Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Solatar on February 08, 2005, 06:46:01 pm
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I was having a discussion with a few friends of mine, and the subject of abortion came up. To the religious part:
Does anybody know the Roman Catholic Church's views on abortion? I know it's "ok" if the mother's life is in danger, but i can't remember about rape/incest.
Feel free to discuss afterwards...in a dignified manner.:p
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Yeah, I'm not entirely familiar with the Vatican's stance on abortion. IMHO it's difficult, nigh on impossible, to make rules for this sort of thing given the terribly fallen position that the world in general is in at the moment - case-by-case would be far more appropriate, though in general it is a terrible thing to take away a life under any circumstance.
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Not sure if this helps, but what the hell:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19741118_declaration-abortion_en.html
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we did this in philosophy last year.
1) it is immoral to kill an innocent human being.
2) an unborn baby is an innocent human being.
3) abortion is therefore immoral.
basically that's the main argument pro-life; if you're pro-choice you'd have to find something logically wrong with 1) and/or 2).
personally, i think providing abortion services is like providing euthanasia services. it may be justified in certain situations.
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But, pro-life or pro-choice, it's still wrong to tell people that they can't do something that should be solely their choice. Despite the fact that it is killing a human being, it's not up to us to tell the mother what she can and can't do.
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no one's actually said anything about telling people what they can't do.
but... are you saying that despite the fact that it's killing a human being, we should let a mother go ahead and kill her child?
i think it was mother teresa who said, don't abort, give me the children you don't want and _i'll_ look after them.
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Originally posted by InfernoGod
But, pro-life or pro-choice, it's still wrong to tell people that they can't do something that should be solely their choice. Despite the fact that it is killing a human being, it's not up to us to tell the mother what she can and can't do.
But, by saying that you would say it's wrong to tell murderers that it's wrong to kill other people since it is their choice. It isn't made right, just because that baby can't tell you that killing it is wrong. Like you can tell me that murder is wrong.
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its more or less a mater of opinion. the church tends to think that the soul is created at conception and is what makes us human and thus would make abortion imoral. dont know if that was in the bible or if they just pulled it out of their ass. thou shalt not kill is the obvious thing they use to justify the abolition of abortion. its a mater of when is an embrio considered a life.
then you have those who do not believe in the soul and believe its che conciousness that makes a small mass of cells a human life. therefore if you abort before the fetus developes enough brain density to support conciousness then you are not actually destroying a human life because the part that makes it human has not developed yet.
abortion is what seems to me to be an obsolete way of handeling the problem. in the event of rape the morning after pill is the normal treatment and i believe is part of the 'rape kit'.
if the mother's life is in danger is the hard one. i think the best bet is to weigh the odds. the goal in this scenario is to save both child and mother, if that cannot be done then save the one that has the best chance survival. if the baby's chance of survival is 10% and the mother's is 60% the obvious move is to save the mother. i believe its a medical decision and not a moral one.
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I'm of the oppionion that it's all just emotional and trying to define 'human life' is about as aplicable as trying to quantify 'good art'
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It's all absurd. Let's all don clown suits and run around screaming, "Zuchini carousel of hot psychadelic gang sex blasphemy," to celebrate the void of meaninglessness that is the cosmos into which we gaze.
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Ford, you ever wonder why there are so few real Nihilists? It's cause nobody likes a party pooper. Which is, BTW, why I am alone. I am the proverbial bucket of cold water.
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Lib, less self-pity would also help in that department. Nobody wants to hear you put yourself down, because if they care about you, that's not going to help their mood at all.
At any rate. Abortion. I haven't really formed an opinion because there doesn't seem to be any right or wrong side (like most controversial issues, I suppose, but this seems even more shades of grey).
On the one hand, it's killing something which could be human life. It's not there yet, but there definitely seems like there's something different about a fertilized human egg than an egg or sperm. If only in the abstract.
On the other hand, the mother is risking her life to give birth to the kid. If they decide to raise the kid it'll cost them lots of time and money. And from a purely biological standpoint, it's not all that different from using a condom or the pill.
In the end, the question seems to really be how many rights do children have, and at what ages do they gain them? This is something that's going to come up soon with the advent of genetic engineering and such. (Gattaca, IMHO, hit a possible future spot-on.) I suppose I'm somewhere in the pro-life side of pro-choice.
