Two Dunblanes a day? Did that really need saying?

[Chirpygirl]

I might regret posting this but although I am anti-abortion for myself, I am pro-choice, I think for some women it is something that is needed and the Cardinal's comments have gone way over the top and more people will be devestated by his comments than supportive.
I know Catholics are anti-abortion, who doesn't? But sometimes I think they could be a little more restrained.

Story here

Well, that's the crux of the abortion debate really, one that is difficult to overcome. One side believes unborn children to be just that, the other side does not.

If you don't believe they are, then the Cardinal's comments will be offensive, but if you believe they are children, you will see his point. Thing is, he wasn't really addressing those who disagreed with him on the broader ideological point, he was talking to people who were supposed to be in good standing with his church.

I have no time for religion because of these kind of issues. As has been said before - who would take any advice on anything from these guys who quite obviously have no idea what goes on in the real world and live with their repressed heads in the clouds?
As Expat has commented, the Angelika Kluk case is another example of the hypicrosy of the church.
A naiive Polish student comes over here to gain money for her studies and to better herself, she thinks she will be safe immersed in a church environment and look what happens - she gets pestered for sex by a grubby 50 year-old repressed Priest and raped and murdered by another guy who works there.
The comments by the congregation of the said church after the event REALLY got me me angry too. One said they wanted the church to open back up as soon as possible with a kind of 'exorcism' service so they could 'get on with their lives', one said 'i didn't know the girl who was murdered so a memorial would mean nothing to me' and the really outrageous one was a parishoner who commented that Father Gerry Nugent was 'one of our own' and everyone else should butt out and let them deal with it.
real compassionate people aren't they?
Christ knows why any of then would still want to follow that religion after that episode anyway...........

I stand corrected on the politicians thing - I misunderstood 'scandal'.

However, I think the Dunblane thing is wrong because I believe a foetus to be a potential human, not a child. A potential human who could find a cure for cancer or spend their life in prison. I think to use children in this kind of argument is a bit like anti-vivisectionists using pictures of bunnies and puppies in their literature.

I think you can argue about the value of a life and when that life starts, but to focus on something as distressing as Dunblane is a cheap argument.

I wouldn't say it's cheap - it does illustrate very well the RC belief about this.

Shocking, and deliberately so? Granted.

A deep problem with the RC view on contraception and abortion is that it's based on obsolete science.
Centuries ago, it was believed that sperm were "seed", and you still find Christians using that term.
A seed is a very tiny, but complete entity that on fertile ground will grow into a viable organism.
Sperms ain't complete, they are not tiny babies.
Women are not passive lumps of mud for seed to grow in. Sperm are "pollen" not seed.

I find it hard to believe that anyone ever believed this, but it was the general view up until the microscope was discovered. Fortunately Christian political power had waned by this point, so no one got tortured or burned for it.

Thus the RCs and many other Christians convinced themselves that a single cell was actually a person.

This is not a basic belief, inherent to Christianity, but the sort of malicious adherence to obsolete ideas you get when those making the rules aren't affected by them.

Thus you can't separate out the official view on abortion from contraception in terms of doctrine.
Many Christians of course adopt "supermarket religion", picking up ideas that attract them and don't cost them too much.
In order to keep their flock, most Churches aren't fighting that, because they would lose, but the RCs are putting up a fight.

However, some reproductive issues aren't even remotely ambiguous, or things made up by misogynist priests.
It is absolutely the case in the Bible that God's will is that women should suffer in childbirth. Genesis, Eve, forbidden fruit, etc.
Christian priests tried enforcing this against anaesthetics when they were invented, and fortunately relatively few women died of hear failure due to extreme pain until they were told to just piss off.

This was of course round two of that fight. Look up why Christians were so keen to burn witches. They were midwives, and the Churches were able to almost wipe them out.

But this is coming back, and you won't like it.

Do you want your 16 year old daughter to be "examined" by the police to see if she might have had an abortion ?

We need 5 years of religion being applied to middle class white people, so that we can get rid of this shit once and for all.

I'd like to discuss this with you DC, but I kind of think it's off-topic for this thread. I've done all the defending of RC doctrine that I have a mind to, tbh. I'm not a Catholic and have no wish to be.

suebaroo, I know not all aborted children are unwanted, my sister had to abort a much wanted child due to health problems so I have seen the pan an abortion can cause, However as edam put it so well, the Dunblane children were children, real alive 5 and 6 year old's that were slaughtered by a nutter in a place where they should have been safe.
They had lives, personality's, were part of a family, and where ever a person stands on the pro choice/pro life debate to compare the two in that way was at best bad taste and at worst plain evil.

I REALLY wish this thread would die

I really hate the phrase he used and really wish I didn't have to keep reading it on active convos

My family evolved from Irish stock. My mother had a friend who was told that if she kept the baby, they would both die.
Clearly heavy hints were dropped that she could get to a civilised country and save her life.

They both died.

The Cardinal is trying to get his religious views put into law. That's not an RC, thing but common to all the large sects. Not sure you can call it a doctrinal issue, since they all seem to want pretty much the same thing.
Non-Christian sects want the same exemptions from the criminal law, and all of them want the ability to have gays, women, and people of other faiths or races banned from state resources they control.
Most religions are pretty much against abortion too, it's just the CoE have given up that fight as unwinnable.

Why do people post to threads saying they wish they'd die? is confused

Kimi, I happy to agree to disagree on this one. The cardinal presumably got the attention he wanted by the use of the phrase in his point. It's not one I would have chosen, but there we are.

DC and others, this thread was not meant to debate abortion, no-one needs or wants to read that, please can you kill this thread?

DC, how about you post a new thread in the religion section. I'm good with discussing it there, if you want.

I read an article where it said "a classroom" a day - and I couldn't help thinking that classes were already too large and where on earth would we put all these children.

Besides it's misleading because not all the aborted pregnancies would go to term.

It is misleading, but not wholly so, depends of course on what class size you're assuming.

The cardinal used emotive terms to get his message across, maybe be he exaggerated a little, but if you genuinely believe that abortion is killing babies, then that is not an unreasonable position to take.

Many religious leaders have got into pleading for Africa and other dirt poor places. In the time you spend reading this a class room of kids will die from stupidly preventable causes.

But they're black and far away, so anyone complaining about it would be ignored unless they are a celebrity, and even then only on a slow news day.
Saying abortion is like something that happened to white kids just down the road does get media attention, and of course comments on MN.