This excellent and balanced post reminds me of what the eloquent Gerald Vann, O.P., wrote in his book *The Heart of Man* (Ch. III), noting that “where there is obvious wickedness, we must protest and fight against the external crime, indeed, but we can never judge of [another person’s interior] sin because we can never know the human heart.”
As Vatican II’s constitution *Gaudium et Spes* stated (in Section 28), “[God] forbids us to make judgments about the internal guilt of anyone.”

Despite its many complexities, & those even within this argument, central to the entire modern, & recent - & very different from ancient pagan - abortion culture, is this profoundly theological one: the vision of hell that life is at heart empty & sans meaning, & frenetic stimulation the main means to escape confronting that abyss.

The conception of a child by definition affirms the alternative view, that, despite everything, life & creation is good; just as killing that child, as an objective act, stands against this truth.

Yet there is a vast difference, as Mr. Shea’s argument illustrates, between an individual’s confused & subjective crime, over against the philosophical premises by which a society defines itself; between a horrendous private crime, & what this society defines - very specifically in Casey v. Planned Parenthood - not just as a positive good, but central to the very notion of freedom itself & thus of l’USA’s very self understanding.

Given the theological horror of that - quite apart from Mr. Shea’s & other arguments - it seems fair to propose to his questioner that this is not a condition one can shoot away. What Joan Andrews & Operation Rescue recognized - & in this hour Linda Gibbons & Mary Wagner still do - is that its enormity can only ultimately be defeated by a very direct imitation of Christ; that is, by absorbing violence instead of inflicting it.

Apart from all else, each day Wagner & Gibbons remain incarcerated, precisely by this voluntary absorption of injustice & thus very real human solidarity, no child anywhere dies without its value very particularly affirmed by men, both in Heaven, & on earth.

And of course, as Mr. Shea points out, even on the political level resistance to hell’s vision, not least in light of its minions’ vast financial & institutional power, has been, & remains, formidable. One example: in 1992 there were more than 2100 extermination camps throughout the US, whereas today there are just 600 too many.

A reader wrote: “Or to ask the same question in a more general way: is an abortion morally identical to the murder of someone after they are born?”

I think it’s pretty clear that even the vast majority of pro-lifers don’t believe this. They show it by never proposing the same legal punishment for a woman who procures an abortion as for the person who hires a contract killer to murder someone. All the excuses that women obtaining abortions were pressured, or even forced, don’t hold up. That is what a trial is for. If the woman was in a condition of diminished responsibility, her defense would have the opportunity to prove this, just as they would if a woman claimed the husband she had killed was an abuser. If pro-lifers really believe abortion is equivalent to murder, why shouldn’t a rational woman making an indepedent decision to abort a baby pay the same legal penalty as the woman who hired a thug to kill her philandering husband?

Mr. Shea gives a good answer on why pro-lifers don’t resort to violence. But what about their failure to practice the kind of peaceful civil disobedience that results in jail time and financial damage for the protestors? Again, I think the reader is correct in thinking that pro-lifers “know abortion is bad, but not really murder.” It’s not worth that kind of sacrifice to them. Given the complexity of the abortion issue, and the persistence of illegal abortion when abortion is outlawed, I don’t blame pro-lifers for not wanting to turn their lives up-side down on behalf of this cause. However the discrepancy between the rhetoric and the effort IS jarring, and damages their credibility.

We thought it would be fun to listen to Huck Finn with our kids in the car. The word N____r quickly had us turn it off since I never wanted my kids to casually use that word (my family ran the KKK in the thumb of michigan in the 1920’s). 

The church equating sterilization, condoms, the pill, plan B, and abortion being all equal makes the morality of this arguement difficult to conduct.  Reproductive freedom is what seperates us from animals (kind of).  Every sex act for dogs and fleas is open to offspring, I don’t personally believe humans are thus required.

I’m confused, Mr. Shea.  What part of the above column is written by you, and what part is written by Mark Twain?

Matt:

Why are you confused?  Twain is indented.

