This is something I've always failed to understand...if you don't believe in abortions, don't have one. That's entirely up to you. I would (as I've often said) prefer that nobody felt the need to have one.and utterly ignore the views of many citizens -- women and men -- who responded to the consultation exercise
Many don't believe in denying people the Right to Migrate. But they deem their responsibility to entail more than simply not personally detaining/abusing/shooting a Mexican the instant the first fiber of his sombrero crosses the border.Avatar wrote:This is something I've always failed to understand...if you don't believe in abortions, don't have one. That's entirely up to you. I would (as I've often said) prefer that nobody felt the need to have one.and utterly ignore the views of many citizens -- women and men -- who responded to the consultation exercise
But telling other people they aren't allowed to have one regardless of their beliefs or circumstances is where I have a problem.
Even though I'm sure I expect rational behavior from people (an expectation rarely met, now that you mention it), what rational behavior am I mis-expecting in these particular circumstances?Avatar wrote:Dunno why you expect rational behaviour from people in these (or any other) circumstances.
Simple fact is that, for whatever reason, (and it's not always irresponsibility) unplanned / unwanted pregnancies will occur.
Your choice is between forcing people to have children they don't want or aren't equipped for, or giving them the choice not to have them.
Screen grab taken from video issued by Britain's Oxford University, showing a person being injected as part of the first human trials in the UK to test a potential coronavirus vaccine, undertaken by Oxford University in England, Thursday April 23, 2020. Two volunteers have received the first vaccine trial against the COVID-19 coronavirus on Thursday. (Credit: Oxford University Pool via AP)
LEICESTER, United Kingdom - A human vaccine trial begun last week in England has raised hopes that the COVID-19 coronavirus might one day be stopped in its tracks.
However, ethicists have expressed concerns that the vaccine, developed at Oxford University, used cell lines obtained from an aborted child in the early 1970s.
Cell lines are often used in medical research and are cells that continue multiplying indefinitely from a tissue sample.
Two such cell lines, the HEK 293 used at Oxford, and the PER C6 cell line from the 1980s, originate in tissue from an aborted child.
Two major Catholic bioethics centers have recently published briefing papers on the issue in light of the push to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.
"Simply as a matter of fact, use of such cell-lines in COVID-19 vaccine production is likely to create problems of conscience for some of those to whom the vaccine is offered, and who become aware of its history ... Conscientious objection on the part of potential vaccine recipients creates its own ethical demands for decision-makers, including those who do not themselves share the objection in question. Such concerns should be viewed with particular sympathy in the area of abortion, bearing in mind that even those who do not object to all abortions may well object to the particular abortion from which a fetal cell line was derived," said the document from the Oxford-based Anscombe Bioethics Centre.
Dr Helen Watt is Senior Research Fellow at the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, and the author of the report. She told Crux that despite the early testing of the Oxford vaccine, it won't necessarily be one that goes into general use.
"It's very possible that the first and perhaps the only COVID-19 vaccine produced will be a cell-free or other morally uncontentious vaccine. That would be an enormous relief to those wishing to avoid a link with even a historic abortion," she said.
Joseph Meaney, the president of the Philadelphia-based National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC), told Crux that Catholics "should insist on ethical scientific research that has no links to abortion or the killing of embryos."
According to the NCBC briefing paper the use of the cell lines obtained from aborted fetuses, even for the purpose of a COVID-19 vaccine, "is a cause of serious theological scandal."
"Appealing to good aims and an 'urgent need' will foster the deeper penetration of unethical research and development into medicine, politics, law, and culture," the paper said.
Both the Anscombe Bioethics Centre and the NCBC appeal to a 2008 Vatican document, Dignitas Personae.
The document states there is "a duty to refuse to use" illicitly obtained biological material by researchers, "even when there is no close connection between the researcher and the actions of those who performed ... the abortion."
However, Dignitas Personae does say that "differing degrees of responsibility," and that a person could ethically use a vaccine developed with two problematic cell lines for "grave reasons."
Certainly, stopping the COVID-19 pandemic could be viewed as such a reason.
"Accepting vaccines produced in morally contentious ways is a matter of conscience that Catholics must decide for themselves in the light of Church teaching such as Dignitas Personae," Watt told Crux.
Risks to self and others of forgoing the vaccine in one's own case must be given serious weight. Those with vulnerable people in their care, for example, will have a particularly strong reason to be vaccinated," she continued.
Meaney said that "if such an ethically tainted vaccine was the only one available, using it without any acceptance of the illicit means used to develop it would be a form of remote material cooperation," using a phrase from moral theology meaning a person does not intend nor directly help with an immoral action, even if they are "remotely" involved in the act.
"This can be justified for a serious reason and if the person's well-formed conscience permits them to do so," he told Crux.
Both the Anscombe Bioethics Center and the NCBC say that if two vaccines are developed, and one is from the fetus cell lines, and the other is not, it is a moral imperative to try and choose the one not connected to an abortion.
