# Is abortion ever justifiable?



## ThomasT (May 25, 2017)

Recently I’ve found myself in arguments with Catholics over the justifiability of abortion in extreme circumstances. The Catholic view is that abortion is never justified, and so I brought up for discussion a hypothetical case, admittedly an unlikely one, of forced surrogacy combined with a threat to the surrogate’s life. The answer from the Catholics was the same: Abortion is murder.

Here’s the hypothetical:

A teenage girl is walking down the street minding her own business. Next thing she knows she’s being thrown into the back of a van, where an evil doctor impregnates her surgically with an embryo created by an egg from another (random) woman and the sperm of the doctor. 

Then an alien being appears and tells the girl that she has two choices. She can take a pill that will kill the embryo, or she can decline to take the pill. If she takes the pill, the poison in the pill will kill the embryo but leave her unharmed, and she’ll be free to go. If she declines to take the pill, she’ll stay in a secret compound for nine months and finally die in horrible agony from massive hemorrhaging caused by the process of giving birth. The alien goes on to say that the child she gives birth to will survive (as usually happens in instances of maternal hemorrhaging) and live a normal healthy life.

The alien establishes in her mind the truth of what he’s telling her. Moreover we’ll say that what he’s telling her actually is true. 

The key question raised by the hypothetical is of course whether embryos may be killed in self-defense. My own view is that embryos are like little children: In extreme cases (e.g., very young children carrying suicide bombs), those who bear no responsibility for their actions may sometimes be justifiably killed to save the lives of those they threaten (the Catholics don’t deny this as a general principle), and that the same principle that justifies the killing of young children justifies the killing of embryos (again, in highly unusual circumstances).

Please note that I’m not looking for an excuse to justify abortion. I am wondering, though, if the pro-life movement is now assigning more rights to the unborn than it is to the born. Abortion is an evil, but so is the notion that helplessness in one person should deprive another person of his right to self-defense.


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## arapahoepark (May 25, 2017)

No.

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## Parakaleo (May 25, 2017)

Lethal measures cannot be taken up in self-defense against someone putting your life at risk unintentionally because unintentional manslaughter is not punishable by death.


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## ThomasT (May 26, 2017)

Parakaleo said:


> Lethal measures cannot be taken up in self-defense against someone putting your life at risk unintentionally because unintentional manslaughter is not punishable by death.



So if a little kid in Afghanistan is given a "gift" by a terrorist and told to take the gift to the American soldier at a checkpoint, and the soldier, who's accompanied by a bomb-sniffing dog that indicates the kid is carrying a bomb, tries to wave the kid away but isn't able to, the soldier has to let the kid run up to the checkpoint and be used as an instrument of force by terrorists who intend to detonate the bomb remotely?

This is not a Christian principle you're defending. The absence of malice on the part of an innocent instrument of force does not deprive us of our right to use force in self-defense against that instrument of force. Malice is not always necessary to justify deadly force against those who threaten us.

Another thing: You're confusing criminal penalties with actions undertaken in self-defense. If a sleep-walking man waving a gun around threatens to kill us but is disarmed before he can carry out his threats, he will (as you stated) not be subject to penalties for attempted murder. But if he can't be disarmed, those threatened by him have the right to use deadly force to protect themselves. His lack of conscious intent to murder makes no difference.


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## Pergamum (May 26, 2017)

You can safely throw out hypotheticals involving aliens.

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## ThomasT (May 26, 2017)

Pergamum said:


> You can safely throw out hypotheticals involving aliens.


The alien per se isn't critical to the hypothetical. He's a stand-in for a set of given premises; we don't care what planet he came from or what he eats for breakfast or how he came to be involved in our abortion controversy. In philosophical ethics, a stand-in (often known as an "evil demon") is a commonly accepted contrivance. He functions as a means of highlighting inconsistencies in an argument. To refuse to engage with an argument because the argument calls into service a being that doesn't exist is essentially an abdication of the argument.


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## ZackF (May 26, 2017)

In a double effect situation where a cancer patient undergoes chemo/radiation therapy that terminates the fetus is not immoral even to the sternest Catholics that I've ever known.


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## Von (May 26, 2017)

Yup - don't worry about the alien - he's just a stand-in!


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## earl40 (May 26, 2017)

ZackF said:


> In a double effect situation where a cancer patient undergoes chemo/radiation therapy that terminates the fetus is not immoral even to the sternest Catholics that I've ever known.



Here is one stern catholic who would say it is immoral.


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## Von (May 26, 2017)

earl40 said:


> Here is one stern catholic who would say it is immoral.


You must be the alien then?


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## Von (May 26, 2017)

When a woman is giving birth in a resource-constrained area/country (without poor or no surgery facilities) and the baby gets stuck, they sometimes perform what is termed a "destructive operation" to kill the baby in order to save the mom's life. This is an extreme situation, but it does happen. Unfortunately we live in a sin-cursed world where we have to make decisions and some things are not clear-cut. God desires mercy, not sacrifice.


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## ThomasT (May 26, 2017)

Von said:


> Yup - don't worry about the alien - he's just a stand-in!



You’re fixated on the alien. Let’s make this less distracting for you. Here’s the same hypothetical without the alien (it’s longer this way; the alien was an aid to brevity, among other things).

A teenage girl in the Congo (we’ll call her Lucy) lives in a remote village. She’s an orphan; her mother died giving birth to her, and her father’s nowhere to be found. Every year her village gets visited by a team of doctors, and for as long as the girl can remember the doctors have been telling Lucy that she’s extremely susceptible to the same maternal hemorrhaging that killed her mother, and that as a C-section isn’t normally available in her village (this requires a real surgery team), she must avoid getting pregnant until she leaves the village and moves to an area with modern health care. The doctors tell her that if she does give birth in the village, her child will most likely survive but that she will certainly die. And she’ll die in horrible agony.

Not long after the latest visit from the doctors, the area around the village gets cut off from outside contact by an insurgency army. No one except the insurgents can leave or enter the area. One of the insurgents is an evil doctor who impregnates Lucy with an in-vitro fertilized embryo created by the egg from another (random) woman and the doctor’s sperm. The doctor then leaves the village and lets Lucy ponder her circumstances.

In the village there are midwives who can perform an abortion, but that’s the extent of their medical skills, at least as far as Lucy’s condition is concerned. Lucy holds off on even thinking about the abortion dilemma until she begins to see for herself, after a few weeks, that she really is pregnant. The weeks drag on and still she hesitates. Finally the midwives tell her that she’s got to make a decision soon. The insurgency army has dug in and won’t be going anywhere for a long time, and Lucy is fast reaching the point where an abortion may be beyond the capabilities of the midwives.

Lucy decides to have the abortion. Question: Has she committed murder, or did she act in justifiable self-defense? Please note: I'm not asking if Lucy's behavior was less than morally ideal, or if Lucy violated the principle of charity. The question is concerned only with the issue of justice.


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## Pergamum (May 26, 2017)

To kill a baby with certainty to avoid a hypothetical possibility is a bad choice.

