Writing about the recent personhood amendment in Mississippi, Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says that when faced with the central logic of the pro-life movement many people “who considered themselves pro-life balked, blinked, and ran for cover.”
When voters in Mississippi voted down the human personhood amendment last week, they sent a clear and undeniable message — the pro-life movement is not as pro-life as it thinks it is. The truth is that, even in what may be the most pro-life state in the union, the most basic moral logic of the pro-life movement is not fully embraced or understood.
[. . .]
Unless the unborn child is recognized as a person at every point in its development, we are just negotiating our own arbitrary definition of human personhood and human life. The pro-life movement rightly recognized Harry Blackmun’s trimester approach to be deadly to the unborn and disastrous to the cause of human dignity. But the defeat of the personhood amendment in Mississippi indicates that voters there just operate out of a more conservative version of Blackmun’s logic. Given the opportunity to declare the human personhood of every individual from the moment of fertilization onward, voters overwhelmingly said “No.”
November 18th, 2011 | 11:44 am
The problem with the personhood amendments is that they implicitly concede that there is a distinction between a “human” and a “person.” Once this concession is made to the pro-abortionist and pro-choice position, we end up arguing about what attributes of humanity constitute a person and leave a loophole for pro-lifers to wiggle out through. They can then say “Well, I am pro-life but that human embryo or fetus is not a person until a some attribute is visible or a certain trimester is reached.”
In subsequent campaigns, perhaps it would be more clear to vote on an amendment that says something like “all humans are persons and all persons are humans” or “there is no distinction between humans and persons.”
November 18th, 2011 | 11:50 am
TJH In subsequent campaigns, perhaps it would be more clear to vote on an amendment that says something like “all humans are persons and all persons are humans” or “there is no distinction between humans and persons.”
The problem with that approach is that while all humans are persons, not all persons are (legally speaking) humans. Corporations, for example, are considered by the law as persons in many situations.
November 18th, 2011 | 11:52 am
Speaking as a Mississippi voter who spoke to other voters (on both sides), a big part of the initiative’s problem for those who might otherwise have voted for it was that it was poorly worded, brought in cloning, and did not explicitly address miscarriages.
November 18th, 2011 | 12:06 pm
It is true that many pro-life groups have not supported personhood amendments. But that is not because of a lack of principle or courage, but rather a consideration of prudence and tactics.
November 18th, 2011 | 12:11 pm
It is, of course, impossible to know why each individual voter cast the vote he or she did, but I think there were ample reasons for those who believe that life (personhood) begins at conception to vote against this amendment.
Even the most committed pro-lifers could have believed the amendment was a misguided strategic move and could have been struck down as unconstitutional, possibly expanding or strengthening the right to legal abortion. I think it is preposterous to think of the American Catholic Bishops or the National Right to Life Committee insufficiently pro-life, and of course they did not support the amendment.
Second, it was a pig in a poke. Admittedly it is a trivial example, but I always think of the signs in public places (restaurants, clubs, etc.) in New York that say, “Occupation by more than X persons is dangerous and unlawful.” Would a pregnant women be two persons? I don’t see why not. How many laws would unwittingly be changed by defining a fertilized egg as a legal person? I saw one of the supporters of the amendment acknowledging there would be confusion if the amendment passed, but she was confident it “would all be sorted out” by the legislature and the courts. Anyone who has ever executed a global search and replace on a whole document in Microsoft Word with disastrous results will have an inkling of what changing the definition of the word person in a constitution and existing laws might result in.
November 18th, 2011 | 12:21 pm
One additional though. We have always known that, among “pro-life” politicians, at least, there is a general unwillingness to grant full legal personhood and a right to life from the moment of fertilization onward. “Pro-life” politicians almost always support abortion in the case of rape, incest, and threat to the life of the mother. I can’t think of a way to justify an abortion in the case of rape or incest if the right to life begins at conception. Also, many “pro-life” politicians support embryonic stem-cell research. I remember when John McCain was asked by Rick Warren when the right to life began, and McCain answered, “At conception,” firmly and without hesitation. But he went on later to justify embryonic stem-cell research. This is one reason why surveys of what percent of Americans consider themselves pro-life have to be read with caution. Self-identifying as pro-life does not necessarily mean that you believe at fertilization a person comes into existence with the same right to life as any other person.
November 18th, 2011 | 12:58 pm
Sorry, Joe, couldn’t resist quoting the phrase I saw recently – “I’ll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.”
November 18th, 2011 | 1:31 pm
Is this going to turn into a Catholic/Protestant thing? The Catholic Church has been very vocal and public in its opposition to legal abortion since it became a national issue. As David said, it is pretty dubious to claim that AUL, NRLC, and the Catholic dioceses in Mississippi are insufficiently pro-life. Obviously, Catholics are not a huge chunk of Mississippi voters (10% or so; still bigger than in most Southern states but smaller than in Louisiana) but if the dioceses had taken a position in favor of the measure, rather than been neutral, it may have made a difference, although probably not a big enough difference. But that’s not really the point.
I don’t know if Dr. Mohler entirely understands this amendment. In and of itself, it would not ban any abortions. Simply defining an unborn child as a ‘person’ for legal purposes does not make it illegal to kill such a ‘person.’ You need an explicit prohibition on such a practice, which would normally come in the form of a criminal statute. The extraordinary thing is that Mississippi *already* has a criminal statute banning abortion in most cases if Roe is overturned (Miss. Code 41-41-45). The Constitution usually limits the state, not private actors.
I think that you can conceivably justify abortion in a number of cases even if you think life begins at conception, just as you can justify killing an adult for various reasons. The fact that life begins at conception as opposed to some other time does not actually change those marginal, tough cases. It is certainly true that most of the country opposes banning abortions in those cases (life of the mother, rape, incest). That is true in Mississippi and everywhere else. But these cases account for no more than 5% of all abortions in this country. Most pro-lifers would be content on a prohibition on abortion with those exceptions. Even if we oppose those exceptions (as the Catholic Church does) we would have to live with it, at least until we can convince the public to stop supporting those exceptions. This is not to say that the problem with the amendment was that it lacked such exceptions (it may have been one of the problems). Most states already recognize an unborn child’s personhood for certain purposes (e.g. in fetal homicide laws). The way to restrict abortion is to pass laws in other states like the one Mississippi already has. I urge the SBC to follow the Catholic Church’s lead on this one and support those sort of laws, rather than pushing personhood measures, which (in addition to failing everywhere they have been voted on) do not in themselves actually prohibit abortion.
November 18th, 2011 | 2:13 pm
We need a “Humanity Amendment,” not a “Personhood Amendment.” It would basically say, in effect, that all humanity has inalienable rights that the government is bound to protect, and that the government simply has no authority to bestow or withdraw those rights, regardless of the status of any human being as a “legal person” under the law. In the case of crimes punishable by death or imprisonment the guilty human being has rendered void their inalienable rights to life and liberty themselves; those rights were not withdrawn from them by the government.
It has always been a question of inalienable “human rights,” not “person rights.” This is because “legal persons” only have the rights bestowed upon them by the government. Humans have inalienable rights that don’t come from the government, but are intrinsic to their humanity. The problem becomes clear when considering the thought of noted legal positivist Hans Kelsen:
That works fine for corporations and other non-human entities that the government bestows “legal personhood” upon. Such entities really do only have those rights the government bestows upon them. Not so with human beings; they have intrinsic, inalienable rights that don’t come from the government. Whenever those rights are denied to a segment of humanity due to bigotry, the attempt is made by the bigots to legitimize the violation of the human dignity of their victims by declaring them to be something less than fully “legal persons.” That is what happened to Blacks in the Old South, Jews under the Third Reich, and now the child in the womb.
The government can play all the games they want with “legal personhood” for non-human entities. When it comes to humans, “legal personhood” becomes a way to legitimize the denial of inalienable human rights to some segment of the human family. We need a “Humanity Amendment” that explicitly states that regardless of the status of any human being in terms of its “legal personhood” the government is bound to protect that human being’s inalienable rights. State-legitimized bigotry will continue to plague humanity until it is clearly established that the state exists for humanity, not humanity for the state, and that humanity bestows upon the state a right to exist as long as it protects humanity’s right to exist – it is not for the state to bestow and withdraw the right to exist of various segments of the human family. The founders clearly said it was our duty to alter or abolish such a state.
November 18th, 2011 | 7:09 pm
Harry is quite right about needing a “humanity amendment.”
Concerning corporations, though, they are not “persons”, although they are colloquially and sloppily referred to as such. Corporations are associations of humans, and as the rights to free speech and free press are unalienable, humans don’t lose them merely by assembling into a corporation.
Similarly, as our right to life is unalienable, it cannot be “voided,” although your point is well taken. Rather than being voided, I’d argue that it is intrinsic to the right that it doesn’t apply and provide any protection after murdering someone and being duly convicted of such a crime.
November 18th, 2011 | 8:35 pm
Americans are “pro-life” for many reasons, from the principled stand that life begins at conception to the vague feeling that “at some point” abortion is wrong. The further progressed a pregnancy is, the more people think abortion is wrong. The earlier it is, the more people think it’s okay. Likewise, people do take intention into account — if the woman was raped, for instance, versus whether she was promiscuous. I remember when I personally came to the conclusion that it was either right or wrong, and that the circumstances of conception had nothing to do with it. That was for me a different step than concluding that abortion was “usually” wrong, and in turn that was a different step from concluding that it was wrong after the first trimester, which was in turn… you get the picture. So I understand that perhaps people not generally in favor of abortion voted against this amendment. Polls have consistently showed that most people are against abortion in most circumstances and after the first trimester. IMHO, that is based on vague feelings rather than on much thought. That said, it’s only logical that a majority would not vote that a human life begins at conception — though logically and scientifically, it does.
November 18th, 2011 | 9:04 pm
[These links on First Things that take you away from FT instead of opening in another window/tab are frustrating.]
In addition to Mohler’s point that this vote was a sobering revelation about the evangelical mind,[with the qualification stated above that it was poorly worded law], there is another important lesson here: politically, it was an UN-wise move. Just as we did with a vote here in S. Dak., ground was lost by attempting to push beyond the what the public will bear.
November 18th, 2011 | 9:22 pm
If we regard all fertilized eggs to be persons, how ought we address the question of naturally occurring miscarriages. If at least 50% of all fertilized eggs are naturally aborted, are we to expect that heaven is to be populated largely by these persons. How would we defend that theologically and scripturally?
November 19th, 2011 | 5:33 am
To define the zygote as a person raises some difficult philosophical questions over monozygotic twins.
If the zygote is a person before the split occurs, odes that person cease to exist, to be replaced by two new persons? Or is one of the twins the original person, the other only coming into existence at the split?
Surely, it is sufficient to say that the zygote is a living individual whole whose life is—all going well—to be the life of one or lives of more than one person. For Christians, there is the added problem of “animation.”
That is why I agree with Harry’s distinction between human being and person. What is present at conception is, undoubtedly human life, however one resolves the problem of personhood.
November 19th, 2011 | 8:06 am
This topic always creates some very strong feelings and opinions. Joe Delahunt above makes an interesting statement about fertilized eggs and miscarriages. It can be looked at as a matter of terminology. Does fertilization equal life? The old saying “what comes first the chicken or the egg?’ comes to mind. Is an egg a chicken even though it is not hatched? In my opinion Gail F. makes a good point that abortion is not always black or white, right or wrong. Circumstances must be taken into consideration.
November 19th, 2011 | 8:54 am
Joe Delahunt: the founder of FIRST THINGS, Richard john Neuhaus, pointed out, years ago, if my memory serves me correctly, in the “While we’re at it” section, in response to the argument, often used by those on the Pro-choice side regarding abortion that, most embryos die prior to becoming post born humans, by accurately stating that this is irrelevant. Fr. Neuhaus pointed out that most newborns died, throughout history, but no one would therefore argue that newborns were not persons to be protected.
In other words, it’s really a red herring to point out that most embryos don’t make it to full maturation. It has no relevance to whether the embryo is a human person deserving of legal standing and protection.
Although I’m not a theologian, I would assume that one could use the same arguments for understanding why most embryos die, as one would use for understanding why most children died, for most of history, prior to reaching adulthood.
November 19th, 2011 | 10:12 am
Joe Delahunt — what’s the theological problem raised?
If it is, it is. It doesn’t seem to conflict with any other theological or scriptural concerns.
November 19th, 2011 | 10:55 am
Dear Joe Delahunt: If God knows us from our mother’s womb, He also knows what spiritual body is appropriate for us in Heaven. The situation is more or less like infants who die; do they remain as infants eternally? The short and accurate answer is that we do not know, scripturally.
However, theologically, anything that exists as a human, it seems, will arrive at an ultimate human destination. Why is that a theological problem?
