jerk, it just happened that way.
For one of those TMI’s Nubby wanted, I recently had sex with someone who took the condom off at some point without my knowledge. Its just absurd to conclude that because I consented to sex I consented to everything that possibily occurs. I didn’t consent to unprotected sex. I didn’t just freely have it and I’m not responsible for the outcome in the same way. Things like that happen to women everyday. I don’t have an exhaustive list of them and I don’t try to. But I know too much to believe that all women are just free having consentual sex with honest partners so the decisions they are making are informed and therefore they are 100% culpable for them.
CS
Wtf? Stick your forked tongue back in your mouth. Don't say I wanted to know anything about anyone's sloppy sex life. Recall something correctlyfor a change: I asked if *you* wanted to hear about everyone's experience. Not me.
DeleteConsenting to sex means you consent to ALL possible consequences. That includes, but not limited to:
DeleteSTDs
Pregnancy
Lying partners
Jerks
Losers that leave you lol alone, married or not
If a person is created from your decision to have sex, you can't kill them. Morally it is wrong. And a law that isn't moral is an unjust law that should not be followed, just read MLK's righting that Leila posted.
If you consent to sex, you consent to ALL possible consequences, even lying terrible men who take off condoms. Even that doesn't give you the right to end a life of an innocent person that has a natural right to life.
CS, I don't mean to be rude, but what is your age?
ReplyDeleteAnd hence why I'm committed to abstinence until the night following my wedding. That eliminates many of the problems CS described. I don't care what a guy says to me, I care about whether he's willing to kneel before Jesus Christ and make a lifetime commitment to be my husband.
ReplyDeleteGirl, you got it. You got fortitude, intelligence, patience... you got it all. CS should befriend you for real. She might find herself less worried about condom accidents and more at peace with her choice to abstain.
DeleteOkay then CS, where do we start to clean up the mess that "we" have created?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I am confused about women choosing between children and "getting ahead". I have four children, have a happy marriage, am a stay at home mom, have a PhD, and volunteer (sometimes using my degrees) umpteen hours at my local parish. I am definitely getting ahead of something and never had to choose between anything. I got pregnant before I had finished my degree, followed my husband 11 hours away (which was frowned upon by my professors...so what), taught classes, waited tables, did baby sitting and had our second child before I finished it, but I finished none the less. An I am no exception. It can be done without choosing life or death.
Actually, CS, you were implicitly consenting to the possibility of conception just by engaging in sexual intercourse, regardless if you or your partner or both of you used contraception. All contraception has a failure rate, so even if your partner had used a condom perfectly, there was still a chance of conception. That's why the logical thing to do is to not have sex unless you are fully cognizant that conception may occur as a result. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to want to conceive, or intend to conceive - you just need to be cognizant that conception of a new child could be a consequence of that act, even if you contracept. If conception of a child would be a disastrous consequence, then you don't engage in the act.
ReplyDeleteFor instance if you have sex with a man who syas he loves you, and intends to marry you, you ARE consenting to sex but specifically you are consenting to sex with a man who loves and wants to marry you. If it turns out he doesn’t love and want to marry you, while you did have sex with him, you didn’t mean to, you aren’t as culpable because you didn’t consent to sex with a jerk, it just happened that way.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is why the Church teaches to wait until marriage.
I am sorry that you were tricked and misled. And yet, these are some of the potential consequences in engaging in the reproductive before you're ready to reproduce with your spouse. It's sad that education has failed you in this matter.
There is no such thing as safe sex, as opposed to unprotected sex. Each and every act potentually has any number of consequences. Which is why fidelity is soooooo important.
CS, with as much patience as I can muster, please read what I am about to say, carefully. First, you know that I love you. You know this. The readers don't know what you and I know, about the fact that I care about you and your life. I hope you know; I hope you feel confident in that.
ReplyDeleteOkay, so now to the rest, which, again, I would say to my own children if they talked as you did about this issue or any issue of the killing of innocent human beings:
What you are trying (in some way/some form) to defend (on some level) is the oppression and murder of entire class/group of human beings. You see that little hand. You saw that little hand and that foot on a pile of his or her own intestines and organs, all freshly cut up and dumped together, by a group of laughing "medical and health professionals". You saw it and your conscience worked rightly. You were horrified. You saw that it was evil.
So far, so good. You were shown evil and you recognized it.
But then, you started to mix up issues and create false dichotomies. CS, the Catholic Church speaks against corporate greed and oppression and vanity and alllllll those things you mentioned. Every day. All the time, for millennia now. The tapestry of Truth is seamless. It all fits together. There is no hypocrisy in the teachings of Christ, who is God and the Author of Life. So please, you are telling devout Catholics that we cannot outlaw pure evil, murder against the innocent, by the MILLIONS, because of there are other sins that have yet to be eradicated? Makes no sense! SIN WILL NOT BE ERADICATED until the end of time. The only sin that we can eradicate is in our own hearts and minds and souls.
The first step to eradicating our sin, is to stop making excuses for sins, stop being a part of sin, stop sinning. Defending the death of innocents is itself a sin. Stop defending it. It's very freeing. You will be set free. You won't have to defend the indefensible anymore. You won't have to keep talking about how these little children "legally" have "no right" to be in their mothers' bodies because they "don't have permission" (do you know how stupid that sounds? I don't mean to be insulting, I really don't, but this is not a moral argument, CS. This is an argument based on "I want").
Bethany is right. Ultimately, abortion is a failure to love. An abject failure to love. And any society who allows the killing of its own children has failed utterly. We don't have to eradicate all other sins before we say "We will not murder our own children!" We can actually do that now.
CS, there is a reason why more young people are pro-life than ever before. You would not be a freak for joining on the side of Truth here.
And as a mother, I just beg you to stop sleeping with these creeps!!!
Okay, end of my lecture for now, but please, open your eyes.
For instance if you have sex with a man who syas he loves you, and intends to marry you, you ARE consenting to sex but specifically you are consenting to sex with a man who loves and wants to marry you. If it turns out he doesn’t love and want to marry you, while you did have sex with him, you didn’t mean to, you aren’t as culpable because you didn’t consent to sex with a jerk, it just happened that way.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is why the Church teaches to wait until marriage.
