Tag Archives: Pro-Choice

Commentary

What did the early church fathers think about abortion?

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Unborn baby scheming about early church traditions
Unborn baby scheming about early church traditions

This is from Birds of the Air. (H/T Neil Simpson)

Summary:

Recently I came across a reading of the Didache. “The what?” you may ask. The Didache is a book written somewhere in the first or second century. For a long time it was up for consideration as Scripture. It was believed to be the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. Eventually it was agreed that the book was an excellent book, but not inspired Scripture. So I was pleased to be able to download this admirable book containing good teachings from the early Church fathers.

The book seemed to be largely a lot of quotes from Scripture. You’ll learn the basic rules of Christianity — “First, you shall love God who made you; second, love your neighbor as yourself.” You’ll learn that “grave sins” are forbidden, like adultery, murder, fornication, and so on. (They specifically include pederasty in the list.) There are instructions regarding teachers, prophets, Christian assembly, and so on. Lots of the normal, good stuff. But, since this was written sometime prior to 200 AD, I was somewhat surprised at this instruction: “You shall not murder a child by abortion” (Didache, Ch 2).

Honestly, there is no real factual disagreement on abortion. People justify killing the weak the same way as they always do – because the weak are in their way and they are stronger and can get away with it. The politically correct jibber-jabber about “choice” is just to make them (the man and the woman) feel good afterward. Really, abortion is just selfishness taken to the nth degree – you create another human being by recreational sex (fun) and then you kill them in order to avoid have to take responsibility for that new life. It’s like going out and getting drunk then getting behind the wheel of a car and killing someone with the car. It may not be what they intended to do, but it was their decisions that led up to it. They’re responsible. But they don’t want to face the natural consequences of their own actions, and they are willing to do the most heinous crime imaginable in order to do so. Sex makes babies. If you can’t welcome a baby into the world, don’t have sex. I don’t. And the chance of getting a woman pregnant is of the reasons why. (One of the others is that I don’t want to hurt a woman by leaving her after sex – which is why I believe in married sex. I don’t want to hurt anyone, most of all babies.

Given the pro-life practices of the early church, I find it hard to understand how people can think that fornicating (pre-marital sex) and abortion are OK. We were not like that then, and we shouldn’t be like that now. Sex was not a recreational activity then, and it is not a recreational activity now.

Learn about the pro-life case

News

Should it be illegal to coerce a woman to have an abortion?

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Rod Bruinooge
Rod Bruinooge

Story from Life Site News. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

The vote on the Canadian bill seeking to criminalize abortion coercion, which was initially pushed back to February, is now set for December 15th.

The bill, called “Roxanne’s Law,” is named after Roxanne Fernando, a Manitoba woman whose boyfriend attempted to coerce her to have an abortion after she became pregnant in 2007.  After refusing to have the unborn child killed, Roxanne was beaten and left to die in a snow bank.

It was introduced in April as a private members bill by Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge (Winnipeg South), who serves as chair of the parliamentary pro-life caucus.  It is opposed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who says he “will oppose any attempt to create a new abortion law.”

The bill, also known as C-510, received its first hour of debate on November 1st.  “No pregnant woman should ever have to choose between protecting herself and protecting her baby,” Bruinooge told the House of Commons.

It will receive a second hour of debate on December 13th.

The bill has gained wide support among religious and pro-life organizations, including the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, the Canadian Bishops’ Catholic Organization for Life and Family, and Priests for Life, among numerous others.

Conservative prime minister (Stephen Harper) has committed to not changing abortion law at all while he has a minority government, probably because he feels he doesn’t have a mandate to do that since he never campaigned to do that. However, this law is so sensible and moderate, I have to think that he should allow a free vote on the issue, and let the social conservatives see that they have a home in the federal Conservative Party. This measure is so moderate that it would be difficult to see how anyone could be against it.

The latest poll has the Conservatives at 33.3% support, and the socialist Liberals at 27.1% support, and the communist NDP at 16.6%. To get a majority, the Conservatives have to be north of 40%. Canada is still a very liberal country.

UPDATE: Mary writes:

I agree that they should allow a free vote on the issue. It’s something that even the pro-choice side should support – provided they’re really pro-choice…

This is actually really important. There need to be repercussions to coercing a woman into abortion. It could save a lot of lives. Most abortions are not wanted and many are coerced. Read this to see just how bad it is: http://www.theunchoice.com/pdf/FactSheets/ForcedAbortions.pdf

And:

In the US context, listen to this recording of the testimony of a woman was coerced into an abortion by Planned Parenthood and hear how they try to shut her up when she wants to tell them why PP is not worthy of taxpayer funding:

News

Court says nurse who was forced to perform late-term abortion can’t sue

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Story here from LifeSiteNews. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

Today the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Catholic nurse who was forced by a New York hospital to participate in an abortion does not have the right to sue her employer.

Administrators at Mt. Sinai Hospital had threatened Catherine DeCarlo with disciplinary measures in May 2009 if she did not honor a last-minute summons to assist in a scheduled late-term abortion. The hospital insisted on her participation in the procedure on the grounds that it was an “emergency.”

Lawyers for DeCarlo, however, have pointed out that the procedure was not classified by the hospital as an emergency, and the patient was apparently not in crisis at the time of the surgery.

DeCarlo claims that her participation in the abortion led to serious emotional trauma. She also claims that hospital administrators later attempted to coerce her into signing an agreement to participate in abortions in the future.

The hospital had reportedly known of the Catholic nurse’s religious objections to abortion since 2004.

Alliance Defence Fund (ADF) attorneys had filed two suits in the case – one federal, filed in July 2009, and another state, filed earlier this year. The federal suit claimed that Mt. Sinai ignored federal laws prohibiting coercion while receiving hundred of millions of dollars in federal funding.

In January the case was dismissed by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, at which point it was appealed to the Second Circuit.

However, in today’s ruling the court found that there is no right to private action or private remedy under the statue cited by DeCarlo in her suit – the so-called “Church Amendment.”  (Read the decision here.)

That amendment protects health care workers working for federally-funded entities from being discriminated against because they refused to perform abortions on religious or conscience grounds.

In other news, pro-abortion nutter attacks pro-life display with metal pipe and gets arrested when he turns to attack pro-lifers, too. Hey – anti-life is pro-violence. That’s their view.

Sorry if blogging is a little light lately. I am having fun reading Mary’s frequent debates on Facebook. It’s really fun!