First, Coming Home has been relatively quiet of late, owing to unrelenting tummy upset. Things seem to have quieted down, finally, and I’ll be posting the ABC literature again tonight.
I’ve tried to maintain a tight discipline and not stray into the political/legislative end of the pro-life movement. Jill Stanek is far better at this, and there’s no sense reinventing the wheel. However, yesterday’s events were nothing less than seismic in their dimensions for the pro-life movement, and so I thought that I would opine for a moment on areas relevant to science and the impact of science on family life.
There is a great misunderstanding that state-level candidates who are pro-life don’t count for much, as Roe v. Wade is a national issue. The truth is that most of our legislative victories in curbing abortion and checking Planned Parenthood’s moves have occurred at the state level. Also, leaders at the Congressional level, candidates for the White House, and Nominees for the Supreme Court all come up through the state-level political machines. From that perspective, it is vital to have strongly pro-life leaders and judges in both major parties.
State and local politicians influence local health department and public school policy regarding sex education, condom distribution, cooperation between Planned Parenthood and local school boards, the content of public health ad campaigns and the target age of those ads, the type of state funding for contraception and abortion services, etc.
The truth is that MOST of what happens in the Culture of Death is done at the local level. So it starts with getting solidly pro-life candidates for the city councils and state assemblies. It all builds from there.
At the national level, we need to sit with our new pro-life representatives and patiently educate them about the abuses taking place at national agencies such as the ongoing travesty being perpetrated by the Brinton Gang at NCI. We need to encourage legislation that requires FULL disclosure prior to abortion, including a document to be given to the mothers at the abortion clinic that details all of what has been explained.
Such disclosure needs to involve a full explanatory sonogram of the baby’s stage of development so that women will never again be duped by the lie that, “It’s just a blob of tissue.” There needs to be an explanation of the gynecologic, reproductive, psychiatric, and oncological risks associated with abortions so that women may be the ones to decide. Such legislation should also spell out to the woman her right to sue for incomplete disclosure. Posters of the developmental stages of the baby need to be conspicuously posted in every abortion center’s waiting room, consult room, and operating room.
We need to push for legislation that makes it easier to sue abortionists for their past lies and incomplete disclosures.
We need to push for Congressional hearings into the fraud at NCI, and the House should use the power of the purse to compel them to start acting honestly. When faced with punitive budget cuts, frauds like Brinton become too much of a liability and are forced out.
We need to push for legislation that protects crisis pregnancy centers and pregnancy resource centers from limits placed on their freedom of speech. And if they are to be regulated as medical centers, then they should be eligible under federal law for funds that allow them to purchase sonogram machines if they serve medicaid patients, and to receive medicaid reimbursement. CPC’s and PRC’s, if forced to be licensed by the state, should receive the same amount of funding from the federal and state governments as Planned Parenthood.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
In the absence of abortion’s repeal, we can work to ensure that women are afforded the opportunity to make fully informed choices, that the centers who currently work to aid women in crisis not be punished, but protected from governmental intrusion.
Yesterday was a good start, but we have a long way to go.
Coming Home 
EXCELLENT!!
We also need to use the 5,000 declarations of Operation Outcry in passing prolife legislation! They are filed as friend of the court briefs and detail the harm that abortion causes men and women!
http://www.operationoutcry.org
I never understood how anyone could object to a sonogram before an abortion — if I were the patient, I would probably ask for one, just to see for myself (or even view the whole procedure, the way I demanded to watch my c-sections, which did not endear me to my last doctor).
As long as women are also presented with a list of the risks of childbirth (surgical delivery, post-partum depression, etc.), there is no reason why they shouldn’t know the risks of abortion, too. There is never a good reason to withhold information.
Heck, I think they should be shown actual embryos, preserved in jars.
More information would eliminate the abortions procured out of ignorance and/or misinformation, but it wouldn’t eliminate those procured with informed consent. All the women I know who had abortions (mostly educated white women, like me) knew exactly what they were doing.
Have you see this? http://www.theonion.com/video/new-law-requires-women-to-name-baby-paint-nursery,14393/
L
Your detachment over wanting to watch your own abortion makes me shudder.
