Reconsidering the value of Saddleback

Two points.

1. Obama had nothing to lose. This was McCain and the GOPs territory the worst he could do was leave as he started. He was talking to people who probably won't vote for him and he could get some new votes, McCain was talking to the choir.

2. I think you are being dishonest with Obama's response. To my ears the response he gave after the "it's above my pay grade" comment illustrated what he meant. Not that he doesn't know but that it is such a complex issue that he cannot be absolutely certain, that the decision should ultimately come down to the woman and her family and her doctor based on her unique circumstances. He then did a bit of reach out by saying we should work to decrease the number of unwanted conceptions, which I think is a bridge between both sides in the "culture war". I think his response was quite informative and thoughtprovoking. Personally I'd love to see Rod explore and respond to it.

What do you think about this? Apparently McCain could potentially have heard the questions ahead of time...http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/18/us/politics/18mccain.html?_r=2&ref=politics&oref=slogin&oref=slogin.

Obama is hamstrung by two deeply embedded, though colliding, intuitions: multicultural relativism and lifestyle liberal triumphalism. The former forces him to be "nonjudgmental" while the latter requires that he judge the opponents of lifestyle liberalism as at best mistaken and at worst threats to liberty itself. He sometimes plays the wrong card at the wrong time with the wrong people. So, we get the strange phenomenon of him explaining away the beliefs of rural Americans with "clinging to Gods and guns" (the lifestyle liberal triumphalism trope at work), but in Berlin we hear the Kumbaya account of our international religious differences as a matter of mere misunderstanding (the multicultural trope at work). Thus, rural Americans have to change while jihadist-sympathizers have to be "understood."

If, on 9/11, the planes that hit the WTC had been hijacked by members of the Christian Coalition and flown into abortion clinics, the intellectuals would not be asking, "What did we do to make these religious people do this?" However, when the characters are foreigners who believes in an unusual religion, the multiculturalist card is played.

Obama is simply not adept enough to juggle these colliding intuitions. In fact, I suspect, that he doesn't even know he has them. For he does not strike me as a guy that is very reflective or imaginative. That's not to say he's not very bright. He indeed is. But like most people who have spent most of their lives in the rarefied venues of academia and liberal social enclaves, he's absorbed premises and principles that he has not had the opportunity, nor the need, to think very deeply about.

English Voice has it exactly wrong.

He makes the mistake of assuming that just because the venue was a "church" (sort of), that it was right-of-center. Saddleback is not a Conservative venue, and Rick Warren is no Conservative. His views on abortion and gay rights are cryptic, and he has already let Obama stump from his pulpit once. Saddleback offers only the most vague kind of Christianity, and Warren is essentially a new age Norman Vincent Peale. This was not McCain's venue, it was Obama's.

Second, I don't see how saying we should work to decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies (PSST: pregnancy is caused, some scientists think, by sex: pass it on!) is any different from the "safe legal and rare" blather of the past. How is this a bridge? Either a human being has a right to live, or not. If you can't know when life begins (as Obama seems to suggest with his "nuance") then morally you err on the side of caution and preserve that life.

Both left and right has sold our society a bill of goods offering endless consumption and pleasure without any consequences. Sex has a natural consequence: it creates life. That's kind of the point, recreational benefits notwithstanding. Are we to assume women (yes, women alone) are too dim to grasp this fact of their own anatomy and must be "protected" from their bad choices even at the cost of a human life? That's what a pro-abortion view assumes.

How the casual sexual use and abuse of women became a "feminist" issue is one of the mysteries of the 20th century.

I agree on it being your own thoughts.

Yes, some Americans (I'm one, after all, so can't say its true of them all) do like short, snappy answers, quick anecdotes with a very obvious moral at the end, etc.

I would hope, after that last 7 years, that we've come to understand that the quick answer, the easy answer isn't always the RIGHT answer. That life, itself, is harder and more complicated than that.

Or, using the question of evil, using a quote from an author that McCain might know more.. intimately than he claims, Solzhenitsyn, that..

"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhlemed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil."

No, it isn't a two second, five word (and none of them over two syllables) soundbite. No, it doesn't offer a quick, easy, 'who do we bomb?' solution.

Doesn't mean it isn't true.

Just because we like our stories like a John Wayne Western, doesn't mean that life works that way, and that darn sure shouldn't be how we base our national policy.

And honestly, we had two terms of someone who saw things with 'utter clarity'. Who knew exactly what evil was, and who the 'evildoers' were, and exactly what should be done with them, and knew, with absolute certainty, that he wasn't wrong.

That kind of quick answer isn't the sign of seasoning. I've found the quickest answers can often come from the young. But I've learned to be very wary of someone who 'knows the answers'.

Do you think McCain, since he is human and this will come up, is capable of realizing and admitting if he is wrong?

Hasn't Beckwith spent most of his life in the rarified venue of academia?

Anyway, I agree with Rod here for the most part. Obama is frustratingly ethereal and abstract. Now, it is an approach I am attracted to because the world is complex, theology is complex, evil is complex. But it doesn't play well in soundbites. He sounds cagey and uncertain. While I'd prefer some uncertainty over absolutism and reflexive militarism, it is a tough sell.

As Rawlins said, I think McCain is a politician of the past. He's all resume--notice his continuing reliance on things that happened more 30 years ago as touchstones to his 2008 views--and seems stuck. He's a foreign policy and defense candidate, which makes his certainty all the more scary.

And with all these 'age' comments, we should realize something.

Obama is 47 years old. I mean, people are talking about him like he just barely graduated college. Sheesh.

He's not even close to the youngest person to serve, or to run for this office.

He is the same age Bill Clinton was when he ran for his first term. Which, no matter WHAT you think about Bill, and his politics, nobody said a word about his age when he was running.

I mean, sure, he's not in his 70's, but all this talk of 'seasoning', anyone here whose ALMOST 50 feel unseasoned?

Let’s put aside the fact that the Lancet is a heavily politicized medical journal and just look at your statement that “banning abortion had less of an effect on the number of abortions carried out in a country than access to contraception.”

This is patently illogical and false. If abortions were illegal, the number of abortions performed would quite obviously drop far below any reduction that would be achieved through increased contraception.

The idea that increased “access to contraception” (as though it was a hard thing to get now) would lower “unwanted pregnancies” is another grand lie. “Here, take a pill, and let your worries slide away, except that it doesn’t always work, needs to be taken rigorously or its efficacy is drastically reduced, screws with your body chemistry, and is bad for the environment!” What do we actually gain from more people having more sex with fewer consequences? How is this a good thing?

The canard of the “unwanted pregnancy” is itself a grand distraction. Okay, so a woman conceives a human being who she does not want to raise. She has made her “mistake”, and a human life is the result. No one is asking her to raise that child. We’re just insisting she not murder it. There are thousands of families who would love to care for that child.

