[Vision2020] Credibility: Roger's and Mine

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Hi Roger,

You need to read my article to see the documentation on the historical position of the Catholic and Protestant churches. My claim was based on tradition, not what current thinkers believe.  Many of them are flaming liberals in changing a traditional position on abortion that has solid scientific foundation.

Neither Calvin nor Luther said anything about abortion, and Thomas Aquinas' position was that the fetus becomes a person "at the completion of man's coming into being."
The great Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain agrees with Aquinas: "To admit that the human fetus receives the intellectual soul from the moment of its conception, when matter is in no way ready for it, sounds to me like a philosophical absurdity. It is as absurd as to call a fertilized ovum a baby."

And if you had followed the Vision discussion between Ted and myself, you would have remembered that I set 24 weeks as the cut-off point for abortion, which is pretty much how state medical boards are interpreting the 1973 Supreme Court decision.

Conception is not your "clear demarcation" point, because twinning can happen up to 16 days, and what was once a conceptus with one genetic identity is now two individuals with the same genetic identity.  That, and the possibility of cloning every somatic cell, proves the absurdity of identifying genetic and personal identity.

My stand on favoring abortion before 24 weeks and rejecting the death penalty at all times is morally and legally consistent.  Executing Duncan, a moral and legal person, or anyone else is state sanctioned murder, but taking the life of a non-person is not.  You continue to speak of "innocence" but cows and pigs are just as innocent as early fetuses, and yet you have no compunction about having them killed.

Thanks for the dialogue,

Nick

Nick 
You state that legal and religious traditions have held that a fetus is not a 
person until late in pregnancy. I dont think that Catholics and Evangelicals 
would agree with that.  By saying late in pregnancy you still have not set an 
exact demarcation point. This  can be somewhat of a sliding scale.  For myself I 
do not know what the correct answer is. I may be somewhat in agreement with 
Obama on that narrow point. At least the Catholics and Evangelicals have a clear 
demarcation point. 
You still run the risk of killing the innocent and sparing the guilty. If 
anybody deserves the death penalty it is Duncan. 
On a related issue why would California what him extradited to try him there. He 
has already been sentenced to death, they should save the expense. The same 
holds for the guy who killed a Moscow student, some one in Boise and in Nevada. 
Boise can keep him. Latah does not need the expense. 
Roger 


You also need to read my article to see that I