November 19th, 2011 | 11:24 am
@Joe Delahunt
Excellent point. Infant salvation and abortion can lead to some very hairy theological discussions.
But there are secular considerations as well. If even 10% of fertilized eggs are naturally aborted, shouldn’t we be redirecting massive amounts of medical research and effort to stop this? We spend a great deal of money on things like childhood leukemia and juvenile diabetes, which affect a far smaller percentage. Why should the 5 year who is going to die of childhood leukemia be considered a higher priority than a zygote who is going to die?
November 19th, 2011 | 11:53 am
I live in Colorado where this amendment was defeated twice by 2-1 margins. I voted for it both times, but I think I understand why many of my pro-life friends did not. The rejection of the amendment by some pro-life people seems to be based on a deeply felt intuition that even if one believes an embryo is fully human and deserves some level of legal protection, it does not necessarily follow that an embryo should be treated exactly the same as a born person. Let’s take Ray’s example of Texas, which is not shy about executing murderers. Under the logic of the amendment a woman who obtains an abortion at 12 weeks has committed premeditated murder and should be executed. I suppose one can find people who believe this would be a just and condign punishment for killing the embryonic human, but they would be a very small minority.
November 19th, 2011 | 3:08 pm
“Let’s take Ray’s example of Texas, which is not shy about executing murderers. Under the logic of the amendment a woman who obtains an abortion at 12 weeks has committed premeditated murder and should be executed ”
Either a fetus is a legal person or it isn’t. If the fetus isn’t a person, pro-lifers must concede the debate. If a fetus is a person, then abortion is premeditated murder, and thus the woman should be punished as any other murderer.
“What should be the punishment for women who has an illegal abortion” is the one of the classic pro-choice reductio ad absurdum arguments. And it shows the idea that a fetus is really a person is so ludicrous that not even pro-lifers can take it seriously.
November 19th, 2011 | 4:33 pm
“And it shows the idea that a fetus is really a person is so ludicrous that not even pro-lifers can take it seriously.”
Why does the ludicrousness or lack thereof of an idea, depend on how consistently people handle the implications, as to opposed to, say, whether it’s philosophically sound?
You can’t *show* that an idea is “ludicrous” by pointing out that people generally don’t react well to the implications. At best, you can show that people don’t embrace it as fully as they think they do.
November 19th, 2011 | 9:46 pm
Joe
The problem with that approach is that while all humans are persons, not all persons are (legally speaking) humans. Corporations, for example, are considered by the law as persons in many situations.
This is how the legal concept of a corporation is often presented but I don’t think its how it is actually set down in law. For example, a law inhibiting free speech for corporations is not unconstitutional because its denying a ‘person’ free speech, it’s unconstitutional because denying the corporation free speech is, essentially, denying its owners free speech though the vehicle of the corporation. Likewise if tomorrow someone proposed a law abolishing corporations, I don’t think you could argue it would be unconstitutional because its ‘denying life’ to ‘corporate persons’ without due process.
I think the Mississippi vote doesn’t illustrate some wording problem (as in “Ohhh we need an amendment that says ‘humans’ rather than ‘persons’). It illustrates the fundamental problem the pro-life argument has. It’s a radical departure from all previous tradition, including pre-Roe law. Now sometimes radical departures are good things. For example the idea of racial equality or women’s emancipation or even democracy…. But radical changes run into the conservative problem. The Conservative is skeptical about our ability to intelligently make radical changes. Longstanding tradition has stood the test of time so we can at least trust it in that sense not to blow things up…but with a radically new idea you are trusting that the guys who thought it up have really thought it through, looked at all the potential areas where it could cause problems and so on. You can only trust a single person’s brain so much….even a very smart person’s brain, or even a large number of smart people. The world is a highly complex place where even the smartest can’t see all the angles, hence a stance of being highly skeptical towards radical change is a conservative rule of thumb.
In Mississippi the lie, or if that’s too strong perhaps ‘self-deception’ of the pro-lifers was exposed. It’s not just about about returning abortion law to the states or reversing Roe.v.Wade. It’s about radically changing the way the law works that has implications that go beyond simply telling a 19 yr old woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant that she may not have an abortion.
November 19th, 2011 | 10:18 pm
I don’t get the questions about miscarriages either. I was told by doctors that conditions arise that are “incompatible with life”, so the embryo dies and the body naturally aborts it. I don’t think they usually know what caused the death. However, they know that the embryo was alive and then it died. While it lived, the woman’s body produced the usual signs and conditions of pregnancy. when it dies, those cease and the doctor knows a miscarriage will ensue. It’s similar to the process of elective abortion, except in that case, the healthy fetus/embryo has to be killed first, then removed.
November 19th, 2011 | 10:59 pm
Peg,
I think there were several miscarriage questions here. The first was a theological one, if its really true that 50% or more of pregnancies end in miscarriage (often without the women even knowing she was pregnant), then it seems the God created a rather cruel universe. As Joe Dalahunt pointed out, if we ‘get to heaven’ and discover most people there weren’t even born…….well I suppose its not a theological no-go zone but it does seem to at least stretch things.
The other is to consider asking yourself what would happen if half your kids died less than a few weeks after you gave birth. There would probably be at least some modest investigation of you to see what could be causing these deaths and perhaps to see if you might have done something wrong. With a ‘personhood’ amendment combined with Equal Protection applying, which is what pro-lifers say they are going for, a woman who has a miscarriage is no different than a woman whose baby dies after birth. If she did anything either purposefully or even accidently to facilitate a miscarriage, she would have to come under state scrutiny and prosecution.
Like I said, the ‘personhood’ argument here goes far beyond simply telling a woman she can’t have an abortion.
November 19th, 2011 | 11:03 pm
And of course miscarriages raise another equity problem. Currently we spend billions in medical care, R&D, prevention etc. to prevent deaths at all phases of life after birth. We spend next to nothing to understand and prevent miscarriages.
But if the unborn are persons and if Equal Protection applies this is a major problem. Here you have a ‘disease’ killing one person for nearly every one person born yet we spend next to nothing for it but hundreds of millions for restless leg syndrome? Could you imagine some plague killing, say, the entire state of California yet the CDC and NIH doesn’t allocate a cent to it while trying to find ways to cure 70 yr olds of diabetes?
November 19th, 2011 | 11:39 pm
We need a “Humanity Amendment,” not a “Personhood Amendment.” It would basically say, in effect, that all humanity has inalienable rights that the government is bound to protect, and that the government simply has no authority to bestow or withdraw those rights, regardless of the status of any human being as a “legal person” under the law
I like that.
Someone should pick that up and run with it.
November 20th, 2011 | 5:50 am
As for miscarriages, the percentages of fertilized eggs that are naturally aborted, heaven being “populated largely by these persons” and “How would we defend that theologically and scripturally?”, I think it is all very simple.
God calls human life into being, God calls it back to himself when He is good and ready to do so. That is for Him alone to do. He commanded us, using all small words so it would be easy to understand, “Thou shalt not kill.” I am confident God knows what He is doing when He fashions a new human life only to call it home to Himself a few days or weeks after conception, and that there is no one in Heaven explaining to God how He should have done things differently.
God, being outside of time, already sees the five year old the zygote will be. It is important to remember that “zygote” and “five year old” are only stages in the development of a human being. If saving the lives of human beings should be a priority at all, then their stage of development shouldn’t matter. Is saving a toddler less important than saving a five year old? Is saving a newborn less important than saving a toddler? Is saving a child when there are labor and delivery complications less important than saving the child the day after it is born? Is saving the child the day before Mom’s labor begins less important than on the day her labor begins? And so it goes all the way back to conception.
It is really a matter of knowing how to save the child. Much of what is routine medical care now during pregnancy and in dealing with complications with labor and delivery were unknown 150 years ago. We do what we know how to do.
In principle, if any human life is worth saving, all human life is worth saving. In practice, we place a higher priority on humans who have had the chance to “charm” us than on those who haven’t. We may be concerned with world hunger but we don’t give that the priority we would give dealing with our own children not having anything to eat. I am not saying our being that way is immoral. Although we should do what we can about world hunger, I think for the most part God wants us to make a priority of caring for those He has placed, in His providence, right under our noses. (Think of Lazarus and the rich man.) He has placed our own children right under our noses.
My point is that the worth of a human being is not rooted in our opinion of it. It has an intrinsic worth, one that drew God down from heaven and up onto a cross – and He did that for us long before we were even fertilized eggs. It is not like there is a nine month gap in God’s eternal love for a human being that begins with conception and ends when we are born, whereupon we matter again to God. Every human being matters – from conception, and in fact, has mattered long before conception, which ought to make serious Christians seriously reconsider their use of artificial contraception.
We have a government that is for Christians and non-Christians alike. What we have in common is our humanity. Christians don’t expect the law to respect our theology, just our humanity and that of everyone else. Again, the state exists for humanity, not humanity for the state. We bestow on the state its right to exist, not the reverse. All human life has an intrinsic worth, which necessitates the existence of the state in order to protect it. Humanity’s worth is not rooted in the Caesar’s opinion of us, or in our opinion of each other. It is an intrinsic worth the law must respect and protect in order to be genuine law at all. When “law” becomes merely the expression of the opinions and bigotries of the powerful we have fallen from civilization into savagery. From the perspective of the child in the womb bloody anarchy has reigned for quite some time now.
November 20th, 2011 | 5:57 am
Blake
Right. It also side-tracks the issue of monozygotic twinning and the personhood of a zygote that will ultimately develop into two (or more) persons
November 20th, 2011 | 2:40 pm
I don’t know if it was linked to FT, but I recommend Jason Jones’ 11/06/11 essay at Crisis Magazine. He is the producer of the pro-life film BELLA.
I’m with Dr. Mohler.
November 20th, 2011 | 2:52 pm
I am confident God knows what He is doing when He fashions a new human life only to call it home to Himself a few days or weeks after conception, and that there is no one in Heaven explaining to God how He should have done things differently.
harry,
What about original sin? For well over a thousand years it was believed (although not officially made a doctrine) that infants who died without baptism were, by reason of original sin, not capable of going to heaven. They were consigned to limbo. Even now the Catholic Church makes no claim that unbaptized infants go to heaven. It says we can hope. You are speaking with great assurance that unbaptized infants are “called home” by God. If by “home” you mean heaven, you are stating a Catholic hope, not a Catholic belief. Some Protestants even believe that infants who die without baptism go to hell.
It used to seem to me that one of the beauties of Catholicism was that it had an answer for every question. However, if every human conception brings into existence a human person with a human soul, and if 60% to 80% of early embryos fail to implant (the best statistics I have found), then Catholicism simply has no answer to the question of what the ultimate fate of the majority of human beings is. Jesus said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” Most human beings conceived can’t possibly be baptized, nor can baptism of blood or baptism of desire apply to them. It seems to me Christianity as a whole, including Catholicism, has insisted on baptism as necessary for salvation. But now we know that no baptism of any kind is possible for the majority of human beings. So it seems to me there is a major theological question, which, put rather crudely, is, “Why did God create a world in which most “people” are never implanted in the uterus, much less born, and then make baptism a necessary condition for salvation?”
Of course, if you believe in an omnipotent, omniscient God, it only makes sense to have faith that he knows what he is doing. But the reason to believe in Catholicism (or some other form of Christianity) is because it claims to explain what God does, and why. But in this case, there is no explanation.
November 20th, 2011 | 5:40 pm
Hi, David Nickol,
The Church allows speculative theology; it should be made clear it is just that. I speak with the great assurance that comes with knowing God is good, generous and merciful beyond all telling or imagining, attributes of His which I, being a sinner, have often received the undeserved benefit. Yet God is also just. I suspect Hell will have in it many people who underestimated His justice, and planning on reforming their lives at the 11th hour, died at 10:45, so to speak. Anyway, we do have reason for great hope regarding unbaptized children, but do not have the certainty regarding them that we have about that which comprises the deposit of faith. It is my reasonable and well founded hope that when God “calls home” unbaptized infants they eventually experience the fullness of heavenly bliss. It could be that they are somehow given the equivalent of what we are given in a lifetime on Earth to respond to God’s love or refuse to do so. Nobody knows with certainty. That is why there is speculative theology. If you are interested in the topic, here is a link to THE HOPE OF SALVATION FOR INFANTS
WHO DIE WITHOUT BEING BAPTISED on the Vatican web site:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html
I agree with you in part when you say:
I believe in Catholicism because the depths of what it offers in explanation cannot be plumbed in a mere lifetime – it takes an eternity to do that, since ultimately the One teaching, the spirit that animates the Body of Christ which is the Church, is the Holy Spirit. I also believe in the Catholic Church because it doesn’t pretend to explain in this lifetime what cannot be known with certainty until the next (that which the Spirit doesn’t think we need to know yet). That approach rings true to me. If the Church made dogmatic statements on every theological question imaginable, I would be suspicious that it wasn’t the Holy Spirit that animated the body, deciding in His wisdom what we needed to know and what we didn’t need to know, but merely the spirits of prideful men. That there is speculative theology is just as it should be.
