Harris believes abortion is a fundamental freedom …
… and doesn’t even seem to be supporting exemptions for religion-based health facilities.
Harris said, among other things:
I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body.
I have a hunch, though, that Harris supported mandatory COVID vaccinations for the military, for example – an issue which certainly seems to have a much better fit with the idea of making decisions about your own body than a pregnancy does. After all, a pregnancy directly and absolutely concerns the body of another: a baby. And that right seems pretty fundamental, at least as a potential: the right to be born.
Whether a person supports abortion or doesn’t, any argument that the procedure only concerns a woman’s body seems obviously duplicitous to me. But it’s a standard argument used by many supporters of abortion. Also, if the right to abortion is such a “fundamental freedom,” it’s certainly not mentioned in the Constitution. The proper route for making it federal law and a protected freedom would be a constitutional amendment. But Harris and the left won’t go that route because they know it doesn’t have enough support right now to pass that way.
You’d think that somewhere along the line they’d figure out how babies get made…
Harris is intellectually and morally bankrupt.
She is as close to being a zero human as I’ve ever seen.
@neo:Also, if the right to abortion is such a “fundamental freedom,” it’s certainly not mentioned in the Constitution. The proper route for making it federal law and a protected freedom would be a constitutional amendment.
I don’t agree that abortion is a “fundamental freedom” for exactly the reason you give, that there are at least three people’s rights and lives involved. But if it WERE a fundamental freedom, we already have it through the Ninth Amendment:
I think it’s important to remember that the theory behind the American Founding is that our rights are not granted to us by a document, like they were under British monarchs; our rights pre-exist our founding documents. The “proper” route you suggest could be construed to have it the other way around, that we have no fundamental freedoms not spelled out in the Constitution. If that “proper” route is sometimes pursued we have to be very careful about the impression we leave about where the right actually came from.
I do think that if you wanted to create a right for Americans that involves power over other people, like a “right” to free health care (which would entitle you to force others to labor for you) you WOULD have to amend the Constitution because it would be taking someone’s rights away, in a way that the right to free speech does not. Just because I’m free to speak doesn’t mean you aren’t, but if I had a right to make you listen that would be taking away a right from you.
Similarly I think a “right” to abortion would fall into this category: you would be taking away the rights of some people to be alive and other people to have a say in the lives of their children.
All this is in kind of the background of the Constitution, the understanding of what words mean and what “rights” even are, and there’s danger in spelling it out explicitly in black-letter law, and danger of another kind in not spelling it out. Blackstone alludes to this danger when he discusses the settlement of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Abortion has been a solid gold issue for the Democrats, and they wouldn’t want it to be resolved. It helps keep a certain demographic on the reservation.
Seventies feminists, I think it was Robin Morgan, joked that if men could become pregnant, men would make abortion a sacrament.
Well, today’s feminists don’t need no men. These women have essentially made abortion a sacrament.
@huxley:Seventies feminists, I think it was Robin Morgan, joked that if men could become pregnant, men would make abortion a sacrament.
While men cannot get pregnant, many of them do wish to avoid any accountability (especially financial) for a pregnancy or the resulting 18-21 years of childhood, and those men have indeed helped make abortion a sacrament.
@Niketas Choniates
What you say is true about the theory. Rights are not all enumerated in the constitution. It is often said that in theory theory and practice are the same but in practice they are not.
Rights that you actually want to keep are best protected by being enumerated. The Bill of Rights was added by people suspicious that these obvious rights would be lost if they were not enumerated. Even with the bill of rights we struggle to keep free speech and assembly. Free association is at least somewhat overridden by a lot of Civil rights law. If the 2nd amendment wasn’t a thing you can bet we would not have the access to guns we have.
While men cannot get pregnant, many of them do wish to avoid any accountability (especially financial) for a pregnancy or the resulting 18-21 years of childhood, and those men have indeed helped make abortion a sacrament.
Niketas Choniates:
Really. Specifics? Cites?
Sure, some men go along with abortion, some for the crass reason you mention, but it’s overwhelmingly feminist women screaming for abortion and feminist men supporting them as allies.
@martin:Rights that you actually want to keep are best protected by being enumerated. The Bill of Rights was added by people suspicious that these obvious rights would be lost if they were not enumerated.
Certainly. But we have to be careful how we talk about it. Because if your answer to “Why does Joe Sixpack have the right to carry WEAPONS! of WAR! used in WAR!” and your answer is solely “It’s in the Constitution”, then you’re arguing on their terms: that your rights are based in some piece of paper that they get to help write and can change.
