Comments on: Media Blackout on the Kermit Gosnell Case May Be Lifting

By: Ann

Ann — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:55:04 +0000

i do want to add a fresh point here that I’ve seldom seen anywhere else–social attitudes to unwed motherhood since 1973 and Roe v. Wade have changed almost 180 degrees–pro-life types realized that you can’t condemn unwed motherhood AND abortion at the same time, you have to make a choice as to which is the lesser moral evil, and the choice is blatantly obvious, the difference between life and death.
Tom,
I have brought this up before and think it is worth reading again. It reminds me of the unmarried woman who brings her child to church and is shunned because she is unwed instead of being embraced for bringing her child (who is alive) to church.
It is important to remember that the moral issue you are referring to about unwed mothers probably applies more to the endorsement of pre-planned or repeated pregnancies without the benefit of marriage rather than embracing and supporting an unwed mother who had an unplanned or initial unwanted pregnancy and decided to carry the pre-born child to term so it could live.

By: Ann

Ann — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:55:03 +0000

So a lot of what drove illegal abortion 50 years ago doesn’t even exist anymore. We need to take a fresh look at all this, Ann. We know a lot more than we did then–how much pro-abortion forces like NARAL were fucking lying about everything, what a baby experiences in the womb, what a mother suffers psychologically by choosing to abort her baby.
Tom,
The lies that have been told about abortion are staggering. Just now people are starting to talk about the devastating physical and psychological effects. Not only are we hearing from the individual who had the procedure but also from the man who impregnated her, the grandparents, the doctor who performed the procedure(s), the other medical staff, and others who in some way were a part, up to the person who handles the accounting. Nothing is forgotten forever – it lingers until there is a conscious awakening and then it comes out and often lasts a life time.
The answer to all this – I do not know. I do know there are choices we all can make though. Prevention of unwanted pregnancies to begin with,with men realizing they have as much responsibility as woman in this area. Education with an abundance of resources to teach and instill the consequences of abortion and the alternatives that are available. I think this should be part of school education and after through other venues. Also, collectively, we must do what we can to remove the desperation factor that leads to making a desperate choice like abortion to begin with. Right now decisions are made on what someone doesn’t want to endure for 9 months, without realizing the decision to have an abortion will last them a life time.

By: Ann

Ann — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:53:18 +0000

But it’s not really ‘rocket science’, is it?
No, but it does take substance and courage to say it 😀

By: Richard Willmer

Richard Willmer — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:52:20 +0000

24 Weeks is towards (but not yet at) the end of the second trimester, Tom. That said, the birth of these twins does raise questions about the law here in the UK.
Don’t quite see how looking at statistics necessarily constitutes a ‘rhetorical dodge’.

By: Zoe Brain

Zoe Brain — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:52:20 +0000

Intuition – Gnosis – is sometimes all we have, and when it comes to moral issues, objectively it has a very good track record. Not 100% perhaps, but we distrust it at our peril. That quiet, small voice that says “No, this offends the conscience”. I’m not sure anything has a better track record, in fact.
I’m too good a Scientist not to see that.
It was also a conclusion I came to when auditing a Theology course at the Australian Catholic University. Too many times we start with a conclusion we know to be true, then shore it up with logic and evidence, lacking the ruthless introspection and intellectual honesty needed to see that’s what we’re doing.
If we admit that we came to the conclusion first, then we no longer unwittingly cherry-pick our data in support, but try to undermine our initial conclusions, to test our Gnosis. Only then, after it’s passed the tests, can we consider it reliable. Imperfect, just likely better than anything else.
It’s hard, and I know I sometimes fail, no matter how hard I try. Fortunately there are those like you with different views to keep me honest!
Thanks for the helpful clarification.

By: Richard Willmer

Richard Willmer — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:52:20 +0000

Lost you, Tom.
I repeat: citing statistics is surely not in itself ‘rhetoric’.
Zoe’s general point about ‘testing one’s conclusions’ seems entirely reasonable to me.