November 20th, 2011 | 5:53 pm
“The first was a theological one, if its really true that 50% or more of pregnancies end in miscarriage (often without the women even knowing she was pregnant), then it seems the God created a rather cruel universe.”
I’m probably walking right into some trap of showing myself to be some kind of insensitive monster, but in a universe where the death rate is already 100%, how does this make it crueler?
Besides, that’s the statistic (if it’s to be believed, of which I’m not certain) — how does the “cruelty” of that get worse if we call all those unknown deaths “persons,” or become less cruel if we don’t?
November 20th, 2011 | 7:36 pm
I agree with Dr. Mohler. For years, the pr-life movement and its mouthpieces have been self-congratulatory with every hint of a poll that might suggest the nation is moving into a post Roe vs. Wade era.
I always doubted the convictions of those polled.
The pro-life movement has not made its case to its neighbors and other community members as strongly as it has for its legislative efforts. The lobbying and political functions are the strongest efforts, and its attempts to change individuals opinions in the malls or in the parking lots of America have been weak.
The praxis of the pro-life movement has been harsh zero-sum politics, and the thought of changing the opinion of the electorate has been unappealing.
The approach to changing America’s law may need to start with changing America. The current strategy has been a failed strategy, yet it is what the movement has repeatedly chosen over and over.
November 20th, 2011 | 7:39 pm
This isn’t the first “go for broke” legislative strategy brought to voters in an enormously pro-life state that failed to pass. This shouldn’t have been a shock.
November 20th, 2011 | 7:43 pm
I think the easier to go route here, and more sensible one is not do diddle between human or person or both but to refocus on jurisdiction. Government simply does not have jurisdiction over the unborn, women do. If and when the unborn happen to be someplace other than inside a woman, the state may have jurisdiction. That is no different than the fact that the state of North Carolina do not charge people from Canada with murders that happened in Canada where the victim was Canadian. This has nothing to do with the gov’t of North Carolina being uncertain that Canadians are people (although it may have its doubts) or thinking murder is moral, it has to do with the fact that the gov’t of North carolina was not created to with blanket authority to resolve all wrongs with the universe. It was created with very limited authority to handle the gov’t business of North Carolina only.
November 20th, 2011 | 10:17 pm
Hi again, David Nickol,
Regarding God making “baptism a necessary condition for salvation” you might want to take a look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1257 to #1261 here:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a1.htm
Note that “Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament.” Consider the following as well:
Note also that baptism is not restricted to the baptism of water, and that “God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments.” In other words, God is in no way bound to refuse the unbaptized entrance into heaven by His having commanded the Church to baptize.
November 20th, 2011 | 11:26 pm
Boonton: your comments remind me of William F. Buckley’s staement, during a Firing Line debate (I forget which one, it was many years ago) when he was asked why he was against abortion, and he stated, to paraphrase him, that he was against it for the same reason (or a similar reason) that he’s against having a slave in his closet; that is, people are free, and have a right be free, whether it’s freedom from enslavement, or death.
The question arises, whether our government has a right to infringe on the choices that any person under its juristiction makes. Clearly, every person has soverignty over her or his body, and to infringe on this, without a morally legitimate reason (e.g., the person is guilty of a serious crime) is a morally unacceptable practice. With respect to abortion, if the fetus is not a person, then the woman’s right to control her own body, clearly supersedes any rights that the fetus has.
The philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, in her ingenious way, conceded, at least for the sake of argument that, the fetus is a person, just like a post born human is, but, if one was awkened to have someone who was required to be attached to you, in order for him to live, no one would argue that you were to be legally compelled to stay attached to him, against your will, even though he would die if you broke the connection, therefore, as the analogy goes,no one is required, legally, to carry a chiild to term. This seems like a slam dunk argument, but not so fast.
When I was a freshmen in college, I came up with an argument against this, for a paper that I wrote in favor of abortion being legal, (I don’t deny that others could come up with this argument independently, after all, it desn’t require a tremendous amount of neural activity to see it, only a moment of reflection!) that her argument would seem to entail that any child, or anyone, who’s dependent for her life on another, such as a baby, or child, could be abandoned, if the caregiver wishes to do so. If a mother doesn’t want to care for her three year old, and there’s no room in foster care, or anywhere else, based on Thomson’s argument, this mother would be entitled to leave this child to the elements to die.
November 20th, 2011 | 11:31 pm
oops, sorry, I meant to say for a paper I wrote in favor of abbortion being illegal, not legal. Also, I misspelled svereignty. Sorry for the errors. Spell check is there to be used, I keep telling myself ;-)
November 21st, 2011 | 9:12 am
Bret,
I would have countered Buckley’s answer with an observation, one cannot be made a slave even if doing so would save another’s life. If having a slave in the closet would have extended Buckley’s life, he may ask someone to consent to be a slave as an act of charity but the gov’t may not force someone to be his slave. And when it comes to the right to one’s own body, the limit on the state is pretty strong. Say it came down to Buckley needing a simple blood transfusion to live. But because he happened to have a very rare blood type, the only living person who could donate would be his arch enemy Gore Vidal. If Vidal said no, Buckley would die as we know with 100% certainity that no other human had the right type. Vidal, though, would have the right to say no and the law wouldn’t compel him to donate even though a blood donation is a rather trivial thing. Imagine a hypothetical law that mandated everyone be an organ donar or donate blood at least once a year. Such a law would without a doubt save lives, yet if Obama tried to propose such a thing how many politicians who toute their pro-life endorsements would suddenly grab their copies of Atast Shrugged and start yelling about jack-booted gov’t thugs knocking down your door to take your kidneys? With that in mind, let’s look at:
that her argument would seem to entail that any child, or anyone, who’s dependent for her life on another, such as a baby, or child, could be abandoned, if the caregiver wishes to do so
The problem here is that a caregiver can abandon their charge if they wish. A parent can give their child up for adoption. A person taking care of an elderly person can say “I can’t do it anymore”. They have to do it in the right way, of course. You can’t just put a baby in a baseket put it on the side of the road. But you can bring it to a police station, hospital or social worker and leave it in their care. An Ayn Randish libertarian type may say the state requiring even that little is a type of slavery but I’m not so dogmatic.
Now with this in mind let’s return to Miscarriages and Equal Protection.
If a mother fed her child a poor diet, even gave him beer to drink and cigarettes to smoke, well she’d be run up on charges pretty quickly. But if we adopt a personhood type amendment, the law cannot make a distinction between the unborn child and the born one. Being pregnant now not only requires that you not have an abortion, it requires that you live your life for the unborn child. If it happens to be discovered that eating peanuts increases the risk of miscarriage, the law has to prevent pregnant mothers from eating peanuts. If being in the sun for so many hours a day increases the risk of miscarriage, pregnant women must wear burkas or the state must prosecute. If 50%+ of all pregnancies end in miscarriage we know we are probably highly ignorant of the causes but we are no less obligated to try to discover and cure those causes than we are obligated to try to discover and cure things that kill toddlers, newborns, teens and so on.
with this in mind, we see that pro-lifers are creating an argument here whose logical conclusion is not just “woman may not get abortions” but one that nearly equals “pregnant women are slaves”.
The former assertions, “woman may not get abortions” is one that you can argue for on simple jurisdictional grounds. The state has perogrative to regulate the behavior of those who are its subjects, therefore it can ban abortions just as it can ban staged dog fights. It doesn’t have to prove the unborn are persons anymore than it has to prove dogs are peopele. Indeed if you look at pre-Roe law, say in the mid to late 1800′s, I think this is a better explanation for banning abortion than the argument that the unborn were persons under the Constitution. States banned abortion, true, but they also banned lots of things that had nothing to do with protecting unborn persons, like premarital sex, masturbation, contraception and so on.
But here’s the bind, say you reject reading personhood of the unborn into the Constitution because of those potential complications but still want the state to ban abortion so you argue that the state has a right to ban abortion simply because it thinks its wrong, like it bans dog fighting or a host of other activities. You may be ok here except for the problem of where is the state limited in relation to individual privacy. It’s only a short hop to the state banning contraception, for example. And if all that’s under the jurisdiction of the state, it works in two directions. If the state can ban, say, contraception, because it thinks it is wrong it can also mandate it….say by requiring welfore moms to be sterilized. If it can ban abortion it can mandate it too, say if it thinks society would be better off with a ‘two child policy’.
November 21st, 2011 | 10:46 am
One of the biggest misconceptions among pro-lifers is the belief that Roe vs. Wade ruled that fetuses aren’t people. It says no such thing. Abortion rights were granted on a woman’s right to privacy, and even if a fetus was declared a person the ruling and logic of Roe vs. Wade would still remain unchallenged.
November 21st, 2011 | 10:56 am
Dr. Mohler is undoubtedly correct in identifying the reason some otherwise pro-life supporters voted no, but there were other, very good, reasons to vote no. An amendment to a state constitution doesn’t overrule a U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case based on an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Passage and implementation of the Mississippi amendment would undoubtedly bring a case to the SCOTUS, and the odds are that decision would strike down the Mississippi amendment and embed Roe even firmer than it now is. That is, the Mississippi amendment represented a bad tactical move.
There are those of us who would support a federal “personhood” amendment which would have the exact same effect that Mohler believes caused many to vote down the Mississippi amendment. It would, therefore, be a mistake to conclude that ALL those who voted “no” on the Mississippi amendment are not fully pro-life. Some undoubtedly are not, but others are. They voted “no” for sound tactical reasons, out of a well-reasoned conclusion that the amendment, however well intended, would make the fight to overturn Roe v. Wade far more difficult and achieve nothing of substance. Without polling to show WHY self-identified pro-lifers voted “no”, Dr. Mohler’s conclusion paints with far too wide a brush. It is almost certainly the case that the Catholic Church’s position was based on tactical concerns, not the reasons identified by Dr. Mohler.
November 21st, 2011 | 11:11 am
Hi, Boonton,
You conveniently ignore the right of the child in the womb to their body. The child is not responsible for being within the woman’s body, he or she is quite innocent.
No problem then with leaving viable babies to die in hospital closets instead of taking them to the neonatal care unit as long as that is done in the “right way”?
Yeah. Right. Just like slaves of the Old South mysteriously fell into a situation of dependence upon plantation owners, the slaves being in that situation had nothing at all to do with the decisions of the slave owners? No way women or slave owners have any responsibility for their own decisions anyway, right?
Contrary to erroneous, revisionist history, the laws prohibiting abortion were essentially based upon the humanity of the child in the womb and his/her inalienable right to life. This is evident from the thought of Dr. Horatio Robinson Storer, who led the physicians’ crusade against abortion, the successful lobbying efforts of which resulted in state and territorial legislatures enacting stringent laws against abortion, most of which remained in effect with little or no change for more than a hundred years. As Dr. Storer put it in his book Criminal Abortion: Its Nature, Its Evidence, and its Law, “The willful killing of a human being at any stage of its existence is murder.” Again, regardless of the status of the child as a “legal person” taking his/her life was outlawed because of the child’s inalienable right to life.
You don’t seem to — or don’t want to — get the big picture.
Taking the life of the child in the womb violates the ethic that was the foundation of Western Civilization; even physicians who are abortion advocates know that.
In A New Ethic for Medicine and Society, an editorial by Dr. Malcolm Watts that appeared in the September, 1970 issue of California Medicine, Dr. Watts attempts to make the recent and controversial pre-Roe legalization of abortion in California seem like it was inevitable and is the way of the future. He realizes the stand many of the physicians in his audience take on the issue is contrary to his own. He knows many of them must still feel bound by the “First, do no harm” ethic of Hippocrates, whose physician’s Oath explicitly prohibits abortion. Dr. Watts must be intellectually honest with them — his audience isn’t that of the local newspaper or television station; he is addressing intelligent, educated physicians. His remarks, those of an abortion advocate forced into intellectual honesty, make for enlightening reading.
Dr. Watts fairly sums up what the Western ethic was as applied to law and medicine. This is followed by the suggestion that the old ethic is on its way out:
Dr. Watts is forced to admit that the ramifications of discarding the old ethic and substituting it with a new one will be substantial and serious. He continues with:
Dr. Watts must admit to his audience that deception will be necessary in order to successfully replace the old ethic with a new one, and admits that abortion takes the life of a human being.
Dr. Watts goes on to assert that “the new ethic of relative rather than of absolute and equal values will ultimately prevail” and discusses what this might require of the medical profession.
