Norma McCorvey has Died

QED.

@pat - I’m trying to understand the official Catholic position. I believe you’re Catholic, if I remember correctly. I’m not sure how accurate this is, but is this your understanding? All forms of abortion are wrong in the Catholic faith tradition? Always, without exception? Does your church consider the seriousness of any abortion to be equivalent to murder?

Catholic Church and abortion - Wikipedia

Hello, I’m not Pat (obv) but am quite familiar with Catholic doctrine. All abortion is immoral, even in cases of rape and incest. Nor would an abortion be moral to save the life of the mother, in that we can’t commit an evil act to bring about a good one.

However, if the intended effect of a treatment is to save the mother’s life and not end the pregnancy then that would be permitted. The abortion in this case is an undesirable but unavoidable side-effect.

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Thanks, Doc. When I’m reading something from another faith, I’m not always sure if I’m interpreting it to mean what I think it means, so I thought I’d ask. Catholicism almost has it’s own language of faith-related terms, and they aren’t always familiar to this slightly unconventional Mormon girl who sometimes went to Baptist church with Grandma. I’m always curious about how much someone’s faith tradition effects their politics/ ideology on a topic. How much a faith tradition gives someone the ability to seek inspiration for their own life, vs. instances where doctrine is very specific.

I like this quote about respect when talking religion and politics. This is from my faith tradition, quote by former Apostle Hugh B. Brown.

Strive to develop a maturity of mind and emotion and a depth of spirit which will enable you to differ with others on matters of politics without calling into question the integrity of those with whom you differ. Allow within the bounds of your definition of religious orthodoxy variation of political belief. Do not have the temerity to dogmatize on issues where the Lord has seen fit to be silent.

That is an AMAZING quote, Puff.

I like the last part especially:

“…Do not have the temerity to dogmatize on issues where the Lord has seen fit to be silent…”

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You want to know why your hypothetical doesn’t work???
Because Mifeprex (a.k.a. RU486) is an abortifacient, meaning it would only be used in a case where a woman is actually pregnant, not as a ‘morning after’ pill. That would be ‘Plan B’ (levonorgestrel), as a ‘morning after’ pill, not Mifeprex. The reason is that conception usually takes 24 to 48 hours, and Plan B prevents conception, but will not affect a human zygote should the rare occasion exist where a woman is actually pregnant in less than 24 hours.
Mifeprex is aweful rough to take as a preventative, which a woman would be using it for in less than 24 hours. It’s awful uncomfortable and miserable to take ‘just in case’.

Mifeprex is only prescribed (ususally by an abortion clinic/ Planned Parenthood… most doctors won’t touch it) in case where a woman is actually pregnant which would not be known the morning after, i.e. in less than 24 hours. That would usually take at least a week or 2 to be able to determine, the morning after it’s simply impossible to determine. Even in the egg became fertilized in less that 24 hours, there is no guarantee that the fertilization takes and becomes a human zygote.

You’re asking for a full episode of ‘Law and Order’ when you gave me less information than a middle school mock court would have, further in a case where there is no equivalence. Where one is a clear cut murder (shooting a 2 yr old) and the other using an extreme method as a ‘just in case’. The latter you may not and probably do not have a body (i.e. formally unique living human organism with it’s own separate DNA) at less than 24 hours post sex. And you want me to rule as judge and jury over that? I would at least have to know if there was even a victim at the very least.

Now in the case where the law does finally recognize unborn human life as in fact human life, an abortion would certainly be a homicide under the law (and already is considered one in certain states if not done in a recognized facility). But the other problem with abortion, is at the very least it takes 2 people to commit the act. Even if an early chemical abortion as in the case of Mifeprex someone would have to illegally give the woman the drug, unless she some chemistry wiz that makes the stuff in her spare time.

‘Deserves’, therefore depends on culpability and intent shared by more than one person. The case should rightly be treated as a homicide. What the people involved deserve, I don’t know. I am not worried about maximizing punishment, or getting revenge, satiating some kind of anger, or any kind of ‘eye for an eye’ type thing. I am interested in reducing the number of abortions to a minimal level and in a country governed by laws, the law is the best way to accomplish that goal.

Before we can get to ‘deserves’ we need to get the law to recognize what science and moral law already recognize, which is that the unborn life is a distinct, unique human life independent from the host (or mother) in every way save for dependence. Further that human life has a right to live above all other rights. After that, with an established law, we can get to what someone deserves for a particular action that terminates a human life.

Except for when the life of the mother is in danger, then yes. So, their is a ‘health exemption’ so to speak, but there really must be no other way. If you were to have an ectopic pregnancy, then of course there is no choice. Both mother and child would die if the child is not removed.

