Agreed. Which is why you’re having so much trouble facing up to it.
Your interpretation doesn’t jibe with the Church’s teachings. An abortion to save the life of the mother is immoral.
Perhaps you’re thinking of a scenario I covered farther down in my original post, where a medical procedure is needed to save the life of the mother, but that would indirectly cause the loss of the fetus. In that instance, the act is neither good nor bad.
In other words, aborting fetus to save mom is immoral.
Removing a cancerous uterus that results in the abortion of the fetus to save mom is amoral.
It does, I just gave a simple answer to actually a technically more complicated question. Essentially, ever opportunity must be given to save the life of the fetus in every case. That must be done first, in the case the life of the child cannot be saved two things must actually happen. That which causes the threat, of say an ectopic, the cause of the the ectopic pregnancy must be treated and if that results in the loss of the child, the action is amoral.
So in other words you have to treat the cause of the issue, if at all possible, which may result in the death of the child. And if so, no sin is committed.
So you’re right in one sense, that you cannot just go in and kill the child and be done. But if treatment of the situation results in the death of the child, in order to save the mother, no sin is committed.
In short, you cannot have a direct abortion without intervening treatment first. But in the event there is no other choice, it is allowed.
Excellent post and if notice there is no rebuttal.
Hi Zeb. I asked Pat if he could help me understand the official Catholic doctrine. DocP and Pat were trying to explain it to me. There’s really nothing to rebut. He was just trying to clarify something for me.
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What’s the over/under on Trump trying another iteration of the Muslim Ban now that he has a non hung SCOTUS?
While I don’t have a problem with Gorsuch, I also don’t forsee him being the vote Trump needs to keep the ban in place.
I thought some of you may like this video. I don’t see his position as strongly pro-life or pro-choice, because he very quickly gets into the difficulties. The underlying problems. The layers. I see a bit of a Classical Liberal position in an imperfect world full of imperfect people and imperfect solutions.
Thanks for that, @Powerpuff…
It points out the difficulty I have when people make abortion a simple “Bumper-Sticker/Protest Sign” issue…
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He lost me from the git-go with his first substantive comment (@1:02): “Abortion is clearly wrong. I don’t think anyone debates that.”
Huh? I don’t understand how he can say abortion is ‘clearly wrong.’ Is this just inartful phrasing? (He is speaking extemporaneously, after all.) I mean, as Americans’ attitudes (and the PWI subforum) make plain, it is painfully obvious that the moral-status of abortion is anything but clear. Which goes to the just-plain-wrong second statement that ‘no one debates whether abortion is wrong.’ Say what?
I didn’t watch much more. Does he manage to recover from such an inauspicious start?
Jordan Peterson is definitely someone to listen to.
I think he acknowledges with his initial hesitation that abortion is something that will send you down a Rabbit Hole.
Peterson doesn’t attack this with his usual “vigor”.
I think he recognizes that there are no easy answers.
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He gets a whole lot more thoughtful and nuanced after that. Maybe you can try again? I think it’s only about 7 minutes long. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting the question and he’s talking off the cuff here, but he gets quite thoughtful, at least I thought so.
Of course I could agree with you that there are times when abortion is NOT clearly wrong.
Will do.
That was my interpretation, Mufasa. I just really appreciated his answer. It’s not eloquent, or polished, but I like the humility in it. The complexity, so many good people who disagree, this are the kinds of things that make me pro-choice in terms of public policy. We have such diversity of thought, I think freedom wherever possible is the way forward. As a society, we really don’t want to make decisions for other people if we can help it.
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I also like the fact that he didn’t take a “This IS no debate/I’m RIGHT!!!” stance, puff…
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Yes. I’m glad you liked his response, or at least the spirit of it. He raises some issues that we really don’t talk about in relation to this topic, which I think helps people appreciate the complexity. I don’t agree with everything he says. In that clip, I wouldn’t say that deciding that “you wouldn’t wish something on someone you love” is a good test to determine if something is moral, for example. He talks about marriage, and of course married people sometimes choose abortion. Anyway… Yeah, overall I liked his thoughtfulness.
Unrelated to this topic, but I think JP is bridging some divides. IMO, he has more people seeing both sides of the political coin, attempting to approach the other side with understanding and warm heartedness. In terms of religion, I’ve been in absolute awe at seeing so many agnostic or atheist people following him, and at least appreciating some of the fundamental truths and positive influences of religious tradition, even if it’s not from a perspective of belief. We desperately need to communicate with each other across political and religious divides.
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OK, watched it all (twice, in fact). It made me hearken back to Bill Clinton’s position on abortion–that ideally, it should be safe, legal and rare.
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Yeah, I didn’t think of that exactly, but I think so. That’s how I read it. He’s so conflicted, which I think is the appropriate way to feel. When he quotes Leonard Cohen, “In a massacre, there’s no decent place to stand,” I was thinking about how many situations are just like that. There’s no good solution. Imagine that you’ve got a physically and emotionally immature little pixie of a 13-year-old who’s pregnant. It might be physically detrimental for her to even attempt to physically carry it because her body isn’t even fully grown, much less the emotional toll, regardless of whether you terminate the pregnancy or not. And of course, there’s much more gravity to that for the young girl. Just one example, I immediately thought, “He’s right. You’ve got nowhere good to go.”
I appreciated what he said about sexual relationships. As a society, we’ve not sorted ourselves out in that regard very well. I had a very frank and open discussion with my college-aged child last week about the way things work. I’m almost sorry I did! Ha! Wow, it’s so turned around for so many of our young adults. The crushing on each other, gradually getting to know someone, holding hands stuff often comes WAY after the sexual relationship, if at all. You’ve got young adults going to sex parties before they’ve ever had a real boyfriend or girlfriend hold their hand. I know this isn’t everybody, but it’s just completely upside down to the way I think about the meaning or gravity of this. That discussion came on the heels of another talk with a couple of women about how sex is expected up front, or there won’t be another date. Anyway, no wonder he’s resonating with so many young adults. Imperfect world, indeed.
I did as well, although I think his intimation that marriage is some sort of panacea for our distorted sexual mores is a bit facile–it seems to me that the same people who are engaging in sexual behaviors for which they are emotionally ill-prepared are just as un-ready for marriage. I also disagree with what I took to be his placing the blame for our sexual dysfunction/abortion issue on The Pill. (I have always found this argument–that technology preventing pregnancy is responsible for our sex-related problems–to be perverse.)
That is my observation as well, and agree that it’s a damn shame (on multiple levels). The question is, what are the cultural factors that have led to this current state of affairs–a state which I think we both agree is generally not healthful.
That’s amazing to me (and not in a good way).
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Maybe more that the pill and the sexual revolution have solved some problems, while creating other problems that we have yet to solve, or that we haven’t fully recognized. That would explain you and I both looking at the current situation with some confusion, and a sense that something’s been lost. The Pill represents sex unfettered from responsibility. Of course, sometimes birth control fails, and humans develop emotional and social bonds, so it’s a bit of an illusion anyway.
I came across this. I apologize if it seems insensitive to people who have been abandoned in some way by a parent or spouse. That’s not my intention at all in posting it here. I found it interesting in that it’s flipped around from the usual narrative, and also illustrates that our “cures” for the reproductive differences between the sexes aren’t always going to make sense.
This was one of the comments responding to the cartoon. “If someone is married to you, you can then expect them to take care of children from that union, because legally, that’s what marriage is. If they fail at this and abandon you and the children, you can sue them for breach of contract.” In a world where we’ve frequently detached marriage from sex, we have other problems.