I am sorry that you were tricked and misled. And yet, these are some of the potential consequences in engaging in the reproductive before you're ready to reproduce with your spouse. It's sad that education has failed you in this matter.
There is no such thing as safe sex, as opposed to unprotected sex. Each and every act potentually has any number of consequences. Which is why fidelity is soooooo important.
Hi Bethany,
ReplyDeleteI completely understand that you want to make the world better holistically; however that passion on non-abortion issues doesn’t shine through. I don’t see catholics marching for maternal benefits like they do against RvW but I also may not be in the know.
I’m also not saying you shouldn’t work to end abortion, so long as those other issues continue. But I am saying I won’t, from a legal perspective, at least, I’ll vote for informed consent, I’ll encourage people to make healthier sexual decisions and have them think about their decisions, there are a lot of parties we can hold accountable, a lot of work and sacrifices we can all make, before we push it to individual desperate women
CS
But the biggest problem of today's culture is they DON'T see all the consequences of entering into premarital sex. It is not just conception of a child, but also the scares each encounter that ends in an unfulfilled promise, especially the women. They see abortion as a quick solution when conception of a life occurs, but then are left with even more scares. The only way is the Truth.
ReplyDeleteAlso, CS, I work full-time in my chosen field (my degree is in English and my job title is senior editor). I have worked full-time since I graduated from college in 2003. Since that time, I have had eight pregnancies, resulting in five living children. I also admin a Facebook group called "Catholic working mothers" with nearly 700 members - all of whom have managed to simultaneously work while having children, without using contraception or abortion. Women are strong enough and capable enough to succeed without having to kill their children. as a feminist, shouldn't you be telling women how strong they are instead of how weak you think they are? I mean, I would be insulted if somebody told me that I needed to kill my children in order to be successful in my chosen career.
ReplyDeleteWhy is abstaining from sex SO scary and dreaded?
ReplyDeleteHi Lisa, I’m 26. I've been out of college for several years, but the name stuck!
ReplyDeleteHi Sissybee,
Congrats on all your accomplishments! No one said that you couldn’t be married with several children and very accomplished professionally/academically. I meant statistically women are choosing not to have/have less/ delaying having children/having fewer children because of career/academics is a pretty large and documented trend
CS
“Actually, CS, you were implicitly consenting to the possibility of conception just by engaging in sexual intercourse, regardless if you or your partner or both of you used contraception. All contraception has a failure rate, so even if your partner had used a condom perfectly, there was still a chance of conception.”
ReplyDeleteRight but I wasn’t consenting to the amount of risk that was taken. You can concede that right. Most people would consider that one person removing a condom during intercourse without permission of the other person as a type of sexual assault and at the very least highly inappropriate
CS
I meant statistically women are choosing not to have/have less/ delaying having children
ReplyDeleteDelaying is not aborting. So what ??
So what about any of this dilly-dally side trails you take?
Leila's post shows dead human children.
And you're on here talking about TMI experiences and trying the hard sale on us about nuances of sex and irrelevant ideas about your generation.
There are dead children in this post. Wake up. Wake up and quit being scared and uninformed.
We've heard the same routine for how long on the Bubble? Any chance you want to come to learn this time?
As I said before, all of these issues atem from a failure to love. Love, properly defined, is willing to work for the good of another whether we want to or not. I think many in the pro-life movement see the profound lack of love being shown to these very small, innocent human beings at the very beginning of their lives and say, "Let's start there. At the beginning. If we can reclaim the love, lost, for these tiniest, most innocent of human beings, then we can take that love and progress forward to reclaim the rest, one step at a time.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to start a march for paid maternity leave- DO IT! It's a necessary cause to take up. Go ahead and begin a march against corporate greed, or greed of any kind! I'll march with you. But if you intend to keep abortion legal as an option, while fighting for these other things, it belays their importance because you've already determined that somebody else is able to decide what a life, what a human being is worth. And if someone else can decide that, anybody can, from greedy CEO's, to everyday employers with bottom lines...
I am sorry everything seems to be posting twice (at least for me, stupid phone).
ReplyDeleteLet's use that example; I've been reflecting on it, lately. Paid Maternity and Paternity Leave.
This country will NEVER be able to hold a serious conversation about paid maternity/paternity leave until we address the simple fact that as long as people, including employers, see that an employee has the option (choice) to "terminate the pregnancy," then the "choice" of carrying a child to term is a choice for an unpaid 12 weeks, max. Which would be more helpful to a desperate woman working to make ends meet, who finds herself with an unexpected pregnancy, the option of abortion or 15-20 weeks of paid maternity leave? Which would make her feel less desperate?
CS, I think you missed my point about contracts. The contract isn't between the woman and the man. It's between the woman and the child. It doesn't matter how much risk is involved (non-contraceptive or contraceptive), or how much risk is perceived to be involved. It doesn't matter if the man turns out to be total scum. It doesn't matter if the man deceived the woman to get her into bed. It doesn't matter if her consent to the man is compromised. It is biological fact that, no matter what precautions may or may not be taken, pregnancy is a possible outcome, whether it is a 1%, 10% or 100% chance. All that means is that the woman thinks that a baby is unlikely to take her up on her invitation, or at least hopes so. The baby is still invited!
ReplyDeleteWhen I tell my mother in law she is welcome in my home anytime, it doesn't matter if I don't actually want her to come or if I think she won't. When she shows up, she's not a trespasser. She's an invited guest.
To clarify since I can't edit, I don't mean Compromised to remove consent completely. I mean in situations where there was a choice, even if it wasn't fully informed on risk.
DeleteBethany, if I could triple "like" your comment, I would. Especially THIS:
ReplyDelete"But if you intend to keep abortion legal as an option, while fighting for these other things, it belays their importance because you've already determined that somebody else is able to decide what a life, what a human being is worth"
Of course, the abortion question of exceptions came up tonight in the first presidential debate with one of the moderators astonished that Gov. Walker would not agree that an abortion is necessary to safe the life of the mother. St. Gianna Beretta Molla pray for us.