As tragic as a rape may be, the mother would be encouraged to carry to child to term and give it up for adoption. I get the emotions behind such a thing, but life is life.
In reality, unless you live in some back water, there are a million ways to prevent conception, even up to ‘Plan B’.

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I don’t consider it a religious question at all, except possibly that it coincides with the moral ethos of Judeo\ Christian faiths, ‘Thou shalt not kill’. But you need no faith to look at it in an objective way so long as your moral prognostications include the sanctity of human life.

I have known people to both consider abortion ‘murder’ or ‘killing’ in it’s equivalence to taking human life, but admit and do not care. Got no beef with those people. They get it, but to them, the only sacred life is their own and they readily admit such things.
Their not the sort I would want to ‘hang’ with either, though.

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You are, once again, dodging the core issue, and by doing so continuing to make my point. But as an aside, I will point out that you are incorrect concerning RU486. In addition to being an abortifacient, it is also a contragestive:

Now we’re getting somewhere.

But the question is not ‘what do they deserve’ in an absolute sense; rather, it is this: Given that (per you) they have committed the same crime (premeditated murder), do they deserve the same punishment as would befit a woman (and her accomplices) who intentionally, and with malice of forethought, shot and killed her 2 y.o.?

When you assert that a zygote is the moral equivalent of a born individual, you obviate the need for any discussion concerning punishment. After all, the laws concerning the murder of a born individual are already well established. Given your position, by what lights would you feel those laws need to be modified? Why not simply apply them as written?

This belief transforms the pregnant woman into something less than a fully autonomous person–into a sort of slave-incubator, forced against her will to endure the physical and emotional travails (including a nonzero risk of permanent morbidity, and even death) associated with carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term.

Oh, I’m glad you liked the quote, Mufasa. I think it’s good advice if we’re trying to really understand each other. There’s a generosity and sense of humility in it that seems very wise. Something for me to strive for, sincerely.

Complete threadjack here - Away from topic.

If you liked the Hugh B. Brown quote, you may like this. He was a much loved orator, with such a GREAT voice. God is the Gardner. This is a piece of a commencement address he gave when he was eighty-five! I had a cassette of this when I was in college. I’ve loved it for a long time. I think anyone within the Judaeo-Christian ethic would relate. Wisdom in coping with disappointment, having things not go the way you wished.

Oh brother. Being that you didn’t know that Mifeprex was not a ‘morning after’ pill, I doubt you knew much about it until you googled it. And now that you found it has other uses, it obfuscates what ever your point is all together.
Considering it’s side effects, I doubt it’s used a contragestive very often.

Asked and answered. Each case needs to be treated on it’s own merits, without specifics, I can do no more than declare it a homicide, which it is technically and literally. The result may be the same, but the actions are different. Each case would need to be weighed upon the merits of it’s own case. I cannot give you anymore. It depends on a lot of info I don’t have and cannot have.
One major problem is that in one scenario, the homicide is legal. I have no way of knowing that if it were illegal, if the persons involved would have still done it. ← Intent is the other 9/10ths of the law.

Well it certainly seems obvious, but the law is murky at this time.
You go punch a pregnant woman in the gut causing to loose her child, you could very well be cooling your heels in prison for 25 years. But she can go to a clinic, have the same thing done and it’s perfectly legal.
The famous Scott Peterson case has him in prison for life. He was convicted of double murder… One for his wife, the other for his unborn son. If that doesn’t muddy the waters I don’t know what does. Other states have fetucide laws, which would be the illegal death of the fetus…Different from born human homicide, but still a crime in the category.
So you see, the law is all over the place.
In a post Roe v. Wade world, the legal questions would need to be handled and likely phased in.

No it does not. The woman has the same right and dignity she had before. The difference is that her child is not some piece of garbage you can just kill off when it’s inconvenient. All this means is that the baby has a right to live. And the right to live is first and above all other rights.
We hold the right to live sacred in most parts of society all we’re doing is extending that right to those who have no voice in the matter.

As I said to puff, there are millions of ways to not get pregnant, even up to using ‘Plan B’, which you can buy at the pharmacy. So there really, in this day and age should be very, very few ‘unwanted’ pregnancies. And I won’t accept ‘stupid’ as an excuse.

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That’s not exactly right. In the case where the mother’s life is in danger, the act becomes amoral. It’s neither good or bad, just necessary especially when the case is that both lives are in grave danger.

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I’m a physician. Unless you are as well, I don’t think you want to get in a pissing contest with me concerning medical matters.

So much hedging, still. You make my case stronger and stronger.

All you would have to say is that, with respect to ‘weighted merits,’ abortion should be treated the same as the murder of a born individual, and your position would be consistent with your rhetoric. The result would be that, given the right set of ‘weighted merits,’ your position is that a woman who uses RU486 to abort a pre-implantation pregnancy should be subjected to the same punishment as a woman who intentionally kills her born child. But as is clear, you don’t believe your own rhetoric.

