Doug Wilson explains why the pro life movement objects to passing laws which would punish mothers who abort their children along with the abortionists who assist them in doing so. His claim is that women who get abortions don’t know that abortion involves killing an unborn child, but abortionists do:
We are dealing with millions of cases. It is the view of politically active pro-lifers that the penalties should fall on those who know what they are doing. Medically trained doctors know exactly what they are doing. The ghouls at Planned Parenthood know exactly what they have been selling.
And the view about the mothers, taken as a class, is that they have been fraudulently manipulated into a form of negligent manslaughter. That kind of problem is best answered with information — ultrasounds and more. This is why pro-lifers for decades have offered support, information, care, and medical services to mothers. The laws have been aimed at doctors who were after the blood money. And in the main, this has been a very effective and reasonable distinction.
However, Wilson acknowledges that there may be extreme cases where a woman actually knows that abortion means killing the unborn child. For example, if a woman is a doctor who performs abortions and also elects to abort her own child, this would be the sort of rare corner case where the mother aborting her child understands that this means killing the unborn child:
Now of course you will have some cases where the mothers know just as much as the abortionists do. Say that an abortionist gets pregnant herself, and then procures a late term abortion. It would make no sense to maintain that she was not guilty of anything because “motherhood.” But that kind of rare case is not what the political battle is over.
Keep in mind that this is not about punishing women who have had legal abortions. It is also not about settling for half a loaf. This is about what kind of laws the pro life movement would want if they had free rein. This is about what the pro life movement sees as just. The claim isn’t merely that the pro life movement has utterly failed to explain that abortion is morally wrong for the last 40+ years. The claim is that after abortion is outlawed, 99% of women would seek out illegal abortion providers without understanding that this is wrong.
Stipulating the absurd argument that mothers don’t understand what abortion does, this raises an obvious question; how is it that the pro life movement has for all of these decades failed to explain that a mother who kills her own child is doing something wrong? The obvious answer is the very nonsense we are witnessing. This makes the case for a law that punishes women (in some way) all the more essential. How else could we hope to signal that this is in fact wrong?
Wilson has promised more detail on the subject in the future, but unless he changes his position I can’t imagine a longer argument being less absurd.
Ha! So they are saying women are stupid!? I mentioned this in a post on my own blog!
“Ladies, how can you stand for this? Do you realize that both the church and society consider you idiots? Both consider you unable to make a rational decision on your own, you had to have been duped! You had to have been misinformed and mislead, and completely unable to determine what is real or truthful on your own! “
Pingback: They don’t know any better. – Manosphere.com
Pingback: They don’t know any better. | Neoreactive
Well honestly.. I don’t know. I think it’s easy to underestimate how hard the message that proLifers are liars gets pounded into women by feminists.
“It’s just a cluster of cells!” — this is driven in hard too. They don’t ever talk about it in terms of killing a baby. They talk about it in terms of “removing the pregnancy”.
I remember being at a street fair when I was a teenager and there were people from a pro life organizations handing out key chains with tiny feet on them. They said — this is what a baby’s feet look like at only 11 weeks! I put the key chain on my backpack because I liked thinking about babies.
When people asked me about it I would tell them what the pro life people had said to me, but I wasn’t sure if it was true or not (I had been told my whole life that pro life people hate women and just want to control them by restricting abortion, that they lie) and usually when I explained it people said, “Really?! Oh I doubt that’s true” or something like that.
Of course now that I’ve had countless ultrasounds of my own children, I know that it is true, and much more to smash the cluster of cells myth. But before that I really didn’t know, and I don’t think a lot of women considering abortion do either.
I think the reason liberals so violently oppose mandatory ultrasound bills is exactly because women DON’T know that it’s not just a cluster of cells. I don’t have any data to back this statement up, but from talking with people who work at crisis pregnancy centers there is a pretty high success rate when the women get an ultrasound. They usually choose to keep the babies. I think this supports the idea that they don’t know what they’re doing — “It’s just a cluster of cells”.
Reblogged this on Patriactionary and commented:
Typical Doug Wilson bullshit. Excuse women; blame men…
This is the worst excuse I have ever seen, especially in the information age. It would be good to connect this to your “fantasy land” post – they’re living in dream world if they think none of these women are murderers.
I thought the argument that women know what they are doing was sound but Lee Lees comment rings true. I didn’t realize it, but even though I’m pro-life, I buy into the lie that we lie. I’ll try to see if I can believe that they do believe the lies Lee Lee said, yet are still culpable. Self delusion doesn’t count as a valid defense IMO, but I wouldn’t be surprised to have God show me that I do the same in some other part of my life. I’ll be better prepared for a productive conversation tomorrow at church if this is brought up because of Dalrocks posts. Doug Wilson has delivered a couple of sermons at my church the past two years, but tomorrow isn’t one of those days unfortunately.
Everyone knows that smoking is unhealthy; people in denial still smoke. Everyone knows that if you drink and while in denial, drive, you may wreck your car and maybe some people as well. I could go on but I hope this illustrates the point.
Everyone knows that an abortion snuffs out the life of a human being. To not know this is just more denial. We’ve been educated to death; more education will not change a thing.
Doug Wilson must live in a bubble to not realize how idiotic he appears by writing this claptrap. Then again, the fact that he obviously has a following tells us that the stupidity epidemic has gone beyond critical mass.
To not know this is just more denial.
The churchian cuckservatives, to include the churchian cuckservative women, know this very well. It’s just that, as with everything else, anything that interferes with ANY aspect of the FI, however destructive, criminal, and sinful, will be hamsterbated/denied away, no matter how transparently absurd and unscriptural the offering (see Wilson’s quoted idiocy in the OP). That the churchian majority continues to not only abide, but eagerly echo this nonsense shows you how deep the rot has struck.
BTW, I’m gonna take a deep breath, hold it, and wait for Wilson to come right out and say in PFE what he’s already said in obfuscaspeak: that women are low-IQ children without moral agency who need to be under adult male supervision at all times (this being the obvious and only logical solution to his statement).
Yeah, I know … but I like the color blue.
This is explaining so much.
The laws have been aimed at doctors who were after the blood money. And in the main, this has been a very effective and reasonable distinction.
Also, a complete and total failure.
Now it all finally makes sense. Stuck on the island with Gilligan.
No wonder everyone ignores these people. They are cowards.
If women are as uneducated as Doug Wilson says, they should not have the right to vote..
Of course, they do know what they are doing (this isn’t the 17th century). But they still should not have the right to vote.
Strangely, Doug Wilson’s view of women (childlike) and Matt/Mike Walsh’s view (smart, strong, independent, and superior to men) may seem contradictory…
But they are not, as these two cuckservatives will agree with each other on most points..
