The United Nations Exposed: A View From Within

From the desk of Alexandra Colen on Mon, 2010-03-22 07:18

At the recent conference on the Status of Women at the United Nations I represented Belgium. I observed that with the Obama administration the United States has joined the hardcore Marxist social engineers.

As chair of the Belgian Parliament’s Committee for Equal Opportunities and Social Emancipation I was sent to New York to be part of the national delegation to the 54th session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations. If I had not been chair I would probably not even have known about the mission to New York, as I do not belong to the in-crowd of progressive Marxist society-shapers that frequent the conferences of this influential institute of world governance. It was a unique opportunity to observe the UN at work.

 My observation started at home, where I attended some of the preparatory meetings to define my government’s position on the main theme of the conference. These meetings were attended by civil servants from the ministries and representatives from a plethora of equal opportunities institutes and NGOs, all lavishly subsidized and accountable to no-one. In the name of “women’s empowerment” they were chiefly concerned with the continuation of attention (and funding), on the part of the government and the UN, for their own activities. Through this system of “consultation” at the preparatory level the NGOs themselves provide the input for the “agreed conclusions”, concrete recommendations of the UN for measures to be implemented by governments and various institutions at all levels, from international to local.

In New York I attended some of the plenaries and panels of the conference (and gave a brief two-minute speech during the panel on “the evolving status and role of national mechanisms for gender equality”). To see how the UN’s texts are developed, however, I attended the “informal consultations” where the representatives of the member states attempted to write consensus texts for resolutions to be adopted by the conference.

Imagine entering a factory hall where a large, complicated machine is in operation. Raw materials are poured in at one end and at various intervals along the belt. There is a regular rhythm, some hissing, clanging, churning from indeterminate sources, a panel with lights that appears to accompany the whole process. Whatever is produced at the other end is immediately packaged and whisked away. Sitting in the room where the “informal consultations” are held, observing the process by which UN resolutions are written, is a similar experience. There is a draft text. At first observation it is unclear where it came from and how it got there. The same applies to the people round the table. Who are they and what are they doing? One thing is clear: the resolution is inevitable, and most of the content of the resolution is inevitable, too. Whoever gets to write the first draft determines the content and thrust of the text.

I asked our diplomats about the draft text and the people. Apparently any country can submit a draft resolution. Once it is submitted, the other countries are doomed to participate in the informal consultations during which the text is adapted until it can be accepted in a general consensus. This year Palestine caused some embarrassment among the diplomats by submitting a resolution (together with Yemen) which laid the blame for the situation of Palestinian women within their own society entirely on Israel. So all 45 missions of the member states of the UN sent out diplomats to try to modify paragraphs such as (from the draft [pdf]):

Expressing deep concern about the grave situation of Palestinian women in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, resulting from the severe impact of the ongoing illegal Israeli occupation and all of its manifestations,”

 And

“2. Reaffirms that the Israeli occupation remains the major obstacle for Palestinian women with regard to their advancement, self-reliance and integration in the development of their society, and stresses the importance of efforts to increase their role in decision-making with regard to conflict prevention and resolution and to ensure their equal participation and involvement in all efforts for the achievement, maintenance and promotion of peace and security;

3. Demands that Israel, the occupying Power, comply…”

until they had a resolution which they could all accept.

I followed the informal consultations on a draft resolution entitled “Eliminating Maternal Mortality and Morbidity through the Empowerment of Women”. Clearly the problem of maternal mortality was only being used as a peg to (re)iterate positions relating to the “empowerment of women”. The resolution was submitted by the new administration of the United States which wanted to make its mark on the UN conference with a very liberal text that included contraception and abortion as means to be promoted and funded by the UN (and by governments at all levels) in efforts to reduce maternal mortality around the world. The Obama administration wanted to enter the world of “women’s rights” apparatchiks and lobbyists with a flourish and immediately take the lead in the feminist cause. Hillary Clinton was returning to the US specially to be present when the resolution, a top priority for the new administration, was officially tabled and accepted on the last day of the conference. Clearly the mood was to be one of triumph. But before that moment the US had to chair endless “informal consultations” to achieve a text which could be accepted by all the UN members.

The chair was a hard, impatient woman who led the meetings aggressively and would have rammed her text down the negotiators’ throats if she could. The US strategy was consummate. They had found a cross-regional alliance of co-sponsors to submit the draft resolution along with them. A number of these were countries from sub-Saharan Africa: a clever move, as this way the African countries could not form a bloc to obstruct the resolution. Other co-sponsors were Belarus, Colombia, Thailand and Indonesia, and Israel.

The discussions constituted a veritable battle; a battle of words, psychology and endurance. The aim of the US and its allies was to gain ground on the ideological battlefield by including references to “sexual and reproductive rights” in the text, i.e. to include the right to unlimited access to contraception and abortion in the recommendations of the UN (on maternal mortality!) to the governments of the world. Switzerland, Sweden, Canada and Australia were extremely diligent in this respect. Their relationship with the chair was of an amicable nature and the chair smiled upon them each time she gave them the floor. The Turkish representative could have been a hardcore feminist in the Europe of the seventies; the chair welcomed her as a shining star in the firmament of the women’s rights universe. At one point she advised the group to accept an amendment suggested by Turkey with the words “Turkey has been extremely helpful, so don’t oppose them here.” Turkey was also helpful in opposing the alliance of Iran, Qatar and Syria, who wished to adapt some of the wording relating to girls and to marriage. They were given the floor with an air of impatience. The liberals resented the fact that the “pro-lifers”, whom they spoke of with anger and hatred, had enlisted their help. Among the assembled national delegates the pro-lifers were few. The representatives of the Holy See, Costa Rica and Chile opposed the repeated attempts of the chair and her allies to introduce terminology which referred implicitly or explicitly to abortion.

The spokesperson for the European Union would have loved to introduce such terminology. However, she had to abide by the consensus which the 27 European Union members negotiated in separate informal consultations, held every morning at the headquarters of the EU Representation to the UN and chaired by a delegate from Spain, which currently chairs the EU. Here a similar battle raged, with the Spanish chair pressing for what she called “strong language.” She had prepared a “package on sexual health and sexual rights” for the EU members to agree on, a text which slyly attempted to introduce references to abortion and to “sexual and reproductive rights.” Malta, especially, was in the defense. Ireland, too, stipulated that it could not accept references to sexual and reproductive “rights” but only “health”. In general, though, the Irish representative seemed quite meek. In one informal moment it was mentioned that Ireland and Poland were “coming round”. The sweetness which the chair bestowed upon them was telling compared with the undisguised mockery that greeted the representative from Malta whenever he asked to speak. On more than one occasion he was subjected to scathing comments on the part of the chair. Informally Malta was referred to as a “hardliner.” Obviously the pro-abortion majority in the room did not regard themselves as hardliners, and could not imagine that others might not share their “enlightened” views.

I was witnessing a chapter of the Marxist push to reshape the world which triumphed in the West with the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The Marxist agenda, however, is one of global scope and its proponents will not rest until they have eradicated every last remnant of pre-sexual-revolution morality. Since the 1960s they have acquired powerful instruments to achieve this aim. They manipulate the complicated and non-transparent bureaucracy of the UN (they fondly refer to it as “the system”), which exerts powerful pressure on the governments of the world. Through this bureaucracy they aggressively advance their cause, initiating attacks on the core-values of family-based societies, especially the judaeo-christian values that have shaped Western civilization, at every opportunity.

These people also feel at home in the massive bureaucratic construction of the European Union, through which considerable moral and legal pressure is exerted on the member states. Within governments, too, they have organized an entire bureaucracy which is paid by the taxpayers and where the activists occupy key positions at every level: in political parties, parliaments and governments, in a wide range of councils and organizations which advise governments, in the administration and diplomatic services, and in a multitude of subsidized NGOs which have considerable influence on decision makers through a network of friends-in-arms. (My country’s delegation to this year’s conference on the Status of Women included government ministers, members of parliament, members of equal opportunities organizations that advise the government, employees of various NGOs, including one who said she was there because of her experience as a social worker at an abortion centre).

