A tale of two abortion doctors

How do some people not consider this murder?

Lord, have mercy!

Lesley, at the end of the story, also ends up not being an abortion doctor, although she hadn't abandoned her pro-"choice" views.

You would think the former East Bloc countries would move away from abortion-on-demand simply beause of declining population. Apparently this hasn't happened so far, except in Ceausecu's Romania. Remember the horrible orphanzages there?

If there is to be change in this area, it may well be in the human heart, not court cases or legislation.

And to think we just elected the most pro-abortion president ever that will champion for more abortions around the world. And many pro-life people elected him...how sad. I hope many read this great article-thanks Rod for standing up for life! Showing Silent Scream to several youth groups really shaped their belief system and saved several young ladies from aborting that I know about.

Ron

One could just email the article to the President-elect. he hasn't given up his crackberry yet.

"Influenced by Aristotle, Thomas wrote that human life begins forty days after fertilization,"

A lot of you guys seem to believe that identical twins don't have souls, since identical twins develop from the same fertilized egg. I can't for a minute believe that life begins at conception. That doesn't mean I'm in favor of abortion, but there's a reason Thomas has been read for hundreds of years and commenters to blog posts likely won't be.

I, too, am moved by descriptions of abortion, and by the women who choose to have them.

Let me save some of the regulars some time --

sigaliris: "My rights! My rights! My rights! Snark! Snark! Snark!"

Daniel: "I'm a good Catholic! I'm pro-abortion! I'm a good Catholic! I'm pro-abortion!"

Jillian: "I hate Christians! I hate God! I hate Christians! I hate God!"

No, we don't screw them. We cook them! Get it right!

sputter grumble sputter grumble sputter grumble

"P.O.C." .... ugh. It seems so clear to me that these and similar terms (e.g. "liquidate cranial contents" instead of "suck out the brains" -- I don't have jargon quite right, but you get the idea) are so clearly euphemisms whose only purpose is to deaden the sympathies of abortionists by misdescribing what happens in abortions -- this seems so obvious I'm always a little surprised the serious pro-choice people actually use words like that.

Also, 48,000?! Is that really possible?

"A lot of you guys seem to believe that identical twins don't have souls, since identical twins develop from the same fertilized egg."

Gee, I've never heard that one, but there's someone out there who'll say juts about anything.

Since the soul in immaterial, it has an immaterial source; the egg doesn't qualify.

"The word "abortionist" is a trigger word that informs your reader both of what side you're on, and of your feelings about the opposite side. It immediately switches the brains of all sides to "partisan mode" and shuts down all possibility of engagement - its only use is to either "rally the base" or to infuriate the opponent."

Man, that's some funny stuff right there!

It is what it is, and calling an abortionist and abortionist is required in any rational discussion of the issue.

Heaven forfend that one must be reminded of what one champions.

Max: "Gee, I've never heard that one, but there's someone out there who'll say juts about anything."

It seems you completely missed Robert's point. Until gastrulation (15-18 days), the fertilised egg can still develop into either one foetus or two (or more) identical foetuses. Therefore, if you believe in the soul as a nonmaterial entity, there are only three possibilities:

1. The fertilised egg has one soul, which has the possibility to divide into two at gastrulation. I'm pretty sure that the idea of souls dividing into two is heretical for Christians.

2. The fertilised egg has two souls, which coexist until the point of division. Or, perhaps, there is an extra soul in heaven, waiting for the point of division. Now, I can't speak for you, but these possibilities strike me as absurd.

3. The fertilised egg does not have a soul, until at least after gastrulation.

Rombald,

Got it. Thanks.

Re: To expand Robert's point, it is at gastrulation, after 2-3 weeks, that the embryo ceases to be capable of division.

I'd be perfcetly OK with setting the metphysical "Uniquely human" point there. That would still make all abortions a taking of a person's life since a pregnancy does not make itself known until some time later than that point.

Max Schadenfreude,

Regarding your defense of the word "abortionist", you are being flippant. Neither of us believes that the word is used in a neutral way. It is generally used by people opposed to abortion to describe anyone who supports abortion rights. Even if, in this context, it is used to describe a medical practitioner, the term is permanently tainted and cannot be used in a neutral manner.

As for why I want compromise? I don't see pro-lifers as permanently defeated, I see the whole fight as permanently stalemated, and its a stalemate that drains too much energy from both sides and that divides people unnecessarily. I'm attracted to crunchy-con style communitarianism, anti-consumerism, and food culture, that's why I read this blog, even though I'm a center-left atheist. As I see it, the abortion issue pre-empts fruitful political cooperation on the aforementioned issues, even though there is clearly so much ground for said cooperation. This is why I want compromise.

Max: "Jon, seems reasonable, but it seems to forget the "morning after" pill, and indeed "The Pill" itself, which are abortifacients."