The culture says that certain acts are bad and evil all the time but people still do them, like rape and murder. Could be that these people are stupid or it could be that there people don’t realize it is wrong or it could be people realize it is wrong and do it anyway or it could be that people are in fundamental disagreement that such acts are wrong.
The goal isn’t to totally eliminate abortion which is impossible , but to reduce it as much as possible.
Before Roe vs. Wade, women who had abortions are lightly or rarely punished. Why are people pretending that women who had abortions in the good old days were being executed or jailed? Saying that women shouldn’t be punished for abortion but abortion doctors should be is how anti abortion laws have always operated in the US. If the goal is to reduce abortion as much as possible, that is the best way. Why would a woman testify against her abortion doctor if that meant her being sent to jail or being put on death row?
Many, if not most laws, in the United States act as if people are stupid. You can read basic tort law and arrive at that conclusion. Why are you shocked that abortion law act as if women are stupid?
Think of it like suicide. Historically a crime, it’s illegal (or was, depending on time of reading) to aid, advise, or encourage another person to commit suicide, but not necessarily illegal to murder yourself. Yet in the general suicide is pretty strongly looked down upon by the culture (until you get old or sick enough anyway). “But how can that be if we don’t punish them?” Well what’s your definition of punishment? Involuntary commitment to jail is punishment but involuntary commitment to an institution isn’t? Of course anyone possessing of common sense would probably realize that arresting and tossing a suicidal person (truly suicidal and not one of those using it as an escape from the judicial system) into jail would probably only encourage them to really REALLY kill themselves. Which would be the equivalent of trying to fix termites by burning your house down.
The key point is the difference between murder and manslaughter. Both are looked down upon by society, but one carries lesser penalties than the other because the law recognizes that humans aren’t always 100% rational. Obviously a woman facing a life changing moment of pregnancy (particularly those in the situations most willing to abort) and going through the hormonal changes MIGHT be a little less rational and in need of counseling and treatment (involuntary possibly) rather than jail time. (I mean, who really thinks the hamster wheel won’t run during this time?)
THEN if you want to go even more mercenary, this isn’t about some women=good/men=bad thing like everyone here likes to imagine, but the simple observation that if you’re really interested in saving the child’s life, then the aborting mother has a ready hostage that can’t exactly be rescued by a sniper. So at the very least, biology has given women a power position in the law negotiation that will have to be addressed if you really want punishment. (perhaps something like, “pregnant women and mothers of children under # can’t go to jail” so they’ll be encouraged to keep the kid to save their own necks if nothing else)
This is why there needs to be a social penalty. Women are not children, and they’re not irrational. They are good at lying to us and we are their (hindbrain hardwired) chumps. We need a legal code that holds women responsible, because it’s not in our nature to do it on the fly when it matters.
@natewinchester
That’s ridiculous. You could make the same case for anything. People who use illegal drugs may do so because they have problems which would only be exacerbated by jail time. Nobody argues that we shouldn’t punish illegal drug use for that reason.
By this logic if a person takes a hostage, we should just give them what they demand and then let them go without charges so they don’t kill the hostage. The only reason people talk like this is because the perpetrators of these crimes are exclusively women.
Pingback: They don’t know any better. | Reaction Times
I remember as a pre–teen (early 80s) hearing my proto-feminist mom and my older sister, who would grow up to become a big time feminist, repeat what I assume was said by someone like Germaine Greer, Bell Hooks or whatever, it went like this: “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be totally legal in all cases and no big deal”.
Even as a 12 year old, with red light shimmering into my mind every day from all the feminine imperative I was witnessing, I realized that the CONVERSE was probably true: Analogies being imperfect as they are, but to their use of the genders in this case, with all other aspects of the genders being the same as they are now: If men could get pregnant and have babies, killing a baby in the womb would be capital crime, punishable by execution. (Perhaps, only for men?)
The thought experiment, and women’s inability to see how they are served by (current) laws that protect the FI, demonstrates how completely oblivious women are to their everyday conveniences and discounts. Abortion is only legal because the initial cause of blame is 100 percent the woman’s fault–and no one likes to blame a woman for anything, or hold them accountable. It might ruin their day or something.
Trump 2016! The last chance to save American before it finishes the present decline into economic depression followed by sweeping societal rioting and upheaval respite with people groups warring against each other internally. Last chance to save what you were given. Afterwards, ten to twenty years of steep decline to the end of the line.
@dalrock Thanks for your thought-provoking posts in recent weeks – it is excellent reading!
It’s a harsh reality that the predominant form of Christianity in the West and its celebrated causes are nothing but a gutter religion and will soon be overrun by Islam anyhow. Abortion will never be outlawed on this continent, and ‘Christians’ are the reason. The sooner the reckoning happens the better.
In the meantime, I love reading your blog!
LeeLee
“It’s just a cluster of cells!” — this is driven in hard too.
“Cluster of Cells”, really? That’s so 1980’s. Heck, it’s probably disco-era 1970’s. Can’t they come up with anything newer than that?
They don’t ever talk about it in terms of killing a baby. They talk about it in terms of “removing the pregnancy”.
Sure, because people will grasp at anything to rationalize what they are doing. But rationalization doesn’t prove ignorance. Except to pedestalizing TradCons like Doug Wilson, of course.
Interesting comment about the little plastic feet. I have no problem believing that – biology in high school taught me that much. It has to be willful refusal of the “I do not want to believe that” sort.
I think it’s easy to underestimate how hard the message that proLifers are liars
this was rendered irrelevant by Mathews’ concocted scenario, though.
remember, we were supposed to ask ourselves what should be done IF abortion were ALREADY illegal.
ignore for the moment that this would actually be addressed by whatever law were to be passed ( whether the doctor / mother / both were to be punished ). which law would, due to the Roe decision, have to involve a Constitutional amendment in order to implement in the first place.
in the above scenario, the President would be bound by the specific Amendment / law which had been enacted.
but let’s move on to what Mathews actually came at him with: how DARE you punish an unwilling mother?
as with most Leftist arguments, this boils down to false righteousness and hate of someone who has dared to not conform to today’s MiniTru approved goodthink.
the correct response is to seize the ‘mantle of morality’ back from the posturing clowns and to go right over the top of them.
you could say things like:
only sociopaths would get an abortion when it was against the law, and female sociopaths deserve punishment every bit as much as male ones do.
from a Christian perspective, a mother murdering her children is a Satanic act.
one could draw in some other current events like Crystal Mangum:
women who are manipulative, lying psychopaths need to be punished when they commit crimes. if you don’t, they’re liable to wind up murdering their boyfriends.
Mathews’ rhetorical dagger was that women listening to this projected themselves getting an abortion in the current regime in which it is legal then being held to account for it at a later date … which is just stupid. but is the emotional response.
from a political analysis perspective, Mathews executed an almost perfect kill shot. Trump failed to recognize the Shit Test and Agree and Amplify over him. i’m not saying it’s unrecoverable, but Trump is normally better than this in the moment.
