I don’t know what to tell you there John. At my school we just had some bioethics student presentations on IVF and CRISPR and it was very much a concern. I don’t know too many Christians that aren’t concerned about it and I have heard of people “adopting” IVF embryos. I’m sorry if people aren’t always consistent, I know I’m not always even though I try to be. I’m really struggling with the death penalty that way right now, but that’s for another conversation.
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I contend that there is not such thing as “late term abortion”. It is made up terminology. Please look up the terminology and compare it with the actual medical procedures that are done at different stages of pregnancy. Let’s discuss actual medical procedures done during pregnancy. Perhaps @swamidass can help.
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I think that will be generational. Many of the catholics I know who are my age and younger completely ignore the RCC’s position on contraception, and they don’t feel they are doing anything wrong. I do fully understand why contraception is a touchy subject, but I still hold out hope.
One of the topics that is often overlooked is that Planned Parenthood is the largest supplier of affordable birth control in the country. If PP is defunded and goes away, and are replaced by faith-based services, there is a real risk that many women will no longer have affordable, or even free, access to both exams and birth control. PP prevents way more abortions than they perform, and I think this is a point worth remembering.
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Do nice, happy, law abiding, kind people kill a baby in the birth canal?
100% correct. It is not a thing.
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I was going off of Late termination of pregnancy - Wikipedia and just used the term I was most familiar with, sorry.
How about ‘third trimester abortion’?
No, and neither does the medical profession in this country. You are completely misinformed about made up medical procedures called “late term abortion”. Do your homework, tell me who and where “late term abortions” are being done. You won’t be able to find any.
You don’t think it happens at abortuaries. Huh.
Not to minimize the awful significance of a terrible subject, but to lighten things up a bit, my wife and I say that we are in favor of abortion, but the time limits are wrong – it should be the thirty-first trimester (age 21). 
Which brings up the Cutler exegesis of the 5th Commandment (Reformed numbering). The 5th Commandment is really to help parents to obey the 6th Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill!” (My wife’s corollary: it only seems like your life is long upon the earth if you obey your parents.
This was clearly murder as the viable infants were killed by this doctor. He is serving life in prison.
Now tell me in detail about all the “late term abortions” that are being done legally across the country by good law abiding doctors.
Note that Roe v. Wade allows abortions to the end of the second trimester (26 weeks) of pregnancy. But technology has improved so that a 24 week fetus is considered viable if it doesn’t have health or health anomalies. Please tell me where doctors are doing “late term abortions” on healthy 24 week fetuses inside healthy mothers?
Question to @swamidass: A healthy young woman carrying a healthy 24 week old fetus comes into WUSTL Hospital and asks for an abortion. What would your colleagues tell her?
@DaleCutler Still waiting to hear about all these “late term abortions” being done on healthy viable fetuses. Please give us facts and figures.
Yes, these are the really hard cases. Thankfully the numbers in group are small. This is where medical science and reasoning becomes paramount. And Government, religion, and rigid regulations and laws should stay away.
You did not complete your homework, as noted above.
Nowhere in the Wikipedia is described anything illegal or murderous like what you describe as happening everyday across the country.
You are taking liberties. I said no such thing.
Seriously?
It’s not illegal to murder a baby in the birth canal. That was the point, wasn’t it. But it’s still murderous.
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“Abortion” itself is not a thing, really; abortion in medicine refers to the termination of a pregnancy and the removal (or expulsion) of gestational tissue, and can be natural or induced. For the vast majority of cases, the procedure proceeds identically regardless of whether the fetus is still alive. The steps taken by an OB to remove fetal tissue after a stalled miscarriage are identical to the steps taken by an “abortionist” in an elective abortion.
There is a strong degree of revulsion associated with these procedures regardless of whether the fetus is alive. Even in a failed miscarriage, where the fetus is already deceased, the thought of needing to break apart an intact body in order to safely remove it is disturbing, though medically obvious.