However, they also say people should not be faced with such a choice.
[...]
Assuming that you're responding to my post -- and since I'd agree that good is brought out of evil (the world being not irremediably tainted thereby) -- what would it take to demonstrate gratitude (or to not demonstrate ingratitude)?Avatar wrote:Would think people would be glad that some good can come of abortions...
Though I'm no ethicist, I do know that there are various kinds of stem-cell research -- some ethical and some not.Avatar wrote:Good question.
I think that to demonstrate gratitude, we should fund more stem-cell research.
A pro-life demonstrator prays near the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington March 4, 2020. (Credit: Tyler Orsburn/CNS)
NEW YORK -- While abortion remains one of the most divisive issues in American public life, particularly among people of faith, a new study suggests that it is rarely discussed from the pulpit.
Findings from the Pew Research Center released on April 29 found that only four percent of sermons posted online during the spring of 2019 discussed abortion. Further, the study revealed that when pastors do discuss it, the topic is rarely repeated and Church leaders are almost unanimous in their opposition to it.
While the study is not comprehensive of all sermons from Christian churches in the U.S., analysts reviewed nearly 50,000 sermons posted during an eight-week period from over 6,000 U.S. churches.
The study found abortion was most commonly mentioned by evangelical and Catholic congregations, with 22 percent of evangelical congregations and 19 percent of Catholic congregations sharing at least one sermon mention abortion during the period of the study.
Further, the study showed that abortion was rarely the focus of the entire sermon, with researchers segmenting out the percentage of words dedicated to abortion during the entire sermon.
"When sermons are broken into smaller segments of 250 words (the median sermon runs 5,502 words), three-quarters of all sermons that mention abortion do so in just one segment," the concluded. "As a result, only 1 percent of all sermons across the whole database discuss abortion in more than one segment."
In addition to pastors expressing opposition to abortion, researchers combed through the differences in language surrounding how different traditions discuss the topic. Among evangelicals, the most commonly used phrases were words such as "womb," "heartbeat" and "pornography." Among Catholics, the most commonly used phrases were "pro-life," "good Catholic" and "church teaching."
[...]
Argentina's President Alberto Fernandez, left, and Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner smile after taking the oath of office at the Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2019. (Credit: Natacha Pisarenko/AP.)
ROSARIO, Argentina -- Argentine President Alberto Fernandez said he's still "committed as in the first moment" to legalizing abortion, even as the country continues its nearly 50-day coronavirus lockdown.
Fernandez said on Wednesday in a radio interview that the proposed bill to legalize abortion in Pope Francis's homeland is "ready," but that he hasn't yet presented it in Congress because there are "other urgencies" amidst the pandemic.
Argentina's Congress- led by current vice-president and former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner -- has been shut down since the coronavirus emergency was declared in mid-March. An attempt to have an on-line session was made on Monday, but it failed, postponing efforts to re-open the legislative body.
The country's bishops have mostly avoided open confrontation with the government on the abortion issue during the epidemic, with the exception of the auxiliary bishop of La Plata and president of the bishop's health commission, Bishop Alberto German Bochatey.
"If we defend life now against the virus, we must defend it against any other matter," he said. "If we're making enormous, galactic efforts not to get sick and so that not one life is lost, how can we continue with a project to legalize abortion or euthanasia?"
[...]
Bochatey's comments came a day after the health ministry of the province of Buenos Aires -- where La Plata is located -- released a series of protocols by decree that went from preventing contagion of COVID-19 among the elderly to "guaranteeing integral attention to people with the right to voluntarily interrupt a pregnancy" during the pandemic.
"We've been talking about the virus for weeks, for hours and hours on end, in all the news outlets, but sometimes, the issue is reduced to showing a line of cars going into a city or the number of infected people, or of casualties, but nothing is said, or very little space is given to the spiritual needs of a person who is sick or someone who's healthy but overwhelmed by the possibility of getting infected," Bochatey said.
"All of this requires the complete attention to a person with his or her spiritual dimension. This is why we are, respecting the corresponding norms from authorities, continue to work in many ways to be able to help and accompany these people," he said.
Bochetay, who's a bioethicist and member of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life, then reflected on the fact that some "emergency protocols" are being applied during the pandemic, but once it's over, there should be a "peaceful debate" -- because even Fernandez has said that "he's more interested in saving lives than in the economy."
"And it's fine because ideology can never be above life or the common good," the bishop said. "But if we defend life now against the virus, we will defend it against any other issues," including abortion and euthanasia, he added.
"I think we are realizing that sometimes many were very light in their statements regarding abortion and euthanasia, and this moment may make them reflect," Bochatey said. "We all agree that we are not going to get out of this [pandemic] being the same. This is why I hope that we can have a much more serene, non-ideological debate, without fanaticism -- a humanistic and anthropological dialogue -- and save and care for everyone's life."
[...]