Where does Obama stand on this? Would he actually urge women to carry their children to term and give them up for adoption? That sounds about as likely as McCain urging people to drive less.

In choosing the language that they chosen concerning life issues, Obama and the Democrats have clearly said that the pro-life contingent can go take a jump. They choose a weak-tea non-concession because they are in thrall to the pro-abortionists.

In my mind, Obama’s “above my pay grade” is the key quote in the election to date, which makes the tedious Saddleback event more important than it would have otherwise been. If McCain is smart, he’ll hang that quote around Obama’s neck like an albatross.

Pro-aborts CAN'T say they don't know. It's not possible to say "I don't know when a human being becomes a human being" and then go on to say "It's okay to abort."

If you don't know when a life begins, how can you choose to end it?

"The idea that increased “access to contraception” (as though it was a hard thing to get now) would lower “unwanted pregnancies” is another grand lie. “Here, take a pill, and let your worries slide away, except that it doesn’t always work, needs to be taken rigorously or its efficacy is drastically reduced, screws with your body chemistry, and is bad for the environment!” What do we actually gain from more people having more sex with fewer consequences? How is this a good thing?"

this is emprically demonstrated. access to contraceptives and sex education correlate inversely to abortion rates.

“Here, take a pill, and let your worries slide away, except that it doesn’t always work, needs to be taken rigorously or its efficacy is drastically reduced, screws with your body chemistry, and is bad for the environment!”

what fantastic evidence for your position. no wonder this nation is doomed.

JPL:
EXCELLENT post. Excellent. Absolutely. Bingo.

A great post by Francis Beckwith, especially how she/he succinctly juxtaposes two situations and finds the Obama position to be hypocritical, at best.

Francis Beckwith wrote: " Thus, rural Americans have to change while jihadist-sympathizers have to be "understood."

If, on 9/11, the planes that hit the WTC had been hijacked by members of the Christian Coalition and flown into abortion clinics, the intellectuals would not be asking, "What did we do to make these religious people do this?" However, when the characters are foreigners who believes in an unusual religion, the multiculturalist card is played."

New York City is positively swimming in contraception, yet roughly 3/4ths of all children conceived in that city are murdered through abortion.

Contraception is not a solution. Until we role back the mindless hedonistic consumerist mindset in this country that demands pleasure without consequence, we will never solve our problems. Contraception doesn't change that mindset: it simply enables it, and not always effectively.

Liberals want people to control their own behavior when it comes to things which affect the environment (and rightly so,) but do not expect them to control their own behavior when it affects life itself.

Again, you can't say "I don't know" when life begins and then choose to end that life. It does not compute.

I'm sorry, but the Saddleback forum was a HUGE disappointment to me. I was expecting something much different. When John McCain answered all three parts of that teacher question before Rick even finished the first part of the question, alarm bells went off. Then when John asked "Will you be asking the Supreme Court question now or later?", I realized he must have had foreknowledge of the questions.

Obviously, he cheated!

As it turns out, he was not in the cone of silence as he was supposed to be. He was on the road in a limo.

And the coup de grace was finding out that John lifted his "Cross in the Dirt" story from The Gulag Archipelago by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.
[Just Google dailykos to find the original report of this.] I was so touched by that story.

How can I vote for a man who is deceitful in a CHURCH forum? You tell me.

I was such a big fan of Rick Warren until this forum. I bought his book some time ago and have been practicing some of its principles. Now I feel like I was duped by yet another crooked evangelical pastor. Shades of Jimmy Baker!

"Obama has been pretty much sheltered from contrary points of view by intelligent representatives of those views."

Given your bio and experience, this assertion is laughable.

I was dissapointed that Rick Warren did not pursue some of his questions further especially regarding taxes and the war and what it means to support the troops. But, I realize he is a minister and not a policy wonk so that might not have been appropriate. After seeing the the David Bacevich interview I wish he would interview both candidates on PBS. If you can't articulate how you would make government work for all the people you shouldn't be running for office even if you do believe in God. This applies to both candidates but since I fear that McCain is a "bomb first, ask questions later" candidate I think he needs to tell people how he will handle WWIII.

"If Obama was too abstracted -- and he was -- then McCain was too concrete, and his concreteness was itself a form of ideological abstraction. In other words, by seeming to refuse to recognize complexity in the world and the tragic sense at work in our affairs, McCain evidences living in a world of unreality as well."

Rod, I quite agree with you. Given this choice, here's the question: which of this flawed temperments is likely to produce better results, on the whole? I'm afraid that Obama would be a highly intelligent ditherer like Jimmy Carter, who was a miserable, feckless president. I prefer the "sometimes wrong, but never in doubt" approach in a president. It just works better in that office.

The scientific answer to when life begins and a fetus can be defined as a human being is when the DNA has been completed. My biologist brother-in-law believed that happens before a woman can determine that she is pregnant.

When that was explained to me (before I became a Christian) I became pro-life. But surprisingly enough, that is the only issue that I can agree with McCain on and that is not enough to vote for him. Obama appeals to me on many levels and because I can't elect Christ as President, I'll have to vote for the lesser of two flawed men.

In my "world view", McCain's faults out weigh Obama's and his Black/White approach to solving problems is to dangerous for America. I what a president who examines all sides of the issues and errs on the side of common good rather on punitive bullying.

I also saw McCain's responses to be "god-like" and therefore as dangerous as any other zealot. His approach to solving problems is no different than Russia's. His sabre rattling at Russia for invading Georgia was to me, like the kettle calling the pot black. How is Russia's actions any different from our actions in Iraq? Think about that.

Evil exists in each of us, we can not escape it. What we can do is contain it. G. W. Bush used evil to combat evil an McCain wants to continue the practice. Obama warns us that the path of is paved with
good intentions and we have been led down that path for the last five years. It is time to get off the road and find a new road to travel on.

McCain is also two faced when it comes to "Faith Based" organizations. I don't think he would approve of federal funding of radical Islamic faith based groups in America. When he speaks of "Faith based" he is speaking solely of Evangelical Christian groups.

His rhetoric on education does not offer a solution to fix our public education programs but only funding private education. The solution is to make our public education system comparable to the private. His answer was to basically shut down public education and use tax money to empower for profit organizations.

My children went to public schools and learned very well because they have parents who got involved with their education and who cared that they learned. Even if you sent every child in America to a private school you could not "force" education on them if they did not have parents to inspire them to learn. You would just create a new form of entitlement that the Republicans hate so much.

McCain is not the choice of forward thinking men and women, he is the choice of those who as happy with the status quo because it gives them something to gripe about but don't have the guts to do anything about.