Cowalker, plenty of pro-lifers have gone to jail.  I attended this man’s sentencing:

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Pastor-jailed-for-Oakland-anti-abortion-acts-3247604.php

The situation cited in the letter made me think of a different one: Is the act of killing a four year old morally different from that of killing an unarmed 35-year old, all other things being equal? I think so, but I’d almost certainly react worse to the first than to the second. Some of these things are simply matters of how we think with our emotions. In particular, systematic evils exercise our emotions (and thus engage our efforts) much less than a sudden eruption of evil. One only needs to look at the reaction to massacres as against ordinary day-to-day gun crimes. This is not to say that this is wrong, but just pointing out this is the way we seem to think.

Also, we might all think a number of things are grave evils without necessarily personally doing something about it, for a whole lot of reasons, lack of opportunity, weakness of will, wrong priorities, minimization, thinking there is no point… Again, not to justify any of these, but only to point out that reaction cannot be taken as a measure of assessment of the magnitude or nature of the evil.

But the letter was good (and your response excellent). It made me think “If being pro-life were against the law, would there be enough evidence to convict me?”

“How much jail time do you think should she get?” “Why aren’t you storming abortion clinics?” “How many unwanted babies have YOU adopted?” You will note that the above questions are all rhetorical, subject-changing ad hominems. All they prove is that often anti-abortion practical conviction doesn’t match the rhetoric; that “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” if you will—and in this context that’s not very enlightening. The basic argument is that it is always evil to deliberately kill an innocent human life. Abortionists rarely dispute that it is killing or that the target of abortion is innocent, so their only hope is in wrangling over the humanity. But the most they can hope for is agnosticism on the question—which means logically they lose due to the Deerhunter Principle. But in recent days, many abortionists are going for the only thing left to them: “Yeah, it’s human. Yeah, we are deliberately killing it. So what?” I think the waning popularity of abortion is in part due to people recognizing that advocating for abortion leads to this so-what? abyss and fewer people are willing to hurl themselves into it.

Rover Serton: I’m not sure what you mean. The Church is actually not against reproductive freedom—rather, that reproductive freedom starts long before one unzips his fly. After that, there are realities that can’t morally be dodged or thwarted. You can’t have it both ways—implying there is a largely irresistible animal sex urge in humans and then suddenly humans have reproductive freedom after the cigarettes have been lit.

“For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds.  We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish disobedience when your obedience is complete.”

????

  The Church infallibly condemns abortion in section 62 of Evangelium Vitae but the infallible definition did not include what one theologian called the timing of the front end of abortion….pre implantation or post implantation.  Being overweight inhibits implantation statistically.  Does that mean all overweight women including Catholic are murdering pre implantation fertilized ova?  The cells, human matter, up to and slightly after implantation are totipotential and not committed to being one person…such cells can further split into identical tripulets which has problems for early ensoulment people.  This is why Rome as opposed to pro lifers and lower clergy is not vociferous about the implantation issue.  Scientific data is still coming in.  All trenchant certitude that ignores such issues can only hurt the pro life cause through what appears to be exaggeration of when individuation begins.  Will not be responding to ad hominem toned posts.
Read a history of the twinning debate here:  http://www.ts.mu.edu/content/54/54.1/54.1.6.pdf
Rome is aware of it and of this periodical where it backed Grisez in a recent debate.

The latest violence I’ve read about this past year was by the pro-choice crowd.  There’s a woman in Canada that has gone to jail numerous times for praying outside an abortion clinic.  Pro-lifers do believe abortion is murder.  It’s hard to figure out the point of this article.

Seems to me: “The moment of my conception” is BY DEFINITION the instant in which I came to be. Even supposing that the apparently undifferentiated human cells replicating themselves in the human morula in the first couple of days after fertilization are indistinguishable from a colony of many germ-cell organisms, nevertheless the ORDERLY and ever more intricate DIFFERENTIATION of those human cells from one another observable by about the fourth day after fertilization—before implantation—proves to my mind the organizing action of a human soul. For by then, the specifically human DNA is already guiding the development straight toward the neo-cortical brain impulses characteristic of human personhood — a personhood already evidently present, therefore, by about the fourth day after fertilization.
Notice, I haven’t asserted that there was necessarily and always ONLY one person by about the fourth day after fertilization. Nor that after that time there couldn’t have become ensouled a second person (an identical twin). My point is that by about day four, there is evidently no longer a simple ensemble of self-replicating human germ cells, there’s rather at least one unified human organism, human being, human person. Thus, twinning would not be a matter of one person dividing into two—a notion admittedly absurd—but rather of a second identical twin created either several days after day four, or else of a twin having already been created by that day but unobservable on that day by science’s means at present.