Likewise I would never argue that abortion is not a right because it’s not enumerated in the Constitution. I’d argue that it cannot be an unenumerated right because it actually takes away rights from some people and transfers them to others. Doesn’t mean we can’t put it in or make it legal some other way, or that we should.
@huxley:Specifics? Cites?
Let’s not make isolated demands for rigor. If you get to assert without cites, then basic fairness says so do I. Maybe you’ve never known any teenagers or college kids or criminals. But plenty of nice middle-class fathers have paid for their college-bound daughters’ abortions. Wouldn’t want to see them “punished with a baby” as one prominent male Dem politician put it.
feminist men supporting them as allies.
These men have reasons for being feminists and associating with feminist women in support of abortion. Feminism isn’t something you’re born believing, nor are you born with a pink hat on your head or a “Keep Abortion Legal” sign.
Let’s don’t mention Thomas Hobbes.
” . . . if the right to abortion is such a “fundamental freedom,” it’s certainly not mentioned in the Constitution.” [Neo]
I once read the following which I thought a very wise and profound observation: Anything that involves the work-product of another human being is not a right.
In that light, we may argue about the legality of abortion, its morality (or lack thereof) and especially the distinction of mother’s body vs. childs life, but under that above observation there is no “right” to abortion, or health care in general, for that matter.
Let’s not make isolated demands for rigor. If you get to assert without cites, then basic fairness says so do
Niketas Choniates :
This topic and its source are a cite.
Kamala Harris believes abortion is a fundamental right.
There’s no question whatsoever that feminist women have made abortion their supreme righteous cause. Must this be proven?
Cite a corresponding man who isn’t just a me-too feminist male supporting the sisters.
Extra credit: Cite an outspoken male who publicly supports abortion because he doesn’t want men to be stuck with responsibility — which was your claim.
Niketas Choniates makes a valid point about the 9th amendment. If you’re so inclined I’d highly recommend reading the reasoning of the founders who were against a Bill of Rights. They were not inimical of freedom, just the opposite. They thought enumerating rights would limit them, just as enumerating powers was supposed to do. I’ve always thought someone could write a damn good book just about the spirit of the 9th & 10th amendments alone, and someone probably has.
All that said, we conservatives should not shy away from the abortion discussion. It is among the enemy’s most powerful weapons, and there is no better place to have that discussion, among conservatives, than right here on this blog.
huxley:
Very few men would say it in such a crass way for public consumption. Much more noble to hide behind the rhetoric of a woman’s right to control her own body.
I have no statistics on how many men support abortion because they want to evade responsibility. I don’t think anyone has figures on that. But I certainly am aware, from people I’ve known, of pregnant women being pressured by husbands or men they’ve gotten pregnant by, to have abortions. It’s hardly an unknown phenomenon.
NIketas: Mike Plaiss, et al:
I certainly would not say that one can’t have a right unless it’s enumerated in the Constitution. However, I would – and did – say that a right to abortion, which does not just involve a woman’s body but involves the killing of a fetus – cannot be considered a right in the entire US, as a matter of federal law, without a constitutional amendment. Nor, by the way, could it be banned at the federal level without an amendment. The states can do either thing at the state level, however.
Roe found a nationwide right to abortion even though it was not mentioned in the Constitution. The judges who made the ruling in Roe were relying on a supposed “penumbra” that they felt was implied in the Bill of Rights but unstated, a right to privacy. Dodd said no; abortion is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution, implied or not, and it’s up to the states to make their own decisions to either allow it or prohibit it. Therefore, because it’s not in any penumbra of the Constitution, anyone who wants the right to abortion to be guaranteed on a national level must amend the Constitution, in my opinion. And likewise, anyone would wants an abortion ban on a national level must also amend the Constitution.
It’s hardly an unknown phenomenon.
neo:
Which I granted in my first response. But it’s not those men who have driven the abortion issue politically.
My point, again, is that the overwhelming political support for abortion is from feminist women and their fewer feminist male allies.
My impression is that Republicans did poorly in the 2022 election largely because of the Dodd decision and the consequent heavy mobilization of feminist women on the abortion issue.
Feminists say it’s a women’s issue and men have no say unless it is to agree. Most men, aside from those in the pro-life movement, would just as soon steer clear.
There is the men’s issue that many men want to have a say in their accountability for a pregnancy based on their paternity, which is only starting to get traction. Though that is another discussion.
Ask David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt about former California A.G., Kamala Harris’ views on the topic.