I prefer nuance. I prefer a man with the humility to admit, "You may be right," in all but the very few things he has direct knowledge of. This is a habit learned rarely, and I'm not going to claim that I've mastered it. But it is something best learned listening to and learning from a diverse set of backgrounds. I grew up in the military, a fairly diverse place despite the uniforms and haircuts. As a child we had families living in our apartment complex who were originally from Vietnam, extremely conservative families who conducted house church services in their living rooms on Sundays and invited us all along, Black families, and quintessential blonde blue eyed "All American" families who started pickup football games out in the field next to our playground. (Our playground was also next to a collection of decommissioned tanks and amphibious vehicles set up as a museum. Military brat is a great way to grow up.)

As a college student, I got to spend a year in Europe (on Federal student loans lest anyone think me uppity), where we spent long cold winter nights pondering life, the universe, and everything as kids will. I heard an earful about every wrong nation had ever committed. I learned a lot - a lot of it was true. I stuck to my guns, or tried to, hampered a bit by language barriers on all sides and my lack of knowledge. I tried to point out Europe's own political issues. But unless they were attacking America's very honor, I learned the fine art past a certain point of raising my glass and offering, whether I felt it or not, "You know, you may be right."

I joined the Army and was shipped from Basic Combat Training (rather like a movie, and I must recommend it as a tonic against rampant individualism if any of you feel you are suffering from that) in the midst of the beginning of a war with Iraq, to the Defense Language Institute where I was confronted with an entirely alien language and culture, and an almost entirely alien religion. It took some time and effort, and some rather excellent human beings who were our instructors, but we began to absorb the worldview, to comprehend and feel it, even if we could not agree with it or even grasp it entirely. We watched the pilgrimage to Mecca, live on TV, millions of true believers at the center of their religious universe, circling the Kaba'a. Their faith was strong, and they lived it and breathed it, and a lot of it was right and true, even if I could not agree with all of its precepts. We were mesmerized, we were seeing the world through their eyes, for just a moment. And two or three of my acquaintances even converted that year.

It is a strange feeling indeed when a year after that you are staring down over downtown Baghdad, trying to track a blood-thirsty enemy who wants you dead, an enemy you can almost understand.

I guess this whole long winded thing is just to say that nuance is the stance you take when you know the world is wide and wild and millions of men and women wiser than you are, past and present, have a lot to teach you, and you have only just begun to learn. There are some basic simple facts you can be sure of (these are fewer than you have been led to believe), and you have your own direct experience and knowledge, necessarily limited by the fact that you are only one person. We all have a lot to learn.

quote: "The idea that increased “access to contraception” (as though it was a hard thing to get now) would lower “unwanted pregnancies” is another grand lie."

I hear this line that we need to "increase sex education and access to contraception" from liberals all the time. Frankly, I don't get it. I live in a small town in the South. It's not the kind of place that most liberals would consider "enlightened" or as having all the government programs they might prefer. Still, one can buy condoms relatively inexpensively at most convenient stores, pharmacies, and stores such as Wal-Mart. Most any doctor in town will write a prescription for the pill. The local health department gives out contraception for free. How in the world could one "increase access to contraception" in my area? Perhaps it should be hand delivered to bedrooms all over the community. Same thing with education. People do know how babies are made. It's really not all that difficult or complicated to understand.
The whole liberal line about "better sex education and increasing access to contraception" just strikes me as a empty and meaningless and platitudes. If people are having unprotected sex it is because they choose to be irresponsible, not because they are ignorant or don't have access to contraception. The problem is sheer irresponsibility and a casual, consumeristic mindset towards life in general and sex specifically. I don't see the shallow "solutions" that liberals offer as doing anything to combat any of this.

rr

Actually, if the question he posed was a legal one, then McCain's answer is even more absurd. McCain believes legal and "human" rights--whatever those are--should begin at the moment of conception? We should give legal rights to seconds-alive human tissue? That less than a second after conception has taken place, one should be able to go into court to represent the legal interests of that tissue?

Some Christians need to become more "Christ-Like", in my opinion.

Posted by: Bill | August 18, 2008 12:57 PM

I agree, Bill. All of us need to become more "Christ-like." It almost sums up the point of Christianity.

rr:

In all due respect, and I mean that because I hear you and on an emotional level agree. But as someone (me) who does speaks to all ages and especially ‘at risk’ lower end of the socio-eco spectrum teens on safe sexual practices to prevent STDs as well as pregnancies, I am constantly amazed at how teenagers, particularly minorities brown and black, are completely clueless about contraception. There is so much misinformation (too much to go into) and also a LOT of superstition/folklore in especially lower socioeconomic or whatever black teens.... you would be amazed.

For instance, I hear over and over again that they believe if you use contraception God will punish you because He will know you 'planned on having sex’ whereas if it is unprotected, ‘he will know you got swept up and had no plans to have sex and He will forgive you’.

I could write a book on what I have heard speaking to teenagers who have become infected with HIV, and all the myriad STDs, who believe an abortion is to 'get rid of those diseases’. They seldom even mention pregnancy as the original “reason” for abortion.

This is still another reason I say that swimming in streams that are absolutely unrelated to one's own river is the key to the larger reality realm for those on either side of the Lib/Con divide.

Lord Karth is right, or just about right. I'm leaving open the possibility that some politician isn't a weasel, but if you find one like that, he's either representing a district where the vast majority of the electorate think the same way, or he's on the road to losing his next election. Politicians are weasels because that's the sort of animal that does best in their line of work.

Rod, I generally don't like your posts and when I visit here at all, I'm usually bashing you. But as a few have already said, this was you at your best. This was a pretty darn good post.

Scurvy Oaks said this--

"I'm afraid that Obama would be a highly intelligent ditherer like Jimmy Carter, who was a miserable, feckless president. I prefer the "sometimes wrong, but never in doubt" approach in a president. It just works better in that office."

After two terms of Bush, I'm surprised anyone could still say something like this. If Carter was a miserable President, Bush is off the scale in the awfulness department. As for Carter, his main failure was in keeping inflation under control. But for better or worse, he put Volcker in as Fed Chairman and he brought it down during Reagan's term, at the cost of a deep recession. Carter, of course, also had the Iran hostage fiasco on his watch, but the funny thing about that is that Reagan lost hundreds of Marines in Lebanon with no accomplishment to show for it, and this is rarely if ever remembered by the people who think his "forcefulness" was far superior to Carter's.

Carter was a moral failure in some ways that only those of us on the far left ever talk about--for instance, like every President from Ford to Clinton (until 1999), he supported Indonesia in its extremely brutal occupation of East Timor. On the other hand, Carter was way ahead of most Americans in realizing the seriousness of the energy problem. In that sense he was a bad President because he couldn't get most Americans to overlook their self-indulgent desires. A "good" President like Reagan pandered to those desires.

August 18, 2008 2:13 PM is me.

Beyond that, there really doesn't seem to be any universal "right" to life. We kill in self-defense and in war. We commit suicide. And I can understand the will of someone to end their own life when their suffering becomes too intense, with no hope of surcease. We execute criminals. We are certainly willing to kill one human when their life negatively impacts others humans in certain ways.

