Wicked Vatters
Rape is used as a weapon of war. Cath Elliot thinks bishops and their churches ought to ponder that fact a little more deeply.
What the bishop and his church fail to understand is that forcing a woman to continue with a pregnancy against her will is a continuation of the violence against her. It doesn’t matter how much empathy and support is on offer, at the end of the day it is the woman, not the church, who is faced with the reality of an unwanted child…When they occur as part of an armed conflict, forced pregnancy and forced maternity are regarded as war crimes and are breaches of the Geneva convention.
But no matter – there’s always someone around to give them a nice soothing pat, so that’s all right then.
Why should Amnesty now leave its traditional focus and take up a position supporting abortion? It is not a hands-on welfare body dealing with cases on the ground. Those women who have suffered the horror and indignity of rape will not be short of pastoral care from a range of humanitarian groups.
So no problem about forcing them to carry and bear a child implanted in them by their attacker. They won’t be short of pastoral care, so that takes care of that.
Unborn children also have human rights. In a country like ours, in which almost 200,000 unborn growing children are killed every year, there should be a debate about abortion. It has to be and is a very serious moral issue, not just for Catholics.
There are no ‘unborn children’; there’s no such thing as an unborn child; mawkish language-manipulation is no substitute for argument. Notice the bluntness where it serves the purpose and the triple mawkish denialism where it suits that purpose – unborn growing children are killed. No; foetuses are aborted; not the same thing as killing growing children. If it’s such a serious moral issue, then address it seriously, not with tricks.
And it’s not all that serious anyway. It’s worked up, rather than serious. A serious moral issue is what happens to women and girls in DRC and Darfur, not what happens to foetuses. Get your priorities straight.
But with the Vatican’s example at hand, how can Catholics get their priorities straight?
The gravity of the problem comes from the fact that in certain cases, perhaps in quite a considerable number of cases, by denying abortion one endangers important values to which it is normal to attach great value, and which may sometimes even seem to have priority. We do not deny these very great difficulties. It may be a serious question of health, sometimes of life or death, for the mother…We proclaim only that none of these reasons can ever objectively confer the right to dispose of another’s life, even when that life is only beginning.
Even if it’s a question of life or death for the mother. She has no right to choose her own life over that of an embryo or a foetus. Furthermore –
The movement for the emancipation of women, insofar as it seeks essentially to free them from all unjust discrimination, is on perfectly sound ground…But one cannot change nature. Nor can one exempt women, any more than men, from what nature demands of them.
Really? What if nature demands of them that they get infected by a virus or a bacterium, and die? Can one not exempt women, or men, from that demand? Do all Catholics abstain from all medical treatment? What if nature demands of them that they be cold because it’s cold, or wet because it’s raining, or hungry because there’s no food nearby? In other words what a stupid smug selective sonorous bit of claptrap. Tell that to the women in the Democratic Republic of Congo gang-raped by a bunch of soldiers – tell them that’s nature’s demand and that no one can exempt them from it. Then go empty the Vatican’s bank account to fund hospitals in DRC to repair all the fistulas that leave the women incontinent and stinking and shunned by their families and friends.
“Every year 80,000 women across the world die as a result of unsafe abortion.” Yet, most notably, [and irrespective of these unnecessary tragedies] the Roman Catholic Church, is still calling for the condemnation of abortion. It is also not before time that Amnesty has taken the new position of supporting vulnerable women who are in need of abortions.
The women of the Democratic Republic of Congo need people like you OB to shout for them.
The law: It is currently illegal for anyone to have an abortion in Eire. However, the law does allow pregnant women to receive counselling and information about all their options. Some anti-abortion campaign groups have been known to masquerade as counselling services. How despicable. Most women travel to England where it is legal to have an abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. Eire definitely needs to urgently debate the ‘abortion issue’ but as was discussed a long while ago on this very site, the Irish TD’s will not touch the subject with a barge pole. It is more than their political jobs are worth.
Before I even got to OB’s post about it, these news items inspired an angry feminist rant – linked for your amusement.
The fact that the phrase unborn child is used by anti abortion zealots to describe a foetus O.B. is no reason to deny that a foetus is an unborn child,if it isnt what on earth is it?
It is a fetus. Nothing more, nothing less.
You see, there’s already a perfectly good word to describe an organism at that stage of life. If it doesn’t have the emotional connotations you want to invoke, too bad.