Yet again, I will point out there is no reason its legality should have any bearing on your moral position, on what you believe the consequences should be.

Why on earth would that matter? Is it your opinion that murder is morally acceptable if/when it’s legal in a given locale?

Again, this has nothing to do with the law; it is about what you believe.

That’s a patently ridiculous thing to say. By prioritizing the rights of a zygote over those of the woman, you are stripping her of her autonomy and privacy. That is why you refused to answer the hypothetical I posed in this regard–because you know you would never submit to being forced to give up your autonomy in like fashion.

Thank you, Pat.

I’m NOT entering into the debate here, but this is from my faith tradition, if you’re interested.

“Human life is a sacred gift from God. Elective abortion for personal or social convenience is contrary to the will and the commandments of God.”

From that, most abortions are wrong in my faith, but there are some limited situations where abortion would not be considered a sin, or where individuals must prayerfully make those decisions, and a pastor cannot/ will not tell you what is the right thing. Rape, incest, life of mother, life of child are such instances.

I know someone who was pregnant with twins, one of which was determined to have Trisomy 13, and accompanying severe major organ malformation, inutero. There was a high likelihood that the disabled twin would die before birth, and would be lethal to his sibling. They decided to eliminate the unhealthy twin in order to save the life of the healthy one, rather than likely lose both. Someone in my faith tradition may make that decision, and it would not violate any religious standard. That example shows that we do not see the unborn as exactly like a newborn.

We have the biblical ten commandments, but we also have a scripture in our canon which reads, “thou shalt not kill, nor do anything like unto it.” Modern revelation clarifies that abortion is not considered equivalent to murder, but it may fall into the “anything like unto it” category. There is a bit more gray area for us where “the Lord has seen fit to be silent.” For example, situations like the morning after pill may be interpreted as contraception.

Most faithful LDS describe themselves as pro-life, but you’ll find some who will say they are pro-choice, as more of a libertarian view, as in “alcohol is wrong for me, but I’m not going to make a law saying it’s wrong for you, because you are not of my faith and I’ll respect your ability to make your own choices.” Jewbacca has said similar things about his desire to live up to tenets of Judaism, where religious observances are required of him, but are not expected of people not of his faith. That’s very similar.

Free will is a fundamental value. It’s HUGE to us, so you’ll find a fair number of LDS people who will say their value of individual freedom, and their support of abortion under some limited circumstances, mean they are pro-choice. I’m in that category in terms of public policy. The church itself specifically takes no official political position on abortion, implying room for both positions.

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You may be that, but you didn’t know that Mifeprex was not a ‘morning after’ pill. So I am guessing embryology and prenatal care or abortion isn’t what you do.

What case? To my knowledge you haven’t made one, unless peppering me with questions after agreeing to my primary claim, that human life begins at conception, that it’s a human life and life should not be taken unless it’s a danger to another life is your claim, then I agree.
To my knowledge you haven’t made ‘a claim’. You’ve just been questioning me.

It’s not rhetoric, its a human life. You want me to doll out punishment to a law that does not yet exist, based on very little information. Yes, even if a woman shot her 2 year old with a gun, that case should be weighed on the merits of the case. What if it were an accident? What if she were trying to take the gun from her crazy husband and it went off? Does that merit a death penalty?

I don’t believe in rhetoric, I believe in the truth. I do not believe in the red herrings you are throwing out. Do you know what a red herring is?
It’s a cheap tactic in logic and argumentation where one introduces many other things other than the topic at hand to distract the other from focusing on the argument.
Well, I am not distracted. It is clear by every measure available, that the pre-born life is every bit a human life and to kill that life without it being a danger to one or more other humans, is an immoral act. I have never wavered. That it should be made illegal, absolutely. I believe this, scratch that, I know this to be a fact. The overwhelming evidence is on the side of life.

You want to distract that by making me pass judgement on an imaginary person, in an imaginary situation based on laws that do not yet exist. And yet, you believe, so how that this is rational? And to ask questions about this imaginary situation that does not exist is somehow dodging? “Shirley, you can’t be serious?”

You’re the one concerned with consequences, I am concerned with reducing, if not ending a barbaric and cruel practice of terminating human life, especially life that cannot remotely defend itself.

Ridiculous? To say that the human life that resides with in her has no right save to the whim of the host which bares it? That the human life inside has no right to just live?

You want me to pass harsh judgement on some poor hypothetical woman. I won’t do it at the risk of being just like you. I need facts, not conjecture or phony sanctimony.