You also make it sound like these “educated” friends continue to discuss these abortions over tea and cookies? That they share sonogram pictures of their aborted babies and laugh over stories about who had the most painful abortion?
There is a culture of life and a culture of death….. the culture of death needs to infect the culture of life in order to survive…. quit making abortion sound like its nothing…. quit trying to infect the culture of life…. you know…. look at me…. it isn’t so bad….. everyone is doing it…… educated, white, rich, pretty – don’t you want to be like us…. we’re so smart – abortions don’t affect us – if they affect you….. you must be one of tose uneducated types….. no peer pressure here……
AMC, I hope I am never in the situation to choose abortion, but if I am, you’d better believe I’d want to watch. It is an avid interest that couldn’t be any further from “detachment.”
And your pretend conversations about smug women laughing about their abortions over tea and cookies are exactly that. I can honestly say I have never heard anything like what you described.
I linked to the Onion video. That’s satire. It’s not real life.
Well – your casual interest in watching your baby die –
because you can’t afford a baby right now
because it “might” have down syndrome, autism, MS, CP
because you just had plastic surgery
are the more common excuses. I’m sure you have a warranted list of reasons why, but the fact is you have a casual interest in watching your baby die….
Also – these “pretend” conversations above are pretty tame if you were ever to hang out on a pro-choice discussion board….. so maybe it’s not tea and cookies – but a bag of chips and a soda on the internet.
goes with the casual interest over watching your baby die.
As for the Onion – I get satire – but it’s just another way for you to show how silly and uncool we pro-lifers are……
Micro-inequities are in everything we do……
AMC, you can’t assume you understand the mentality of all pro-choice people just from what you read on Internet discussion boards.
If I were ever to watch my baby die, I can assure you my interest would be more than “casual.”
I can also assure you I’ve never met a single woman who was happy to have an abortion — even those who didn’t regret it.
L.,
If one simply accepts that there are alternatives to murdering a child, then one is never in the position of having to choose whether or not to murder a child. Once an unintended pregnancy has made itself known, the options for the woman are all consequential. The short term fix always carries the lifetime of regret, not to mention a host of gynecological, oncological and obstetrical side effects.
L does at least admit it’s a baby.
The abortion advocates are all over the pro-life websites lately. Hmm.. They are making comments trying to discourage us that the election results aren’t meaningful – which reveals more about their own insecurities and how badly they wish it weren’t so.
I know a lot of liberal friends who honestly don’t know the difference between the Onion’s satire and real news. Fer reals.
To all prolifers out there, I’ve got three words for you:
Toehold. Foothold. Stronghold.
Hmmm, sometimes having a baby also comes with a lifetime of regret, not to mention a host of gynecological, oncological and obstetrical side effects. Better not to get pregnant in the first place.
Ninek, what do you mean, “at least” I “admit” that it’s a baby? OF COURSE it’s a baby — what else would it be?
And anyone, liberal or conservative, who believes everything they read/see in the Onion or Fox News is a fool.
“if I were the patient, I would probably ask for one, just to see for myself (or even view the whole procedure,……”
How any mother could watch the death struggle of her baby is beyond twisted. What do you think happens during an abortion, L?
To compare the abortion death of a baby with watching the life-giving procedure of a C-section is unbelievably callous.
If you really want to get your kicks L, why don’t you try watching Silent Scream. But I’m betting you believe that film is fake. 😦
To all prolifers out there, I’ve got three words for you:
Toehold. Foothold. Stronghold.
😀 😀 😀
Silent Scream? Saw it in ’84, when it came out. I was already a “pro-abort” by then, and it did nothing to change my mind that I would personally have an abortion, in some circumstances.
Some pro-lifers seem to think that if only women were shown sonograms and pictures of abortions, and really understood how bloody, horrible and destructive they really are, we would all change their minds about them. And yet, when we say we are actually interested in seeing all of this, and facing the truth head on, we are accused of being “callous.”
I don’t know anyone who has invasive minor gynecological surgery “for kicks.”
“And yet, when we say we are actually interested in seeing all of this, and facing the truth head on, we are accused of being “callous.””
no L. It’s demented to want to watch as your baby inside of you is murdered. Period.