Yes, that's the point with me, really, and why, although I see myself as prolife, I can't go down your road. You would ban the pill and the coil. Do you really (I mean really) consider a woman who is on the pill for a year to be morally equivalent to a Nazi who murdered hundreds of people in the gas chambers? Do you think all fertile, sexually active women should be imprisoned in maximally implantation-facilitating institutions, to prevent involuntary manslaughter?

On a wider level, I would like more discussion as to how to actually reduce the abortion rate. I suspect that will not happen, because, at least in the Anglosphere, practicable anti-abortion policies would cut across the lines in the culture war. I mean that, on the one hand, the legal cut-off line should be decreased (the USA, which has the strongest prolife movement, also has a horrifically high time limit), and abortions should be made more difficult to obtain, but, on the other hand, there should be a welfare net for pregnant women, ready availability of contraceptives, and solid sex education (including both the biological facts, and the principle that chastity is legitimate and feasbile - the just-say-no crowd does have a point there).

I rather suspect, Max, having seen the way you have spoken to Sigaliris about this issue recently, that you are not really interested in it for humanitarian reasons, but because it is a stick with which to beat feminists, atheists, liberals, the modern world, women in general, or whoever you place in your particular Dantean circles. Of course, I might be wrong.

A pregnant woman develops a serious health issue. The pregnancy (i.e., the presence of the developing child in her uterus) is directly contributing to the degradation of the health condition. If the pregnancy continues her doctor says there is a better than 90% chance of losing both the child and the mother. If the pregnancy is terminated (i.e., the child in the womb intentionally killed) there is a better than 90% chance that the life of the mother can be saved.

Her husband and three other children stand before you, and she is in the hospital bed next to them. Should this woman be able to have a doctor terminate the pregnancy (kill the unborn child)?

"And for left-right cooperation, yes, I do mean "crunchy" issues. Or how about restricting our imperialist tendencies?"

Did I catch an "-ist" in there? lol.

RJohnson,

Apologies. You were not refering specifically to ectopic pregnancies, but rather a rather vague "health condition".

Regardless, in such matters the principle to which I refered should hold in such cases.

What I find fascinating here is how Dr. Adasevic has a vision of St. Thomas Aquinas (that most Catholic of all Western Saints, after "Blessed" - aka "Saint" - Augustine..) and then returns to his childhood Orthodoxy..

I know too many Orthodox who disdain Aquinas (one of the progenitors of "Western Rationalism" or "Spiritual Positivism") - Some of the same people who would have us believe that Western apparitions at places like Fatima or Lourdes are of diabolical provenance.

It reminds me of how the teenaged daughter of an Orthodox priest came up to me at coffee hour after liturgy once, and gave me a passage in a book of stories about Saint Seraphim of Sarov to read- Where St. Seraphim tells of a vision he had of St. Francis (a western counterpart very similar to St. Seraphim in his love for animals and nature) who told him that Orthodoxy was the true Church, and Rome was wrong.

[She was hilarious, by the way - always jibing me, and making of fun of me for being Catholic.. Once, on Forgiveness Sunday she came up to me, and instead of coming up, prostrating herself, and saying "Forgive me, my brother in Christ" like she was supposed to, she said "Forgive me, my *almost* brother in Christ.." Good times. Yessir, Good times..]

What I find really funny about this story is that St. Francis is noted for his being the first ever person to receive the Stigmata - And this at a relatively late date, the 13th Century.. Which incidentally is when the Schism really began to jell [The Crusaders had sacked Constantinople in 1204, which many would say is the moment the split became irrevocable - and Boniface VIII finally defined papal spiritual supremacy in it's most strident terms ever in 1302 ..]

To my knowledge, stigmata are unheard of in the East.. So, it always make me wonder, when the Orthodox deny the orthodoxy of Rome, what they would have the origin of such Western miracles as stigmata, Eucharistic miracles, incorruptibility of corpses such as that of Pope John XXIII (whose body I saw in St. Peter's, yesterday.. Looks as if he's only been dead a day, instead of 40+ years..) what they would have the source of these phenomena to be??

All of these sorts of things, including St. Francis' stigmata (like those of others, such as Padre Pio, who only died in 1968) must be either 1.) miraculous or 2.) a hoax or 3.) of diabolical origin..

So, the fact that St. Seraphim purportedly saw St. Francis in a vision
has always since fascinated me, and made me wonder.

Just as Dr. Adasevic's vision does.. Very curious, very curious indeed..

I wonder what Fr. Karbo's daughter would say about it..?

And what about you, Rod? What say you?

Mike F.
I realize that the terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" irritate both sides, by implying that one is either "anti-life" or "anti-choice", which both sides feel is an unfair skewing of the argument. How about "pro-abortion" or "anti-abortion"? Unambiguous, and without the editorializing.