ReplyDeleteCS, I just wanted to say I used to feel the way you felt and used to live similarly, too (dated more than a few guys who I wouldn't want to be the father of my children). It's a scary, exhausting place to be. But I was raised by a feminist who was a single mom and also raised three girls. While life might not always be fair, the only way to true peace and joy is to rise to these challenges by doing the right thing. A woman who chooses to love her child by allowing her child to live even if the circumstances are imperfect won't regret it. There aren't support groups for women who wish their children had been aborted. They do not exist. Yet there are support groups for women absolutely devastated by choosing abortion (and men.. yes men are often devastated by abortion because they lose children in that deal too). Why? Could it be because allowing your child to live, even in tough circumstances, is *never* the wrong choice?
ReplyDeleteThese babies have a right to be protected and defended regardless because they are human beings, but I am also trying to address what seems to be a misconception that pregnancy and having children is a terrible burden that women that needs to be done away with if the circumstances aren't fair enough (and that somehow, by doing away with the child, fairness and therefore happiness might be achieved). When I was growing up, my grandmother often referred to her child-bearing and rearing years as "the happiest years of her life." It was such a strange thing to me. I couldn't fathom how being at home with her 4 children and all the burdens of raising them could be so happy. Life treated her very unfairly. Her husband died young and they were poor. Yet somehow, raising her kids resulted in "the happiest years of her life." Abortion can rob a woman in crisis (or a woman facing a future crisis) of the only good she has in this life. And soooo many women regret it and would give anything to go back (I helped edit - for grammar - interviews with many of these women for a book... those stories are burned into me). I think your feminism is terribly misplaced. Evicting a baby isn't going to create fairness or happiness or peace for women.
For clarity's sake (and not to dismiss anything that you said, because I agree!), abortion isn't evicting a baby. It's executing it. If one just wanted to evict the baby (remove it from a woman), you'd induce labor and let come what may.
DeleteFaith - yes, thank you. I am aware of that. I was using the same language CS was using just to make a point. It is much more than evicting a baby (but since the focus was on "permission to reside in the uterus" I was using that language).
DeleteHi Leila,
ReplyDeleteYou know that I respect you and your viewpoints immensely, its why I have frequented this blog for years. I do consider and learn from the things you and other commenters say, and I can honestly sat that those videos have effected my personal feelings of abortion and even how I will talk to and encourage others if they find themselves in that situation.
There is so much room for compassion here and I think we have an opportunity to talk to women about their pregnancies, about the beauty of sacrifice and magnitude of pregnancy. I think doing this in a compassionate and understanding way has the capacity of making so many women want to choose to have their baby.
But I will never not ever make that choice for them. ‘You agreed to get naked, you agreed to sleep with a man because he lied to you but actually he’s not who he said he was, you got too drunk and were actually in and out of consciousness, you started having sex and you asked him to stop and whoops he didn’t, you agreed to have sex and he took the condom off’ all these things happens that aren’t really your fault but you got pregnant so f**k you.’ Sorry I’ll never sya that to someone. I don’t believe those things. I don’t believe that if you consent to having sex with someone with a condom it’s the same as consenting to sleeping with someone without a condom. Nothing else works like that
I gree with the creeps Leila, I’m looking for nicer guys, hopefully I’ll find one soon.
CS
“I am sorry that you were tricked and misled. And yet, these are some of the potential consequences in engaging in the reproductive before you're ready to reproduce with your spouse. It's sad that education has failed you in this matter. There is no such thing as safe sex, as opposed to unprotected sex. Each and every act potentially has any number of consequences. Which is why fidelity is soooooo important.”
ReplyDeleteHi Bethany,
I’m digressing but I hate this attitude. Its part of the reason that I have an issue with pro-lifers, this view is so misogynistic.
Men are going around doing blatantly disrespectful things to women during sex without their permission. We need to stop telling women that this is an extent of something they agreed to. Women are just starting to get used to it, and men are under the impression its okay, its scary and very- not ok stuff.
CS
CS, here's what I want you to know. No one, and I mean no one that I know in the pro-life movement, and I know plenty, would ever say "F-you, tough shit, you made a bad choice and now you're pregnant you stupid fool." Oh how I wish if you were ever in Phoenix that you would come with me on a tour of one of our incredible medical clinics which help women in crisis, or even the homes which house pregnant women for months during pregnancy (free) and then even months after the baby is born and help them get their lives together. No one is writing off these women and no one is walking away from them. In fact, places like Planned Parenthood have tried to shut down these free and wonderful and loving places that people like me and my friends help to support and staff. People you would like very much. People who have changed lives and who never turn anyone away. And these are very nonjudgmental counselors and doctors. But they will never refer for abortions, even though they cannot stop a woman from having one, if she leaves to go to PP down the street, which will happily take her money to do so. But my friends and colleagues will teach her the truth. And they work with the fathers too, and they often get the men to stop being jerks! Men want to be heroes and if we believe in them and if other good men mentor them, they will care for their women and their babies.
ReplyDeleteThe rules are definitely not different for men. The rules of chastity are the same. I have three boys who are passed puberty. One just started medical school. They are chaste. They are respectful. They are good boys who have never, ever used women. They have hormones like everyone else. And as far as the woman getting the short end of the stick during the sexual encounters, there is a huge danger to men and boys as well. The danger is that they could impregnate someone and that woman could kill their unborn child without any input or permission from him, the baby's father. I know men (and teens) who have been devastated by this. There is no good that can come from any of this, CS. That is why virtue is not a list of restrictions, but it's a way to live life where you have the most peace, happiness, and freedom. It's how to live in joy and not in regret and pain and emptiness, and yes not reap death, spiritual and/or physical.
Anyway, talk to me privately maybe, and we can discuss where you're finding these horrible creepy man! You deserve someone who will treat you like the treasure that you are.
CS "Right but I wasn’t consenting to the amount of risk that was taken. You can concede that right. Most people would consider that one person removing a condom during intercourse without permission of the other person as a type of sexual assault and at the very least highly inappropriate "
ReplyDeleteFirst, that guy is terrible and possibly criminal, and I hope you got rid of him quickly.
Next:
You are really splitting hairs now, "wasn't consenting to the amount of risk". Wow. If you have sex, no matter how many precautions and contraception you use, you are consenting to the possibility of a person growing in you. No, "I don't accept that amount of risk", doesn't give you the right to kill another person. I just can't see how this logic works in your brain.
I'll say it again, if you consent to sex, you consent FULLY to all possible consequences.
STDs
Pregnancy
The other person abandons you.
And anything else that is a result of sex.
