Instead of engaging with the text of Archbishop Charles J. Chaput’s recent remarks at Notre Dame, Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter has attacked Chaput for saying that it might sometimes be necessary to deny communion to abortion-supporting politicians. Winters claims such a stance makes no sense because, “There are many reasons why someone might not support a certain piece of legislation that would restrict or criminalize abortion.”
But what about cases in which the politician’s reasons for opposing pro-life laws are well known? This is precisely the case with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi has explicitly endorsed a “right to choose” and elsewhere offered as her reason that, “women should have that opportunity to exercise their free will.” Pelosi’s votes in favor of abortion are not a matter of prudence. They are a matter of principle—deliberate, dogged, and unashamed.
There are arguments for a stance like Pelosi’s, but we should not pretend that any of them are Catholic. As Pelosi’s own pastor, Archbishop George H. Niederauer, wrote in a response to her public statements, “It is entirely incompatible with Catholic teaching to conclude that our freedom of will justifies choices that are radically contrary to the Gospel—racism, infidelity, abortion, theft.”
Some fear that prudential considerations (which are necessary for any principled politics) are increasingly invoked as an excuse for infidelity rather than used as a tool for faithful citizenship, and Winters’ dubious use of prudence is not likely to reassure them. But all this is somewhat beside the point, for the reality today is that many of our self-identified Catholic politicians feel no need to work against life under cover of insincerely invoked prudential grounds. Instead, they support abortion rights on principle and in the open.
It’s also worth noting that Winters misreported the actual event. In the original news report Winters cites, we are informed that Chaput was asked “why there is so much disunity among Catholics on the question of Catholics in political life standing clearly with the church on major moral issues such as abortion.” Winters rewrites the exchange so that denial of communion is introduced as the subject of a controversial question. Chaput is now “asked why Catholics were so divided over the issue of whether or not to deny communion to pro-choice politicians.” This small error is simply the first false brushstroke in Winters’ portrait of a man embattled and alone.
Winters concludes with a transparent attempt to drive a wedge between Chaput and his fellow bishops. He claims that Chaput has called them “cowards” because they fear driving Catholic politicians out of the political life. But Chaput said no such thing, nor is there is anything cowardly in the desire to ensure a vigorous Catholic voice in the public square. On the contrary, it is a goal that Chaput himself has, I would submit, consistently and even courageously sought to advance.
April 14th, 2011 | 10:45 am
The question in my mind is whether the statements from various sources (including the Vatican) that abortion must be illegal are so weighty that legislators who disagree should be denied communion. I don’t think Pelosi gave a very good account of the Catholic position on when life begins (although she wasn’t as wrong as some people would make her out to be), but the real question is what the law ought to be. Ought the law in a pluralistic democracy go by the Catholic principle that life begins at conception, or ought it to go by the Jewish concept that life (or more accurately, full personhood) begins at birth? When different religious traditions disagree, why should one religious tradition be governed by the laws of another?
April 14th, 2011 | 11:26 am
The question in my mind is whether the statements from various sources (including the Vatican) that abortion must be illegal are so weighty that legislators who disagree should be denied communion
If human life is sacred, then taking it would be a sin, no? It is not clear to me why killing a fetus would be different in kind from killing a Jew or a black man or a senior citizen or a homeless man: human lives are supposed to be equal in value, no?
If a sinner is openly unrepentant, is that a problem re: granting communion?
April 14th, 2011 | 12:06 pm
Archbsihop Chaput is right to observe that you are not free to pick and choose which church teachings you will follow and remain truly Catholic. So called pro-’choice’ Catholics like Pelosi should remain true to their worship of the principle of choice and choose a less dogmatic church, or as some of us see it, flee to a church that lacks enduring tenets and likes to keep up with the times. The church is obligated to deny communion to those who refuse to follow its teachings.
April 14th, 2011 | 12:25 pm
Blake,
What precisely is Pelosi’s sin for which she should be refused communion?
April 14th, 2011 | 12:33 pm
@David Nickol “What precisely is Pelosi’s sin for which she should be refused communion?”
Condoning the taking of innocent human life.
As to your first post: what the law of a particular country has nothing to do with whether the Church should deny Communion?
April 14th, 2011 | 12:56 pm
[...] There is a lot of meat to gnaw on in the talk which is posted on the Public Discourse site. H/T First Thoughts (apparently there was some Misreporting of the good bishops response to questions concerning pro [...]
