who supports right to choose

[rodriguezequal 3]

And I thought this site was related to Lap Band and such. When did it become a location for polls on totally unrelated surgery issues? Isn't there a face book spot or some more appropriate place for polls on 'issues?' Just curious.

This is the off topic debate area...This site isn't just for talking about the lapband...it is also a place where people with lapbands can come together and talk, about anything...it's a lapband community

[gadgetlady 4]

Here are a few sources to get you started, Carrie. I must say, just dabbling in this has garnered fascinating information. While I am not Catholic, most of these sources are:

Ten Reasons: Ensoulment

The Colorado Catholic Herald

AmericanCatholic.org - Catholic Update

One thing I found particularly interesting was the discussion of early Church thinkers and how they arrived at their conclusions about ensoulment. St. Augustine was recently cited by Nancy Pelosi to demonstrate that the Catholic Church didn't always believe ensoulment to occur at conception, but this position appears to me to be more biologically- and culture-based than theologically-based. As the writer points out at Theological Catch-Up , "Augustine also thought that males were vivified at 30 days and females at 90 days."

A comment on the same page reads (emphasis mine):

What Pelosi was citing were arguments in a time when natural science was still a branch of philosophy. (It’s hard to tell when you are reading the ancients whether they are talking about theology or natural philosophy because these areas of knowledge had not yet separated.) They were making causal inferences from false premises with a bit of Scripture thrown in, doing the best they could to understand human physiology and biology.

About 1830 the scientific community finally realized that it wasn’t just material from the father that made a baby. With microscopes they discovered that the mother’s reproductive system produced an egg which was fertilized by the father’s sperm causing human life to begin. Before microscopes it was assumed that the mother merely nutured what had been placed within her by the father. They thought that at some point God decided to form a human out of the material; it wasn’t considered a new human life until it had limbs, etc. Then a soul was supposedly injected when the the mom first felt the baby move (quickening). Even abortions of just the supposedly inert, unformed material was evil because it crossed God’s intent to form a human from that material.

The people Pelosi cites didn’t have our scientific knowledge of conception e.g. uniting of sperm and egg resulting in an entity with DNA differing from both its parents.

This might be of interest, too: Key_7

[green 6]

Augustine was a notably misogynistic writer who was troubled by his unbriddled lusts for women and, as a consequence, loathed and hated them; he viewed them as temptors; in this light, I would be inclined to discount all that he wrote.

[gadgetlady 4]

Augustine was a notably misogynistic writer who was troubled by his unbriddled lusts for women and, as a consequence, loathed and hated them; he viewed them as temptors; in this light, I would be inclined to discount all that he wrote.

Tell us how you really feel, green :ohmy:

Well, since Augustine's writings were the basis for Pelosi's claim that one could be Catholic and still in favor of abortion, I'll forward your comments about Augustine to her and perhaps she'll change her mind :tongue_smilie:

[green 6]

Ah, I see that I misspelled unbridled - my bad, eh. lol

[BJean 16]

gadget claims: "Since when are we only talking first trimester? You've said over and over that abortion should be legal through all 9 months of pregnancy."

You're full of prunes. I have absolutely NEVER made one comment about abortion being legal through all 9 months of pregnancy. I have never had any reason to state my feelings on that topic. Abortion is not a matter that should be decided by the government. EVER!

It is a matter that is always to be decided strictly by the woman involved and whoever else she chooses to include in her decision-making; medicial personnel, significant other, God, etc.

As for the definition of embryo I took my information straight from the dictonary. I will defer to you of course, because we all know you make this such a top priority in your life, you obviously are more well-educated on the proper terminology than I.

[BJean 16]

gadget sez: "You don't produce a baby through labor and delivery. You simply deliver what has already been produced."

I disagree. I don't believe you can say that a baby has been produced if it is in an embryonic state or a zygote, or a fertilized egg or whatever terminology you wish to use.

Just because you have parts of a car on an assembly line, doesn't make it a car that has been produced. Not until it rolls across the assembly line and is a complete model is it considered a car that has been produced.

Prior to that, it is just bits and pieces that will some day comprise a car but it is not a car, per se. You can even have all the pieces of the car in the same place, but until it gets all put together, with all the nuts, bolts and oil and grease where it all belongs can it be a car.

I know that you like to think that a fertilized egg is a fully complete baby - a human being with all the rights and priviledges of evey other human walking the face of the earth. But I respectfully and totally disagree and I believe that I am right every bit as much as you believe that you are right - furthermore, I believe that most dispassionate and scientific people agree with me.

Yeah, I agree that this is a pretty far out analogy, but it is not nearly as far out as some of the ones that the anti-choice people toss around.

[rodriguezequal 3]

I like that comparision very much!!! Nicely put!

[gadgetlady 4]

gadget claims: "Since when are we only talking first trimester? You've said over and over that abortion should be legal through all 9 months of pregnancy."

You're full of prunes. I have absolutely NEVER made one comment about abortion being legal through all 9 months of pregnancy. I have never had any reason to state my feelings on that topic. Abortion is not a matter that should be decided by the government. EVER!

It is a matter that is always to be decided strictly by the woman involved and whoever else she chooses to include in her decision-making; medicial personnel, significant other, God, etc.

Ergo, legal through all 9 months of pregnancy. If, according to you, no restrictions should be placed on it at all, it means legal through natural birth.

[gadgetlady 4]

Just because you have parts of a car on an assembly line, doesn't make it a car that has been produced. Not until it rolls across the assembly line and is a complete model is it considered a car that has been produced.

Prior to that, it is just bits and pieces that will some day comprise a car but it is not a car, per se. You can even have all the pieces of the car in the same place, but until it gets all put together, with all the nuts, bolts and oil and grease where it all belongs can it be a car.

It's a cute analogy, but it doesn't work because a car requires the physical intervening act of assembling all of those parts. It doesn't assemble itself without the assembly line and all of the robots and people who participate in that process.

The baby, once he or she starts growing, needs nothing but nourishment and a place to live (hmmm -- just like you and me).

[Carrie_C 9]

That analogy works better to me than arguing that slavery and abortion are related.

[green 6]

This is where the DNA comes into play. The gentic code tells the forming foetus when to build those limbs and in what order. It will also flood the brain with male or female hormones, thus determining its gender.

[rodriguezequal 3]

Without the Host (Mother) the baby's "parts" will not be assembled...

[gadgetlady 4]

The problem with the analogy is when do you consider the baby to be "produced"? A newborn still has a lot of growing and developing to do. As does a toddler. Heck, sex organs aren't fully developed for another 15 or so years!

"Produced" isn't a good adjective to apply to a person because a person isn't just a sum of parts.

[rodriguezequal 3]

The growing that happens with a fetus is different from the growing of a newborn and a toddler...the toddler isn't growing limbs or developing new organs...