Another common hypothetical is the supposed need for an abortion in the case of an ectopic preganancy. But abortion is not needed to treat an ectopic pregnancy.

http://www.personhoodinitiative.com/ectopic-personhood.html



> ** ABC News: As of 2002, 40% of Ectopic Pregnancies are Not*: In 2012 ABC News reported the findings from scientific research published in the journal _Obstetrics and Gynecology_ that, "roughly 40 percent of pregnancies diagnosed as ectopic are later revealed to be normal, intrauterine pregnancies".






> Surgeon General C. Everett Koop answered the dilemma in this way: “Protection of the life of the mother as an excuse for an abortion is a smoke screen. In my thirty-six years in pediatric surgery I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother's life.”[2] [ /QUOTE]
> 
> 
> In every case I can imagine, it is much better to bear with it and hope for the best. In the very least, if a mother dies valiantly trying to deliver a live baby she dies in a noble effort instead of killing her child to save her own.

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## Pergamum (May 26, 2017)

Von said:


> When a woman is giving birth in a resource-constrained area/country (without poor or no surgery facilities) and the baby gets stuck, they sometimes perform what is termed a "destructive operation" to kill the baby in order to save the mom's life. This is an extreme situation, but it does happen. Unfortunately we live in a sin-cursed world where we have to make decisions and some things are not clear-cut. God desires mercy, not sacrifice.



False. Babies often die during hard deliveries and efforts are made to destroy and remove the already-dead baby. But killing the live baby is much different.


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## Pergamum (May 26, 2017)

Stop buying the lie! Abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother.

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## Pergamum (May 26, 2017)

Ectopic pregnancy: it is medically possible to relocate the fetus if the fallopian tube must be removed. In many cases it doesn't need to be or the Ectopic pregnancy is shown later to be normal.

Cancer: You can do chemo without killing the baby.


> *Chemo During Pregnancy* Appears Safe for Mother and Child. A review of the experiences of more than 400 women who received *chemotherapy* to treat breast cancer *while* they were *pregnant* suggests that the treatment doesn't harm the baby. The study was published online on Aug. 16, 2012 by The Lancet Oncology.



Some women delay chemo until the baby is born and survive.


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## ThomasT (May 26, 2017)

Pergamum said:


> Stop buying the lie! Abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother.



Sure -- if you live in a country where modern medical care is available to all. But what if you don't? What if your village in Sub-Saharan Africa has an abortionist but no doctor to perform a C-section?

The real lie is that the world is extravagantly endowed with shiny modern hospitals, and that women need only avail themselves of the splendid services these institutions provide. Why have an abortion when you can simply check yourself into Cedars-Sinai?

This is a quote from a pro-life website; it acknowledges the need for C-sections to save the lives of mothers and happily reports that this procedure has made abortion unnecessary. How wonderful for women everywhere, including places like the Central African Republic.
-----------------------
Situations in which the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother are extremely rare. Late-term abortions are never medically necessary. Emergency C-sections are often the medically appropriate response to save both mother and child. Viability at this stage of the child’s development is generally very good, especially with advances in neonatal care. Babies who weigh just under a pound are surviving!
http://www.feministsforlife.org/what-about-the-life-of-the-mother/

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## ZackF (May 26, 2017)

Pergamum said:


> Stop buying the lie! Abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother.


I respectfully disagree.


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## Ask Mr. Religion (May 27, 2017)

I do not think there is a single instance from Scripture that give us warrant to presume to know the providence of God, so discussing hypotheticals is a meaningless endeavor (Deut. 29:29). We should never do evil thinking good will come of it. This is an act of rebellion against the revealed will of God. Intervention intended to end the life of an unborn child is murder. It is not debatable. Bringing good out of evil remains the sole purview of God.

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## ThomasT (May 27, 2017)

Ask Mr. Religion said:


> I do not think there is a single instance from Scripture that give us warrant to presume to know the providence of God, so discussing hypotheticals is a meaningless endeavor (Deut. 29:29). We should never do evil thinking good will come of it. This is an act of rebellion against the revealed will of God. Intervention intended to end the life of an unborn child is murder. It is not debatable. Bringing good out of evil remains the sole purview of God.



If it's always murder to kill the unborn intentionally then it must also always be murder to kill little children intentionally. And yet prohibiting the killing of little children would deprive people of the Middle East (and also our soldiers in the Middle East) of their right to protect themselves from the little children who are used as suicide bombers by terrorists. You can't categorically prohibit the killing of the unborn without explaining why children don't deserve the same protection.

Leaving war aside: Policemen have sometimes been forced to shoot little kids who were waving guns around. The kids had no malice but the policemen had to protect themselves. Our right to defend ourselves does not go away simply because the person threatening us is both helpless and free of malice.


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## Ask Mr. Religion (May 27, 2017)

Thomas,

The discussion is related to unlawful killing, _murder_. This is what abortion is. Introducing unrelated category errors into the discussion serves no purpose save but to distract from its original intent.

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## Von (May 27, 2017)

ThomasT said:


> Sure -- if you live in a country where modern medical care is available to all.


I agree. Where I am staying there are some HOSPITALS that do not even have medical gloves. The packs used for stitching patients' wounds run out halfway through the night. There's not enough beds, so people sleep on the floor. I can go on and on.
Furthermore Pergamum,

"...In my thirty-six years in pediatric surgery..." - seriously?! - a paediatric surgeon commenting on an obstetric issue?
The article from ABC news is criticizing the doctors for giving a drug that eventually caused malformations in the baby, but the study they quote (and that you use in support of your argument) to prove that ectopics are misdiagnosed, actually ADVISES that the doctor should give this specific drug! - You and ABC can't have it both ways.
The study in question does note that only 61.6% had ectopic pregnancies, but the REMAINING 38.4% had miscarriages! (not exactly a normal viable pregnancy...)



ThomasT said:


> the pro-life movement is now assigning more rights to the unborn than it is to the born


I think you have your answer.


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## Pergamum (May 27, 2017)

Von:

Are you medically trained enough yourself to discount the testimony of someone 36 years in medicine because the surgeon was not an ob-gyn?

Late-term abortions are never medically necessary, as in your bush-scenario of killing and decimating the stuck baby to pass it in hard labor.

The intention of any procedure should never be to end the life of the child. Even in ectopic pregnancies which rupture or must be removed, in many cases the pregnancy can progress until the baby is viable and only then be removed to be nursed as a preemie.