The activists consistently behave with responsibility not to the taxpayers who fund the systems within which they operate, but to their own agenda. This March in New York, the issue was not the plight of ill and dying mothers, but the promotion of a general acceptance of abortion as a form of healthcare, through UN texts which are binding for the member states. The more texts there are that include references to this, the more frequently the terminology (referred to by UN negotiators as the “language”) occurs in each text, the stronger the position of the activists. Any concept that has been defined and employed in the body of existing UN literature has been acquired. It can only be weakened by an awkward process in which states pronounce reservations at the moment the text is accepted. But such reservations do not stop the process. The bureaucracies grind on, the activists launch new attacks. They constitute so massive an army, they are so relentless and dedicated that one wonders how long the few brave defenders will hold out?

Dr. Alexandra Colen MP is a member of the Belgian House of Representatives and chairperson of the House Equal Opportunities Committee

 

See also:

Shelters in the Emirates, Women’s Lib in Geneva, 19 December 2008

Peter's answers/?s

Submitted by Capodistrias on Tue, 2010-03-30 21:49.

Peter said:

That is as it exists at all of course. If the movement of an arm involves a succession of chemical processes, then what triggered the first one? Considering the first law of thermodynamics, it can hardly come from anything else than the material universe. Let’s talk about degrees of freedom rather then free will. And if we must talk about it in connection with abortion, let us rather talk about accountability. Would you today base your actions on the decisions of a fourteen year old? I suppose not. So let us not overestimate the responsibility of a young teenager. I agree that some adults could be hold more accountable. But even then we shouldn’t be harder on them than we are on ourselves.

 

Peter,

I believe my point was that the Free Will exercised by a young woman two thousand years ago is the triggering event you seek in the material universe.

Whether any physicists or mathematicians accompanied the angel Gabriel to the event, I admit ignorance. Do any of your colleagues exhibit ethereal qualities?

 

I have no qualms or hesitation to base my actions and life on the decision of that young woman, of course I maintain that every human being since that decision has, one way or the other.

Now you wanted to talk about some 14 year old girl? Hypothetical? Real?

@Marcfrans

Submitted by Capodistrias on Tue, 2010-03-30 21:11.

Whiff would have been a much less objectionable choice of words. And I wondered whether that was what you may have meant to write? Thank you for the clarification, I always appreciate the care you take in being precise. 

Now for the word fundamentalism...?Are all manifestation of fundamentalism odiously odorous?

Is it too much to claim that out of the core principles of Christianity arose much of what is beautiful and worth treasuring in the world today?

answers # 2

Submitted by marcfrans on Tue, 2010-03-30 18:39.

@ pvdh

1) We will continue to disagree on this one.  I think one must make a distinction between (A) human morality, i.e. human behavior that is consistent with true human nature (which requires prior judgment about the 'meaning of life'), and (B) "rules".  The latter are man-made, and reflect themselves in laws made in the political sphere or in actual behavior patterns of a particular culture.  Those 'rules' may indeed change over time, perhaps reflecting different or new interpretations w.r.t. specific actions or matters, but human nature (and therefore human morality) does NOT change over time. The difficulty lies in specifying virtues and vices, and applying them to the context of moral dilemmas of one's own time and place. If, for example, we accept that honesty is a virtue, and should be adhered to to be truly human, then the duty to be honest is as valid today as it was 500 years ago.

Two further points:

- Your reference to "ritual human sacrifice" has nothing to do with a "sudden change in morality triggered by religion". It's simply another reflection of existing cultural behavior patterns to which you would like to ascribe a "religious" significance. If in the past Amero-Indians liked to burn their enemies to death, or if today Jihadists like to cut the throats of their captives, that certainly has nothing to do with religion nor with moral "rules". It is simply barbaric behavior, just like partial birth abortions usually are. There is no moral "rule" that says that most abortions are "moral". There are, however, rules that say that abortion can be legal. Those rules cannot substitute for your moral duty to make your own moral judgement, and to frame the dilemma honestly.

- While societal perceptions of moral questions may change over time, it is very doubtful that people on the whole are actually better or worse today, in a moral sense, compared with the past. Good and evil are all around us. Virtuous behavior remains rare and 'vicious' behavior quite common. In that sense the 'rules' haven't changed a bit.

2) You are right. Traveller will have to speak for himself. I am sure that he meant that simple rules are needed as an 'assist', or a tool, to help people in general. Just like mathematicians need certain tools (rather than 'recalculate' everything again), normal people can help themselves by following 'simple' rules. In the end, these rules do not substitute for your own conscience, but they are needed because 'normal' people are incapable of considering all likely consequences of their actions, in a moral sense, on a daily basis.

...

4) No, one should not equate "killing" with "murder". Killing refers to a specific action, it is a factual statement. It does not entail a moral judgment. "Murder" refers to morally-UNJUSTIFIED killing, and it always involves a moral judgment.

Your logic is faulty here. Both abortion and the death penalty involve "killing". Whether one - or the other, or both - is murder, that depends on the underlying intention or justification of these actions. You cannot equate the taking of 'innocent' life with justice and punishment. While it is possible or conceivable to justify the taking of innocent life in abortion, that surely must be a 'hard case' to make. The 'comfort' of the mother seems hardly relevant. By contrast, the moral justification for the death penalty is much easier to make on grounds of justice and of appropriate punishment and it should ideally (in a judicial sense) not be made by "victims", but by those concerned with societal welfare and justice.

Capo

Submitted by marcfrans on Tue, 2010-03-30 16:55.

@ Capodistrias

You got a good point, Capo.  Where did it come from? It came from a place you do not want to go. I should have used the word "whiff", not "whim".  The fault is all mine.

Moral 'certainties' are definitely not whimsical, but they can be held with an attitude that betrays a whiff of fundamentalism.

As to free will, Obama would have said "that's beyond my paygrade".

Are all moral certainties flights of whimsy?

Submitted by Capodistrias on Tue, 2010-03-30 05:13.

Or just those that assert and discern a direct connection with fundamental tenets and dogmas of Christianity?

Free Will? Now that's an interesting principle to introduce into  the solving of moral dilemmas.

Just out of a whim, where did that come from?

 

answers

Submitted by peter vanderheyden on Tue, 2010-03-30 15:42.

@Capodistrias

That is as it exists at all of course. If the movement of an arm involves a succession of chemical processes, then what triggered the first one? Considering the first law of thermodynamics, it can hardly come from anything else than the material universe. Let’s talk about degrees of freedom rather then free will. And if we must talk about it in connection with abortion, let us rather talk about accountability. Would you today base your actions on the decisions of a fourteen year old? I suppose not. So let us not overestimate the responsibility of a young teenager. I agree that some adults could be hold more accountable. But even then we shouldn’t be harder on them than we are on ourselves.

@marcfrans

1) there is no doubt that moral-rules are variable as well over time as over different culture. There are ample examples of that. Infanticide, cannibalism and slavery are a few of them. And then I’m not even speaking about the sudden change in morality triggered by religion, like ritual human sacrifice our blowing oneself up in the midst of an innocent crowd.
2) I totally agree, but then it wasn’t me expecting "easy clear cut rules". It was Traveller and I responded that this was an illusion. Also for abortion. We are from time to time forced to make a moral choice: The wellbeing of the mother against the survival of the fetus.
3) I agree.
4) By asserting that abortion is the killing of a human being, anti-abortion activists are saying that ending somebody’s life is always murder. They should be consequent than, and should see death penalty as murder to. I’m in principle against the death penalty, but I can understand that victims are asking for it. At the end I’ll always have more sympathy for the victims then for the murderer.

@ peter vdh

Submitted by traveller on Tue, 2010-03-30 19:40.

I am extremely busy lately and cannot really participate in lengthy discussions, my mind is on other things.
Anyway, the simple rules I was asking for are not so difficult to formulate.
Since we don't know the point in time life begins, we are morally bound not to fool around with our ignorance and to run the risk of erring on the side of murder. Killing willfully for comfort and without necessity for saving another life is murder and ignorance is no excuse.
The discussion about the elasticity of the timing is pure speculation and absolutely unscientific.
Either we know it or we don't.
If we don't we shut up and study the matter further until we are sure we know.
In order than to help people who are smart enough to know that they don't know we make simple rules: murder is forbidden and therefor killing unborn babies is also forbidden from the moment of conception, except for saving the mother's life.