The point of this article was to attempt to answer my reader’s question.  I thought that was obvious.

Scott W. posted on Monday, Jan 14, 2013 9:02 AM (EDT):
“‘How much jail time do you think should she get?’ ‘Why aren’t you storming abortion clinics?’ ‘How many unwanted babies have YOU adopted?’ You will note that the above questions are all rhetorical, subject-changing ad hominems. All they prove is that often anti-abortion practical conviction doesn’t match the rhetoric; that ‘the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak’ if you will—and in this context that’s not very enlightening.”

In the context of the reader’s question, these issues are enlightening. The reader who wrote to Mr. Shea was not asking whether abortion was wrong. He or she questioned whether pro-lifers truly believed their rhetoric that an abortion was morally equivalent to murdering a person who had already been born. That is the subject of the blog post. What else would you look at beside the actions of pro-lifers to get an idea of whether they believe their own rhetoric?

Great questions, Mark!

I don’t think it makes sense to judge the gravity or sincerity of a position solely by watching what people do.  I agree it is usually very enlightening—but not always.  At this time, I think there are millions of people who DO believe that life begins at the beginning, not in the middle, DO believe a creature who is working hard to construct a human heart and a human brain is an extraordinarily creative and beloved child of God, and yet are almost completely at a loss about what to do about it.  Puzzlement is not cowardice.

The Israelis in slavery in Egypt claimed to be the children of Abraham; building pyramids as slaves did not reflect what was in their hearts.  When Moses led, they were more or less ready to follow, but before his leadership, they were puzzled, frozen, lost, enslaved. 

One of the great oddities of American history in the past century is the distribution of power.  The nation is the most powerful nation ever—and yet a vast portion of our literature explores the challenges of powerlessness.

I think ANTIGON is right: the holy few in jail for protecting life are prophetic voices in our midst.  Small seeds grow.

I am a little ashamed to proclaim what I have not worked to produce.  But I do believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.  The slaughter will end.

John Cavanaugh-O’Keefe

Mark,
Great article.  Thorough and thoughtful.  I also very much appreciated the catalyst for the article - the letter-writer had some serious questions and doubts that were themselves stated very thoughtfully and respectfully.  This whole exchange has been a breath of fresh air in a world that places so much value on “gotcha journalism” and snarky beligerance.

I was especially touched by your portrayal of the panicked teenager under pressure from her boytfriend versus the cold-blooded Nazi who places the barrel of the gun between his victim’s eyes and fires.  As I have gotten older and faced some of my own painful human frailty, I’ve realized that the worst-of-the-worst in this world really is not all that different from you or me.  Hitler himself was a broken man whose brokenness led him to terrible conclusions.  Dahmer was a broken man whose brokenness led him to terribly desperate acts of inhumanity.

Sin begets sin, evil begets evil.  Despite the circumstances, murder is murder.  Let’s do what we can to stop it, but always have compassion for even the murderer.  We are all broken.  The miracle happens when we allow God to work through our own hands and hearts to help heal the world.

cowalker, Today, in Africa, a child of six will die, for lack of proper nourishment.  Does the fact that you won’t get on a plane to do all you can to prevent this, imply that you don’t believe she is a human being, worthy of care and recognition?—Or maybe you believe white children are more worthy of intervention?

With pro-life, you need to distinguish between talkers and doers.  The great majority of people in this country of ours are disposed to interminable complaining.  However, for every 100 people who yak about it, a select few actually do something.  If there are maybe 5/100 in this group, it’s a lot, and probably enough to turn the tide.  The Pro-life population is a bimodal distribution with one hump doing all the talking, and the other hump doing all the doing.  Perhaps that’s your confusion, cowalker. 

Let me put it another way: on Superbowl Sunday, 100 men will be on the field, with 100,000,000 watching.  Clear?

