As if your head wasn't hurting enough....life/death (Page 2)

Right.  

Not every vice ought to be legislated against (I'd be against a law legislating against Jim's avatar, for example )

But what is the bare minimum standard for legislation?

It seems to me that the bare minimun ought to be to legislate to protect an innocent human being (or using my previous argument, a human being that could possibly be a human person until proven otherwise)

Without that bare minimum, I don't understand where you get your foundation for legislating for other moral and ethical goods.  

For example, without believing that an innocent human being ought to be protected by law, where do you get your reasoning for protecting the life of a criminal in a death penalty case? (I myself am against the death penalty)

I don't understand the reasoning for that.  Or the reasoning that says that it is wrong to go to war except under very strict guidlines. (I myself opposed the beginning of the War in Iraq - although I support our presence there now)

I don't understand the reasoning for it.

And I'm not being rhetorical.  I really don't understand the reasoning.  What is it based on?  Is it based just on your (ya'll) opinion, or does it have a deeper foundation that it rest on? 

Much of our law is indeed based on religious morality, but that becomes more and more difficult to inact as we become a more diverse society.  The primarily WASP demographic of the framers of the Constitution is certainly much different than the present-day make-up of the electorate.  I think that's one of the reasons that we need more tolerance and respect for others and their beliefs.  Certainly we always need laws to provide the fundamental protection for life and property, but beyond that we need to be careful about dictating what people believe.

Also, one other thing...

I put this question to anyone who is personally opposed to abortion but believes that it ought to be the mother's right to choose

and

is also in support of embryonic stem cell research

Please show me the internal consistency of that position.

I can understand if you are personally opposed to abortion but still pro-choice. I disagree with the argument, but I admit that it is a compelling argument because it brings into question the rights of the mother involved. It becomes a question of who has more right, the unborn child or the mother. And I understand that you could be in a place where you would never abort a child yourself, because you believe that it is a person, but you do not want to impose that belief on the mother. I disagree, but I understand.

But when the question becomes about killing a human embryo for research, suddenly the logic usually shifts. The argument often becomes about utilitarianism.

It goes something like this: "Well, the embryo is going to die anyway, so we may as well use it to create pharmaceutical products."

Huh? How did you make that leap in logic?

On the one hand, you would never kill your own unborn child because you believe it is a person. On the other hand, you believe that it is moral to kill a human embryo IN A SITUATION IN WHICH THERE ARE NO RIGHTS OF THE MOTHER INVOLVED.

I don't get it. If you believe embryonic stem cell research is moral and licit, I don't understand why you are personally opposed to abortion in the first place.

Again, I'm not being rhetorical. I really don't understand.

I honestly don't have a huge care for the abortion debate.  In my mind the mother is making the best choice she feels she is capable of making and what happens from there is between her and her higher power.

My issue with legisltaion is this,

When does it stop?

So if, for the sake of argument, we agree that we are going to make abortion illegal because we are protecting the rights of the fetus, where do we stop?

OK you can't "abort" the pregnancy.  How about people who smoke? Drink? Eat too much?  Eat the wrong stuff? Don't excersize? Want to continue with high risk activities?  At what point does it become a debate about how much control the mother has over her life?  At what point have we relegated the role of mother to "test tube" until the baby is born?

The "easy" argument is the one that has been stated already.  This one will go round and round forever.  The "hard" argument is once you've made the choice on the easy one...now what are you going to do about those other decisions.  If the answer is "well I don't have the right to legislate that..."  Then you have invalidated your original solution to the "easy" argument.

Just my .02

Joshua

I don't fully understand either, that's why I said earlier that I was conflicted.

I see part of the problem being the advancement of science and man's increasing ability to manipulate the natural world.  God gave us the intelligence to figure things out.  That can be good (penicillin) or bad (nuclear weapons).  But many choices about how we apply our God-given intelligence and knowledge are not so clear-cut.  That's the rub and it makes our lives much more difficult when we are faced with those choices.   

I guess I come down on the side of what I would consider to be the greater good.  If sacrificing a non-viable human embryo can potentially save thousands of lives by helping to cure cancer or diabetes, or some other horrible disease, then that's where I am.

I think in your examples that the principle of double effect comes into play.

When we say "abortion" we usually mean "direct abortion" in which the point of the act is to kill the embryo.