Whether you like it or not, abortion was outlawed in the U.S., as Dr. Watts points out, because “The traditional Western ethic has always placed great emphasis on the intrinsic worth and equal value of every human life regardless of its stage or condition. This ethic has had the blessing of the Judeo-Christian heritage and has been the basis for most of our laws and much of our social policy.” Insisting the issue is one of “legal personhood” remains a tactic used by bigots to exclude the victims of their bigotry from the protection of law — this works great for them because there is no way to establish what constitutes a “legal person,” it always remains a matter of the opinion of those in power, not one of science and common sense. The Pro-Life movement will eventually figure that out and shift the discussion away from “legal personhood” to one of the inalienable human rights of all humanity. They will insist on the restoral of the very foundation of Western Civilization, which the Supreme Court has yanked out from under it. It should surprise no one if the structure collapses into godless totalitarianism if Roe and the deification of the state it has established aren’t reversed.
November 21st, 2011 | 12:00 pm
“One of the biggest misconceptions among pro-lifers is the belief that Roe vs. Wade ruled that fetuses aren’t people. It says no such thing.”
This is simply incorrect. I quote from Roe v. Wade:
“”The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a “person” within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument. On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Constitution does not define “person” in so many words. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment contains three references to “person.” The first, in defining “citizens,” speaks of “persons born or naturalized in the United States.” The word also appears both in the Due Process Clause and in the Equal Protection Clause. “Person” is used in other places in the Constitution: in the listing of qualifications for Representatives and Senators, Art. I, 2, cl. 2, and 3, cl. 3; in the Apportionment Clause, Art. I, 2, cl. 3; 53 in the Migration and Importation provision, Art. I, 9, cl. 1; in the Emolument Clause, Art. I, 9, cl. 8; in the Electors provisions, Art. II, 1, cl. 2, and the superseded cl. 3; in the provision outlining qualifications for the office of President, Art. II, 1, cl. 5; in the Extradition provisions, Art. IV, 2, cl. 2, and the superseded Fugitive Slave Clause 3; and in the Fifth, Twelfth, and Twenty-second Amendments, as well as in 2 and 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. But in nearly all these instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only postnatally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application.
All this, together with our observation, supra, that throughout the major portion of the 19th century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word “person,” as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.”
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 156-58 (1973).
November 21st, 2011 | 1:20 pm
Hello, Gregory K. Laughlin, Michael B,
You might find the article at the link below interesting. It is an article that appeared in the Spring 2010 issue of Issues in Law and Medicine by legal scholar Gregory J. Roden, J.D. Here is a summary:
Here is the link:
https://www31.ssldomain.com/grtl/docs/ILM_Spring%2010.pdf
As I have said, I think the “legal personhood” issue is a pointless distraction, but I still found the above interesting.
November 21st, 2011 | 2:07 pm
“But you can bring it to a police station, hospital or social worker and leave it in their care.”
But you can’t execute the baby or the dependent parent, no matter how good your reasons or what kind of legal process you go through. Your argument seems to presume that it’s a trivial difference that “choosing not to care for” an unborn child requires an act of execution of the undesired dependent. It’s not a trivial difference — it’s the entire basis for the controversy.
I don’t know of any pro-lifers who would think that it ought to be a criminal matter to remove an unborn child from its mother to be cared for in some other manner, if it were technologically possible and reasonably safe, whatever they might think of the morality of such practices. So any comparison to any other dependent care situation breaks down at *exactly* the point where you *absolutely cannot* relinquish “care” of an unborn child without destroying it.
November 21st, 2011 | 2:35 pm
Gregory
Passage and implementation of the Mississippi amendment would undoubtedly bring a case to the SCOTUS, and the odds are that decision would strike down the Mississippi amendment and embed Roe even firmer than it now is.
From a strategic POV, this is irrelevant. Nothing Mississippi could pass, no matter how its worded, could either embed Roe more or cause it to be struck down. Either Roe remains in place, or it won’t and that depends on SCOTUS. If Roe falls, though, presumably this amendment would have automatically kicked in and banned abortion in Mississippi so from a purely strategic POV it made a certain amount of sense for pro-lifers who just want abortion banned and aren’t very picky about how it gets done.
There are those of us who would support a federal “personhood” amendment which would have the exact same effect that Mohler believes caused many to vote down the Mississippi amendment.
Not sure why this works either. It’s not like Mississippi passing a personhood amendment would prevent a Federal one. After all most states have state amendments supporting free speech, freedom of religion etc…..the fact that the Bill of Rights is Federal doesn’t stop states from having their own state bills of rights.
I don’t think there’s a coherent argument to vote no on this proposal that is based on it becomming harder to ban abortion or overturn Roe if it passed.
This is simply incorrect. I quote from Roe v. Wade:
What you quoted was the court noting that the Constitution did not define ‘person’ and in the few instances it uses the word the context always assume postnatal. It also noted that no case could be found the supported prenatal inclusion under the 14th amendment. That’s not the same, though, as declaring the unborn are not people. Instead its basically not replying to the question (which SCOTUS does quite often, their job is to resolve cases, not address all possible questions that may come up regarding the Constitution).
In fact, its quite easy to imagine a case where SCOTUs could uphold both Roe and making the unborn persons under the meaning of the 14th. Imagine we had the ability to gestate unborn children in artifical wombs. Imagine further that a political party highly opposed to ‘artifical birth’ comes to power and passes a law ordering all artifical wombs to be decactivated. SCOTUS could quite consistently rule that this would deny life without due process of law. Roe, though, did not involve the gov’t performing or mandating abortions but was a contest of rights between what the gov’t could impose on on individual in order to save another.
harry
You conveniently ignore the right of the child in the womb to their body….
NO I didn’t. Note my response to Buckley’s point. I said Buckley doesn’t have a right to make someone a slave even if his life depends upon it. I’m not assuming any less of the unborn has any less of a right to life than the late WFB did.
No problem then with leaving viable babies to die in hospital closets instead of taking them to the neonatal care unit as long as that is done in the “right way”?
I suggest if you are aware of this happening you report it to law enforcement rather than commenting on blogs about it.
Yeah. Right. Just like slaves of the Old South mysteriously fell into a situation of dependence upon plantation owners, the slaves being in that situation had nothing at all to do with the decisions of the slave owners?
There were plenty of blacks in the South who were not slave who were able to live independently both before and after the CSA fell. If you can point me to unborn children who can be born without a woman involved let me know.
Contrary to erroneous, revisionist history, the laws prohibiting abortion were essentially based upon the humanity of the child in the womb and his/her inalienable right to life. This is evident from the thought of Dr. Horatio Robinson Storer, who led the physicians’ crusade against abortion, …
All very relevant if I had asserted no one had ever argued that the unborn were persons in order to argue against abortion prior to 1973. The problem with your position is that Equal Protection carries very real consquences for how the law treats persons which is simply not consistent with either pre-Roe law or even most proposed laws from pro-lifers.
First, Mr. Roden points out that the Constitution does not confer upon the federal government the power to grant or deny “personhood” under the Fourteenth Amendment. Rather, the power to recognize or deny unborn children as holders of certain statutory and common law rights and duties has historically been exercised by the states. …
Interesting except the 14th was explicitly written to force the states to treat persons with equality and equity. It would be kind of odd then to assert at the same time the authors were trying to stop states from treating people without equal protection, they would foolishly give states the power to decide who was or wasn’t a person. The Radical Republicans passed the 14th because they were afraid that as the former Confederate states got rehabilitated back into the Union they would try to recreate the slavery system.
Additionally, you seem to be speaking from two sides of your mouth here. If the unborn are clearly presons and entitled to protection of the law, then you can’t, at the same time, assert states can grant or withhold personhood by whim. On top of that, if the state can, in fact, grant personhood by any method they want, they are still limited Constitutionally from granting personhood in ways that accidently or purposefully violate the rights of others.
November 21st, 2011 | 3:03 pm
Hi, Boonton,
So you know the child in the womb has no less a right to life than the late W. F. Buckley did? Hmmm…. And what crime have these children committed to deserve the death penalty? The child has to die for being in a situation the he/she was placed in by someone else and over which he/she had no say and for which he/she is in no way responsible? And the one who is responsible for putting him/her in that situation gets impose the death penalty on this human being you believe has as much of a right to life as W.F. Buckley did? I take it you don’t think Buckley had much of a right to life. Who else have you decided doesn’t have much of a right to life? You guys are really disturbing. You should listen to yourselves.
November 21st, 2011 | 3:36 pm
@Boontoon,
I disagree with just about everything you wrote in reply to me. It does matter if a state “personhood” amendment reaches the SCOTUS and is struck down. It adds even more precedential weight to Roe, Casey and other cases upholding the “right” to an abortion. Fighting losing battles is a bad a strategy in law as it is in war. You pick fights you can win and which gain you ground, not ones that give further likely victories to your opponents. If your answer is that the Mississippi “personhood” amendment would lead to victory, I disagree, but at least that is a valid argument. If you argue it doesn’t matter whether the effort creates good or bad precedent, I must respectfully disagree. No lives would be saved thereby and ultimate victory would be just that much more difficult.
I agree that Roe doesn’t define whether the unborn are “people”, which has no legal meaning, but it most definitely does decide that the unborn are not “persons”, which does. The Court explicitly decided that “the word “person,” as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.” And this is not mere dicta, because the Court also explicitly noted, “If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.” Therefore, the finding that the unborn are not “persons” is essential to the outcome in the case. Frankly, the Court couldn’t have been clearer in declaring that the unborn are not “persons”.
The reason that a federal amendment is far superior to a state one is that a federal amendment would overturn that portion of the Roe decision that holds that the unborn are not “persons” which would, as the Court noted in Roe, guarantee “the fetus’ right to life . . . specifically by the [Fourteenth] Amendment.” Federal constitutional rights preempt state constitutional rights where in conflict and, as a result, the Mississippi “personhood” amendment would be preempted by Roe’s finding that the unborn are not “persons” for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. Since the “right to privacy” and the resultant “right to an abortion” were declared rights under the U.S. Constitution, the Mississippi “personhood” amendment would be preempted where the two conflict, which includes, specifically, when addressing the right to an abortion. That is, the federal constitution does most definitely “stop” states from enforcing state constitutional provisions which impair rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. I disagree, of course, that the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to an abortion, but that is, unfortunately, the current state of the jurisprudence.
Your intentions are undoubtedly good, but I believe (along with many pro-life advocates) that the Mississippi “personhood” amendment, if passed, would have done more harm than good. Wishfully thinking or ignoring the structure of American law gets the pro-life movement nowhere. Being picky how things get done matters because how things are done determines whether they achieve the goal, accomplish nothing, or actually cause more harm than good.
November 21st, 2011 | 3:56 pm
Hi, Boonton,
The 14th amendment was ratified by the states, not forced on them by the federal government, and the Constitution doesn’t confer upon the federal government the power to grant or deny personhood under the 14th amendment.
November 22nd, 2011 | 11:37 am
harry
So you know the child in the womb has no less a right to life than the late W. F. Buckley did? Hmmm…. And what crime have these children committed to deserve the death penalty?
A moot question. When a state or federal prosecutor charges an unborn child with a crime and seeks the death penalty we can concern ourselves with questions like is the unborn child a person, could he committ a crime, can it be proven and can he be given the death penalty. Either before or after Roe, the state has never committed a single abortion so your question is irrelevant.
The only time it may have some real life relevance is if you had a woman on death row who was pregnant. I don’t think that has ever happened and if it did I’m sure the state would wait until she gave birth before executing but if for some reason it wanted to execute her before she gave birth you may have an argument in regards to the above.
My rephrasing of the WFB assertion is that WFB does not have a righ to make someone else a slave, even if his life depends on it. That has nothing to do with whether or not WFB is a bad or good person, whether he is guilty of some wrong or innocent. The fact is if his life depended upon some great imposition on someone else (say he needed your kidney and you’re the only one with the right tissue type that could donate), he has no right to force it upon that person either himself or through the state.
And the one who is responsible for putting him/her in that situation gets impose the death penalty on this human being you believe has as much of a right to life as W.F. Buckley did?
The only problem here is ‘impose’. NO I have a right to say no to WFB in regards to me. I don’t have a right to give him the death penalty. If an artifical kidney was invented or some other donar found I have no right to insist upon his death. If a way is found for him to live without the use of my body then it ceases to be within my jurisdiction to say no.
And that’s really where it comes down too, does the state have jurisdiction here? I think it doesn’t, or it lacks enough jurisdiction IMO to ban all abortions. That hardly resolves the abortion question itself. It doesn’t tell us whether or not the unborn are people or when they become people or what exactly is the moment they become people. It doesn’t tell a woman what is right or wrong. But in most circumstances the law doesn’t do that. There are plenty of people who are absolutely evil for their entire lives who nevertheless perfectly law abiding.