Medical care is one of the most regulated areas of life. The government prohibits many drugs and procedures. If the MSM were real journalists, they would ask anyone mouthing the “politicians shouldn’t tell me what I can do with my body” robotic cliché whether the FDA should be abolished, lobotomy’s performed or amputations in the case of body integrity identity syndrome done.
For that matter, why have physicians licensed? If you neighbor wants to practice surgery on you, it’s your body.
If you believe it’s OK to kill unborn children, have the integrity to say so.
Pete Buttigieg recently said that men are not truly free without readily available abortions for women. Doug Emhoff toured my state in a pro-abortion van saying much the same thing. That’s two in recent days.
And many, many women get abortions because the boyfriend threatens to leave them if they don’t abort. Often the boyfriend pays for it. Cheaper than child support. Again, I cite Doug Emhoff.
I notice that the Dems, who scream about Trump’s alleged intention to outlaw abortion nationally, also regularly vote for and advocate a national pro-abortion law.
@Kate:And many, many women get abortions because the boyfriend threatens to leave them if they don’t abort.
What I find sadder still, is the large proportion of women who get abortions because their parents will abandon them if they don’t.
It may be too old to easily find online but the New York Times had an approving editorial by a woman who, with her husband, successfully pressured their teenaged daughter into an abortion and explicitly gave the concern that they might be stuck with the burden of raising the child.
They believed in legal abortion, and they did not want the responsibility of a child, and they did not want their daughter to take on that responsibility because it might get in the way of the life they think she should aspire to.
Sometimes it’s not just the boyfriend or the husband who wants to avoid responsibility, it’s the woman’s own father.
Do not disagree with a single word of what neo says at 7:45. My interest in this particular topic, on this blog anyway, is political, not theoretical/constitutional. Illinois is throughly blue, but during the last election, in a district that is at least kind of up for grabs, I counted, I kid you not, seven conservative ads by the democrat hammering away at the Republican’s stance against abortion. Living here, I can assure you, these ads were highly effective.
I’m trying to encourage debate. Neo’s reasoning at 7:45, while entirely correct, is WAY too cerebral for a political message – not that she was suggesting it was one. So where does the conservative/libertarian coalition come to terms on this issue? Because if we don’t, we’ve got a problem, in my opinion.
Mike Plaiss:
Indeed, the politics are a big problem.
Anyone wanna talk about how the majority of OBGYN’s don’t actually perform abortions, and being forced to perform abortions might make many doctors leave the field or change their minds about entering… Wouldn’t that undermine “women’s health,” which the Democratic Party supposedly cares so much about?
@Mike Plaiss:So where does the conservative/libertarian coalition come to terms on this issue? Because if we don’t, we’ve got a problem, in my opinion.
Yeah, those infants are sure inconvenient to a lot of people, including Republicans who want to hold office.
Almost as bad, old people. Their medical bills, their insistence on living longer and longer but with fewer and fewer working people paying into the government programs that pay for those bills; fewer and fewer of them having any children with any interest in seeing that they are treated well. All the while the shifting demographics of the country meaning they will be cared for by people who feel no cultural connection to them and may not even speak their language, and the rising levels of government debt ensuring that there’s less to pay for it all.
Cormac McCarthy’s sheriff said it best, in “No Country for Old Men”:
Let’s just say it out loud! Abortion is basically child murder!
All well and good Niketas Choniates, and what happens to the infants in a Harris/Walsh administration with Democrats in control of the senate and house?
https://www.google.com/search?q=lincoln+movie+compass&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:b2f648c2,vid:PW6JYjJ6Scs,st:0
And while we’re at it, it is crystal clear that Trump is dancing around abortion being ok early in the pregnancy, and not ok late. Everyone on board with that? Or not?
@Mike Plaiss:and what happens to the infants in a Harris/Walsh administration with Democrats in control of the senate and house?
Leaving aside the moral question of whether it’s right for good people to do a little evil to stop bad people from doing more evil, do you really think that “Like the Democrats, but ten years later and half as much” has been a winning GOP strategy for the last thirty years it’s been tried?
As for Harris and Walz, I’m pretty sure they will be in charge in 2025, and it will be because their party has captured the important parts of the ballot-counting apparatus and the Federal bureacracy, not because they successfully fear-mongered on abortion.
One thing that has been a good thing to come out of the last 8 years is watching all the masks come off. Liz Cheney is revealed as someone who never actually believed in any of the pro-life fire-breathing she used to do. More Republicans like Liz Cheney sound like a smooth winning strategy?
it is crystal clear that Trump is dancing around abortion being ok early in the pregnancy, and not ok late. Everyone on board with that? Or not?