Pro-choice people are not pro-abortion. That's just dumb.

If you want to actually name the groups without any subjectivity, divide them by what they are actually arguing for: There is a pro-outlawing-abortion side and anti-outlawing-abortion side.

Max Schadenfreude
Ah, no. But an abortificient is an abortificient. Not liking the fact doesn't make it not so.

And neither the pill nor the morning after pill have ever been demonstrated to be abortificients. Claiming they are is, well, lying.

The reason the pro-life pretends they are is so that easily lead followers can tricked into arguing against the most efficient form of birth control. (While, ironically, results in more abortions, not less.)

This is because, like it or not, no matter how 'pure' the motives of the pro-life movement is, you guys need to realize that the people leading from the rear and pointing out the direction, are actually, and have always been, anti-contraceptive. And that is because they are anti-women.

RJohnson:
In every case I have known like this (and I have known people in this spot, although they had 1 or 2 children already, not 3), the drs. have been able to hospitalize the mom and treat her until the baby can be delivered prematurely. A crappy and stressful situation, but still one that can be dealt with. Actually, in one of the cases, the mom did not need hospitalization, just bedrest, and eventually she carried the baby full-term with no lasting effects. Perinatologists tend to give the worst case scenario, because they can be sued to high heaven for anything else.

I know this may not answer your imaginary scenario; but I have seen no cases in real life where the baby was going to survive and the delivery could not be postponed til 24 weeks. 24 weeks is just not that long.

Interesting that Dr. Adasevic has nightmares about Aquinas. So have I. Of course, mine come from the required reading list of Jesuit theological pulp fiction and not from a foray into papaya pulp surgery.

Anyway, I note two points about Aquinas. One, he based his forty day "hominization" theory on the biology of his time. Two, he said that if the Magisterium were to decide otherwise, then he would submit to the Magisterium. (In those bygone times, this was always a useful tactic to avoid an embarrassing and painful public pre-mortem cremation.)

Times have changed somewhat since the heyday of Scholasticism. I note two points about the vicissitudes of time. One, biology has improved and continues to improve. Two, the infallibility of the Magisterium is now a divinely revealed dogma, duly voted and passed at the First Vatican Council and signed into law by Pio Nono himself.

But there is a fly in the ecclesiastical unguent. I note two points about extreme unguents. One, why is biology an element in a theological dispute? Theologians used to confine themselves to indefinables like "person", "nature", "substance", "hypostasis", "being", "homoousios", "homoiousios". Life was simpler when the race was ignorant. Two, if the pope is infallible and superior to a general council, the pope can decree the dogma of infallibility null and void or so restrict its scope that Metropolitan Jonah will be lobbying gleefully for a cardinal's galero.

Let us cease fighting the Thirty-Five Years war over Roe v. Wade with ineffectual biological and theological armaments and put our minds to the far more crucial question of papal infallibility. Who knows, we might even get an invitation to coffee and canolis with Joe Ratzinger and his good friend Hans Küng.

The "mother's health" vs. the "baby's life" is a false dilemma in the age of modern medicine.

In the few cases where it truly exists, and the baby must be removed, why not do so humanely (c-section--I've had more than one, so yes, I know what they're like), instead of drawing and quartering it alive? And with the age of fetal viability growing ever-earlier (thanks to medical advances), such cases are probably almost non-existent in the western world.

Old Susan, there is a gay pro-life movement: www.plagal.org

Maybe I missed it, but has anyone here who's objected to the term "abortionist" offered an alternative? What's the proper term, in your view? Thanks.

Susan: "I don't know what this means exactly, except maybe that people tend to have an agenda in this area they may not be articulating for us. "

Yes, I do think abortion is an issue that attracts people who have other agendas. The most obvious ones are:
Conservative Christians: I often wonder whether they're really working out their grudge against modernity, secularism and/or the sexual revolution.
Liberal male heterosexuals: They generally strike me as being concerned mainly with facilitating their own sexual desires.

People who say of an entire class of people "They generally strike me as (insert pejorative description)" generally strike me as morons.

As to the main blog post - MEDICINE IS ICKY! OH NOES!

My point in bringing up this scenario is to try to determine what, if any, common ground exists. An argument often heard from the pro-life community is that the pro-choicers are unwilling to compromise. This argument is also thrown back at pro-lifers by the pro-choice community.

Perhaps it is truly futile, but I was hoping to find out if the pro-life advocates here felt that any law should have an exception for the life or physical health of the mother. Pre-Roe most state laws had such an exception. If Roe is struck down, or if further restrictions on abortion are to be considered, should they include physical health and life exemptions?

