I am pro-life, with the exception of medical emergencies. I'm not going to argue about that. Seeing the discourse going downhill like this hurts, since it's just one more broad-brush tool to use against a different side.
https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9827886/abortion-clinic-attack...
"Since 1977 there have been eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 42 bombings, and 186 arsons targeted at abortion clinics and providers across the United States. In some cases, a small group of clinics have been targeted multiple times."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_Uni...
But... now that we know abortion clinics only murder a few hundred thousand, that makes them like twice as good as they used to be. That's how this works, right?
Note that the Catholic heirarchy is, in fact, opposed to all forms of conception that don't involve a sex act between married partners, including homologous artificial insemination within marriage.
> However, within the 'Catholic bubble', fertility clinics probably get as much ire.
They really don't; they rarely get mentioned outside of fairly academic discussions of the relevant theology, even by most of the people within the Church that engage in intense advocacy on abortion and/or family issues.
They do get some ire by extremists on the opposite side of the heirarchy’s position than the general society, the types that put out pamphlets or go on Catholic radio using arguments like “clones—and IVF babies—have no souls” (seriously). But they don't get a lot of attention in mainstream circles. If a couple asks their pastor about it, they’ll probably have the official positioned mentioned, but unlike abortion it's not something you're likely to hear mentioned in a Sunday sermon or as the focus of a heirarchy-led public advocacy campaign.
The Catholic heirarchy views that no differently than other natural death, which, while it might be something better to reduce, is not an active moral wrong the way homicide (including, in the view of the heirarchy, direct abortion) is.
(I say “heirarchy” rather than “Church” here because the evidence suggest that the mass of the faithful, the body of the Church, aren't particularly in line behind the heirarchy on this issue—polls in the US, for instance, fairly consistently see virtually no difference in distribution of political views on abortion between Catholics and Americans generally.)
The discourse in your country doesn't seem to revolve about facts any more. At the moment it's just political. I'm wondering why this is on HN at all. We all know whatever is going to be said about this topic is going to be political eventually.
(wow fastest downvote ever, I just posted this, like 5 seconds, and it already got a downvote :)
Edit: to be clear, by "feel-good" I do not mean "positive," emotionally, just not subject to the same level of useless vitriol common elsewhere--which is where this thread is going.