It really is a miracle. Doctors carried out an operation to let Gabriel die - yet he hung on.Did you catch that? "Doctors carried out an operation to let Gabriel die"...to let him die????
I suppose if I ever kill someone I can stand before the judge and say, "Your honor, I simply pulled the trigger/cut the throat/poisoned the food of the victim to let the victim die. I didn't actually do anything. It was all passive."
This statement by Mrs. Jones is nothing but a rationalization of abortion by making it seem passive instead of admitting it is the active killing of the unborn. We see the same exact terminology used in euthenasia cases too. "We'll pull the feeding tube and let the patient die. It's what they would have wanted."
All this begs the point that anyone who deprives another person of food will CAUSE that person die. Anyone who engages in activities that will cause the death of another human being is not "letting" death occur, it is causing death to occur.
Words have meaning. The fact that this woman felt pricked in her conscious enough for her to twist her words from an active killing to a passive allowing of a death demonstrates that she knows in her heart that what the doctors were doing was wrong. If the doctor's decision is not morally suspect, there is no reason to pretend that what the doctors do is to permit a death instead of causing the death.
Agreed. I don't see a morally relevant distinction between killing and letting die in situations such as euthanasia and abortion.
ReplyDeleteyet he hung on!
ReplyDeleteDid you catch that? Did this mother name the child after or before? Yet he hung on. What recognition of humanity...what sadness
Jill Ireland once said that the movement needed to drop the pretense and call it what it is, murder. She went further and said, what women want is the right to end the life of one of their children. The fact is, it is only among the ignorant of the movement, that there is a distinction made between realities. The apologists of euthenasia know. There is a continuity of life and they know it, as one pro-life researcher once said quoting Schultz, "A who is a who, no matter how small." And he went on to explain the cognitive dissonance that occurs in abotive women. Relating it to Piaget's stages of developement, he said that even a child developes the sense of permanency, and what cannot be seen, is recognized as existing despite its absence from view. So too, women know, intrinsically, logically that what is born, is what was hidden from sight in the womb. What a crime then a woman must commit, not only to the fetus, but to her own mind.
you boys should just shut your yappers. if a woman wants your opinion on what to do with her body, she'll beat it out of you.
ReplyDelete'nuff said.
By the tone of the post and the comments, I'm sure I will be tarred and feathered and rode out on a rail.. Nevertheless...
ReplyDeleteIf there were only one baby in there, then you would have a point. And if there were two babies in there and both were healthy you would have a point.
But considering the actual the situation (that it appeared that one baby was very likely to die, and the death of that one baby would cause the death of the second baby)... I don't think you have room to speak of the mother (especially) and doctors (probably) as though they were just bent on abortion and trying to rationalize their behavior post-hoc.
I do not argue with the technicality of the terms (it would indeed have been an abortion, and it was not a passive but was an active undertaking to cause vs allow death). I also do not argue with the point that the woman probably did have her conscience pricked.
Rather, I argue with the brush that you (all) seem to paint the mother.
Note that the mother is very glad that both babies are alive, and there is no talk of the mother doing this because she was taking command of "her own body" or such.
Shall we put **everything** in the world into two boxes based solely on its outward appearance?
Abortion is letting one die? I don't think so.
ReplyDeleteAbortion, even in this case is killing the baby.
Although this particular case is a rare one, and not like the millions of abortions that take place for the purpose of convience.
To kill a human baby is to kill someone made in the image of God, who is innocent. And that is a terrible sin.
What would I and my wife do in the same situation?
I hope we would have said, "We can not allow you to kill our baby, and then trust the Lord.
I don't know if we would have been able to do such a thing, but this would seem the right decision.
For it glorfies God, in that we are saying we believe to kill this baby is wrong.
All that said, I do have to praise the Lord for these two boys. they are beautiful, and perhaps they will grow to love Christ and share their testimony to a world that hates to acknowledge sin.
Shelly said...
ReplyDelete"you boys should just shut your yappers. if a woman wants your opinion on what to do with her body, she'll beat it out of you.
'nuff said."
**********
Okay, but you're assuming that the unborn is your *body.* Now, this was a *boy.* "Yet, *he* hung on." He therefore had a penis. Say this woman was you. Are you saying that you, Shelly, would have a penis? How does your husband feel about that?
Shelly said...
ReplyDelete"you boys should just shut your yappers. if a woman wants your opinion on what to do with her body, she'll beat it out of you.
'nuff said."
*******
Since all properly functining humans have 46 chromosomes, and since the unborn has its own 46, since it is Shelly's body, then Shelly (and all pregnant women on her hypothesis) would be humans with 92 chromosomes! Keep showing that scientific ignorance pro-choicers are known for. And they call creationists backwoods ignorant hicks....
11/04/2007 9:23 AM
Theojunkie, to quote from the article, "Firstly they tried to sever his umbilical cord to cut off his blood supply, but the cord was too strong.