Pro-life activists object specifically not to medical abortion, but to induced fetal demise…acts which would bring about the immediate death of a fetus. This can include both the procedure used in removal of fetal tissue (since removal from the uterus cuts off the blood supply to the fetus) or mechanical damage to fetal tissue. Curiously, the law in question in the Kansas supreme court ruling would have required that physicians administer a dose of poison to a fetus before performing certain procedures, which would at least separate this mandated induced fetal demise from the abortion procedure itself.
The vast majority of medically-induced abortions take place very early in the pregnancy (or immediately following a failed miscarriage). Medical abortions later in pregnancy either happen due to severe fetal abnormalities/defects which would preclude a healthy birth, or as a result of entirely preventable, tragic circumstances which pro-life activists seem uninterested in addressing. Abortions late in pregnancy represent only 2-3% of all medical abortions and do not typically involve elective decisions. There are no healthy women with healthy 39-week pregnancies walking into abortion clinics and demanding that their child be killed during labor.
A married woman who is 31 weeks pregnant with her first child and excited about becoming a mom goes in for a routine checkup and is informed that her baby is brain-dead. This, the doctor explains, is due to a severe defect that, if left to deliver at term, would render her infertile and would likely place her in ICU for weeks. Because of the gestational age, D&E is contraindicated; the doctor explains that the safest option is to induce pre-term labor and remove the undersized fetal body intact through a partially-dilated birth canal. Devastated, she makes the decision to follow the doctor’s recommendation. She and her wife are able to bury their child and go on to try again for another.
A woman in an almost-identical situation receives similar news…except that this time, the defect has not rendered the fetus brain-dead. The fetus has a severe, inoperable heart defect that gives it only a 2% chance of surviving outside the womb, but it still will almost certainly render the mother infertile and put her in the ICU. She and her husband make the same decision.
Now…how would you write a law to prevent the imagined hypothetical of “murder in the birth canal” without impeding the healthcare access of either of these women?
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Gosnell is an adequate case in point demonstrating that it is neither imagined nor hypothetical. What he was doing was legal, until he botched it, delivering the babies alive, only to be murdered later rather than sooner.
Now…how would you write a law to prevent the practice?
In respects other than their early embryonic development, absolutely. Doesn’t mean that identical twins are following the normal developmental path when they form from a single zygote.
Well, I do believe it, and I’ll just have to ask for your forgiveness for my imperfection in living it out.
I’m afraid it will be unproductive to keep pushing this point - this is getting into an area where we obviously have different metaphysical frameworks - but the addition of the complementary gamete to the environment doesn’t mean the first gamete has the intrinsic ability to develop the way the zygote does…
… Nor does this counterfactual imply that the chain of causation is running from mother to zygote/embryo. (The zygote begins growing before implantation, and unless I’m reading this wrong, there is a sense in which its growth is self-directed, just as it is for any other complete organism. There’s philosophical arguments to that conclusion as well, though we’d have to dive into metaphysical issues get into those.)
Another passage where the interpretation is not certain - it is also possible that it is referring to a premature birth, not a miscarriage. (NET Bible translates it this way, for example.)
It doesn’t. I agree that the pro-life movement, broadly speaking, is inconsistent on the issue of IVF, and should be speaking out against it as well. What I’m saying is that it doesn’t imply insincerity about beliefs (perhaps that is the word I should have used, rather than principles) - just imperfect implementation of those beliefs.
I’m also saying that it is natural to be inconsistent in this way - to focus on the issue that receives a lot of attention and ignore the issue that doesn’t. _I’m not saying this is okay _, just that it is the way it is.
I didn’t say anything about hypocrisy in your position; what I said is that you are making false allegations about the intentions of others.
How do you know that, since you are just assuming what my reasoning (or lack thereof, you claim) is? I haven’t even tried to lay out a full case for why I think abortion is wrong. All I’ve been doing here is supporting the specific claims I’ve been making in disagreement with you, and that only very briefly.
How do you know I don’t? You’re assuming a lot about my actions in accusing me of hypocrisy.
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