By: Zoe Brain

Zoe Brain — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:52:20 +0000

FWIW I’ve been involved with three medical emergencies involving people dear to me. In one case, I helped resuscitate my father from flatline, no heatbeat. Unfortunately his heart was too badly damaged, 2/3 akinetic, no salvage, and 12 hours later I signed off on the morphine overdose that may have (let’s not beat around the bush *did*) terminate his life a few minutes early), but meant he didn’t feel himself dying again. He wanted it – he was fully compos mentis – and he would have done the same for me.
20 years of PTSD Flashbacks is a small price to pay.
The point was, he was not dead before resuscitation even though his heart had stopped.
In the second, I performed CPR on my 94 yr old Father in Law. I got him back breathing even before the Ambulance came. I couldn’t detect a heartbeat, but I didn’t have time to be certain, too busy keeping his brain oxygenated, heartbeat or no. Had I not performed CPR, yes, he’d be dead. But is not.
In the third, a good friend, younger than myself, suffered sudden cardiac arrest. I wasn’t there, and despite her husband’s frantic attempts at CPR, she required a ventilator to breathe in the hospital.
We saw the brain start swelling on the scans, obviously catastrophically damaged, necrotic, and turning into undifferentiated pudding. But her heart kept beating even though her lungs were inflated by machine.
She’d left us long before her heart stopped, the base-brain reflexes suppressed at last from the pressure of the rest of the dead brain disintegrating. Only took two days, thank goodness, and twenty minutes after the ventilator had been removed. It could have been a lot worse if the damage hadn’t have been so obviously fatal.
If I saw an infant trapped in a burning building, roasting to death in agony, and had a gun – then of course I’d shoot. Infanticide is sometimes not just justified, it’s immoral not to do it. Similarly with conjoined twins, both dying, but where there’s a chance to save one if separated. If one is already dead, there’s no moral or ethical issue that arises. Not to separate is murder most foul.
Similarly in some “abortions”, of dead and rotting foetuses to save the mother, regardless of stage of development. “Pro-Life” Fanatics who would make abortion illegal under any circumstances are morally bankrupt.
Pregnancy termination in the earliest stages – call it the “first trimester” though I’d put it later than week 14, more like week 23, is a tragedy, an extinction of a potential person. But not murder. Infanticide in the third trimester, past week 28, is just that – infanticide, whether birthed or not – but in some cases may be mandatory, not just justified. In between – a matter for medical judgment. It depends – we have at least two conflicting rights,, the right of the mother not to bear the very real risk that she will die in childbirth, and the ethical decision as to whether the pregnancy involves a person or not. Even if it does – do we have the right to force a rape victim to be the involuntary incubator for her rapist’s spawn?
Only those involved directly can make that decision, and others, like myself, have no right to second-guess, no matter how strongly we may feel about it. I would advocate with my last breath for the rights of a child who’s the product of rape, using every power of persuasion I have on the mother to let this innocent baby live. But I would not compel her to.
In that regard, I guess I’m Pro-Choice. And if it had ever come to a choice of whether I or my unborn child would live, that’s an easy one. My child would come first. MY decision though. MY choice.

By: Richard Willmer

Richard Willmer — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:52:20 +0000

Well, Tom, I think that Zoe is actually pointing to something that is often done, even by the most well-intentioned of people. If one is engaged in looking for the truth, one must ‘ruthlessly’ appraise one’s own thought processes.
As for the ‘statistics’ thing: I think it rather depends HOW those statistics are used. Simply pointing out that the US and UK abortion rates are similar, despite differences in the laws in those two countries, is not of itself ‘rhetoric’. It is simply a fact.

By: David Blakeslee

David Blakeslee — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:49:08 +0000

Legal abortion was supposed to protect women from procedures that would harm them. In this case a few died.
Think of the babies and the mothers in this case where an abortionist was operating in a legal clinic—no back alley here.

By: Tom Van Dyke

Tom Van Dyke — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:49:08 +0000

I don’t think so, Teresa. I’m used to being personally abused for saying unpopular things–it’s all part of the bullying game that I spoke of earlier. I don’t threaten to commit suicide.
If they want me dead, I make the bastards execute me. ;-P
What I’m hoping is that more people start realizing that being a Christian doesn’t mean becoming a soggy moral coward. The Sermon on the Mount isn’t the Barney the Dinosaur show, la-la-la.
And it doesn’t mean we surrender to the moral fog. Our reason is God-given and it’s a sin not to use it. The problem isn’t that people disagree, the problem is the lack of clarity on the issues. I’m not the pope and you’re not God. All we can do is reason together. So first we have to seek clarity–there are some things we know, so many more things we don’t know.
I hope we grow to understand each other better from here on. We have so many cliches and smokescreens to wade through. I’ve been reading what you and Ann and Emily have been writing to each other–and to the internet at large–and first and foremost admire your courage in trying to help each other puzzle it all out. The “experts” are so full of shit and politics that they’re no help atall. There are only a few people like Eve Tushnet and Melinda Selmys putting themselves on the line, and their personal and moral courage makes whatever moral courage I try to find look trivial. I look up to you, not down. Please know that. This is hard stuff, the hardest.