April 14th, 2011 | 1:28 pm
Blake,
What precisely is Pelosi’s sin for which she should be refused communion?
I didn’t say anything about Pelosi.
I only asked whether enabling, justifying, participating in, accommodating, or being an accomplice to the murder of unborn babies is different in kind from any other mass murder.
April 14th, 2011 | 1:37 pm
Ian,
I don’t have any exhaustive account of Pelosi’s views, so I will just say that a pro-life politician need not condone abortion. There is a difference between saying every woman should be permitted to make her own decision of conscience and saying that women in a particular circumstance should have an abortion.
My point regarding laws is that many Catholic politicians take the position that they are personally opposed to abortion but they do not believe it should be criminalized. The Catholic Church has taken a position that abortion must be against the law. A Catholic politician might take the position that abortion was immoral, no one should have an abortion, and so on, but nevertheless believe that criminalizing abortion was not the best way to deal with it. That person would be in accord with the Church on the morality of abortion itself, but would not be in accord with the Church’s position that abortion must be criminalized. I don’t believe that should be grounds for refusing a Catholic politician communion.
It seems apparent that most Catholic bishops hold the position, for whatever reason, that this is an issue over which to deny communion. Many Catholics apparently take that as cowardice on the part of the bishops, but of course supporting the bishops when you agree with their decisions but calling them cowards when you disagree with them is really not respectful of the bishops.
April 14th, 2011 | 2:28 pm
@Publius
“Archbishop Chaput is right to observe that you are not free to pick and choose which church teachings you will follow and remain truly Catholic.”
No, he’s completely wrong. Catholics are free to pick and choose. Catholics have official teachings, but in practice completely ignore it. (I would know — I went to Catholic school.) A recent study, conducted by reproductive health institute Guttmacher, finds that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women use or have used birth control other than church-approved natural family planning. 98%! That’s almost all of them.
source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110414/sc_livescience/religiousfauxpasmostcatholicsusecontraception
April 14th, 2011 | 2:58 pm
I don’t have any exhaustive account of Pelosi’s views, so I will just say that a pro-life politician need not condone abortion. There is a difference between saying every woman should be permitted to make her own decision of conscience and saying that women in a particular circumstance should have an abortion.
Would you think it is okay to say that every person or nation should be permitted to make its own decision of conscience re: whether to murder any other type of human life?
Do you agree that Middle Eastern men and/or nations have the right to decide for themselves whether to stone women or gays to death? Is that a “personal” or “private” decision?
April 14th, 2011 | 3:00 pm
A recent study, conducted by reproductive health institute Guttmacher, finds that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women use or have used birth control other than church-approved natural family planning. 98%! That’s almost all of them.
If you expand the survey to include all kinds of sin, instead of just one kind of sin, I bet you’ll find that 100% of Catholics have committed one.
April 14th, 2011 | 3:02 pm
One should not receive communion if one is not in communion with The Catholic Church.
April 14th, 2011 | 3:30 pm
Jeff,
The Church does not, and should not, govern itself on the basis of public opinion polls. If some “Catholics” are out of sync with the Church’s teaching, then these individuals may reassure themselves that they are good Catholics, but they are not. It’s not the Church’s job to align itself with the prevailing opinions of the day. 34% of Americans believe in flying saucers from other planets, 16% believe that Bush and Cheney engineered 9/11. All this proves is that there are a lot of stupid people. If a “Catholic” believes in abortion, they are no longer Catholic, regardless of what they may think.They are however free to exercise their pro-choice rights and become Unitarians.
April 14th, 2011 | 3:33 pm
Would you think it is okay to say that every person or nation should be permitted to make its own decision of conscience re: whether to murder any other type of human life?
Blake,
Murder should never be permissible by law. But under American law, abortion is not murder. Furthermore, it never was murder even when it was widely illegal prior to Roe v Wade. Murder, in our legal tradition, can only take place after birth.
There is a legitimate debate as to when life (personhood) begins, but legally speaking, it is the pro-life movement that is trying to change the legal tradition of the past several hundred years.
April 14th, 2011 | 3:57 pm
@Blake
That’s the other extreme. Catholics selectively ignore teachings they don’t want to follow. However, they do have some rules that they follow. 98% of Catholics have not cheated on their spouses. Also, they aren’t just failing to follow the birth control teachings every now and then — they are completely ignoring the teachings.