Moral Dilemmas

Submitted by marcfrans on Mon, 2010-03-29 17:30.

@pvdh

I don't claim to have the moral certainties (which suggest a whim of fundamentalism) of some here, nor the scientific knowledge of others concerning biology (which might suggest a whim of typically human arrogance), but I do believe and claim that human morality is always a matter of human choices, i.e. exercising free will in a context of very-imperfect knowledge together with apparently-conflicting values.   The distinction between good and evil presupposes human free will, without which human morality becomes meaningless.   If you accept that rudimentary outline of a philosophical 'framework', then it should be clear that human morality is first and foremost about human INTENTIONS and not about any specific actions. It is not so much about WHAT you do, but rather about WHY you do it.

Having said that, I am now in a position to explain where we differ on a number of specific points.

1) Your claim that humanity has "changed the rules over time" seems rather naive. On the contrary, it is hard to imagine any kind of vice, nor of virtue, for which there has not been an abundance of evidence on display throughout history everywhere. The world in the past and today displayed and displays all sorts of vices and virtues, so that in a moral sense there is 'nothing new under the sun'. The issues of abortion and of appropriate punishment are as old as mankind.

2) It is quite possible to believe that the bible is "God-inspired", or that mankind can learn something about God's will from the bible, without expecting "easy clear cut rules". The bible is about exactly the opposite: it is about a spirit, an attitude if you will, not about rules. The bible is not kind to rules-obsessed farizeees, and makes a crucial distinction between the letter and the spirit of 'the law'. Whether God speaks through the bible or not is neither here nor there. But, your 'demand' for simple clear cut rules is very 'human', in the sense of trying to avoid having to make the really hard decisions yourself. You seem to like to have no rules, or to be able to hide behind "simple" rules, which amounts to wishing real moral dilemmas away.

3) So, when it comes to the matter of abortion, it is important to frame the moral dilemma correctly, which requires an HONEST examination of consequences and of motivations. Clearly, that is sometimes easier than other times. For example, any assertion of “sexual and reproductive rights" in the context of partial-birth abortion would seem rather silly, unserious, and extreme. At the other extreme, arguments about the exact nature of 'cells' at 'early' stages of pregnancy, may resemble arguments about the exact nature of 'angels'.

4) The issue of the "death penalty", in the US or anywhere else, has nothing to do with abortion. It has to do with concepts of 'justice' and of appropriate 'punishment'. The biblical injunction against "killing" concerns 'innocent' life. I know, that may seem a cop-out, but less so than would be a belief in ALL killing is wrong. I am sure that God wants you to be able to defend yourself (and not just narrowly in an immediate sense), for self-preservation is the first moral law. Which does not prevent you from sacrificing yourself for a good cause, but not for 'nothing'. In fact, I am convinced that God would want you to "kill" in certain circumstances, so that it can become your duty. In short, you cannot avoid making moral judgements about 'innocence' when it comes to killing.

The Annunciation

Submitted by Capodistrias on Mon, 2010-03-29 06:56.

I wonder how many of the posters or readers of this thread were aware that last Thursday March 25th was the day the Church celebrates The Annunciation?  

I suspect Atheling may have taken note, and maybe a few others would have understood the poignancy of the little debate taking place on this thread and the Church's celebration of what I would argue is the greatest moment in Human history, the most remarkable achievement by a single human being in time. "Hail Mary Full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee...

 

Atheling you won't be able to taunt or beat Peter and KA into submission or understanding on this issue. Each age, each generation of Man lives and experiences the Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ thru the events and tribulations of the age, the practice of Abortion as it has been perfected in our times is very much the scourging and crucifixion of the Word, Christ our Lord in our times. And just as in the time of Christ some will heed the cry in the wilderness, some will not; some will fear and deny the Truth, and some will follow the lead of the simple handmaid of the Lord and say yes to Life.

So while the rest of you very ably hold up the pro-life message on this thread, I think I will simply say a Hail Mary for both Peter and KA during the coming Week and wish you all a Happy Easter.

religion?

Submitted by dave on Mon, 2010-03-29 00:46.

Humanists believe we are miraculously transformed into human beings at some indeterminate point. That's not science.

Capitão Andre's Final Reply to Reconciler and atheling

Submitted by Kapitein Andre on Sun, 2010-03-28 03:29.

Reconciler,

 

I stated my position on foetal viability in prior comments to both you and KO.  Viability applies to the foetus, and to neither the zygote nor embryo.  As I have already stated, I do not consider zygotes or embryos to be human.  However, I do not believe that abortion should be unrestricted to the stage of birth.  Abortion should be restricted during the foetal stage, based upon viability.  Advances in medical technology over the past 15–20 years have markedly improved viability, and I am in favour of restricting abortion accordingly.  Even if viability is possible but unlikely (e.g. 20 weeks gestational), the foetus should be legally protected.  It is disappointing for you to refer to abortion as “organized mass murder”.  The Brussels Journal is a forum for free and open debate.  Your histrionics belong at a rally outside an abortion clinic, not here.

 

atheling,

 

Following the logic of your comments or lack thereof, I should accuse you of upholding patriarchy, of attempting to control women’s reproduction and of being an apologist for an organization full of pederasts and pedophiles, which burned opponents (incl. scientists) at the stake and tortured and murdered cats, bringing on the bubonic plague.  If you are going to exaggerate and be rude, I can outdo you.  Keep your comments to me factual and objective.  I disagree that criminalizing abortion in Europe is the solution to Europe's population decline.  Rather, the solution is for Europeans to willingly produce more children and raise the birth rate.  The Third World is instructive in this regard, as despite high infant mortality rates, African fertility has overcome the Malthusian trio of disease, famine and war.  In the West, low infant mortality is overcome not by abortion, but by career commitments, savings and financial objectives.

 

 

Capitão Andre

Breaking News! Kapitein Andre Jumps the Shark!

Submitted by atheling on Sun, 2010-03-28 05:18.

In what appears to be a major setback for conservatives everywhere, Kapitein Andre has officially jumped the shark and used politically correctspeak to defend his indefensible views on abortion and the dwindling German population.

"It is necessary that I be able to use feminist illogic and falsehoods to protect the right of every German woman to kill her unborn child without question. I will defend to the death of every unborn child the right for Europeans to march off a cliff into extinction", KA primly proclaimed with faux indignation. "So what if I use the same propaganda that the state controlled media uses? So what if it makes me look like a lemming? Abortion is my life! It is the only sacred cow worth dying for! It is noble to die for the cause!"

Re: @KA

Submitted by Reconciler on Sun, 2010-03-28 04:22.

It is disappointing for you to refer to abortion as “organized mass murder”. The Brussels Journal is a forum for free and open debate.

I regret to have infringed your sensibility towards free speech. Please do not see it as an attempt on your rights here on the Journal. Thank you for the interesting exchange of thoughts.

My personal opinion of abortion is "organized mass murder" (factually) and is also - I suspect but cannot prove - slow genocide instigated by people who would like to see western peoples substituted in their homelands. Joschka Fischer, ex minister of foreign affairs: "Germany is to be contained from outside and heterogenized from the inside by influx, "diluted" so to speak.

The original quote in german "Deutschland muß von außen eingehegt, und innen durch Zustrom heterogenisiert, quasi "verdünnt" werden." can be found in his book "Risiko Deutschland".

It has nothing to do with abortion directly. Yet I cannot help but think that people in power with such notions will also see abortion a welcome nail to our demographic and cultural coffin.

@atheling

Submitted by peter vanderheyden on Fri, 2010-03-26 10:50.

<

I’m comparing nothing. The purpose of a moral dilemma is to find out if there is some graduation between two moral wrongs. If there is, then we should try to find out the logic behind it.