Beyond that, humans of different ages don't have the same human rights. I can spank my child, but not my wife. I can force my child to attend a church, but not my mother. And, based on my religious convictions, I can deny medical care to a child leading to his death, even when that outcome is nearly certain, without legal repercussion in most cases.

Clearly, there are many circumstances where we decide a being does NOT have the right to life.

At the moment, plebian as it may seem, I guess the most I can say is that most people agree with me that a newborn is human. Prior to that, there's a lot of debate. I have my own opinion, but don't feel certain enough to force it upon others. I think, but I don't know.

Obama seemed no different in his answer.

Posted by: JPL | August 18, 2008 1:49 PM

And I think this perspective is getting more common. Abortion is wrong. But I'm not going to stop a woman from getting one (though I do believe in time limits and exceptions.) My best friend got one, and given her circumstances I could not fault her, really. I won't go into them, it was her business. Suffice it to say, a lot of women have little recourse when trying to make ends meet (financially and emotionally) on their own.

And as you point out, the right to life is hardly universal, or I would not be targeting militant insurgents here in Iraq.

Not to say a hardened IED operative is by any means the same as a not even born yet infant, but at what point does one person's rights end, and another's begin? Do we really value everyone equally, from birth to extreme old age, from brilliant thinkers to the profoundly mentally disabled and the psychotic, from Catholic nuns to Black men on death row, from our rich neighbors to an orphaned starving African child dying of AIDS contracted at birth? Clearly, the answer is no.

I guess you cannot refuse to act in the face of all this, but it's rather a lot to take on, isn't it? I guess you just have to start somewhere. Part of what leads to the perception that there is this great gulf between liberal and conservative is that each side refuses to accept that maybe the other IS fighting injustice - they've just started somewhere else than your favorite issue. I suspect that a lot of the ambivalence among us younger thinkers comes from all these accusations from both sides that this one issue or that other issue is not even an issue, when it seems to us there are more than enough issues to go around.

"Well, we can't tell when the human creature becomes ensouled; some say black people don't have souls, while others disagree. Anyway, who can prove the existence of the soul? That's why we have to be pro-choice on slavery."

ugh, rod, the pro-life crowd is the one that screeches endlessly over "ensoulment", as if any of you could ever identify a moment when someone or something acquires what is an unprovable, faith based concept.

abortion screechers then moan thatt "life begins at conception". that's all well and good when the megachruch "pastor" with a mail order divinity degree says so, and all the other poor, lost, sad people in the pews nod their heads approvingly to get their weekly endorphin release, but, for those of us who think, the thought is:

huh?

when in conception, rod? when? when sperm adheres to the ovum? when it (along with other sperm cells) penetrate the ovum? when DNA recombines?

a fertilized ovum may take several days to achieve gene recombination. what of the fact that the majority of fertilized ova never implant on the uterine wall? does this bother any of you? god himself is flushing the majority of those single cell babies? why would god flush them? is it merely god's will that we cannot grasp? does the accepted medical definition of "pregnancy" mean anything to any of you?

is ALL of this discussion about what it is to be human and in this world and whether or not there is a god or afterlife or ANYTHING penetrate any of your skulls? or is it all this smug, self-satisfaction at having The Truth! "revealed" to you?

it's mindbogglingly dull! as if the "soul" itself can be at all elucidated by reason! or if, should one have the necessary faith to believe in an immortal soul, that one can define "ensoulment" with anything approaching the mathematical precision reflected in statements like "life begins at conception".

which of course leads back to WHEN at conception? the best arguments the gleeful sky-is-falling christian crowd can make relate to unique genetic code. so, recombination is it? that's when rod's ridiculous slavery comparison re: human rights comes into play if at all.

can us poor, unenlightened, rational thinkers get a definitive line here, then, from god's personal mouthpieces on earth?

"ensoulment" occurs upon completion of recombination in the zygote? yes?

whythelies you must understand that God does not exist in our chronological order. There are many "mysteries" which only God can explain. Paul said that "ensoulment" begins at quickening, but he had no understanding of DNA and zygotes. I will make no attempt to define the exact millisecond of when "ensoulment" begins. However, I will unequivocally say that by the time the mother has confirmation that she is pregnant, her baby has passed the stage of "ensoulment". So her desire to have an abortion is a mute point.

Whythelies, Rick Warren does not have a "mail order divinity degree." Rather, he hails from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the largest seminary in the world and a very respected institution, even among non-baptists.

Fine that you disagree with Rick (I often diagree with him as well), but an intellectual rationalist such as yourself should get your facts straight and not belittle your own views with petty name-calling.

the pro-life crowd is the one that screeches endlessly over "ensoulment", as if any of you could ever identify a moment when someone or something acquires what is an unprovable, faith based concept.

I don't think I've ever read or heard of anyone who calls himself or herself Pro Life talk about "ensoulment." That's pro abortion casuistry at its worst.

Even the staunchly Pro Life teaching of the Catholic Church doesn't depend on any particular belief about when "ensoulment" occurs. A child in its mother's womb deserves protection from those who would harm or kill that child.

Amen, Simon. The "ensoulment" debate is a trap; there are those using it at the other end of life decisions (i.e., how do we know the seriously ill or comatose patient still has a soul? Maybe only the body is alive, etc.).

Mattc, I agree with you, too--this Obama dodge was clumsy, as well. He had to know he'd be asked a question like this one.

And the question I'd like to ask him is this: if abortion does *not* involve the killing of a human being, why does it have a "moral dimension?" Why does anybody, let alone the nation, "wrestle" with it? What, exactly, is the moral dimension of abortion to those who believe the unborn human is a disposable nonperson?

Rick Warren did a fine job. The questions were substantive and were the kind of thing that thoughtful people wanted to hear discussed at length. The applause given by the audience to a wide variety of answers of both candidates showed that they were open-minded and not at all "stacked" either left or right. This forum was miles ahead of the silly non-debates the media presented us with earlier this year.

As a traditionalist conservative, I have been very hesitant to support McCain, and horrified at the idea that such a slippery, yet inexperienced leftist as Obama could have gotten so far in this process.

This forum helped to bring me closer to confidence in McCain's ability to be president. I'm not all the way there, and his choice of running mate will help to see more clearly into his mind. Nevertheless, this interview brought me closer.

We need more of this, but after his showing Saturday night, it might be hard to get Obama back into this sort of venue.

What, exactly, is the moral dimension of abortion to those who believe the unborn human is a disposable nonperson?

Since no one says this, especially Obama, you have created a strawman argument worthy of the Wizard of Oz. Feel free to try again after you've left the world of black and white.

John E,

So where exactly do you draw the line and, as a separate question, what is the rationale for making the distinction, even for the difference between 100 cells and 8 1/2 months? The answers to these two questions are to me is the heart of a credible "pro-choice" position.

