Abortion

[Mark of the Cross]

[quote name='Sternhauser' date='03 December 2009 - 05:54 PM' timestamp='1259823269' post='2013721']
I'd like to apologize for the tone in my saying "Perhaps you forgot." There was nothing in your simply-put question which merited that. It was the memory of things in the past that inflamed me.

~Sternhauser
[/quote]
Obviously you have had a bad experience with members of law enforcement. I hope and pray that you can come to terms with it! And it was gallant of you to apologise to the poster. People often find it hard to admit something they did was wrong.

[N/A Gone]

This is one of the best statements I have seen written about abortion. I have seen numerous people walk back and gather their thoughts after reading this. I will not give credit unless that person wants it, but this writing is a gift.

[quote]We must hold through our own common experience that the human person is endowed with a special dignity and that since none of us would like to have our life taken from us, the life of innocent human persons is to be defended. I don't think anyone except the very difficult to reach will deny that.
The question becomes: when does the life of a human person begin? Now there are some who propose that life begins at the moment of birth, but unless some profound change occurs because of the delivery of a child, this cannot be true. Since a child born 3 months early is now generally considered viable, the idea of personhood given at birth seems illogically arbitrary, since both a full-term child and a premie would be considered human persons, while a child in utero just as old and developed as the premie is at birth would not be considered a human person. It makes little sense to say that, all other conditions of two children being the same, one is a human person because he is born and another is not a person because he is not born.
Now we come to the question of a fetus which is viable but not completely developed or is otherwise malformed. Some argue that these children should be aborted, but that would be to argue that those who are not completely functional are lacking in human dignity and the right to life. To say such a thing would be equivalent to say that a person once considered a person should no longer be considered a person once a disabling disease afflicts them. For personhood to come and go through the circumstances of life reduces personhood to a thing much less dignified and permanent than personhood must be by definition. The next logical step is for an argument in favor of abortion to claim that only those who are viable have human personhood, but this means that those who cannot live by themselves do not have personhood, including those who are on ventilators and the like, despite the fact that such people are still most certainly human persons for the same reason as the last argument.

After the viability argument, the next logical argument is regarding heart function or brain waves. The first is simply a biological process that allows organ functionality, but has nothing to do with personhood any more than any other organ does; the second reflects thought, which may at first seem relevant, since all human persons we ever speak with are capable of thought, but we must not be empiricists. Simply because we cannot perceive the presence of a soul does not mean that there is no soul. The faculties of the soul may not be actualized, but that does not mean the soul is not present. The soul, being the animating principle of the body, is present whenever there is life. Since life begins at conception (and here we must be clear that defining life qualitatively in a way that would allow a person to deny that someone who doesn't have a lot going on has a life cannot be permitted, since that would be a subjective criterion)...anyway, since life begins at conception, which is confirmed by science, any living human creature must have a soul and therefore be a person. The faculties which are not actualized in some persons are still present as a part of the human nature, making any individual human a human person (don't confuse this with the claim that a fetus is a potential person, which is ridiculous).

Since some may debate what a person is...person comes from the Latin persona, which is defined as a legal term (also as a drama term). The legal definition of persona is "persona est sui juris et incommunicabilis," which means that the person is of his own law (free will) and incommunicable. Sui juris indicates that a person's nature has the capacity of free will. Now, we cannot say that a person is only sui juris (and therefore only a person) when that individual is exercising free will, or else any time that a person is unconscious or even simply not making any decisions, such an individual is not a person. Some would also argue that an infant does not have free will because an infant cannot know or understand actions and choices. However, this is irrelevant to free will, because the faculty to know or understand is a matter of the mind, not the will. The mind knows and the will chooses. Now, a child at some stage does not choose anything, but that does not mean that the child by human nature does not have the faculty to choose; the ability to choose is merely latent, the same as it would be in a sleeping individual. Incommunicable simply means that the individual cannot be another individual. We can be many things and have many things in common. We are all humans. Half of us are all men, the other half are all women. Incommunicability is that which each of us is which no one else is, our individual identity which can never be held or experienced first-hand by another. In fact, properly speaking, our incommunicable person is our first-handedness itself. A mother is not her infant at any stage of development. Therefore, personhood begins at conception.[/quote]

[elizabeth09]

Yes for Life.

[rhetoricfemme]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' date='02 December 2009 - 09:37 PM' timestamp='1259807862' post='2013501']
at least one person close to them who's had an abortion. I found it a bit shocking..... we're 18 and 19 years old. It seems too young! ...but I know I'm being naive.
[/quote]
I don't know if it's common for many people to have someone close to them who's had one. One of my best friends had an abortion, though. While I'm pretty sure she'd do it again, I know that she still feels sad about the whole thing. It was years ago so it doesn't get brought up often anymore, but her language at the time indicated that she knew there was a little life there.

[quote name='CatherineM' date='03 December 2009 - 10:04 PM' timestamp='1259895842' post='2014140']
I'm convinced that is because kids today do not remember a time when abortion wasn't legal. They don't think there is anything left to debate.
[/quote]
Yeah.

Abortion is wrong any way you put it. However, I believe it'll never stay legal or illegal. That'll just fluctuate with whoever is in office at the moment. That doesn't mean we should stop trying to make it illegal, though. If abortion is made just a little more inaccessible, that's at least one more life being saved.

[elizabeth09]

Every baby should be saved.