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Comment by RHSeeger | Hacker News Reader

> Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest mention

That is misrepresenting the argument. There's a lot of people that believe that abortion is the killing of a human being. And killing another human being is, most definitely, on the list of "bad things" for every flavor of Christianity. For a lot of them, killing one human being (not in self defense) to save another is still on that list; because only God is allowed to end life.

You may not agree that an unborn child is a human life, but the people that are against abortion for actual Catholic religious reasons do believe it. And do believe it is against their religion, and against any reasonable set of morals.

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The standard line in conservative politics (that abortion is murder) isn't supportable by the text of the Old Testament, which outlines distinct punishments for murder and for inducing a pregnant woman (unsolicited) to abort. Causing an abortion isn't even sin in the Old Testament; it just yields a fine. And it's true that Jesus doesn't explicitly address any of that to supersede or revise it.

The 'valid Catholic reason' for the a doctrine of ensoulment that prohibits abortion is just papal authority. Different popes, saints, and schools within Catholicism have had different beliefs on ensoulment; it's not like the reasoning has been decisive here.

Fucking up other people's lives for the sake of obeying a series of 'infallible' flip-floppers is in fact embarrassing and not respectable.

And even from a religious perspective, criticizing particular sects of Christianity as unmoored from their own sacred texts and traditions with respect to this issue is a perfectly valid line of critique of those sects and their adherents. That's what the GP is essentially doing, informally asking what the rational connection to the sacred texts and tradition even are on this issue. Just because the Catholic church has an answer to that question doesn't mean it's satisfactory.

Conservative governance in general uses Biblical teachings purely for show. In an effort to set modern society back to the 1800s, they are using what they believe to be an unassailable source for their actions.

As recently as the late 1970s, evangelicals and Southern Baptists were at worst ambivalent about abortion rights. The anti-abortion stance of that particular set of people is tied pretty heavily to opposition to desegregation.

This is a great point to emphasize in this thread, since it otherwise happens to focus on Catholicism. This cynical use of religion to grouns conservative policy in beliefs not adressable by normal public debate is not at all limited to Catholicism.

Then how do you explain them supporting the removal of gun laws like the court did yesterday? Why does the idea that abortion extinguishes life and therefore supersedes all other rights not apply in other situations in which someone’s rights will lead to death? Either life is sacrosanct or it isn’t. Why are rights to guns more important than life but rights to bodily autonomy aren’t?

> Then how do you explain them supporting the removal of gun laws like the court did yesterday?

> situations in which someone’s rights will lead to death

Not all people are utilitarians, especially religious people.

It's rhetorically interesting to reach and point at this result as if it's some binary gotcha.

For those who believe that abortion is murder, that's it. They don't need to care whether a state's gun laws are compatible with the US constitution.

Broadly, there's two types of views regarding justice and how to construct a moral society: systemic responsibility vs individual responsibility. For the systemic responsibility view, you pull any and every lever to result in more preferable outcomes. For example, the response to rampant gun violence is more gun control. Here it makes sense to ask why we are not pulling every lever to prevent deaths from gun violence as we are deaths from abortion. This is in contrast to the individual responsibility view. Here, the response to immoral behavior is punishment for the wrongdoer only. Systemic issues are not relevant. In this case, there is no contradiction to punish women who get abortions and not increase restrictions on guns. (Of course, individuals will have views that are varying combinations of the two.)

It's interesting how the "individual responsibility" mechanism works by depriving people of agency.

Not gun owners of course, but the victims of gun violence.

I think many of them would argue self-defense is not the same thing as an abortion in most cases.

You may be trying to compare very different things. Abortion by definition ends (aborts) a life. Having a right to own a gun does not automatically do that ( although it most certainly could ).

We keep balancing stuff like that all the time. The seeming major difference here is that guns are explicitly mentioned in the constitution, while abortion is not ( and was invented from other amendments ).

The court didn't "remove" gun laws yesterday. What they did was decide that states cannot have "may issue" laws and deny permits for arbitrary reasons. 2A is an enumerated right in the Constitution, and so there's a pretty high burden to restricting the exercise of that right. Incidentally, "may issue" laws traditionally were used to deny certain classes (usually black Americans) the ability to exercise their rights.

>Why are rights to guns more important than life but rights to bodily autonomy aren’t?

This strawman is bandied about a lot, but it deliberately misrepresents what is actually in the Opinions if you so choose to read them.

Because "killing someone" and "owning something that can kill someone" are VERY different things. Pretending that isn't the case is ridiculous. It is entirely possible to argue that what/how to limit ownership of "things that can kill people" is a much bigger gray area than "thou shalt not kill".

To be absolutely clear, I'm in favor of stricter gun laws and I don't believe in absolute bans on abortion. I just hate it when people claim that anyone that does want a ban on abortion is a hypocrite or out to control everyone else. There are plenty of people that believe that abortion is murder, and that believe is entirely consistent with their views. They're not all bad people, they just have a different view of the world than us. And anyone that tries to lump them all in the evil bucket IS the problem.

There’s neither scientific fact nor biblical teaching to support this position though. I often see “Thou shall not murder” as a defense for antiabortion policies, but it takes an unsupported leap to call it murder to begin with. Genesis says that life begins at first breath, which is far after most societies consider abortions legal and moral.

There’s also no indication that people even used to think that life began in utero, and that anything less than a fully formed infant was alive and capable of surviving.

> There’s also no indication that people even used to think that life began in utero

You obviously haven't read a bible to any depth.

God talks about "nations" being in the womb of Rebekah. He opened/close the womb of Rachel and of others in scripture.

