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Post by blackforest on Sept 22, 2023 13:06:17 GMT
It's called the "heckler's veto." Participants ban any dissenting speech by shouting them down and sometimes physically blocking them or other people from seeing them.
Where I recently read (and highly recommend) *The Coddling of the American Mind,* I think it's going to get increasingly harder to be a pro-life college student.
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bluekumul
Full Member
Christian humanist, democratic socialist, world citizen
Posts: 201
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Post by bluekumul on Sept 23, 2023 8:39:02 GMT
Did Jesus ever say anything about abortion?
Sometimes I see the pro-life movement as akin to leftist activist movements because of the same sentimentality. Just like leftists cry over animals, pro-life activists cry over unborn babies.
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bluekumul
Full Member
Christian humanist, democratic socialist, world citizen
Posts: 201
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Post by bluekumul on Sept 23, 2023 16:49:45 GMT
To be more exact, it is humane to abort a fetus with defects which will prevent it from living a normal human life, rather than to force its mother to attend to this baby for the rest of its life. Strict anti-abortion stance is pharisaical.
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Post by homeschooldad on Sept 23, 2023 19:09:09 GMT
To be more exact, it is humane to abort a fetus with defects which will prevent it from living a normal human life, rather than to force its mother to attend to this baby for the rest of its life. Strict anti-abortion stance is pharisaical. Innocent human life is not ours to take, regardless of how wretched the person's life is. If the fetus has defects that the mother doesn't think she will be able to cope with, she can always renounce her parental rights and allow the baby to become a ward of the state. That is not a "good" solution, but it is better than killing the baby. And what if a baby is born apparently normal, but develops some kind of condition or defect a month, two months, six months, after it is born? Kill it then?My own father lay on a couch for almost a year, wasting away, in deepest agony, whatever was wrong with him, it couldn't be cured, he just had to wait to die. Despite all we tried to do to make him comfortable, his quality of life was as bad as you could expect a person's to be. Very possibly a combination of ALS and some kind of invasive, metastasizing cancer. He refused further treatment or any means to prolong his life, such as a feeding tube. (I disagreed with the latter, but could not make him do it, legally or morally.) For reasons I shall not go into, I don't think the morticians were able to restore him to a viewable condition. (I chose not to see him, and the funeral director did not challenge this, in fact, I think he was relieved that I chose not to. He had no viewing or funeral, just graveside rites.) So often did I think that the euthanasia advocates have a point, just one massive dose of a deadly agent, and he'd be gone, his suffering could end humanely. And they do have a point, except for one thing --- that is murder.
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Post by farronwolf on Sept 23, 2023 20:24:15 GMT
The Church allows for individuals to refuse medical care which ends in death. The Church, and its members look fondly on martyrs, who by action or inaction are killed for their faith. Sort of like suicide by cop in modern days. Action or inaction on the persons part causes someone else to kill them instead of committing suicide themselves.
It is a pretty wavy line between suicide, martyrdom, and possibly euthanasia.
At what point is it acceptable to simply give up on life to be left to die. In martyrs, I would think anything short of forsaking God would be the line.
When people are old they are allowed to decide to refuse medical care, food or whatever and allowed to die. Children are under the care of their parents, if a child has no chance at a reasonable quality of life, why isn't it acceptable for the parent to refuse medical care or food for the child if the quality of life isn't any better than the old person being left to make that decision themselves?
Being left to a lifetime of misery seems like imposing a sentence of hell on earth for the child who, other than original sin, is faultless if in that condition.
This is simply a mental exercise on my part, but like I said, it could be a pretty wavy line depending on the circumstances.
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Post by homeschooldad on Sept 23, 2023 20:47:10 GMT
The Church allows for individuals to refuse medical care which ends in death. The Church, and its members look fondly on martyrs, who by action or inaction are killed for their faith. Sort of like suicide by cop in modern days. Action or inaction on the persons part causes someone else to kill them instead of committing suicide themselves. It is a pretty wavy line between suicide, martyrdom, and possibly euthanasia. At what point is it acceptable to simply give up on life to be left to die. In martyrs, I would think anything short of forsaking God would be the line. When people are old they are allowed to decide to refuse medical care, food or whatever and allowed to die. Children are under the care of their parents, if a child has no chance at a reasonable quality of life, why isn't it acceptable for the parent to refuse medical care or food for the child if the quality of life isn't any better than the old person being left to make that decision themselves? Being left to a lifetime of misery seems like imposing a sentence of hell on earth for the child who, other than original sin, is faultless if in that condition. This is simply a mental exercise on my part, but like I said, it could be a pretty wavy line depending on the circumstances. You do raise an interesting point. But in the case of the child, it would depend upon whether the child had a fatal condition that could not be alleviated by medical intervention, as is the case of an elderly person who might, or might not, prolong their life by heroic treatment, but who would die without it. But simply facing a "lifetime of misery", without there necessarily being a terminal condition, is no excuse to kill someone, or even passively to refuse ordinary life-sustaining methods. I'm reminded here of the Terri Schiavo case. As I understand it, the only thing she lacked, aside from a large amount of brain function (the autopsy did reveal that her brain was, indeed, severely atrophied), was a way to take nutrition naturally, and a feeding tube addressed this. Is a feeding tube ever an extraordinary ( ergo non-obligatory) means of sustaining life? It would depend upon the circumstances. In my father's case, we were able to give him a baseline of essential nutrition via liquid formulations, which he could swallow, albeit with difficulty. In all likelihood he was eaten up with cancer (possibly metastasized into his brain). A feeding tube would have been both unnecessary and, within a short time, futile, and even though I disagreed with the decision not to install it, upon further reflection, I have to think, in his case, it would indeed have been extraordinary means. (He probably would not have lived through the surgery.) There is no "one size fits all".