For you obviously there is no graduation. Killing life is equally wrong in all situations. Or the life of a human stem cell that has the potential to become a full grown person is much more important then the health of the mother, and certainly then the quality of life of mother and child. For you morally there is no difference whatsoever between this stem cell and a born child.  

Now I’m just offering you a moral dilemma, so to find out for yourself if this is true.    

Ok, let’s make the moral dilemma a bit harder:

Suppose you’re part of a couple that can’t have children on their own. So you choose in vitro fertilization. So far so good. The merger of ovum and sperm has gone well.  You’re in the lab on the fifth floor together with the young 25 years old nurse who performed the fertilization. Suddenly a fire or some other catastrophe happens, and you now have the moral choice: Save the nurse, or the cell. Remember this cell is your own flesh and blood. It’s your own son or daughter to you equally valuable as a born child. If you choose for the cell, I hope they put you away for a long time.

 

@PVH again

Submitted by atheling on Fri, 2010-03-26 21:33.

What is it in your brain that fails to comprehend the difference between ACCIDENT and DELIBERATE?

Murder is the DELIBERATE taking of an innocent life.

Choosing between saving two persons in an accidental incident (fire) is not the same as choosing to MURDER one of them.

I hope you're an unemployed mathematician. If you're not, I pity the children who have to listen to your illogical ramblings.

@atheling

Submitted by peter vanderheyden on Sat, 2010-03-27 22:41.

I'll tell you what. You answer who you would choose: your own flesh and blood are the unknown nurse, and then i'll explain the conection with abortion.

And please stop being rude. No need for that. We're all grown-ups just trying to learn something from each other.

@PVH... one last time...

Submitted by atheling on Sun, 2010-03-28 01:15.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that you can teach me, Peter. There is not a concept, or extrapolation of a concept, that you can impart to me.

You and your ilk have done nothing but destroy Western civilization either by pure malice or by pure stupidity or by a combination of both.

You do not have respect for human life, therefore I have no respect for you. To you, it's all about personal comfort, convenience and hedonism, just like the Eloi in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine.

I refuse to answer your stupid question because it is not illustrative of the abortion question, nor does it address the issue of DELIBERATE MURDER, which is abortion. Secondly, I don't believe in in vitro fertilization, so I would never be in such a situation.

I find you and Kapitein Andre to be two sides of the same progressive coin, although I wonder why the shrewder KA seems unable to add two and two together when it comes to the survival of the European people and abortion. He's not stupid, but blind, for some reason.

You, however, are simply a lemming.

@atheling

Submitted by peter vanderheyden on Sun, 2010-03-28 09:10.

Thank you for clarifying. That says it all. Note however that the learning I talked about was a two way channel: Me trying to learn from you also. I always thought Christianity was also about spreading the Word trough kind and relentless persuasion. I’ve got the feeling you failed somehow.

Improvement

Submitted by KO on Sun, 2010-03-28 10:50.

@atheling and reconciler: I don't see why you are treating KA so harshly. Millions of unborn children would be saved if his recommendation to criminalize abortion after the 20th week were adopted. That would be a mighty improvement over the current situation. As for abortion from the moment of conception, moral sanctions should be imposed until such time as the law could be further changed. I also don't see how you can be absolutist about the early stage embryo being a human being, if Father Hardon rests the condemnation of abortion on uncertainty whether it is a human being or not. Certainly a one-celled zygote will be a unique human being at a future point, but its actual humanity is purely physical at that point, and all other elements of its humanity are only potential.

Or are we supposed to adopt the view outside of time in which past, present, and future are simultaneously present? If so the fully developed actual humanity of the zygote would coexist with its merely potential humanity. Another view might be that while such timelessness is a fiction, our knowledge of the capacity of the zygote to become an actual human being imposes on us the duty to protect it as we would protect an actual human being.

@KO

Submitted by Reconciler on Sun, 2010-03-28 15:39.

I am usually one to remain silent during most discussions here, as I am not as learned in political matters as maybe KA and others. I do however have a scientific education. Scientific education's foremost purpose is to train rational thinking.

My scientific guts tell me, that a human being develops from zygote to grave not in stages, but continuously. The stages recognized by biologists are approximations used to characterize phylogenetic and ontogenetic development. They are purely functional/physiological and say NOTHING about assigning or denying humanity. If we can deny one human cell or a cluster of 10 cells their humanity, what stops us from denying it to a cluster of 100 trillion cells? Our lacking ability to understand relativity and its profound impact on morals? 20 weeks? Why the hell should they be any more adequate than 19.9 or 20.1 weeks?

My ranting is not so much about abortion but about refusing to think things through to the end and also about not learning from history.

On a side-note: That science is abused by scientists themselves to advance their own research (think embryo stem-cell research and exploitation), is only a logical consequence of the moral disintegration of our society.

@ KO

Submitted by traveller on Sun, 2010-03-28 14:05.

The basic moral problem is the starting point.
Once the egg is fertilized the "life principle" is involved and that is extremely basic in the moral approach of the protection of any human life, taking into consideration that we Christians consider Life to be God's gift to mankind. Once you have life started you MUST protect it within the limits of all moral considerations like the life of the mother if that is threatened.

The question is extremely difficult to solve if you leave the "start of life" point and tries to postpone it to any other virtual or probable point in time. Morality shouldn't be a game of roulette, of course for those who still care about morals or ethics.

I call random abortion simply "comfort killings"

@traveller and reconciler

Submitted by KO on Sun, 2010-03-28 19:49.

Thanks for your thoughtful replies. Faith, reason, and pragmatism all militate in favor of protecting life from conception, which, pragmatically speaking, is a bright line as birth is a bright line. One can also say that men and women are free to be as irresponsible as they like with each other prior to conception. However, protecting life from conception is a hard sell to the secular mind if the zygote has no more feeling and intelligence than an amoeba. The real difficulty is revoking the sexual revolution and requiring people to acknowledge that sex is procreative of human life and that innoocent human life is owed both reverence and protection.

In the context of my first remarks below, I think what you are both saying is that there is no such thing as a potential human being after conception. It is actual. Pairs of unintroduced eggs and sperm cells are potential human beings, but fertilized eggs are actual human beings in their earliest stages.

@ KO

Submitted by traveller on Sun, 2010-03-28 20:19.

I agree totally but I don't trust my fellow human beings, knowing myself all too well, to stick to a rule if the rule is not clear cut.
Morality and ethics need to be clear, there is already enough wishy washy in today's non morals.

@traveller

Submitted by peter vanderheyden on Sun, 2010-03-28 21:58.

"Morality and ethics need to be clear"

Would be nice if they were, but they aren't, are they? If they were humanity wouldn't have changed the rules time over time during history. And I’m sure if a book like the Bible is God inspired, like you claim, It should be able to state those easy clear cut rules, wouldn’t it? Thou shall not kill, should read “thou shall not kill, except if the person has got the death penalty in the US”…

@PVH: Well...

Submitted by Reconciler on Fri, 2010-03-26 14:37.

I don't know about other countries, but in Germany, my motherland, they do not put you away, if you fail to help somebody in distress. Not these days anymore anyway. Finally, nobody ever said, that in hazardous situations you have to make a morally right decision, when it comes to saving this or that life. I still do not see the similarity of choosing between two lives and the willful destruction of one without dire need. I do not count risky pregnancies here.

KA to atheling

Submitted by Kapitein Andre on Fri, 2010-03-26 07:40.

atheling: ...you can hardly compete with two thousand years of thought, research, philosophy, theology and science produced by the Church.

 

The Roman Catholic Church is dedicated to organized Roman Catholicism not scientific inquiry, and the research of two millennia ago can hardly compete the with science of today, specifically that of the past fifteen to twenty years.

 

atheling: ...if "viability" is the basis for your opinion, then one can certainly justify murdering a 6 month old baby, since he is hardly "viable" without human assistance.

 

The viability of the foetus ex utero does not preclude artificial aid or human assistance. 

@KA... again.

Submitted by atheling on Fri, 2010-03-26 21:54.

"The Roman Catholic Church is dedicated to organized Roman Catholicism not scientific inquiry, and the research of two millennia ago can hardly compete the with science of today, specifically that of the past fifteen to twenty years."