I was removed from the public sidewalk after years of peaceful sidewalk counseling.  My crime, worthy of an appellate court decision?  Handing out rosaries, a packet of information where women could find help at our crisis pregnancy center, and knowing how to speak Spanish.  Panned Parenthood prevailed legally, using a “RICO” argument which was designed to shut down mob racketeering. (Another group of sidewalk counselors in another state fought this same kind of RICO ruling, and prevailed at the Supreme Court level.)  A huge turning point came for me as I hashed my moral dilemma out with my confessor.  I had the earth shattering pain of having held living, breathing human babies that had not been aborted, because I had reached out to their mothers.  The dilemma was, that I simply couldn’t have continued anyway.  Being ordered 500 feet off of the public sidewalk came as an immense relief, because I was physically and emotionally exhausted.  I was 24, expecting my second baby, and the emotional drain of facing death twice a week had become unbearable.  My confessor was patient with me.  I was armed with that Schindler’s List quote: “He who saves one life saves the World entire” as well as the famous “all that evil needs to prevail, is for good men to do nothing.”  My confessor likened me to Peter, who thought that he could fight the murder of Jesus with earthly means.  Peter began with the mentality of an activist, but ended his life by simply doing his God given duty with what he had been entrusted to.  We simply can’t eradicate the evil in this world.  God allows it for a reason.  We are called to drown the evil with an abundance of good, in the place, profession and time in which we live.  In the end, all things will be brought to light, people will be judged individually, collectively, and justly.  Love will prevail, because the battle has already been won.

The reader who wrote to Mr. Shea was not asking whether abortion was wrong. He or she questioned whether pro-lifers truly believed their rhetoric that an abortion was morally equivalent to murdering a person who had already been born.

Yes, and common-sense tells us that not all believe with full conviction or act in such a way. Having disposed of the easy question, I thought we’d move to more substantive stuff. 

I share cowalker’s concerns, and I’m wondering why no one is answering his questions. I am very pro-life and always have been, but I’ve come to the conclusion that very few pro-lifers truly believe that a fetus is equal to a born person. The only ones who really believe that are the crazies who shoot abortion doctors. Otherwise, they would want to prosecute women who have abortions, right? Most pro-lifers say that women who have abortions should not be prosecuted because they often don’t know what they’re doing. The pro-choice crowd thinks this is condescending towards women, and I tend to agree. But at the same time, I feel intuitively that a woman who kills her born child should go to jail, but a woman who has an abortion should not, even though I do think abortion is wrong.

I guess I am starting to understand the “personally opposed to abortion” stance. I used to think it was stupid, like being “personally opposed” to murder but not caring if someone else was a murderer. But once you realize that most pro-lifers don’t really think abortion is equivalent to taking the life of a born person, it makes sense. (I’m not saying it’s right, just that I understand it, and it’s not as intellectually incoherent as I first thought.)

I’ve known several people who are vegetarians, for various moral reasons. But the interesting thing I’ve noticed is that they would all be willing to eat meat (and have eaten meat) under certain circumstances, such as if the animal was hunted instead of slaughtered in a factory, or if they really needed meat in their diet for a serious health reason, etc. In other words, even though they all have a moral stance against eating meat, none of them *really* believe that animals are equal to humans. Only the extremists at PETA believe that. I think most pro-lifers, deep down, feel the same way about unborn babies, especially early in pregnancy. 

Another thing I find strange is that women are automatically excommunicated for having an abortion, but not for killing their born child (even though they would obviously be committing a very serious sin by killing their born child.) Why is this? It seems to be saying that morally speaking, abortion is worse than other forms of murder. But for most pro-lifers, *legally* speaking, abortion is not as bad as other forms of murder, since most think the woman should not be prosecuted. This is quite bizarre to me.

I am seriously asking everyone here: if abortion were illegal, should a woman face any penalty for having one? Why or why not? In fairness, I am still working this out myself, and don’t really know the answer.

I share cowalker’s concerns, and I’m wondering why no one is answering his questions. I am very pro-life and always have been, but I’ve come to the conclusion that very few pro-lifers truly believe that a fetus is equal to a born person. The only ones who really believe that are the crazies who shoot abortion doctors. Otherwise, they would want to prosecute women who have abortions, right? Most pro-lifers say that women who have abortions should not be prosecuted because they often don’t know what they’re doing. The pro-choice crowd thinks this is condescending towards women, and I tend to agree. But at the same time, I feel intuitively that a woman who kills her born child should go to jail, but a woman who has an abortion should not, even though I do think abortion is wrong.