> While he was United States Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop stated publicly that in his thirty-eight years as a pediatric surgeon, he was never aware of a single situation in which a freeborn child's life had to be taken in order to save the life of the mother. He said the use of this argument to justify abortion in general was a “smoke screen.”
> 
> Due to significant medical advances, the danger of pregnancy to the mother has declined considerably since 1967. Yet even at that time Dr. Alan Guttmacher of Planned Parenthood acknowledged: [1]
> 
> ...


http://www.abortionfacts.com/facts/8



> In a new Live Action project, former abortionist and practicing OB/GYN Anthony Levatino explains: “*You never need late-term abortion to save a woman’s life. If necessary, you accomplish the delivery*.” Preterm delivery involves inducing the delivery of the child before he has reached term. The procedure is performed for various reasons, including the cessation of extreme health risks to pregnant women.
> 
> This procedure in no circumstances requires the prior, direct killing of the preborn child. While the child may be too underdeveloped to survive outside the womb, his natural death would be the result of an ethical delivery which saved his mother’s life. Furthermore, the child’s death is _by no means _inevitable in these circumstances; hospital delivery offers preterm children the medical technologies that are used to sustain premature babies every day. Dr. Levatino explains: “Now, did every one of those children make it, because they were preterm? No. But they all had a chance. And most of them did make it.”


https://www.texasrighttolife.com/fo...ion-is-never-necessary-to-save-a-womans-life/



> Five of Ireland's top gynaecologists, writing in 1992: “We affirm that there are no medical circumstances justifying direct abortion, that is, no circumstances in which the life of a mother may only be saved by directly terminating the life of her unborn child.” John Bonner, Eamon O'Dwyer, David Jenkins, Kieran O'Driscoll, Julia Vaughan, “Statement by Obstetricians,” The Irish Times, 1 April 1992. ______ Dr. Hymie Gordon, Director of Medical Genetics, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, October 15, 1974: “In more than 25 years now of medical practice, I have come to learn that if a woman is healthy enough to become pregnant, she is healthy enough to complete the term - in spite of heart disease, liver disease, almost any disease. As far as I’m concerned, there are no medical indications for terminating a pregnancy.” Dr. Hymie Gordon, Director of Medical Genetics, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, October 15, 1974


https://www.nrlc.org/archive/abortion/pba/HowOftenAbortionNecessarySaveMother.pdf

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## Pergamum (May 27, 2017)

Dr. Levatino also has a law degree, and explains in the video how a law that contains an exception for the “health of the mother” is meaningless because “health” has been defined to include not only physical health, but mental, social and even economic “health”.

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## Pergamum (May 27, 2017)

The very worst-case scenario I can think of is the Twin to Twin Transfusion Scenario where both twins share one placenta. 

But even then there is hope:



> Anthony Dardano, M.D. writes:
> 
> Twin to twin transfusion syndrome occurs when identical twins share the same placenta. This is the case in roughly 5-10% of identical twins. Since the twins share the same placenta, they share some of the circulation, which may result in the transfusion of blood from one twin into the other. This is a very complex syndrome and can very from very mild to quite severe where one twin is fluid overloaded and the other anemic and fluid depleated. Severity is determined by how much of the circulation is shared and at which stage of the pregnancy it starts to cause symptoms. While I won't get into all the signs (excessive amniotic fluid), symptoms, etc., I will say that there is treatment available for a lot of the cases. The simplest treatment is to do nothing. If the amniotic fluid development exceeds certain limits, it can be drawn off by ultrasound guided amniocentesis. Modern technology has made this procedure relatively safe compared to the "blind taps" we did years ago. In any event, many times this is all that's needed. The pregnancy can be monitored and earlier delivery via cesarean section can be life saving for both twins. Remember that after birth, when the cords are clamped, the syndrome is over and modern perinatal intensive care has done wonders in stabilizing these children. More exciting is the use of fetal surgery. With a fetoscope, one can actually enter the amniotic cavity, visualize the abnomal circulatory placental connections, and seal them using a laser beam. Of course, these procedures carry some risk of fetal loss, but since the primary intent is to save both children, the risk would be morally acceptable ( a good example of the Principle of Double Effect guiding our decisions). I must be emphatic however in stating that any therapy with the primary purpose of destroying one fetus to give the other a "better chance" is infanticide and absolutely prohibited under all circumstances. As I have said many times before, physicians frequently are more concerned with their liability in managing a case, than with doing what is morally right for the patient. Their recommendation to sacrifice one fetus for the sake of the other is an example of that mentality.
> 
> Anthony N. Dardano, M.D.




But docs often say that one twin MUST be aborted to save the life of the other. Below is a good example of how these twins are treated by most hospitals. Lots of misinformation....docs telling patients there is no hope and they MUST abort one twin or lose both. Below is an encouraging news story:

https://world.wng.org/2016/08/advertising_life


> But they found out later the babies had twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS), where the babies share a placenta and have an uneven blood flow. Their first doctor recommended either aborting both of the babies, or one, “Baby B.”
> 
> “I can’t imagine thinking about ending one kid’s life to save our other kid’s life,” says Celeste Fine, the mom in the ad.
> 
> ...



https://www.tttsfoundation.org/help_during_pregnancy/reflect.php


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## Von (May 27, 2017)

Please explain to me the following statement:


Pergamum said:


> Even in ectopic pregnancies which rupture or must be removed, in many cases the pregnancy can progress until the baby is viable and only then be removed to be nursed as a preemie.


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## Pergamum (May 27, 2017)

Von said:


> Please explain to me the following statement:



"An ectopic pregnancy is a pregnancy in which the child is growing in an area of the mother’s body other than the womb.

In most of these cases, the child is found to be growing in one of the mother’s fallopian tubes. Occasionally the child will grow in the mother’s abdominal cavity, and on very rare occasions he will begin to develop inside of one of her ovaries.

These pregnancies are generally assumed to be fatal unless an abortion is performed, and the explanation is given that it is better to save the mother by killing the unborn child than to do nothing and allow both of them to die. "

But, as I have given proof of, many ectopic pregnancies are misdiagnosed and are not ectopic, or at least not tubal. Or the precise location is not known (see the article linked below).

"The actual danger that an ectopic pregnancy poses to the mother is that of a tubal rupture or some other kind of hemorrhage which could cause the mother to lose a vital amount of blood." But this bleeding can be stopped. "In 2002, a worldwide study of 632 ruptured ectopic pregnancies treated with autotransfusion reported only a single instance of death. That’s a success rate of 99.84%. This study demonstrates that this non-abortive treatment is more successful than the preferred abortion method which has a success rate of just 99.6%." Better to let things progress naturally instead of intentionally end the life of the fetus. In some cases upon rupture the embryo has re-implanted in another location.

"The treatment of ectopics gets better and better all the time with advances in medicine making it possible now to transfer the pregnancy from the tube into the uterus. In reality, there have been many reports of successful ectopic pregnancies. Two obstetricians in New York, Dr.’s Hellman and Simon, published details on 316 ectopic pregnancies which resulted in live births between 1809 and 1935. [1] (Only half of these children survived their first week of life, but these births occurred long before the development of the first neonatal intensive care unit."

It has been discovered that a large percentage of ectopic pregnancies resolve on their own with the death of the child before he grows large enough to cause a rupture of the fallopian tube. In one study of 179 tubal pregnancies, it was found that 41.9% of all tubal pregnancies result in the death of the child at this stage.[30] This means that approximately 58% of the children continue to grow until they eventually rupture their mothers' fallopian tubes.

So if most die on their own, why intentionally kill it? Especially if the survival rate is so high for the mothers?

Dr. Clark demonstrated that the rupture itself does not cause the death of the child and that he will often subsequently implant on some other surface in the abdominal cavity and may live.

The solution should be to closely monitor the condition of both the child and the mother so that a c-section delivery could be initiated immediately if the condition of either patient begins to worsen.