ReplyDeleteThey then cut Mrs Jones's placenta in half so that when Gabriel died, it would not affect his twin brother."
You are giving too much credit. If the sole purpose in this case was to save the healthy child, then why not just cut Mrs Jones' placenta in half? Why try to cut the umbilical cord first?
Theojunkie,
ReplyDeleteI intentionally limited this post to the words being stated by the mother because this is definitely not the normal conditions under which abortions occur. This is one of the few cases where an argument could be made to justify the abortion (whether that argument is a good one or not is a different issue).
If murder is the unjustified taking of human life, and if the unborn is indeed human, then all abortions require a justification or else they are immoral. (On the flip side, if the unborn is not human then no justifican is necessary for abortion.)
In this specific case, the doctors can put forth a justification, insofar as they were attempting to save the life of the twin. Now while I personally believe they made a horrible diagnosis and that abortion to save the life of another must be the absolute last case scenario (which, as far as the information we can get from this article goes, was not the case here), at least there is a justification offered in this particular case.
But none of that is the point of my post. The point of the post is actually the very things you agreed with when you said:
---
I do not argue with the technicality of the terms (it would indeed have been an abortion, and it was not a passive but was an active undertaking to cause vs allow death). I also do not argue with the point that the woman probably did have her conscience pricked.
---
I hope now you can see that I wasn't putting everything "into two boxes based solely on its outward appearance"...although perhaps you were putting my post into one of those boxes based on its outward appearance.
Words are important. There is a reason that radcist terms exist, for instance. It's a way to linguistically insulate your conscience from the human attributes of the person you are labelling. Eventually, you can deny the humanity altogether.
The same thing applies for other issues. Take the Left's concern with being called unpatriotic. They would like to redefine patriotism as questioning one's country. Why? Because the redefinition allows them to keep the benefit of the term. They can be patriots, because a patriot is a good thing, even if they don't do anything that a patriot actually does.
Read 1984 if you want a good example of how limiting and redefining words affects thinking. The entire purpose of Newspeak was so that it would be impossible to think thought-crime. If the words for the thought-crime don't exist, then you cannot form the thought in the first place.
While I think that is a bit extreme, there is some truth to it, and you see that displayed in this article (as well as in the "arguments" being put forth during the Terri Schiavo case). If we no longer "kill" but instead "let die" then we are no longer active participants in the matter, and we no longer have to ask ourselves the moral questions of whether or not what we are doing is right.
And here's the bottom line when it comes to Mrs. Jones in the article. She used a linguistic trick to justify her position when she is one of the few people who have abortions who actually has an argument. That is the travesty that has occured here.
It's not simply Mrs. Jones either. This is what our public indoctrination centers (AKA: "High School") are teaching too. Ignore the rigorous intellectual debate; we'll simply define the morality away.
That was the point of my post. That's why I titled it "Words Have Meaning" instead of "Abortion is Wrong In All Cases No Matter What End Of Discussion."
Paul says:
ReplyDelete"Since all properly functining humans have 46 chromosomes, and since the unborn has its own 46, since it is Shelly's body, then Shelly (and all pregnant women on her hypothesis) would be humans with 92 chromosomes! Keep showing that scientific ignorance pro-choicers are known for. And they call creationists backwoods ignorant hicks...."
Where did you come by this wonderful information? Was it in the Bible? No? Hhhhmmmmm.....
moron.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeletePaul says:
"Since all properly functining humans have 46 chromosomes, and since the unborn has its own 46, since it is Shelly's body, then Shelly (and all pregnant women on her hypothesis) would be humans with 92 chromosomes! Keep showing that scientific ignorance pro-choicers are known for. And they call creationists backwoods ignorant hicks...."
Where did you come by this wonderful information? Was it in the Bible? No? Hhhhmmmmm.....
moron.
11/04/2007 1:26 PM
**********
Anonymous,
I did not come by that information in the Bible. I don't know what point you're trying to make. The Bible also doesn't tell me the gas mileage my car gets. Are you under the impression that Christians can't believe something unless it's stated in the Bible? Why think that, that's odd. Where would that be implied from other Christian doctrine? And, your response has nothing to do with the rather stupid statement Shelly made. Is it your habit to fallaciousy change the context of dialogue? To commit red herring fallacies? That's idiotic. The Bible didn't tell me that you were an idiot either. But so what?
Peter,
ReplyDeleteFair 'nuff and points taken. (BTW, I was in part responding to the comments, not just your post).
Caleb,
I guess I've said what I've said, and I can't say n'more, because all I have to go on is that article (I wasn't there and haven't talked to the mothers or the daughters).
It appears that Peter understands the point I was trying to make, and I have already agreed with him that an abortion is an abortion is an abortion.
... and I have chillin's yelling in my other ear, so I can't think straight to type...
ReplyDeleteThat was supposed to read, "I haven't talked to the mother [singular] and doctors [not daughters]."
Sorry..