It’s not up to him. That would put him in the mainstream of American and European opinion. But as President he will not have power to make any such law. I personally don’t plan for anyone who has that power and has that opinion, which affects my vote for Congresscritters, certainly.
Right now, though, it’s actually up to the states, and if no Federal law or amendment is passed that is where it will stay.
I’m no expert but doesn’t morality play some kind of role. I hear the “who’s morality” sneering response alot. I don’t have a problem responding Judeo Christian morality. Killing babies or fetuses is immoral. But in order to enjoy unfettered sex severed from its purpose of creating families we have to eliminate morality to get that. Since we don’t have a culture we have a bunch of subcultures that substitute. Isn’t the Constitution, at least in part, based on morality?
Re:“Why does Joe Sixpack have the right to carry WEAPONS! of WAR! used in WAR!”
Is there any right more fundamental than the individual’s right to life itself? When our lives are mortally threatened, the means to effectively defend our lives is critical. Since we can’t know in advance of an attack what specific defensive arms will suffice, prudence requires that we have more than we are likely to need, since by definition, less than we need will not suffice.
neo states, “anyone would wants an abortion ban on a national level must also amend the Constitution.”
While I understand the desirability of societal cohesion on divisive issues, that’s essentially an argument that a Constitutional amendment is necessary to prevent the premeditated taking of another person’s innocent life…
Not a “person’?
In Jeremiah 1:5 God says, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I sanctified you; and I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” [my emphasis}
Relevant lyric from the Emerson, Lake & Palmer song, “From the Beginning”
“You see it’s all clear
You were meant to be here
From the beginning”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUx6pZiJprA
“He who has ears to hear, let him hear and heed My words” Matthew 11:15:
I’m sitting here watching the world burn, on the brink of WWIII, grocery bills still too high, housing market way too high, men in women’s bathrooms and sports, and very basic biology is being questioned and rewritten…yet women will ignore all of that just so they have the option to kill their own offspring after willingly and enthusiastically (in 98% of cases) engaging in the very activity that created the kid, even with all the various forms of birth control that exist.
I just don’t get it. I don’t get how this is THE issue. The pill, IUDs, condoms, tracking your cycle, etc. It’s never been easier to NOT get pregnant.
Having said all that, the abortion debate wearies me. As much as I would love to see abortion banned, there will never be an agreement to do so until we can agree to what a fetus IS, both in definition and in value. Is it a clump of cells or is it a baby? Is it worth as much as another human or less? Why would anyone pro-choice be okay with abortion being banned when they only see a fetus as an evil parasite? Even the ones who see it as human still think it has less value than the mother. That’s not a scientific issue, that’s a heart issue. That is SO much more difficult to debate with someone.
On men and abortion: The Playboy Foundation was (perhaps still is) a major donor to abortion lobbying organizations. Because nothing interferes more with the playboy life than having to shell out the money.
Richard F Cook said “in order to enjoy unfettered sex severed from its purpose of creating families we have to eliminate morality to get that.”
I don’t think we have to eliminate morality. Better to say we have to flout certain moral strictures. I confess that, in my youth, I had my share (and then some) of what you call “unfettered” (albeit protected) sex. I flouted the moral stricture on sex out of wedlock. And I enjoyed it. Boy did I ever. So much so, that I would do it again if the same circumstances obtained (i.e., youth and bachelorhood).
The Catholic Church asserts that sex outside marriage is a sin. I was also told by a priest that having sex with my Episcopalian wife of 43 years was a mortal sin and that we were henceforth obliged to forego intimate relations and “live like brother and sister” (that’s a verbatim quote) until she got with the program, as it were, and converted to Catholicism. This happened a year ago come November when I was literally on my death bed, pending emergency surgery that might well fail, and I was making confession to the hospital’s resident priest for the purpose of getting right with God before passing on. When the priest informed me that I was committing a mortal sin, and that I had in effect been committing a mortal sin for 43 years, I had to resist a very strong urge to throw that gentleman of the cloth bodily out of my room. I was so angry, I think the anger might have played a role in my surviving surgery. My point being, that the priest was talking what I hold to be bullshit. Similarly I also think all the sex I ENJOYED before I got married was not sinful, even though the Church says it was. Which is also bullshit.
I’m a cafeteria Catholic. I admit it.
Geoffrey Britain; Richard F. Cook:
Surely you are aware that the Bible is not the authority in a court of law on the subject of whether a fetus is a person.