Be an adult and accept the responsibility that comes with the choices you make. You don't get to kill another person because you can't face the consequences of your choices.
“It doesn't matter if the man turns out to be total scum. It doesn't matter if the man deceived the woman to get her into bed. It doesn't matter if her consent to the man is compromised. “
ReplyDeleteIt matters soooo much Faith. You can’t hold the woman responsible for a decision she agreed to under extreme coercion. No one is responsible for anything they do under extreme coercion. No one. In any freaking circumstance
“It is biological fact that, no matter what precautions may or may not be taken, pregnancy is a possible outcome”
Right but your only agreeing to that outcome if the person you are sleeping with is being honest with you. If someone tricks u into taking a risk that you wouldn’t have otherwise taken by lying to you, you are not responsible. You may have been fine taking that risk with a man you love but if that man deceived you, you wouldn’t have taken that risk. There is literally no way for a woman to avoid that lest she be a mind reader.
“When I tell my mother in law she is welcome in my home anytime, it doesn't matter if I don't actually want her to come or if I think she won't. When she shows up, she's not a trespasser. She's an invited guest.”
If you invite your mother in law in your home because you love your husband, and it turns out your husband is cheating on you. You can un invite your mother in law. You took the risk of inviting her BECAUSE of your relationship with someone else. Once they defaulted on their obligations to you you can default on our obligations to them.
CS
CS "Men are going around doing blatantly disrespectful things to women during sex without their permission. We need to stop telling women that this is an extent of something they agreed to. Women are just starting to get used to it, and men are under the impression its okay, its scary and very- not ok stuff. "
ReplyDeleteSo your position is that it is okay to kill a person because there are some bad guys out there tricking women to think they are nice guys and once they get the women to consent to sex they do terrible things like take off condoms, poke holes in condoms, and anything else a worthless piece of crap guy would do?
If you consented to giving yourself to a guy and participate in sex with them, one possible consequence is that he is actually a loser that is tricking you. That is why people here who are saying to abstain and choose men wisely are right. This is what happens when we have a society that tells women that they are powerful when they are carefree with their body. And the same rule applies to men, our society tells guys to sleep around and it is cool to have sex with lots of women. That is the way of the world and that is why God says not to do that.
Sex is not a small thing that a person can just say, "it is just 7 minutes of fun." Sex is a reproductive act, biologically that is the primary reason for it. When sex is perverted into a fun act and the reproductive aspect is minimized, you get results like we see now. Millions of people murdered because those people get in the way of OUR FUN! "Kill them! I just wanted to have fun, not a child!" Sickening.
Finally, CS, I say this with love because I want the best for you and any family you may grow in the future.
ReplyDeleteSex leads to babies. No matter the safety steps you take. No matter the truths or lies a man tells you.
Sex leads to babies. Sex leads to babies.
Please understand that fact. If you consent to sex, you consent to a baby. That fact, which is based on science, doesn't change because a condom or pill failed. That fact doesn't change because a man lied to you.
Sex = baby making (possibilities vary, but never go to 0% chance)
Consenting to sex = consenting to baby making (again possibilities vary, but never go to 0% chance)
Jrfjosh is right.
ReplyDeleteCS, The biological sexual drive is so strong, one of the strongest forces on earth (people have killed and been killed for it), and the drive in the body, strictly speaking, is the drive to make a baby/reproduce. That is what the body is trying to do when it comes together in the sexual act. The body is trying to make a child. Healthy bodies will overcome anything, even contraception by "responsible" people, even people who are mature, in order to make a baby. Planned Parenthood admits that 54% of abortions are performed on women who were using contraception that month. Sex and reproduction are a force of nature. The fact that we have to step over 55 million broken, dead bodies of aborted children in our quest for sexual "freedom" means we have not fully accepted reality. Having sex means the bodies are trying very hard to make a baby.
These children are victims of the adults who failed them. You speak of obligations, but the child is the one that adults are obligated to protect. Your obligation to a creepy man might end, but your obligation as a mother to your child does not become negated. The mother has an absolute obligation to her child. The child is weak and voiceless and we are obliged to care for the children. It is black and white. There is no gray area.
All of this can be avoided by acting in a virtuous manner. Or if we make a mistake, or make a bad choice, or commit a sin, we do not then compound the sin by killing the child for the sins of the father or the mother for that matter.
"Men are going around doing blatantly disrespectful things to women during sex without their permission. We need to stop telling women that this is an extent of something they agreed to. Women are just starting to get used to it, and men are under the impression its okay, its scary and very- not ok stuff.
ReplyDelete*sigh*
It is NOT okay for men to do these things. And yet, you're action of sleeping with them before marriage, is convincing them it IS okay. You are not the sole victim. Do not pretend that your enjoyment of sex means that you can choose with whom you have sex with prior to (what is supposed to be) an indissoluble commitment, and then play victim when the other involved turns about to be a jerk, or worse. You better damn (excuse my french) well who you are being intimate with, and know them well enough to trust they aren't going to be a jerk. If you don't trust enough to marry them, then I damn well wouldn't trust them with sex. Anything less is immature irresponsibility.
And again - the baby has a right to grow and develop in the mother's uterus, not because of permission, but because of nature. That baby has just as permission to grow in the mother's uterus as the rain has permission to fall on my lawn. As in, I give it none, and it does it anyway. Nature/ biology don't need permission. We don't, we can't control it. These horrific, yet ultimately weak-minded, weak-willed attempta to control it, simply contribute to so many of the larger problems that you want addressed before you are willing to condemn abortion as the evil act that it is.
"Right but your only agreeing to that outcome if the person you are sleeping with is being honest with you."
ReplyDeleteNot quite, you are agreeing to that outcome because it is biological fact. Nothing ever changes that biological reality.
I will (and do) agree that coercion impacts culpability. I'm sorry if I didn't make that as clear a I should have. However, I guess I'm unclear on how coercion impacts biological fact, especially when a woman is aware that any and all genital contact can result in pregnancy.
When I said that the coercion didn't matter, I meant specifically in the scope of this biological fact. Coercion doesn't change that reality. Is it your position that something about coercion makes a woman forget this reality, and she is no longer accountable for that knowledge?
What then of all the other times we are expected to know and obey law (particularly civil), and ignorance is not an excuse?
