“Fish on Lent” is supposed to be an act of humility, as it is historically a peasant dish.
“Eggs on Lent” is appropriate not because “eggs aren’t chickens until they’re hatched” but because eggs are cheap.
Of course, with the price of fish diverging heavily from meat in the wake of factory farming, one might rationally argue that the American lental feast should be burgers.
But this would not be the first time that the dogma of church history outweighs the message they’re supposedly teaching.
the question isn’t whether a fetus is an adult but whether it is “human”. And the question of humanity boils down to whether a fetus has a soul. And a fetus doesn’t have a soul until “the quickening”, which is generally regarded as the point at which a woman can feel the fetus kicking in her belly (typically between week 16 and 25, on the back end of the second trimester).
So the real question a doctor has to ask before performing an abortion is whether he can detect a soul in the fetus he is aborting.
I think the biggest reason the debate continues amongst honest actors is that defining when life begins is always going to be arbitrary.
Is it meiosis - when a genetically unique human begins to form? Is it fetal heartbeat? Is it 2nd trimester? Is it birth? Is it after they’ve developed language and can begin to function in society?
The line is going to be arbitrary any place its drawn, and there will be people thinking it’s murder to abort and others who think it’s fine.
That’s one end of the argument. But the other is the same argument you’ll find with conjoined twins or child support payments. At what point do the needs of one individual supersede the well-being of another?
That’s another arbitrary line to draw. But the fundamental problem with “pro-life” as a movement is that said line seems to be drawn to explicitly exclude the pregnant woman. In fact, the possibility of pregnancy almost feels like an excuse to weaponize law enforcement against women, such that even the possibility of being pregnant instills a perpetual social/economic obligation on an entire gender.
there will be people thinking it’s murder to abort and others who think it’s fine.
There will be people thinking its murder not to abort in quite a few circumstances. And women bleeding out in ERs, because physicians are too afraid of the civil/criminal liabilities of aiding a pregnant woman are becoming entirely too common in these so-called pro-life states.
Which is why it’s so damn complicated. But I think the time line of when human life begins is the biggest sticking point because it’s the one that determines the basis of all other arguments.
You have to be willing to see the other side sometimes to have an honest debate.
The best pro-life argument I ever heard was to look at pregnancy like an accident. If you cause an accident that puts someone else’s life in danger, you’re legally required to stop and render aid to the victim until someone else can take over - up until doing so would endanger your own survival.
To the pro-lifer, choosing to have sex was causing the accident that placed the “child” in mortal danger, and carrying the child to term was rendering aid. They also held the position that the logic meant that a raped woman had no responsibility to continue the pregnancy because it wasn’t the victim’s fault they were raped, and that a pregnancy endangering the mother could be terminated.
That argument could be persuasive, but only if the fetus is considered a human.
I think the time line of when human life begins is the biggest sticking point
Its an age old philosophical debate, but that’s precisely why it isn’t a viable candidate for policy. You inevitably get into a contradictory standard of enforcement when the liabilities for fetal death eclipse the electoral benefits of prosecuting pregnant women.
Texas isn’t using these rules to adjudicate HOV lanes, for instance.
While the Texas penal code recognizes an unborn baby as a person, current transportation law in the state does not.
So the question isn’t what’s being raised. These are arbitrary distinctions set by the whims of the legislature.
You have to be willing to see the other side sometimes to have an honest debate.
The best pro-life argument I ever heard was to look at pregnancy like an accident. If you cause an accident that puts someone else’s life in danger, you’re legally required to stop and render aid to the victim until someone else can take over
The act of pregnancy itself puts the mother’s life in danger. However, the prospective father is not liable for providing health care to the woman he impregnated.
These theories are quaint thought experiments, but they fail to make their way into law.
That’s the thing though, you’re jumping straight to Ken Paxton as the standard example for the other side. You’re judging the other side of the debate by the extremists. There are millions of pro-life people who hold that position out of legitimate concern for what they consider to be unborn children, and not because they want to control women.
