Heartland

The [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5099362.stm]BBC[/url] wrote:The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales has reopened the abortion debate by urging the government to change the law.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has called on ministers to lower the 24-week abortion limit at a private meeting at the Department of Health.

I can totally understand how a man who is presumably celibate has the right to lecture people on the morality (or otherwise) of their child-bearing choices.

We all know that the church is anti-abortion anyway; this is obviously the start of a push to get abortions banned completely in this country.

Why should the ministers of one particular religion get to decide what's right and wrong for the rest of us who don't share their beliefs?

Since us non-Catholics are hellbound anyway, you'd think they'd cut us some slack.

Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, now that has kind of an Irish ring to it, hasn't it?

markfiend wrote:Why should the ministers of one particular religion get to decide what's right and wrong for the rest of us who don't share their beliefs?

Keepers of the faith... (that's an explanation, not a justification)

I thought this was a Dropkick Murphy reference or something...

As an important ecclesiastical figure, he's entitled to his point of view. I'm more concerned about how much credibility Ministers are going to give to his opinions, how much leverage he has over Whitehall. Let's try and avoid a Supreme Court situation here, eh?

Bollocks.

If it were a woman who has gone through childbirth and abortion, I'd listen. But a male cardinal whose religion is against it to begin with, personal views aside?

He's no more qualified to say what should and shouldn't happen regarding abortion than I am.

I couldnt care less of what a catholic thinks. I found it much more frightening that there is a current general tendancy towards conservatism all over the world.

A survey by the Observer newspaper earlier this year showed that half of women wanted tougher laws.

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said there was "substantial and growing disquiet in Britain at the numbers of abortions".

He said: "Millions of people, especially women, would like to see a review of the current law.

When faith is enforced by law, there is no faith.

That aside, define when the foetus becomes human, apply murder law and stfu.

And I suppose these millions of women opposed to abortions are the ones consensually having them? f**k off

Motz wrote:define when the foetus becomes human, apply murder law and stfu.

The problem for the Christians is that they have no biblical support for their position that the life of the foetus is sacred. Quite the opposite in fact:

Exodus 21: 22-25 (RSV) wrote:When men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall be fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

This implies that the loss of the unborn is no "harm".

Given the current state of things, I'll bet that if altar boys could get pregnant then the Church would change its tune PDQ...

I have no problem with religious people until they attempt to force their religious morals on the masses; sadly the majority of religious texts encourage it. I don’t want to follow a rule simply because ‘god says so’; I want reasoning and logic behind the law. If we followed the old testament, men would be stoned for working on a Sunday and rape victims would have to marry their rapist. In the majority of religious texts there are so many sickening, unnecessary laws that degrade the human body for no reason whatsoever except ‘god says so’.

Saying “before it’s human� is equal to saying “before it has a soul.� It’s still a living organism, and it still has the potential to be a human. Me saying this may seem hypocritical to you because I eat meat, but I feel that killing another species is different to killing your own. I think evolution has a play in this because we live for our own species.

I can see, however, why a limit to when a person can have an abortion is needed, for obvious ethical reasons there are no point in me stating.

I dislike the feminist notion “it’s my body, my decision� because it’s not their body they’re destroying and it is not their own life they are taking, it’s the life of the organism that has a potential to be a living being. Also, I think the father should have a say in it, too, since it is his baby also. And I do not like the argument “give birth and then have an opinion�, I could simply say “be aborted and then have an opinion.�

I realise though, that if abortion was illegal, women would still have abortions but with a lot more hazardous risks. And this is a good argument for abortion. And then there is the argument about rape victims, incest, brain dead children, children so deformed they’d have no chance of a life, a baby that giving birth to could risk its life and the mother’s life. These are all good reasons for abortion.

I can’t help it, but abortion feels like murder to me, but sometimes murder is necessary; as the reasons for abortion given above prove. Something about it just feels wrong to me, but I’m on the fence with it because I can see the good and the bad in it.

EDIT - revised.

If abortion is murder, then is a woman who miscarries guilty of manslaughter?

No and yes. If the person was pregnant and doing heroin or something that endangers the baby, then I would class it as manslaughter; but if it is due to the most common symptoms, cramping and bleeding - something totally out of their control - then it is not manslaughter.

Manslaughter is usually broken into two categories:

* Voluntary manslaughter

This arises in cases where the defendant may have an intent to cause death or serious injury, but the potential liability for murder is mitigated by the application of a defense. For example, the defendant may be provoked into a loss of control by unexpectedly finding a spouse in the arms of a lover or witnessing an attack against his or her child, or the defendant may have diminished capacity.

* Involuntary manslaughter

This is where death occurs due to recklessness or criminal negligence with no intention to kill or cause serious injury. In Northern Ireland, Scotland, and the United States, the law differentiates between levels of fault based on the mens rea (Latin for a "guilty mind").

reason #2.5 i stopped being a catholic.

markfiend wrote:

The [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5099362.stm]BBC[/url] wrote:The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales has reopened the abortion debate by urging the government to change the law.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has called on ministers to lower the 24-week abortion limit at a private meeting at the Department of Health.