George
It does matter if a state “personhood” amendment reaches the SCOTUS and is struck down. It adds even more precedential weight to Roe, Casey and other cases upholding the “right” to an abortion
If you want the Court to strike down Roe, you must present it with a case. To do that you need to craft a law that violates Roe in order for there to be a legal conflict. Given that you have little choice in the matter. Every law that violates Roe provides an opportunity for the court to strike Roe down. It doesn’t necessarily mean the law challenging Roe won’t also be struck down. The court could find an anti-Roe law violates some other Constitutional provision, but nevertheless strikes down Roe because the conservative members want it struck down.
As far as precedential weight, maybe ten plus years ago when the fiction that the right wing of the court was actually committed to ‘only reading the Constitution’ and judicial restraint was actually somewhat believable this might be a legitimate concern for those seeking to overturn Roe. I think we are far beyond that point now, right wing judicial philosophy is simply an extension of the GOP electorial interests. Just like a guy who seeks to unseat the current boxing champion, what is needed is challenges to be made and accepted so he can get in the ring.
The Court explicitly decided that “the word “person,” as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.” And this is not mere dicta, because the Court also explicitly noted, “If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.” Therefore, the finding that the unborn are not “persons” is essential to the outcome in the case. Frankly, the Court couldn’t have been clearer in declaring that the unborn are not “persons”.
Read this part carefully, though. Saying that the appellee failed to demonstrate the unborn are persons is NOT the same as saying the appellant demonstrated that the unborn are not people.
Harry
The 14th amendment was ratified by the states, not forced on them by the federal government, and the Constitution doesn’t confer upon the federal government the power to grant or deny personhood under the 14th amendment.
The 14th was in fact passed by the states. So what? The amendment was written to bind the states. The Joint Committee on Reconstruction found that only an amendment could protect the rights of blacks in southern states. The Southern States refused to ratify it and had military governments appointed to run the states until after the amendment was passed by enough northern states to ratify it (even then many southern states waited to ratify it, for example Kentucky ratified it in 1976 after rejecting it in 1867).
In the context of the people who wrote it, the people who voted both for and against it, it’s almost totally absurd to read the 14th as an amendment empowering states in some way. It was an amendment designed to limit state power. Giving states the right to define persons however they saw fit would have totally defeated its purpose as states could simply define blacks as non-people in order to violate the 14th as well as other post-war amendments like the abolition of slavery.
November 22nd, 2011 | 11:44 am
BTW, in the hypothetical of a woman on death row whose pregnant getting a stay of execution until after she gives birth. Those seeking something a bit more light hearted should check out the old movie Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow with Sophia Loren. In the first little story she plays a woman who avoids going to jail by exploiting a quirk in Italian law that said a pregnant woman may not be imprisoned. To avoid jail, she keeps getting pregnant. A very cute movie worth hitting on Netflix…
November 22nd, 2011 | 2:50 pm
This is what: If it was passed by the states then it wasn’t a case of a federal authority deciding to “force the states to treat persons with equality and equity.” It was a matter of a majority of the states deciding to do so.
And giving the Supreme Court the right to define persons however they see fit totally defeats its purpose as it can simply define human beings as non-people in order to violate the 14th as well as post-war laws enacted to prohibit taking the life of the child in the womb.
Boonton, it is a matter of bigotry towards a segment of humanity and a matter of the violation and destruction of the very foundation of Western Civilization. It is a replacement of our traditional ethic with a new one (see my earlier post regarding the remarks of one Malcolm Watts in a California Medicine editorial) — although it isn’t entirely new — it was tried out in Germany during the twelve years of the Third Reich. The state claiming for itself the authority to sanction the killing of innocent human beings as a matter of social policy turned out to be one of the most disastrous social experiments in the history of the world. The state simply has no such authority, no matter how much the fundamental issue is hidden with a smokescreen created by blathering on and on about “legal personhood,” which, as I have pointed out before, is a rather worn out tactic most often used in an attempt to legitimize the violation of the human dignity of the victims of one’s bigotry.
November 22nd, 2011 | 3:40 pm
This is what: If it was passed by the states then it wasn’t a case of a federal authority deciding to “force the states to treat persons with equality and equity.” It was a matter of a majority of the states deciding to do so.
So then why do you think it would be logical to assume the 14th was written so as to let states decide who persons are? The purpose of the amendment was to limit the state’s freedom of action, not expand it.
And giving the Supreme Court the right to define persons however they see fit totally defeats its purpose as it can simply define human beings as non-people in order to violate the 14th as well as post-war laws enacted to prohibit taking the life of the child in the womb.
Except the SC wasn’t given the right to define as they see fit. Since no specific branch was explicitly given the right to define persons or life the SC must either try to decide cases without defining who is or isn’t a person or if that is not possible try to arrive at a definition that is consistent with the context and previous cases of the Constitution.
Contrast this, say, with the income tax amendment. It specifically gave Congress the right to tax income. What are the proper income tax rates? Congress decides in the laws it passes and they are whatever it decides period.
it was tried out in Germany during the twelve years of the Third Reich. The state claiming for itself the authority to sanction the killing of innocent human beings as a matter of social policy turned out to be one of the most disastrous social experiments in the history of the world.
As I pointed out, since Roe the state has never performed a single abortion nor has it ever mandated one.
November 22nd, 2011 | 4:50 pm
Regardless of the purpose of the amendment, my point is that the majority of the states ratified it, as opposed to those states having been “forced” to comply with it by the federal government.
If the Supreme Court wasn’t given that right, they certainly claimed it for themselves in the case of Roe v Wade.
The consistency needed was with our primary, founding document, the Declaration of Independence. This is no small matter — inconsistency with it in the Constitution caused a civil war. “Legal” abortion, like slavery, is inconsistent with our founding principles.
And I didn’t say Hitler personally with his own hands killed Jews, nor have I said the Supreme Court justices personally perform abortions. The problem is that in both cases the government pretended to have the authority to sanction the killing of innocent human beings. The state has authorized the abortion of minors without their parents’ consent or knowledge, certainly “mandating” the abortion from perspective of such parents. And it is silly to claim no abortions have ever been performed in state hospitals.
Let’s get back to the point: Before there was government at all, before the concept of “legal” persons had entered the mind of man, was it wrong to intentionally take the life of an innocent human being? And I am not talking about anything that can be construed as killing in a “just war” or in “self defense” or something like that. Was that intrinsically wrong before there was a government? If so, can a government ever make that right? In short, is murder wrong? If not, why not?
November 22nd, 2011 | 5:31 pm
Boonton wrote, “If you want the Court to strike down Roe, you must present it with a case.”
You also need to wait until you have the votes likely to win. It’s pretty easy to count the votes that will not strike down Roe: Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan and old reliable, Kennedy. That’s five. Five is all that is needed to uphold Roe. Four is not enough to overrule it. Presenting a case when you don’t have to votes can do no good and could do a great deal of harm.
“Saying that the appellee failed to demonstrate the unborn are persons is NOT the same as saying the appellant demonstrated that the unborn are not people.”
Again, the word “people” has no legal significance. “People” aren’t protected under the 14th Amendment, “persons” are. And here is what the Court said on that point: “[T]he word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.” It doesn’t get more explicit than that.
Engaging in wishful thinking is a luxury which those who are serious about the pro-life effort can ill afford. You are engaging in wishful thinking.
November 22nd, 2011 | 9:21 pm
Regardless of the purpose of the amendment, my point is that the majority of the states ratified it, as opposed to those states having been “forced” to comply with it by the federal government.
I think this is going around in circles. The purpose of the amendment was to apply limits to state government. Just because states passed the amendment doesn’t alter its purpose nor would it alter its meaning. It’s meaning was not to expand state power but to contract it. Reading it as giving the states the right to declare personhood is at odds with the amendment’s history and context.
If the Supreme Court wasn’t given that right, they certainly claimed it for themselves in the case of Roe v Wade.
No they didn’t, the quotes provided prove that. Let’s review here, when the Constitution grants a branch of gov’t some power, then that branch can essentially use it at its whim. For example, the President has the power to veto laws passed by Congress. The President doesn’t have to justify a veto, doesn’t have to explain it. You can’t sue the President because he vetoed a law you think was the greatest thing ever written and if you did sue the court would toss it out without even a hearing.
Now if the Constitution said any particular branch of gov’t could decide who persons are, then whatever that branch said would go no questions asked. The SC, though, did not say they get to decide. They said in Roe that neither side proved the unborn were or were not persons. When there’s no clear case either way, the SC’s job isn’t to necessarily decide but to see if they really have to decide and then only decide if its absolutely necessary.
I think here the hypothetical of a pregnant woman on death row might be useful to consider to see how this is. As far as I can see, the court could entertain a petition to stay the execution until after she gives birth on the grounds of personhood and due process…namely unlike the woman having an abortion which is a question of her rights versus the unborn’s rights, executing the woman would also be executing the unborn and since the unborn was not convicted & sentenced to death under due process the state may have to hold off the electric chair.
As I pointed out, since Roe the state has never performed a single abortion nor has it ever mandated one.
And I didn’t say Hitler personally with his own hands killed Jews, nor have I said the Supreme Court justices personally perform abortions.
No but you’re dodging an important distinction. The Third Reich executed people on the authority of the German gov’t. While Hitler and the highest levels of authority may have never pulled a trigger those that did were acting under their authority as their representatives. Since Roe, there has never been a single abortion in the US that was due to the government ‘sanctioning’ it as you say. Every abortion that happened has been and continues to be a private decision. This is an important point to keep in mind not only because it shows the weak spots in your attempts to analogize America to Nazi Germany, but also because it misses the contrast between the US and a gov’t that really does order abortions, namely China.
Was that intrinsically wrong before there was a government? If so, can a government ever make that right? In short, is murder wrong? If not, why not?
As I pointed out, no one ever said right = legal. Has there ever been a church in the whole world that told its followers all they needed to do to get into heaven was stay right with the law?
Gregory
You also need to wait until you have the votes likely to win.
This would seem to be a subtle shift in your argument. You’re not saying that the amendment itself was flawed but that now was not the right time to do it because ‘the votes’ aren’t there. But then let’s assume at some point in the future the votes are there. Why would a failed attempt at present cause the votes that will be there to suddenly not be there?
Again, the word “people” has no legal significance. “People” aren’t protected under the 14th Amendment, “persons” are.
There’s no particular distinction I see between ‘people’ and ‘persons’. The language bandied about is quite imprecise and a single core idea (is the unborn a human person or not?) gets referred too by a host of different words and phrases (‘person’, people’, or most annoyingly ‘when does life begin’..)
‘
I’ll leave you with this from Roe which you neglected to quote:
November 22nd, 2011 | 11:12 pm
Boonton,
George F Will, once said that Peter Singer is the Pro-choice side’s worst nightmare. He was referring, of course, to Singer’s view that infanticide can be morally permissable. I would add to this that, Thomson would at least give the Prochoice side bad dreams.
Why would this be? Because few on the prochoice side would wish to endorse infanticide or even late term abortions. But the the cold logic that Singer brings to this issue, would entail, if one accepts his premises, that infants are no more entitled to be considered “persons” than fetuses are.
Thomson’s argument entails the same thing. At least with Singer’s argument, though, he would argue that persons have the right to life. Thompson’s is actually more radical. It would entail that any person’s right to life would be superseded by another’s right to liberty, if the two come into conflict.
I’m not chastizing her for this, because we all realize that, it cannot be morally right either, to allow for just anyone to come and infringe on one’s liberty. So, she’s on to something with her argument, but since it would allow for anyone to die, if the saving of this person’s life infringes on someone else’s liberty, something is wrong with it.
her argument would entail that no restrictions on abortion would be morally justifiable. Is this really what those on the prochoice side want? I don’t think so.
Let’s say that, a newborn, in order to live, can only receive milk from its mother. But the mother refuses. According to the logic of Thomson’s argument, we cannot infringe on the mother’s right to liberty, so the baby, as unfortunate as this would be, would have to be allowed to die.
Something must be wrong with Thomson’s argument.
Certainly the right to life takes priority over the right to liberty.
True, we do rightly allow someone to give up her baby or child, but this presupposes that there’s always someone there to take care of the child. Suppose there isn’t. Would we just let the child die? Thomson’s argument would entail yes. This cannot possibly be right, morally.
November 22nd, 2011 | 11:16 pm
I would add that, Singer is a utilitarian. He would perhaps agree with Thomson’s argument, if, after proper analysis, he dtermined that it would result in greater happiness for the greater good. But he would disagree, if it would result in greater unhappiness for the greater number.