All of these sorts of things, including St. Francis' stigmata (like those of others, such as Padre Pio, who only died in 1968) must be either 1.) miraculous or 2.) a hoax or 3.) of diabolical origin.

So, the fact that St. Seraphim purportedly saw St. Francis in a vision has always since fascinated me, and made me wonder. Just as Dr. Adasevic's vision does.. Very curious, very curious indeed..
I wonder what Fr. Karbo's daughter would say about it..? And what about you, Rod? What say you?

About the only thing I can say for sure about any of this is that I don't think I have any place deciding where and how God can act through His people -- Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant. Or, for that matter, through non-Christians. Who was the modern Pope who said that we (meaning Roman Catholics) know where the Church is (for him, in its fullness within Roman Catholicism); but we don't know where the Church isn't -- meaning that the Holy Spirit is not limited in His miraculous and mysterious actions to communicants of the Church.

Bottom line: I think Padre Pio (for example) was a saint and a staretz. And I don't feel the least bit compromised in my Orthodoxy for saying so, even though there's no way that the Orthodox Church will elevate a Roman Catholic to the altar. I doubt that informed Catholics would doubt the sanctity of St. Seraphim of Sarov, even though he couldn't be elevated to the altar in Roman Catholicism.

Oh this whole "abortionist" argument is so duplicitous it makes my eyes hurt. You use a term as a slur that implies that the target is part of some nefarious ideology, then expect the people that term is aimed at to use it and like it, otherwise they're "ashamed" of what the term denotes.

Right.

Besides, there are no doctors who do nothing but abortions. There are gynecologists / gynecological surgeons who perform abortions, among other things, and the nurses that help them, and calling them "abortionists" is just a way to emphasize this "evil" thing they do. You don't call a general surgeon an "appendicist" because they remove appendixes.

Why I'm taking the time to deconstruct a jr. high level taunt masquerading as an argument, I'm not sure.

Rod: ... why shouldn't a doctor who performs abortions be called an abortionist? It's a neutral term ...

It is apparently not all that neutral since it seems to be generating quite a bit of heat.

Medical specialties are designated not by the procedures performed by the practitioners but rather by the parts of the body the practice on. "Abortionist" is therefore an anomalous term. Further it is another hermaphroditic mutant. Even chiropodists have a fancy Greek name for their art.

I would suggest the terms "paedectomologist" for the specialist, and "paedectomy" for the successful outcome and "paedotomy" for the botched version of the procedure.

Why did St. Thomas wait to appear until after 48,000 procedures?

Why does he not appear to all medical students and doctors? Politicians?

Why do not saints or angels appear to all women with crisis pregnancies?

Any ideas? Or does this come down to the "mysterious ways" argument, which seems generally to function by shutting down probes into the inconsistencies of such claims?

"What's the proper term, in your view?"

Doctor?"

Right, "doctor" as in doctors such as Dr. Mengele. By the way, Dr. Mengele did perform illegal abortions in Argentina in the 1950s. That's little surprise considering his "medical" activities in the mid 1940s.

rr

elizabeth: Why did St. Thomas wait to appear until after 48,000 procedures?

Sounds like a joke. Punch line: he's been busy with the Second Part of the Supplement to the Third Part of the Summa?

Come to think of it, other than that Serbian abortionist, there have been scant Thomistic apparitions. Of course, Serbia is just down the road apiece from Medjugorje. Slivovitz country, you know.

"Sounds like a joke. Punch line: he's been busy with the Second Part of the Supplement to the Third Part of the Summa?"

Now that's funny!

Discussions of this sort would go better if we weren't constantly confronted with the 11-year-old raped and pregnant by her father or grandfather (or both maybe), the pregnant mother of twenty children who will DIE DIE DIE THIS INSTANT unless she aborts immediately, the ectopic pregnancy about to rupture, the anacephalic unborn baby, all that jazz.

The overwhelming proportion of abortions are performed on women of legal age, who were not raped, there is nothing "wrong" with the baby, they just don't want to have a baby right now, for whatever reason. They are not sacrificing to save their lives and the lives of their other children, they do not face madness seeing the face of the rapist in the newborn, all that stuff.

And as for ectopic pregnancies and babies who are developing without a brain, when does common sense kick in? (Answer: it doesn't.) A pregnancy implanted in a tube is doomed, so let's doom the mother too, great idea, right? Especially if she already has other children? The anacephalic baby will die at birth or very shortly thereafter. So let's carry the pregnancy to term....why? To make everyone involved as miserable as possible, especially the mother?

Just being "pro-life" doesn't absolve you from making sense.

"Discussions of this sort would go better if we weren't constantly confronted with the 11-year-old raped and pregnant by her father or grandfather (or both maybe), the pregnant mother of twenty children who will DIE DIE DIE THIS INSTANT unless she aborts immediately, the ectopic pregnancy about to rupture, the anacephalic unborn baby, all that jazz."