> ox News in Phoenix has this story of a woman who was diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy (one outside the uterus) at 20 weeks. She rejected surgery at that point because her baby couldn't have survived. He was born, healthy but premature, at 32 weeks.


http://www.fox10phoenix.com/dpp/news/offbeat/expecting-mom-carries-fetus-in-abdomen-5-23-2011

Here is an article about an ectopic pregnancy surviving:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2008476/The-mother-risked-ectopic-baby.html

Here is another article:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/a...ectopic-baby-after-8-c-sections-this-couple-c

And here is another:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/sep/10/vikramdodd

And here are medical journals about tubal pregnancies being transplanted into the uterus:
http://www.ajog.org/article/0002-9378(90)90794-8/pdf

http://americanrtl.org/files/docs/Journal-Surg-Gyn-Obst-1917p578-579ectopic-transplant.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2602194/

The death of both the child and the mother is far from certain in these cases. When there is hope I think you must wait and see and not end that hope prematurely.

A number of things could happen if a doc diagnoses even a fallopian tube pregnancy. They could be wrong. It happens a lot. The baby may die on its own without you intentionally ending its life. You can use the principle of double-effect and remove the tube and say in your mind that it is not with the purpose of killing the baby (as some do). The tube could rupture and might re-implant. You might find out it wasn't actually in the tube but in the abdomen and you might be able to remove it once viable and keep it alive as a preemie. Death is not a foregone fate.

The OP asks, "IS abortion ever justifiable" and even in these most difficult of cases, I believe the answer is, "NO, abortion is never justified."


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## Von (May 27, 2017)

Yes - FIRST WORLD, without the following:

Preconceived ideas about medicine (ie: western medicine = bad, traditional medicine = just as good)
Poor infrastructure
No personal transport available, and public transport variable
Nearest clinic (primary healthcare) not being easily accessible 
Long queue of equally ill people at nearest hospital with surgical facilities
The only doctor on duty at this secondary medical facility is a junior doctor
The senior doctors are often not available for various reasons
etc, etc
I can go on and on - the IDEAL would be to spare the pregnancy, but this is not ALWAYS possible.
It sounds like you are more anti-abortion than pro-life.


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## Pergamum (May 27, 2017)

If you have the medical technology to do an abortion "safely" then you have the medical technology to do many of things I have mentioned above. 

So....abortions only for the poor people, then, huh?

If this is a true triage condition like on a battlefield where an absolute lack of meds are available you can justify a lot. But it isn't...all of these conditions progress over weeks to months. 

I live in the bush, too, and we can get medical emergencies flown out over the course of a few hours to at least reasonable medical care. 

Systems may fail and patients die due to poor care and poor infrastructure, but this is no justification of the morality of a practice.


A summary of my situation: My wife and I are RNs living amongst a remote tribe and treating the sick in our home and on our porch as a clinic. I was in the Army before that and we trained for field (bush) conditions. The only access here in my village in and out was by heli at first before we opened a water strip on our river and then a real airstrip.

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## Von (May 27, 2017)

This is going nowhere.
I'm done.


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## jw (May 27, 2017)

Duty is ours; outcomes belong to God.

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## ThomasT (May 27, 2017)

Pergamum said:


> If you have the medical technology to do an abortion "safely" then you have the medical technology to do many of things I have mentioned above.
> .



There are many places in the world where abortions can be performed safely but where C-sections can't. You seem unwilling to acknowledge this.

Even in places where abortions are unsafe and risky, for a woman who has no access to a C-section, these risky abortions are often her only hope of survival. It's a cruel thing to tell a woman who's dying for want of a C-section that she can't take her chances on the local abortionist because his "clinic" doesn't meet AMA standards and his "training" isn't properly certified. 

These objections are pretexts designed to prop up the grotesque lie that abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother.


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## ThomasT (May 27, 2017)

Ask Mr. Religion said:


> Thomas,
> 
> The discussion is related to unlawful killing, _murder_. This is what abortion is. Introducing unrelated category errors into the discussion serves no purpose save but to distract from its original intent.



You're putting the cart before the horse. We haven't yet established that abortion _is_ murder in all possible cases.


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## Ask Mr. Religion (May 27, 2017)

ThomasT said:


> You're putting the cart before the horse. We haven't yet established that abortion _is_ murder in all possible cases.


Scripture, notwithstanding, of course (Job 33:4;Ex. 20:13;Jer. 1:4–5; Isaiah 49:1–5;45:9-12;64:8;Psalm 51:5;139:13–16;Matthew 5:21-22;Luke 1:40–44).


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## ThomasT (May 27, 2017)

Ask Mr. Religion said:


> Scripture, notwithstanding, of course (Job 33:4;Ex. 20:13;Jer. 1:4–5; Isaiah 49:1–5;45:9-12;64:8;Psalm 51:5;139:13–16;Matthew 5:21-22;Luke 1:40–44).



The verses you’ve cited make a strong case for the humanity of the unborn, and I have no interest in making the opposite case. In general I view abortion as a grave evil.

But the verses you've cited do nothing to address the issue of self-defense. The Bible deplores the killing of (born) children, but nowhere in the Bible will one find the suggestion that only a soldier or policeman or other agent of the state may justifiably kill a child if the child is actually threatening someone's life. The Bible doesn't lead us to believe that ordinary people -- people not wearing uniforms -- are prohibited from using deadly force against children when the force is used in self-defense.

So if we agree that an innocent gun-toting tot may sometimes be killed with justification, even if the killer isn’t a cop, we can’t then go on to say that the _unborn_ may never be killed in justifiable self-defense unless we can show_ a critical and inherent difference between a helpless innocent embryo and a helpless innocent child._

In any homicide case in which a claim of self-defense is made, we have to become familiar with the relevant details of the case before we can conclude that the homicide was or wasn’t justifiable; we can't just look at the age of the deceased. When courts are hearing a case involving homicide, and the defendant makes an affirmative defense (meaning that he admits he committed the homicide he’s accused of, but on grounds of self-defense he denies any guilt), the court doesn’t simply say, “Well, the person you killed was three years old, so that’s the end of it – guilty.” Nor does it say, “Well, you said your life was at risk, so that’s the end of it – not guilty.” The court looks at the case in excruciating detail to determine what alternative actions the defendant could have taken, whether the child really was holding an actual firearm, whether the child was capable of discharging the firearm, whether the adult bore any responsibility for the fact that the child found himself in possession of the firearm, whether there was a reasonable chance the child might have pulled the trigger, etc. Without these details no responsible ruling can be reached by the court.

You seem to be indifferent to details when they're associated with abortion. But this is an indifference we're not entitled to as moral beings. Practical morality is a serious thing, and it happens to be everybody’s business. If we believe that abortion is always murder, we have to provide real reasons for treating one innocent human as absolutely untouchable and another innocent human as a justifiable target of deadly force. Which means we're stuck with the messy details.


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## Pergamum (May 27, 2017)

Abortion as self-defense against one's own baby is a horrible justification.

I live in arguably the most remote part of the world. If we can arrange medivac to a facility big enough to do an abortion that same facility can do a c-section. 

You make up false scenarios to defend the indefensible.