I want to invoke nothing dzd,I just ask what is a foetus if not an unborn child?
Just what is a human if not an undeceased corpse?
Well, someone who acts to kill a child or FETUS one contraction before it is born, is not much different to someone who waits until its out and kills it then.
My youngest child cried out while only his head was born, his body still to come. Would that count as a born child, subject to the protection of laws against infanticide, or was he just a FETUS to be killed to the pc morality police? I have been part of four live births, one life-threating miscarriage and one young person’s sensible decision to terminate, and the implied guideline in comments above seems to me wrong.
BTW I am pro-choice, to the extent of thinking there should be no laws interfering with people’s free decisions on this matter.
But here it seems that some kind of savage moral superiority is being assigned to those who support freedom to extinguish a life until a technical ‘moment of birth’.
Morally, this cannot stop there.
The position we accepted in the 1970s was that first-trimester abortion should be the woman’s uncoerced choice, with medical reasons valid and the woman’s life paramount for all later stages. This became the law with the approval of most of my country, over the formal disagreement of a substantial partly Christian minority. There was no Roe vs Wade type judicial fiat in England or Australia; the law moved after people accepted a change in principle, and well after general practises had already changed.
Now it seems that ideological purity has bid the first-trimester baseline up. Are women next made free to escape poverty and oppression by leaving a one-month-old baby exposed to snowy weather? How about if the FETUS is a girl and the mother wants a boy, is that adequate reason to terminate as the contractions get stronger? I submit that you can’t have purity and stop at that point, because real cases are to be decided and they always go further.
Slippery slopes are not imaginary; the moving goalpost for free decision to terminate since 1970, from a tiny fetus to a complete, healthy one in the process of live birth proves that.
Seems to me that these women in war zones need access to good facilities, including terminations, and preferably immediately, without waiting to start an ideological stoush with the pope.
Damn, I was WRONG; I was not involved in four live births, but five; but ah can’t remember teh first!
Abortion: Taken from the Vatican website. 2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person – among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.71 Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.72 my frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.73 2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion.
This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law: You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.74 God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.75 2272 Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offence. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. “A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae,
“76 “by the very commission of the offense,”77 and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law.78
The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society. 2273 The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation: “The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority.
These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin.
Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being’s right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death.”79 “The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law.
When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined
As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child’s rights.”80 2274 Since it must be treated from conception as a person, the embryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed, as far as possible, like any other human being. Prenatal diagnosis is morally licit, “if it respects the life and integrity of the embryo and the human foetus and is directed toward its safe guarding or healing as an individual.
It is gravely opposed to the moral law when this is done with the thought of possibly inducing an abortion, depending upon the results: a diagnosis must not be the equivalent of a death sentence.”81 2275 “One must hold as licit procedures carried out on the human embryo which respect the life and integrity of the embryo and do not involve disproportionate risks for it, but are directed toward its healing the improvement of its condition of health, or its individual survival.”82 “It is immoral to produce human embryos intended for exploitation as disposable biological material.”83 “Certain attempts to influence chromosomal or genetic inheritance are not therapeutic but are aimed at producing human beings selected according to sex or other predetermined qualities.
Such manipulations are contrary to the personal dignity of the human being and his integrity and identity”84 which are unique and unrepeatable.
At least it was good to see that Bruce Kent (used to have some respect for the man, lost it a fair while back when he seemed to “rediscover” his dogmatic supernaturalism) got a damn fine intellectual spanking in the comments that followed.
Some small evidence (a straw to clutch at?) that suggests the Grauniad’s readers – well, at least the on-line lot – are smarter than those who run the damn thing?
“Because the Catholic Church as an institution has never considered, does not now consider, and almost certainly never will consider women to be fully human – a perspective it shares with an overwhelming majority of Christian, Muslim, and Hindu religious sects, as well as the more conservative branches of Judaism.”
It speaks for itself…
“From the first moment of “his” existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person
“God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to “men” the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves.
I note that “he” calls itself a “she”
“The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed,”
Where are the “she’s” to be found in the Church? Yeah, you have it…in the background doing all the dirty work. They are manipulated by the “he’s” of the Church who take all the glory and run the whole shebang.
“Nor can one exempt women, any more than men, from what nature demands of them.”