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Originally posted by Ford Prefect
It's all absurd. Let's all don clown suits and run around screaming, "Zuchini carousel of hot psychadelic gang sex blasphemy," to celebrate the void of meaninglessness that is the cosmos into which we gaze.
Originally posted by Liberator
Ford, you ever wonder why there are so few real Nihilists? It's cause nobody likes a party pooper. Which is, BTW, why I am alone. I am the proverbial bucket of cold water.
my cult grows :D
nihilism rules!
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I am not a nihilist. I'm what the gambling industry calls a Cooler.
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The amusing thing (if anything about abortion can be amusing) is that it's an evolutionary dead-end. Nature cannot sustain a species that insists on killing its own young.
The even more amusing thing is that there are an estimated fewer 40 million potential Democratic voters living today than there would be if abortion hadn't been legalized. One possible explanation for the Republican party's recent successes.
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Originally posted by Liberator
I am not a nihilist. I'm what the gambling industry calls a Cooler.
call yourself what you will. just dont loose yourself in a sea of words. so many names, far far too few meanings.
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Originally posted by Goober5000
The even more amusing thing is that there are an estimated fewer 40 million potential Democratic voters living today than there would be if abortion hadn't been legalized. One possible explanation for the Republican party's recent successes.
Politics arent hereditary :rolleyes:
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Originally posted by Gank
Politics arent hereditary :rolleyes:
Alot of times they probley are,if you grow up with your parents a democrat, then you will probley be a democrat.
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Thats still not hereditary. And not neccessarily true either.
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I think that abortion should be legal only when the baby is still dependent on it's attachment to the mother. if the baby is able to survive with out the umbillical cord (whether by forced removal or early birth), then abortionm should be illegal.
Besides, you went through about 7 months with this child, why not just have the last 2 months and just birth it?
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Originally posted by icespeed
2) an unborn baby is an innocent human being.
this is the whole thing. How do we determine when (or even wether) an unborn baby is actually alive?
But I do agree that if you get pregnant by accident or rape, you have to decide right then and there wether you want the child or not. And don't come crying after s5-6 months that you suddenly changed your mind.
That's why I really love the way they've done it here. It's only possible to get an abortion within the first 22 weeks of conception, otherwise it is in fact illigal to do so.
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Well, 'Pro-Life' is such a wonderfully all-encompassing phrase isn't it?
And quite quite misleading.
We think in the 'here and now' terms with life, and, as usual, turn a blind-eye to the future. Take the stance on Stem Cell research, many Pro-Lifers would rather see a Mother have a child from a Rapist than allow the undeveloped foetus to be used for research, which could save the life a child who is wanted by another Mother in 10 years time.
So Pro-Life isn't actually promoting the enhancement of life as such, it would be closer to say the two groups are 'Pro Choice' and 'Anti-Choice'.
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Ford, you ever wonder why there are so few real Nihilists? It's cause nobody likes a party pooper.
Well, for what it's worth, I usually refer to myself as an existentialist, because while I do believe that all existence is meaningless, I usually step back and concede that I would prefer to have a certain level of organization in society, for the sake of happiness.
Also, I would disagree with your inference. There are so few nihilists/existentialists because there are only a few of us who take obscene, masochistic pleasure in dealing with absurdity. It is the urge of all people, myself included, to assign meaning to things, but to an existentialist, the artificiality of this meaning is sort of a like a splinter in the brain; it's just stuck there for good. I embrace it as my artistic inspiration.
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Originally posted by Flipside
Well, 'Pro-Life' is such a wonderfully all-encompassing phrase isn't it?
And quite quite misleading.
We think in the 'here and now' terms with life, and, as usual, turn a blind-eye to the future. Take the stance on Stem Cell research, many Pro-Lifers would rather see a Mother have a child from a Rapist than allow the undeveloped foetus to be used for research, which could save the life a child who is wanted by another Mother in 10 years time.
So Pro-Life isn't actually promoting the enhancement of life as such, it would be closer to say the two groups are 'Pro Choice' and 'Anti-Choice'.
But, then what will happen if that child you kill, even tho it was from a rapist, was the one who cured cancer, or mental retardation. A you can say that there will be another one born who will find it anyways, but if thats the case, then where is another Albert Instien and if there was another one like him, it would have been far too late too drop the bomb on Japan, and thousands and thousands of soiders would have died, or what would have happened if they had the tech and aborted George Washington, John Adams and Ben Franklin. We might not have the freedom we have now.