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## ThomasT (May 27, 2017)

Pergamum said:


> Abortion as self-defense against one's own baby is a horrible justification.
> 
> I live in arguably the most remote part of the world. If we can arrange medivac to a facility big enough to do an abortion that same facility can do a c-section.
> 
> You make up false scenarios to defend the indefensible.



In my scenario, which isn't supposed to be either "true" or "false" but rather a hypothetical (although there's no reason the scenario couldn't have already happened), the woman is merely a surrogate. The embryo isn't hers. Moreover, the woman didn't choose to be a surrogate; an embryo was implanted inside her against her will. Her life is now in terrible danger as a result of her being forced to carry someone else's offspring.

Your experience living in a remote place -- and I don't care if that place is the South Pole -- poses no threat to the truth of the following statement: There are millions of women around the world who have access to a village abortionist (no medivac needed) but who have no access to the resources necessary for a C-section. No one's going to medivac these women anywhere when they find themselves in a troubled pregnancy. No one even knows they need a medivac. They either get the abortion or they die.

If a girl happens to come to the attention of the right parties (say if an NGO has essentially adopted the village), then lucky her: She's taking a flight that will end up saving her life. But for every girl like her there are thousands who will never see the inside of an airplane no matter how sick they get.


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## Pergamum (May 27, 2017)

You cling to a very odd hypothetical scenario but won't accept the reality. I live very remotely and there is no scenario I have ever heard of where somebody can get an abortion "to save their life" but not other needed healthcare. 

At the very most a doc may prescribe a "therapeutic abortion" to avoid some possible future complications, but that is killing an innocent with certainty to avoid a possibility and is not morally defensible. 

You are making things up trying to suit your purpose. Intentionally killing a live baby in the womb is never needed.

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## arapahoepark (May 27, 2017)

I find it odd that if there is such a lack of medical care how is it deemed that she must kill or be killed?


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## ThomasT (May 28, 2017)

Pergamum said:


> You cling to a very odd hypothetical scenario but won't accept the reality. I live very remotely and there is no scenario I have ever heard of where somebody can get an abortion "to save their life" but not other needed healthcare.
> 
> At the very most a doc may prescribe a "therapeutic abortion" to avoid some possible future complications, but that is killing an innocent with certainty to avoid a possibility and is not morally defensible.
> 
> You are making things up trying to suit your purpose. Intentionally killing a live baby in the womb is never needed.



I'm not sure how familiar you are with the eastern Congo, but in any case it's a region that's been devastated by war. Rape is common, and women (this includes girls as young as ten) who get pregnant have no access to modern medical care. Much of the area is cut off from outside contact by rebel armies. Women with life-threatening pregnancies are forced to choose between taking a chance with a local abortionist (abortionists are ubiquitous in Africa) or taking a chance carrying a child to term. Many of those who elect to carry a child to term end up dying. No one -- exceptions allowed, as always, for the very lucky -- manages to escape her dilemma by hopping on a bush-flight to Nairobi and checking into a hospital.

And please let's not pretend that the eastern Congo is the only place in our sad world where similar conditions prevail. Your world, the one you keep calling our attention to, seems to be a much happier place than the real one. And that's great for those who live there. I'm concerned with those who don't.


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## Pergamum (May 28, 2017)

How do you know it is a life-threatening pregnancy? How do you know the solution is to abort? How do you know they are "forced to choose" between their life or the baby's life?


Many women end up dying in childbirth here, too. The solution is not abortion. Women end up dying from botched abortions, too, in Africa. Is this an argument to get them done more professionally?

Maybe you should start putting trolley cars into your ethical dilemmas.

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## Ed Walsh (May 28, 2017)

Although some have said similar things to me. I want to state clearly my position.
My simple maxim is and has been:

*Never kill a baby to protect the mother from a merely potential, even probable death.
*​In killing there's a world of difference between a definite death and a potential death.

_Just my 2 worth...

PS - I know I wandered from the OP. Sorry for that.

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## Pergamum (May 28, 2017)

Ed Walsh said:


> Although some have said similar things to me. I want to state clearly my position.
> My simple maxim is and has been:
> 
> *Never kill a baby to protect the mother from a merely potential, even probable death.
> ...



YES. Exactly! You didn't wander at all but hit the nail on the head.


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## Ask Mr. Religion (May 28, 2017)

"If the choice is between allowing _nature_ to kill the mother or _man_ to kill the baby, I would choose the passive
action of possibly letting a woman die from natural consequences rather than intervening to directly kill the unborn child."
*Src*: Abortion: a rational look at an emotional issue {<--_free_}

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## arapahoepark (May 28, 2017)

Ed Walsh said:


> Although some have said similar things to me. I want to state clearly my position.
> My simple maxim is and has been:
> 
> *Never kill a baby to protect the mother from a merely potential, even probable death.
> ...


Prepare for a wordy scolding...


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## OPC'n (May 28, 2017)

A man walks up to a woman and beats her so badly that it disfigures her face. Now the the only thing she is reminded of when she looks in the mirror is her attacker. Is it fair that she has to live with that face or should she be allowed to kill herself in order to run from the remembrance of her attacker? Abortion is never right unless the mother is inches from death.


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## Pergamum (May 28, 2017)

A woman is raped. So she cannot bear the thought of having a rapist's baby. So she has it aborted to help her forget.

Abortion is never right. Period. 

We never really know when she is inches from death. There is a huge calculation problem of weighing probabilities. We don't have psychic abilities. 

...and if she is already dying, killing a baby probably won't help her...better to deliver and save the baby.

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## ThomasT (May 28, 2017)

Ed Walsh said:


> Although some have said similar things to me. I want to state clearly my position.
> My simple maxim is and has been:
> 
> *Never kill a baby to protect the mother from a merely potential, even probable death.
> ...




The argument you’re making here is brought up frequently by those who oppose abortion in all cases. You and others on this thread seem committed to it.

But I think it’s a bad argument – it suffers from a consistency problem. The driving principle behind the anti-abortion movement is that the unborn are fully human and as such have the same rights as adults. And yet what’s really happening is that the anti-abortion movement is assigning _more_ rights to the unborn than to the born.

What you're saying is that we can't kill the unborn simply on the _possibility_ that the mother will otherwise die. Abortion is a definite end for the fetus, while death in childbirth for the mother is at most merely probable – it’s never certain.

Yet if we followed the same rule for adults (and for the born in general), no one would ever be able to use deadly force in self-defense. It’s never certain that a man pointing a gun at us will actually pull the trigger. It’s never certain that even if the man does pull the trigger, the gun won’t backfire. It’s never certain that even if the gun doesn’t backfire, the bullet won’t hit its target. But no one will object when we kill the man anyway. He was pointing a gun at us; that counts as a reasonable assumption of threat.

And by the way (and I have a feeling that this point will be overlooked), even if it's a three-year old who's waving the gun at us, the same rules apply. We may, depending on circumstances, have the right to kill the toddler (he thinks the gun is a toy and that we're playing a game), but when we (sadly) kill the kid, in what we believe to be self-defense, we can't say we really know for a fact that killing the kid was necessary.

