Anonymous: Here's some food for thought: No one is forcing anyone to have an abortion, however you would like to force people to stay pregnant. If a woman doesn't have control over what happens to her own body (if she is FORCED to stay pregnant) what does she have control over? And this is what I am most curious about: If you are really for life, why don't you do something to help people who are actually ALIVE living in horrible conditions such as poverty or w/ illness, & why don't you complain about war?
And this is what I am most curious about: If you are really for life, why don’t you do something to help people who are actually ALIVE living in horrible conditions such as poverty or w/ illness, & why don’t you complain about war?
This is sort of a straw man. We are talking strictly about abortion. If you want to learn more about how Catholics are pro-life in every sense of the term, just Google things like “Catholic Charities” or “Catholics against Euthanasia” or “Catholics against Poverty.” I’m sure you will find things that accurately label the Catholic Church as a holistically “pro-life” community.
TL;DR Not only do we do the baby-saving, but we do people-saving in general, both spiritually and physically. And Popes have spoken against war.
No one is forcing anyone to have an abortion, however you would like to force people to stay pregnant. If a woman doesn’t have control over what happens to her own body (if she is FORCED to stay pregnant) what does she have control over?
Your argument appeals to emotion — you’re trying to make it seem like Catholics are cold-hearted jerks who force women to carry children to term. Believe me, I have a special branch of love for women who endure nine months of pain so that a unique life may make its way in the world.
No one is forcing anyone to have an abortion.
Yes, and no one is forcing anyone to have sex. Oh wait, Hedonistic Hollywood is implying it.
If pregnancy is such a life-changing, responsibility-charged consequence, then, according to the Causal Adequacy Principle, shouldn’t the action behind it be at least at life-changing and responsibility-charged? The problem with your argument is that you assume sex should automatically be without strings. On the contrary, Catholics, in accordance with natural law, believe that sex should be closely tied to pregnancy, because after all, one is the possible outcome of the other.
If the case is rape (and therefore non-consensual sex), then I don’t believe it would be fair to dismiss the human being caught in the fray as “my rapist’s face, and therefore moral grounds for abortion.” The human preborn is in no way morally culpable for the action the rapist took, and although rape itself is a tragedy (and rape culture seriously needs to be kicked out of society along with all adjacent misogyny), we do not want a second tragedy, that is, the abortion of an innocent life.
If a woman doesn’t have control over what happens to her own body (if she is FORCED to stay pregnant) what does she have control over?
My right to punch ends where someone else’s nose begins. Likewise, the woman’s right to her body ends where her body ends, and a new body begins. Biology tells us that indeed, the preborn is a unique human being with its own DNA code and often differing blood type from that of the mother. And once they form (according to various studies, at an early stage in development), their fingerprints are identical, too. In every sense of the term, the preborn is a unique human being. In a theological sense, the preborn is in the body, but not of it.
Pregnancy is not a disease.
A preborn human is not a parasite.
These are two truths that Catholics will never surrender.
We look to the mother as a source of love and support for the child. We look to the father as a supporting source of love and support for the child. We will continue to support pregnant women. (Note: Birthright is not strictly Catholic, but everyone I know who volunteers there is. So it’s Catholic by nature because it is Pro-Life!)
I hope you are able to see that what pregnant women need is love and (financial) support for them and their child, and not a quick-fix solution that may or may not scar them for the rest of their lives. Let us all work together to bring this radical of idea to the hearts of all who hear it.
-Olivier
