Abortion

[Dave]

I think it is understandable that a baby with no lungs, heart, or brain not to be considered for full human's natural rights. That is my judgement call, and you can disagree if you want.

So it's just based on your opinions and feelings? Opinions and feelings never led anyone to what's true.

[dairygirl4u2c]

In the Truth of our world, it is true that some people don't agree with us. I would imagine no one would disagree with me on this. And in this world even the freedom of people who don't agree with the truth should be valued above life, as long as the very premise of the said life is reasonably disputed. Not because we may be wrong but because of the inherent value and truth of freedom itself.

That must be where we disagree.

So it's just based on your opinions and feelings? Opinions and feelings never led anyone to what's true.

Since the Church has spoken on the issues, should we start imposing our will in voting against the death penalty, allowing people who want to die to die, to allow people who havn't had a say in their death to have the plug pulled? Should we start killing the abortionists since we have a right to self-defense, defending the people, and just wars?

Even the Catholic Church hasn't defined anything on what I am saying. And therefore anyway you look at it, the irony of the situation is that I could say the same to you.

Edited February 8, 2004 by dairygirl4u2c

[Dave]

In the Truth of our world, it is true that some people don't agree with us. I would imagine no one would disagree with me on this. And in this world even the freedom of people who don't agree with the truth should be valued above life, as long as the very premise of the said life is reasonably disputed. Not because we may be wrong but because of the inherent value and truth of freedom itself.

That must be where we disagree.

Even the Catholic Church hasn't defined anything on what I am saying. And therefore anyway you look at it, the irony of the situation is that I could say the same to you.

It's wrong to kowtow to those who hold immoral, sinful views.

And you're wrong, the Catholic Church has indeed said that we can't be personally opposed to abortion but support it for those who don't think it's wrong. Just not possible.

[dairygirl4u2c]

I take it by the way you said that that you're not really sure if that was the official stance. But you are correct at least unofficially as I found:

This is directly in conflict with what Pope John Paul II teaches in his encyclical letter. Paragraph #71 he says "The legal toleration of abortion or of euthanasia can in no way claim to be based on respect for the conscience of others, precisely because society has the right and the duty to protect itself against abuses which can occur in the name of conscience and under the pretext of freedom."

This still doesn't free Catholics from not killing abortion doctors and insisting on no euthanasia. I couldn't tell you whether it is infallible. But I think you are correct that if you are Catholic, you must believe this. He may also be correct that if you are pro-life personally you must believe this.

I've been doing some more thinking. With abortion (and the premise that the baby is entitled to rights) and the baby and its freedom gone, the only thing left is the mother and her "freedom". Whereas if she did not abort, what would exist is two lives and one freedom of the baby. Moreover, one may argue that the mother thinks she is "free"... when she really isn't.

This is interesting, I will reflect some more on this.

Edited February 8, 2004 by dairygirl4u2c

[jmjtina]

So your WHOLE argument is about ppls freedom to choose. In other words, "Whatever floats your boat, if your okay with it, that's your choice." With your logic, not only isn't the baby in the womb a person (by some ppl) but every person who wanted to kill b/c they didn't see the other as "human". It goes for the people like Terri Schavio, who isn't even seen as a "full functioning human being" by her own husband and others. With your logic, not only would the world be at chaos, but every human life would lose it's freedom. The main fact is, babies are MURDERED for the sake of "freedom of choice".

People still do think the baby is not human. So they must think the baby is not "enough human" (ie no heart, no brain, no lungs and unable to function with out the mother.. prolly leading them to think at this stage it is the mother) to be worthy of rights (or whatever they think).

Instead of fighting for the warped evil illusion of freedom, I hope you bring these people into a bigger freedom: Telling them the truth that a baby IS LIFE. If you truly believed in FREEDOM in it's fullest sense you'd realize that No choice of freedom is worth taking someone elses freedom. When you RESPECT ALL life, freedom is there in it's purest sense of the word.

I saw one pro-choice person say we could argue about the unborn babies "no heart, brain" having rights just as much as we could have an undead person (us) not having rights. I think this may help you understand them more.