And what of any situation where coercion is not involved at all? What of selective reductions, when a woman pregnant with twins murders one of them?
^^^^^^^^^^^^ THIS!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteCS, I think you have a mindset that when we say, "actions have consequences" we mean that anyone who engages in the action and suffers a negative consequence as a result should therefore be shunned or excommunicated or left to fend for him or herself.
ReplyDeleteBut you need to get out of that mindset because it is blatantly false. We're talking about logic and biological facts here. How we respond to those who have made mistakes and need help is a completely separate issue.
And honestly, you have been around this blog long enough to know that we would never shun or refuse to help anyone who needed it regardless of their culpability for their own situation.
ReplyDelete“but the child is the one that adults are obligated to protect. Your obligation to a creepy man might end, but your obligation as a mother to your child does not become negated. The mother has an absolute obligation to her child. The child is weak and voiceless and we are obliged to care for the children. “
Right but when one adult neglects that obligation why must the other fulfill theirs? You think women should be unilaterally responsible for something two people did. I won’t make women do that. Hell, the majority of abortions are for young adults, we’re talking 15-25 year olds here, these are hardly ‘women’. Many of whom had sex under extreme pressure, or that they din’t like, or because they have low self esteem. Many of these things are accident’s these are split second mistakes, made by two people. The abortions that toke place on the video are 20 weeks, not 6. Denying ALL people the ability to take a morning after pill or abortion pill at a few weeks in unusually punitive. Talk to these girls and women, before and after sex educate them, offer them help and services, but don’t MAKE them have babies, especially alone.
CS
“You better damn (excuse my french) well who you are being intimate with, and know them well enough to trust they aren't going to be a jerk. If you don't trust enough to marry them, then I damn well wouldn't trust them with sex. Anything less is immature irresponsibility.”
ReplyDeleteRight but that’s the thing Bethany, you can’t ‘know who you’re being intimate with. My parent’s have been married for 35 years, a large amount of their friends have divorced or cheated. They trusted their spouse, they probably should have trusted their spouse, but people even in marriage break trust all the time. You don’t ever control another person and you have no say in whether someone cheats on you or leaves. Touting marriage as a pancea of anything is bullshit. It is not reasonable to expect women to have crystal balls and know the future of their relationships.
“And again - the baby has a right to grow and develop in the mother's uterus, not because of permission, but because of nature.”
I guess Bethany, this is the point. Even if a woman doesn’t consent to sex, you believe that the baby has a right to live in her. Her actions, be her raped or deceived or coersed do not affect the baby’s right. She could have freely opened her legs or been Bill Cosby’ed the baby has the same right.
And she the woman whose body is being occupied has none. She must because she is a woman, because she has a uterus, always hb willing to put her baby’s need before her own. Women become second class citizens in their own bodies without their consent because they are women
CS
"You think women should be unilaterally responsible for something two people did."
ReplyDeleteUh... no. No one has ever said that. BOTH men and women are responsible for their own sexual choices, and both need to be held accountable. It's unfortunate that it's sometimes more difficult for men to be held accountable, and that the woman will have to bear the brunt of the burden in terms of pregnancy and birth, but the fact remains that both men and women need to be held accountable. No one here has *ever* said otherwise.
"She must because she is a woman, because she has a uterus, always hb willing to put her baby’s need before her own. Women become second class citizens in their own bodies without their consent because they are women."
ReplyDeleteBut it's NOT without their consent. That's what we're saying. If you choose to enter into a sexual relationship with ANYONE, you take those risks. If you absolutely can't bear the thought of ever having an unplanned pregnancy, or a cheating/lying/dishonest partner, then you should never have sex with anyone, or you should never be in a relationship with another person. That's simply a fact of life.
All you can do is try to mitigate the risks as much as you can by making good choices. Don't have sex until marriage. Don't marry a man unless you have a rock-solid foundation for a good marriage. Make sure you know who you are marrying. Get lots of pre-marriage counseling to make sure that your marriage can survive rough times.
And if life happens and your spouse does a complete 180 and starts lying, cheating, etc., then you deal with that as best you can. But that's part of the risks you take.
And none of that -- NONE OF THAT -- justifies killing a child, who is a completely innocent party in the whole situation. S/he is a victim too, and you're essentially suggesting that victims of liars, cheats, etc. should be executed for the crimes of the liar and the cheater. How is that just?
Great points.
DeleteI think Emily "CS" is a good example of our society teaching people they aren't responsible for their own actions and choices.
We teach kids at an early age that nothing is their fault and they can do no wrong. It is always someone else's fault, not their fault.
For example we tell kids "you got 19th place, it isn't your fault, here is a medal!" Instead, we should say "you got 19th place because you didn't practice and work hard enough, or you simply weren't better than the others. Work hard and improve yourself to do better next time." We have a cultural problem that teaches no responsibility for your actions, it is systemic and one reason that leads to people saying it is okay to kill a person because someone lied to another person.
Yes, this ^. Punishing the victim is unjust. And will never, ever give peace and happiness to the punisher either (although even if it did, it would still be wrong).
Delete"Denying ALL people the ability to take a morning after pill or abortion pill at a few weeks in unusually punitive."
ReplyDeleteDo you agree there ARE people who should be denied, then? Situations where abortion isn't reasonable?
CS, I want you to really read what these older, wiser women are saying to you. Really read it. And perhaps pray about it, to.
ReplyDeleteCS.... think about this. You say that the women are the only ones who have to suffer these consequences, but honestly, there are men/boys who suffer, too. If a girl or woman decides to execute (yes, execute) his child, he has NO SAY. Nothing he can do will save that child. He has lost a child to death, and there is no return. He must live with that, even if he offers to marry her, and heck, even if he IS married to her. There are horrible consequences to sin on both sides and in all areas of life. This is all about SIN, CS, not some sad result of "unfair biology". Sin is ugly and sin ends in spiritual and even physical death. Avoid sin!
"She must because she is a woman, because she has a uterus, always hb willing to put her baby’s need before her own. Women become second class citizens in their own bodies without their consent because they are women"
This line deeply troubles me. To care for others, to take care of our children, to protect the weak, to put others, who need us, ahead of ourselves DOES NOT MAKE US SECOND CLASS CITIZENS!
In fact, it's our calling as human beings and as Christians! Please tell me you understand that on some level.