Look at any case of justifiable homicide in the news recently and you’ll see that the man who used deadly force did so on a _mere probability_ that the person he killed posed a threat to his life. No one has ever used deadly force in self-defense with an absolute certainty that deadly force was necessary. We operate in life on probabilities.

So assuming that you believe an adult has the right to use deadly force against another adult (or child) on a reasonable assumption – not a certainty – of mortal threat, you’re stuck with explaining why an adult can’t use deadly force against the unborn for the same reason.


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## ThomasT (May 28, 2017)

Ask Mr. Religion said:


> "If the choice is between allowing _nature_ to kill the mother or _man_ to kill the baby, I would choose the passive
> action of possibly letting a woman die from natural consequences rather than intervening to directly kill the unborn child."
> *Src*: Abortion: a rational look at an emotional issue {<--_free_}



I think a lot of mothers would make that same choice for themselves. But that's a choice -- it's not an obligation of justice.


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## Pergamum (May 29, 2017)

If a 3 year old is waving a gun at people, I would hope the police are trained not to shoot to kill or even use deadly force. There are options. To go straight to the option of a sniper's round to the head is not the best. We don't know enough to know if the gun is loaded, if it is on safety, etc. I believe an officer trying to sneak up behind or using a riot shield so that death for the infant is never the goal is an obligation here.


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## ThomasT (May 29, 2017)

Joshua said:


> Duty is ours; outcomes belong to God.



One of our duties is to uphold the Christian principle of self-defense.


Pergamum said:


> How do you know it is a life-threatening pregnancy? How do you know the solution is to abort? How do you know they are "forced to choose" between their life or the baby's life?
> 
> 
> Many women end up dying in childbirth here, too. The solution is not abortion. Women end up dying from botched abortions, too, in Africa. Is this an argument to get them done more professionally?
> ...



Let’s bring this argument back to its essentials. You’re asserting the following (the first four points are assumptions; please let me know if I'm misrepresenting you):

1. It’s not always murder to kill a young child intentionally.
2. It’s not always murder to kill an old person intentionally.
3. It’s not always murder to kill a physically handicapped person intentionally.
4. It’s not always murder to kill a mentally retarded person intentionally.

but…

5. It’s _always murder, under all possible circumstances,_ to kill the unborn intentionally.

If you were teaching this principle to an ethics class, you’d have every hand in the room raised. Your students would present you with a million hypothetical cases, most involving highly unlikely circumstances, to determine if your principle could stand the test it’s clearly crying out for. If you responded to those hypotheticals by dismissing them on the grounds that they’re not what we encounter in everyday life, you’d lose your audience. And deservedly so.

My Congo scenario is admittedly outlandish, but I think it combines all the conditions necessary for the surrogate mother to justify killing the embryo she’s been forced to host.

Self-defense is a legitimate Christian principle; it can’t be dismissed out of hand.


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## ThomasT (May 29, 2017)

Pergamum said:


> If a 3 year old is waving a gun at people, I would hope the police are trained not to shoot to kill or even use deadly force. There are options. To go straight to the option of a sniper's round to the head is not the best. We don't know enough to know if the gun is loaded, if it is on safety, etc. I believe an officer trying to sneak up behind or using a riot shield so that death for the infant is never the goal is an obligation here.



So all cases involving cops shooting gun-wielding toddlers are murder cases? There's never been a single such case in which the police (or private citizen) had no other choice but to use deadly force? Please tell me you're not serious. In 2015, toddlers shot people at a rate of one a week in the US. And you want us to believe that in all of those cases there was a non-violent way to prevent the shooting?

"Last year, a Washington Post analysis found that toddlers were finding guns and shooting people at a rate of about one a week. This year, that pace has accelerated. There have been at least 23 toddler-involved shootings since Jan. 1, compared with 18 over the same period last year."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...t-23-people-this-year/?utm_term=.a3f47c1dd038


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## Pergamum (May 29, 2017)

Why are you looking so hard for justifiable reasons to kill infants?

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## Pergamum (May 29, 2017)

Self-defense against a willful attacker is much different than trying to defend the lives of all, including the innocent child/baby.

The baby is not "attacking" anybody.

Alan Guttmacher, former Planned Parenthood president says, "There are no conceivable clinical situations today where abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother. In fact, if her health is threatened and an abortion is performed, the abortion increases risks the mother will incur regarding her health."

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, American Bioethics Advisory Commission, "There is only one purpose for abortion — ending the life of the child. The "life of the mother" situation for abortion is simply bogus."

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## ThomasT (May 29, 2017)

Pergamum said:


> Self-defense against a willful attacker is much different than trying to defend the lives of all, including the innocent child/baby.
> 
> The baby is not "attacking" anybody.
> 
> ...



The presence of a fetus in a woman’s body can undermine the conditions necessary for her to sustain her own life. There are women who are advised by their doctors never to get pregnant because pregnancy will probably result in their death. The Catholic Church, which couldn’t be more strongly opposed to abortion (or to artificial contraception), allows women to take the pill when they suffer from conditions in which pregnancy will likely kill them.

When such a woman (a woman with pre-existing susceptibility to pregnancy-related death) gets pregnant as an involuntary surrogate (see my scenario), the embryo inside her, while helpless and innocent, isn’t just a serious threat to the life of the surrogate – it's also occupying a space it has no right to occupy. The woman has every right to remove it if its presence presents a mortal threat to her. Now if she’d gotten pregnant voluntarily, we’d have a grey area to deal with. But when another human being is put inside her without her consent, a human being that didn't even come from her own body, the woman needn’t stand by helpless; her body is hers to protect from a life-threatening intruder. The embryo in my scenario is an intruder despite being free of malice.

It’s the embryo (in my scenario) that’s occupying space it has no right to occupy. If someone drugs me, rendering me comatose, and dumps me in your house, I’m an intruder despite having no intent to intrude. You and I don't have equal standing in your house. And if my presence is somehow a threat to your life (say because of an infectious disease I carry), and you can’t a) leave your house to escape the threat I pose, or b) remove me from your house, you have every right to kill me. It doesn’t matter that I’m free of malice.

You may choose, as a matter of charity, not to kill me. But as a matter of justice you're entitled to do so. Justice doesn't require you to die because an intruder -- however helpless and unwitting -- puts your life at risk.


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## ThomasT (May 29, 2017)

Pergamum said:


> Why are you looking so hard for justifiable reasons to kill infants?



Because we as Christians have a duty not to make false statements about Christian ethics.


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## Pergamum (May 29, 2017)

So the unborn baby in the womb is "occupying a space it has no right to occupy"? 

Your ethics seem more informed by Peter Singer than the Scripture.

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## Ed Walsh (May 29, 2017)

I think we're stuck on this one. Maybe we should just let it go. That's what I am doing.

Bye for now.

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## Steve Curtis (May 29, 2017)

ThomasT said:


> here are women who are advised by their doctors never to get pregnant because pregnancy will probably result in their death



Such was our case - and God was pleased to bless us with not one but two babies! We never for an instant considered taking the life of either to avoid the potentiality of danger for my wife.