You say you are for the dignity of women? What about the millions of women dead from abortion? What about the force abortions in China, where girls are singled out for the knife and vacuum suction?
Rhetoric… That’s what people on the wrong side of an argument need, rhetoric. It somehow white washes the blood and dissolves the body parts of the quiet victims. It hides the atrocities of man kind against itself in the name of ‘free choice’. Its the same tactic used by every barbaric generation who wished to justify their crimes against the innocent throughout history.

Not much of what you introduced is contrary… Rape/ incest conceptions are extremely rare. As a matter of politics and legal haggling I would let it go, for the sake of the 99% plus abortions which are purely elective. Not that I think less of that life, but that I am concerned about the numbers. 1 to 1.2 million abortions a year is way to high a number for me to live with as a fact of life. If it were 100 per year or even 1000, that would be a vast, vast improvement over what we have now. In a country with 320 million, lots of people die all the time. To me the goal is to get the number of abortions at least down in proportion to an average number who die via violent crime. At least then, the deaths would not be taken for granted, would not count for nothing.

Certainly, a situation that you described where there is a sickness that would render one child dead and likely damage the other would be an occasion for the amoral decision to hedge your bet on the otherwise health child that could be otherwise damaged by the sick one.
But let’s face it, the overwhelming majority of abortions are voluntary and based on convenience vs. inconvenience. Those are my primary target as a matter of protest.

And if we want to break it down by demographics, it’s a holocaust in the Black and Hispanic communities who make up the majority of the abortions.

We cannot even pretend to call ourselves civilized when this practice of killing our young is so tolerated, so long as you keep it out of site in clean buildings and sanitary appearances.

One thing I am certain, by siding with life, I cannot be wrong.

I am firmly convinced that one day history will judge our generation harshly, as we judge the slave holding generations of yore.
I don’t personally care to be remembered, but if I am, I want it to be clear which side I was on. I was on the side of life.

Then you haven’t been paying attention. My ‘case’ has been that you do not truly believe a zygote is the moral equivalent of a born individual. Rather, statements to that effect are rhetorical flourishes on your part–flourishes intended to incite an emotional reaction, not convey an actual belief.

Once again, you make my case. Laws concerning premeditated murder already exist. You say you believe there is “no distinction between a human life be it a child, fetus, a teenager, an adult or elderly,” so why the hesitation re doling out the same punishment for ‘killing’ a fetus that would befall someone for killing a child, teenager, adult or elderly individual?

I have used the words ‘intentionally’ and ‘premeditated’ throughout, for precisely this reason. Surely that has not escaped your attention.

You seem incapable of distinguishing between these concepts.

Hardly. I have subjected your ‘argument’ to several simple hypotheticals, and your inability to address them in a consistent manner has revealed that your position is not what you say it is.

Given our exchanges, I’m sure anyone following along is as amazed as I am that you would write such a thing.

Others have read the hypotheticals and had no problem grasping their relevancy. Nor have they had difficulty identifying the very obvious response required by your stated position. It is clear that my case has been made; the only mystery remaining is why you won’t/can’t admit it.

If a woman INTENTIONALLY KILLS (wanted to make sure you saw it this time) her child simply because she no longer wishes to be a mother, your first thought is ‘Oh, that poor woman’??!!

Bingo.

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Well that’s your big mistake. Which is your problem, not mine. You’re pretending to know that I mean something different than what I say. Yes, I fully believe the human life of a Zygote is every bit as ‘valuable’ as any other human life. It is in fact a human life hence having that distinction from any other organism.

Trumping up red hearings and strawmen, to try a prove that I believe other than what I say, is just the flaw in your logic, not mine. Don’t pretend to think for me or anybody else for that matter.

The flaw in your logic is analogous to a situation like this:
If I introduced a case, say where a drunk driver killed another in a car wreck, I am sure you would be measured in your interpretation of justice. Now, if that same drunk driver killed another in a car wreck, and that deceased was your mother, child, wife, etc. You’d feel very differently about the same account.
Does it objectively change what happened? Nope.
Is the crime different? No.
Should I then accuse you of believing the life of a stranger has no value to you while the life of a relative does, because you care more about a relative? Based on your own measure I could. Perhaps you do feel life isn’t valuable unless you personally care about that life. But the case has no validity on what a life is and whether or not the cases are equal or if one case with a stranger is worse than one with a relative.

The only thing you can say to me at this point that would evoke a ‘give a damn’ from me is if you can prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt that an unborn human is not in fact human. Don’t pretend you know what I believe better than I do. I stated exactly what I believe, clearly. And it’s the only discussion that matters.
This has zero to do with how I would prosecute a particular situation. Given that the law is not the business I am in, I wouldn’t be prosecuting anybody for any reason, regardless of the law.

All I can say is, amazing. And QED.

The truth hurts.