Everything these women are telling you is correct and wise. (And I love that rainfall analogy.) Listen to them. Not every young women gets such wise counsel. This is a gift to you, handed to you. Take it.
(Remember once, years ago, I even did a blog post on the statement you made that made my brain twist. You said: "I have a big issue with all of your assumptions about women, that their bodies were made to breed and sustain other people…." I said it was as if feminists are at war with their own biology. And honestly, if you war with your own biology and with natural law, you end up with atrocities and disaster, like 55 million dead children as many wounded women.)
Okay, so a reminder that when/if we hit 200 comments here, we will need to hit "load more" at the bottom. Or subscribe to email comments which makes it easier. You can read stuff in your inbox that way.
CS, weird question, but what is the greatest desire of your heart?
ReplyDeleteCS - why should one adult fulfill the responsibility when the other doesn't? Because it's the right thing to do. Have you ever heard "two wrongs don't make a right?" Basic morality here... one person doing wrong doesn't mean it's okay for the other to do wrong. By your logic, my mom should have had us three girls euthanized because my dad didn't live up to the bargain and that wasn't fair. Because basically what you are saying is that single parents should be able to ditch their kids out of what... anger.. at the abandoning parent? Not only is that just horrifying logic, but it won't really solve the single-parent dilemma. And even if abortion really solved things and made it "fair' (it doesn't and it won't), it won't solve the problem for the mom of a two-year-old who is abandoned unless we are advocating killing off the clinging, needy 2-year-old. Let's throw away this idea that abortion is the solution and embrace ways to help ALL single parents regardless of the age of their kids (born or unborn). Btw, my youngest sister was still in utero when my dad left. Reading your logic is very upsetting. You have a very dismal view of pregnancy and children.. a very sad and misinformed one. Just like my grandmother found joy in raising her four, my little sister was the one good thing happening to us during a terrible time (regardless of the difficulties of pregnancy or laboring alone). If we are going to help people like my mom it is NOT telling her to abort children like my sister,
ReplyDeleteSorry to get personal here, but what you are advocating directly impacts real women and children and it is very disturbing to me.
Which btw, brings up another point.. not only do mothers suffer from abortion and fathers suffer from abortion (and the babies who die suffer from abortion), but make no mistake ... siblings suffer from abortion. It is a terrible burden to a child to find out that they had siblings who were killed in the womb, and that child will never get the chance to have that friendship or support of that sibling. And they might wonder why they lived and their sibling died. I think specifically of the twins and triplets who survive having a sibling "reduced"... what a burden. I don't know if you are aware, but there are support groups for twins who have lost twins, and many who join lost a twin in utero (and often sense that before the parents even tell them... because these siblings form a relationship in utero that amazingly does impact their lives outside of the womb. Check out "National Geographic's 'Multiples Inside the Womb'"... twins will play together in utero and those same games will be observed even years later).
ReplyDeleteI mean, basically, what you are advocating CS is, "Life isn't fair, so we should *all* just act like jerks and live only for ourselves." What a sad way to live. How about combat the jerkiness of a few men with aiming high instead of trying to race to the bottom of the pit of morality just to make things "even." I say this with concern, not trying to be mean. I used to really feel that sense of unfairness acutely too.... but trying to make everything "even" never solved it.
ReplyDelete“This line deeply troubles me. To care for others, to take care of our children, to protect the weak, to put others, who need us, ahead of ourselves DOES NOT MAKE US SECOND CLASS CITIZENS! In fact, it's our calling as human beings and as Christians! Please tell me you understand that on some level”
ReplyDeleteLeila these are ideals. Not everyday expectations not reasonable expectations. Strive for it, great. But you don’t have to stop eating caviar so that other’s have food. Should you, yes! But no one is making laws over it because that gets highly oppressive. Women get pregnant all the time, most of the time they do what they can do to be great mothers. Sometimes they decide they don’t want to do that. That is a right they have. They don’t have to share their bodies. That’s an unreasonable thing to require of people, especially young girls and women. Biology doesn’t have to be fair but laws do.
CS
“I even did a blog post on the statement you made that made my brain twist. You said: "I have a big issue with all of your assumptions about women, that their bodies were made to breed and sustain other people…." I said it was as if feminists are at war with their own biology”
ReplyDeleteThis is where we loose each other Leila. Your body was made to do a lot of things. Goodness it’s against men’s biology to be monogamous, they were made to be bale to impregnate several women at once. My body grows hair in places I don’t like, I take the hair off. My body does things I don’t like, sometime’s I do things I don’t like, so I change.
CS
JoAnna,
ReplyDelete“But it's NOT without their consent. That's what we're saying. If you choose to enter into a sexual relationship with ANYONE, you take those risks.”
I meant that according to the people on this board the baby has a right to live in the uterus even if the mother was raped. The woman’s obligation doesn’t stem from her consent to engage in a risky activity, her obligation stems from her having a uterus and a baby needing it. Even if she takes no risks, she has an obligation.
And if you start having sex with someone and you ask them to stop and they do not, you did not consent to that did you? If you have sex and you are in and out of consciousness you don’t consent to what happens when you are unconscious right? Or are those risks you took because you chose to enter into a sexual relationship.
CS
“CS, weird question, but what is the greatest desire of your heart?”
ReplyDeleteAt the moment finding a really great relationship
Biology doesn’t have to be fair but laws do.
ReplyDeleteThen explain how RvW is fair, being that the necessity criterion (objective, scientific) that the Court had in its possession and historically consistently implemented before the decision was completely trumped by clarity criterion (subjective, personal feelings).
Or maybe you’re not familiar with the criteria?
Also, explain how it is fair that a lesser right can trump a higher right, in terms of the documented ordering of those natural rights, per the Declaration?
Ref: Dred Scott and its reversal, if necessary
Or maybe you’re not familiar with the proper ordering of unalienable rights, and why they are listed as such?
Also, explain how it's fair that an unalienable right (God-given, not voted upon by any judiciary) was turned into an extrinsic right (voted upon, majority rule, tyranny of the majority) at the handing-down of the RvW decision?
Or maybe you’re not familiar with the major difference between the Declaration of Independence and Unites States Constitution?
I’d love to hear about the fairness of the law and its new establishment at RvW.