John E,
So where exactly do you draw the line and, as a separate question, what is the rationale for making the distinction, even for the difference between 100 cells and 8 1/2 months? The answers to these two questions are to me the heart of a credible "pro-choice" position.
Posted by: Scrappy | August 18, 2008 9:33 PM

Where do I draw the line? I don't need to - the Supreme Court already did in Roe vs. Wade.

What is the rationale? An eight-and-a-half month fetus has developed to a point where it can survive outside the womb.

I don't believe it's the role of the Supreme Court to draw lines. It's their role to decide which side of the line a particular case is on. Drawing lines is above their pay grade, so to speak.

I'm more interested in your personal thoughts on why survival outside the womb is the determining factor to determine human personhood. The need to determine precisely how many weeks of gestation are required cuts both ways and is in this case a matter of life and death. Is a full-term baby who needs lots of tubes and wires immediately following birth "viable". Can we just kill it?

Daniel, does an abortion kill a human life, or not?

Look, all I suppose I practically meant by ensoulment was "is this being human or not?" And the answer, in the case of an embryo, is "I suspect so, but don't know."

Other people suspect not. They don't know either.

Other people claim they actually know it is, or know it isn't. They don't actually know any more than I do.

So, to answer your question to Daniel of "Does an abortion kill a human life, or not?", I would answer "I suspect so, but I don't know, and don't feel certain enough of my suspicion, and can't prove it, so for the moment I don't see how I can ask that it be legislated."

As for cognition or self-awareness, I doubt it's that simple. For example, an embryo has little consciousness that we know of. Nonetheless, I suspect it is a human life worthy of preservation, if for no other reason than the reasonable promise of its future cognition. But someone who's brain has been destroyed, beyond any possibility of repair, and is being kept alive on machines? In that case, their lack of consciousness and complete absence of hope for any future consciousness would seem to indicate that ceasing life support is appropriate, and let them pass on.

Daniel's too cowardly to answer my question. I already answered his, in an earlier thread, but I'll repeat my answer:

Imprisoning anyone because we believe they may be contemplating the commission of a crime is not a possibility. A man may drive by a street corner where a prostitute is standing every day, but we can't put either one of them in jail until the transaction takes place, even if we "know" she's been arrested for prostitution before, and even if we "know" he's talked in general terms about hiring a prostitute.

Should abortion be made illegal, I'd punish those providing them.

JPL, thanks for your answer. My one objection is this: if you came across a large box, and someone told you a person might be inside, but they didn't know for sure, would you set fire to the box? If we don't know whether the unborn is a person or not, but we suspect she may be (what with her own DNA, heartbeat by five weeks, fingers/toes by eight weeks, fingerprints and ability to curve her hand around objects by nine weeks and so on--all from "pregnancy.org" btw) then why not let her live? Why let someone else--her mother--kill her?

I have asked this question of books in print and people I've met, both in person and online, but no one - neither the Bible nor Christian nor Jewish theologians - has been able to answer the question of when a person "gets" a "soul" (or even "if" a person "gets" a "soul") in a way that is Biblically, religiously (I use that instead of "theologically" because technically "theologically" has to do with God/Theos, like "Christologically" has to do with Christ, and "psychologically," though having to do with psyche/soul, has another meaning these days) and scientifically/naturally arguable.

I.e., show me how/when a person "gets" a thing called a "soul" that somehow makes him different ontologically than a non-human animal.

Anyone?

"Daniel's too cowardly to answer my question. I already answered his, in an earlier thread, but I'll repeat my answer:"

We've had this conversation at least 20 times and you know my asnwer. Yes, abortion kills a "human life." It does not, however, necessarily kill a "person." A seconds-existing zygote is technically a human life, but has not achieved "personhood" which is the much more important philosophical, legal, and theological question.

Of course, you know that.

Now, let's get back to your dodge on how far you are willing to go to protect a "human life." Obviously, you are willing to toss a doctor in prison for providing health care. But why not imprison the woman, especially if she's demonstrated she intends to abort the child?

We do imprison people who attempt murder. We imprison people who facilitate murder. So why aren't you willing to imprison a woman who wants to obtain an abortion in order to protect the fetus? If a zygote suddenly has the same rights as a living, autonomous person, why are you treating the facilitator of an attempted murder differently?

I ask because you never demonstrate any interest in the woman and her rights, so it would be helpful to figure out exactly how you view the woman in relation to the rights of the fetus.

Erin's box analogy, like all others I've seen so far, fails. Pregnancy is a unique circumstance. There is no other condition where one being is living inside the body of another, intertwined with and dependent on that body for sustenance. How in the world do you go about granting civil rights to an incomplete being that is inside the body of another person? I suggest that if the fetus were present inside the body of a man, there would be no question that his rights as an individual would come first. That is really the only analogy that would make sense--imagine a pregnant man, and proceed accordingly. However, as we all know, such an analogy is completely contra-factual, and thus of limited value.

when does the unborn human creature attain to personhood in the eyes of the law?

When the mother decides it does, until then it can be killed with impunity.

The usual scenario would be, assuming abortion were TRULY going to be prosecuted the same as a murder..

There is the pregnant woman, the fetus, and possibly the doctor (since there have been home methods of this since.. well, forever). Maybe the father, if he is involved.

If an abortion were murder, and the woman goes to the doctor get an abortion, this would be equivalent to me going to a professional to pay to get someone killed. In THAT scenario, the doctor isn't the murderer. The doctor is the hitman, the WOMAN is the murderer.

The minute I talked TO the doctor to discuss it, that would be 'conspiracy to commit murder'. But the primary criminal, in all these cases, would be the woman.

So, if you are to treat abortion, legally, the same as a murder, the doctor MIGHT get arrested and imprisoned, but in any case where they could prove the doctor was guilty (except in the case of a deliberate plant, where a woman was working to try to incriminate the doctor), you would have a woman as the primary one charged. To do otherwise would be like trying to arrest a hitman without going after the one who hired them.

So, if you were truly going to do this, and really viewed this as murder, then you view the WOMEN, not the doctor, as the true murderer. Why this emphasis on doctors, I don't know. Women sometimes (even most of the time, initially, just not very successfully) who attempt abortion try methods on their own to end their pregnancy. From old wives tales, to falling down, using herbs.. They just don't tend to work very well. I remember one teen who repeatedly kept 'going roller skating'. Thinking that falling on her butt over and over would do it.

That, if this were murder, would be attempted murder. And we get to open up a whole new range of murder charges based on things that could cause harm, even if not intentionally, such as manslaughter, and involuntary homocide.

Interestingly, nobody who says they think the above ever follows through to treating it exactly the same as they would if the woman were, for instance, holding someone in their arms, instead of having it inside their body.