I know this falls on deaf ears, and wonder why I saying this. And I promise this will be the last message on this subject, since Me, Ford and Gank don't mix well.
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Well, think of the trouble we might have avoided had Hitler or Pol Pot been aborted? The times produce the people in far more cases than we care to admit ;)
I suppose that's the whole thing though isn't it? If we use the 'could be a genius/could be a tyrant' argument, it all boils down to 50/50 so it may as well be personal choice anyway.
The question I always ask at a time like this though, is, if a way were found to identify Homosexual tendencies in an unborn foetus, I wonder what a fair percentage of 'Pro-Life' campaigners position would be on abortion then?
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Umm, not being smart or anything but your name doesnt really set off any bells in my head.
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Originally posted by Flipside
The question I always ask at a time like this though, is, if a way were found to identify Homosexual tendencies in an unborn foetus, I wonder what a fair percentage of 'Pro-Life' campaigners position would be on abortion then?
The pro-life people would remain pro-life, because they hold that you can change your sexual orientation. But the homosexual lobby would switch to pro-life, because they hold that you can't. ;)
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I gonna break my promise.:D
Even if they are gonna be gay, they still should not be aborted. But, being gay is a choice, not a born in thing. But, I'm not gonna get into that subject. And even if they were another Hitler they should should still get a chance to live.
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
I think that abortion should be legal only when the baby is still dependent on it's attachment to the mother. if the baby is able to survive with out the umbillical cord (whether by forced removal or early birth), then abortionm should be illegal.
Besides, you went through about 7 months with this child, why not just have the last 2 months and just birth it?
Actually, that is the legal position; there's a certain time period in the pregnancy after which abortion is illegal.
I think the whole issue of abortion is determined by whether you believe life begins at birth or at some point of cellular embryonic development; which is a matter of faith rather than empirical fact.
At the moment abortion law uses the scientific definition of life (and dependency upon the mother) to determine when abortion is legal and when it is not. I think extending that to a blanket ban is forcing a belief (not necessarily religious) upon people - and that people should have a moral right to decide when and if abortion is 'right'. Basically, the mothers right to choose.
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the thing is, science is allowing earlier and earlier preemie survival. used to be, if you were thirty-six weeks then it was touch-and-go. now they've got incubators and respirators and stuff, it's twenty-eight weeks. what if they invent artificial wombs and manage to support embryos from conception? (not likely, but it's a possibility.) so it's kinda moving towards pro-life/anti-choice if you define abortion as immoral if the baby can survive without the mother.
and saying 'what if the kid will be hitler or einstein' is putting everything down to fate. you might as well not bother with the whole free will business if you say, oh yeah, but that kid might turn out to cure cancer. it's like you're forcing someone into a role. and besides we don't know if they will be a genius or whatever, so that's entirely irrelevant anyway.
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so it's kinda moving towards pro-life/anti-choice if you define abortion as immoral if the baby can survive without the mother.
Well I don't know about other people, but I don't go for the conditional abortion stance. Either you deny it to everyone or you grant everyone the right, and accept that many people will use that right in a way that you believe is immoral.
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Originally posted by icespeed
the thing is, science is allowing earlier and earlier preemie survival. used to be, if you were thirty-six weeks then it was touch-and-go. now they've got incubators and respirators and stuff, it's twenty-eight weeks. what if they invent artificial wombs and manage to support embryos from conception? (not likely, but it's a possibility.) so it's kinda moving towards pro-life/anti-choice if you define abortion as immoral if the baby can survive without the mother.
It's only defined as immoral because the foetus is at that stage alive, though; the issue is not whether or not the foetus can live, because that's wholly presumptative.
Abortion law is not about morality, but protecting the rights of the child. The issue over the legality of abortion, is when does that foetus become a living child which is to be protected (has rights)?
We can't really form laws on the basis of morality but societal harm anyways; the sort of universal lawas against rape, murder, theft, etc can be clearly defined as crimes because they do tangible damage.
With abortion, the concept of damage is highly subjective; is you view a foetus as being alive, then it's murder but if you view a foetus as a set of differentiating cells (not alive), then it isn't. It's only when that foetus becomes legally a person (not based on any religious or personal notions of when life begins, but the best unbiased scientific evidence) that it should be protected.