“That was not lying on her part as there was no deliberate attempt to deceive — she didn’t know such language was euphemistic. The fault was with those who had lied to her.”

How do you know they were lying?

As you point out, “fetal issue,” etc., might be euphemism. It could also a shorthand description. For someone who believes that a meaningful life doesn’t begin until consciousness is possible, pain is felt, viability is reached, etc., the developing child might as well be just “tissue.”

Their use of euphemism or shorthand description would not be lying but an expression of their beliefs about the beginning of human life.

More importantly, why do you assume they were lying?

Too many people in these debates reflexively assume that their opponents are liars. Reasonable people disagree about definitions, beliefs, and policies. I don’t know why so many partisans want to treat disagreements as lying.

“Bigotry can be quite innocent.”

What you describe is socialization, not bigotry.

Originally, a bigot was a religious hypocrite. Today, the OED uses bigot to describe anyone who is “characterized by obstinate, intolerant, or strongly partisan beliefs.” Bigot describes an attitude, not a belief itself.

In other words, pro- and anti-abortion proponents can be bigoted in their obstinance or intolerance, but their positions cannot—by definition—be bigoted.

Very few people are lying …

When expressions like “fetal tissue,” “a mass of tissue,” and the “products of conception” are used in reference to abortion when one knows good and well that what one is referring to, upon visual inspection, looks to most people like a little human being — a tiny child, and one uses such language deliberately in order to hide the reality of the abortion procedure from another, that is intentional deception — lying.

I know a woman who, in her training to be a nurse, when the subject matter turned to prenatal life was shown photographs of unborn children which included fetal development when a woman is at the stage of pregnancy she was at when she had had an abortion. At that time she had understood the phrase “mass of tissue” as used by abortion clinic personnel to mean just that, and that what was going to be removed from her body didn’t even remotely resemble a baby. Then when she saw what her child had looked like, and realized that they had lied to her, she was devastated.

Now that woman, before she discovered the truth, had discussed abortion at that stage of pregnancy with others and used the same kind of euphemistic language those at the abortion clinic had used. That was not lying on her part as there was no deliberate attempt to deceive — she didn’t know such language was euphemistic. The fault was with those who had lied to her. This brings me to the next part of your comment:

… most understand that nothing in the abortion debate even resembles the definition of bigotry.

Bigotry can be quite innocent. A young white person brought up in the Old South would assimilate the notion that Blacks had their place in society and whites had a superior place, and would do so even if nobody ever explicitly said so. That that was the case would have seemed to be “just the way it is.” So one can be bigoted without knowing that they are, and without any malevolent or hateful intentions at all, due to their having trusted the institutions of society that they were taught to trust from the time they were small. Many of the institutions of the Old South were not to be trusted.

Now let’s take the case of a young, single woman who finds that she is pregnant. From the time she was small she has been indoctrinated with the notion that there are certain institutions she can trust, like the medical profession, the Supreme Court and the news media.

– She can trust a doctor – he is so honorable that it is okay for him to see her disrobed if that is necessary for him to care for her health.

– She should be a good citizen and honor the decisions of the Supreme Court.

– News stories are not fiction, but fact; to be an informed citizen, she should stay up with current events via the various electronic news outlets and read the daily newspaper.

What are these institutions she was taught to trust telling her? The Supreme Court has declared it is her constitutional right to get an abortion. The “honorable” doctor is willing to perform the abortion (she doesn’t know the medical profession quietly allows the likes of Kermit Gosnell within their ranks until the atrocities committed by such people are made public). The news media have done all they could to marginalize those who object to abortion and always use dehumanizing euphemisms when referring to the child in the womb. So what is this trusting young woman going to do in her very stressful situation? Of course, she is going to get an abortion.

As was the case with the Old South, many of the institutions of contemporary society are not to be trusted. They propagate and sustain bigotry which allows the exploitation some segment of the human family and the brutal violation of its intrinsic human dignity. At the same time they also make victims of those who trusted them.

“To fail to point that out is to become a participant in propagating the “Big Lie” and to delay the day when the lethal bigotry of our times is finally dispelled”

But that’s the problem. Very few people are lying, and most understand that nothing in the abortion debate even resembles the definition of bigotry.

By portraying abortion supporters as liars and inventing your own definition of “bigotry,” you give people who support some restrictions on abortion even less reason to throw their support behind those restrictions.

People don’t like being associated with positions that seem extreme or crazy.

Every time someone comes to believe that life begins at week one, week three, week six, ten, or fifteen, we move closer to developing the conscience, but the voices calling for an absolute ban only delay real progress.