A point not picked up on I think is that it is not the Abrahamic god demanding here but nature.
Any godite want to enlighten on this, has god delegated responsibility to nature? Or has this never actually been god’s area of responsibilty?
Or could it just be that the statement, “Nor can one exempt women, any more than men, from what God demands of them” would be laughed to scorn, even by many an otherwise convicted godite?
“Nor can one exempt women, any more than men, from what nature demands of them.”
A point not picked up on I think is that it is not the Abrahamic god demanding here but nature.
Any godite want to enlighten on this, has god delegated responsibility to nature? Or has this never actually been god’s area of responsibilty?
Or could it just be that the statement, “Nor can one exempt women, any more than men, from what God demands of them” would be laughed to scorn, even by many an otherwise convicted godite?
Uhm, ChrisPer, who are you getting all hot under the collar at? Really? No one here (or anywhere that I’ve seen) is advocating last-second abortions, nor are there any doctors who will perform them. Pointing out that referring to ALL fetuses as “unborn children” is emotionally exploitive rhetoric does not make one an advocate of killing any and every womb resident on a whim. It is simply pointing out the BULLSHIT of the “blastocysts are people too” position of the anti-abortion movement.
I haven’t run into any of this extremist pro-abortion “ideological purity” you are frothing about, but even if someone takes an extreme position against any abortion legislation whatsoever, maybe this is their reasoning: Who is in the best position to decide where to draw the line on any given later-in-the-term abortion? A woman and her medical professionals, with full awareness of all the health concerns in the case – or a bunch of men in suits passing a law that will necessarily cover all women in all circumstances? Not every moral question lines up perfectly with a legal question. Some things would be wrong for anyone to do, but it would still be wrong to legislate against them.
I was recently involved in a debate on another blog (PP) about the growing trend in some Asian countries to abort female fetuses. A lot of angles were covered, but always from the point that this was a self-evidently Bad Thing.
Someone pointed out that we were mostly self-identified as pro-choice, but when we perceived the reasons for that choice as being regressive we started using different terms, such as ‘foeticide’ and unconciously shifting aspects of our argument. I felt it was a valid point, and one I could not satisfactorily answer.
Interestingly, Islam seems to have a more liberal approach than catholicism. It holds that abortion should be avoided but is not forbidden, that a fetus has ‘human’ status only after it ‘quickens’ (can be felt to move) and that ultimately the issue is one for physicians and parents, not scholars. Of course, there may be other schools of thought but that struck me as not unreasonable.
Ah, why not go the whole hog and campaign for the rights of ‘unfertilised children’….
By such perverse logic, rape would be not a horrendous crime, but a life giving act.
Strangely, even catholic apologists draw the line somewhere.
@ Don: “Foeticide”? Really? Huh. Strange rhetorical maneuver. I would think most people would have enough sense to see that a culture’s valuing male children over female children so excessively as to encourage abortion is pretty much a completely different issue from the abortion debate as such. After all, this problem is much older than abortion availability: Even now, there’s significant evidence that the skewed sex ratio in China (and parts of India) is as much due to subtle infanticide through the neglect of daughters’ nutrition and health as to abortion.
The fact that the devaluation and oppression of women can have very different results in different places – the anti-abortion movement in the U.S., excessive abortion, neglect and infanticide of female children in China – is no great surprise. Anyone who would get tangled up in this probably isn’t seeing that the two phenomena have the same root cause – treating women as brood mares.
And incidentally, the current standard Islamic position on this issue (ensoulment happens when the child “quickens” in the womb) is exactly the same stand taken by the Catholic Church for centuries, until quite recently. I can’t recall how recently, though…
[Goes off to Google, comes back.]