I walk up with a person in my arms, talk to my doctor about having them killed, nobody would hesitate in the slightest to say that woman belongs in jail, no matter what happened to any other family she has, especially the one she is holding. Nobody would say the doctor, even if he agreed, was the one most at fault. And nobody would certainly say they should keep custody of that person and raise them. No matter how 'stressed' or worried, or pressured they might claim to have felt.

Interesting intellectual dissonance there.

I don't think that box thing works well, for the reasons Sig mentioned above.

Of course, in your scenario, I wouldn't risk burning the box. But in your scenario, choosing to not burn the box has no consequences at all for me. Out would pop a human, who I'd be glad I didn't burn. Or, alternatively, the box would just sit there, empty and unburned.

But in real life, the "box" has enormous consequences. Should I choose not to burn the box, I am absolutely guaranteed that a person will pop out of it...since we KNOW that even if the box doesn't contain a "human" now, unburned it soon will, and deliver that human into my hands. A human that will be absolutely dependent upon me for every conceivable kind of support for many, many years. A person with whom I'll develop a deep emotional relationship.

I am risking my health, my finances, my emotions, my relationships, and many, many other possibilities and consequences by choosing not to burn the box. If, for example, I'm a 16-year-old with an unplanned pregnancy with deeply religious parents of a certain type, I could literally destroy all my significant relationships and support, and damage my entire future, all the while providing a quality of life and care that would be sub-par for the "human" that is soon to arrive.

If I decide the box is empty until opened ("person" begins at birth), I can terminate the "non-person" cells, and later have a more successful pregnancy at a date of my own choosing.

I'm not arguing this is the right thing to do, or moral, simply that your analogy doesn't deal with the true weights in the decision in an accurate way.

Lastly, you really did dodge the question about imprisoning a woman for receiving an abortion, so it's not right to call someone else a coward for having dodged your question. You simply said that you'd support legal action against the doctor performing the abortion, and that you couldn't prosecute a woman for merely considering one. But that isn't the question.

Would you support legal action against a woman who HAD an abotion? So the woman goes into a doctor, has an abortion, walks out of the clinic into the arms of the police. Will you support her being prosecuted for this crime, and imprisoned?

Interesting, also, that the analogy equates a pregnant woman to a box. In this scenario, the ONLY person present is the one inside the box. The box is just, well, a box. No volition, no feelings, no rights. It's just an object. Maybe that's not what Erin intended to imply. But that's the trouble with analogies.

Erin, thanks for your reply.

I understand your point, but frankly know a women in precisely that situation, who did indeed years ago abort a child for just those reasons. Also she feels guilty about it today, being quite devout herself now, she certainly isn't emotionally ruined by it. And the fact that her parents don't know about it troubles her a bit, but she realizes the immensely destructive effect it would have on their relationship if she did.

She certainly never turned to those negative outlets that your describe, although surely some people do. But it doesn't seem as common as you descibe. In a recently released study by the APA, researchers found “no credible evidence” that single abortions could directly cause mental health problems among adults with unwanted pregnancies. It called for more well-designed studies to investigate the issue.

Even the evidence for adverse psychiatric effects of multiple abortions was equivocal, it found. Higher rates of mental illness among such women could be explained by social factors, such as poverty or drug use that also put them at higher risk of unplanned and unwanted pregnancy.

Frankly, in her case, I think it's a situation of sinners all around. (What isn't, I suppose?) The parents lacked the compassion to confront her teen pregnancy without abandoning her and destroying the relationship. She lacked the will to remain chaste, or to use effective birth control. She chose her anticipated future and her relationship with her parents over the child's life. Her parents rigid and hard-hearted belief system encouraged her to make a poor choice, but I know the ultimate responsibility was her own.

She regrets it, but still considers it the best choice under the circumstances. She's raised a wonderful son since then.

You're absolutely right about the adoption thing, and frankly, if we built some societal systems to make adoption easier and less expensive, along with some cultural values changes so that parents would support children who become pregnant before marriage and would carry the child to term rather than abort, hoping for an adoption, I'd feel better about legislating this issue.

Regardless of these divisions, I think it's clear there's more nuance in these issues that regularly addressed. I've never really met anyone that was "pro-abortion"...only being who thought that it was sometimes the least bad of choices available. I think that someday, a comprehensive solution will include changing values, education, contraception, adoption, and legislation. I doubt it will satisfy everyone, but I hope it will be better than today,

"Imprisoning anyone because we believe they may be contemplating the commission of a crime is not a possibility."

it's called conspiracy (with the only other necessary condition being that it involves at least 2 people).

egads, woman, you homeschool your kids? this nation is doomed.

If you're talking about prison, you're talking about criminal law. Criminal law regarding conspiracy requires "conspirators to take an overt step to accomplish the illegal act to demonstrate the reality of their intention to break the law", not mere contemplation of committing a crime.

I know your argument is facetious, and you don't really believe anyone will be rounding up pregnant women any time soon. I'm not a lawyer; I offer this clarification as one more homeschooling dad (who served on a jury for a murder/conspiracy case) trying his best to prevent the imminent doom of the nation.

Thanks, Scrappy.

Daniel, the equivalent, assuming that you really want to punish abortive women more than their own consciences can, would be that she actually "hires" the abortionist. Your rather silly question began with the hysterical "Would I put pregnant women in jail just in case they might be thinking about an abortion???" which I think I've answered more than adequately.

Besides, you're a Catholic who ought to know what the Church teaches on abortion. You either don't know, don't care, or reject it entirely; whichever it is, I haven't got any interest in talking to you any more on the subject, as I don't find it amusing to deal with a so-called Catholic who is so cruelly and viciously willing to support the death of the unborn as you are. I'll just pray for you, instead.

Woo hoo, Erin. I'm admiring your vigorous defense against all comers. To quote you: If we really cared about women, we'd . . . . celebrate it [pregnancy] as the ultimate expression of the most unique female power imaginable. We'd be on hand to help women in crisis and honor as heroes those women willing to turn an inconvenient pregnancy into the chance for an infertile sister to be a mom. I couldn't agree with you more on this statement. (Though I elided the bit about considering it a "horrible disease" because I don't know of anyone who actually thinks of pregnancy this way.) I'm not sure you agree with you, though, because it seems to me that I've heard you in the past deriding social programs designed to help poor or unmarried mothers, and declining to vote for them on the grounds that it would make your life as a SAHM more difficult because your breadwinner would have to pay more taxes. If I'm misremembering, or if you've changed your mind about that, do correct me.

You say "we shove them into abortion clinics." Say what now? Who is this "we" of whom you speak? You use that pronoun rather promiscuously. Perhaps you mean that conservative men shove women into abortion clinics, figuratively speaking, by denouncing them as sluts if they have babies "out of wedlock," and by trying to deny them birth control and assistance to get food, shelter and education for their children. If that's what you mean, I'm willing to agree with you there, too. I certainly don't think any woman should ever get an abortion against her will--but I think the problem under discussion here is the opposite.