Samson was a Nazerite "from the womb".

Job says that God "made him" in his "mother's womb".

I could go on and on. Please read up on this some more, your argument is very ignorant of what scripture actually says about this.

A reference to the womb does not imply life.

Scripture actually says that God recognized certain people before they were even conceived.

God is omniscient though, so I don’t think that’s a useful standard for the cops to use when deciding who to throw in jail.

> scientific fact

“Science”(whatever that means) doesn’t really weigh in on what “personhood” is.

What "science" says is that we can keep a fetus alive that had the misfortune of being born at... 24 weeks, I think? But the number keeps moving - it used to be 28.

So at least at some distance after conception, yes, medical science supports seeing a fetus as a human, with life of its own.

See my comment elsewhere in this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31866064

> Genesis says that life begins at first breath

It says no such thing. It says that Adam's life began upon first breath. Adam was also created as a full grown man, so it's clearly not an example for human life as a whole. The Bible doesn’t teach that every man comes to life at first breath any more than it teaches that every woman comes from the rib of a man (from https://www.str.org/w/does-bible-teach-life-begins-first-bre...)

The Bible does say, in multiple places, clearly imply that life begins in the womb. For example, when John leaped for joy in his mother's womb, announcing the coming of the Lord.

And it's the current Supreme Court's prerogative to establish that specific religion, and forbid religious practice of, say, Judaism where the life of child and mother are weighed compassionately and abortions are permitted in certain cases.

the supreme court did not ban abortion. It removed abortion as a legal right. It means people cannot use the power of the federal government to overrule their own state legislature on the topic of abortion.

If you understand how the US Government works, then you understand that the Supreme Court cannot establish ANYTHING by removing laws. (ie overturning previous decisions).

What the Supreme court did was allow for the POSSIBILITY of a fully Catholic US State to practice Catholic religion with respect to abortion. It ALSO allows a fully Jewish state to practice Jewish religion however they want with respect to abortion.

They actual problem caused by overturning Roe v Wade is that some states who's laws are already catholic will regain the power to stop abortions in their state. That's it. California, New York, etc, are absolutely and completely unaffected by this decision, for example.

> They actual problem caused by overturning Roe v Wade is that some states who's laws are already catholic will regain the power to stop abortions in their state.

Quite the motte and bailey you've got there. Do you think that this court will make an about-face and suddenly recognize the constitutionality of the Establishment clause? Textualist/originalist, my ass.

this feels like semantics?

Catholic people will make catholic laws. They wont literally be catholic laws.. but common sense would allow you to see them as such. There's nothing wrong with that either. The state does not need to recognize them as catholic laws and requires the laws be articulated and produced independent of the religion.

you cannot make a law that says "You must treat the poor the way Jesus would" but you can make a law that says "You cannot refuse life saving medical treatment to someone for being poor". Under Separation of Church a State can still create their set of laws to be 1:1 with the teachings of their religion. They just have to actually do that.. make the set of laws. they cant say "follow rules in the bible". The laws supersede the bible. Make the laws match the bible if you want people to follow the bible. So that's what these states are doing.

> they cant say "follow rules in the bible".

Only, they are saying the quiet part loudly now. And Clarence Thomas has been arguing that individual states can establish religions for at least two decades less three days[1]. Law is semantics.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/00-1751

> Law is semantics.

Right, but that's also the point I was making. People think creating a law based on the beliefs of religious people violates the separation of church and state. It doesnt. the semantic nature of the law is relevant here.

I was highlighting that by saying you could make a state that effectively is a religious state using the current system. since the semantics are still there and must be accounted for, this prevents it from actually being a religious state.

By adhering to the semantics, no amount of religious belief can lead a state to violate the constitution.. even if the state bases every single one of its laws on religion. And if they try to, then the federal government has authority to enforce otherwise.

"There's a lot of people that believe that abortion is the killing of a human being. And killing another human being is, most definitely, on the list of "bad things" for every flavor of Christianity."

A lot of them seem to have no problem with killing human beings in war, or in executions, or killing done by police, or the killing of various human beings they hate (from "druggies" to gays to muslims or Mexicans).

As George Carlin said:

"Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to 9 months. After that, they don’t wanna know about you. They don’t wanna hear from you. No nothing! No neonatal care, no daycare, no Head Start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you’re pre-born, you’re fine, if you’re preschool, you’re fucked."

"For a lot of them, killing one human being (not in self defense) to save another is still on that list; because only God is allowed to end life."

Horseshit, or the religious conservatives would also abolish the death penalty federally. Instead, the more Republican states tend to be the ones who wish to expand the death penalty. Look at the history of the death penalty in Texas, and who has historically been "eligible" for it.

It's all about control. These people believe America to be a "Christian" nation first and foremost. Their ultimate goal is to push America into that direction.

I believe within the lifetime of my generation's kids, we will see a push to repeal the First Amendment, at least the religious part of it. Although knowing how American Christians have historically handled freedom of speech, more than likely they'll try to gut the whole thing.

I do know some individual Catholics who reject the death penalty for the same reason that they would not themselves ever seek or endorse abortion, but I don't see the same phenomenon in national politics.

The Church rejects the death penalty. It's literally a part of their catechism.

Yes, and the use of Catholic doctrine by politcal conservatives is cynical and selective.

That's what I meant— it's not as hard to find regular Catholic believers who are consistent in rejecting both abortion and the death penalty as a matter of their commitment to their religion as it is to find politicians who are the same way.

> for every flavor of Christianity.

I wonder what methodist tastes like. I bet it's something saucy like spicy queso.

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