Smoking, drinking, overeating, or in general wrecking havoc on your health may bring about harm to a fetus, but it is not the intent of those actions to bring about this harm.  The intent may actually have good motives: someone may physically feel really bad and use one addiction or another to bring relief from that pain.

The intent is not to cause "direct abortion" even if the effect is to bring about an abortion for some reason. 

So I don't see where deciding not to legislate against something like overeating invalidates legislating agains "direct abortion", even if the overeating causes an abortion somehow. 

Thanks, Mike.

I hope I was clear that I was putting the question to my liberal brothers and sisters who are pro-choice but oppose the death penalty and opposed a loose definition of a Just War.  I don't understand their logic.

While I disagree with you about these issues, I understand your logic and reasoning for them.  I find it consistent.

OK, cool...

So now we have these competing notions:

An act is moral if it brings about the greatest good for the greatest number of people

vs.

The ends may never justify the means, or, You may never do evil in order to bring about good

I understand the embryonic stem cell reasearch (ESCR) argument if it is looked at in an isolated way. I don't agree with it's utilitarian foundation, but I understand it.

What I don't understand is if the same person who holds this belief also believes, personally, that it is wrong to abort an unborn child, even if they are not will to impose that on the mother of the unborn child.

It seems inconsistent to me.

I do.

And for anyone who has brought a child into the world through IVF, please know that I do not sit in judgement of you. At the same time, I need to honor the conclusions that a sincere search in this area has brought me to.

I believe that any conception outside of the conjugal act in a valid marriage between a man and a woman is immoral.

And, as I mentioned in a thread a while back, I myself have never had such a marriage. (at least not by the standards of Catholic teaching which, being a Catholic, I am bound by) Therefore, the acts that brought about the conception of my own children were immoral.

Of coarse, all of these children, themselves, are not immoral. The human dignity and worth of any conceived child is the same. They are not responisble for the sins of their parents.

Also, I don't believe that IVF ought to be legislated against. I think people ought to be free to use it if they want. My thinking here is that I can't find a strong enough non-religious argument to make the case that it ought to be outlawed. And I don't want to impose my religious belief, where the case against IVF is stronger, on others.

At the same time, the fact that the IVF process results in the creation of "extra" embryos, does not make the case that those embryos, therefore, ought to be used in scientific research. At this point, the argument shifts to a non-religious one, and I feel comfortable legislating against their destruction.

Yet what happens when you have legislated against direct abortion and now the intent is to cause abortion through indirect means?

That is the heart of the question.  Understand that when you legislate against it people will still do it, they will now attempt to find creative ways to make it happen.  Now how far are you willing to go with the poistion and still be logically consistant.

That's all I'm asking.

I agree with Derek, depends on your view of the existence of the soul.

I agree with Jim, wiser to teach morality than to legislate it.

And i believe that life DOES begin at conception.

Okay, holding all three of those ideas in my brain at once puts me in a tiny minority, I know.  I think abortion is a terrible thing - and if you are close enough to women who've had to make that choice, most will tell you that it was a terrible and difficult choice for them personally. 

 Yes, I would like to live in an America where abortion is LESS common that it is now.  But given that this is a pluralistic society, that this is an extremely divisive issue that we're not going to agree on any time soon, and that the circumstances surrounding any one pregnancy CAN be intensely complex and difficult... it seems wiser to tackle this from the demand side rather than the supply side. 

Maybe envisioning a comprehensive antipoverty and child-care policy isn't so popular around this board, but if we Christians were were honest about valuing LIFE, it would be high on our agenda.  Maybe confronting sexual violence, predation, and incest head-one isn't very fun or convenient.  Maybe "loving the sinner" is harder for us than standing in front of a clinic with a sign, but really it's in the one-on-one relationships that people are taught and changed.  And I'm sure there's more we can do.  If the real goal were to reduce the demand, many people would have better ideas than I do.  And we could do it.  We are a great nation -- when we have great leaders (whether elected or not), we rise to great challenges.  Instead, we are endlessley wasting our energy in the legal/illegal debate and tossing aside the law of love in the process.  IMHO of course.

 Peace!

I agree with your premise.  I just think it will be hard to make real and effective change without also dealing with the reasons why affluent/middle class educated children also make the decision to have abortions.  In most cases it isn't because other options aren't readilly available for them, it is because of a culture of shame brought about by many (not all) of those sign wielding protestors and "do as I say not as I do" ideologues.