Yes, natural rights and the Founders assert our rights are founded in a deity and not merely because they are written in the Constitution. Nevertheless, plenty of things are immoral in various religions but don’t have the force of law prohibiting them – at least not in the US, which is not a theocracy and which does not have an official state religion.
Neo
It is obvious that the Bible is not the authority in a court of law. It is quite a leap you made from Judeo Christian teachings being the hard underpinnings of our culture and law to theocracy. You have to believe, as a group in something. If you believe in nothing you get blue states. Why did you leap to theocracy when I made no such claim?
“Similarly I also think all the sex I ENJOYED before I got married was not sinful, even though the Church says it was. Which is also bullshit.
I’m a cafeteria Catholic. I admit it.” IrishOtter49
I’m so sorry that the priest got it so wrong. Sadly the Bell Curve holds true in every arena. I and no doubt many others here kept you in prayer at that time. I rejoice when what we pray for actually turns out as we hope and in this case especially so as you wanted to live.
I, too, am a Cafeteria Catholic, if what is meant by that term is one doesn’t hold to every jot and tittle of the Catholic Catechism available to us in English in 1994. The faith is over 2000 years old and founded on the Patristic faith thousands of years older. If you believe there is a “faith once and for all delivered” the challenge is to understand and try to uphold it. Jesus said it best, “worship in spirit and in truth”. The holy scriptures are the framework. The accretions promolgated by the faulty confessor you encountered bump against truth and are rightly discarded. But your holding the position cited above defies actual ancient scriptural truth. The Church didn’t say it, God did, the Church upholds it. You can disagree with it, you have free will. But when our neighbor disagrees with parts of the other 9, well, we get the world we live in.
I believe this hasn’t been mentioned, and I have read all preceding comments.
America has a larger sex trafficking problem than ever before! With open borders, with less policing, with evil elite sex “practices”.
Pimps and sex trafficking thugs are fully involved in forced abortion.
I wonder how many doctors are forced to murder babies.
All of that is appalling, and I feel the need to include in this discussion.
…
Very powerful people want to destroy our rights to conscience objection to abortion — I.e., to destroy our rights to refuse to perform or to fund abortion!!
…
God save us from them.
If Harris and Democrats were trying to persuade fence-sitting Republicans/conservatives to hold their noses and vote Trump again, I’m really not sure what they would be doing differently.
It’s amazing to me. If Hillary had moved even half-an-inch to the center in 2016, she would have won. If 2020 was really a “national emergency,” then don’t have a Democratic primary about unilaterally adding new states to the union and packing the Supreme Court and don’t nominate a senile cut-out for the Bernie Sanders wing of the party.
If you really care about “democratic norms,” then don’t indict your political opponents on BS “show me the man” criminal charges. Don’t have your partisan AG civilly sue him for “fraud” in transactions where both parties made money and expressed a willingness to do business again.
If you really care about “democratic norms,” don’t repeatedly thumb your nose at the Supreme Court when it tells you that you cannot have an eviction moratorium or student loan giveaways without Congress.
And on social issues, my goodness, Kamala is about as far to the left as you can get. President Kamala means an end to all state level abortion laws, federally funded abortions and doctors forced out of practice if they won’t perform them. Hideous. And then there’s the ghastly child gender madness along with the rest of the gender nonsense.
Finally there’s this whole trope about Kamala (or Liz Cheney) giving conservatives “permission” to vote for her. What utter, insulting, nonsense. You don’t give voters “permission” to vote for you. You ask them for their vote and give them a reason to vote for you. The deal from the left can be summed up this way:
“You must vote for us because Trump is bad. You will accept utter defeat on every other issue you care about. You will accept entrenched hegemony of the Democratic party and its crazy ideologues for the foreseeable future. But it is your duty as an American to accept all of this because Trump is bad. And, by the way, we give you permission to do it.”
(To which my reply is – “Wait a minute. What are you accepting to defeat Trump? It sure seems as though this is a game where you get everything that you’ve ever wanted and I have to help you get it?”)
There was no way that I would ever vote for Harris or Biden. But I could have very easily been persuaded to leave the top of the ticket blank or vote third party. I actually think that a second Trump administration is likely to be a dumpster fire and that 2026 and 2028 will be a disaster for the right if Trump wins. Why can’t I just pick the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man?
I’ll add too that, as a conservative who watched two disastrous wars pushed by the Cheney wing of the GOP decimate the right and empower the most radical elements of the left . . . Kamala can keep Dick and Liz.
For Bauxite it’s about style. Trumps first term was pretty damn good. I don’t know what you are basing your assertion on that his second term would be a dumpster fire.