Many who recognize that it is wrong in principle to kill an innocent human being, and realize that it is the fact that one is a human being that merits one the protection of law, not his/her age or stage of development, are also completely willing to fight for passage of laws that will not end “legal” child killing completely, but will only increase the survivor count when it is finally over and the statistics are gathered for the greatest holocaust of innocent human life in the history of the world.

Pointing out the scientific fact that human life begins at conception is not saying one will only support strategies the intent of which is to bring all child killing to an end immediately, yet there should be an absolute ban on taking the lives of innocent human beings, and that needs to be pointed out, even if it can’t be accomplished immediately. To fail to point that out is to become a participant in propagating the “Big Lie” and to delay the day when the lethal bigotry of our times is finally dispelled.

Both Ryan and Biden think abortion is justified in some cases. They only differ on who should decide when it is justified: Biden thinks the pregnant woman should decide, whereas Ryan thinks politicians should.

Ryan thinks, with the Founders, that the very purpose of government is to protect the inalienable rights of humanity, the first of which is the right to life itself. Biden seems to think there is no such thing as inalienable rights, and that the only rights humanity has are those bestowed upon us by whoever is currently in power.

I’m glad to have this analogy articulated in just this way. Whenever I explain to other pro-lifers that compromise is necessary, someone asks where we would have been if Lincoln had compromised with slavery. When I answer as Franck does here that Lincoln did compromise, I’m told that I don’t understand history. It is the absolute position that turns people away from the pro-life movement.

We lose when the issue is framed as choice and freedom. But we win when the issue is framed as determining when life begins. Every time someone comes to believe that life begins at week one, week three, week six, ten, or fifteen, we move closer to developing the conscience, but the voices calling for an absolute ban only delay real progress.

While I am an enthusiastic supporter of the Church’s position of NO exceptions-I understand that politics is the art of the possible, not the ideal. This is why you don’t look to politics for salvation.

Then again, am I really to accept the moral judgment of an insincere equivocator who implicitly denies the Real Presence by referring to Holy Communion as a “wafer”?

Not to repeat myself, but the Catholic left is all left, and not at all Catholic.

Without going into the whole detailed history of it, I will say that it is clear to me that Ryan always opposed all abortions, in full agreement with the Catholic position. He did not discuss it with Romney. Romney made remarks responding to the Atkins statement about “legitimate rape” to the effect that the position of the Romney/Ryan ticket would not oppose abortion in cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. That made things slightly difficult for Ryan, but as I recall, he made it clear that it was not his personal position, but he accepted it as the position of the ticket, since it was far preferable to the position of Obama/Biden. I don’t see how even the staunchest pro-life advocate could find fault with Ryan here. He has not compromised his personal position, and it would not help the pro-life cause if he were to make an issue of the difference in the two positions and resign.

That sounded to me like it had already been discussed by Ryan, Romney and their advisers, and the “policy of a Romney administration” had already been decided upon. That remark in the debate tells us nothing about what Ryan’s input was in that discussion. So, based on that remark there was no way to tell Ryan’s position is on the hard cases.

One can draw some conclusions from his voting record, some of which follows:

# Voted YES on banning federal health coverage that includes abortion. (May 2011)
# Voted NO on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines. (Jan 2007)
# Voted NO on allowing human embryonic stem cell research. (May 2005)
# Voted YES on restricting interstate transport of minors to get abortions. (Apr 2005)
# Voted YES on making it a crime to harm a fetus during another crime. (Feb 2004)
# Voted YES on banning partial-birth abortion except to save mother’s life. (Oct 2003)
# Voted YES on forbidding human cloning for reproduction & medical research. (Feb 2003)
# Voted YES on funding for health providers who don’t provide abortion info. (Sep 2002)
# Voted YES on banning Family Planning funding in US aid abroad. (May 2001)
# Voted YES on federal crime to harm fetus while committing other crimes. (Apr 2001)
# Voted YES on banning partial-birth abortions. (Apr 2000)
# Voted YES on barring transporting minors to get an abortion. (Jun 1999)
# Rated 0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record. (Dec 2003)
# Rated 100% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-life stance. (Dec 2006)

Those last two items say much more than the rest about the contrast between Biden’s and Ryan’s positions on abortion. Biden had a 100% approval of his voting record by NARAL.

Peppard’s attempt to make Ryan and Biden appear equivalent on abortion in terms of Catholic teaching was a blatant attempt to deceive, and sadly, probably succeeded to some extent.