Social conservatives just need to get out more. If they crawled out from under whatever rock they live under, they would realize that it isn’t just pathetic, vulnerable, naive 19 year-old girls who get abortions. Smart women get abortions, too. And they know exactly what they are doing. Didn’t Dalrock write an article called something like “Punch Harder on Abortion” that revealed that the facts on women who get abortions is not what Socons think?
Somehow this will come back to adam’s failure to stop eve….
I believe many women are pushed into an abortion by those around them, for a range of reasons, but they are far from the victim even in such a case. Alternatives are widely available and well publicized.
Those in China might be able to claim they were completely forced, but I would challenge most who would claim that in the US. They are accessories to a murder and we will only really change the situation when we acknowledge that.
BTW, the comment earlier about throwing people in jail for using illegal drugs is off target. The modern drug war crud is more about encouraging a powerful central state that can force that than any moral argument behind such laws. We should not be throwing most or even all such people behind bars, at least not for the drug use. Don’t support them in the future however and come down hard on true crimes that are committed (such as robbery), but not on the use. Let people be idiots if they really want to do so!
I also used to vote almost exclusively on the pro-life issue, but I have been convinced that is not relevant today as things will not change in that area without some massive societal shifts. Even strong people in that area (supposedly at least), such as Reagan, did nothing to really stop the horror of killing so many of our own children.
The piper will get paid, but fighting that is not productive at this moment.
Damn man we must be really getting to them when “I’m too stupid is a reason for anything.”
Talk about turning back the clock. That argument alone is a repeal of the 19th amendment.
I too have heard the “soulless bunch of cells” argument as far away as Australia (although “far away” is misleading: we lead the world when it comes to feminism and it shows).
Women themselves however, don’t even consistently stick to this argument. Consider when a man gets a woman pregnant. She looks at the circumstances. If she wants the child she says “I’m going to keep THE BABY”. Should the man involved say, ” I didn’t sign up for parenthood and you told me you were on The Pill. Get rid of it!” – she will be shocked. “What horrible beast would take A LIFE”?
If that same woman comes to a different conclusion – for example, she is half way through university / mid sporting or corporate career – she decides on abortion. She says, “Now is a really bad time for me to become a mother. I’ll get rid of IT”! -exactly like the bestial man who suggested it in the other scenario.Notice too that the unborn child is human in the first instance, non-human in the second.
The Hamster is Satanic. The status of the unborn child’s life is decided solely on the basis of the woman’s whim. And this has been multiplied by a figure of 1.72 BILLION, that being the number of abortions performed world-wide since Roe v Wade.
A deal with Molech is to sacrifice the innocents to him for the basis of selfish gain, condemned in the Old Testament.
The Judgement of THE LORD God is justified.
@ Enrique
Bravo on your brilliant and (from my experience anyway) totally unique perspective about the old pro-abortion cliche on “if men could get pregnant….” Our society already demonizes and locks-up men simply for failing to pay child support, despite the fact that someone else (up-to-and-including our sugar-daddy government) will keep their kid from starving. So how how much worse would society treat a pregnant man who hires a medical professional to carve-up his own unborn baby daughter solely for being an inconvenience who cannot survive on anyone else’s support? Such a man would be a monster, worse than any racist or sexist, as would anyone who politically supports his so-called right to kill his dependents..
A part of the problem is that pro-lifers do not want to come to terms with the possibility that an embryo ISN’T a person. A form of human life yes, but not a not necessarily a person. If that distinction is made, then it becomes easier and more appropriate to argue for punishment that is rightly less than the punishment for the murder/manslaughter of a person. Abortion before personhood, if not morally wrong, is still unconstitutional, as guaranteed by our first inalienable right.
As a guideline, I would set the punishment for a first time offense as a mandatory $10000 fine and an optional up to one year in jail. For each subsequent offense, the fine would increase 10 fold, but imprisonment would remain optional and still only up to one year in jail.
Lastly, the punishment would apply universally to everyone. This includes women seeking abortion, doctors doing abortions, scientists destroying embryos for research or a someone who punches a pregnant woman in the stomach that causes an abortion.
O yes; it’s just a clump of cells….but a clump of cells don’t get bigger and start talking, or playing with other kids or attending schools.
I think it all goes back to selection bias. A woman who has decided she wants an abortion will subconsciously seek out those who would justify her actions, and egg her on on her quest. Thus, she is more likely to speak to someone at Planned Parenthood, rather than her pastor, before she has an abortion. She knows who is likely to tell her what.
Lies you tell to yourself and want to believe are the hardest for anyone else to disabuse you of.
@k mando
Exactly. Women create the reality they need at a given moment, along with wrapping that reality in layers of other ready-made created realities that they can shuffle between as needed. In this case it was very easy. The hypothetical woman and even the limp brained emotional thinking males who are piling on, took the premise and inserted in into the actual reality of today and found it repulsive.
This is a simple and profound observation. People will not perform thought experiments that involve the possibility of conclusions they do not want. Its more than just rejecting the premise in this case because the premise is linear, simple, and independent. There are no holes in the premise where in debate one can reject it on the bases of “it could never happen and here is why”.
The left is clever with this kind of thing, and the conservatives are not deliberative enough to see the traps…..largely because they want to avoid the traps in a manner that gets them more Lifts
@Linx
I may find the whole thing sickening, by way of people who cannot see the goal due to the process, but sadly in the current legal context he doesn’t fit the outright charge of hypocrite so much as he is just a mealy mouthed bureaucrat dealing with others of the same stripe.
@Boxer
Social penalties are different from legal penalties (example: you won’t go to jail for being a nazi, but you’ll be a social outcast). Social penalties are fine and I don’t know many prolife people opposed to them. Indeed given women’s social natures they might actually be more effective than legal penalties.
@Eidolon
Actually a lot of people make that argument. It’s also already been implemented all over the nation, it’s called drug courts. Dealers are more likely to still go to jail, but users are more likely to be given treatment.
You… didn’t read my entire comment did you.
Also, you’re bad at logic.
“It is the view of politically active pro-lifers that the penalties should fall on those who know what they are doing. ”
I’m not even going to respond to the second excerpt because it’s so idiotic that it defies belief. We are long into the second decade of the 21st century! In the US EVERY WOMAN that procures an abortion KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT THEY’RE DOING either on instinct or by a one minute web search.
Abortion should never had been decided at the federal level. Having said that, since the other side decided to go there, once it’s outlawed again, I suppose we’ll have FBI SAs arresting women and doctors for abortion. There’s no overarching federal law prohibiting ordinary murder; rather there’s a law on the books on all 50 states.