With regard to whether abortion is murder, I think your response is still a bit slippery. You say "I'd recommend mercy for the woman." But you must know that the law does not ask if Erin Manning of Texas recommends mercy or not. The law takes its course regardless of your opinions. So if you want abortion (and birth control) to be defined as murder, you will have to bite the bullet and admit that yes, you are willing to punish women with jail terms or even death.

I'll just pray for you, instead.
Posted by: Erin Manning | August 19, 2008 4:09 PM

I will pray for you.
Posted by: Daniel | August 19, 2008 4:27 PM

...and isn't this what BeliefNet should be all about?

BTW, Daniel, what do you think about those New York abortion statistics?

"I'll just pray for you, instead."

physician heal thyself! how arrogant and condescending. and no, your profession to pray for that person isn't sincere, and you know it. that's a put down, and nothing more.

erin, be unequivocal. should the state have the power to absolutely coerce pregnancy at all stages of gestation? that is the issue. mewling pitifully about late term abortions or babies being half born and being executed is bluster; casey already defines the point of viability as the time when restrictions may be placed on abortion.

i don't care if you consider a blastula or morula or zygote a full person. i want to know if you think THE GOVERNMENT should have the power to force a women to stay pregnant against her will - yes or no?

i await your vascillating, heavily qualified, whiny non-answer.

"I'll pray for you" really does come off like the Christian version of "Go f... yourself."

The state isn't telling a woman what she can do with her body. We're proposing that the state set the limits for what a woman can do with someone else's body.

For the last time. Until the fetus is viable, it is the woman's body. It isn't "someone else's body." The fetus cannot exist without the lifeblood and body of the woman. Telling a woman she can't end a pregnancy is the state telling a woman what she can do with her own body. It is policing the doctor's office and the health care of the woman.

We can talk about the immorality of abortion. We can talk about the atrocity of abortion. But the denial on the part of pro-lifers that there is an actual woman involved here who is being denied the right to make decisions about her own body is the frustration.

Pro-lifers could gain a lot of good will in these discussions if they would acknowledge that a woman exists in this equation, that there is a moral and policy quandry with telling women they can't have a medical procedure, and that the threat to a woman's autonomy is a significant interest in this equation.

The "human life" would not, and cannot, exist absent the body of the woman. Therefore, denying the woman has even some liberty interest in her own body is an astonishing statement and prevents good will discussions on the policy concerns over criminalizing abortion.

Well, anonymous coward, my sincerity about praying for Daniel is very real. I've already asked others to join me in praying for him and for all so called "pro-choice" Catholics so they won't imperil their immortal souls by the grave evil they support with their words and actions. Daniel's a fellow Catholic, who supposedly accepts the same faith I do and tries to live according to it; I wouldn't engage in some insincere, passive-aggressive offer to pray for someone. It's not my style.

And as to your question: yes. Yes, I would support the government forcing a woman not to kill her unborn child. And up to the recent past all decent civilized Christian people would have totally agreed with me. It's only in our modern age, which enshrines Sex Without Consequences! as its only and overriding civic value that we pit a mother against her child, and tell her it's just fine and dandy to kill the son of a....And we mean it, don't we, in every sense of the phrase.

Daniel has no clue how utterly sexist he sounds. Women are, to him, such delicate, fragile flowers that their whole "health" depends on their unfettered ability to have their unborn children dismembered and labeled "medical waste". How heroic of him, to champion this gruesome "right" so no woman--and no man (let's not call them "fathers") ever has to deal with the inconvenient reality that sex causes pregnancy.

It's rich to be accused of sexism by someone who wants the state to tell women what health care decisions they can make and is willing to call in the police to stop women from making a decision on their own about their own body and who barely acknowledges that there is an actual, human female person involved in the equation.

Erin thinks that women lack the moral and intellectual decision making needed to make health care decisions and therefore needs the police and the state to step in as the paternalistic watchdog. I trust women and their moral reasoning. Calling in the police to monitor the doctor's office and take away a woman's right to make moral decisions is an affront to such trust.

quote: "But the denial on the part of pro-lifers that there is an actual woman involved here who is being denied the right to make decisions about her own body is the frustration."

Uh, you do realize that pro-lifers see women who have abortions as victims too don't you? Pro-life groups sponsor all kinds of groups for women dealing with the long-term emotional trauma that often comes after women having abortion. I find it interesting that pro-choice people like to accuse pro-lifers of "not caring about babies after they are born" (from what goes on in my church alone I can tell you that is a baloney). The irony is that pro-choice folks don't see to care about women after they have abortion. After all, they are not exactly supportive of recovery groups for women who have abortions and are very resistant to any discussions of the negative psychological impact that abortion often (not always, but often) has.

quote: "Pro-lifers could gain a lot of good will in these discussions if they would acknowledge that a woman exists in this equation, that there is a moral and policy quandry with telling women they can't have a medical procedure, and that the threat to a woman's autonomy is a significant interest in this equation."

Except they do acknowledge that women exist in this equation. See my comments above for a concrete example. And one can't just do whatever one wants with ones' body under our current laws. Try using that defense before a judge if you are put on trial for illegal drug use and see how far it gets you. Straight to jail. Finally, as usual, you continue to dance around what abortion really is with euphemisms such as "medical procedure." Abortion is murder plain and simply and is no more and ordinary "medical procedure" than were the experiments of Dr. Mengele.
To answer Karen's earlier question, this in my view is part of the reason that pro-lifers aren't eager to send women who have had abortions to jail. Yes, they have killed their child. But many women are pressured into abortions and/or are abandoned/not supported by the the men who impregnate them and don't want to be a man and take responsibility for their child. Abortion is a huge enabler of male sexual irresponsibility after all.
To further comment on Karen's question, if abortion was criminalized, I wouldn't go after women who have abortions. For one, they are often (but not always) victims too. Second, for the moment abortion is so widespread that it would be impractical and impossible for the justice system to prosecute the over 1 million women a year who have an abortion in the country. Granted, if abortion were criminalized, that number would certainly fall, and if and when legal and social views of abortion changed for the positive, perhaps women who continued to have abortions should be prosecuted. Nonetheless, in the event this country regains its moral sanity and criminializes abortion, I would certainly go after abortionists first. After all, they kill thousands upon thousands of children for money. They are much, much worse than hit men and are akin to war criminals in places like Rwanda or Bosnia. Abortionists need to be given life sentences with no possibility of parole in maximum security prisons. Of course, putting abortionists in prison and shutting down the abortion industry complex would greatly reduce abortions in this nation and change all kinds of things (sexual behavior, attitudes towards relationships, etc.) for the good.
So no, there isn't any cognitive dissonance on the pro-life side. The pro-choice side has got already got the market cornered on that.

rr

Erin, would you support the government forcing a woman to give birth to a child conceived through rape?