It’s sad that you don’t believe so. 😦
I am interested in watching any medical procedure on my own body that is possible to watch. I want to see everything with my own eyes, everything that there is to see.
It would indeed be sad — perhaps even “demented” — if I took any pleasure in watching my baby die, but somehow, I don’t imagine it would be enjoyable at all.
//Hmmm, sometimes having a baby also comes with a lifetime of regret, not to mention a host of gynecological, oncological and obstetrical side effects. Better not to get pregnant in the first place.//
I guess those imaginary conversations also discuss the regrets of having had children in the first place – so why ruin life with more kids.
Those are some circles you run in – now your friends seem to regrets having their children. I guess this is their reason for aborting the later ones……..
Just curious, why would someone have regret over having children?
AMC, most people don’t, but some people do — I know of one tragic case in which a child grew up to be a criminal, who caused great harm, and his parents wish he had never been born.
And I know mothers who put babies up for adoption who regretted getting pregnant in the first place. Sure, they made the “loving choice of life,” but it really sucked for them, and they wish they had avoided it in the first place.
“I am interested in watching any medical procedure on my own body that is possible to watch. I want to see everything with my own eyes, everything that there is to see.”
except that you are not watching a “procedure” exclusively on YOUR body L.
You are watching a “procedure” on your baby that results in it’s painful death.
You seem unable to focus on the actual significance of that fact.
This is not like watching a stent procedure or the removal of your appendix.
I find your curiosity absolutely morbid beyond comprehension. 😦
Yes, Mary Catherine, you seem to find my very existence morbid beyond comprehension. It will have to remain a profane mystery.
I would be watching a procedure on my own body — I don’t see room for dispute on that point. In addition to my body, the procedure is also which entails removing the body of a tiny little being, my own baby, which would result in my baby’s untimely death. I can’t imagine I would take this lightly — it’s nothing I would laugh about over tea and cookies later, despite apparent beliefs that we “pro-aborts” think abortion is jolly and fun.
I wouldn’t videotape my abortion and put it on Youtube, or show to my big kids at home. Perhaps, hypothetically, I would even be undergoing the procedure due to grave risks to my own life, in which case I imagine I wouldn’t be conscious to watch.
When I say I would want to watch it, I mean that if I ever made the decision to undergo an abortion, I would want to watch it. I don’t mean, this is something I would really enjoy doing — surely, if that were the case, since I’m highly fertile, I would have gotten knocked up on purpose just to watch the baby die. And yes, that would be morbid.
“AMC, most people don’t, but some people do — I know of one tragic case in which a child grew up to be a criminal, who caused great harm, and his parents wish he had never been born.”
Actually, the parents shouldn’t have been born. There are no bad children, only bad parents. I gotta love ya, L, appealing to the exception to the rule so often, it becomes the rule of your reasoning.
Since you defend abortion via soul migration and rebirth, explain via reincarnation the criminal who caused great harm?
“When I say I would want to watch it, I mean that if I ever made the decision to undergo an abortion, I would want to watch it. ”
This is morbid and disturbing regardless of whether you would enjoy it or not.
I consider any woman who would want to WATCH the actual destruction of her own baby to have something seriously wrong with her. Womanhood is characterized by service to others and the gift of self. She is capable of giving the gift of life to another human being in a way that no one else can. Nothing could be more diametrically opposed to this mission than watching and therefore participating in the death of another. The watching is particularly disturbing because when we see another human being suffering or being attacked in any way, it is a common human trait and a particular trait of mothers to reach out to protect and alleviate. To watch and to do nothing to help a child so utterly helpless and to know that the attack is based on something you initiated is pathological IMO. This is why women suffer so terribly after abortion – because it is so against their vocation as women and as mothers. Women who deny this deny their human nature, their womanhood and their femininity on a very basic level. That is why I believe post abortion trauma is a very natural and healthy response to a terrible trauma.
And really let’s be honest here – the baby is the one really getting the “procedure” done. You survive (usually). The baby doesn’t.
As for your existence, I made no comment on that. That is your own projection L.
I am prolife and I’m glad you are alive! 🙂
anyways that’s my view.