Science, as we know it, CAME from the Roman Catholic Church. Do tell me, what was the repository of western knowledge after the fall of Rome? Who kept all those writings by the ancient Greeks and Romans, (scientific and otherwise) for the West?

Ever hear of Christopher Clavius S.J.? 17th century astronomer. Christopher Grienberger S.J.? 17th century mathematician. 12th century scholar and chancellor of the School of Chartres, Thierry of Chartres is credited as being one of the founders of western science. Roger Bacon, Franciscan priest who worked on math and optics. Albertus Magnus, Dominican priest and naturalist. Fr. Nicolaus Steno, 17th century geologist. Fr. Giambattista Riccioli, 17th century physicist and astonomer. Fr. Francesco Maria Grimaldi, 17th century astronomer. Fr. Roger Boscovich, 18th century polymath (astronomy, optics, mathematics, atomic theory). Fr. Athanasius Kircher, 17th century chemist. Fr. Frederick Louis Odenbach, seismology (which is called "the Jesuit science")... I can go on and on and on...

Really, I'm astonished at your ignorance of the enormous contribution to the sciences made by the Church.

Now, I recall once commenting that since we deem a person dead once brain activity ceases, should we not deem a person "alive" once brain activity commences in the developing fetus? You immediately dismissed it by saying it would mean that no abortions could be done if based on that standard since brain activity commences before one can even determine pregnancy. That tells me that you are "dedicated" to abortion no matter what science or common sense says, and that, therefore, disqualifies YOU from making any valid argument about it.

@atheling: Good one.

Submitted by Reconciler on Sat, 2010-03-27 01:22.

Now, I recall once commenting that since we deem a person dead once brain activity ceases, should we not deem a person "alive" once brain activity commences in the developing fetus? You immediately dismissed it by saying it would mean that no abortions could be done if based on that standard since brain activity commences before one can even determine pregnancy.

That's a good one. Just goes to show that whatever twisted arguments the champions of organized mass murder bring forth, they continuously disprove themselves. One just needs to compile their failings for everybody to see.

The point is exactly to end abortions, not to find acceptable arguments in favor of them. There simply are none except for the rare high-risk pregnancy, where the mother's life is clearly at stake.

@Reconciler

Submitted by atheling on Sat, 2010-03-27 03:25.

I wonder why someone who is acutely aware of the diminishing number of his countrymen would continue to rabidly promote their death through abortion and euthanasia?

It's suicidal.

I mean, if you can't appeal to someone's sense of morality, can't he even be persuaded by a natural desire of wanting to survive as a people?

Why is abortion so precious to him?

them and us

Submitted by dave on Thu, 2010-03-25 22:26.

That life is explained as stages is confusing to some.

answers

Submitted by peter vanderheyden on Thu, 2010-03-25 16:11.

I’ve been away for a while, and an interesting discussion has developed since…
I know it’s a bit out of date, but I’ll give a short answer to most of you anyway.

@atheling

“Your hypothetical question is not congruent with the issue at hand”

I think it is congruent. What I’m saying is that there is a gradation in priority to “let live”. Of course we could start a long discussion on boundaries. But it is surely not black & white, like the anti-abortion movement wants us to believe. It is not inconceivable that life and quality of life of the mother may prevail on the life of a cluster of cells.

@Reconciler

“. Murder will be murder, even if they delude themselves to believe that it is a matter of women's choice and not murder.”

I don’t see the problem. It can be murder and the woman’s choice at the same time. After all shooting another soldier in a war is murder also. But we agree that it is a murder that is necessary for the defense of the nation, and thus acceptable. The same way abortion can be a morally acceptable murder.

“But to accept the guilt is the least one can do”

Frankly to me guilt feelings are something that need psychological treatment. So if one knows one will have guilt feelings, one shouldn’t commit abortion in the first place. If by the contrary you think your choice is the best one, guilt feelings afterwards seem rather stupid isn’t it?

@Atlanticist

“If two human beings fell in the water (bath tub?) drowning and you could only save one of them. The first is an 8 hour old baby girl, and the other is a 93 hour old baby boy. Which one would YOU choose to save and WHY? “
If I would have all the necessary parameters and a computer in my head that could calculate at a very rapid speed, I would choose the one with the highest chances on a life of quality. But even if I don’t have all this parameters I will go for an oversimplified model. So I think the uglier one of the two will have bad luck.….

@KO, @KA

I believe drawing the line is difficult. But cowardice lies in not drawing the line, and let nature take decisions on the life of offspring and mother. You obviously are trying to draw lines by use of logical and moral consideration. I enjoyed reading your postings.

@PVH

Submitted by atheling on Thu, 2010-03-25 17:47.

No, it is not congruent. You are comparing the wilful murder of an unborn child to having to choose between the accidental drowning of two people? Apples to oranges.

Your use of the term "cluster of cells" can apply to you too. I guess that means anyone is justified in murdering you as well.

I thought mathematicians were supposed to be logical.

Dealing with Uncertainty

Submitted by KO on Thu, 2010-03-25 18:49.

@Capo: Thanks for the reference. This quotation from Fr. Hardon directly addresses the uncertainty that attends any discussion of the point at which the growing embryo becomes a human being:

"If a person does not know for certain that his action is not killing another human being, he must accept the responsibility for doing so. Anyone who is willing to kill what may be human is, by his intention, willing to kill what is human. Consequently, the one who performs or consents to abortion inescapably assumes the guilt of voluntary homicide."

To Reconciler and KO RE: Abortion

Submitted by Kapitein Andre on Thu, 2010-03-25 07:50.

Reconciler,

 

I disagree that the foetus is legally and morally a separate entity from the mother, until it attains viability in the uterus.  Moreover, it does not “create” its environment, which is the mother’s uterus.  There is a continuum of prenatal human development from the zygotic and embryonic to the foetal stage, and the description of human should be applied at the point of foetal viability.  However, even after the foetus is viable, the mother’s safety should take primacy.

 

The Catholic Church’s theological and scientific justifications for its opposition to both abortion and contraception are flawed, and should carry no legal weight. 

 

KO,

 

As I noted in my response to Reconciler, the foetus should be accorded a right to life after it has attained viability.  Indeed, are premature children not deserving of the same rights as children issuing from normal births?  Evidently, I am delving into further detail than in my previous comments by referring to foetal viability, but this in no way changes my support for accessible and legal abortion.

 

We disagree on the extent of the “zone of protection”, and I am decidedly opposed to extending it to zygotes and embryos.  However, given advances in neo–natal care, it should extend to a degree beyond the point of foetal viability e.g. 20 weeks.  This “comfortable margin” should be for the benefit of the foetus as even the first trimester provides ample opportunity for termination.

 

I will not entertain religious arguments as to the zygote or embryo being a “gift of God”, as this has shaky theological and scientific foundations and troubling implications for individual sperm and ova.   I fully agree with your discussions on pregnancies resulting from crime and pregnancies harming the mother.  In a society where abortion is both accessible and legal, nearly all abortions should reasonably be expected to be undertaken during the first trimester, as foetal viability can be attained in the second.

 

The Sexual Revolution has not eliminated consequences, especially as adopting out or placing one’s child in an orphanage or with relatives were always alternatives to raising a child.  No technological advance or law has been able to compel men to be good husbands and fathers or women to be good mothers.  The Sexual Revolution is disappointing in that decent people are delaying having children for career or financial reasons, and the dregs of society continue to produce children that are abandoned, mistreated and neglected as if contraception and abortion were non–existent. 

@KA: not any better

Submitted by Reconciler on Fri, 2010-03-26 15:52.

The fetus surrounds itself actively (note: actively) with the amniotic sac, which is basically a sort of eggshell. It is non-permeable and therefore the fetus develops in its own environment, which is not part of the mother's body.

Nobady said that the fetus is at present considered legally or morally separate starting from conception. That is exactly the origin of all misery here. Because the fetus is factually a separate life-form from conception onwards, it should just as well be one legally and morally.