An undead person has a heart, and a brain. What the heck is your point? If your gonna argue that it takes a heart and a brain to qualify for a human, then by YOUR logic, the dead have rights the living don't. The baby's heart and brain are WORKING. Hello?! Science has PROVEN this! The point I'm seeing from this pro-murder cheap "comeback" is THEY are going in circles and making ridiculous statements. They would rather turn a blind eye to SCIENCE itself (hence, that is why even athetists and agnostics were at the MARCH FOR LIFE) than face the fact that they are MURDERING a living baby.

Chronological Diary of a Baby--Pictures of a live, growing baby

1. Immediately upon fertilization, cellular development begins. Before implantation the sex of the new life can be determined.

2. At implantation, the new life is composed of hundreds of cells and has developed a protective hormone to prevent the mother's body from rejecting it as a foreign tissue.

3. At 17 days, the new life has developed its own blood cells; the placenta is a part of the new life and not of the mother.

4. At 18 days, occasional pulsations of a muscle - this will be the heart.

5. At 19 days, the eyes start to develop.

6. At 20 days, the foundation of the entire nervous system has been laid down.

7. At 24 days, the heart has regular beats or pulsations.

8. At 28 days, 40 pairs of muscles are developed along the trunk of the new life; arms and legs forming.

9. At 30 days, regular blood flow within the vascular system; the ears and nasal development have begun.

10. At 40 days, the heart energy output is reported to be almost 20% of an adult.

11. At 42 days, skeleton complete and the reflexes are present.

12. At 43 days, electrical brain wave patterns can be recorded. This is usually ample evidence that "thinking" is taking place in the brain. The new life may be thought of as a thinking person.

13. At 49 days, the baby has the appearance of a miniature doll with complete fingers, toes and ears.

14. NAME CHANGED FROM EMBRYO TO FETUS. At 56 days all organs functioning - stomach, liver, kidney, brain - all systems intact. Lines in palms. All future development of new life is simply that of refinement and increase in size until maturity at approximately age 23 years. This is approximately two months before "quickening" yet there is a new life with all of its parts needing only nourishment. The mother will usually not feel the child's movements until four months after conception.

15. 9th & 10th week, squints, swallows, retracts tongue.

16. 11th & 12th week, arms & legs move, smells of elderberries thumb, inhales and exhales amniotic fluid, nails appearing.

17. 16 weeks (four months), genital organs clearly differentiated, grasps with hands, swims, kicks and turns somersaults (still not felt by mother).

17. 18 weeks, vocal cords working . . . can cry.

19. 20 weeks, hair appears on head; weight - one pound; height - 12 inches. A fetus (little one, child, baby) is essentially no different at fertilization, ten weeks, twenty weeks or thirty weeks. A person is a person, no matter how small.

In the Truth of our world, it is true that some people don't agree with us. I would imagine no one would disagree with me on this. And in this world even the freedom of people who don't agree with the truth should be valued above life, as long as the very premise of the said life is reasonably disputed. Not because we may be wrong but because of the inherent value and truth of freedom itself.

With this statement, I see how the warped "choice" of freedom can be viewed. You don't have a clue as to what the Catholic Church teaches if you can say the Catholic Church hasn't said anything about the issue.

The irony of this situation is the Church has defined both freedom AND life, in it's truest and purest sense of the word.

[dairygirl4u2c]

Here is the full paragraph:

Certainly the purpose of civil law is different and more limited in scope than that of the moral law. But "in no sphere of life can the civil law take the place of conscience or dictate norms concerning things which are outside its competence",[90] which is that of ensuring the common good of people through the recognition and defence of their fundamental rights, and the promotion of peace and of public morality.[91] The real purpose of civil law is to guarantee an ordered social coexistence in true justice, so that all may "lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way" (1 Tim 2:2). Precisely for this reason, civil law must ensure that all members of society enjoy respect for certain fundamental rights which innately belong to the person, rights which every positive law must recognize and guarantee. First and fundamental among these is the inviolable right to life of every innocent human being. While public authority can sometimes choose not to put a stop to something which--were it prohibited--would cause more serious harm,[92] it can never presume to legitimize as a right of individuals--even if they are the majority of the members of society--an offence against other persons caused by the disregard of so fundamental a right as the right to life. The legal toleration of abortion or of euthanasia can in no way claim to be based on respect for the conscience of others, precisely because society has the right and the duty to protect itself against the abuses which can occur in the name of conscience and under the pretext of freedom.[93]