John E., would you tell someone who was the result of rape that he/she ought to have been killed?

Daniel, you're apparently arguing in favor of outlawing abortion after viability. I'm surprised--I thought you supported all abortion through all nine months of pregnancy for whatever reason a mother has to kill the child. I'm glad to know you'd oppose it after viability.

For me, the fact that the child depends on her mother makes it *more* important to protect her, not less. The mother, after all, had the chance to avoid pregnancy. It isn't the child's fault that she exists, is it? Do you think it's appropriate to permit the killing of children just because their mothers are bad decision-makers in the realm of sexual responsibility?

Devil's advocate here.

It's got different DNA. It's not her body. It's not a part of her body. It may have started its life in a test tube, outside her body. It's someone else living inside her body. It's not her property - it's her child - and she has exactly the same parental rights and responsibilities as the parent of a newborn.

Tapeworms have different DNA than their host. They are not the host's body. They are not a part of the host's body.

Eric W, I have no moral problem with the killing of tapeworms. Cut 'em up, suction 'em out, poison them, whatever.

I do have a problem doing any of the above to humans, regardless of their age or condition of dependency. I guess I think the powerless unborn ought to be protected, even if it means the powerful, privileged born occasionally have to be inconvenienced for a time period of not more than nine months.

Daniel, opposing the killing of innocent humans wasn't solely the teaching of the Vatican, last time I checked.

You never mind when the Vatican says we shouldn't be at war with Iraq, or that we should respect the environment--but you have a moral blind spot on abortion that I can't fathom.

Why do you think it's fine to kill children in the womb? What makes you think women should have this life-and-death power over their powerless voiceless offspring, or that all of us would even want it? Kind of ironic that I'm the one opposing abortion and you're the one insisting I should have access to it, don't you think? But I insist on the right to life for all women, born and unborn (and men too, of course), while you're the one who only values the powerful, already-born humans.

Ahh, Daniel. Interesting that that's the question that made you angry.

I'm praying. I think you know why.

John E., would you tell someone who was the result of rape that he/she ought to have been killed?
Posted by: Erin Manning | August 19, 2008 9:20 PM

Straw man and intellectually dishonest to boot - there is no 'ought to' involved. My opinion is that the woman should have the option of aborting or give birth to the rapist's progeny.

I'll ask the question again - would you support the government forcing a woman to give birth to a child conceived through rape?

quote: "If the Israelites could by God's orders and via murder expel the Canaanites from the land, then a woman should have the right to expel a rapist's seed from her body."

So does God likewise order women to kill their children when said children were the product of a rape? If not, what gives them the "right" to kill their children? Also, when did infanticide became a "right" in the US Constitution?

rr

rr, is it really the case that you believe that a woman should be required, by force of law, to give birth to her rapist's child?

Thank you for your reply Erin.

You think a woman should be forced by law to give birth to her rapist's child.

Erin, let's take the case where the raped woman doesn't want your love, sympathy, or support - she justs wants an abortion and not to be forced to gestate and give birth to her rapist's child.

You would say that's just too bad for her, she has to do it anyway?

As usual, "way to go, Erin." You rock.

Pro-aborts just don't get it. It's a baby. A human being - regardless of whether or not she was conceived by a crime.

John E,

Do you think honor killings are wrong? You seem to be endorsing a form of honor or vengeance killing in saying that rape victims should be allowed to kill their children. Rape is horrible and I agree with Erin about throwing the book at rapists. But abortion is horrible too as it is murder. Two wrongs don't make a right.

rr

McCain was not 'too concrete'.
An answer is is the resolution of a person's thinking.
The predications belong in subsequent discussion.

Otherwise, good article.

Regards;

I'm sorry, but I simply must post again as I contemplate the vistas opened up by Erin's imaginative suggestions: In addition, I think that the NRA should be recruited to arm rape victims and help them qualify for concealed-carry licenses; I think states with strict gun-control laws should have waivers for rape victims . . . .

So, at just about every church in the land, Sunday morning services would be attended by gun-carrying children and former children, armed to the teeth lest the priest or minister make another move on them. Well, it would certainly add an edge to the eucharistic ceremonies. I like it . . . I think . . . .

Saint Augustine believed that abortion of a "fetus animatus", a fetus with human limbs and shape, was murder. But his beliefs on earlier-stage abortion were similar to Aristotle's, which basically said life begins at birth or very late in pregnancy, not conception.

In 1140 A.D. the monk John Gratian completed the Concordia discordantium canonum (Harmony of Contradictory Laws) which became the first authoritative collection of Canon law accepted by the Church. In accordance with ancient scholars, it concluded the moral crime of early abortion was not equivalent to that of homicide.

In 1200 A.D. Pope Innocent III wrote that when "quickening" (movement in the womb) occurred, abortion was homicide. Before that, abortion was considered a less serious sin.

In 1591 Pope Gregory XIV decreed that prior to 116 days (~17 weeks), Church penalties would not be any stricter than local penalties, which varied from country to country.

Clearly, much thought, even Catholic thought, saw distinctions between early and late-stage abortion, even in the distant past. Certainly, all saw it as wrong, but also saw shades of gray in there. I don't think people who disagree with me are cowards, or insincere, or hypocritical. I think they've looked at the very complex facts, and gave it their best thinking to date, and came to a different conclusion. The back and forth vilification hasn't moved this debate anywhere yet...I doubt it will tomorrow either.

Posted by: JPL | August 19, 2008 7:04 PM

Thanks for that, JPL, it gives a little perspective. I don't think this issue is a clear-cut as the two sides of the debate make it out to be. Not every human has a right to life, in practice, even if they might ethically and morally.

As far as the example of the rapist's child? I honestly don't think I could do it, go to full term and give birth to such a child. How would you answer people's questions about it? How could you face the very visible and absolutely unhideable reminder of what had been done to you? Even putting the child up for adoption, a closed adoption would be tough, because he or she would probably eventually find out the truth. Maybe it's just some very old tribal psychological thing going on here, but "death before dishonor" for some reason pops into my head. Again, I'm just putting this very personally. Maybe I would feel differently if this actually happened to me. Perhaps after contemplating on the new life within, I'd press forward for its sake. I don't know. I just find it difficult to imagine going through with such a pregnancy. The very concept boggles the mind.

What Saddleback did for me is that it caused me to re-evaluate Rick Warren. I had seen him as an evangelical with a heart for the poor and hurting. That changed when he laughed at John McCain's five million dollar remark and didn't pursue it.

Also, in regard to the 'cone of silence' charade, I expected Warren to say, "I did announce a cone of silence, and I was wrong. I don't think anybody cheated, but I made a mistake and I admit it." Instead, he used words like "lie," etc. He was defensive.

So, in a sense, I agree with you. I didn't learn anything new about Obama or McCain, but I learned a lot new about Rick Warren.