I don’t think we should use the term “unintended pregnancy.” When we do, we’re referring to the unborn child as a “pregnancy.” Would anyone ever refer to a pregnant woman as a “pregnancy”? Certainly not. Think of how offensive it would be to do this! How is referring to the unborn child in this manner any less offensive?
The problem with using the term to refer to unborn children isn’t just that it marginalizes and dehumanizes them, but it describes them purely from the perspective of (pregnant) women. When you use the term “pregnancy” in this way you are describing an entire class of people from the perspective of the powerful, instead of describing them as ends in themselves.
Mary Catherine, you and I clearly have very different definitions of what it means to be a women. I’m sure we’re raising our daughters very differently.
Astran, somehow in all of my previous comments (and I admit, there were a lot of them), you missed the point that I believed in reincarnation as a small child, and my belief in it faded with my belief in Santa Claus. I have also made the point here that others believe in it very ardently, and I respect their beliefs although I don’t share them. Therefore, I am totally unqualified “explain via reincarnation the criminal who caused great harm.”
And there are both bad parents AND bad children — sometimes in combination, sometimes not.
“… appealing to the exception to the rule so often, it becomes the rule of your reasoning.”
Ah, but being an “exception to the rule” sums up my entire life in Japan: raising Japanese kids; taking Buddhist/Shinto kids to mass; being a career woman and rejecting traditional motherhood/wifehood in a land where it is more valued than what I do, etc.
It is easy for us exceptions to be marginalized by society.
And if there are no “bad” children, how do you explain me? My parents were devout Catholics. My father had me reading Aquinas when I was seven, and I never missed mass or catechism class, unless I was ill, until I left their home. And yet all that time, they were raising someone who would grow to be “an enemy of the culture of life.”
Should they never have been born? 😉
“And yet all that time, they were raising someone who would grow to be “an enemy of the culture of life.”
Should they never have been born? ”
“And there are both bad parents AND bad children — sometimes in combination, sometimes not”
So you disagree with humanist/socialist child psychology that there are no bad children, only bad parents. According to Soviet psychology, it is the nuturing of the parents that produces harm to human beings. Another words, humans are born good, and then turned into harmful human beings by their parents. The state is in a fight to produce the perfect non-harmful human being, just as the socialist in Europe and the USA are doing today. There are no bad children, only bad parents. And in San Fran, those bad parents are making obese children, and the city seeking perfect citizens have taken away the right to eat certain foods that the bad parent allows.
As for your being born and ending up being a enemy of the culture of life, that is one of your “puposes in life” according to reincarnation/migration. You really have no will to change where you are today or tomorrow. You migrated to the antithesis of your father’s faith because it fulfills his faults in a previous life, which might/is based on “his” being a “her”, in a previous life, and accquiring a abortion. It’s your parents life/karma to produce a soul that “would grow to be an enemy of the culture of life.” In the end, your that aborted baby/soul your “father” denied life, in his previous life! As for Japan and your life there, you’ll always be gaijin. To be truthful, the best of Japan are migrating away from Japan, and seeking employment in the USA.
“It is easy for us exceptions to be marginalized by society”
Doesn’t change the fact that you use the logical fallacy of appealing to the exception to the rule until it is the rule of your reasoning. LOL.
I assume you’re referring to San Francisco’s “Happy Meal Toy” ban. This would not have affected our family, since I convinced all three of my kids that In n’ Out Burger was better, even without the toys. And it was far less onerous than the “no plastic grocery bags, no exceptions!” law — try walking home with heavy groceries in paper bags, and getting caught in the rain…..
I believe that there’s good and bad in everyone. No parents are entirely good or bad, and no children are entirely good or bad. And one size doesn’t fit all, when it comes to raising them.
You kind of lost me with that reincarnation stuff.
As for the best leaving Japan…..I do hope you’re right. I don’t want any of my kids to end up Japanese, if I can help it.
“… you use the logical fallacy of appealing to the exception to the rule until it is the rule of your reasoning.”
Nah. I imagine I would only personally have an abortion in exceptional circumstances, but I use contraception for the very prosaic and boring reason that I don’t want to carry any more babies. And I doubt that I am the “exception to the rule” on that one.