After reflection, I think I have decided to return to the pro-life camp (the one's that are against it personally and socially). I hope you understood my initial resitance at least in words, the fact that the Pope has spoke in so much detail makes it known that good people can not have thought it through. It will take a little bit (not long) for this to sink into my brain again but I think I've been converted back again! :rolleyes:

Edited February 8, 2004 by dairygirl4u2c

[jmjtina]

This still doesn't free Catholics from not killing abortion doctors and insisting on no euthanasia.

Two Words: Ten Commandments

[jmjtina]

Priests for Life

Great pictures (America will not reject Abortion until America sees abortion) and great information!

Roe Vs. Wade

amesome site!

Life Dynamics

Life Dynamics is great...doing work, reports and studies. This one is a must to go to. Check it out.

Virtue Media

great ads......download some.

National Right to Life

Silent Scream.org

The true horror of abortion

Couple to Couple Leage---Natural Family Planning

[foundsheep]

Your awsome Tina!

[Lounge Daddy]

“Not-enough human”

I have never ever heard that one before… I had no idea that some people thought this way.

Wow… So with no heart, no brain, or no lungs the baby is “not-enough human?" I had no idea we were assigning levels of humanity (and protection under constitutional law) to individuals based on organ numbers.

If I were to lose a kidney would I go down in class to “Not-enough human?” Do conjoined twins get a “more-than-enough human” classification?

This approach could have interesting legal ramifications…

[Lounge Daddy]

Two Words: Ten Commandments

wow... Amen, jmjtina. :cool:

[ironmonk]

dairy,

As far as Ironmonk goes, he thinks he proved me wrong, but you can't prove a judgement call (opinion) wrong.

You've proven yourself wrong. The biological definition of life proves you wrong. Abortion ends a life that normally would live 70 or so years.

Anyone who has studied the issue knows that you're wrong because of your very words.

If you want to convince me that I am wrong, convince me that all this freedom talk of mine is not worth more than a human because I believe in freedom and consideration of others above life.

You contradicted yourself... you can't have consideration of others when you are killing a innocent and helpless child. Your core beliefs in this area do not add up.

Freedom and consideration of others above life? - Then by your very values, it should be ok for a man to rape because of freedom. By your values, it should be ok for someone to kill because they want to. Raping is more considerate than murder... after someone is raped they can go on living... after you abort a baby, the life is ended.

Do you know what consideration means?

con·sid·er·a·tion (kn-sd-rshn)n.

Thoughtful concern for others.

By being for abortion and ending a life there is NO CONCERN FOR OTHERS. Abortion is murder because of selfishness.

Are you even Christian? Your beliefs go against Christian values.

Actually, your belief goes against every religion's values that I have ever studied... no where is it taught that freedom is about life.

Because of birth control, condoms, abortion, etc... is why there are so many people with HIV/AIDS, and all the STD's.... All under the lie of freedom. Is it really freedom when you can't control yourself because you can avoid all responsibility of having sex. Because of these things men look down on women. Women are no longer looked at as equal partners, but because of "birth control" men look at women as sexual objects.

As far as "safe" sex, there is NO such thing. Condoms ONLY protect you from 3 STD's OUT OF 63 know STD's.

HOW CAN THAT BE SAFE?

If the HIV cell was a ping pong ball, the pores in a condom would be a basketball hoop! 1 in 5 people who have sex with someone with HIV AND wearing a condom will catch HIV. HOW IS THAT SAFE?!

GET THE FACTS!

And yes... we would like to know what you claim to be (religion). It is important to help us to try to understand where you are coming from.