But in the no-hold barred world of abortion rights, these situations do matter. While most Americans support abortion rights with restrictions, there are absolutists--including many people who post here--who want a complete bar on abortions no matter the situation. That's the GOP party position, supporting a complete ban without even a rape, incest, or life exception.

So the extremists on both sides force us to talk about the extremes.

I'm getting confused, maybe you-all can straighten me out.

You have to understand that I was born in 1945, and that I actually remember the presidency of Harry Truman.

I was taught back in the day that a "conservative" is someone who prefers to keep order by social restraint and other non-governmental means when possible, and who resorts to State power only as a last option. I was further taught that a "liberal" is someone who wants to use the State for every and any purpose.

I'd like to introduce a distinction into this abortion discussion which I have tirelessly urged in the (unrelated) gay rights area, to wit, the distinction between private morality and State policy. There's the State, which is charged with keeping order, which might arguably be served by recognizing same sex marriage. Then there's the Moral Right of the Thing, upon which opinions vary.

But I find myself opposed in the gay marriage area, oddly, by self-proclaimed "conservatives" who are anxious to use the power of the State to further their own private moral agenda. Odd.

The reach of the State is limited. Perhaps we pro-lifers, while recognizing the moral right of every unborn child to life, can also recognize that there are limits to what the State can do about this as a practical matter.

The exception for the "health" of the mother has worked out to, "well, I don't want the baby and if I have to have it I'll be displeased, so I should be able to have a legal abortion." In other words, an exception that swallows up the rule. On the other hand, whereas I personally think it is murder to abort a child who is the result of rape (the child, after all, is innocent) it may not be possible or desirable to mobilize the armed power of the State behind my opinion, just as it may not be wise to mobilize the State behind the idea that there's something wrong with same-sex marriage.

That's what the church is for.

I'm suggesting that the hoary old principle that the State is here as a last resort, to do what it can when it can, but not to impose private morality on everyone, may serve us well in this context.

I think the State can and should prohibit the dismemberment and "abortion" of an eight-month or full-term baby. My opinion, but I think most people agree. I think that while I personally deplore abortions at two months gestational age, as a practical matter there is no way to enforce my opinion. We could start with that kind of discussion.

But that assumes that while of course I think I am morally right (that's what the word "opinion" MEANS) I don't think I can or should impose my views on everyone, and also assumes that the pregnant woman cannot just have whatever she wants whenever she wants it any more than anyone else can, views which are abhorrent alike to the liberal and conservative totalitarian mentality.

OK, Mrs. Toad, I totally agree about the eleven-year-old.

But.....what if he were only 10? Then it's OK? 9? 2? A newborn? Where's the line? A newborn, after all, is, in your terms, "absolutely dependent on the mother (or someone) to survive," so it's OK to do away with him, if some "greater good" can thus be served?

See however my post on the distinction between morals and laws.

____________________

IT SAYS MY POST HAS BEEN SAVED IF ITS EATEN IT BECAUSE THE LITTLE LETTERS HAVE EXPIRED BUT IT LIES, IT ONLY SAVED THE FIRST PARAGRAPH.

Seriously. This is not rocket science. Beliefnet has the most incompetent programmers in the business, I could do it better myself.

SAVE EVERYTHING BEFORE POSTING.

Conversation with my biology-major daughter when she was in college:

-- Dad, if I were at a party and got raped and got pregnant, would you force me to have the baby?

-- Absolutely. That is a human person and you just have to accept it whether you like it or not. You will have to quit college and bring up the child. We will help you but it's your responsibility. It's God's will.

-- Dad, a blastocyst is not a human person. And if I do get raped, I'm having an abortion and I just wont tell you about it.

-- I'm glad you've learned to think for yourself. Of course, you will burn in hell in that case. You'll be excommunicated from the Church.

-- No I won't. I'll go to confession and then do a rosary and get a plenary indulgence.

-- (My wife's voice from the kitchen) Will you two stop discussing theology and help me with the dinner?

A sad story.

Back in the day, which for our purposes here is 1970, my closest friend became pregnant by accident. She was married, had two small children already, and they were swimming in money, but she decided for a variety of reasons not to have the baby. So she got an abortion, under the "I'll be unhappy if I have this baby" provision. (Having a lot of money helped.)

Their two living children are now 40 and 39, and they have I think six grandchildren, and the family pictures are lovely.

But I know the backstory.

The marriage of my friend has not been a happy one, and that's mostly because she has yearned after more children more than she has exactly yearned after her husband. (I'd point out that SHE, not HE, made the abortion decision.)

Having grandchildren is great.

But the child who was murdered so long ago is the ghost at the feast.