And you never addressed mothers who give their babies up for adoption wishing they had never gotten pregnant in the first place. Also, I know single mothers who accidentally got pregnant and decided to keep their babies — while they love their kids, I know a few who regretted not waiting until they were married someday, so their kids would have a dad. I know plenty of parents who wish they had done things differently.
The parents of the criminal are certainly exceptional, but they hardly have a monopoly on regret.
/I believe that there’s good and bad in everyone. No parents are entirely good or bad, and no children are entirely good or bad. And one size doesn’t fit all, when it comes to raising them./
The bad comes from bad parenting.
The good comes from the state correcting and enforcing good actions. You’ll be held responsible for the bad actions of your children, which begins with them being evaluated by a psychologist when you’ve allowed them to do a bad action, or idea.
Is it not true that children are born good? Do you deny the principle of “inherently good” as established by Rousseau? You will be responsible for any bad action/idea your child does for their entire life.
//And you never addressed mothers who give their babies up for adoption wishing they had never gotten pregnant in the first place. Also, I know single mothers who accidentally got pregnant and decided to keep their babies — while they love their kids, I know a few who regretted not waiting until they were married someday, so their kids would have a dad. I know plenty of parents who wish they had done things differently.//
Let me give you my answer to those statements you wrote in matters of accidents, wishes, and “things done differently”.
Although life is permitted to come into this world in your above statement, it is conditional love in each situation you listed.
As the child ages, those conditional love ideas are eventually made manifest in the child. Therefore, the “born good” child realizes the conditional love him/herself, and responds with conditional love towards the parent(s) first. When you realize your a wish to not exist, or a accidental existence, the good is drained away. Basically, it’s a “meditation on evil”, which is presented to the child’s still expanding morality and intellect.
BTW, that is one point/reason of Aquinas’ writing the Summa. The short story I’m making is that a “lack of good”, which the child recognizes in him/herself from being a wish to not be, a unintended action, is the classic definition of evil. A lack of good! I imagine your father had a high opinion of your child intellect being able to digest the difference between “ontological” and “moral” evil.
As for Japan, my in-laws are Japanese and are heading West while your heading East. Being named “Susan”, pre WW2, does invite the Kempeitai to examine your “thoughts”.
BTW, how do you defend your Catholicism against being a cannibal, eating the flesh and blood of a resurrected person?
“The problem with using the term to refer to unborn children isn’t just that it marginalizes and dehumanizes them, but it describes them purely from the perspective of (pregnant) women. When you use the term “pregnancy” in this way you are describing an entire class of people from the perspective of the powerful, instead of describing them as ends in themselves.”
What a great statement. Thank you for defending unborn children Austin. 😀
L, you better believe my girls will be raised very counter cultural.
They believe in womanhood and have a wonderful understanding of true femininity. They have been taught that bc is a sin and that abortion is the deliberate killing of an unborn baby.
I expect great things from them! I expect them to be mothers and wives, God willing! But first I expect them to be faithful to God in however He calls them.
“The bad comes from bad parenting.”
You know, I don’t believe this at all, just from what I’ve observed with my own eyes. It’s true sometimes, yes, but not always. I think you hit on it when you say, ” You’ll be held responsible for the bad actions of your children, which begins with them being evaluated by a psychologist when you’ve allowed them to do a bad action, or idea.” Much of the truly “bad” behavior I’ve seen is by kids with problems that their parents didn’t cause — and try to correct.
Indeed, I “headed East” in 1985, when the Japanese economy looked a lot better than it does now. I have three Japanese children, and I wonder where they will want to head. Hopefully not here.
And I don’t receive Communion, so I’m not a cannibal. I suppose one could argue that transubstantiation means one never has to eat human flesh, because the wheat matter stays the same, and cannibalism is defined only as literally eating flesh matter.
Mary Catherine, I am quite sure you are raising your children very conscientiously. Who knows, maybe one of your daughters will marry one of my sons. Weirder things have happened, in this life….
One more thing, Astran —
“As the child ages, those conditional love ideas are eventually made manifest in the child. Therefore, the ‘born good’ child realizes the conditional love him/herself, and responds with conditional love towards the parent(s) first. When you realize your a wish to not exist, or a accidental existence, the good is drained away.”