I guess I am starting to understand the “personally opposed to abortion” stance. I used to think it was stupid, like being “personally opposed” to murder but not caring if someone else was a murderer. But once you realize that most pro-lifers don’t really think abortion is equivalent to taking the life of a born person, it makes sense. (I’m not saying it’s right, just that I understand it, and it’s not as intellectually incoherent as I first thought.)  (continued)

Scott W. posted on Monday, Jan 14, 2013 1:24 PM (EDT):
“Yes, and common-sense tells us that not all believe with full conviction or act in such a way. Having disposed of the easy question, I thought we’d move to more substantive stuff.” 

OK, here is are two questions that came to my mind while reading responses to this column. If not all pro-lifers (including the questioning reader) really believe, or act, with full conviction that abortion is equivalent to murder, what sort of crime do they believe destroying a fetus is? In addition, what sort of punishment should a woman receive when found guilty of this crime which most acknowledge is not equivalent to murder?

Red herring alert: how would you punish the abortionate woman?  (Viz. the woman caught in adultery.)  Tread lightly Prolife, the sands are shifting and deep.

Cowalker poses an excellent question. If abortion is thinly disguised murder, and somehow the Catholic pipe dream of making it illegal in this country is realized, what is the appropriate penalty? Has anyone thought this through?

Abortion, gay rights, pornography in thought word and deed, have been advanced by gradual desensitivations and undermining culural mores through generations, especially by means of perverting youth.  Now it is common for women to procure abortions, whereas generations ago this was unthinkable and illicit.  You would sooner cut off your arm than procure an abortion.

Likewise, the shooting war between the sexes, and absolute degeneration of civility has made intersexual animosity the stuff of tuesday/thursday night sitcoms, instead of deeply feared tragedy.  I have to thank you, Norman Lear, for that.

Why not assign responsibility to the act of abortion on a comparative basis, like with automobile accidents:  the woman is the point of impact, but there’s a lot of treadmarks with her coital partner, their inculturation and upbringing, and the social road conditions they’re all skidding along in. 

Why not adopt a “green” methodology for life issues - and regard the environment which gives rise to this poisonous exhalation?

A pregnant woman is usually the last person to really want an abortion.  It’s an act of violence upon her very being.  “That’s why he who handed me over retains the greater guilt.”

Posted by Zeke on Tuesday, Jan 15, 2013 9:16 AM (EDT):Cowalker poses an excellent question. If abortion is thinly disguised murder, and somehow the Catholic pipe dream of making it illegal in this country is realized, what is the appropriate penalty? Has anyone thought this through?”
********************************
Zeke,
I’d look at pre-Roe vs Wade data to see how things actually worked regarding the laws at that time & how/when they were enforced.

I’d look at pre-Roe vs Wade data to see how things actually worked regarding the laws at that time & how/when they were enforced.

That’s a good answer, but not one that people will accept. You see, this isn’t really a question of “What is your comprehensive plan for re-criminalizing abortion?” But rather, “See? Cruel pro-lifers either want to impose draconian punishments on women whom they secretly hate, or if they don’t equate a women who procures an abortion to a mafia hit man, then they don’t really believe it’s murder. And if it doesn’t rise to a legal definition of murder, then maybe reaching into a women’s womb with a pair of forceps and dismembering the human within isn’t really an evil act.” Ok, that last bit was a flourish because if there is one-thing we know about the pro-abortion position, its it’s dogged determination to talk about anything other than a vivid and accurate description of the actual act of abortion.

In response to the original question, I think the important thing is to distinguish the constraints imposed by different virtues on any proposed law.

JUSTICE:  Is it just for to punish a woman who has an abortion with a penalty up to death?  Yes, for the same reasons in which other murders may receive the same range of penalties.  Each case must be decided individually according to the particular circumstances, as Mark mentions (though he does so as part of the reason why we should withhold private judgement, another question altogether).

MERCY: What are the implications of mercy for the proposed legal punishment?  In all cases, as much mercy should be applied as possible, without, however, injuring the criminal or society.