The doctrine of ensoulment at conception only dates from the middle of the 19th century, and early term abortion was not considered sinful before then. The doctrine was ostensibly changed for a particularly obscure and typically inane theological reason, although I find it curious that it changed at about the same time when medicine and surgery was becoming professionalized to a degree that abortion was conceivable as a safe medical treatment. I found the following relevant paragraph in this article about the ethics of in vitro fertilization:
“In regard to IVF research the absolute moral values referred to by Cardinal Hume consist of two claims; first that the fetus is entitled to the full rights of human personhood from the moment of conception, and second that all issues concerning life and death lie in the sole prerogative of God. The first claim is actually rather hard to sustain on the basis of either biblical revelation or long ecclesiastical tradition. The dominant biblical view is that life commences only when the breath enters the nostrils for only then does the man or woman become “a living being”. <13> Hence for the Bible a fetus is not a person, and the bringing about of a miscarriage is not homicide.<14> Likewise for most of the Christian centuries the Church took the view that personhood, characteristically referred to as “ensoulment,” did not occur until the mother felt the child “quicken” in her womb at the end of the first trimester. Consequently St. Augustine , St. Jerome and St. Thomas Aquinas all insisted that early abortion could not be classed as homicide,<15> and by implication still less could the destruction of an embryo in the process of IVF research. The Roman Catholic Church only began to claim that personhood went back to conception in 1869 when Pope Pius IX recognised this was an implication of his earlier proclamation of the Immaculate Conception of Mary in 1854 in which he had declared her immune from original sin from “the first instant of her conception”.<16> This of course requires us to suppose that her personhood can be traced back to that moment. What this does show however is that the notion of personhood having its origin at conception is not a belief that goes back to the beginning of Christianity, but is simply the opinion of a nineteenth century Pope – and one which goes against the unanimous teaching of all the Church Fathers and Schoolmen.”
Not that I give a rat’s ass about the opinion of any self-proclaimed authority on the will of an imaginary God…
‘Not that I give a rat’s ass …’
Well, obviously. Nor do I, but it’s engrossing to examine the knots they can tie.
But as for:
‘I would think most people would have enough sense to see that a culture’s valuing male children over female children so excessively as to encourage abortion is pretty much a completely different issue from the abortion debate as such.’
I don’t see how that’s obvious. ‘…a culture’s valuing x over y so excessively as to encourage abortion…’ is not a completely different issue. As such.
“Uhm, ChrisPer, who are you getting all hot under the collar at? Really?”
Terminological framing by dzd ‘fetus’ not ‘unborn child’ denies the individual in question his/her humanity, for some ideological . Definitions are contested, because the frameworks behind them are ideologically incompatible; but Richard’s use of the term ‘unborn child’ is in line with everyday language, and denying it seemed to me deligitimising our normal conception of the value of a human for ideological reasons.
Exactly cris not only are liberals required to support abortion it is also required that terms must be used that nuetralise the meaning of the practice. I believe in legal abortion but i also wont shy away from terms that describe what it is infantacide!
*Ahem* abortion is not infanticide, because infanticide is a very specific thing, to wit “the killing of a newly or recently born child”:
[http://research.lawyers.com/glossary/infanticide.html].
Your notion that ‘liberals’ are ‘required to support abortion’ is specious. I, as a ‘liberal’, if you like, do not ‘support abortion’. I would be very happy if no woman, ever, had one. But I do abhor the alternatives, which are, inter alia, forcible detention of ‘suspect’ pregnant women; rising levels of illegal, unhygienic, ‘backstreet abortions’, and increases in [real] infanticide. I judge legal, safe abortion of non-viable fetuses to be immensely preferable to a society in which any of these might prevail.
If it makes you feel better I do thereby rule out the possibility, which in practical terms is little more than a reductio ad absurdum, and ought to be acknowledged as such, of the termination of viable fetuses. No sane, moral person [in my judgment], except one possibly trying to make some kind of extreme ideological point [and I’ve never heard one], really advocates the killing of those with an actual, contemporary, capacity for independent life.
But I also insist that if sundry religious authorities did not continue to peddle authoritarian bilge concerning their right to dictate the terms of human sexuality, the demand for abortion, under any circumstances, would decline, as women would gain greater control over their own reproductive process, and freer access to safe, effective contraception.
Hope this helps:
I’m a Roman Catholic,
And have been since before I was born,
And the one thing they say about Catholics is:
They’ll take you as soon as you’re warm.
You don’t have to be a six-footer.
You don’t have to have a great brain.
You don’t have to have any clothes on. You’re
A Catholic the moment Dad came,
Because
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
CHILDREN:
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
continued below…
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GIRL:
Let the heathen spill theirs
On the dusty ground.
God shall make them pay for
Each sperm that can’t be found.
CHILDREN:
Every sperm is wanted.
Every sperm is good.
Every sperm is needed
In your neighbourhood.