November 23rd, 2011 | 5:57 am
Bret Lythgoe is right that, in some cases at least,the right to life takes priority over the right to liberty. One has only to consider the International Maritime Conventions that impose on vessels of all nations the duty of saving life at sea, where this can be done without “imperilling” the rescuer’s ship. Both the doctrine of the jurists and the jurisprudence of courts of admiralty indicate that “imperil” implies a serious degree of risk.
Again, Article 223-6 & 7 of the Code Penal has found its way into most European legislation:
“Anyone who, being able to prevent by immediate action a felony or a misdemeanour against the bodily integrity of a person, without risk to himself or to third parties, wilfully abstains from doing so, is punished by five years’ imprisonment and a fine of €75,000.
The same penalties apply to anyone who wilfully fails to offer assistance to a person in danger which he could himself provide without risk to himself or to third parties, or by initiating rescue operations.
Anyone who voluntarily abstains from taking or initiating measures, which involve no risk to himself or to third parties, to combat a natural disaster likely to endanger the safety of others is punished by two years’ imprisonment and a fine of €30,000.”
In other words, the law sees nothing objectionable in principle in imposing a positive duty of care.
November 23rd, 2011 | 8:52 am
Why would this be? Because few on the prochoice side would wish to endorse infanticide or even late term abortions. But the the cold logic that Singer brings to this issue, would entail, if one accepts his premises, that infants are no more entitled to be considered “persons” than fetuses are.
I haven’t read anything of Singer, only a bit by his critics but I believe his issue is not so much about ‘personhood’ as strict utilitarianism. He would save the infant with severe disabilities, but only provided all other uses of resources that provide more ‘bang for the buck’ in terms of quality of life years had been spent. His marginal analysis is that he wouldn’t spend $5 on keeping an infant on a respirator for an extra 6 months of life if $5 would save 10 healthy infants in Africa of an easily preventable illness.
This is indeed cold sounding, but it is the strict logic employed by your insurance company which, no doubt, is happy to pay for cheap preventative measures like BP medication for you but balks at the experimental cancer treatment that costs hundreds of thousands and has only a 50% chance of giving you 3 more months.
He also has a point that this analysis sounds chillingly cold but its no colder than the way we justify how we spend our money….lavishing thousands on toys for healthy children who are ‘close’ to us while giving only token amounts for children near death on the other side of the world. He is at least least intellectually consistent in arguing that the well off (which in global terms means almost everyone who is able to read this) should drastically reduce their consumption unless and until all opportunities for alleviating suffering for others have been exploited.
I’m not chastizing her for this, because we all realize that, it cannot be morally right either, to allow for just anyone to come and infringe on one’s liberty. So, she’s on to something with her argument, but since it would allow for anyone to die, if the saving of this person’s life infringes on someone else’s liberty, something is wrong with it.
Well if we take a strict Ayn Randish view of liberty, we do seem to come to that point. Not only may the state not order you to donate your kidney, donate your blood or have your uterus used for the sake of another, but the state can’t even tax you a penny to save the whole world from death. But we tend to have a more sliding scale view of liberty starting with the fact that most of us understand our interdependent reality. No man is an island unto himself. Ayn Rand achieved her success not only from the free transactions of people who brought her books, paid for her speeches but also from the unfree transactions. The person collecting Social Security who went to the book store driving on roads subsidized by tax dollars and policed by the gov’t to keep highway robbers at bay to buy a book printed by a printer free to print because massive defense expenditures prevented invasion of the US by enemies all benefited Rand in ways she was never asked to pay for.
So I’m willing to say that the gov’t may infringe upon liberty to save other people. If 10% of my pay helps old people get dialysis and young people kidney transplants I’m not going to get too upset by it. But we do recognize limits on this infringement. It’s one thing for the gov’t to tax me my work income, it’s a bit different for gov’t to enslave me 10% of the time. It’s one thing for the gov’t to call for people to volunteer their kidneys to help those that need them…even offer them bounties and rewards paid for by my taxes….it’s another thing for the gov’t to go around with a kidney draft forcing unwilling people onto hospital beds, drugging them and removing their ‘spare’ kidney.
Let’s say that, a newborn, in order to live, can only receive milk from its mother. But the mother refuses. According to the logic of Thomson’s argument, we cannot infringe on the mother’s right to liberty, so the baby, as unfortunate as this would be, would have to be allowed to die.
Is this case any different from the person who needs a kidney or bone marrow transplant but the one person with the ‘right type’ won’t donate for whatever reason (he hates the sick person, or he has religious beliefs against transplants, or he has totally irrational crazy beliefs like giving up some body tissue is giving up his soul)? As harsh as it sounds, I don’t think in this case the mother could be forced to give her milk if she really didn’t want too.
Certainly the right to life takes priority over the right to liberty
Both these rights are being phrased here as positives (something gov’t gives you) when in fact they are negative (gov’t refrains from infringing upon these). The gov’t doesn’t give me life. In fact, its a bit nonsensical to talk about ‘saving a life’. We all have 100% fatality. The best we do is extend life, avoiding the car accident today extends your expected ‘life years’ or improve its quality. The ‘right to life’ is simply a right to require the gov’t make no effort to take away life without due process of law. Gov’t can’t force all of us around to maximize some type of ‘life metric’. Likewise with liberty. Gov’t may not prevent me from writing, but gov’t can’t give me the ability to write well. Can’t give me fame for writing stuff people like and so on.
So both these ‘rights’ or ‘interests’ only can exist on sliding scales. If they didn’t, if ‘life’ always trumps ‘liberty’ then you have no liberty. Not only can the gov’t tell you that you can’t get an abortion, you can’t spend $2.50 on a coffee at Starbucks unless you first ensured that every person in the world first has enough to eat, and then has shelter, and then has essential medical care and so on.
I would say the more removed gov’t is from the person, the less the liberty interest holds against the life interest. To tax my transactions in order to keep Russia or China from nuking half the world represents a very high life value at a very low cost to liberty. Ditto for providing health care to people, research for disease and so on. As gov’t gets more closer to my person, the liberty cost increases. If a cop shoots me, my liberty cost is sky high. This can’t be justified unless the life cost was also very high (say if I was threatening someone with a knife).
This does indeed put abortion in a fuzzy zone. Telling a woman who wants an abortion at 8 months 3 weeks that she may not have one without state prosecution is a high liberty cost, but only for a week or so. At 2 weeks though, the liberty price goes up. This would seem to satisfy your desire to avoid a system that hits either extreme of saying no liberty for anyone as long as any life may be at stake or saying liberty over everything regardless of who gets hurt.
November 23rd, 2011 | 10:09 am
To use a silly analogy, but one that will make my point: Let’s say you and I and our mutual friend, S.C. Justice, are out in some farmer’s pasture getting in some target practice, shooting at tin cans, crates and other junk that had been discarded out there. I take aim at a crate off in the distance, and you say, “Harry, wait a minute, I’m not sure but I think I saw something moving in that crate you’re aiming at, it might be one of those kids we saw playing out here earlier.” I reply, “You haven’t proved there is a kid in there, it’s my right to empty my pistol into that crate.” We argue and then agree to leave it up to our friend, S.C., who, relishing the authority we have agreed to give him, lets that go to his head. He notes that neither of us have proved whether there is a kid in the crate or not, yet insists a decision must be made. S.C. authorizes me to empty my pistol into the crate. Luckily, just then, we all see a child emerging from the crate.
No analogy is perfect. In reality, a child always “emerges from the crate” eventually, so to speak. And everybody knows that will happen if we don’t “empty a pistol into the crate.” In reality, it never was a question of “proving there was a kid in the crate.” Everybody knows what the state of a pregnant woman is, that being so obvious it has been called being “with child” from time immemorial. It is a matter of whether or not we have any respect at all for human life. If we do, then if there ever is a doubt, we don’t merely err on the side of human life, we come down hard on the side of human life. The Supreme Court didn’t do that. Why? With atheism, there can be no such thing as inalienable rights. Under the atheocracy, our right to life is not inalienable, it is measured by how much we are wanted by others.
The government “sanctions” killing the child in the womb, as in giving that action its official permission and approval. I strongly suspect that fifty million dead children, if they could, would disagree with you about the government’s approval of taking their lives not being a factor in that happening.
November 23rd, 2011 | 10:45 am
Right and “legal” are not the same things, the prime example of that currently is pretending that taking the lives of innocent human beings is “legal.” Doing so is intrinsically illegal. Right and “genuinely legal” are, where fundamental principles are concerned, the same things. To accept that the law doesn’t necessarily have to be moral in its fundamental principles, that it is merely the exercise of those with the power to make their decisions stick, is exactly the situation we are in. That is what you get under an atheocracy such as ours, for which inalienable rights have no basis. Taking the lives of innocent human beings is intrinsically immoral and involves the most fundamental principle of civilization – that the powerful can’t take the lives of the less powerful simply because it is within their power to do so.
November 23rd, 2011 | 11:02 am
We argue and then agree to leave it up to our friend, S.C., who, relishing the authority we have agreed to give him, lets that go to his head. He notes that neither of us have proved whether there is a kid in the crate or not, yet insists a decision must be made. S.C. authorizes me to empty my pistol into the crate. Luckily, just then, we all see a child emerging from the crate.
I think the key problem here isn’t the imperfections in the analogy but the phrase the authority we have agreed to give him. What if he turned around and said I don’t know whether or not there is a child in the crate, so you will have to decide what the best course of action is. If that was the case and you decided to shoot the consquences for the decision belong to you, not him. Suppose the question you asked wasn’t “should I shoot” but “who shall decide whether or not I shoot”? His purpose is not to judge the decision to shoot or not but to judge who should make it. Should you make the call or should the guy supervising the shooting range or property owner make the call?
The government “sanctions” killing the child in the womb, as in giving that action its official permission and approval.
You seem to have things backwards my friend. The gov’t doesn’t give you ‘permission’ to do things. It’s the gov’t that has permission to do things. As for approval, again you’re basing that simply on the gov’t lacking authority. Does the state of Kansas give me ‘permission and approval’ to rape and kill people in Canada? If I did, and for whatever reason Canada couldn’t or wouldn’t prosecute me, the state of Kansas could do nothing. You can, if you wish, ditch Christian belief and become an atheist, or a Satanist, or just a hedonist. Is the state also giving you ‘official permission and approval’ aka ‘sanction’?
November 23rd, 2011 | 1:11 pm
So it has nothing at all to do with whether or not an innocent child might get killed? You, and the atheocracy that we are now living under, are truly frightening. The heart of the matter, as abortion advocate Dr. Watts was forced to admit, is that:
All the atheistic regimes of modern history, rejecting the traditional ethic, have resulted in the killing of innocent human beings on a massive scale. They are forced to use deception because their agenda violates the law naturally written in everyone’s heart. Such regimes return us to the days of the false deification of Caesar, who insists we render unto him that which belongs only to God.
Our government, which began as one dedicated to protecting the inalienable rights of all humanity, has been altered as needed when it failed to do so, according to the principles of its founders who insisted it was our duty to do that. That is why slavery and the killing of the child in the womb were outlawed. Since then our government has been slowly transformed into something entirely different, into just another modern atheistic regime, in which, of course, there can be no basis for God-given rights. And of course this rejection of the traditional ethic has resulted once again in the killing of innocent human beings on a massive scale, and is, as always, based on deception.
This won’t make any sense to atheists, but for Christians it should explain a lot about why atheistic regimes always use deception which results in the killing innocent human beings by the millions:
Yes, I know how that sounds to those completely lost in atheistic secularism. But before deciding that the above citation is sure proof of my faith-based fanaticism – remember who it is defending innocent human life and who it is accepting the destruction of innocent human beings by the millions. Using the wildest stretches of your imagination, consider the possibility that taking innocent human lives by the millions just might be fanatical. Consider also that your atheism must be taken on faith – it is impossible to prove God isn’t there. Do you suppose your accepting on faith that the killing of innocent human beings by the millions is legitimate might just be dangerous “faith-based fanaticism”? And just what is so fanatical about objecting to that? Think about it.
November 25th, 2011 | 8:17 am
So it has nothing at all to do with whether or not an innocent child might get killed? You, and the atheocracy that we are now living under, are truly frightening.
You keep tossing around the accusation of atheist without any support. There are plenty of atheists who do not support abortion for the very reasons you don’t, and there are theists who do not believe a fertilized egg by itself is a soul. In fact, for much of Christianity the belief was that quickening was the moment a soul entered the body hence abortion before that point wasn’t murder (which is not the same as saying it was permitted or condoned).
Since atheism has nothing to do with this discussion, you tossing it around is just bigotry. Its as if I kept inserting into my arguments with you “that’s a Jew opinion!”