April 14th, 2011 | 4:02 pm
Life begins the moment we are brought into being, at our creation, when we were created and endowed by God with our unalienable Rights. This is why the statement regarding our creation and our endowment with our unalienable Rights is all part of the same sentence in our Declaration of Independence. Our Founding Fathers recognized that we are endowed with our unalienable Rights not when we are brought forth from the womb at our birth, but rather at the moment we are brought into being at creation.
April 14th, 2011 | 4:56 pm
@Blake
That’s the other extreme. Catholics selectively ignore teachings they don’t want to follow. However, they do have some rules that they follow. 98% of Catholics have not cheated on their spouses. Also, they aren’t just failing to follow the birth control teachings every now and then — they are completely ignoring the teachings.
So since you know all about the inner workings of Catholics, please tell me, just how many, percentage-wise, have cheated on their spouses?
Then tell me, how many, percentage-wise, routinely use birth control (vs. those who tried it when they were younger)?
Of those who routinely use birth control, how active are they? Do Catholics who actually attend Mass once a week routinely use birth control?
Be careful with statistics. They are slippery. Especially when you’re trying to turn “98% of Catholics have used birth control” into “98% of Catholics currently and routinely use birth control” – which we know can’t be true, because the Catholic population has too many post-menopausal couples in it for that to even make sense.
April 14th, 2011 | 5:15 pm
@Blake
I think it’s a safe statement to say that more than just a few Catholics are disobeying what the church says about birth control. So we shouldn’t be surprised if the same goes for abortion.
April 14th, 2011 | 6:49 pm
Jeff, why are you changing the subject? The point at issue was whether one’s convictions have anything to do with whether one can be “fully Catholic.” It’s unclear to me why any statistic would bear on that question.
April 14th, 2011 | 8:18 pm
Murder should never be permissible by law. But under American law, abortion is not murder.
Yet.
April 14th, 2011 | 9:11 pm
Blake,
One way to get an idea of what abortion laws would be like if Roe is overturned is to take a look at states that have passed “trigger laws”—that is, anti-abortion laws that will go into effect the moment Roe is overturned (if it ever is). The five states that have them do not classify abortion as murder.
In the United States, when abortion was against the law, it was not murder, and if it ever is against the law again, the odds are very much against a state treating it as murder.
April 14th, 2011 | 11:28 pm
D. Nickol: “The Catholic Church has taken a position that abortion must be against the law. A Catholic politician might take the position that abortion was immoral, no one should have an abortion, and so on, but nevertheless believe that criminalizing abortion was not the best way to deal with it. That person would be in accord with the Church on the morality of abortion itself, but would not be in accord with the Church’s position that abortion must be criminalized. I don’t believe that should be grounds for refusing a Catholic politician communion.”
This Nickol is a “proceduralist”: he wants to frame the issue in terms of procedures rather than substance. That way, a person can “agree” with the Church on an issue but not have to do anything about it.
According to this “position”: a German citizen of the 1930s could “disagree” with the Fuhrer’s “position” on abortion but not have to feel any obligation to do anything about it.
In this way all morality becomes merely abstract and meaningless.
April 15th, 2011 | 3:34 am
David Nickol
“I don’t have any exhaustive account of Pelosi’s views, so I will just say that a pro-life politician need not condone abortion.”
As only God has an “exhaustive account” of anyone’s views you would not bar anyone from Communion. Pelosi’s record on opposing the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act and her active support for abortion are clear enough – please re-read the article. Pelosi ought of her own conscience refrain from taking Communion as she is clearly not in communion with the Church. She appears to have hardened her heart and as a prominent politician who plays the “I’m a Catholic and a Democrat” card, she is leading some of the faithful astray. If she will not repent of her unChristian views, if she continues to call the truth a lie and lies the truth then it is right for the Bishop to say she should not take Communion.
It may have been a slip of your pen but pro-life politicians do not condone abortion.
April 15th, 2011 | 8:04 am
Let me see if I can parse the questions behind the Church leaders’ logic (and that of many of us who agree) that a Catholic politician cannot in good conscience be pro-abortion in the processes of framing and debating the law of the land.
First, what sin have they committed? They would not have abortions in their own families. Well, here it is. If someone came to me and asked my advice whether to obtain an abortion, what is the morality of my suggesting they get one? Surely it is clear that I would not be innocent, even though I never came close to the mill where the act took place. Urging others to commit sin is proximate material cooperation, and it carries similar guilt to actually committing the sin.