PRUDENCE:  What are the implications of prudence for the proposed legal punishment?  Here, I think, is where serious modification occurs.  For one thing, a woman who aborts her child is not generally a threat to go murdering other people, so although there is a need to demonstrate that the law gravely disapproves of her act, prudence does not place serious obstacles to the generous application of mercy.  Secondly, there would be widespread public disapproval of a harsh punishment; however just, it would not be in the interest of an orderly society.

Why is excommunication a penalty for doing or having an abortion, but not for premeditated murder of an adult? Well, my understanding is that excommunication is intended to bring an erring Catholic to his senses, so that he repents his evil. Premeditated murder of an adult, on the other hand, is already punishable by a country’s criminal law. Similarly, time was when dueling, like abortion today, went unpunished by a country’s criminal law, so it was penalized by ecclesiastic law. No educated Catholic holds that an act penalized by excommunication is necessarily graver than one not thus penalized. In this, I’m not defending this excommunication policy —nor *any* “automatic excommunication” (“latae sententiae”). Indeed, canonist Ed Peters has expressed his misgivings about this type of excommunication, holding that excommunication “ferendae sententiae”, by a bishop’s juridical act, would suffice. (Source: Peters commenting in Michael Liccione’s article of May 21, 2010, “Excommunicating Intentions”, in the review *First Things*. Of course, as long as it’s in force, automatic excommunication should be complied with.)

Scott W. ,
Even trying to find data about how pre-Roe vs Wade laws were enforced-or not enforced, takes you through a lengthy google search of opinion articles from both sides.I’d like to find some straight data on the subject devoid of hype.

It seems to me, clearly, that the only arguement can be, “Do we confom our lives to Christ in its (their) totality or not. When we conform Christ to ourselves, we are left with a fractured and broken world, with our people, thoughts and actions being imperfect.
The perfection of us in the world and in our Christ who is the truest and only example of truth for the world, the fulness of which we can not begin to comprehend.
We are in the world, caught between the Pilates who can say “what is truth” and Christ who is the Way and the Truth.

I struggle with this struggle daily. I witness as I have the wit and wisdom to do so, pitifully I am afraid.

Very well put Mark.

To win this battle we must all be willing to sacrifice.  Christian martyrs have not won souls by taking lives, but by offering their own.

Peaceful means work.  40 Days for Life saves hundreds if not thousands of lives a year.  Pregnancy resource centers save lives.  Ultrasounds save lives.  There are so many creative approaches…you can’t move straight to the last resort if you’ve only made token efforts at the first, second, third, or fourth.

cowalker: Seriously?
-
It’s going to be impossible to top Anna Lisa’s comment.  I do notice you don’t seem to have directly answered her question.  It’s not necessary to, is it?  Everybody knows the answer to a rhetorical question…
-
There is still a well-funded, well-connected, concerted misinformation campaign going on.  Coercion and desperation are also a real problems, not “excuses.”  Until this is not the case, if we let a few slip the net because we are giving many a little benefit of doubt, I hardly think it is the end of the world.  If we come to a point where 98 or 99% of people understand abortion to be murder, it will obviously be much harder to justify one’s ignorance or deliberate transgression of the norm.
-
There are still places where there aren’t super-restrictive distance laws, and it really requires some effort to get arrested, because the police have already been notified of intent to protest for the sake of order and safety and won’t arrest them for doing nothing wrong.  I believe I am called to challenge things and accept unjust treatment in return at times; I do not believe I am called to go out of my way to bait others into treating me unjustly so I can achieve some vain dream of becoming a hero or martyr.
-
Much unpleasantness can happen short of being arrested.  One of my first negative experiences at 40 Days was having a man get in my face and call me a retard for having the audacity to hold one of their official “Pray to End Abortion” signs in a public place…me…a petite female.  It wasn’t fun.  It vindicated everything about my being there.