If abortion were illegal, the penalties ideally would be as follows: 1) the abortionist is charged with murder and 2) the woman, at a minimum, would be charged with solicitation of murder, if not out right murder. Finally, if anyone helped fund it or drive her to or from the abortionist, they’d be charged with accessory to murder.
Finally in the case of rape, go to the police, report what happened. Even if they don’t launch a criminal investigation your next stop WILL BE the hospital. DO THIS WITHIN 24 hours of the rape. Tell them you’ve been raped and been to the police. Ask for an estrogen blast. That will prevent the sperm from uniting with the egg. That estrogen blast bit I learned in grade school, a parochial one. The 24 hour time frame may be too long based on current medical knowledge but the point is get to the hospital ASAP.
The plain fact is over 97% of abortions are elective. Women need to start being held to account.
If women are as uneducated as Doug Wilson says, they should not have the right to vote..
Of course, they do know what they are doing (this isn’t the 17th century). But they still should not have the right to vote.
As always, women are the ‘weaker sex’ when it works to their benefit (usually avoiding consequences), yet simultaneously ‘just as good as any man’ when that works to their benefit (usually gaining an advantage). They see no contradiction in this.
TradCons are particularly useful allies when it comes to the ‘weaker sex’ aspect.
Which is it? Are women idiot children scarcely capable of tying their shoes, or are they prophetesses standing astride the Will Of God for the Church in Wisdom and Enlightenment? I having a hard time with it being both. The cognitive dissonance is getting such that I am the one beginning to feel psychotic.
Women themselves however, don’t even consistently stick to this argument. Consider when a man gets a woman pregnant. She looks at the circumstances. If she wants the child she says “I’m going to keep THE BABY”. Should the man involved say, ” I didn’t sign up for parenthood and you told me you were on The Pill. Get rid of it!” – she will be shocked. “What horrible beast would take A LIFE”?
If that same woman comes to a different conclusion – for example, she is half way through university / mid sporting or corporate career – she decides on abortion. She says, “Now is a really bad time for me to become a mother. I’ll get rid of IT”! -exactly like the bestial man who suggested it in the other scenario.Notice too that the unborn child is human in the first instance, non-human in the second.
Forgot to note in the last thread, the female that said “I didn’t do anything wrong” by killing her baby, went into Drama Queen mode when she miscarried and expected the world to stop to join her mourning.
I didn’t bother pointing out the disconnect. I should have, it was damned (sic) annoying.
“Wilson acknowledges that there may be extreme cases where a woman actually knows that abortion means killing the unborn child.”
Not nearly as extreme as he assumes: any Hillary Clinton supporter who saw her on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd two hours ago could hear their favorite candidate refer to what her side usually calls a fetus, or a clump of cells, as an “unborn person”.
Excuse evaporated.
FYI, this will run again on MSNBC at 2pm & 5pm EDT, unless if course they try to bury this inconvenient segment by altering their program schedule, which I wouldn’t put past them.
natewinchester:
Legal penalties are a subset of social penalties. All legal penalties are social penalties by default. This is a small distinction, but an important one, as your argument demonstrates.
Best,
Boxer
Wilson is avoiding a huge elephant in the room.
Women will not challenge him when he argues that they lack moral agency when it comes to abortion. However, if he said they were in fact morally responsible, then they would protest that they do not have the moral agency to tell the difference or they don’t know any better.
This would force him to ask them if they do not have moral agency here or are truly that ignorant, where else are they equally as ignorant? Additionally, intellectually honesty would dictate he ask why they should have the same rights as men if they lack the full moral agency to exercise that power appropriately when men are expected to?
Simply asking these questions, not necessarily making a case either way, is outside the parameters of modern political thought.
Again, Blue Pill philosophy is a contradictory belief that women do not have the same moral agency as men and shouldn’t be held as responsible for their actions yet they should have the same rights because they are equals.
Wilson is going with the argument that won’t force him to question the modern intellectual argument behind women’s suffrage.
Men are held to a higher standard of moral and social culpability, this is seen all around us.
Both guy and girl are drunk and have sex but only the guy is a rapist…. If men and women are equal, are held to the same standard and are of equal stature before the law, both are equally at fault; or not at fault at all since this was consensual sex with both having drinks before..
Same with the draft, same with abortion and no reproductive rights for men. Men are expected to keep their zips shut or tubes tied or face the consequences, but women have to be given every opportunity to remove unwanted pregnancy to the point of killing an unborn child and then having it blamed on Doctors; who would no doubt be blamed as well for not giving the procedure for said special snowflake who would have to get a back alley abortion if no proper Doctors did abortions.. and so the circle of benefits but no responsibility continues at pace for the wimmins!
Either women are moral agents with their own agency such that they are responsible for their actions, are they aren’t. If they are responsible for their actions then Trump is right and women who commit abortions must face some punishment. If they aren’t, then women are not responsible for anything and they shouldn’t be given the freedom to do a fraction of the things they are legally permitted to do. It can’t be both ways.Ever since I discovered the red pill it has been my argument that women are NOT moral agents, that they have never been moral agents, and that they can’t be moral agents. Its not in their nature. It goes against their make-up, goes against their very design. Its not just abortion, this rape nonsense at UVa, Duke Lacrosse, Columbia, this he-for-she garbage that foolish little British girl was advocating, this current Life of Julia, all of it is about getting as much freedom and freebie resources as women can get without taking ANY responsibility for any of their own personal actions. As such, I am the strongest possible advocate for taking away a woman’s right to vote for elected leaders in government. I agree with Ann Coulter here, women simply have no business voting.Since I don’t see women as moral agents, I am not for a woman facing punishment when she murders her own child. It is not in her make-up to be responsible…. for anything, not mortgage payment, not a student loan, not being somewhere on time, not looking of for the best interests of their own children, nothing. Their moral absolute guiding principle is how can they maximize their own personal comforts and freedoms. God understood this when he spoke to Eve. In over 6000 years, we seem to have forgotten this. Thank God for the red pill to help us remember.
@Lee Lee: “women DON’T know that it’s not just a cluster of cells.”
While this is a good argument that blends logic and emotion in symbiotic harmony, the fact is that women will believe whatever explanation best fits their emotional state at the time. They play the plausible deniability game all the way to God Almighty.
The reason the argument is so compelling (that women really don’t “know” and should not be punished) is because of the “fact” that in the first month “it” really is just a collection of cells. There is no brain, just a neural groove and some tissue that will eventually develop into the nervous system into the 4th week. There is a “heart” or rather a collection of cells beating together but there is no real cavity and certainly no blood is pumping.