Fill us in.
*United States
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Incidentally, CS, you are like a hybrid of person who wants what she thinks she's going to see through rose-colored glasses (perfection), and yet your choices to obtain that perfection are always going to yield the exact opposite of your hope, because of the caliber of men you choose from the onset.
You cannot expect great performance if you're not building the thing to task. Right or wrong?
ReplyDeleteI guess Bethany, this is the point. Even if a woman doesn’t consent to sex, you believe that the baby has a right to live in her. Her actions, be her raped or deceived or coersed do not affect the baby’s right. She could have freely opened her legs or been Bill Cosby’ed the baby has the same right.
And she the woman whose body is being occupied has none. She must because she is a woman, because she has a uterus, always hb willing to put her baby’s need before her own. Women become second class citizens in their own bodies without their consent because they are women
I got pregnant with my first 6 weeks after our wedding, much to the chagrin of my parents, and most everyone else (I think I've mentioned that story before). It was a rough pregnancy - constant sinus infections, morning sickness, and then the swelling which turned out to be toxemia. At 34 week I went into the hospital, at 34w6d I gave birth to a 5lb4oz baby boy, and what should have been 35w3d Icam home with a 4lb13oz baby boy. And proceeded to spiral into PPD for 2 years. There's the background... Fast forward several years and my husband had gotten a new job in a different state, we had 2 boys now and thought about trying for a girl. My best friend who, completely flipped when I had my first because of all the health problems I had had, was already livid with my husband for moving our family 8 hours away. WhenI told her we were expecting #3 (cause we are uber fertile, apparently) she went off. Accused my husband of not taking my health seriously, just wanting to have more babies at the expense of me and my health. Then she said something that I've been turning over in my head for nearly 9 years now, something similar to what you've said here. "I want you to know, you're more than just a uterus, Beth," she said. "You can do so much more than just have babies."
We had a falling out a few years later, interestingly enough, more or less over #4. But her words kept haunting me and I couldn't figure out why. In a moment of epiphanial clarity during an online discussion, where someone said those exact same words, it hit me.
The only people who have EVER made me feel like "just a uterus," are the people who have felt the need to point out to me that I am "more than just a uterus." The condescension in that phrase is flabbergastting. It is YOU, CS, and thos who think like you, who make me and other women feel like second class citizens because we DO have uteruses (uteri?), because we're WOMEN. I am not going to apologize for my sex and its ability to do great and magnificent, miraculous things in the realm of nature, nor am I going to thwart that ability because somebody else thinks it's not good enough to matter in this world. If you think that nature's design for women to carry and bear children makes them second class citizens, simply because nobody controls nature and you did't get to choose your sex, then that's on you. But don't you dare drag down the rest of the world's women by trying to convince them that unless they have "control", they're really just second class citizens, nature and biology be damned.
I have to resign from this conversation for a little while, I'm a little confrontational lately and getting worked up.
Peace and blessings.
Stay. You are making very perfect sense in a conversation of illogical clustered balls and tangled knots.
DeleteYes please stay if you can. You make good points on how the pro-choice movement has hurt women, based on your personal experience.
DeleteThank you for sharing.
In the case of rape, the issue isn't implicit consent, because you're absolutely right - a woman does not consent in that case. However, in the case of rape, it becomes an issue of justice. The child is still a victim. S/he is a victim of the rape just like the mother. And it is not fair or just to execute an innocent child for the crimes of his/her biological father.
ReplyDeleteCS, think about it. Is there any other context where you would support executing an innocent child for the crimes his/her biological father committed? If not, then why is this the one exception? It's a horrible situation all around but no amount of crime or tragedy justifes the taking of an innocent life.
But for now, let's focus on the 99% of pregnancies that are the result of consensual sex and not a rape situation.
Exactly. Abortion is wrong in all situations for the same reason - the child is innocent, and killing an innocent is murder. Just because there are additional reasons in *some* situations doesn't mean it isn't still wrong in *all* situations.
Delete“The condescension in that phrase is flabbergastting. It is YOU, CS, and thos who think like you, who make me and other women feel like second class citizens because we DO have uteruses (uteri?), because we're WOMEN. I am not going to apologize for my sex and its ability to do great and magnificent, miraculous things in the realm of nature, nor am I going to thwart that ability because somebody else thinks it's not good enough to matter in this world.”
ReplyDeleteHi Bethany, don’t apologize for anything. I’d not trying to make you. Don’t thrawrt anything. You can’t assume that just because you did something or that it worked for you everyone should do it though?
It sounds like you had a really rough pregnancy. I’m glad you made it through. But if you didn’t want to risk sinus infections and morning sickness and and toxemia and suffer through years of PD you didn’t have to. Other women don’t have to. They don’t have to choose years of sickness and depression if they don’t think its wroth it. And I’m sure as hell not choosing it for them.
CS
Seems to me that some general post-abortion counseling/consoling on this thread might do someone or other a whole lot of good - along with a heartfelt, long, healing cry of remorse. Some tragedies in life simply have to be traversed through in this way, not skirted around with all manner of flimsy arguments and counter productive rationalizations. All the latter exercise does is uselessly prolong the pain. No matter how many times we mess up in our lives, our Creator forgives us if we ask, and indeed, gives us the graces we need to do better going forward. Blessed be the Mercy of the Lord.
ReplyDelete“CS, think about it. Is there any other context where you would support executing an innocent child for the crimes his/her biological father committed? If not, then why is this the one exception?”
ReplyDeleteCan you think of any other situation in which someone commits an act of violence against you and leaves you with legal obligations? The woman is innocent and she doesn’t owe anyone anything.
The woman is innocent and she doesn’t owe anyone anything.
ReplyDeleteThe baby is innocent and owes no one his or her life.
Do you know anything about laws that affect people who have been victimized by violence, CS? Do you know anyone lost to murder? Intentional killing? Yep. You'll find they're left holding the bag legally on a lot, actually.
Quit reaching. This is so weak, it's nauseating.
Side story: A great friend to me is a product of rape. She's an adult with 5 kids, 4 of whom she adopted from the system. She's a hero. Without her, perhaps those kids would not have been rescued. Abortion serves no one.
Are you going to educate us on law now? We're waiting.
So, CS, your view is that it's right and just to kill an innocent person if an act of violence leaves you with legal obligations toward that person?