SD: It is not condescending if it’s true.  In my experience, the ones who cry the loudest about how “condescending” this is often have some connection or loyalty to the very purveyors of the above-mentioned misinformation campaign, i.e. Planned Parenthood.  I’d take their input with a large grain of salt.  And remember, a woman can see her born child.  She can’t see her unborn child without the aid of technology, and the abortionist usually has a financial interest in preventing or discouraging her from taking full advantage of it. 
I don’t want to get too inflammatory in a thread that has so far been pretty civil, but it is quite presumptuous to put on airs about knowing what “most pro-lifers” “really” believe “deep down.”  I am beginning to find this offensive.  Please, do not kid yourself, you are not that clairvoyant and neither am I.  While it is to your credit that you are ostensibly here seeking an explanation, you undermine honest and natural curiosity by thinking you have answered it yourself already.
-
bill bannon: Does the Church not also make distinctions between an inclination or general state of being and a deliberate action?  I fail to see how taking a pill is equivalent to “being overweight,” unless you think all weight gain is entirely controllable through willpower alone.  As for the rest—so it might theoretically be killing two or three people down the line instead of just one?  Well THAT certainly clarifies things.

If anyone should be prosecuted to the fullest extent, it’s the abortionist.  Let’s keep the focus where it belongs in that sense.  Even in the pre-Roe days women didn’t necessarily perform abortions on themselves.  Of course, if too heavy-handed an approach leads to fewer Abby Johnsons or Bernard Nathansons, I’m all in favor of mercy there; not all of them are totally obstinate and unrepentant. 
Many women are punished for the rest of their lives by the knowledge of their guilt.  Maybe in some or even a lot of cases that is more than enough.
I think legal penalties are necessary, but not to the point where we lose sight of what we’re ultimately trying to accomplish.

Well, enness, I am pro-life and always have been, yet I’m starting to see why a lot of people think it’s condescending to say women who have abortions don’t know what they’re doing. Isn’t it kind of condescending to say “the poor little woman just didn’t know what she was doing?” Wouldn’t it be less condescending to say she is a murderer?

Yet at the same time, my gut feeling is that it’s cruel to punish a woman who had an abortion the same way you would punish a woman who killed her born child. Again, I am still working this out.

I guarantee you I have NO connection or loyalty to planned parenthood or other such groups whatsoever - I think what they do is evil. I’m just struggling with this.

Maybe I should only speak for myself instead of trying to say what “all pro-lifers know deep down.” I guess deep down, I struggle to see how an early pregnancy is the equivalent of a born person. When I was younger, this was more black and white to me. But now I’ve been pregnant, and had a bunch of pretty awful things happen to me because of pregnancy, and heard about much worse things happening to people because of pregnancy, so I guess I’m just struggling more with it.

I guess it also seems to me that if pro-lifers really thought a fetus was equivalent to a born person, they would all be bombing abortion clinics.

Also, Subsistent, thank you for your clarification on excommunication. I thought excommunication was supposed to be for “the worst” offenses.

SD,
You shouldn’t be confused. Is the abortion of an 8-month old fetus, which we know feels pain and could survive outside the mother with medical care, morally murder? Yeah, probably. Can we say the same about a 1-month old fetus? Hmmm, that’s trickier. Is using hormonal birth control that may prevent a minuscule mass of reproducing cells from implanting and developing further (i.e. abortifacients) murder by any fair definition? Of course not. Only by adding the imaginary element of a “soul” or insisting that God played some part in this chemistry does this become a question of morality.
-
And this is why the one-note incoherent rants that “abortion is murder” are ignored as insults to our intelligence. It may be contrary to the morality of Catholics, or other Christians who believe this nonsense, so fine - don’t have an abortion. But seeking to prevent others who vastly outnumber those with such superstitious beliefs from the right to end pregnancies from rape, or where their health is endangered, will never, ever happen. The more that Catholics continue to push their religious agenda on the rest of society is why they are increasingly ignored as rational thinkers when it comes to such issues.

Mark, Huck Finn recognized the personhood of Jim.  He saw that slavery was not a good.  Those are wonderful things. That does not make his decision correct.  He could work to end the acceptance of slavery with his newfound knowledge, but to use evil to do good, as you say, is not the answer.  He could tell Jim he has to send a letter to his owner and he best get out of there because he knows slavery is not a good, but his choice is morally deficient.