MUM:
Hindu, Taoist, Mormon,
Spill theirs just anywhere,
But God loves those who treat their
Semen with more care.
MEN:
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
WOMEN:
If a sperm is wasted,…
CHILDREN:
…God get quite irate.
PRIEST:
Every sperm is sacred.
BRIDE and GROOM:
Every sperm is good.
NANNIES:
Every sperm is needed…
CARDINALS:
…In your neighbourhood!
CHILDREN:
Every sperm is useful.
Every sperm is fine.
FUNERAL CORTEGE:
God needs everybody’s.
MOURNER #1:
Mine!
MOURNER #2:
And mine!
CORPSE:
And mine!
NUN:
Let the Pagan spill theirs
O’er mountain, hill, and plain.
HOLY STATUES:
God shall strike them down for
Each sperm that’s spilt in vain.
EVERYONE:
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is good.
Every sperm is needed
In your neighbourhood.
(Monty Python)
“Richard’s use of the term ‘unborn child’ is in line with everyday language”
Nonsense. ‘Unborn child’ is a strictly polemical neologism coined by enemies of abortion rights. Everyday language does of course refer to ‘the baby’ (when it’s a wanted baby) but does it ever refer to ‘the unborn child’? I don’t think so.
“But I also insist that if sundry religious authorities did not continue to peddle authoritarian bilge concerning their right to dictate the terms of human sexuality, the demand for abortion, under any circumstances, would decline, as women would gain greater control over their own reproductive process, and freer access to safe, effective contraception.”
Can I get an “amen”?
The phrase unborn baby might be more acurate than unborn child,though that would still be disputed,to my mind this is an argument that the right cant win the alternative to legal abortion is so horendous that however ever they describe it they will never make more than minor gains, so why shy away from their terms?
“MISS D, the teenager at the centre of a High Court abortion battle with the HSE earlier this year, is pregnant again. The 17-year-old has also revealed she is considering suing the Health Service Executive (HSE) over their handling of her case, which forced her to go to the High Court to be allowed to travel and induce her severely disabled baby.”
Google: Independent.ie Friday September 28 2007… for full story. Today only, as it thereafter goes off-line.
Richard, it’s not a matter of ‘shying away’ from any terms, it’s a matter of insisting on terminological accuracy. I dislike manipulative special vocabulary, and that applies across the board, not just to abortion. Just look at the Fashionable Dictionary and the Dictionary of Euphemisms if you don’t believe me! (I wrote all of the DofE and most of the online FD.)
Bugger!you are right its been a while since I read them,I loved the refer to truth as hegemonic discourse one in wooly reotoric.
Ah the guide to rhetoric – I wrote all of that, too.
A large majority of women now believe the Government should legislate to provide abortion in Ireland, according to an Irish Times /Behaviour & Attitudes poll on women today.
A total of 54 per cent of women believe the Government should act to permit abortion. While support is highest among young and single women, a majority of most age groups favour allowing abortion.
A large majority of women now believe the Government should legislate to provide abortion in Ireland, according to an Irish Times /Behaviour & Attitudes poll on women today.
A total of 54 per cent of women believe the Government should act to permit abortion. While support is highest among young and single women, a majority of most age groups favour allowing abortion.
A large majority of women now believe the Government should legislate to provide abortion in Ireland, according to an Irish Times /Behaviour & Attitudes poll on women today.
A total of 54 per cent of women believe the Government should act to permit abortion. While support is highest among young and single women, a majority of most age groups favour allowing abortion.
ireland.com and the Irish Times
The story is nobtainable after today to those who are not signed up.
Trouble is Marie I would guess that the figure for men is much less hopefull?
Undeniably, Richard, I would unequivocally agree with you that the figure for men would be much less hopeful. Consistently, Irish men are very infrequently to be seen demonstrating outside the Dail, [Irish Parliament] on abortion issues. As are women in their abundance. In other words, they would not be seen dead outside the Dai! In some [a lot, I think] of rural areas throughout the island during Sunday mass men still sit in singularly segregated areas at the back of the chapels. They are also to be seen congregating together outside the chapels. The same behaviour applies in some of the rural, [a lot] dance halls. Even some pubs. These Irish men in all probability have not symbiotically separated from their own mothers, [surrogates] apron strings. So, therefore, in all honesty how can they be expected stand up for abortion issues? They have not got the right grip on women.