Acting like the goal of every pro-lifer is subjugation of women is no different than pro-lifers acting like pro-choice people are only interested in “murdering babies.”
It’s an antagonistic position that prevents honest discussion and only serves to empower the extremists on the right.
People on both sides have noble goals, and acknowledging that is the first step towards seeking consensus. Calling everyone on the other side mysoginists gets them defensive, and the political right has weaponized that defensive reaction for decades and used it to create the most powerful single-issue voting group in modern history.
That’s the thing though, you’re jumping straight to Ken Paxton as the standard example for the other side.
He’s the leading figure in the largest conservative state’s dominant pro-life political party. If he’s not the standard for “the other side” who is? He is quite literally dictating the policy by which “the other side” is being judged.
Acting like the goal of every pro-lifer is subjugation of women
This is the explicit stated goal of the most influential financial and religious leaders within the movement.
Its no secret that Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist. And it would be deeply insincere to claim abortion advocacy is - at least in part - driven by a desire among aspiring parents not to give birth to children with sever developmental issues. A down’s syndrome diagnosis is a leading cause of abortion.x
These are realities that people have to confront, not caricatures we should pretend are fabrications of the opposition. Some women simply do not want to be pregnant, full stop. And abortion opponents do not believe they have the right to terminate that pregnancy, full stop. The state intervention in that decision is - explicitly and definitively - an attempt by the pro-life movement to subjugate these women.
People on both sides have noble goals
That’s categorically untrue. The goals of these organization leaders range from the cynically mercenary to the outright misogynist. The goals of their members are entirely confrontational and removed from any kind of functional beneficial public policy.
This is a country that is ratcheting back everything from the public financing of emergency medical assistance to food aid for elementary school students. The goals are not noble. The perceived ends are not virtuous. The people are not simply coming at a complex problem from different points of view.
Eric Erickson, Steve Bannon, Ron DeSantis, and Mike Johnson are not your friends. They are not trying to do right by you. They do not want the best for your children.
“Fish on Lent” is supposed to be an act of humility, as it is historically a peasant dish.
“Eggs on Lent” is appropriate not because “eggs aren’t chickens until they’re hatched” but because eggs are cheap.
Of course, with the price of fish diverging heavily from meat in the wake of factory farming, one might rationally argue that the American lental feast should be burgers.
But this would not be the first time that the dogma of church history outweighs the message they’re supposedly teaching.
I would argue that the American lental feast should be lentils because the words are the same AND they’re cheap.
Catholic Galaxy Brain.
If eggs aren’t chickens than a fetus isn’t an adult.
If you want to get really theological
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_abortion
the question isn’t whether a fetus is an adult but whether it is “human”. And the question of humanity boils down to whether a fetus has a soul. And a fetus doesn’t have a soul until “the quickening”, which is generally regarded as the point at which a woman can feel the fetus kicking in her belly (typically between week 16 and 25, on the back end of the second trimester).
So the real question a doctor has to ask before performing an abortion is whether he can detect a soul in the fetus he is aborting.
I think the biggest reason the debate continues amongst honest actors is that defining when life begins is always going to be arbitrary.
Is it meiosis - when a genetically unique human begins to form? Is it fetal heartbeat? Is it 2nd trimester? Is it birth? Is it after they’ve developed language and can begin to function in society?
The line is going to be arbitrary any place its drawn, and there will be people thinking it’s murder to abort and others who think it’s fine.
That’s one end of the argument. But the other is the same argument you’ll find with conjoined twins or child support payments. At what point do the needs of one individual supersede the well-being of another?
That’s another arbitrary line to draw. But the fundamental problem with “pro-life” as a movement is that said line seems to be drawn to explicitly exclude the pregnant woman. In fact, the possibility of pregnancy almost feels like an excuse to weaponize law enforcement against women, such that even the possibility of being pregnant instills a perpetual social/economic obligation on an entire gender.