-ironmonk

[Aloysius]

hey, let's use the declaration of independence to proove you wrong.

the inalienable rights

#1 LIFE

#2 Liberty

#3 The Persuit of Happiness.

two major cases messed this order up. The Dred Scott case made the white ppl's persuit of happiness (also known as persuit of property from John Jockes original they borrowed this from) over the black ppl's liberty. this should never happen. in a choice between ppl's persuit of happiness/property and ppl's liberty, liberty is higher.

the second case is Roe V. Wade, which put the woman's right to liberty over the baby's right to life. in a choice between saving lives or infringing upon liberty, saving lives must always be chosen.

that word order was not randomly chosen. the inalienable rights are FIRST LIFE, THEN LIBERTY, THEN THE PERSUIT OF HAPINESS.

[cmotherofpirl]

No Abortion Left Behind

From the February 2, 2004 issue: How much is worldwide access to abortion worth?

by Joseph Bottum, for the Editors

02/02/2004, Volume 009, Issue 20

HOW MUCH is worldwide access to abortion worth? What price are the international activists who cluster around the United Nations willing to pay to achieve the ability of any woman--at any place, for any reason--to have an abortion?

We might start with the deaths of more than 6 million children after birth. Of the world's 10 million children who died last year of preventable diseases and starvation, two-thirds could have been saved by effective international intervention through UNICEF, according to a recent essay in the British medical journal the Lancet. But Danny Kaye's old international children's fund has been taken over by abortion activists who have radically shifted the organization's focus away from rescuing children.

Jim Grant, the widely respected executive director of UNICEF, launched what he called the "Child Survival Revolution" in 1982. Upon Grant's death, however, the Clinton administration demanded the appointment of New York activist Carol Bellamy. And under Bellamy, UNICEF has decided its job is not to save sick and hungry children, but to join the great march toward universal sex freedom--agitating for minors' access to condoms, requiring that refugee camps provide abortion services, and handing out sex-education manuals to grade-school students in the third world. "We, a group of concerned scientists and public health managers, call on . . . UNICEF . . . to act on behalf of children," the authors in the Lancet pleaded. "Child survival must be put back on the agenda."

A worldwide decline in democratic government, too, is apparently a small price to pay for bringing about the universal legality of what international documents call "reproductive rights." Why should voters be consulted about the laws that govern them--if consulting actual citizens might not bring about the all-trumping right to abortion? That, at least, is the feeling manifest in recently obtained internal memos from the Center for Reproductive Rights, a lawyers' nongovernmental organization (NGO) that specializes in suing local and national governments that fail to allow unfettered access to abortion.

A copy of these abortion-strategy memos was mailed anonymously late last year to Austin Ruse, who heads the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey reprinted them in the Congressional Record on December 8, and they make fascinating reading--for they show how NGO activists speak behind closed doors. "There is a stealth quality to the work," one memo noted. "We are achieving incremental recognition of values without a huge amount of scrutiny from the opposition. These lower-profile victories will gradually put us in a strong position to assert a broad consensus around our assertions."

Such disingenuousness is necessary for the abortion activists' strategy, which consists primarily of inserting vague passages in as many international treaties, reports, and working papers as possible--and then getting the enforcement agencies and entities such as the European Court of Human Rights to interpret those passages to mean a universal right to abortion has been established. Although the phrase "reproductive rights" is omnipresent in U.N. documents--a draft for the 1999 report from the Cairo + 5 conference, for instance, used it 47 times in the section on adolescents alone--there is not a meaningful definition of "reproductive rights" in any official U.N. resolution.

Perhaps the most interesting portion of the memos from the Center for Reproductive Rights is the admission that this strategy has failed thus far to establish the "soft norm" of abortion--for the center claimed exactly the opposite two years ago when it brought suit against the Bush administration for reinstituting the ban on federal agencies' funding of international organizations that promote abortion. In its brief in that case, the center explicitly insisted that the performances of international courts had already established a "customary right to abortion" that American courts are obligated to obey. "Our goal is to see governments worldwide guarantee women's reproductive rights out of recognition that they are bound to do so," the center's memos admit--and, "What good is all our work if the Bush administration can simply take it all away with the stroke of a pen?"

