Steve Waldman makes the case that a Democratic plan to reduce abortions could do more than the typical Republican strategy -- but that Barack Obama is not on board with this plan. Read Steve's entire post and let us know whether it makes sense to you. Basically, it's about increasing sex education, birth control and welfare incentives to encourage women to keep their unborn children instead of aborting them.
It's obvious why many Catholic and other Christian pro-life activists can't endorse sex ed and birth control distribution, but on the welfare incentives question ... well, let me ask: how did welfare reform affect abortion rates? I honestly don't know. I'd be willing to pay higher taxes to subsidize irresponsible, immoral behavior on the part of single mothers. Better that than that they kill their unborn children. But I know that is not a position many Republicans would take.
One thing Steve writes has always struck me as embarrassingly true about the pro-life movement:
By the way, if you have a hard time believing that the pro-life community, like the pro-choice community, routinely compromises its principles for reasons of political tactics and coalition-building consider this: while they oppose stem cell research, they have not campaigned against fertility treatments which cause the creation and destruction of most human embryos. Why not? Because too many pro-life people have had fertility treatments or because they know that opposing it would turn public opinion against pro life movement.
You cannot be for fertility treatments and against abortion. Well, you can, but you cannot be morally consistent.
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I know I said I was done with this discussion, but rombald's comments have me interested again. R - do you really believe that St. Thomas Aquinas said that masturbation was a more serious crime than rape?
Do you know why or how he explained the immorality of masturbation, and that it was in part based on an incorrect understanding of biology? And that he never said that masturbation was a matter for public authorities to be concerned with?
Do you see any evidence that the Catholic church ever taught or ever held it to be true that masturbation was a crime worse than rape?
People love to dig up obscure and irrelevant comments of some saint from 1000 years ago and say this is why the Church is not credible. I always wonder if they actually truly believe that (and so would be interested in knowing the truth of the matter in order to have that false obstacle to faith removed) or whether they just enjoy finding statements that taken in isolation look absurd and then using them as reasons to justify their contempt for religion (eg - "How can anyone be a Christian when Jesus told them to pluck out their eye if they ever looked lustfully at a woman?? Christians are obviously fools!")
Sally: Aquinas was just "some saint", who made "obscure and irrelevant comments"?
No - the quote was obscure and irrelevant to the discussion. I happen to agree with the way that Aquinas analyzes moral issues, but in order to understand that method you need to do more than pull an obscure quote out of context and make fun of it.
To explain his method would take quite a long time, but I have a feeling that there is no interest in actually understanding what he was driving at. Just making fun of something that one does not understand is a waste of time, and has nothing to do with the topic of this post.
The short answer to how Aquinas could say that masturbation is more immoral than rape is that ONE way of describing how an act is immoral is by looking at the proper end of any inclination (the proper end of the sexual drive is to create families by bringing men and women together in sexual union). Then by asking how a perverted use of that drive differs from the intended end. Rape perverts the sexual drive because it cannot bring the sexual act into conformity with the dignity of the other, does not create a true family, and is a violent perversion of the unity that sex is supposed to promote. But it does share *some* limited conformity with the end of sex in that it does involve some kind of connection with another person.
Masturbation is further removed from the proper end of the sexual drive than rape is- it doesn't unite anyone with another person, it drives people toward isolation rather than toward any interaction with another. So looked at purely from the perspective of "how far does this perversion of the sexual drive take a person from where it is supposed to take one" masturbation is further from the mark than rape.
Does this mean that rape is a less serious crime than masturbation? Of course not. Because another (and more important and weighty) way of assessing the immorality of an action is by looking at the HARM that is done by the act. The harm of rape is exponentially greater than the harm of masturbation on any measure. And harm to others is the criteria used to assess whether an act should be illegal or not. Which is why Catholic nations have always considered rape a crime to be punished and have not held that masturbation is such a crime.
This sketch is obviously inadequate to convey all of the important provisos and depth of the method of moral analysis that is present in Aqiunas, and my sense is that no one really cares about finding out this complexity and depth. They just like to pick out an obscure quote completely out of context and make fun of people. It's a waste of time trying to respond if that's all you are trying to do.
By the way - do you know what sin Thomas Aquinas considered to be the most serious, and why he described it as such?
DavidTC,
Hear, hear. Well said.
I believe that women deserve better than abortion. The problem is, we do not have the neccesary programs (universal health care), nor a strong economy (women are un/underemployed in huge numbers, and feel that they can't afford a baby), or a real safety net for the very disadvantaged (national, manditory paid maternity leave, "welfare" programs, etc.). So women who want to keep their babies, who love their babies, think, "What kind of life can I offer this child?" And they abort out of desperation.
We will never eliminate abortion, just as we will never eliminate lying or murder. Making something illegal doesn't just *poof* make it go away. This is not a perfect world.
But reducing the number of abortions? That can be done. It won't be done by legally restricting abortion, it won't be done by promoting adoption. The only way we can reduce abortions is by reforming our government to be supportive of women, families, and mothers.
Leo et alia
Aquinas also believed in legalized prostitution. (Prostitutes are already "fallen", it keeps the onrier men from deflowering virgins, and it's an alternative to masturbation I suppose) Do you think the nefarious Catholic Church is determined to legalize prostitution everywhere? Do you think many Catholics, when they "catch" their sons, immediately think "I've got to get him a hooker to stop him from doing that"?
Aquinas was not a Pope or an Ecumenical Council.
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