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Post by farronwolf on Sept 23, 2023 21:29:18 GMT
I remember the Terry Schiavo case well. Her family was trying to say she would smile, ect. but after autopsy, it was clear those were involuntary actions. She had no life, and was just being kept alive via nutrition. Essentially brain dead.
Life itself is a fatal condition. It is just a matter of time.
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Post by homeschooldad on Sept 23, 2023 23:07:09 GMT
I remember the Terry Schiavo case well. Her family was trying to say she would smile, ect. but after autopsy, it was clear those were involuntary actions. She had no life, and was just being kept alive via nutrition. Essentially brain dead. Life itself is a fatal condition. It is just a matter of time. But she was not being kept alive by any means other than a feeding tube. So far as I am aware, she was on no other form of life support, and had no other condition that was shortening her life. Even though her brain function was next to nil, obviously there was something in her brain, her central nervous system, that kept her breathing, her heart pumping, and so on. If the feeding tube had been left in, it's hard telling how long she could have lived. At best, it's an edge case.
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Post by blackforest on Sept 25, 2023 19:02:24 GMT
Did Jesus ever say anything about abortion? Sometimes I see the pro-life movement as akin to leftist activist movements because of the same sentimentality. Just like leftists cry over animals, pro-life activists cry over unborn babies. We're expressly commanded in the Scriptures not to kill. Christ teaches us to live with compassion for "the least of these," which naturally includes the unborn.
I suppose the answer to your question would depend on this: How seriously do you take abortion?
If abortion involves just "removing a clump of cells" and "should be the woman's right to choose [it]," your question might make more sense.
If, on the other hand, you accept that abortion deliberately and unjustly takes the life of a defenseless human being, then you're in line with Christian thinking and - more broadly still - upholding fundamental human rights.
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Post by tisbearself on Sept 25, 2023 19:24:23 GMT
Removing the entire theological context, applying a purely secular analysis: - Group of people A are seen as economically burdensome and/ or not as important as group of people B. Often this is because Group A is poor or disenfranchised whereas Group B has money, power, can vote.
- Society decides it’s politically expedient to kill off Group A, in part because this makes the well-off Group B happy and they give their votes and money to the candidates who support killing off Group A.
- In order to make it “okay” to kill off Group A, they are dehumanized. Presented as being akin to a clump of cells or an animal or something less than a person. And then the killing can proceed, justified and guilt-free!
We have seen this before with Group A being people of color, Jewish people, people of subjugated ethnic groups, poor people, and mentally challenged/ disabled people. And now Group A is babies in utero. Same ol’ story.
Jesus always defended Group A. Weird that anyone would even question that. If pro-lifers seem weird to you, you can ignore them because it’s not about pro-lifers, it’s about the latest economic genocide taking place in the name of getting votes.
Support genocide and pretty soon it’ll be like that saying, “They came for the Jews and I said nothing…they came for the blacks and I said nothing…then one day they came for me…”
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Post by theguvnor on Sept 25, 2023 20:32:22 GMT
The T4 Aktion program worked on the process of 'dehumanizing' people. Once you establish they are an 'useless eater' it is much easier to dispose of them.
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Post by blackforest on Sept 26, 2023 1:59:17 GMT
Did Jesus ever say anything about abortion? Another thought: Jesus also didn't say anything about school shootings, police brutality, or caging up kids on the country's border. The Gospels aren't going to specify every last act against The Least of These. We just know not to commit them.
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Post by RN69 on Sept 26, 2023 18:11:03 GMT
theguvnor Thank you for your post concerning the T4 Aktion Program. Not aware of what that was, I informed myself about this precursor to the Holocaust by Nazi Germany. It's action to eliminate from the Aryan nation any person deemed unworthy of living due to a genetic defect, psychological aberration, physical abnormality and old age among several other conditions was presented as a mercy killing. It is an excellent argument against the current culture of death proponents in our society who want to impose this on society as being a compassionate course to take dealing with abortion or euthanasia.
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Post by theguvnor on Sept 26, 2023 20:12:22 GMT
Unfortunately, I ended up researching it quite a bit for my MA as the subject of that had an absolute hatred of such things and used his science-fiction to demonstrate that humanity is a matter of an inward moral orientation and not just appearance. He saw the Japanese 731 group's experiments in real-life and they make the Nazis look like cuddly teddies. I suggest anyone reading about that only do so if they have an extraordinarily strong stomach. I'm starting to worry that a lot of what the author (Cordwainer Smith) saw as the rot at the root of Western society was very true. He predicted obsessions with changing sex, living through computers, a retreat from communal life and lives devoted to endless pleasure which in the end isn't pleasurable at all. He's not the first writer in sci-fi (or other genres) to do that but his work is particularly disturbing in regard to this. As he was devout High Anglican he suggests that faith in something greater than man is what will ultimately save humankind if it can be saved. Although he is quite subtle about that and slips it in between the lines.
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Post by iagosan on Sept 27, 2023 7:40:55 GMT
"He saw the Japanese 731 group's experiments in real-life and they make the Nazis look like cuddly teddies."
Indeed. There is a great (and overlooked) book on the topic of war crimes in the Far East in WW II that few are now aware of. It is well worth reading.
"The Knights of Bushido: A History of Japanese War Crimes During World War II" by Lord Russell of Liverpool.
shorturl.at/eprsK
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