I also think that you are carrying the "self-defense" position too far. I am not so concerned with my own material existence that I would kill a toddler to preserve it. Period.

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## arapahoepark (May 29, 2017)

ThomasT said:


> So all cases involving cops shooting gun-wielding toddlers are murder cases? There's never been a single such case in which the police (or private citizen) had no other choice but to use deadly force? Please tell me you're not serious. In 2015, toddlers shot people at a rate of one a week in the US. And you want us to believe that in all of those cases there was a non-violent way to prevent the shooting?
> 
> "Last year, a Washington Post analysis found that toddlers were finding guns and shooting people at a rate of about one a week. This year, that pace has accelerated. There have been at least 23 toddler-involved shootings since Jan. 1, compared with 18 over the same period last year."
> 
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...t-23-people-this-year/?utm_term=.a3f47c1dd038





ThomasT said:


> So all cases involving cops shooting gun-wielding toddlers are murder cases? There's never been a single such case in which the police (or private citizen) had no other choice but to use deadly force? Please tell me you're not serious. In 2015, toddlers shot people at a rate of one a week in the US. And you want us to believe that in all of those cases there was a non-violent way to prevent the shooting?
> 
> "Last year, a Washington Post analysis found that toddlers were finding guns and shooting people at a rate of about one a week. This year, that pace has accelerated. There have been at least 23 toddler-involved shootings since Jan. 1, compared with 18 over the same period last year."
> 
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...t-23-people-this-year/?utm_term=.a3f47c1dd038


Do you think toddlers are more of a threat than self radicalized Jihadis? They are kids who have stupid parents and they are fooling around with a gun not knowing better. Do you believe that they have intent? And yes, I do the cops who 'kill' kids should be tried for murder. I babysat a kid who was nuts once, about 7 or 8 years old running around, weidling a knife threatening me, his brother and my sister. I tackled him.
I have followed your logic and your attempted rebuttals. To the non-trained they sound good but, weak analogies and plot holes ruin it.


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## Steve Curtis (May 29, 2017)

ThomasT said:


> One of our duties is to uphold the Christian principle of self-defense.



This - as an apparent moral obligation - seems to be quite a big issue for you. Can you share chapter and verse to support it, to the point of killing the toddler who waves a gun at you?


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## ZackF (May 29, 2017)

Ed Walsh said:


> I think we're stuck on this one. Maybe we should just let it go. That's what I am doing.
> 
> Bye for now.



I come down on the other side of the issue from you but I agree. It's pointless to continue.


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## ThomasT (May 29, 2017)

arapahoepark said:


> Do you think toddlers are more of a threat than self radicalized Jihadis? They are kids who have stupid parents and they are fooling around with a gun not knowing better. Do you believe that they have intent? And yes, I do the cops who 'kill' kids should be tried for murder. I babysat a kid who was nuts once, about 7 or 8 years old running around, weidling a knife threatening me, his brother and my sister. I tackled him.
> I have followed your logic and your attempted rebuttals. To the non-trained they sound good but, weak analogies and plot holes ruin it.



Your argument takes a specific case and uses it to reach a general conclusion. You're saying that you were able to tackle a knife-wielding child and that therefore any adult who will ever find himself threatened by a child can do what you did -- which is to protect himself without using deadly force. This is inductive reasoning at its most fallacious.

As for terrorists, we know that these monsters often use children as bombers. Are we obligated to avoid shooting kids who wear suicide vests and "tackle them" instead? Are you not aware that our soldiers in the Middle East have been forced on many occasions to kill children? Should these troops be prosecuted like the cops you want to send to jail?

ISIS, Boko Haram, and (to a lesser degree) the Taliban all use children to carry vests full of explosive ammonium nitrate. Security forces often have no way to protect themselves and bystanders from these kids except by using deadly force. This really is a fact.

As for the question you asked about intent, some of the kids used by terrorist groups are true believers with definite malice. Others are so young they have no idea what they're doing. But intent or no intent, our moral obligations do not require us to let the bomb go off.


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## ThomasT (May 29, 2017)

Pergamum said:


> So the unborn baby in the womb is "occupying a space it has no right to occupy"?
> 
> Your ethics seem more informed by Peter Singer than the Scripture.



No -- that's not what I'm saying. Most unborn babies _do _have the right to occupy the womb they're in.

But in my scenario, the embryo didn't come from the woman's body it now inhabits. _That _embryo has no right to be where it is. One cannot claim that simply by occupying space one has established residency rights.


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## Pergamum (May 30, 2017)

Suppose a secret mafia team sneaks into your house at night and drugs you and hooks up your body to the body of a secret mafia boss such that he is using your kidneys so that he won't die. Suppose you can find a willing doctor to drug the mafia boss and surgically remove him and free you, even though the mafia boss will die. Can you remove the mafia boss?

See I can make up hypotheticals, too.


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## ThomasT (May 30, 2017)

kainos01 said:


> This - as an apparent moral obligation - seems to be quite a big issue for you. Can you share chapter and verse to support it, to the point of killing the toddler who waves a gun at you?



I'm not saying that we're _obligated _to use deadly force when someone threatens us. What I'm saying is that if we _choose_ to use deadly force, we haven't committed an injustice, providing deadly force was our only reasonable option. If the woman in my scenario chooses to let herself die in agony, she certainly wouldn't have anything to apologize for. In fact I think we'd all admire her courage and compassion.

But justice is different from charity, and it's justice we're concerned with here. Our _obligation_ is to avoid characterizing justice as not permitting the use of deadly force in self defense.

As for Scripture, are you saying that according to the Bible, whenever a cop shoots a kid who's waving a gun around the cop is _always guilty of murder_? You know my answer (No -- sometimes the use of deadly force against kids is justified), but I don't know yours. I think it's only fair for you to take a position here before we start quoting chapter and verse.


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## Pergamum (May 30, 2017)

Why deadly force instead of just force...or the minimal amount of force that seems necessary? That is another point your argument is failing to account for. You go straight to deadly force without trying lesser alternatives first.

The toddler with the gun doesn't need to have his brains blown out. Lesser alternatives can be successful. 

The baby in the womb doesn't need to be killed. It can be delivered by C-section, or you can wait and see how the pregnancy develops. Your scenario seems to have the parties endowed with fool-proof psychic ability.

Again, you can never justify abortion by using arguments from self-defense unless you mischaracterize the fetus as a criminal or attacker.


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## Pergamum (May 30, 2017)

All your arguments seem to be variations of the "Violinist's Argument" - here is a synopsis of the Violinist's argument:



> You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you—we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.
> 
> Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you _have_ to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says, "Tough luck, I agree, but you've now got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him."



This argument is along the same line as someone comparing the fetus to an armed intruder in your house.


> "If a woman has the right to defend herself against a rapist, she also should be able to use deadly force to expel a fetus," she writes.[5] In pregnancy, a woman is being attacked by another human being - from the inside, not from the outside. Therefore, she has the moral liberty to repel her attacker by killing the intruder.



All of these arguments at least acknowledge that the fetus is a person. But they still all fail.

The first false premise is that we must see the baby in the womb as a trespasser or a parasite and turn the mother-child union into a predator-host relationship. This is clearly unbiblical and thus all your analogies fail immediately.