There will be people thinking its murder not to abort in quite a few circumstances. And women bleeding out in ERs, because physicians are too afraid of the civil/criminal liabilities of aiding a pregnant woman are becoming entirely too common in these so-called pro-life states.
Which is why it’s so damn complicated. But I think the time line of when human life begins is the biggest sticking point because it’s the one that determines the basis of all other arguments.
You have to be willing to see the other side sometimes to have an honest debate.
The best pro-life argument I ever heard was to look at pregnancy like an accident. If you cause an accident that puts someone else’s life in danger, you’re legally required to stop and render aid to the victim until someone else can take over - up until doing so would endanger your own survival.
To the pro-lifer, choosing to have sex was causing the accident that placed the “child” in mortal danger, and carrying the child to term was rendering aid. They also held the position that the logic meant that a raped woman had no responsibility to continue the pregnancy because it wasn’t the victim’s fault they were raped, and that a pregnancy endangering the mother could be terminated.
That argument could be persuasive, but only if the fetus is considered a human.
Its an age old philosophical debate, but that’s precisely why it isn’t a viable candidate for policy. You inevitably get into a contradictory standard of enforcement when the liabilities for fetal death eclipse the electoral benefits of prosecuting pregnant women.
Texas isn’t using these rules to adjudicate HOV lanes, for instance.
So the question isn’t what’s being raised. These are arbitrary distinctions set by the whims of the legislature.
But we’re well past the point of debate. We past that point when AG Ken Paxton petitioned to stop the abortion of a nonviable pregnancy.
The act of pregnancy itself puts the mother’s life in danger. However, the prospective father is not liable for providing health care to the woman he impregnated.
These theories are quaint thought experiments, but they fail to make their way into law.
Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
That’s the thing though, you’re jumping straight to Ken Paxton as the standard example for the other side. You’re judging the other side of the debate by the extremists. There are millions of pro-life people who hold that position out of legitimate concern for what they consider to be unborn children, and not because they want to control women.
Acting like the goal of every pro-lifer is subjugation of women is no different than pro-lifers acting like pro-choice people are only interested in “murdering babies.”
It’s an antagonistic position that prevents honest discussion and only serves to empower the extremists on the right.
People on both sides have noble goals, and acknowledging that is the first step towards seeking consensus. Calling everyone on the other side mysoginists gets them defensive, and the political right has weaponized that defensive reaction for decades and used it to create the most powerful single-issue voting group in modern history.
He’s the leading figure in the largest conservative state’s dominant pro-life political party. If he’s not the standard for “the other side” who is? He is quite literally dictating the policy by which “the other side” is being judged.
This is the explicit stated goal of the most influential financial and religious leaders within the movement.
Its no secret that Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist. And it would be deeply insincere to claim abortion advocacy is - at least in part - driven by a desire among aspiring parents not to give birth to children with sever developmental issues. A down’s syndrome diagnosis is a leading cause of abortion.x
These are realities that people have to confront, not caricatures we should pretend are fabrications of the opposition. Some women simply do not want to be pregnant, full stop. And abortion opponents do not believe they have the right to terminate that pregnancy, full stop. The state intervention in that decision is - explicitly and definitively - an attempt by the pro-life movement to subjugate these women.
That’s categorically untrue. The goals of these organization leaders range from the cynically mercenary to the outright misogynist. The goals of their members are entirely confrontational and removed from any kind of functional beneficial public policy.
This is a country that is ratcheting back everything from the public financing of emergency medical assistance to food aid for elementary school students. The goals are not noble. The perceived ends are not virtuous. The people are not simply coming at a complex problem from different points of view.
Eric Erickson, Steve Bannon, Ron DeSantis, and Mike Johnson are not your friends. They are not trying to do right by you. They do not want the best for your children.
Your argument was never if fertilized chicken eggs are chickens but if a fertilized chicken egg is meat.
Reread what they wrote
But the bible promotes abortion as a way to test if the wife was faithful
Or you can view it as part of God’s plan, a successful abortion means God didn’t want you to have a child