We are all dancing around the question of WHEN the fetus acquires the rights of a living child. I don’t know exactly when God “knows” and recognizes a new person in the womb but do we REALLY want to say it is at the moment of conception? Why not go the extra mile and just say every time you spill your seed on the ground you are committing a sin akin to murder and abortion? The RCC seems to take that exact position arguing that “thwarting” God by using contraception is akin to murder and abortion because everything is pre-determined??? I reject the view that contraception is sinful and further reject that killing a collection of “cells” is sinful.
The question we are all dancing around is did God “Know” the prophet before he was even a gleam in his father’s eye? A literal reading of the text suggests he did not. God “knew” the prophet in the womb- which could suggest he did not “know him” at the moment of conception (getting obnoxiously and absurdly technical, that would occur in the Fallopian tubes, not the “womb”).
Ancient Jewish tradition held the soul did not enter the body of a fetus until 40 days after conception and I think they had it just about right.
IBB:
This is an old debate, but still instructive, I believe.
The way you define moral agency is the way a philosopher would define intentionality. It’s your stated position that women are incapable, biologically, of acting with intention. Your position alludes to the fact that women are more like machines, following if (alpha) then (beta) instructions. Women get divorced simply because it’s encoded into their programming.
In order to justify this faulty position, you’ll have to explain why over half the women in American society (including a great many of the women these brothers in this comment section are married to) have not destroyed their families in the divorce courts. Dalrock’s wife, Grey Ghost’s wife, the wives of Brad A, Lyn87, Cane Caldo, and many other married women seem to be doing their part to raise up children and stay married. How can this be?
With all this in mind, it makes more sense to see women as moral agents who are responding individually to incentives, than to paint them all as emotional and intellectual children. Wouldn’t you say? This also leads us to the correct conclusion that the woman who divorce a good man to go live as a ho’ is worthy of our scorn and derision, as she has made a series of poor choices intentionally, rather than simply being a helpless damsel who is just doing as she has been programmed.
Regards,
Boxer
The other point of cognitive dissonance that springs from this topic is the notion that woman/mothers/hamsters are God’s natural care givers and nurturers……
All you people arguing that women MUST be punished for abortions and that Trump is a loser/lostyourvote/backtracking forget the central reality.
1. Women are 53% of the voting electorate.
2. Women will violently oppose ANY person who suggests they need to be held accountable for ANYTHING. They will oppose that person en masse as a unified group.
TLDR: Trump cannot possibly win if women believe there is any possibility they or any of their friends, will be held accountable for anything.
@bpp:
“Why not go the extra mile and just say every time you spill your seed on the ground you are committing a sin akin to murder and abortion? The RCC seems to take that exact position arguing that “thwarting” God by using contraception is akin to murder and abortion because everything is pre-determined??? I reject the view that contraception is sinful”
Seems you hold RCC teachings at arms length, and so you get them wrong. You should move closer, or stay completely away.
Pingback: Scholarly recognition of the empathogasm | Empathologism
Women are 53% of the voting electorate
Is this accurate at all? Or it is as accurate as “25% of women in America will become victims of sexual assault in their lifetime”? Or as accurate as “women earn 77 cents to a dollar earned by men for the same job”?
Even if the 53% number were accurate, is there any proof that all these women will vote as a block, when they don’t seem to do so even now?
Notice too that the unborn child is human in the first instance, non-human in the second.
Yes, this is the entire absurdity.
No woman who is not either an extremist ideologue or a woman who is getting an abortion has remarked, after seeing her ultrasound (often with the father present) about her fetus. “Oh, here are the ultrasound pictures of my fetus, aren’t they cute” — when was the last time you heard that? Or “I felt the fetus kicking”? Anyone?
The whole thing is a euphemism to paper over the killing that is happening and make it more palatable, even to the women themselves. The fact that women can slip back and forth between thinking of the “clump of cells” as a fetus or a baby based on what they want to do is yet another strong indication of the emotion-primary way of thinking about things, and the law (and culture) obviously indulge this to no end.
Well, you see it’s only murder when men do it. When women do it it’s “empowerment”.
And let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that women don’t know what they’re doing. They know exactly what they’re doing.
Next time it comes up, mention that if men could get pregnant, women would be entirely useless and nobody would put up with their shit for ten seconds.
I agree that social penalties are a good idea. Like nate said, they may work even better than legal penalties given women’s social nature. Also legal penalties, even if they override “keep the govt out of my bedroom” privacy concerns, would be much more difficult to pass and enforce given that half Americans are still pro-choice. I’m making headway against my pro-choice sister by repeating the life-begins-at-conception argument. Even if an embryo or a fetus or a “cluster of cells” isn’t a person, preventing it from becoming one takes conscious effort. Even if that conscious effort is not exactly murder, it sure is similar. Of course, content doesn’t matter much compared to tone and repetition.
Good insight here, Dalrock. I didn’t see failure to condemn or admonish women in the reaction to Trump’s comment until you pointed it out. I imagine declaring that you support Trump’s original comment would be a good hook for explaining your larger point about failure to confront sinning women.
Another thing that is telling is that the woman aborting there babies are viewed as victims by Churchianity. Are the ever called to repentance? For murder?
I think the lack of a response tells us all we need to know about how seriously they take God and His Holy judgement.
Another thing that is telling is that the woman aborting there babies are viewed as victims by Churchianity. Are the ever called to repentance? For murder?
Churchians, even if only subconsciously, hold that ALL women are carbon copies of the RCC version of Mary, Mother of Jesus: without sin. Even if they do sin it’s never of their own volition. Some man, somewhere, somehow is responsible. Always and without exception.
I think the lack of a response tells us all we need to know about how seriously they take God and His Holy judgement.
Women are not long-term, big-picture thinkers. In fact, I would not be the least bit surprised if an in-depth psychiatric study (NOT one funded by established academia, of course, which would never dare undertake such a thing) were to come up with conclusive scientific evidence that women are not structurally even capable of perceiving the world or life in this manner. This would explain the utter lack of concern most women have about divine judgment; it’s not something that happens immediately, ergo, there cannot possibly be any consequences for sinful behavior worse than what man chooses to mete out – which usually = none. The threat of “God” punishing her for her sinful conduct has about as much palpable impact on her behavior as the thought of her being instantly vaporized by the sun going super-nova.
The Pro Life movement is simply getting on board the ‘Apologist Express’ where NO woman will be held accountable anytime, anywhere, for anything.
It is absurd for Pro-Lifers to take the view that women don’t understand that abortion kills an unborn child. This is a childish point of view; and flawed in the extreme.
We’ve reached such a feminist over-reach that even the Pro-Life movement dare not cross women.
If a woman has an abortion, she skirts responsibility and accountability for that murderous act. The present argument is that a fetus is not a person (yet). It is some DNA goo clogging up her uterus. This is just the argument of convenience, because she didn’t want that child.
However, if another pregnant woman is harmed in a car accident and loses a similar term fetus child through miscarriage; lawyers will be dispatched immediately to collect on this harmful loss.