As for viability: Even though biologists split fetal development up into stages, viability is still something that is not switched on from one moment to another. Viability is subject to changes due to scientific advances in reproductive medicine. It has been pushed back tremendously in recent decades. How can it be a basis for deciding which embryo is to survive and which one isn't?

I ask again, on what logical grounds you would deprive or grant a human being the label "human" at any time during it's development both inside and outside the womb? Where can you draw the line? With your reasoning you are always one step short of justifying the most horrible crimes humans have committed against other humans.

Here a quote from J.A. Hardon's excellent analysis of abortion. I pray that you read the whole essay, if you haven't already done so. It is worth it.
"The exact time when the fetus becomes “animated” has no practical significance as far as the morality of abortion is concerned. By any theory of “animation,” abortion is gravely wrong. Why so? Because every direct abortion is a sin of murder by intent. It is, to say the least, probable that every developing fetus is a human being. To deliberately kill what is probably human is murder.

If a person does not know for certain that his action is not killing another human being, he must accept the responsibility for doing so. Anyone who is willing to kill what may be human is, by his intention, willing to kill what is human. Consequently, the one who performs or consents to abortion inescapably assumes the guilt of voluntary homicide."

@KA

Submitted by atheling on Thu, 2010-03-25 17:41.

"The Catholic Church’s theological and scientific justifications for its opposition to both abortion and contraception are flawed, and should carry no legal weight."

Because you say so? So far, you have given no reason why it should be dismissed, except your own opinion, which is pure solipsism.

I wonder why your opinion on the matter has any more weight than that of the Church's? What makes your opinion more valid than that of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Chrysostom, or any other Church thinker from the past two millenia? With all due respect, I don't exactly consider your thinking to be superior to any of theirs, indeed, you can hardly compete with two thousand years of thought, research, philosophy, theology and science produced by the Church. What arrogance on your part, to think you know better than the great men and women who preceded your existence! What chauvinism! Really, your faux superiority is quite laughable.

Second, if "viability" is the basis for your opinion, then one can certainly justify murdering a 6 month old baby, since he is hardly "viable" without human assistance.

By the way, the word "foetus" means "little one" in Latin. What "little one" do you think the Romans were referring to? Olives?

killing babies

Submitted by dave on Wed, 2010-03-24 20:37.

What do you mean it's not a baby? It's not a squirrel! People don't like kids. It's not a lot of stuff but it is a kid.

KA That's not "The Fire"

Submitted by Capodistrias on Wed, 2010-03-24 18:19.

Those are the little electric candles you place around yourself as you give praise and glory to your wonderful self.

KA states:

"Abortion is a significant subject and I cannot possibly cover it here." 

Given the rest of your post the above statement has to be one of the most ludicrous and pompous declarations ever uttered on TBJ, i.e.

"I don't have time to hold forth on my volumionous opinions and judgements on the moral and philosophical issues raised by Abortion, BUT! BUT! I am quite capable of dismissing the more than 2 thousand year tradition that argues against Abortion on moral and theological grounds in a single word: 'problematic.'

Ta Ta! Thank you very much, please lower your eyes on the way out. I do not wish to blind anyone with my brilliance, in a vainglorious and futile attempt to behold my luminous visage."

 

Translated out of KA pomposity - People have argued with the moral and theological arguments against Abortion for the last two thousand or so years, therefore those moral and theological arguments are not valid. When I have more time to hold forth, I'll keep piling up the manure for you all to marvel at.

Submitted by peter

Submitted by Edensfelt on Wed, 2010-03-24 18:16.

Submitted by peter vanderheyden on Mon, 2010-03-22 14:38. new
"Depends on weather you consider it to be my granddaughter or not, isn’t it?
Once the egg and the sperm are merged, it’s considered a person to you; “a person” meaning having a soul; and a soul clearly not being a part of our material world. We know however that the resulting growing clustering of cells may still split and become … two persons. The sudden emerging of an extra soul seems rather problematic to me. Or do souls in the immaterial world split together with their corresponding cell-clusters in the material world?"

Conception of any living organism is the beginning of life regardless of the number of cells involved in the initial process or whether the union of sperm and ova results in more than one offspring. After all, both events are part of the natural order of procreation. Nature has nothing to do with religious beliefs so the topic of religion should be kept separate from the physical dimension.

On the question of whether that life as a result of conception in humans is human, I would have thought it was patently obvious it is. If not, can those who dispute this fact enlighten us as to what they believe such a lifeform might be, if not human?

"Nature on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have that much problems with abortion. At least 15% of all pregnancies ends in a miscarriage......"

There is a vast difference between Nature which has endowed all living things with the ability to create life in the first place electing to terminate it and man doing so especially for selfish reasons that have nothing to do with life-threatening illnesses or malformed embryos, for example, but even then such deliberate interference could be construed as murder in the strictist sense as in the latter example, we are then presented with a further ethical argument as to whether handicapped human beings are to be classified as humans or otherwise.

"Let’s stop being hypocrite about it. There are other far worse things going on with unwanted children that were born to parents that can’t cope with them. I’d be a 100% with you in trying to help them out."

Parents who can't cope with their own offspring is no justification for abortion, particularly abortion-on-demand and late-term. This is suggesting that parents who find they can't cope is perfectly sufficent grounds for justifying deliberate murder of an unborn human being.

KA Goes Into the Fire: On Abortion

Submitted by Kapitein Andre on Wed, 2010-03-24 08:27.

I generally agree with Peter Vanderheyden on abortion.  An unborn foetus is not equivalent to a human, and is in fact “part” of the mother; therefore, the mother should retain legal and medical primacy prior to birth.  As the foetus is not a human, abortion is not murder.

 

Christian arguments against abortion are problematic.  Firstly, early Christian thought on abortion was varied, and abortion is not referred to in the Bible.  Secondly, there is no evidence that conception results in ensoulment.  Thirdly, if ensoulment occurs at conception or later but prior to birth, how can miscarriages be explained?  How can a miscarried or terminated soul be saved?  Moreover, disagreement on salvation prompted new denominations and sects within Christianity, as well as establishing theological support for sectarian conflict. 

 

To my mind, the anti–abortion or “pro–life” movement is a reaction to the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s, and has no theological or scientific legitimacy. 

 

Abortion is abused.  But however repugnant I find this personally, I am opposed to regulating motives rather than actions.  Moreover, restricting the termination period per medical considerations and modifying insurance to deter and prevent “abortion on demand” is possible, whilst keeping abortion accessible and legal. 

 

Abortion is a significant subject and I cannot possibly cover it here.  However, I believe it should be a personal decision on the part of mother.  Fathers have rights over their (born) children, but should not the right to compel a woman to bear his child against her will. 

 

I also disagree that contraception is immoral.  If it is immoral to prevent conception or terminate one, then is it immoral to not “be fruitful and multiply”?  Economic liberty has indicated that finances tremendously impact planned pregnancies; is the couple immoral for not attempting as many pregnancies as possible?

 

Personally, the sexual revolution has not altered my morals.   I remain opposed to many of the cultural effects of the sexual revolution, but I support the new freedoms it brought.  Liberty is a great responsibility, and I trust far more in the moral persons in a free and open society than those that claim morality but live in a society without choice. 

@KA on abortion

Submitted by KO on Wed, 2010-03-24 19:09.

It is always of interest, KA, when you lay your cards on the table, since you are often surprisingly reticent on your positions or first principles, for which reticence you receive too little credit. I note that reconciler did not take the bait on "ensoulment," and refused to be drawn into a completely indeterminate exercise of line-drawing.

It seems indisputable that an unborn child, the day before birth, is almost indistinguishable from a child, the day after its birth, in its capacities, feelings, responsivness to its environment, in all the qualities that make up human life at that stage, and in its potential to live a full human life in the future. Thus birth seems like an unprincipled boundary at which to cut off the human being's fundamental right to life.