For legislators, the enactment of laws permitting abortions constitute this kind of cooperation in evil. It would be less clear if there were no laws against murder. But since there are, to permit murder for some categories of persons is a clearly grave evil. Morally, it is equivalent to permitting the lynching of black people. It robs that category of people not only of protection for their life, but their dignity as human persons made in God’s image.
There is also the fact that law is a teacher. Laws permitting (yea, encouraging) abortion tend to teach people that this form of murder is morally permissible. We tend to form our citizens to be indifferent to human life, if that life is costly or inconvenient to us.
It matters not that abortion has not been defined as murder in US law. What matters morally is what really is happening, and not the vagaries of inconsistent lawmaking. Martin Luther King, in his letter from [was it Birmingham?] jail, parsed the distinction very nicely between just and unjust laws.
What about the communion thing? All of us are sinners who approach the communion table. How can we exclude the pro-abortion politicians? The answer is that, while recognizing our sinfulness, it is a grave sin of sacrilege to receive the Lord in the state of mortal sin; ie, having not repented, confessed and received absolution for any mortal sins.
It is a condition of repentance to intend not to repeat the sins repented of. This is common sense, besides being a teaching of the Church. A politician whose legislative actions demonstrate that he has no intention of repenting of cooperation in abortion gives scandal when he approaches the communion table. Hence, the recently-famous Canon 915, which permits (requires, maybe) that the pastor withhold communion from a chronic grave public sinner.
Unfortunately, there has been a lot of inconsistency among Church leaders in applying these common-sense moral principles. In addition, the explanations for either following or not the guidance of Canon 915 has not been very clear. Much of the public discourse makes it sound like the issue is whether or not the offending politician can belong to the “Catholic Club”, which has certain “by-laws.” Some members of the “Club” wish these by-laws to be strictly enforced, and others don’t, seemingly for the sake of showing “tolerance.”
What is tragically lost in all this is that one’s eternal salvation is at stake.
April 15th, 2011 | 8:28 am
@David
The idea that abortion is murder is one that many pro-lifers will say, but not even a fundamentalist pro-lifer can take it seriously. Ask most pro-lifers what should be the penalty for a woman who has an illegal abortion, and they nearly jump out of their seat. As even Sarah Palin said, “I would never advocate prison for a woman who had an illegal abortion”.
April 15th, 2011 | 8:38 am
Blake,
One way to get an idea of what abortion laws would be like if Roe is overturned is to take a look at states that have passed “trigger laws”—that is, anti-abortion laws that will go into effect the moment Roe is overturned (if it ever is). The five states that have them do not classify abortion as murder.
In the United States, when abortion was against the law, it was not murder, and if it ever is against the law again, the odds are very much against a state treating it as murder.
The next civil rights movement is going to be children’s rights.
It’s coming.
Then a lot of current law will be revisited (child custody, marriage, child actors, educational rights and responsibilities, bullying – a lot of laws will be revisitied) – and we will be a better nation for it.
April 15th, 2011 | 11:14 am
I find it extremely difficult to believe that Jesus ever intended the Eucharist to be used as a bludgeon as some prominent bishops are inclined to do. Certainly, they have the duty to vigorously argue in favor of pro-life public policy and speak out against measures that run counter to that. However, no matter how just their cause may be, it is wrong for a bishop to use, or rather abuse, the sacrament in this way. In fact, I would argue that it is a sacrilege. To employ such a tactic displays a fundamental lack of understanding of the gospel in which Jesus sat and ate with sinners and tax collectors.
April 15th, 2011 | 11:40 am
As only God has an “exhaustive account” of anyone’s views you would not bar anyone from Communion.
Ian,
No, I did not make a claim that no one should be barred from communion. I merely declined to claim that Pelosi either had or had not condoned abortion. I don’t accept that being in favor of an individual’s right to choose an abortion is condoning it. I don’t claim that only an omniscient person can know Pelosi’s position well enough to say she condones abortion. I am saying I don’t know enough about her position to make that statement. If someone can point to a statement she has made that under certain circumstances, women should have abortions, I will be more than willing to concede she condones abortion. I don’t think to be pro-choice is necessarily to condone abortion.
April 15th, 2011 | 12:11 pm
This Nickol is a “proceduralist”: he wants to frame the issue in terms of procedures rather than substance. That way, a person can “agree” with the Church on an issue but not have to do anything about it.