There is error whenever someone applies seamless tunic theology that equates violence upon innocent pre-born children in the womb with enemies of war, the poor, invaders, criminals, etc. These are not morally equivalent situations. The Holy Father (when he was Cardinal Ratzinger)wrote a letter to Cardinal Ted McCarrick on this very topic. He said there may be times when self-defense against enemy or criminal invasion is necessary, and it is unfortunate when innocents get killed in crossfire, although unintended. Then he said there is no justification for killing a child in the womb under any circumstances. Finally, he also stated that one can differ with the Holy See on war and still present oneself for communion, but not with abortion. As an aside, there is no such thing as an abortion that saves the life of the mother. Miscarriage is not elective abortion, since abortion is a human choice to terminate a pregnancy that would have survived.

That Hat Lady:

You appear not to have read a single word I wrote and simple disgorged a pre-recorded statement having nothing at all to do with what we are talking about here.  Nobody is saying *anything* about a seamless garment.  Nobody is saying *anything* about abortion being justifiable.

Maybe it’s all these years of being married to a lawyer, but the legal implications seem pretty clear to me.  Yes, if a woman has an abortion she would be prosecuted just like if she killed her child outside the womb.  The law would then recognize there were different levels of culpability as in murder one vs. manslaughter.  But not often mentioned would be that if the father was involved in the decision he too would be prosecuted.

The doctor would always be prosecuted at murder one, as he always has the cold eye of premeditation.

I thought I had posted this.  Trying again:

Before 1973, all 50 states had wrestled with the question of what to do about prosecuting a highly paid and highly qualified and highly respected professional (a doctor), and also what to do about prosecuting anyone else involved in taking the life of another human being.  Before 1967, all 50 states had laws protecting babies, although some changed their laws before Roe v. Wade.  But all 50 states thought about the question that pro-abortion people are throwing at you – and all 50 gave the same answer.  This ultra-clever question about prosecuting women is actually an ignorant question, historically speaking – it was answered over and over for decades, by legislators in all 50 states.  And as I say, all gave the same answer.

The person who explained it to me was a prosecutor before 1973.  He put at least one abortionist behind bars; I think he prosecuted several and put several in prison, but I don’t remember clearly; I know he jailed at least one.  (It’s in NRL News, sometime in 1980.)  The prosecutor was Senator Tom Eagleton.  Eagleton was a pro-life Democrat before the Republican Party hijacked the pro-life movement and started driving out liberals.  He was a VP candidate briefly, running with McGovern – not exactly the most conservative person in politics.  He was tossed off the ticket when news broke that he had been treated for depression.  McGovern backed him 1,000% for a day or two, and then replaced him with Sargent Shriver.  But Eagleton was a highly respected Senator, from the left wing of the Democratic Party.  He entered political office on the strength of his work as a prosecutor, including jailing abortionists.

What Eagleton said was simple.  When a child has been killed, you could theoretically prosecute either one of two people – the mother or the abortionist.  The abortionist is likely to kill another 10,000 times if you don’t take him off the streets.  The mother: not so.  And you are pretty sure, most of the time, that the mom is already beating herself up; you don’t need to punish her any more than she is punishing herself.  That’s not always true, but generally.  Further, you can be pretty sure from the outset that the mother was highly upset when she had the abortion – this is not an excuse, but it is a factor to weigh when considering any response.  The abortionist, on the other hand, was not emotionally involved, came into a situation in which the mom was in pain, offered help, and made everything worse.  For this, he got paid.  So which one should you prosecute?  Probably, you will need the testimony of one to prosecute the other.  Every prosecutor in every state for 100 years did the same thing: this is a no-brainer.

Rep. Millicent Fenwick (D, NJ) once said (circa 1981) that if RvW were reversed, the anti-choice fanatics would go back to prosecuting women for back-alley abortions.  I asked her for the name of any woman who had been prosecuted for a back-alley abortion, any time, in American history.  She responded quickly, with class and honesty: she had mis-spoken.  She could not name anyone.

This is not a new question.  Every state in the Union dealt with it in the not-too-distant past, and all came up with the same answer.  ALL.

John Cavanaugh-O’Keefe

To Matt B on Monday, Jan 14
Red herring? I dunno. Is it kosher?
BTW have you looked into the evidence that The Woman Taken… is non-canonical?

There is no objective moral difference in killing an innocent person at any stage of his or her life. The moral value of every living person from conception to natural death is equal. The moral culpability of a mother who kills her child in a particular set of circumstances is another matter.