The unique biological organism created by fertilization has a potential, unique human life ahead of it from the time of fertilization, though it also has the hazards of miscarriage, etc. ahead of it. At some point the embryo, a potential human being, becomes a full human being, and this clearly occurs before it is born. Since in law and politics we normally try to draw a zone of protection around fundamental human rights, the zone of protection could reasonably be extended back to conception, though a less extensive zone would arguably be adequate to protect the actual human being. It would be reasonable to hold mothers and other individuals responsible for taking measures to kill the actual human being and deprive it of its right to life. The hazards of miscarriage exist, but they are distinct from actions or omissions intended to kill the unborn child. In morals, it is even more reasonable to extend protection back to the time of conception, since conception is a gift of God and Nature's God, as well as the natural and notorious consequence of copulation.

Another argument I would like to suggest is this: if technological advancements have made sex without consequences available to many more people, they have also made the unborn more able to survive premature removal from the womb. The unborn should also have the benefit of technological advances. I'm not saying that viability is decisive in determining humanity--that would be an excessively materialistic argument--but that the unborn child's dependence on the mother may not be justly regarded as a determining factor in whether the child has a right to life, or not.

What about the common exceptions of rape, incest, and the health of the mother? If the health of the mother is in conflict with carrying the child to term, the mother and father should make the decision of regarding how much risk they can tolerate, with the ultimate decision being the mother's on the principle of self-preservation. The child is blameless in conception by rape or incest, and though the mother is blameless too, the child should not be punished for the crimes of others. Such unwanted pregnancies provide a practical need for the existence of a period between conception and actual humanity during which the termination of a pregnancy would be permitted. They are not decisive in, or even relevant to, determining whether the potential human being has become an actual one.

In Roe v. Wade, the rights of the mother were allowed to trump the State's interest in preserving life in the first trimester. By perverse developments in law and politics, the details of which escape me, that first-trimester line has come to support a fundamental right to abortion up to the moment of birth. Most American conservatives, however, believe that the Court's worst crime in Roe v. Wade was usurping the prerogative of state legislatures to determine, within their jurisdictions, the scope of the crime of homicide and available defenses. For a federal court to tell the people of the states, their elected representaives, and their law enforcement agencies, "You may not prosecute for homicide a woman and her doctor who have intentionally killed an unborn child," is widely regarded as wildly overreaching the proper powers of the Supreme Court.

There is a temptation to accept, if not approve, the prevalence of abortion among our political enemies, i.e., liberals, and among demographic rivals, i.e., Mexicans and blacks. Surely there are more pressing causes than protecting hostile groups from self-inflicted genocide? The temptation itself is evidence of the same degradation of the buman spirit evidenced by the frequency of abortion.

The sexual revolution has played a major role in that degradation, unhooking sexual pleasure from marriage and reproduction. The anti-abortion movement tends to go hand in hand with reinstating seriousness about sex and reproduction. There is choice without consequences, and choice with consequences. Choice with consequences is "truer" liberty than choce without consequences.

@KA: Unsound reasoning, misinformation, wrong statements

Submitted by Reconciler on Wed, 2010-03-24 10:36.

The fetus is neither part (why the quotation marks? unsure?) of the mother, nor of the father. It is a separate life-form, that is nested in the womb, creating it's own environment, it's own walls. It is connected to the mother via the umbilical cord, through which it feeds, gets oxygen and disposes off its own waste. If anything, the fetus is a parasitic life-form, but certainly not a part of the mother. So much for the current biological consensus.

When does the unborn child acquire the label human, according to your reasoning?

I am convinced that because of insufficient information and your upbringing, you do not deem something seemingly as insignificantly small as a fetus a human being. A couple of hundreds of years ago, the church based her moral system on the information available in the bible as well as from scientific advancement. The catholic church has always amended her doctrines on these grounds, if sound reasoning demanded the update. She is still doing it. I do not see, what long since abandoned ideas about abortion have to do with the church's current viewpoint, other than that there is a hereditary connection.

Contraception is clearly not immoral. Be "fruitful and multiply" is clearly different from "do not use contraceptives". That is my own opinion, which certainly is not congruent with the Bishop of Rome's.

@reconciler

Submitted by Paganini on Wed, 2010-03-24 14:35.

I agree. Great comments.

Just one remark: I don't know if the church says that contraception is immoral or forbidden, but one argument of the church states that risky immoral behaviour (for example homosexuality) does not become moral by using contraception (for example condoms). Contraception can't be an excuse for immoral behaviour. A valid argument.

@ Capo

Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Tue, 2010-03-23 18:28.

Long ago I formed the opinion that Peter was and remains a respectable gent and I don't doubt for a moment that he is a mathematician by profession, which makes his failure to address my question all the more surprising.

Here's an example where God provides both the variables and the math.

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpDjR2Jtao0

 

 

 

Bravo Reconciler

Submitted by Capodistrias on Tue, 2010-03-23 15:28.

Very nicely argued. Conciseness is a gift.

(Your 1st post, I'm not sure what is going on with the 2nd)

 

@Atlanticist

Darest thou mock a mathematician! Variables man, variables!  Were the new borns dropped at the same time, the same day, in the same tub, in the same water?! Were they twins, born hours apart? Did they have all their appendages? Did either die in intitial drop?

 

No respectable mathematician would make a move to save any baby, or any human being dropped in water until you provide all variables. Damn it man, come up with a proper equation! You can start with: Mathematician > God.

Will sombody shut that crying baby up I'm waiting for an answer. Well Atlanticist?

more human

Submitted by kappert on Tue, 2010-03-23 08:14.

Surely the author deserves that predicate. She's immediately aware of evildoers and Marxists as she walks on the street, shreds the informal communication blabla in assemblies, shows no concern for Palestinian women, an anti-abortion hardliner (no concern, again), and is chairperson for equal opportunities (whatever she might do there?). Amazing.

Answer the following question (2)

Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Mon, 2010-03-22 23:58.

@ Peter

 

Oh, I think I understand. So let's modify that question of yours a tad shall we?

 

If two human beings fell in the water (bath tub?) drowning and you could only save one of them. The first is an 8 hour old baby girl, and the other is a 93 hour old baby boy. Which one would YOU choose to save and WHY?  

For a mathematician that question should be a breeze.

Chairwho?

Submitted by Cogito on Mon, 2010-03-22 12:46.

Alexandra Colen is "chairperson"? Why not chairwoman?

abortion

Submitted by peter vanderheyden on Mon, 2010-03-22 12:22.

 

"I was witnessing a chapter of the Marxist push to reshape the world which triumphed in the West with the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s."

 

It would have been a well written text, if it wouldn't use such a hollow language as above. It's like left people referring to the holocaust each time somebody on the right says something they don’t like. It’s a sure way to kill all possibilities for an honest discussion.

 

 

I don’t know about the US, but in EU, if one would hold a referendum on abortion, we would certainly have a majority for the more liberal stance. So the “no-accountability” argument is rather false. That is of course except for Ireland and Malta (and probably Poland). But then their representatives did express the opinion of the Irish and Maltese people. So it seems all rather democratic to me.

 

 

Apart from the “Marxism” references, even if I find it a well written text, I don’t agree about abortion. I believe that there are many cases were the chances on the quality of life of mother and child can prevail on the saving of a few cells, especially if one knows the way nature is rather prodigal with unborn life itself.

 

 

Anyway, my daughter seems to grow up quite fine. But if one day she has made a big mistake that could jeopardize her chances on a happy life, I sure wish abortion is still around to help her out.

 

 

@Peter

Submitted by Paul Belien on Mon, 2010-03-22 13:06.

Indeed, let us hope that your daughter avoids "big mistakes", so that abortion will never have to "help her out" by killing your granddaughter.

@Belien

Submitted by peter vanderheyden on Mon, 2010-03-22 13:38.

Depends on weather you consider it to be my granddaughter or not, isn’t it?
Once the egg and the sperm are merged, it’s considered a person to you; “a person” meaning having a soul; and a soul clearly not being a part of our material world. We know however that the resulting growing clustering of cells may still split and become … two persons. The sudden emerging of an extra soul seems rather problematic to me. Or do souls in the immaterial world split together with their corresponding cell-clusters in the material world?