Now to answer your question the first question a judge asks is “do I have the authority to hear this case?” That question is fundamental because if the judge doesn’t, then its only a mere opinion he can provide, not different than anyone’s opinion. To give you an illustration, suppose you presented a Mexican judge with evidence that a man on Texas death row was innocent. Is the question of a man on death row being innocent very important? You bet it is! But the first question the judge must determine is whether or not this question belongs to his jurisdiction or not. As I pointed out, Roe explicitly did not claim to have resolved the abortion question. In fact the passage I quoted said that they were not resolving it. The only thing ‘resolved’ is the limits of gov’t authority in this area. To what extent gov’t should use the authority it does have, and to what extent the people should use the authority they have remains a question that they have to answer.
Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death.
It is said that history is written by the winners, but that’s not quite true. History is often written by losers, mostly because quite often winners move onto other things after they win while the losers have only their memoirs to write. For example, there’s a lot more nostalgia for the Confederate States of America than the Union when it comes to the Civil War. The above is littered with factual errors that support this.
It may be easy for even pro-choicers to be fooled into believing that in the past abortion was outlawed because it was viewed as murder. After all just about the only argument you hear against abortion these days is that its killing a human, so if you hear that 150 years ago a state outlawed abortion it’s quite sensible to assume they did it because they believed that argument. But we have exhaustively looked at abortion law pre-Roe on this blog and we have seen that’s NOT the case. Abortion was never viewed as murder in the pre-Roe era. So we see the first factual error, there has been no separation between abortion and killing. Both were seen as seperate even when abortion was outlawed. A woman who killed her newborn baby in 1860 was likely to have been hanged. A doctor who did so would also probably face the rope. Abortion was not so viewed. Pro-lifers are pretending to be conservatives when in fact they are proposing a radical change, uniting two ideas that were separate for all of human history. Now that by itself doesn’t make them wrong. After all, plenty of ideas we accept as quite sensible today like freedom of expression, democracy, the silliness of an absolute monarch, freedom of religion, opposition to racism and sexism etc. all are quite new ideas in human history. So I’m willing to entertain the possibility is very real that human history has been largely mistaken and we should adopt a new way of viewing the unborn. But then pro-lifers need to do the following:
* Be honest in admitting the radicalness of their agenda.
* Ditch the self-righteousness addiction. Lincoln didn’t bash slave owners. In fact, he even said if he had been born in the south and raised there he might very well be as passionate about defending slavery as he was about containing it. A little bit of sympathy for the positions of others goes a long, long way.
And we see yet another factual error made in the above. Human life does not begin at conception. The sperm and the egg are living human cells before conception. The author knows this as does the author in Roe who talks about the question of “when does human life begin”? We know the phrase “when human life begins” in the context of this debate is a verbally imprecise stand in for the question “where is the line, if any, between pre-personhood and personhood in the development of a new human?” What is happening here is that an easier question is being swapped in for the harder one. It’s a subtle but classic type of straw man argument.
November 26th, 2011 | 10:56 am
Provide me with a list of, say, five “Atheists for Life” type organizations. And if you can, which I seriously doubt, it won’t be a case of those groups opposing abortion “for the very reasons” I oppose it. That is because there can be no such thing as inalienable, God-given rights for genuine atheists. One Who doesn’t exist at all can’t bestow rights on humanity.
If there are “theists who do not believe a fertilized egg by itself is a soul” that does not present a problem. God bestowed upon human beings – not “those the government considers legal persons” – an inalienable right to life. That a fertilized egg is an innocent, living, growing human being is certain according to science and common sense. That is the case whether or not it possesses a soul according to the government.
Even when, based on incorrect science, Christianity made a distinction between destroying a child before quickening and after quickening, it was still considered gravely wrong in both cases. That it was wrong to destroy the child even before quickening was probably at least in part based on the following:
That God has a plan for us before we are even conceived made clear that it was wrong to destroy the child before quickening. (Again, this should make serious Christians seriously reconsider their use of artificial contraception.)
That isn’t the case. Again, there can be no such thing as inalienable, God-given rights for genuine atheists. The government our founders established, based upon theism and natural law – the laws of nature and nature’s God – creates an entirely different situation for humanity than the government it slowly became: one that doesn’t acknowledge any authority higher than itself, that acknowledges no eternal principles of justice, that feels free to bestow “legal personhood” on non-human entities and feels free to remove it from innocent, living, growing human beings.
Fifty million dead children, if they could, would disagree. Roe pretended to authorize and legitimize the killing of the child in the womb, striking down laws put in place by the elected representatives of the people. As I have pointed out before, after a decade of work, abortion advocates had only achieved the repeal of those laws in about a half dozen states, and those few were considering the repeal of their new laws allowing abortion. The New York state legislature actually did repeal their new law but that was vetoed by Nelson Rockefeller. Frustrated abortion advocating atheocrats needed a shortcut – one that wouldn’t have to deal with the moral sensitivities of the people, which is a huge obstacle to implementing the agenda of the atheocracy. Roe was that shortcut. From then on Pro-Lifers were told again and again that the abortion question had been settled by the Supreme Court. The Pro-Lifers knew it had been settled like the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision settled the slavery question, which is to say it hadn’t been settled at all. Even so, the intent of Roe was to settle or “resolve the abortion question,” which it did not do at all even though abortion advocates claimed it had.
That it was outlawed because it took the life on an innocent human being with an inalienable right to life is evident to anyone who has not been hopelessly indoctrinated with atheocratic propaganda. If taking the life of the child in the womb did not bring about prosecution of the crime of “murder” it wasn’t because the A.M.A didn’t condemn abortion as taking the life of an innocent human being:
The report goes on to state that the A.M.A should recommend to federal and state legislatures that they revise the law as it relates to the crime of abortion.
A human liver cell is not a human being. The sperm and the egg are not human beings. A fertilized egg is a human being.
November 28th, 2011 | 6:53 am
Provide me with a list of, say, five “Atheists for Life” type organizations.
I suggest you go to Google and type in ‘atheists against abortion’ and variations on the above. Beats me if you’ll find an ‘organization’ out there, being a pretty small minority, atheists have much fewer organizations than Christians. But you should have no trouble, if your honest, finding anti-abortion atheists. And you’re going to also find more pro-choice Christians (organizations or persons) than pro-choice atheists. More importantly most of the anti-abortion arguments do not require any particular religious bleief.
it won’t be a case of those groups opposing abortion “for the very reasons” I oppose it. That is because there can be no such thing as inalienable, God-given rights for genuine atheists. One Who doesn’t exist at all can’t bestow rights on humanity
Ohhh well sorry, you’re right you’re not going to find anti-abortion atheists who are theists. On the other hand, you won’t find any pro-abortion atheists who are theists either. The above is a long winded way of saying atheists aren’t theists. Thanks for playing but you haven’t supported your original assertion that abortion is some especially atheist conspiracy.
That isn’t the case. Again, there can be no such thing as inalienable, God-given rights for genuine atheists. The government our founders established, based upon theism and natural law – the laws of nature and nature’s God
A person who simply believed all humans had inalienable rights would have no trouble following your argument nor the arguments of most pro-lifers. In fact, plenty of people who don’t respect your arguments for life or freedom have opposed abortion. Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, for example, outlawed abortion.
Even when, based on incorrect science, Christianity made a distinction between destroying a child before quickening and after quickening, it was still considered gravely wrong in both cases.
Again lots of things can be considered wrong. It’s considered wrong to kill a dog or kitten, yet very few people would say this implies killing a dog or kitten is like killing a child. You cannot escape the logic of equal protection, you can’t just say its wrong, you have to say its equal to killing a child, an adult, or any other person. Anything else and you’re cutting it short.
If taking the life of the child in the womb did not bring about prosecution of the crime of “murder” it wasn’t because the A.M.A didn’t condemn abortion as taking the life of an innocent human being:
I notice you keep dodging my arguments (such as in regards to jurisdiction) and simply trying to repound your own. Your AMA letter from 1859, however, demonstrates my point that views on abortion were not settled pre-Roe the way you would like to think.
Consider:
So what are we hearing here from your source? That while the mass public would consider a woman who killed her newborn to be a murderer, a woman who had an abortion would be much less than that, esp. if it was a first trimester abortion before quickening. This was the widespread belief and you have asserted that widespread beliefs should count in a democracy…..or maybe they only get the count when they coinincide with your beliefs….
Anyway, the AMA letter basically says that the publics widespread belief is ignorant and the AMA, being an elite organization knows better. But what do they know that the ‘common man’ doesn’t? They pull the same strawman argument you pull today! Just goes to show that there’s nothing new under the sun!
They pretend the question is about when the fetus is ‘alive’. But this is a swap in for ‘personhood’ or ‘ensoulment’ to use a more theistic word. The AMA asserts it has elite scientific knowledge the uneducated common man (or common woman) lacks. But we know they had no such elite knowledge. No scientific discovery has pinned down ‘personhood’. All the AMA could really say, if really pressed on the issue, was that the fetus existed before quickening. But this was no great scientific discovery nor was it anything that wasn’t known by the common person in 1859….in fact it was as well known in 859 BC. All ‘common people’ knew that a woman was pregnant before quickening and they knew that pregnancy was linked to an act of having sex.
This red herring works by simply asserting some definition into the argument that science can have a say on, and then noting that there’s no scientific dispute over that. For example, a more modern version tries to assert that ‘unique DNA’ defines a person, therefore science ‘proves’ that conception is when unique DNA is created therefore abortion after that point is murder. But ‘science’ can’t prove unique DNA makes a person anymore than it can disprove quickening is not the moment a soul enters the body.
In fact, let’s ask exactly why quickening is rejected these days. Exactly what evidence or proof has ever been produced that its wrong? I can see why the AMA wouldn’t like it as a definition. It depends on the mother’s intuition and subjective ‘feelings’ as opposed to the elite doctor’s use of objective scientific tests. But the soul has always been elusive scientifically. They used to try to measure the soul’s ‘weight’ by putting dying patients on very precise scales to see if they could see how much the body’s weight dropped when the ‘soul left’. Materialists assert that this is because the soul doesn’t exist, at least not in any way that is not part of the brain. But theists counter that it simply means the soul is elusive to the measurements of ‘mere matter’. But ‘science’ cannot prove one version right. At the end both sides are making assertions of faith which at the end have not been proven by science in either direction.
With that in mind, why is the believer in quickening so easily derided? She’s accused of ignorance but that’s false. She’s perfectly aware that pregnancy exists before quickening, she’s perfectly aware that its linked to and caused by a sex act. So why is she falsely accused of being ignorant? Because she asserts she knows something ‘in her heart’ or by ‘intuition’ or ‘just knows’? This is degraded because its not a method of knowing that you can use a measuring device like a scale to detect. But those who mock her would have a better case if they themselves had scales that actually worked in this area, they have nothing. In the end her faith claims are no less valid and no more disproven than any other, including the person who asserts he ‘just knows’ that all men have God-given, inalienable rights.
November 28th, 2011 | 10:39 am
Which brings us back to who respects human life and who doesn’t, who considers the destruction of innocent human lives by the millions to be legitimate and who doesn’t.
Theism is faith-based. That faith is a reasonable faith, not the irrational, dangerous, blind faith of atheism that is always lethal to humanity on a massive scale.
Science and common sense tell us that human life begins at conception. If we respect human life at all we will want to protect it from its beginning, even if faith-based atheism doesn’t like that. As I have pointed out before, atheism is necessarily faith-based since it cannot be proven that God isn’t there.
If it is wrong to take the lives of innocent human beings it is wrong regardless of the jurisdiction in which that takes place.
November 28th, 2011 | 12:59 pm
Science and common sense tell us that human life begins at conception. If we respect human life at all we will want to protect it from its beginning, even if faith-based atheism doesn’t like that.
Except it doesn’t. This is exactly what your AMA letter from the 1850′s says. It said ‘common sense’ said humans began at quickening but the AMA, being elite scientists had proven it was conception. so basically you’re position is science is right when it agrees with you, common sense is right when it agrees with you and both are wrong when they don’t. do you have anything better to advance your argument? Anything that doesn’t collapse into “whatever harry wants goes”?
If it is wrong to take the lives of innocent human beings it is wrong regardless of the jurisdiction in which that takes place.
Again you seem uninterested in actually listening to the arguments of others.
November 28th, 2011 | 2:27 pm
Again, if it is wrong to take the lives of innocent human beings it is wrong regardless of the jurisdiction in which that takes place. You want to claim a woman is her own jurisdiction. She is not. Defining an individual as their own legal jurisdiction is another way of advocating anarchy. Women do not have the right to be judge, jury and executioner of their own children. Sorry.
Could it be that my position is in agreement with science and common sense and yours isn’t?
November 28th, 2011 | 3:59 pm
Could it be that my position is in agreement with science and common sense and yours isn’t?