BobG,
You have misunderstood what I said. My position is that Catholics have a very weighty responsibility to agree with and abide by the Church’s teachings on abortion itself. However, I do not believe what the Church says about what civil law ought to be regarding abortion is a Church teaching about abortion. It is a teaching about what law ought to be in a pluralistic democracy, and I think Catholics are justified in disagreeing with it, or maybe agreeing with it in principle but in a particular country at a particular time saying they do not believe that criminalization is the best, or even the most effective, solution to the problem.
Consequently, I feel Catholics are bound by the Church’s teachings on abortion. I feel Catholics are not bound by what the Church says about how civil law must handle abortion.
I am talking about legislators here, and there is a limited amount one legislator can do. There is also no Church teaching about precisely what kind of laws the Church believes must be put in place to outlaw abortion. If a legislator believes that a particular proposed anti-abortion law would be counterproductive, would not actually decrease the number of abortions, would result in the same number of abortions but more dangerous ones, and so on, he or she certainly must have the freedom to vote accordingly, rather than say, “The Church says abortion must be illegal, so I must vote for this very bad bill.”
According to this “position”: a German citizen of the 1930s could “disagree” with the Fuhrer’s “position” on abortion but not have to feel any obligation to do anything about it.
Did you really mean abortion here? Because the Nazis were “pro-life.” To the best of my knowledge, Nazi Germany is the only country in history to have threatened the death penalty for abortion. (As Wikipedia notes, however, “undesirables” were sometimes forced to have abortions in Nazi Germany.)
Regarding “this Nickol,” I take the usage as an intentional note of incivility, but at least you spelled my name correctly.
April 15th, 2011 | 12:39 pm
D Nichols said: In the United States, when abortion was against the law, it was not murder, and if it ever is against the law again, the odds are very much against a state treating it as murder.
And this is part of the problem which should be rectified. It is this relativistic view of murder that makes legal abortion possible. And also makes euthanasia possible when we start eliminating certain types of life from the definition of murder.
In a prior post you asked why our laws should follow the Catholic view of personhood beginning at conception rather than the Jewish view of beginning at birth.
There are a number of sound biological reasons but the most obvious is the range of ages of viability at birth. If a baby born at 26 weeks is viable now and given personhood under Jewish definition, doesn’t that rationally mean that a baby still in utero at 26 weeks is a person even if they haven’t been born yet? If you grant that is the case, then rationally we can also ask if any fetus born with a beating heart is also a person legally deserving of protection from murder in or out of utero. And on and on citing different biological markers.
Since this view of personhood at birth is so variable biologically it starts to lack reason as a good marker. The Catholic view of personhood at conception suffers from no such variability and will not be subject to change as medicine advances. From the moment of conception, the genetically complete fertilized egg is never going to become anything but a unique human being at any time during it’s development. Such a definitive and unchangable point of personhood seems much more rational than any other subjective and moving biological target.
April 15th, 2011 | 1:32 pm
momor,
Personhood isn’t a biological concept, it’s a legal and/or philosophical one.
Just because it is difficult to draw a bright line between two states, stages, etc. doesn’t mean they must be taken to be the same. On the spectrum, for example, you may not be able to identify the exact spot where yellow stops being yellow and green starts being green, but this doesn’t mean we need to regard yellow and green as the same color to solve the problem.
April 15th, 2011 | 2:17 pm
David,
Personhood ‘deserving’ of protection under the law is a legal definition based on a biological event (the taking of a breath) in many if not most states. Philosophy is not involved.
Philosophical definitions of personhood are just as fraught with error as ever shifting biological ones. It becomes dependant on which philosophy you adhere to and is just as subject to intense debate with no better rational basis for agreement.
Please explain if you can how the Catholic definition of when personhood begins is not the most rational and defensible of all definitions.
April 15th, 2011 | 3:15 pm
Matthew, thanks for writing on this. The news article that was distorted by Winters was written by me. I had not seen the Winters commentary until I read your blog. I have posted a comment under the Winters piece at NCR indicating my displeasure at his unfairness to Arbp. Chaput and my displeasure that he distorted my news story. You are absolutely right: Winters created his own question for the answer he quoted. Furthermore, the archbishop never used the word “coward” about his fellow bishops, nor did he imply that. He simply said there was disagreement about how to approach the issue, something anyone who was paying attention for the past few years knew already. Arbp. Chaput was very open and engaging in his interaction with the students at Notre Dame; it’s realy too bad that his reward is to be mischaracterized by people who disagree with him.