What’s the difference?
Life is determined by a woman’s FEELINGS about that child. I.E. whether or not she wants to keep that child.
If she doesn’t want to keep it, she can abort…….no muss, no fuss.
If a women DOES want to keep her child, then it is a life at conception.
And this is the irreconcilable nonsense occupying our laws, and women’s minds.
The lack of accountability, lack of responsibility, and profound disregard for all others involved is revolting.
Every woman knows that it is a baby. Any statements to the contrary are sheer b.s. She deserves severe punishment for murdering her innocent child.
These “pro-life” types that claim otherwise, are simply SJWs converging the pro-Life movement by pushing female non-agency by “strong women”.
What’s striking about Wilson’s position is the sheer cowardice of it.
If Cuckservatives truly believe abortion is the equivalent of murder, but are unwilling to so much as call-out the women who actively seek them, not only does this PROVE that Cuckservatives are moral cowards of the worst kind; it PROVES that they are complicit in murder.
There is ZERO reason to give money to any such “Pro-Life” outfit.
Dalrockians should loudly refuse to provide donations to such groups, and explain clearly why they will not be donating to these moral retards.
Also, the “women are children morally” argument is a misnomer, because even children are disciplined by Society to a far greater extent, even when there is no murder is involved.
Cuckservatives are too spineless to discipline women even at the level of children. Talk about pathetic.
Addendum: As is true of most Cuckservative positions, this one miraculously combines BOTH stupidity and cowardice of epic proportions.
As is true of most Cuckservative positions, this one miraculously combines BOTH stupidity and cowardice of epic proportions.
Word. If there were a Nobel Prize for such, American Cuckservatives would run away with it every year.
The legal fiction that allows an unborn baby to be considered a victim in a double murder of a pregnant woman and simultaneously a clump of cells in an abortion is all we really need to know about our society.
The state of mind of the woman and her intent vis a vis the pregnancy drives the train regarding the issue of whether or not it is a “baby.”
This effectively makes the woman God. Or as Rollo might say, the Holy Spirit.
This effectively makes the woman God. Or as Rollo might say, the Holy Spirit.
Uh-oh … that puts women in direct competition with the State for the role of Supreme Being, a role that the State claims for itself. Apparently whoever set up.the current society-destroying paradigm never imagined that this conflict would arise.
@feeriker, One is God and the other is the Holy Spirit…..or more likely, one is Mystery Babylon and the other the Beast.
My mother flees the devourer. Their mother is going to be destroyed with them.
It is high time to admit that Democracy fails over time, as women see no purpose for government beyond transferring resources TO women, and all accountability/standards AWAY from women. Every single institution is society has to be transformed to work towards this goal, when women have a very unnatural level of power bestowed to them by democracy. Women are literally uninterested in anything not directly pursuant to the aforementioned goals….
Democracy sucks. It always devolves into a feminist dictatorship….
boxer,
Because at the moment, their husbands make them happy.
True enough, IBB. But these women of Dalrock, GreyGhost and the rest aren’t sitting around with a stopwatch or “Happy-Thermometer” gauging the length or depth of their happy-mood, either. For them, life is a marathon, not a YOLO feeling-sprint. Hell no, you are NOT happy every minute. You have bills and tragedies and old folks to look after and funerals and hassles with bills and school and work and dammit, the car just broke down again. Life crashes down, illnesses and injuries and jobs and name the sector of life, there is always something to take the “Happy” out of your mood.
These are folks that know that while not every moment is slap-dashing happy, they are comfortable and satisfied that it means something to raise decent human beings, it means something to be productive, to contribute to your community, to some of us, it meant something to defend the country. No one said a damned thing about “happy” anywhere in the bible and decent people understand that.
That most of the population blows up the family over their happiness being interrupted for I dunno, a relative 5 minutes or so is lamentable. Tragic really, especially for them because they get to their end and understand that the greater happiness of burden and accomplishment of all the things noted above were what was important, not the fleeting moments of eat-pray-love “haaaaapies” peddled by the divorce industry. The women of Godly men, the men of Godly women understand that. And so, IBB, no disrespect intended, I think your notion of “Happy” is skewed, or misused to point out that Dal and Grey have to keep their wives “Happy”.
I have confidence in my woman, I think I’m safe to say that surely Dalrock and Grey Ghost and the rest have confidence in theirs, that the “Happy” you mean is a whole other meaning by which we and our women gauge “Happy”. Again, there is the Eat, Pray, Love “haaaaapy” and then there is the Happy of depth and profundity and decency and accomplishment of a life lived that indeed encompasses many, many moments of temporary and deeply-felt “unhappiness” that would drive the weak and secular woman away to start anew. Good and decent and Godly women understand that coming through all those moments and building a life of fruitful accomplishment with your man at your side for life is a Happy for which there IS no measure. Ya dig, Brother?
I grew up in the 80s. Even then the propaganda “It’s just a few cells” was pretty strong. I swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
It wasn’t until my wife became pregnant with our first child that I understood how quickly that “mass of cells” begins to look and act like a human being. I loved that little “mass of cells” from the moment of conception and followed his development each week on Babycenter.com. I understand what fatherhood is now.
It sickens me to recall how, as a young man, I pressured by girlfriend to have an abortion when we had an accident. She wanted to have the baby. I am haunted by the ghost of my child. If I only knew then what I know now. Abortion is not like visiting the dentist. It is taking a life. My own child’s life.
Dear IBB:
In other words: they have agency. Thank you for admitting as much.
Boxer
A smart man realizes that he can never make his wife happy. He may be able to create situations where it is easier to enjoy things, but happiness is ultimately in the mind of each individual and the individual controls that.
Responding to unhappiness is the challenging task of those who are married and want to remain so. Realizing that many of the things that are claimed to create that happiness do not do so is a key step on the path to surviving in this society.
None of us can guarantee our spouses will not go wacko on us, but we can lay a reasonable foundation and keep the right frame – things in a man’s control.
I would love to see a site that covered more of what to do than what not to do. Many sites are good at pointing out the idiocy today, such as this one, but few dig very deep into things that work. My apologies to Dalrock if I am missing something here, but I can’t recall a lot of posts on solutions. That seems a common issue in the blog sphere. It is easier to point out what does not work, especially since claiming something works will put you under fire by all who disagree with your claims.
I doubt we could get a majority of the regular posters here to agree on many specific things that work, so having a blog on that would definitely be a challenge. Too many here quickly jump on claims that X works, whether it does or not. That makes it riskier to make such a claim.
That is too bad since those walking through this really do need solutions. Implied solutions can help, but specific statements on things that work would be very helpful as well.
(My claim of few solutions may not be accurate, but it is the impression I have now.)
If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,
and will he not repay man according to his work?