Bauxite….the Coco Channel of politics.
No, Richard F Cook, it is not about style. Not even a little bit. Again, I find Trumpers every bit as insulting as the left. (“Let me tell you what you actually think.”) No thank you. I know my own mind. I don’t need you to explain it to me.
The difference, to me, is that Trumpers don’t (immediately) come with a crushing loss to the left. I think that will be enough for most non-MAGA conservatives.
This is the unbelievable through-the-looking-glass election where both sides seem to think that they can win the election by insulting the voters they need to persuade.
If the Stay-Puft Marshamallow man was actually on the ballot, I’d think about.
“I don’t know what you are basing your assertion on that his second term would be a dumpster fire.”
I assume Bauxite believes the Left’s attack on Trump will be even worse than it was in his 1st term, and that they will have more success.
I still think it’s worth a fight, and important to disrupt the Left’s current unfettered march.
Showing the ignorant, the confused, the fence sitters or just apathetic people that some things are worth fighting for may move some mountains.
Shes a vacuous and evil woman that makes my skin crawl the tableau that the sheriff describes in ncfom is where we are at this undefined plague of evil drugs violence wanton immorality all that things that tear society to ribbons
The cartels represented by chigurh were long in coming so were given to understand ‘if you dont hurt anyone but yourself’ such poppycock. The old gods filled the vaccuum left by the God that settled this nation
I agree that this is both a moral problem and a political problem. Since the 1973 Roe decision, the Overton window was moved away from traditional sexual ethics and towards widespread promiscuity and radical feminism. Unlimited abortion is required to sustain those new values. Those of us who believe that killing infants growing in their mothers’ wombs is unacceptable need to face the fact of this opinion shift. We need to do what we can politically to limit elective abortions to the early weeks while continuing to work to change public values. This is not perfect.
You hit the nail on the head Kate. Convenient sex is the unstated and unexamined premise of nearly every pro-abortion argument.
I think that, given the logical and moral pretzels that one must weave to justify killing one’s own offspring, it should be clear that sex really isn’t so convenient after all and that traditional sexual ethics were an attempt to deal with that reality. But I doubt that we’ll be reversing the sexual revolution anytime soon.
So pro-lifers are left with very unsatisfying and somewhat logically inconsistent arguments that flirt with conceding that there are some circumstances where it is morally acceptable to kill a defenseless human being for the sake of convenience. I’m not sure that’s sustainable either.
There will come a great judgement among those countries in the West who were given the task of promoting the Word
Perhals this is why the US does not figure in the final days according to some interpretation
The Dems want to plunge us into utter darkness do you need to know more
Bauxite, my view does not concede that it’s morally acceptable to kill infants for the sake of convenience. I only concede that I can’t convince enough voters in my state about it at this time. I vote for limits because it’s what I can get, and I support the crisis pregnancy center nearby which is literally next door to the largest area abortion site.
IrishOtter49,
Like you and Sharon W., I don’t agree with the church’s teaching on marriage between a Catholic and non-Catholic not being a marriage. That was absurd to discuss when you were so ill, and seeking a sacrament. I am sorry that happened to you.
Regarding your statement about doing it all over again as a young bachelor…
As a grown man, having lived with my spouse for decades and raising kids of both genders, and watching them and their friends grow up, and thinking back on my bachelor days; I would not do it all over as I had. I did not understand that women have an innate, biological motivation to bond in a way men do not. Sex is not, and cannot, be casual for women, and the more a woman attempts to disabuse herself of her biology the more difficult it is for her to bond when a worthy partner comes along.
Even when I was young I understood we men need to protect women. If we fail to do that the species fails. However, I did not understand the harm casual sex does to women. Or pretended to not see what was before my eyes in a desire to satisfy my own lust.
Our culture works hard to sell a lie to young women. Were I a young man again I hope I would have the strength and wisdom to not use that to my advantage.
What Deity weaves shadows of desire into the fabric of existence, wielding judgment like a thunderbolt? A Being who crafts rules of reverence yet dances with human frailty, echoing the very flaws it condemns. Is it fear or love that shapes such a paradox, where creation is both cherished and chastised? A riddle of divine contradiction, where the sacred and the profane entwine.
IrishOtter49, I, a non-Catholic, was married in 1971 to a Catholic man. The Monsignor who did our premarital counseling certainly did not tell my fiancé that we should not have sex once married! I agree with the Catholics here who say that what you met was a rogue priest who did great harm at a critical time. Shame on him, and even larger shame, since he seems to have driven you away from mass attendance. Don’t let him do that to you. Find a parish where you can worship.