ReplyDeleteIronically, JoAnna, she's scared of getting put out by a jerky guy because she thinks the law won't protect her so she's going to off the child (talk about being put out).
ReplyDeleteHowever, there are such things as presumed paternity laws that she's completely ignorant of, and it would do a great deal of good if CS would get her head removed from the modern feminist garbage tank of thought, and into some actual law books, or even just inquire of some family law consultation, if she really wants to learn. It would free her from her fear and hopefully it would give her the same confidence that she need not kill a child, even if every last guy is a cad.
There is lawful recourse. Babies do NOT need to pick up the tab because of fear, CS, see Family Law in your state.
Yes CS but the baby is innocent as well - two victims! Why so much sympathy for the mother and none for the baby? Is the baby any less a victim?
ReplyDeleteFr. Barron on Planned Parenthood and the Loss of Human Dignity
ReplyDeleteCS - "Can you think of any other situation in which someone commits an act of violence against you and leaves you with legal obligations? The woman is innocent and she doesn’t owe anyone anything."
ReplyDeleteI can think of act of violence and you are left with legal and moral obligations. You are abducted by a terrible man who takes you to a remote desert 200 miles from civilization. Also he leaves a 1 month old baby with you there.
Now you have decisions to make. What do you do with the baby? They will slow you down. They will eat and drink your resources you need to survive and thrive. They might attract predators with their cries.
Options:
Kill the baby quickly.
Take the baby on your journey for help.
Kill both of you because you give up.
Or something else you think of??
What would you say is the legal right thing to do? What is the moral right thing to do?
Remember, this isn't fair to you. You didn't consent to this situation. You are completely innocent here. This started with an act of violence against you!
What do you do?
This just popped up in my mail box! (Yes, methinks these days we do whine too much!)
ReplyDeleteON WHINING AND WEEPING
Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Not all tears are alike; there's a difference between weeping and whining. The former is healthy, the latter isn't.
Weeping is healthy. It's a wholesome expression in the face of loss. Moreover, when we weep we are giving expression to a sorrow that speaks not just of some private loss and pain, but somehow too of that same sadness within the entire world. The loss we are mourning may seem a private thing, like the death of a loved one, but, if the focus of our grief is on the one lost rather than on ourselves, our weeping is essentially empathic. Our deep sadness then mourns a universal condition and connects us more deeply to the world, where death and loss spare no one. Everyone, ultimately, carries that same sadness.
Whining, on the other hand, is mostly self-pity. Unlike weeping, its focus is not on what has been lost to tragedy but is primarily upon ourselves, our hurt, and our plea for sympathy. To whine is to hold a private wound up for public viewing in order to look for sympathy, like a child showing a bruised knee to his mother. We can feel sorry for a bruised child, the propriety there is not offensive, but the scenario is not nearly as palatable when we are adults.
We cry tears for different reasons and we cry tears in different ways. In all tears, the question is: “Whom am I crying for, for someone else or for myself? What is causing my tears, sympathy for someone, sympathy for something, or self-pity?”
What CS does not understand is that most states have a form of document called a ROP (Recognition of Parentage) which gets the court action in motion. After legal status is obtained, the father then has duties, obligations and rights to that child. There is lawful recourse to name a father, to get him identified legally, and to get legal and emotional help. There are court actions that can and usually are named to determine biological relationship.
ReplyDeleteThere is NO reason to kill a child because you fear getting ditched.
But the smartest thing to do to avoid all of this headache, stress, cost, time wasted is to abstain in the first place. Hello.
* There are court actions that can be done and usually are done to name and determine that biological relationship
DeleteThanks guys. The last week has been challenging, guess I'm a little more sensitive than normal.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you had a really rough pregnancy. I’m glad you made it through. But if you didn’t want to risk sinus infections and morning sickness and and toxemia and suffer through years of PD you didn’t have to. Other women don’t have to. They don’t have to choose years of sickness and depression if they don’t think its wroth it. And I’m sure as hell not choosing it for them.
Oddly enough this gives me comfort. Do you know why? 10 years ago I was 26, pregnant with my 2nd, and making this Exact Same Argument, in a discussion with some friends, one of whom was a pro-life Republican. I think I used the phrase, "stuff-shirted, white-haired politicians" referring to who wasn't going to "*tell me* what I can and cannot do with my body." I can still hear the adamant attitude in my voice.
A lot changes in 10 years. A lot of growing up.
You say I didn't have to go through that pregnancy. You're right. I didn't. That't true, whether abortion is legal or not. You see just as you think the moral law and legal law are and should be different, the legal law does not prevent our ability to choose. It alters or adds or subtracts consequences for the choices depending upon how that choice may potentially effect people and society, but it doesn't eliminate the choice itself. People choose illegal and even immoral things everyday, but you know that, that's part of what you're saying - men who are making immoral and even illegal choices by not accepting their role.
I am still hung up on this, though. How does nature/biology turn women into 2nd class citizens? It didn't. Other people did, so the answer is to what? Make sure others have a non-existent legal right to interfer with nature and biology because some people are stupid jerks? Um but I thought the legal law and nature were separate?
ReplyDeleteSorry that if that came out condescending. I'm thinking while writing, which usually means rambling stream of consciousness stuff.
*interfere
DeleteHi jrfjosh
ReplyDelete“What would you say is the legal right thing to do? What is the moral right thing to do? Remember, this isn't fair to you. You didn't consent to this situation. You are completely innocent here. This started with an act of violence against you!
The moral thing is to take care of the baby absolutely. Most people would do that as they should. But the question isn’t what should you do, it’s what must you do. If you were on a dessert island with limited food and you earnestly believed sharing it would be a threat to your survival, I would chastise you, I would think you were a selfish person, but I wouldn’t put you in prison for trying to save your own life.
That's why morality versus legality matters
CS
I was asking what would YOU do in that situation. Please answer and explain why you would do that.
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ReplyDeleteHi Bethany
“I am still hung up on this, though. How does nature/biology turn women into 2nd class citizens?”
Having to attend to the needs of someone else’s use for your body over your own use and desire for your body makes you a second class citizen. Treating pregnant and non pregnant women differently under the law makes them second class citizens. Not choosing to but having to.
We interfere with nature/ biology every day all the time.
CS