April 15th, 2011 | 3:21 pm
Please explain if you can how the Catholic definition of when personhood begins is not the most rational and defensible of all definitions.
momor,
I think a book-length response would be required to do the topic justice, but I would say there are two principle reasons. First, the Catholic definition, to my mind, basically says that a potential thing is the thing itself. Since a fertilized egg is going to be a person some day, it must be treated as a person. (In reality, most fertilized eggs do not result in pregnancies, let alone live births, but that is another topic.) In a nutshell—you probably know what’s coming—an acorn is not an oak tree, and a hen’s egg is not a chicken.
Second, I would argue that a person should be defined by what it can do, not by what it is. Why is God a person, or why is an angel a person, or suspending disbelief temporarily, why was ET, or Mr. Spock, or Data, or The Doctor, or HAL a person? It is because they had the attributes of a person. They could perceive, think, choose, believe, doubt, and so on.
I would agree that if there is such a thing as an immortal human spiritual soul that can exist independently from the body, then a person exists as soon as a soul is infused. But that is a matter of faith, not of science, and I don’t think you can pass a law against abortion based on belief that a soul is present. And the Catholic Church doesn’t say when a soul is present.
April 15th, 2011 | 3:48 pm
momor,
Personhood isn’t a biological concept, it’s a legal and/or philosophical one.
When this nation was founded on the idea that “all men are created equal”, the founders believed that not all human beings were equal. Some human beings had personhood and some human beings didn’t – because they were women or because they were slaves or even just because they were poor.
But we are moving toward the recognition that equality is fundamentally incompatible with exceptions and cherry-picking. As long as a single human being can be viewed as “legally not a person”, then we cannot say that we are a nation where all humans are equal. The best we can say is that we value all humans as equal, except the ones we don’t. But let’s face it – even the most horrible governments of the early and mid 20th century could say that.
April 15th, 2011 | 4:00 pm
[...] recent address at Notre Dame. Now the author of the original news report, Ann Carey, has commented on my post. Carey regretfully points out that in his rush to criticize Chaput, Winters [...]
April 15th, 2011 | 4:06 pm
David,
Thanks for your explanation.
I think you really make the core of the argument for the Catholic position however, without meaning too. Since we don’t know precisely when the soul enters the body, we must hold to the possibility that it occurs at the moment of conception when the egg and sperm unite to become a unique human individual.
By your own admission, if a soul exists then the moment it unites with the body that body/soul becomes a person. And since no one can prove a soul does not exist in each person from the moment of conception, then ethically and rationally we must default to the position that it does in order to be certain we are not legalizing murder.
As far as attributes defining personhood: “It is because they had the attributes of a person. They could perceive, think, choose, believe, doubt, and so on.”
This hardly defines a newborn infant, aside from certain perceptions of noxious or pleasant stimuli which are known to exist even prior to birth. This definition would leave us open to legalizing infanticide up to a certain point. And once again that point would always be a subjective opinion and a shifting biological marker.
April 15th, 2011 | 4:25 pm
I left out my closing thought in my last post.
Truth is truth because it is the same past, present, and future. We need to attach the legal definition of a person to an unchanging point in time which is logically the moment of conception. If advances in medical science cause us to have to reevaluate that definition then it was never truth to begin with.
April 15th, 2011 | 4:28 pm
Mr. Nickol,
You have defined personhood in two very different ways (“a person should be defined by what it can do”, then “a person exists as soon as a soul is infused”). Which is it? Is a person defined by function (communicable attributes) or by ensoulment (putting aside the question of how one might discern this)? These are quite distinct, but you seem to be trying to play both sides of the field to your advantage.
April 15th, 2011 | 4:35 pm
If I may appreciatively summarize momor’s argument: If prudence is a virtue, then abortion must be treated as murder. For rational man, prudence is a virtue.
April 15th, 2011 | 4:51 pm
TimC,
Basically what I am saying is that there are two very different ways to look at the question. From the nonreligious, secular viewpoint (which is what our laws are based on), I believe there should be a functional definition of a person—can the entity in question perceive, think, believe, decide.
From the religious perspective (or at least the Catholic perspective), God infuses immortal souls only in persons. There is no need to ask the question whether an immortal soul can perceive, think, believe, and decide. We simply have faith that in creating an immortal human soul, God brings a human person into existence.