It says in Scripture that God is just. We'd say karma or something, but it's the same thing. Murder will out, they say. This doesn't make up to the murdered child for his or her life. That's up to God. But the revenge? That happens, I guess, by itself.

_________

THERE'S A NEW TRAP! DO NOT BELIEVE THEM WHEN THEY SAY THEY'VE SAVED YOUR TEXT BECAUSE THE CAPTCHA HAS EXPIRED, THEY LIE!!!

MJS, RJohnson, I have been in that pregnancy situation just two years ago: early severe preeclampsia at 20 weeks, blood pressure rising uncontrollably on maximum meds, kidneys and liver beginning to fail, muscle breaking down and adding to kidney injury, red blood cells breaking down, platelets being used up (both hemorrhage and ischemic injury waiting to happen) and being told by my doctors that I would not live another four weeks to give my baby any chance at all. My husband with me and four children at home. I lost my father when I was 11 and did not want to leave my children without a mother. I was afraid to die. I still wonder if I should have died with my baby. I feel like I let her go in a hurricane so I could swim.____It was a Catholic hospital. Our priest came in. The US Bishops say that induction of labor is permissible in preeclampsia threatening the mother's life, even if the baby dies, because the intent is not to kill the baby

RJohnson: "So you would support the idea that any anti-abortion laws should provide for exceptions in the case of the life and/or physical health of the mother?"

I actually knew a family this happened to. It was some horrible RH antibody/incompatibility between mother and child. She was hospitalized and the baby was delivered as soon as it became viable. He is now a healthy 11-year old. Should he have been killed? He is her only child; she can no longer have any. My point was that there are other ways to extricate an unborn child from his/her mother than drawing and quartering, or having his brains sucked out. After a certain point, YOU CAN TAKE THE BABY OUT WITHOUT KILLING IT. Or, you can extricate it before viability in a way that causes as little suffering as possible, and make the unborn child comfortable before death. My point is that abortion is not the only solution. I would go so far as to say that it is probably almost never the only solution.

As for the laws, the United States has the world's most permissive abortion laws. Not only that, we have a highly vocal minority who argues that these laws must be maintained at this degree of permissiveness forever, or women will be disempowered.

RJohnson, to answer your question: there is no danger of a Latin-American style anti-abortion regime in this country, and I personally wouldn't want that. I do wish, however, that people who advocate for completely unrestricted abortion at any point in a woman's pregnancy realized what brutality they are sometimes advocating; and I do wish people would wake up to the fact that abortion hurts women as well as unborn children.

Rod, I want to thank you for so kindly responding to my earlier post on some of the issues (those miracles) dividing Rome and Orthodoxy.

Like Roland de Chanson (in his earlier post,) I too think that the most important thing (even apart from tragedies like abortion) facing the Church - Orthodox and Catholic - is the Schism.

We must be unified. Other ("protestant") Christians may not appreciate this at all, but the Church must be visibly united. As Paul says there is but "One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism; One God and Father of All, Who is over All and through All and in All." (Ephesians 4:3-6) And again, "In Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others." (Romans 12:5.)

This illegitimate division cannot persist.

What Roland (and many other Catholics) may not appreciate, is that it is not merely the claim to infallibility that is a significant obstacle.

I have been too long among the Orthodox, and prayed far too many Orthodox liturgies. The cultural divide is hugely significant. Catholics need to understand that the liturgy (as well as many other things such as the the fast and observing feasts, and things like Augustinian soteriology, and Scholastic rationalism like that of St. Thomas Aquinas) need to be addressed, too.

I could hold forth for pages on all of this. I will conclude here by simply stating that Rome's claims to infallibility are utterly anachronistic when read back upon the history of the First Millennium [See for example the documents of the 6th Ecumenical Council - about 10 or 12 pages, single spaced] - That does not necessarily mean they are invalid, only that Catholics need to immerse themselves in our common history (the very "ressourcement" that the Second Vatican Council has called us all to) so as to understand with greater compassion and subtlety the issues involved.

See Henri de Lubac, and other major influences on that Council (such as our beloved Benedict XVI) for even more food for spirit and thought.

That we may all be One. As we are commanded. As the Creed itself says, the Church is Catholic, which is to say Universal, and Ecumenical (in the Greek sense of Οικουμένη, Oikumene - Anywhere, in space and time, that there are Christians, there is the Church.)

Because we are not all to be "Roman" Catholics, But Orthodox Catholics.

Again, thank you Rod. I know how roundly you were abused when you converted. Just know that there is one Catholic out here that appreciates what you and your family did, and admires you for it. You are, and have been, in my prayers.

I will remember you at the tomb of St. Nicholas on the 6th.