I agree with Kate and laud her support of the crisis pregnancy center.
Most things central to life don’t fit neatly into politics, or “the law.”
A woman considering an abortion is a tragedy and that woman needs help. She is confused or scared or uninformed or facing external pressures or impoverished… Likely some combination of several of those things. She is literally in “crisis” and it doesn’t matter which laws, or how many laws are on the books. She doesn’t need an attorney, she needs love and help.
So many of us Conservatives fall into a trap of debating the subject of abortion in terms of laws, or the Constitution, or State’s rights… If you live in a nation that is so culturally and morally adrift that women are considering killing their offspring and their neighbors march in the street openly proclaiming the importance of baby killing, your nation’s problem isn’t legal. Fellow citizens believing child sacrifice is essential to the proper functioning of society is an educational, religious and cultural problem, not a political or legal issue.
Word salad and musings of CC™.
You must not only tolerate evil but affirm it how far are they willing to go
h/t Instapundit
Who are today’s Rashnishiis?
Is Google evil?
Well they want us eating bugs (which im sure is much healthier, sarc)
Kate, Rufus, Sharon:
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I don’t necessarily agree with all of them, but I don’t necessarily disagree with all of them either. How’s that for equivocal?
And, certainly, many many thanks for your prayers during my time of need.
A post-script to my story from yesterday: The next day, as I was being prepped for more dangerous surgery, another different priest dropped by my room to see if he could be of assistance. He was an Irishman (by that I mean, in the Chicago vernacular, an Irish-American), from an Irish neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago (Mt. Greenwood). A jolly fellow, with snow-white hair, a pudgy face and a florid complexion — his face was, as the saying goes, a virtual roadmap of Ireland. I liked him instantly. I told him about my encounter with his colleague the day before. He laughed and said that fellow got it all wrong, and not suprisingly because he was Opus Dei, a real hard-liner — my jolly Irish-American priest let me know in his amiable, polite, but very firm way that he didn’t think much of Opus Dei priests because . . . well, because my encounter was not at all atypical of the type.
He then performed the sacrament of the annointing — smiling the whole time — which was a great comfort to me.
I’m still a Catholic. I love the overarching theology, particularly the emphasis on mystery — for me, “the mystery IS the message.” Which goes a long way, I think, to explaining why I am and shall remain a Cafeteria Catholic. The food is better, more soul-satisfying, more sustaining — at least in my opinion. God’s word is mediated by and through humans and their institutions (e.g., the Church), and thus open to interpretation — and misinterpretation. The Church upholds its own agreed-upon interpretations, which may or may not be greatly flawed. That’s where theology, and theological reflection, contemplation, and discussion comes into play. The Church Fathers were profound thinkers and they did not always agree with each other. In the end, as one of my favorite parish (NOT Opus Dei) priests pointed out to me: our interpretation of the faith, our understanding of it, rests fundamentally on “the dictates of an informed conscience.” The process by which the conscience is informed is a subject for another day.
@Niketas Choniates
I agree with you on your points about keeping the argument in the realm of natural/god given rights. We also should work more toward keeping the Federal government limited to the todo list of the constitution. I think that the proper reading of the change from Roe to Dobbs puts the question of abortion outside of the preview of the Feds. If a law was passed to ban or stop state bans it should be found unconstitutional.
One question which I think isn’t asked often enough is : if abortion is a right, then is it “negative” or “positive” ?
My (admittedly limited) understanding is that the Second Amendment is an example of a negative right. The Government can’t take your gun. If it were a positive right, then the government would be obliged to provide you with a gun.
If a hypothetical woman who I don’t know wants an abortion, I may not approve but what she does with her own body isn’t my business.
If the same woman wants said abortion to be provided by the government, then the situation changes. What she does with the taxpayers’ money is the taxpayers’ business.
@richf: but what she does with her own body isn’t my business.
Unfortunately abortion involves more than a woman’s “own” body. There’s the rights of the baby, and the rights of the baby’s father, which you are just waving away.
We have a right to do what we want with our own property*, but we no longer consider that we can have “property” in human beings and you can no longer justify slavery by talking about a man’s “own property” and waving away the rights of other humans.
Likewise we ought not to consider a baby as a woman’s “own” body.