I am saying that for a believing Catholic, the question of whether a fertilized egg (with an infused soul) is a person is answered by faith. The Church says it is a person. No further tests are required. An immortal human soul doesn’t have to meet a functional definition of a person.
April 15th, 2011 | 4:59 pm
These are quite distinct, but you seem to be trying to play both sides of the field to your advantage.
TimC,
One more point. You seem to think I am up to no good in bringing up the matter of an immortal human soul. Actually, from my perspective, I was making a concession. In essence, I was saying, “If I look at this from a purely secular point of view, but your position as a Catholic is true, then you are right and I am wrong. A fertilized egg with an immortal human soul is a person.”
April 15th, 2011 | 5:12 pm
If I may appreciatively summarize momor’s argument: If prudence is a virtue, then abortion must be treated as murder. For rational man, prudence is a virtue.
I don’t see that this has any more truth value than, “If prudence is a virtue, then abortion must not be treated as murder. For a rational man, prudence is a virtue.”
Remember that from the Catholic point of view, an abortion is never permissible, even to save the life of the mother—even to save the world! If a woman has a problem pregnancy, and only an abortion will save her life, it is not permitted, even though the abortion would save one life and not performing the abortion would cause two lives to be lost.
If your position is that it is always prudent to assume that a fetus is a human life because it may be a human life, you have situations like the one I just described where you know the mother is a human person, but you only assume the fetus is a human person, because you want to “err on the side of life.” I think prudence would dictate—if you are not certain the fetus is a human life—that you save the life you know is a human life. You perform the abortion to save the mother. You don’t let a “maybe person” and a known person both die because you might be killing a “maybe person” by an abortion. In such a situation not saving the mother’s life can only be justified (if it can be justified at all) if you know the unborn child is a person with a right to life.
April 15th, 2011 | 6:18 pm
Remember that from the Catholic point of view, an abortion is never permissible, even to save the life of the mother—even to save the world! If a woman has a problem pregnancy, and only an abortion will save her life, it is not permitted, even though the abortion would save one life and not performing the abortion would cause two lives to be lost.
Except for the fact that there are a great many women who were instructed to get an abortion, who not only survived, but now have living children.
You have to wonder at the motives of someone who is passionate enough to insist that these women should be saved, no matter the cost – until you say “well then a good-faith effort should be made to find a surrogate and put that baby in the surrogate’s womb, then”…then suddenly the “pay any cost to save that woman’s life” rhetoric disappears.
April 16th, 2011 | 4:38 pm
Blake,
Another possible solution to the case of a woman with a life-threatening pregnancy is to put her in a time machine and send her far into the future where doctors with knowledge far in advance of our own can save both mother and baby. True, we don’t have time travel, but then again, we also don’t have the ability to transfer a fetus from a pregnant woman in mid-pregnancy to a surrogate mother. So both seem equally rational solutions.
April 17th, 2011 | 1:37 pm
How about simply “a good-faith effort to save both lives?” Most maternal-life-threatening prenatal conditions don’t manifest themselves or really become life-threatening in early pregnancy. It’s in mid- to late pregnancy, when the unborn child is at least potentially viable if delivered, that conditions like eclampsia present themselves.
Ditto the situation with many existing maternal medical conditions which would make carrying a pregnancy to term difficult and dangerous. In a situation wherein a mother with, for example, significant bone loss and abdominal scar tissue due to steroidal treatment and then surgery for ulcerative colitis (to name the situation of one friend of mine), a doctor’s course of action for a pregnancy might reasonably be to let the baby go as close to term as possible — 27 weeks, say — without endangering the mother’s health, then deliver and treat the premature baby in the NICU.
All that presumes, of course, that both the mother and the doctor view the child as a child, with a life to be saved if possible, and not merely a kind of disposable human-DNA tumor. We do, at this moment, have the technology to save very, very tiny premature babies, and it’s time to recognize any tiny, potentially premature baby as worth the effort and expense of saving, if at all possible, as well as the mother.
April 17th, 2011 | 2:44 pm
All that presumes, of course, that both the mother and the doctor view the child as a child, with a life to be saved if possible, and not merely a kind of disposable human-DNA tumor.
Unfortunately the true meaning of the phrase “pro-choice” is that people honestly believe that whether that child is a child or not is a “choice” for the mother to make.
April 19th, 2011 | 6:18 pm
Well, yes. That’s the stumbling block.
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