If that’s the case why cite evidence that supports my position like the AMA letter? Are you attempting an act of charity on my behalf?
Defining an individual as their own legal jurisdiction is another way of advocating anarchy
Quite the contrary, over many moral decision the individual is the beginning and end of jurisdiction. You seem to confuse jurisdiction with morality. Look again at my example of Canada vs. Kansas. If someone commits murder in Canada, a Kansas court has no jurisdiction over the case. If the Canadian courts cannot or willnot prosecute the crime, the Kansas court remains at a loss.
This doesn’t mean its moral to kill people in Canada, it means courts and gov’t as a whole is limited in what they can do in trying to confront wrongs in the world.
November 28th, 2011 | 5:09 pm
Booton wrote:
Because some members of the Court are more prone to honor precedent than others. Honoring precedent (i.e., the principle of stare decisis) is actually a conservative concept. Thus, building more and more precedent in favor of abortion rights may actually cost some conservative justices to uphold the existing precedent. In any event, if I assume that a future Court might be amenable to overturning Roe when the current one is not, what’s the point in making the challenge now? It smacks of doing something just to do it or because it makes you feel better about yourself, when you know it has no real chance of saving any lives. I certainly understand people who voted yes who believed it might actually be helpful, but I can see no reason for doing so when one sees the effect of the amendment as doing more harm than good other than vanity. Why waste time, money and energy passing amendments doomed to be struck down when the same time, money and energy might be spent doing things that would actually save some lives?
This statement belies a lack of understanding of the significance of legal terminology. “Persons” are explicitly protected in the Constitution; “people” are not. Lawyers, judges, and justices use precise language because words are given definitions in the law. The distinction between “people” and “persons” is that the former is a term with no legal significance in this area of the law and the latter is.
November 29th, 2011 | 7:24 am
Gregory,
I don’t think much thought was given in the Constitution in using ‘persons’ rather than ‘people’. Nor do I think anyone has a really precide definition that tells me what the difference is between ‘persons’ and ‘people’. Lawyers should use precise language, but we see with the shifting around between ‘persons/when does life begin/etc.’ that sloppy use of language happens at even the highest level of legal thought.
I think you’re overstating the power of precedent here. Precedent works best when its used to build on law. Take privacy as an example. It was first used to strike down a law prohibiting married couples from using contraception. Later cases expanded that right into more diverse settings. That type of precedent makes it harder for a court to rule no right to privacy exists. Doing so would upset not just one case but multiple cases that cut cross many different areas.
Most abortion challenges, though, are just rematches of Roe.v.Wade. From a pro-choice POV, if the Roe side wins again the value of ‘additional precedent’ is slim compared to the risk of the Wade side winning.
Also, the Mississippi amendment could still stand even if Roe was preserved. As I pointed out above, you can rule that the unborn are people (or persons) yet rule that one still has a right to an abortion. The personhood amendment would have implications elsewhere (see my hypothetical about a pregnant woman on death row) and would kick in should Roe get reversed some other way.
Let the record note, BTW, that Mississippi is neither a hotbed of atheism or pro-choicism. The defeat does seem to belie harry’s assertion that its ‘common sense’ that persons begin at conception. In fact, common sense seems to be just the opposite with the AMA complaining in the 1860′s that ‘common sense’ was ignorant.
November 29th, 2011 | 10:23 am
Gregory,
I don’t think much thought was given in the Constitution in using ‘persons’ rather than ‘people’.
I disagree entirely. “Persons” had a legal meaning the the drafters of the 14th amendment. The drafters of the Constitution and its amendments were not sloppy in their choice of words. In the original Constitution, the word “person” or “persons” was used 22 times. The word “people” was used only twice, and one of those was in the preamble. Both times, the word “people” was immediately preceded by the definitive article “the”. The uses were quite distinct. The former (i.e., person or persons) was used to describe individuals, the latter (i.e., people) was used to describe the population as a whole.
Likewise, the in Bill of Rights, the word “people” was used five times, each time immediately preceded by the definitive article “the”. The words “person” or “persons” was used four times. The same distinction is evident.
In the subsequent amendments, the words “person” or “persons” was used 23 times and the word “people”, again immediately preceded by the definitive article “the”, was used twice, both times in the 17th Amendment. And, again, the distinction in the use is evident and the same as found throughout the Constitution and its amendments.
I understand the distinction you are making as to precedent, I simply disagree with you that building up precedent in support of the specific right to abortion does not make it more difficult to overturn the precedent. The longer the line of precedent, the more difficult it will be to overturn it.
I agree that a “personhood amendment” does not, by itself, bar all abortions. What it does do is give the unborn a Constitutional right to life which must be protected. It would require a weighing of interests between the right of the unborn and the right of the mother. That is why finding that the unborn were not “persons” was an essential element of Roe v. Wade. The expansive right to abortion laid out in Roe simply could not exist if the unborn are “persons”.
November 29th, 2011 | 12:31 pm
What I have repeatedly said is that what constitutes a “legal person” is entirely subjective and therefore cannot be used to determine the right to life of a human being. That must be determined by what science and common sense make clear: human life begins at conception.
The A.M.A. of the 19th century was aware of the fact that human life begins at conception. This is evident from the thought of Dr. Horatio Robinson Storer, who led the physicians’ crusade against abortion. It was a matter of science and common sense then, too.
The general public was ignorant of the knowledge of medical science. Common sense had brought much of the general public to conclude that human life had begun at least by quickening; this was centuries-old thinking. The A.M.A., knowing better, realized the obligation they had to educate legislators and the general public. They did so. The laws were updated to reflect science and common sense, protecting the inalienable right to life of all humanity.
The A.M.A. does the opposite now, rejecting science and common sense. We now have “legal” abortion before and after quickening. The discoveries of modern medical science only confirm what the A.M.A. of the 19th century knew to be true: Human life begins at conception. What has changed then? Government based on theism and natural law has been replaced with an atheocracy that does not and cannot accept any such thing as an inalienable, God-given right to life.
November 29th, 2011 | 4:21 pm
Gregory
The uses were quite distinct. The former (i.e., person or persons) was used to describe individuals, the latter (i.e., people) was used to describe the population as a whole.
OK but do you have any evidence to indicate that they thought the population (i.e. ‘people’) consisted of anything other than ‘persons’? I mean when they said “We the people…” you are saying they meant “We the population…” but again all the population consists of persons. “We the people…” didn’t include all the squirrels, deer and birds of the United States, for example.
I think tactically more challenges to Roe tend to be a bad thing for pro-choicers rather than a good thing by ‘locking in precedent’ but I guess we’ll just have to disagree on that judgement. You glide over the fact that a personhood amendment, even if it couldn’t defeat Roe, would alter the ‘consideration’ given to the unborn in legal thinking (i.e. my hypothetical over the pregnant woman on death row). That would seem to imply an argument for it.
harry
That must be determined by what science and common sense make clear: human life begins at conception.
Except its clear that human life begins before conception. So you’re just tossing up the straw man again.
The A.M.A. of the 19th century was aware of the fact that human life begins at conception
The AMA of the 19th century also said that ‘common sense’ at the time was that “human life” began at quickening. So which is it, is common sense right or wrong? Is the AMA right or wrong?
The general public was ignorant of the knowledge of medical science. Common sense had brought much of the general public to conclude that human life had begun at least by quickening; this was centuries-old thinking.
Really? What scientific discoveries was the public ignorant of? There were none that were relevant to the question of when does human life begin. The ‘common sense’ of the general public was well aware that pregnancy did not begin at quickening, it was well aware that sex caused pregnancy. It was well aware even of conception! What, do you think the word Conception didn’t exist until the 1900s!!!!!! Heck, Christians had been celebrating the Feast of the Immaculate Conception since maybe the 5th century. Did everyone think that was a celebration of quickening until the AMA came along in the 1850′s?
November 29th, 2011 | 6:13 pm
No. They weren’t. The Immaculate Conception of Mary wasn’t declared infallibly as a dogma of the Church until 1854 by Pius IX. Thomas Aquinas (of the 13th century) did not believe Mary was sanctified from the moment of her conception.
There were feasts in honor of the conception of Mary and others, but the Church didn’t consider their conception to be the beginning of their human lives. The child wasn’t thought to be alive until after quickening or “ensoulment.” This is why the early Church made a distinction between abortion before quickening and afterwards. The idea that life began with quickening or “ensoulment” persisted to some extent for centuries. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, speaking theologically, makes the point that Christ was an exception in His being ensouled from conception. Speaking in terms of the understanding of the science of its time it assumed everyone else was ensouled at quickening. That assumption was not a theological error, but a mentioning in passing of the belief of the science of the times.
As I said before the sperm is not a human being nor is the egg human being. In the same way a liver cell is not a human being. A new human being begins with conception.
Common sense is often right. Science and common sense reaching the same conclusion is nearly always a correct conclusion. Common sense told ordinary people that if Mom can feel the baby kicking inside her it was alive. That was correct. Science and common sense determined that the baby was alive even before Mom could feel it kicking — from conception. Science and common sense tells us that if a fertilized egg is growing it is alive.
November 29th, 2011 | 7:42 pm
No. They weren’t. The Immaculate Conception of Mary wasn’t declared infallibly as a dogma of the Church until 1854 by Pius IX. Thomas Aquinas (of the 13th century) did not believe Mary was sanctified from the moment of her conception.
You’re confusing Christian with Roman Catholic. The Eastern Church in Syria was celebrating it as early as the 5th century. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_the_Immaculate_Conception
The idea that life began with quickening or “ensoulment” persisted to some extent for centuries.
You’re confusing ‘life’ and ‘soul’ here. Clearly ancients knew parts of the body were alive without being a ‘soul’. They knew that if you cut a person’s finger off it would die and begin to rot while his other attached fingers would remain healthy and alive. The distinction that was made here was between a living entity without a soul (i.e. one who isn’t yet a person but will be if all goes well) versus one with a soul (aka ‘person’). Today this debate is superceded often by a debate over whether or not a soul exists as something distinct from the matter that makes up a body but there’s never been any scientific discovery that ‘settled’ this issue.
While anatomy wasn’t quite a perfect science, it was probably well known that pregnant humans and animals who died before quickening and were dissected did not have inanimate lumps in their wombs but small bodies. The quickening view would have held these were bodies whose ‘souls’ were not yet ‘downloaded’ (or ‘uploaded’). They would have viewed them as alive in the same sense you view your finger as alive when it remains safely attached to your hand.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent, speaking theologically, makes the point that Christ was an exception in His being ensouled from conception. Speaking in terms of the understanding of the science of its time it assumed everyone else was ensouled at quickening. That assumption was not a theological error, but a mentioning in passing of the belief of the science of the times.
If Christ was an exception then by definition there’s some difference between him and other men. This is clearly a debate that has nothing to do with science. Science cannot and has not demonstrated that souls do not enter the body at quickening. More importantly, this demonstrates clearly that people were well aware of the concept of conception being distinctly different than quickening. There was no ‘scientific discovery’ ever made related to this issue. People knew pregnancy and unborn babies existed before quickening.
As I said before the sperm is not a human being nor is the egg human being….
So you did say before, but you didn’t say ‘human being’ but ‘human life’ which would include any and all living cells from a human. So we go back to you doing the dance we see in Roe, the dance in your AMA letter from over 100 years ago. You pretend the debate is about mere ‘life’ when the debate is about a human beign.
Common sense is often right. Science and common sense reaching the same conclusion is nearly always a correct conclusion.
But here we don’t see science and common sense reaching the same conclusion. We see the AMA complaining over 100 years ago that common sense was at odds with their conclusion. We see the voters of Mississippi rejecting what you say is ‘common sense’ more than 100 years later. We also often see that science can and often is wrong when it runs up against common sense. Biology has especially been notorious for claims being made as being absolutely proven true by science (the dangers of masturbation, the inability of women to have orgasm, sex during pregnancy causing birth defects, the blank slate theory of gender identity, racial hygenics, lobotomies, psychotherapy, etc.) only to collapse after a sustained refusal of ‘the people’s common sense’ to yield. Then it’s discovered that the inassailably ‘true’ theories are, in fact, simply opinions of scientists who conned themselves into thinking they had ‘proven’ them true.
November 30th, 2011 | 3:05 pm
You have convinced me of this much: that you don’t believe it is intrinsically wrong to take the lives of innocent human beings. Keep it up. Convince everybody that people with your mindset don’t believe murder is wrong. But don’t expect the idea that murder is wrong to go away. It won’t. It is written in the hearts of all humanity.
November 30th, 2011 | 7:10 pm
Whatever “common sense” may hold, the Church has always condemned abortion, and a lot of other acts which are today not only practiced, but promoted:
The Didache.
The truth of the teaching doesn’t change however much man’s definition of “common sense” may.
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