The cease-and-desist letter the center's president sent Austin Ruse after these embarrassing memos were leaked to him is hilarious in its arrogance and frankness. The memos are "privileged communications, proprietary information, and trade secrets" that must be returned unused, since "disclosure of this material has caused, and further disclosure will cause, CRR irreparable harm." And the harm is, finally, the revelation of the circularity in the abortion activists' technique. Their legal briefs routinely cite phrases they themselves crafted in U.N. directives, international court decisions, and treaty-organization minutes. Every time a court admits one of these "soft norms"--as the U.S. Supreme Court did in its Lawrence decision last June--the activists move closer to achieving their goal.

The memos from the Center for Reproductive Rights are hardly the long-sought smoking gun that at last exposes the schemes of the pro-abortion NGOs. Freshly fired pistols litter the floors of the United Nations and the World Court--all the treaty organizations at which the world's legal and practical norms are decided these days. At the Cairo world conference on population and development in 1994, or the Beijing conference on women in 1995, the international community did little to hide the centrality of its abortion agenda or its disdain for the opponents of abortion.

But the memos do at least reveal the extent to which the activists for international abortion hate the forms and participatory nature of democratic government. These people are fanatics, in the truest sense of the word: All other issues must be warped to reflect solely their concerns, and the mere existence of opposing views convinces them that radical evil is afoot in the world. Their adversaries seem to them demons and monsters, against whom no tactic of deceit or slander is ever forbidden.

Various women's groups this summer, for instance, denounced the government of Peru--because the Peruvian congress apologized for the more than 200,000 poor women coerced into sterilizations under the 1990s "compulsory family planning program" of President Alberto Fujimori. "We do not condone forced sterilizations," one activist explained, "but no one can deny that Fujimori's program was excellent in terms of access and information." The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy issued a press release declaring the "apology is part of a right-wing strategy to limit family planning options in Peru."

This November, Ellen Sauerbrey, representing the United States on the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, promoted a mild resolution--"very near and dear to us in America," as she explained--that urged greater political participation by women around the world. Nineteen pro-abortion NGOs promptly sent a letter to the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Negroponte, rejecting the resolution because it didn't mention abortion.

The examples of fanaticism go on and on. UNESCO has drifted so far into the abortion fight that an irritated Tommy Thompson, secretary of health and human services, finally sent a letter this month to the U.N. asking what declarations such as "Governments should make abortion legal, safe, and affordable" have to do with UNESCO's supposed mission of promoting education, science, and culture. When Secretary of State Colin Powell cut off American funding for the United Nations Population Fund in 2002--on the reasonable grounds that UNFPA was hopelessly implicated in China's forced-abortion policy--he was immediately attacked by E.U. development and humanitarian aid commissioner Poul Nielson, for creating a worldwide "decency gap" in failing to help UNFPA spread international abortion rights.

Meanwhile, Douglas A. Sylva, the vice president of Ruse's group, reports that the U.N.-backed European Population Forum this month blamed the United States for bringing, as one official put it, "near-collapse to international gatherings on children's rights, development and population by opposing any language that might allow for abortion." The fundamental job of every international agency in coming years, the president of International Planned Parenthood explained, will be to fight the opponents of abortion by "discrediting their pseudo-science and unmasking their ideological motives. It is essential to demonstrate the truly dangerous consequences of their approach."

Only zealotry and extremism can explain all this: the warping of every institution, every issue, and every occasion to concern abortion. The pro-abortion fanatics have taken over the entire international forum. And to achieve the ability of any woman--at any place, for any reason--to have an abortion, they are willing to pay any price.

--Joseph Bottum, for the Editors

© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

[cmotherofpirl]

also:

http://www.lifesite.net/waronfamily/unicef/

and

http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2003/dec/03121102.html

Edited February 9, 2004 by cmotherofpirl