Dude, I have always found it weird how the same people who are all for "smaller government" are the same people who think that the government should be allowed to monitor the relationship between doctor and patient and interfere with the decisions made therein. The only way to legally enforce an anti-abortion law, would be to know what is going on inside of a woman's uterus, and the government doesn't belong there.
That's one of my favorite arguments, but I got a whole stack of 'em right here!
But that one's easy to answer. Government is there to protect the weaker citizens from the stronger. So, ideally, even in a "radically smaller" government, a company knowingly selling poisoned food is punished (and where possible, prevented from selling it in the first place.) A man who abuses his wife and children is kept away from them, and potentially from everyone else, unless and until he is rehabilitated. The unborn are clearly the most defenseless possible members of society, so it's not incongruent for the government to be allowed or encouraged to prevent harm to them.
I once knew a fundamentalist Christian who thought abortion was a good thing because it sent the fetus's souls straight to heaven. Forgive my ignorance, but I was wondering what the Catholic position is on this? Fetus goes to heaven? Purgatory? What about babies that die in the womb from natural causes?
The girl was kind of crazy though, so I don't think she speaks for the majority of Christians. She thought the poor didn't deserve health care, because if god wanted them to have it, he'd give them the money to get it. That doesn't sound like what the New Testament says!
long answer go!cheyinkaJanuary 23 2009, 21:24:26 UTC
The official Catholic position is "we don't know what happens to those under the age of reason who die unbaptized"; that is to say, anyone under the age of 7 and anyone who never reaches a mental age of 7. The older assumption was that they'd go to Limbo, which was a place of perfect natural happiness but not spiritual happiness (or unhappiness, for that matter - it wasn't thought of as a bad place, just not as good as Heaven). The newer assumption is that since God can do anything, he's not restricted to saving someone through baptism, so we can reasonably hope that his mercy make it possible for those who never had the chance to want baptism before they died to be saved anyway, and so they'll be in Heaven, having never committed any sins
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"In a perfect world, no one would ever have an abortion. But until we have a world free of rape, poverty, and injustice--for starters--we work with what we've got." That only works if a human who is not yet born is not worthy of protection. If that's not the case, then the attempted solution to injustice is in fact perpetuating more injustice.
This is an insoluble intellectual divide. Those who believe abortion is murder in the first degree are of course appalled by it. Those who see the rights of those already born as paramount are generally more inclined to view abortion as a necessary evil. Impossible to change the other side's mind.
As for injustice, perhaps I wasn't clear--I don't consider abortion a mechanism of justice; if anything, its very existence is a reflection of how rampant injustice is in our world. (E.g. forced abortion in China.) Hence the somewhat clumsy "pro-reproductive-justice" rather than "pro-abortion" or even "pro-choice."
People on both sides of the debate tell themselves a story about the woman who goes for an abortion. Those who believe that abortion should be legal envision a woman who was raped or who had a shit-head boyfriend who refused to use condoms or a mother with three children already who simply cannot afford to bring another child into the family. In all of these cases, the woman is a victim of circumstances, a powerless pawn in the hands of others, and this is one way she can take control and make a good decision for her life
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That's one of my favorite arguments, but I got a whole stack of 'em right here!
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The girl was kind of crazy though, so I don't think she speaks for the majority of Christians. She thought the poor didn't deserve health care, because if god wanted them to have it, he'd give them the money to get it. That doesn't sound like what the New Testament says!
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As for injustice, perhaps I wasn't clear--I don't consider abortion a mechanism of justice; if anything, its very existence is a reflection of how rampant injustice is in our world. (E.g. forced abortion in China.) Hence the somewhat clumsy "pro-reproductive-justice" rather than "pro-abortion" or even "pro-choice."
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As for it not being a mechanism of justice - if it has to be legal because of injustice, what else is it?
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