How does this apply to adopted children, who are never exposed to the regret of their birth mothers? Or women who have children out of wedlock and lovingly raise them with no outward trace of regert, and yet privately wish they had waited for marriage?
Here’s another example: I have a close Japanese friend with two daugthers, quite apart in age. There was a boy in between them, but he was killed in a late-term abortion, when the mother listened to medical advice instead of to her own heart. She regrets the abortion. However, if she hadn’t aborted the boy, she never would have had her second daughter (since she is not Catholic, and her husband wanted to stop at two children). She both lovingly embraces her second daugther’s existence, and at the same time, very much regrets aborting her son.
/How does this apply to adopted children, who are never exposed to the regret of their birth mothers? Or women who have children out of wedlock and lovingly raise them with no outward trace of regert, and yet privately wish they had waited for marriage?/
Before I answer that question, you failed to answer my question:Do you deny the principle of “inherently good”(born) as established by Rousseau.
To answer your question.
It’s not about the regret of the creator, but the created. Adopted children are permitted to live by a act of conditional love of the mother. It’s quite simple, one half of love is missing, the father. There is a lack of love. A lack of goodness. As for the mother who created life out of wedlock, one can replace the word “wedlock” with a lack of love by the mother and especially the father. Oh, the mother can show no reget, but again, it’s about the created, the child’s slow recognition of being less then good as the child develops the history of how they were created. Japan has had many cases of murderers who eventually explain their murdering/harm by their mother’s lack of good, or evil. They’re catching up with the Western world.
As for your not being a cannibal, you just send your kids to cannibal meetings. Lolz.
//Ah, but being an “exception to the rule” sums up my entire life in Japan: raising Japanese kids; taking Buddhist/Shinto kids to mass; being a career woman and rejecting traditional motherhood/wifehood in a land where it is more valued than what I do, etc.//
When I give Buddha/Shinto examples of squaring the circle of peoples actions in their present soul/body life, you are fluffing off your childrens religious education by writing:
//You kind of lost me with that reincarnation stuff//
Predicted outcome: Agnostic, the essential logical contradiction. They absolutely know, that they can’t know———- for sure.
I have a different definition of “agnostic” — doubters who are open to the possibility that something might be knowable. There are “glass half-full, hopeful” agnostics as well as the better-known, “glass half-empty, nothing is knowable” agnostics. And yes, I predict this outcome, too, because it is essentially what their mother is teaching them.
My kids have gotten no religious education in reincarnation, as far as I know. My husband is a Buddhist the way people who put up Christmas trees are Christians.
And didn’t Rousseau leave all five of his kids on the doorstep of an orphanage? I take with a grain of salt anything he wrote, about children’s inherent anything.
Also — did you know that many Japanese Buddhists believe in Heaven and Hell, and the survival of the self after death? A priest at our church told me he thinks it’s because Buddhism arrived in Japan from China, filtered through Christian missionaries.
“Mary Catherine, I am quite sure you are raising your children very conscientiously. Who knows, maybe one of your daughters will marry one of my sons. Weirder things have happened, in this life….”
I doubt it very much because I would recognize you immediately and strongly counsel my daughter against the marriage.
My daughters have been taught that marrying a faithful Catholic man is THE best way to have a happy marriage. 🙂
“I doubt it very much because I would recognize you immediately and strongly counsel my daughter against the marriage.”
Really? I would encourage my children to marry any person who was kind to them and treated them with love, respect and kindness. I wouldn’t strongly discourage them from marrying anyone, no matter how different the family, faith or culture.
I have never met you or your daughters [that I know of], and I have no reason to believe they wouldn’t treat their future spouses with love, respect and kindness.
based on your values which I’m assuming you would pass on to your children, I doubt very much that my children would show ANY interest
a successful marriage is based upon shared values.
The right to abortion, the use of birth control are not shared values in our family.
Well, I am certainly trying VERY hard, to raise children who support the gay agenda, as well as legal contraception and abortion. But there are no guarantees in life — my Catholic parents somehow raised a gay-loving “pro-abort.” 🙂
A successful marriage can indeed be based upon shared values. But mutual respect for different values works quite well, too.
not in my books.