I can totally understand how a man who is presumably celibate has the right to lecture people on the morality (or otherwise) of their child-bearing choices.

We all know that the church is anti-abortion anyway; this is obviously the start of a push to get abortions banned completely in this country.

Now don't get mad and freak out when you read my perspective - Consider the possibility that the Catholic Church believes they are "moderating" abortion for the good of all humankind. This is why they strive to "lock the abortion thread."

Abortion is between mother, baby and father.

There can be no morally justified outside interest.

Motz wrote:Abortion is between mother, baby and father.

And how would you get the baby's opinion on abortion Motz?

Motz wrote:Abortion is between mother, baby and father.

There can be no morally justified outside interest.

Don't you mean mother and father, since a baby has no say in things.

In fact, that’s always pissed me off. A baby has never had the option of being born or not, it’s always just thrown into the world. It’d be great if there was some sort of technology that allowed the baby to make the decision, anyway, I’m rambling about s**t.

Even if it "isn't a human yet", it is still a living organism with the potential to be human. Do you think if a mother murders its baby who has entered the external world and can now grow without the need of its mother's womb, that that is just between mother, father and baby? The only difference is that now the baby is outside the womb.

DarkAngel wrote:

Motz wrote:Abortion is between mother, baby and father.

And how would you get the baby's opinion on abortion Motz?

Wait 'till it grows up, becomes a consenting adult and then ask.

scotty wrote:

DarkAngel wrote:

Motz wrote:Abortion is between mother, baby and father.

And how would you get the baby's opinion on abortion Motz?

Wait 'till it grows up, becomes a consenting adult and then ask.

Motz wrote:Abortion is between mother, baby and father.

There can be no morally justified outside interest.

Don't forget doctors, if they find that if the mother goes through with it, her health/life is at risk.

Don't even get me started on that man!

markfiend wrote:

Motz wrote:define when the foetus becomes human, apply murder law and stfu.

The problem for the Christians is that they have no biblical support for their position that the life of the foetus is sacred. Quite the opposite in fact:

Exodus 21: 22-25 (RSV) wrote:When men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall be fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

This implies that the loss of the unborn is no "harm".

Putting on the professor hat for a moment, the actual, age-old justification for a Christian prohibition on abortion stems from the synthesis of Aristotelian teleology and Christian thought that one finds in St. Thomas Aquinas. The sola scriptura argument is, as you point out, problematic at best--but it wouldn't have been accepted until after the Protestant reformation anyhow, since the Catholics were always busy mucking about in moldly old pagan books (like the works of Plato and Aristotle). If it's to be a serious argument in opposition to abortion, it's ultimately an Aristotelian/Thomist argument; i.e. final causality, natural law and an entirely different cosmology from what we have today. The issue is much deeper than the screaming lunatics on either side care to admit; there are serious thinkers trying to work it out, but let's face it--who wants to consider teleology, natural law, potency and act, etc, when you can scream "Baby-killer!" and "Keep your laws off my body!" "Think cogently about biologial teleology, potency and act!" doesn't have the same ring to it. Doesn't fit on a bumper sticker either.

edit: punctuation is neat

sultan2075 wrote:

markfiend wrote:

Motz wrote:define when the foetus becomes human, apply murder law and stfu.

The problem for the Christians is that they have no biblical support for their position that the life of the foetus is sacred. Quite the opposite in fact:

Exodus 21: 22-25 (RSV) wrote:When men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall be fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

This implies that the loss of the unborn is no "harm".

Putting on the professor hat for a moment, the actual, age-old justification for a Christian prohibition on abortion stems from the synthesis of Aristotelian teleology and Christian thought that one finds in St. Thomas Aquinas. The sola scriptura argument is, as you point out, problematic at best--but it wouldn't have been accepted until after the Protestant reformation anyhow, since the Catholics were always busy mucking about in moldly old pagan books (like the works of Plato and Aristotle). If it's to be a serious argument in opposition to abortion, it's ultimately an Aristotelian/Thomist argument; i.e. final causality, natural law and an entirely different cosmology from what we have today. The issue is much deeper than the screaming lunatics on either side care to admit; there are serious thinkers trying to work it out, but let's face it--who wants to consider teleology, natural law, potency and act, etc, when you can scream "Baby-killer!" and "Keep your laws off my body!" "Think cogently about biologial teleology, potency and act!" doesn't have the same ring to it. Doesn't fit on a bumper sticker either.

edit: punctuation is neat

You see this is why I like Heartland,
occasionally unpredictable and thought provoking posts raise up.

Dear Cormac

Fcuk Right Off

Hugs
Weebles

PS You wear a dress and smell of pee

weebleswobble wrote:Dear Cormac

Fcuk Right Off

Hugs
Weebles

PS You wear a dress and smell of pee