Nature on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have that much problems with abortion. At least 15% of all pregnancies ends in a miscarriage. That is without counting the miscarriages at a very early stage, where the mother didn’t notice she was pregnant in the first place. If these unrecognized miscarriages are included, it is estimated that 40–60% of pregnancies ends in miscarriage. All these poor wandering souls that ended up in the toilet instead of being granted a decent Christian burial… And then there are all those ways to provoke a “natural abortion.” If you do it not too explicitly, you might even fool yourself, so as not to have guilt feelings afterwards.
Let’s stop being hypocrite about it. There are other far worse things going on with unwanted children that were born to parents that can’t cope with them. I’d be a 100% with you in trying to help them out.

misunderstanding

Submitted by Reconciler on Mon, 2010-03-22 16:38.

@vanderheyden

The issue is not, whether a few cells constitute a person (more on that later). The issue is that as rational, spiritual beings we can detach our moral system from natural inevitability. Yet, if we honor logic and ratio, we will base our decisions on those very natural laws that clearly make aborting your own daughter an irrational and therefore morally wrong act.

If you consider "a few cells" in the uterus to be less than a person, then you ignore two very basic facts of life:
(1) Human life does not develop incrementally but continuously. There is no sudden appearance of a person. It is there from the moment of conception, only developing from then on.
(2) failing to ascribe a personal character to "a few cells" through rational deduction (a pleonasm?) does not strip these "few cells" of their persona.

Whatever excuses you might prepare for your and your daughter's future decision of life and death, they will not unmake this basic truth. If I slaughter a pig, I do it to feed myself, not because I reject the idea of the pig being a living, feeling being. Your daughter may one day kill her own daughter in her womb - not because she does not consider her a daughter, but because of economic reasons. All attempts to deny unborn human life its humanity are just delusion and cowardice, leading you to refuse admitting and standing by the real reasons for the murder.

@reconciler

Submitted by peter vanderheyden on Mon, 2010-03-22 18:05.

I will not contest the fact that it is continuously, but as a mathematician I know that continuity doesn’t mean constant. There sure is a gradation. Some things are more “alive” then others and some are more “human” then others. Because of this gradation scientists argue a lot about which organisms should still be considered as “living”. (Conservatives seem to find mass-murderers not human enough to keep alive, by the way.) I believe the delusion and cowardice lies in not acknowledging this gradation. I.e. not having the courage to decide from whereon we find a living being worthy enough to sacrifice the life or "quality of life" of another living being for it. I know this means acknowledging that the ones that define what is morally acceptable and what not are ultimately the human beings on this planet. I know it is a lot of responsibility. But it is what we ultimately will have to do. To sacrifice the life of the mother is not a moral-free decision either.

@vanderheyden

Submitted by Reconciler on Tue, 2010-03-23 15:19.

The distinction I tried to make wasn't one of moral choice. It was one of moral implication and acceptance or denial thereof. I do not want to impose my own moral choice on you. I merely point out that you cannot deny, what your moral compass indicates: that killing an unborn child is murder at any stage of it's development. You may however choose to live with your choice.

"You may step on my back, but do not hide your face"

Leftist-Liberal fascists try to eradicate something that cannot be eradicated: logic. Murder will be murder, even if they delude themselves to believe that it is a matter of women's choice and not murder. You cannot change natural laws, you can just obscure them with the euphemism treadmill.

As a mathematician, you might know that the only true gradation known to mankind is the quantum level. Not being a physicist, I don't claim that this is a correct statement, but I believe so. Correct me if I'm wrong though. Every other gradation is purely a product of human simplification and generalization, is it not? A mere consequence of our limited sensory capacities.

Now take your example of a risky pregnancy: If there is a significant health risk to the woman with child, I will agree to sacrifice the child. But it is still murder. Buying a life on the expense of another constitutes murder in my book, if the victim does not have a choice. ＢＵＴ　ＴＯ ＡＣＣＥＰＴ ＴＨＥ　ＧＵＩＬＴ　ＩＳ　ＴＨＥ　ＬＥＡＳＴ　ＯＮＥ　ＣＡＮ ＤＯ．　(On a side-note: Ｔｈａｔ　ｉｓ　ｔｈｅ　ｏｎｌｙ　ｗａｙ　ｔｏ　ｒｅｐｅｎｔａｎｃｅ．　Ｈｏｗ　ｃａｎ　ｙｏｕ　ｒｅｐｅｎｔ，　ｉｆ　ｙｏｕ　ｄｅｎｙ　ｙｏｕｒ　ｓｉｎｓ？)

Ｅｇａｌｉｔａｒｉａｎｉｓｍ　ｉｓ　ｅｓｓｅｎｔｉａｌｌｙ　ｎｅｏ－ｐａｇａｎｉｓｍ，　ｂｅｃａｕｓｅ　ｉｔ　ｐｒｏｍｏｔｅｓ　ｄｅｎｉａｌ　ｏｆ　ｙｏｕｒ　ｒｅｓｐｏｎｓｉｂｉｌｉｔｙ　ｆｏｒ　ｙｏｕｒ　ｏｗｎ　ｃｈｏｉｃｅｓ．　Ｔｈｅ　ｎｅｗ　ｇｏｄｓ　ｄｏ　ｎｏｔ　ｈｕｒｌ　ｌｉｇｈｔｎｉｎｇ　ｏｒ　ｂｌｅｓｓ　ｗｅｌｌｓｐｒｉｎｇｓ，　ｔｈｅｙ　ｊｕｓｔｉｆｙ　ｆｅｔｉｃｉｄｅ，　ｇｅｎｄｅｒｃｉｄｅ　（Ｃｈｉｎａ，　Ｉｎｄｉａ）　ｅｖｅｎ　ｇｅｎｏｃｉｄｅ　（e.g. Germany. Wｈａｔ　ｅｌｓｅ　ｉｓ　ｋｉｌｌｉｎｇ　ｏｆｆ　ｌａｒｇｅ　ａｍｏｕｎｔｓ　ｏｆ　ｙｏｕｒ　ｏｗｎ　offspring　ｓｔｉｌｌ　ｉｎ　ｗｏｍｂｓ？）．　Ｔｈｅｙ　ｐｒｏｍｏｔｅ　ｄｅｓｔｒｕｃｔｉｏｎ　ｏｆ　ｔｈｅ　ｆａｍｉｌｙ　（ｏｕｒ　ｇｅｎｅｔｉｃａｌｌｙ　ｐｒｅｄｅｓｔｉｎｅｄ　ｗａｙ　ｏｆ　ｌｉｆｅ）　ａｎｄ　ｓｅｔｔｉｎｇ　ｕｐ　ｐｅｒｖｅｒted　ｃｏｎｓｔｒｕｃｔｓ　ｉｎ　ｉｔ'ｓ　place (homosexual marriage). Their followers are like spoiled children, who catch frogs in a pond to blow them up with drinking straws, feigning innocent merriment.

Moral Imbecility

Submitted by atheling on Mon, 2010-03-22 21:41.

"Some things are more “alive” then others"

I'm no scientist but that does not sound like a scientific fact. In science, either something is alive or dead. Tissue is either alive or necrotic, genius.

"some are more “human” then others."

Gee, thanks for giving us the Third Reich interpretation of the matter. That also puts you in the same company with the 19th century Democrat party and their slavery position. After all, in their books, black slaves were not "fully" human either.

You are one sick puppy.

@atheling

Submitted by peter vanderheyden on Mon, 2010-03-22 22:35.

"Moral Imbecility"
It must be great to feel so superior. :)

OK, I understand that you don’t want to understand on purpose. And I don't know why I bother to try to explain. anyway Let’s try it differently.
Answer the following question:

If two people fell in the water, drowning and you could only save one of them. The first one is a young girl of 8 years old, and the other one is an old man of 93 years old. Which one would you choose and why?

More Imbecility

Submitted by atheling on Tue, 2010-03-23 00:31.

Your hypothetical question is not congruent with the issue at hand.

We are talking about whether or not some people are "more human" than others, as you absurdly claim, and whether or not some things are "more alive than others" as you ridiculously claim.

Asking me whether I would save one person over another in a life and death choice scenario is not the same as choosing to have an abortion because it's inconvenient.

Try again.