Shared values leads to a way of life.
Natural family planning is a shared value but more importantly it is a way of life just as contraceptive lifestyle is a way of life which my children would likely not partake of.
It would be impossible for a marriage to work between a person who believes in contraception and the other who believes in NFP. In fact I know of several couples whose marriages have failed precisely because they did not share the same values in the area of sexual morality.
Being faithful to ALL of the teachings of the Catholic faith is also a way of life. I have raised my children both by example and by teaching to be faithful to the Catholic faith which I believe has the fullness of truth. While I cannot guarantee they will hold to my values, it is likely that they will since they are part of a community who holds the same values.
I love persons who have a same sex attraction but I believe that their lifestyle is wrong.
The loving thing to do is to respect persons with same sex attraction but to encourage them to seek help and/or to live a chaste life.
“It would be impossible for a marriage to work between a person who believes in contraception and the other who believes in NFP.” –>
You’re quite wrong on this one. I know of several such marriages. It is indeed a challenging situation, and can in fact end up to be an insurmountable obstacle, but it certainly isn’t all of the time.
And I, too, was (and still am) part of a community that shares my parents’ Catholic values, but some of the values just didn’t stick. As you said, there are no guarantees.
“You’re quite wrong on this one. I know of several such marriages. It is indeed a challenging situation, and can in fact end up to be an insurmountable obstacle, but it certainly isn’t all of the time.”
in my experience it is usually the NFP person who capitulates since the contracepting spouse threatens sterilization. 😦
your experiences are most unusual.
I know people who stick to their NFP guns, regardless of what the other partner (both male and female) do. Their partners are not open to life, but they are.
I doubt it’s as unusual as you think.
But I’m sure there are also plenty of examples of cases of marriages that ended due to one partner’s insistence on contraception.
//I have a different definition of “agnostic” — doubters who are open to the possibility that something might be knowable. There are “glass half-full, hopeful” agnostics as well as the better-known, “glass half-empty, nothing is knowable” agnostics. //
Agnostic, the essential logical contradiction. They absolutely know, that they can’t know———- for sure.
L, do you understand the above statement defining a agnostic? The logicical contradiction of the doubter as you personally defined the agnostic? Your definition ends with that “doubter” being:
//something might be knowable//
Try and catch the logic L. He absolutely knows that he knows that “something might be knowable”.
//glass half-empty, nothing is knowable” agnostics.//
Again the person knows absolutely, that “nothing is knowable” In all your definitions of a agnostic, the agnostic ends being a contradiction in logic.
A atheist absolutely knows, that he knows that “something” doesn’t exist.
A theist absolutely knows that God does exist.
A agnostic, to be logical must state that he absolutely knows that he doesn’t know. He doughts, absolutely. In all your definitions given of a agnostic, which aren’t in any dictionary, you have entered humpty dumpty land:”When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ LOL.
//And didn’t Rousseau leave all five of his kids on the doorstep of an orphanage? I take with a grain of salt anything he wrote, about children’s inherent anything.//
Reduced to ad hominem, still failing to answer the question asked of you. Your fun L. Picasso put out cigs on his women, and according to your logic, he fails as a artist. Rousseau’s thinking/philosophy led to modern psychiatry in that a person is born good, and then beings to lack good as he/she ages. The reason for the increase in a lack of good:the parents.
Once again.
Is it not true that children are born good? Do you deny the principle of “inherently good” as established by Rousseau Yes or no.
Oh well, I’ll answer why you don’t answer, because it means you reject inherent good in human beings. And that is because liberalism was founded on the fact that human beings are born good, and has ended in the logical contradiction of destroying what is born/created good :ABORTION.
Okay, if you insist I’m not an agnostic, you can call me whatever you’d like.
And yes, I wholeheartedly reject the concept that all children are born “inherently good,” and only become bad due to the influences of their parents. I don’t think I was “inherently good” myself, and some of the “bad” in me is innate. No one is either entirely good or entirely bad — we all have both in us, to some degree.
And I don’t believe it’s an ad hominem to state Rosseau’s behavior toward his own children as a reason for doubting his ideas regarding children in general. It seems directly relevant to me.