*Some restrictions apply…
IrishOtter49–Thank you for the postscript. I’m so glad a loving priest was able to be there for you. I agree with you regarding “the informed conscience”. Presently my husband and I attend a parish with 2 very traditional priests–kneel at the altar, receive the Eucharist on the tongue). It is a beautiful jewel in a slum (Long Beach is a street-by-street basis). People travel from all over to attend the Latin Mass. My husband and I prefer the Novus Ordo. We’ve had both of our priests to dinner on separate occasions and feel completely comfortable being who we are and they love, respect and accept us. We chose this parish because the unadulterated truth regarding abortion, homosexuality, and so forth is openly addressed in mild-mannered homilies. We love these priests and are thankful for them. Since homilies are a part of the Mass the messages here conform to reality consistent with the scriptures and ancient teaching, as opposed to our 3 other former parishes where we were the “conservatives” often listening to the Father CNN (as my one son referred to them) messages. Here we are the liberals when it comes to the hard and fast rules of observing the sacraments. It’s a good thing my parents raised me to be comfortable not fitting in. When we returned to the Catholic Church in 1993 (having both been raised Catholic, but neither practicing as adults–though we married in the Church in 1982) I had gone through the Father Hardon catechism, The Faith. On the front page I wrote, “Beauty, Truth and Mystery”. I believe this defines our God and our Faith. God bless us all as we are on a journey.
Thanks, Sharon. “Beauty, Truth and Mystery” indeed. That pretty much covers it for me as well. The is just . . . paperwork. 🙂
Kate – I’m not challenging your view at all. I am challenging the practical politics of incrementalist political positions on abortion. It seems like a lose-lose to me.
I think it is very difficult to construct a moral defense of, say, a 6 or a 15 week abortion ban on anything other than a utilitarian basis. If abortion for the sake of convenience is wrong at 15 weeks or 6 weeks, it is very difficult to come up with a good reason why it isn’t also wrong at 14 weeks or 5 weeks. Heartbeat laws are clever, but I don’t even think that their advocates believe that elective abortion is morally acceptable the day before the heart starts beating.
You can certainly justify a 6 or 15 week ban, parental notification law, or whatever else on the grounds that it is the best you can get in the current political climate – i.e., on utilitarian grounds. But this that sets up the “worst of both worlds” scenario for pro-lifers.
First, the law is a teacher, so if elective abortion is legal after 6 or 15 weeks, people are going to become acclimated to the idea that elective abortion is a-ok before that time. Next, since there is really no meaningful difference between 6/5 or 14/15 weeks, I find it very hard to believe that the time-based bans will last, especially in the US where opinions on the pro-abort side are so extreme and so deeply held.
On the other hand, pro-lifers are going to struggle to get any credit or slack from the electorate for moderating. Because the 6/15 week bans are only utilitarian, pro-aborts are going to argue, correctly, that pro-lifers would really prefer to ban elective abortion altogether because that is what their principles require.
Lastly, similar to my first point, I think that history tells us that political accommodations to abortion always lead to more political accommodations to abortion, and eventually to the pro-abort position. Bob Casey Sr. was a principled pro-lifer. His son initially tried to split the baby and is now indistinguishable from Kamala Harris. Mario Cuomo’s “personally opposed” position was, in my view, a serious (albeit seriously flawed) attempt to grapple with the politics of abortion. But it also was a dead end. If you are accommodating evil, you must not believe that it is really evil. And I would argue that Mario Cuomo’s children learned that lesson well. I fear that our children will as well.
how can someone have the fundamental god given right to something that wasn’t even consistently safe to do without causing permanent bodily harm just 100 years ago. if something is what you were meant to do you naturally would have thought nature would have provided a way for humans to do it safely naturally..
Since we have a federal system, since it’s the states that are in charge of policing the people and not the Federal government, since abortion is now back in the hands of the states, I think it’s pretty obvious that pro-lifers should work within their states, and worry about how pro-life candidate for the governors and state legislatures are.
The last time the country really got behind one moral rule for everyone was Prohibition, and I think we should all have learned that it is not the model to follow.
Many excellent comments here. Thank you Neo for starting the topic. Niketas Choniates you have made some excellent points regarding the Constitution, natural rights and domain–Federal or State. Because the average citizen is completely ignorant regarding these issues, pro-lifers are trodding rough ground. The take-over of education (social studies, not history, etc) accounts for this sad reality. Also facing the truth that we as a nation are less pro-life than formerly is tied to being a post-Christian culture. I was very pleasantly surprised that the Republicans in the state of California were unsuccessful in removing the pro-life platform (for now). They sure did try though.
IrishOtter
Why are you a Catholic at all since you, by your own admission, pick and choose what to accept? Where is the genuineness in that?
I answered your question is my posts.