Proverbs 24:12 (ESV)
Dear Jim Christian, Bill Smith, et.al.:
This is a very old debate, and y’all are new, so let me put you into the know.
Several people here like to advance the theory that the substandard women we often scoff at in this comment section are really victims of bad, bad men. IBB is certainly not the only person to do this; but, he is probably among the most intelligent people to advance this white-knighting notion. I’ve been pointing and sniggering at him for a long time.
In fairness, I believe him to be a father with grown daughters, and I don’t think his attempts to run interference for slutty wimminz is entirely conscious. I believe it is a natural ideological apparatus that kicks in during fatherhood, where one sees his kids as better than they are.
I know older bros with daughters, and they fall into two varieties. Those who have decent daughters just assume that all women are decent naturally, and this leads to the assumption that all these nasty hoes that are walking around must have been victimized, at some point in the past, by a father or boyfriend who did not teach them or treat them correctly. “After all,” this dope will explain, “they would have ended up like my normal daughters otherwise, right?”
Those of the second variety, who have slutty daughters, tend to voluntarily put blinders on, telling themselves that their daughters are perfect princesses and any evidence to the contrary is all lies, etc.
I don’t know which of these camps IBB is in, and it doesn’t matter, since the prognosis is the same. Thus there is little hope that we can counter IBB directly with facts or statistics. In the past, when I tried to do so he got very angry, following me around, predicting that I would someday marry a prostitute (no, I’m not kidding). I mainly argue with him now only briefly, for the benefit of the younger dudes.
Women are not machines. They’re people. When a woman makes a poor decision, that is her decision, and she needs to be held accountable for it. Social shaming and legal codes help people, women included, to better themselves and hold themselves to a high standard.
Best,
Boxer
As a minor addendum to my last comment on this topic. If you are a father with kids, and you want to learn how to resist this strange ideology, you would do no better than hunting up Grey Ghost comments here. He talks about conversations he has with his boys and girls here on this blog. Loving fathers in the modern world need to be straight with their kids, so they know the real consequences of not living a disciplined life.
Boxer
Female agency is only present if it is required. Female morality is not a normal self sacrifice as it is as a marker for a man. A beta male with have honor as part of his masculine identity and that is what makes him a respected man.
This great discussion on the nature of women is about one section of a long equation and it seems the whole picture that is unseen or not in discussion at the time are filled with projections of beta male logic. This violates the big picture. Females do have agency only if it is a part of the whole. The failing of the west and the sin of pedistalizing women is to assume agency as something naturally occurring and always present. Civilization is to control women not men. The Churches that follow the “the women are closer to God” thing are just plain wrong.
Female agency is only present when it fits in with the basic selfish nature of women. A woman can kill an unborn child and claim to be a victim and will be treated as such if allowed. In the environment we have created here in this period of time it is very easy to assume women have no agency I’ve commented so myself many times. What is different is their agency isn’t what makes them female as agency makes a male a man.
Men are by default due to there nature leaders like it or not. Men will always be required to at all times with out failing to require agency from women in all situations that need female agency. The path historically taken is to simply set up a civilization that doesn’t require female agency. Women no allowed the vote, not used for military service, legitimacy based on the father’s name etc. The bottom line is a stable civil and prosperous civilization and society will require females to be told no. There is no getting around it. That is man’s curse starting real early from genesis
Trump was right. The reaction from the masses shows how doomed the west is.
@wobbole: “Seems you hold RCC teachings at arms length, and so you get them wrong. You should move closer, or stay completely away.”
You may be right. Where can I learn more about RCC teachings? I have read the entire Catechism and a dozen or more books by early Elders and doctors of the church, and the complete works of Pope Benedict. Yet I cannot find a single logical argument for the church stance on contraception. Abortion is a no brainer but the argument on contraception, as best I can tell, is that sex is pleasurable and therefore sinful. Since any worldly pleasure you get brings you closer to the world and further from God, you must stay celibate and only have sex while married if there is a chance of having a kid because????? reasons?
In the 2008 US presidential election, per CNN, 70.4 million women voted (65.7% of eligible women), and 60.7 million men voted (61.5% of eligible men). From those numbers, in 2008, 52% of all eligible voters are women, and 53.7% of actual voters were women.
I don’t know why you’re questioning the 53% number, but I’d say it’s reasonably accurate. As you point out, the bigger question is whether women will vote as a bloc. I don’t know, but I’d guess that they vote more as a bloc than they themselves realize.
Even if the 53% number were accurate, is there any proof that all these women will vote as a block, when they don’t seem to do so even now?
Dave seems to be under the GOP delusion that women who vote Republican are somehow against ‘feminism’.
BPP-
You might find this useful. My understanding is not so much that sex=pleasure therefore it is sinful, but rather that artificially decoupling the pleasure of sex from marriage and babies is not part of Gods design.
https://theorthodoxlife.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/sacred-seed-sacred-chamber/
Dalrock,
“The claim is that after abortion is outlawed, 99% of women would seek out illegal abortion providers without understanding that this is wrong.”
Who makes this claim? I don’t see that Wilson does in the referenced article.
“About half of all U.S. women having an abortion have had one previously.”
https://www.guttmacher.org/about/gpr/2007/05/repeat-abortion-repeat-unintended-pregnancy-repeated-and-misguided-government
Mothers aren’t meaning to terminate a life but doctors are? Really? I’m sorry, there has never been a fraction of a second where I was under the impression that abortion doctors were bloodthirsty sociopaths making money off child killing while the women getting the abortion were somehow blameless.
It’s jarring to me that someone would make such a bad argument to keep from throwing moral accusations against women. I’m absolutely sure it’s not a good faith position, and anyone who believes it is needs help.
I would love to see a site that covered more of what to do than what not to do.
They exist, but you might not like some of what is said there.
Whether they know it or not is a question for God.
The policy question is whether or not those who oppose abortion are more likely to make progress against abortion by advocating to punish those women or treat them as victims. I am pretty sure they know that answer better than a bunch of Internet armchair quarterbacks. Debating the right position in a magical place where my wishes become law is pointless. If even Trump realizes punishing woman is a non- starter than clearly the people who fight abortion with their time and money and not just comments on the internet also know what might work.
The life process can be stopped and restarted through invitro fertilization. The embryos that are not implanted fresh are frozen and implanted at a later date, if the parents want more children or the fresh implants are unsuccessful. I’m sure the percentage with frozen is lower (my three kids all came from fresh implants), but there must be some successes. I don’t know what happens to the soul of a frozen 3 or 5 day old embryo.
Boxer,
No. I admit that women see their own individual happiness as an entitlement. When life gets a little too difficult for just too long a period, women will seek to dramatically alter their standing in life, even if doing so destroys the lives of everyone around them they have professed to love. THAT is a complete lack of moral agency.