Second, in the violinist illustration, the woman might be justified withholding life-giving treatment from the musician under these circumstances. Abortion, though, is not merely withholding treatment. It is actively taking another human being's life through poisoning or dismemberment. A more accurate parallel with abortion would be to crush the violinist or cut him into pieces before unplugging him.

Third, the violinist analogy suggests that a mother has no more responsibility for the welfare of her child than she has to a total stranger. The "Self-defense" argument view is even worse. She argues the child is not merely a stranger, but a violent assailant the mother needs to ward off in self-defense.

This error becomes immediately evident if we amend Thompson's illustration. What if the mother woke up from an accident to find herself surgically connected _to her own child_? What kind of mother would willingly cut the life-support system to her two-year-old in a situation like that? And what would we think of her if she did?

Blood relationships are never based on choice, yet they entail moral obligations, nonetheless.

Read more here: http://www.str.org/articles/unstringing-the-violinist#.WS3NtY9OJPY


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## ThomasT (May 30, 2017)

Pergamum said:


> Why deadly force instead of just force...or the minimal amount of force that seems necessary? That is another point your argument is failing to account for. You go straight to deadly force without trying lesser alternatives first.
> 
> The toddler with the gun doesn't need to have his brains blown out. Lesser alternatives can be successful.
> 
> ...



I've said many times that if an alternative to deadly force is available, that alternative course of action should be preferred. _You_ seem to be saying that in this big wide world of ours, it _never happens -- and never could happen --_ that deadly force against a child comes to be our only option. I'm not sure why you would take such a patently ridiculous position. You have no way of knowing what kind of exigencies a cop (or private citizen) could face.

You also said that a baby can simply be delivered by C-section, and yet again you force us to point out that your position is absurd. In the eastern Congo, for example, there are places (cut off by jungle and warfare) where no resources for performing a C-section are available and where no practical means of extricating women to a hospital can be called upon. Are you honestly asking us to believe that every woman in the eastern Congo can be assured that a C-section will be available to her when she needs it? Tell that to the NGOs that can't even get access to the area.

As for the fetus not being a legitimate target of deadly force because it isn't an attacker, it's critical here to understand that an attacker is anyone who uses physical force against us. In my scenario, the fetus causes maternal hemorrhaging by putting pressure on its host's blood vessels. Without this pressure, the woman in my scenario (who has a congenital susceptibility to maternal hemorrhaging), wouldn't be facing a life-threatening situation. So the fetus _is_ an attacker; it just doesn't have a gun in its hands.


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## Pergamum (May 30, 2017)

Ah yes.....the Eastern Congo again...where a woman can get a safe abortion but cannot get any other medical care at all.


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## Steve Curtis (May 30, 2017)

ThomasT said:


> As for Scripture, are you saying that according to the Bible, whenever a cop shoots a kid who's waving a gun around the cop is _always guilty of murder_? You know my answer (No -- sometimes the use of deadly force against kids is justified), but I don't know yours. I think it's only fair for you to take a position here before we start quoting chapter and verse.



You keep moving the discussion's parameters... My response was to your comments about "*self*-defense." Specifically, self-defense against a *toddler*. Now, you have a cop - either defending himself or the little old lady behind him or a packed subway car (you don't say which) - shooting a child of indeterminate age. I said that *I* - in defense of *myself* - would not take the life of a toddler. Then, I questioned your comment that we have a "duty" to "uphold" the "Christian principle" of self-defense and I asked you to support that comment. I think we have a much stronger warrant for defending the defenseless (e.g., the child in the womb) than we do defending ourselves against the child only a couple of years removed from it (i.e., a toddler).


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## ThomasT (May 30, 2017)

Pergamum said:


> All your arguments seem to be variations of the "Violinist's Argument" - here is a synopsis of the Violinist's argument:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



You wrote: "The first false premise is that we must see the baby in the womb as a trespasser or a parasite and turn the mother-child union into a predator-host relationship. This is clearly unbiblical and thus all your analogies fail immediately." You're mistaken. I never once said that we must see "the baby" as a parasite or trespasser; I said that we must see the baby _in my scenario_ as a trespasser. In my scenario, the embryo doesn't come from the woman's body; it's a human being that was put there against the surrogate's will.

Incidentally the violinist argument (which I'm familiar with) is critically different from mine. In the violinist argument, the kidnap victim doesn't face death if she stays attached to the violinist -- in mine the surrogate dies if she doesn't have an abortion.


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## ThomasT (May 30, 2017)

kainos01 said:


> You keep moving the discussion's parameters... My response was to your comments about "*self*-defense." Specifically, self-defense against a *toddler*. Now, you have a cop - either defending himself or the little old lady behind him or a packed subway car (you don't say which) - shooting a child of indeterminate age. I said that *I* - in defense of *myself* - would not take the life of a toddler. Then, I questioned your comment that we have a "duty" to "uphold" the "Christian principle" of self-defense and I asked you to support that comment. I think we have a much stronger warrant for defending the defenseless (e.g., the child in the womb) than we do defending ourselves against the child only a couple of years removed from it (i.e., a toddler).



Let me be clear: I'm not saying that any of us has an obligation to shoot a toddler. I'm saying that we have an obligation _not to condemn a cop_ who acted in good faith and used deadly force against a kid when he believed no other options were open to him. Some on this forum are saying (or at least implying; I’m having trouble getting straight answers) that as a Christian principle, _it’s always murder_ for a cop to kill a kid. It’s this assertion – that as a Christian principle it’s always murder for a cop to kill a kid – that I’m rejecting as unchristian and arguing that we have an obligation to condemn.


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## ThomasT (May 30, 2017)

Pergamum said:


> Ah yes.....the Eastern Congo again...where a woman can get a safe abortion but cannot get any other medical care at all.



So then this couldn't possibly happen?


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## Pergamum (May 30, 2017)

I suppose a Violinist's Society could also kidnap you as well...


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## ThomasT (May 30, 2017)

Pergamum said:


> I suppose a Violinist's Society could also kidnap you as well...



According to the source I pulled up, there's a grand total of 70 anesthesiologists in the entire Democratic Republic of the Congo. As anesthesiologists are necessary for C-sections, in addition to trained surgeons, it doesn't seem likely (as if the stats aren't telling us what we knew already) that a girl in a Congo village would have any reasonable chance of pulling out a just-in-time C-section card to save her life when confronted with a troubled pregnancy. The fact that her village abortionist isn't "safe" would hardly matter to a girl who's going to die anyway.

http://ifna.site/ifna/page.php?36

I'm not the author of the Violinist Hypothetical. Mine is far more realistic. And more importantly, I don't run away from hypotheticals, realistic or otherwise.


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## Pergamum (May 30, 2017)

If she is going to die anyway, why stain her soul with the sin of murder on the way out?

Reactions: Like 1


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## Southern Presbyterian (May 30, 2017)

*MODERATION*

We are done here. 

"Speculating and looking for theoretical excuses for actively taking the life of children in the womb is simply not a question we are going to explore on the Puritan Board."

Reactions: Like 4


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