I've been trying to think through your question.  Not sure if this answers it or not.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that there is a corelation between abortion and eating at McDonald's fifteen times a week.  Could you then legislate against eating at McDonald's.

I don't think you could, as far as legislating against it because of abortion.  You couldn't because there are other reasons for eating at McDonald's.  Even if someone found that they could procure an abortion by eating at McDonald's you still couldn't justify legislating against it.  You'd have to prove that the intent of serving a Big Mac, was to induce an abortion.  That would be a pretty difficult case to prove. 

Yup, I agree with you 100% there.

Please go ahead and raise my taxes and implement policy with those funds in order to do it.

And in the meantime, it's important for all Pro-Lifers to find private ways of doing that right now.

And I know that sometimes people who put out arguments for the illegalization of abortion sound cold and calculating.  I think that comes from trying to be really careful and respectful in laying out an argument for a pluralistic society.  It needs to meet a very high standard (and I probably don't do it justice)

But, yes... God is love... 

Jmcelroy, interesting what you say about the "culture of shame."  I think you're probably right that most of the affluent teens who have abortions do so because of shame, but I think it's more that they don't want their daddies to know they are having sex to begin with.  For the teen sex, a more conservative/religious person might blame the "culture of hypersexuality" -- I tend to agree, but I'm not willing to jack with the First Amendment in order to change it, so the government should probably keep out.   Anyway, I'm not sure that the absence of sign-wielders will help either way.  So the affluent-teen abortion question is a tough one.  As hard as it is for Christians to swallow, it would probably help to actually teach sex education in the schools (i.e. real discussions about birth control; under our current government, condoms cannot be taught except "they don't always work." )  Or perhaps, could groups that care about the issue do more to promote dialogue between teens and their parents about sex?  Like I said, i don't have all the answers.  But you mention a good issue.

And Dontracy, I can't raise your taxes to fund child care.  See the "why I can't run for office" thread.    Maybe if some Dems win elections down here I can work on the policy side some; Lord only knows I campaign for them plenty!  But anyway, if we chose to we could probably pay for child care without raising your personal taxes... it's just a matter of priorities.

and....if the vast majority of Christians are pro-life (pre birth) then ever wonder why they change their minds about folks (post birth) ie capital punishment, war, starvation
and...finally I really like your explanation of Natural Law and it's difference to Religious law. However I feel that God wrote the Natural Laws upon our hearts. It just takes some of us a long time to read them (me for one).

Oh I agree it would never stand up in court.  Yet cases have been argued where a mother uses an illegal drug which, as one of its side effects, causes damage to a fetus.  They are charged not with a crime related to drug use but a crime related to damaging the unborn fetus which they could have legally aborted.

So too me the argument is still valid.  Of course keeping in mind that in the real world the politics that drives such decisions is motivated by factors outside of the theoretical debate world.

This is the culture of shame I'm referring too.

Well, hit me over the head with a ton of bricks... that is a good one... Guess I need to be a little more careful with my language on that one...

I guess the reason why I believe that any conception outside of the definition I laid out is immoral, gets into the theology of the nuptial relationship between a husband and wife. This nuptial relationship is reflection of, and a way of understanding, the nuptial relationship God has for with his people. The summit of this nuptial relationship between God and his people is the virgin conception of Jesus through Mary's unqualified Yes to God's request, her Fiat, "Be it done unto me according to Thy will."

So the virgin birth meets my standard of morality. But you're right, I need to change the language of my statement and bring into it the concept of the nuptial relationship between God and his people and also the nuptial meaning of our bodies, the reason why I believe any conception outside of the conjugal act between a husband and wife is immoral.

Thanks for the headsup on that one.

Well, I believe that we receive that breath of life at conception. It's just that I can't prove it to anyone outside of a religious argument.

I don't think so. It's not the intent of the fetus to harm its mother. It is not trying to attack her.

If a fetus dies while trying to save a mother's life, and it's not the intent to kill the fetus but rather the intent to save the mother's life, I don't think you can consider that direct abortion.

Me too, brother. Me too.

Great idea about broadening the scope of sex ed.  As for finding a program that satisfies every group, won't happen, agreed.  So we should settle for finding a program that is effective, "effective" that is per whatever standard that can be roughly agreed upon by the broad middle -- and that probably includes reducing teen abortions.   Advocating for and implementing the program is then, again, a question of leadership.