What are you talking about? I am not angry with you. I have never been angry with you. I don’t follow anyone around anywhere. I’m certainly not going to say you are going to marry a whore. I think you have me confused with someone else.
Madness…
Dear IBB:
I’m glad you’re not still / were not too perturbed with me. Granted, it was a long ass time ago, but you did say something to that effect in one of our arguments. if you think she has moral agency, then you go marry her was what you said. I can’t remember the subject (some ho’) but I thought it was humorous.
Best,
Boxer
To my dear CryptoMormon brother IBB:
You’re conflating agency (which is just the ability to make choices) with being selfish. If someone doesn’t have moral agency, that implies that they’re more machine than human, and that their moral choices were predetermined by something (biology, programming, etc.)
Women, as you are describing them here, do have moral agency. They are consciously choosing to be immoral. I agree with this, and I think we should hold them accountable for their bad behavior.
Boxer
I am not LDS Boxer. I know of your religion. I know of it in great detail. I understand it in great depth and at a very broad level, so much that I have enough knowledge that I could be in any ward’s bishopric. But I am not (nor have I have been) LDS.
Call it whatever you’d like. I’d prefer to refer to the Bible and God’s teachings that harp on women submitting to their husbands. This is akin to God being all wise and all knowledgeable in understanding that women often do go feral. That is part of their design. And in these instances, best she submit and do as she is told by someone who HAS “agency” and who is “responsible” to know the difference between right and wrong.
Dear Bishop IBB:
The dude who wrote the New Testament was a rabbi and philosopher named Saul of Tarsus. I gotta say, I share your opinion of his intellect and ability to dole out sound advice.
I think we’re talking past each other, though. This is another example.
Men often go feral too. Think of the story of Zacchaeus the tax-man. He was clearly afoul of the rules of the spiritual game. He was probably politically connected, with ho’s and lots of money.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2019%3A1-10&version=KJV
The text tells us Zacchaeus repented. He chose to sin, but he chose to repent. This is moral agency. It’s intentionality. We choose to do things and make them happen.
Women who go feral also have moral agency. They have choices, and they act on them.
The text says that women are weaker than men, but not that women are automatons. They have choices, and the moral agency to act on their choices. They need to be held responsible for their choices, same as men.
Luke 7:37
That is what agency is, and by your reckoning, women have it. Let’s start encouraging them to be good moral actors, and quit excusing the bad shit they do with the idea that they are helpless slaves of their desires.
Boxer
That is true Boxer. I have read quite a bit of the backlog, even though I have only been replying recently.
I find it ludicrous that we could claim any human lacked free will, especially since all will be held accountable for that. I hesitate to say more less I stir up the Armenian-Calvanism debates of the past….
@Bill Smith
Pingback: Maybe in a thousand years. | Dalrock
An ideal world would have a 0% abortion rate. Boxer’s idea of a ‘social penalty’ in the form of ‘a legal code that holds women responsible’ is appealing. A deterrent, something that deters women from going ahead with abortion in the first place would be a good starting point. Something along the lines of compulsory exposure of the woman’s intent of aborting to those with an interest in the child other than the mother might be a start. I don’t know for sure but something tells me that abortion as it is currently practiced is a far too secretive affair. Simply involving more people might be a good deterrent. I’d like the aim to be to get the child born in the first instance.
@bpp:
‘you must stay celibate and only have sex while married if there is a chance of having a kid because????? reasons?’
Once again, you seem unable to present the real teaching, but only your warped version of it (and likely also others’ warped versions, as I’ve witness how these misinformed notions are passed around by the like-minded).
Hopefully some counter examples will help debunk your caricatures.
The RCC will allow a man who is known to be sterile to marry without any problem whatsoever. A man who has permanent impotence, or a genital injury or disfigurement, that prevents sexual intercourse and hence consummation of the marriage, will be refused marriage in the RCC.
If your theories held true, married couples would be forbidden to engage in intercourse after the wife became post-menopausal. Also not true.
This is not hard stuff if you aren’t predisposed to follow what the naysayers “know”.
bluepillprofessor says:
“Yet I cannot find a single logical argument for the church stance on contraception.”
The argument is functional, not an arbitrary command (notwithstanding the case of Onan, who was given a divine order to have children by his late brother’s wife). We are talking about telos or Aristotle’s “final cause”: the purpose for which a thing exists.
The body and its natural functions were created for specific reasons. It is not illicit to take pleasure in the body’s natural functions and the activities thereof, but it is (literally) unnatural to frustrate them or employ them in violation of their purpose, in order to enjoy the pleasurable sensations contrary to the purposes for which they were created. The logic against contraception is exactly analogous to the logic against sodomy, masturbation, bulimia, and substance abuse; reject that logic for any one of them and eventually the others will start to look normal too.
“…the argument on contraception, as best I can tell, is that sex is pleasurable and therefore sinful.”
St. Augustine had a negative view of sexual pleasure. His writings are not authoritative, though, and even though Augustine’s work was influential for a host of other reasons, his view on this was not held by the Church as a whole.
In response to Swanny and Lee: Lee It doesn’t matter if women do not know that it is a baby. Yes pro choicers lie but they have the law on their side and the law is great teacher. The reason women don’t know they get pregnant with babies (and not frogs) is because the law does not defend or protect these babies so it’s easy for people to think they are not in fact babies. IF the law were changed and abortion became illegal and punishable for ALL involved then all people would know it was a baby and no one could claim ignorance because the law had made it the act illegal anyways.
Pingback: Clearing the Christian marriage market. | Dalrock
Pingback: An educated guess. | Dalrock
Pingback: An invitation to Pastor Wilson’s defenders. | Dalrock
They know exactly what they are doing.
Pingback: Challenge not accepted. | Dalrock
In this case, Mr. Wilson’s position is clearly anti-biblical. Exodus 21:22-25 states quite clearly that if a man struggling for his life accidentally strikes a pregnant woman causing the unborn child to die, “then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”
The purpose of the case law is to show that even in the extremely unlikely case that
a) the man was fighting for his own life in self defense
and
b) striking the woman was accidental
then if the fetus is killed
the punishment is death.
Therefore, if someone is not fighting for their life, and kills the fetus on purpose, how much more so.
Leviticus 19:21 has another law that approaches it more directly. “And you shall not let any of your descendants pass through the fire to Molech”. This specifically refers to the human sacrifice of children, of which modern abortion is definitely a subset.
Verse 29 states the penalty, “For whoever commits any of these abominations, the persons who commit them shall be cut off from among their people.”
So depending on whether “cut off from their people” means exile or execution, it is definitely a severe punishment.
Abortion should absolutely be a death penalty offense, as it is clearly stated to be in the Bible, and since in modern law, abortion can only be initiated by the mother, then the mother is the one who should received the heaviest penalty.