Comment by pstuart | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pstuart | Hacker News Reader

This is obviously a contentious issue, but it's important to understand why.

Catholics are "pro birth" in general, but it really doesn't have much in scripture to support it; there is of course the "Quiverfull" movement which aims for each birth to be "an arrow in the quiver of God's army"

So for all of that, it's clearly a religious viewpoint and that raises serious 1A questions.

A question I've never seen addressed by those who hew to this belief system:

Apparently roughly 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, which is (using the belief system above), God is performing an abortion. How does that reconcile with that stance.

My personal take is simple: "every baby should be a wanted baby"

The politics of it started half a century ago, and the politicizing of abortion was very much intentional:

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/04/1096154028/the-movement-again...

It's important to have discussions based on logic and facts, rather than emotion. It will be interesting to see how that plays out here.

> The politics of it started half a century ago, and the politicizing of abortion was very much intentional:

It might have re-emerged as abortion became more in vogue in the early 20th century, but the politics of it have existed since ancient rome.

https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/article/infanticide-in-ancient...

The rest of your argument is a strawman, you're imagining someone who disagrees with you and giving them weird arguments.

I'm arguing in good faith and welcome valid criticism.

Please note that I'm not trying to troll (the bit about God doing abortions may seem like it but that point stands on its own: if an abortion is the cessation of the development of a fetus or proto-human, then a miscarriage is effectively an "abortion"). The question becomes "why did that happen". This is an important question to ask because women are being imprisoned for miscarriages and the "passionate pursuit of the matter" does not always lead to justice.

As for any strawmen from me, my conflation of Catholic teaching and the Quiverfull movement -- I'll own that outright as being lazy on my part.

Politics can be construed in different ways. Yes, there have been laws and movements, but not under the banner of any US political party. I'm talking about as a partisan platform issue. I remember, I was there. It's very well documented and there's an even less palatable facet to that movement as it has been documented that it was intended to succeed segregation as a politically activating issue.

Now back to your points:

Conflating infanticide with "abortion" is an Equivocation — using a single term or concept across two things that differ in a morally or legally. Also known as a false equivalence. It also begs the question, since the equivalence between fetus and infant is precisely what's in dispute.

I'm engaging here in self-defense, because there are parties actively trying to make this country a theocracy and I think thats a very bad idea.

> Catholics are "pro birth" in general, but it really doesn't have much in scripture to support it

Exodus 20:13: "Thou shalt not kill."

That verse prohibits murder. Whether abortion constitutes murder depends on fetal personhood, which is the entire question.

I agree with this.

But I would add, I don't think we can define a person as anything other than a genetically distinct individual of the species Homo sapiens. If a definition were to be proposed not on the basis of what something is, but rather how it functions, where it exists, or its level of dependence on other persons, then personhood ceases to be an inherent property and becomes a conditional privilege. And historically, whenever society has tried to separate biological human status from legal 'personhood,' it has paved the way for dehumanization and injustice.

To preserve human equality, personhood must be tied strictly to objective biological reality.

> genetically distinct individual of the species Homo sapiens

Well yes, in principle. But is a Blastocyst a person or potential person?

> paved the way for dehumanization and injustice

Oh, that ship sailed a long time ago and it has nothing to do with babies.

> objective biological reality

objective is an interesting word, in that in this topic it seems to be very subjective.

My point stands: the easiest way to prevent abortions from happening is to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

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