"Discussions of this sort would go better if we weren't constantly confronted with the 11-year-old raped and pregnant by her father or grandfather (or both maybe), the pregnant mother of twenty children who will DIE DIE DIE THIS INSTANT unless she aborts immediately, the ectopic pregnancy about to rupture, the anacephalic unborn baby, all that jazz."

Yes, it would be nice if life were a bit neater. It would even be better if there were NO unwanted/dangerous pregnancies. Unfortunately these things happen. The question that pro-life advocates need to answer is do they accommodate these tough situations or do they hold to what is called a "hard line" position?

"And as for ectopic pregnancies and babies who are developing without a brain, when does common sense kick in? (Answer: it doesn't.) A pregnancy implanted in a tube is doomed, so let's doom the mother too, great idea, right? Especially if she already has other children? The anacephalic baby will die at birth or very shortly thereafter. So let's carry the pregnancy to term....why? To make everyone involved as miserable as possible, especially the mother?"

Common sense...how I so wish it would prevail on both sides in this argument. Unfortunately it is absent in far too many cases. For example, many pro-life advocates who hold to the "hard line" position admit the same thing you admit...that these instances of life and physical health are quite rare. It would seem that if they were rare we should simply acknowledge that the sometimes do happen, make provision for them, and seek to save the vast bulk of children who are aborted for non-medical reasons. As many such arguments have shown in the past, this does not happen.

Common ground means that neither side gets a perfect solution. In the scenario I put forward the hard-liners would be left with explaining to the husband and remaining children why their mother died...not because the doctors did not know how to save her, but because the law did not allow them.

Charles Curtis,

Yes, I agree with the points that you make in your post. A small caveat - you're right there is a cultural divide, but it is by no means insurmountable. The Eastern Rite Catholic churches testify to that. I think Ratzinger is trying to mute the stridency of the "papal claims" with his emphasis on "collegiality." He probably harbors deep doubts about infallibility himself; Hans Küng remains not only a friend and colleague but a priest in good standing though he was barred from teaching Catholic theology (by Wojtyla) because of his writings on infallibility.

I don't want to derail Rod's thread here either (though I suspect the heat has begun to eclipse the light) - maybe he could start another one sometime on unification issues. One talking point might be Bishop Hilarion's recently having taken Benedict to task for tampering with the Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jews. The Orthodox know tradition and Tradition, and the sacrosanct nature of the Liturgy as a vehicle of revelation, as the Romans do not anymore since the Reformation redux of Vatican II. Timothy Ware had a thorough analysis of the stumbling blocks to unification in his The Orthodox Church, a book which I first read when I was thinking about converting myself.

Note to Max:
The Pill is NOT an abortifacient, under normal use*. You are repeating a piece of disinformation put out by people with a radical agenda who would like to bamboozle the pro-Life movement with blatant lies into accepting their agenda. Of coyerse sincet hat agenda (the elimination of contraception) is solidly rejected by the public, the result would be to wreck the pro-Life movement instead.
The normal action of the Pill is to prevent ovulation. In very rare cases it can prevent implantation, but then so can hot baths, vigorous exercize and too much garlic (among many other things). We aren't about to ban hot tubs, biking or Italian bistros so I wouldsuggestt that the Pill should also pass moral muster (if your only objection to it is on the grounds of abortion).

I am of course speaking about birth control pills, not RU-485, "the mroning after pill".

Thanks for this post, Mr Drehrer.

At college, a close friend of mine told me she had an abortion. I had learned that this was the taking of a life in school - and your post actually makes this more real in an emotional sense, despite it not being an emotional post. But I must admit that when confronted with a grown-up person who I cared about a great deal, I had neither the heart not the stomach to do anything except listen, and let her talk. Would I have said anything if I had known before? I don't know: she was neither a Christian, nor from a majority-Christian country, but was more gentle and warm-hearted than many who wear that term on their sleeve; she would have no support from a husband, and her employment prospects would be drastically curtailed.

There are a few fundamental issues that Christians will have to face up to, in order to reduce abortions if not eliminate them:

1. It is no good in simply believing that everyone will have some sort of road-to-damascus religious experience, no matter how much Jesus-talk (it may close doors even further); how do you plan to convince people who aren't particularly religious in your way?
2. Unmarried mothers and their babies do not live on spirit alone; if you want to reduce abortions, you are going to have to be willing to provide some kind of material support for mothers in crisis, not just prayers and pity;
3. With the exception of writing such as that above, it is very, very difficult to get across to many people, how the life of the fully-formed personality of the mother - already in the world - and affecting you, is of exact equivalence to the potential personality and partially-formed life-form hidden inside of that person, separated from the rest of the world and to be brought into it free-gratis of her effort; although this may be theologically clear, in common sense experience it is not (necessarily), and attempts to force-feed this to people intellectually only makes you look like cold-blooded Vulcans;
4. Dr. Ruth, the sexologist, refuses to counsel well-off people who use abortion as a lazy-substitute for contraception; sooner or later you may have to choose whether you want to advance your strategic goals of reducing abortions in the profane world of tactics and politics, or whether you prefer the rareified pleasures of alienating absolutely everyone else in the pursuit of ideological purity;
5. Even though I think abortion is barbaric (and even more so after reading the above post), I would find it highly unlikely that I would have the stomach or the nerve to physically restrain a pregnant woman (like my friend) from an abortion. If there was a noticeable bump, I might be willing to restrain a pregnant woman from a dangerous course of action to her baby. I have no philosophical justification for this; it is all emotion and gut feelings, with a bit of rationalisation thrown in as an afterthought. Nonetheless this is the truth, and one probably many others would be sympathetic to. Given that, I don't see that I have any right to authorise the State - or its agents such as the police - to do to other women, wives and daughters on my behalf, that which I wouldn't be willing to do myself.

That I have come to believe that women should have the power to decide on abortion within a limited time from conception, is not the same as believing that there is a right to abortion. (If you insist on an analogy, the best I can come up with is Jury Nullification.)

Jillian: "I hate Christians! I hate God! I hate Christians! I hate God!"

Oh dear! You're still so bitter, 'Augustus'. It's amazing, however, how completely you can remind me of the specific problems I (and the Bible) have with your personal versions of those two things in so few words.

Actually, I was going to suggest that the antichoice activists make and hand out lots of copies of this and other kinds of abortiporn. Carrying around big pictures of abortuses in public might also do the trick. Lapel pins, wallet photos, pinup posters, refrigerator magnets, shower curtains, bumper stickers, billboards, coffee table books, magazines, video tapes and DVDs of a couple dozen abortions, abortion experience anthologies...whatever it takes. Hand them out for free in public places, send them as advertising mail, advertise on TV. Talk to your neighbors and give them lots of material to contemplate. Before you know it you'll have the whole country convinced!

Roland,
I rather agree with you about the Novus Ordo (other than I see no reason the Roman Catholic litury should not be done in the vernacular language of the congregation. God is no more fluent in Latin than in any other language). Vatican II changed things it should have left alone and kept things it should have changed or dumped.

That said, charity (in the broadest sense) can never be optional for the Christian Church. If a given liturgical verse is offensive to others and not essential to the order (as, for example, the Epiclesis is) then for charity's sake (not political correctness) we ought consider letting it go. Again, we do not want to create stumbling blocks, nor set ourselves up as latter-day Pharisees, obsessed with the minutiae of the letter while ignoring the spirit.

Ugh...up in the middle of the night...can't sleep...read this sad saga...

I had a wonderful family practice doctor care for me during my very difficult 4th pregnancy. I will never forget her listening for the heartbeat at 11 weeks and saying,"Come on,baby, where are you?" She left the military and established an abortion clinic in the N AK town I lived in at that time because she felt it was her duty to make abortion available to a large populace who had no access to it. Words fail me. I cannot describe the sense of shock and loss I felt knowing this lovely young woman who referred to my fetus as a baby was going to spend her life providng abortion.

This article has helped me understand the thought process she must have gone through. It doesn't make it any easier but it helps me understand what her motivation was. I guess she was really pro-choice, because she supported my choice to have the baby despite the horrible suffering I was going through. She never once suggested abortion to me. Probably she was judging her audience, knowing DH worked for the RCC.

I think, like gay marriage, abortion is here to stay and we need to do all we can to help reduce it, to help mothers who are deciding about it. To pray. Prayer is so powerful I am always reminded of this when I read stories of great saints like Seraphim and St. Terese, who did nothing but pray and look at how much they accomplished compared to the average believer!

This was a very weird piece. The author spends a lot of time highlighting the young doctor's inquisitive nature and thoughtfulness, then ends the article with "oh and she decided it's not for her..."

Well, what did she decide to do? That's such an important part of this conversation. How did the learning process affect her decision making, and where did she ultimately decide she would be better off?

The overall tone of the piece was rough. "count the parts..." is a phrase I will never forget. The role of medicine in abortion is indeed complex, and I feel for doctors on both sides of the spectrum. There is much we could learn from their perspective.

It was good to see that the hosptial turned away the woman with a 6-month old baby though. Obama would let her have the abortion if he had his weay...

It was good to see that the hosptial turned away the woman with a 6-month old baby though. Obama would let her have the abortion if he had his weay....

FOCA says that a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy is absolute only up to the point of viability.

From FOCA: The term `viability' means that stage of pregnancy when, in the best medical judgment of the attending physician based on the particular medical facts of the case before the physician, there is a reasonable likelihood of the sustained survival of the fetus outside of the woman.

Here's FOCA if you want to read it. It's short: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.2020:

Mrs. T