apollonius...:

Yeah, Rome just spoke a few days ago when Pope Rottweiler, whose previous job was obfuscating, deflecting and covering up the rampant pedophilia of the church, went on record to say that Galileo's punishment was just and deserved. Yeah, he just said that. Rome has spoken AND Rome can kiss my ass.

That is your secular spin on what he said. Actually, he mostly said the opposite but you probably are not interested in hearing the explanation.

But there were a bunch of idiot professors and students at an Italian university who in their contempt for anything Vatican overreacted (similar to what you are doing now) and lead a protest to not allow Benedict XVI to speak at their university where he was invited because of this spurious interpretation of his words. Never mind it was the Catholic Church who invented the university and civilized the Western world through education and learning --- all they need is a crumb of error and they (these secular humanists) think have been “the enlightened ones” all along.

When I mimic Augustine’s “Rome has spoken, the case is closed” it is for those kinds of arguments on faith or morals where it is not easily determined (for us Catholics) what side virtue mostly lies that we rely on Rome to make that determination. It’s not a novel path to take, it’s Scriptural. But I wasn’t trying to win you over. Nor was I expecting Washington to take that into account, it’s just a gift for me to rely on.

that my reasoning veered dangerously close to an argument against child support.

I'd argue that child support is less an obligation (at least legally) to the child than a contractual obligation to the other parent, especially since seeking formal (or even common law) marriage should imply foreknowledge of divorce law, which is part of the deal. More akin to severance pay. I am not well informed on what child support obligations are for kids born out of wedlock or cohabitation, but should make for an interesting discussion on the foundations of law.

Really. But you have to admit that you are still making arbitrary moral choices. Does a fetus not have an equal moral right to take what it needs to sustain life? It is, after all, where it is involuntarily. One can choose to view it as a parasite, or as a victim, but that choice is arbitrary, and from that choice flows everything else.

Sarvis is a fine fellow, but I'd happily have him lobotomized to save you.

I think a fresh top post was a good idea. That particular horse was flogged plenty.

This post, however, needs to have a warning on top that it is for post-collegiate liberal arts majors only. Not that there is anything wrong with that (my wife is one AAMOF). But part of my goal in my post was to articulate a defense of abortion that did not require either a law degree or masters thesis on Plato, post modernism, and the icky history of men.

I'd imagine your question depends very much on how you define 'dependence'. A fetus's dependence [parasitical?] is not the same as an infant's, even if the result of deprivation would be the same. The same consequence for two acts does not make those acts equivalent: For example, the consequence of manslaughter and murder is the same, a person dies, though legally they're quite different.

I think Gregor answered the question of intervention quite well.

[Topazz: That thread lost me too ... too many axes grinding]

[Snolly: True litmus test that]

uh huh....

Here's the thing you were talking about <link>

What he said recently I'll just let everybody find on their own.

I note you didn't address the fact of what this pope did in the years before he waltzed into the office in his Bruno Magli shoes. You care to comment on what this 'holy man' did previous to his present appointment?

I hate to break it to you but God doesn't have anything to do with your church. The Jews are not his chosen people and 99% of the Christian organizations of today would crucify Christ again because they wouldn't recognize him and therein lies the interesting feature of clothing over corpus... you can't color or drape the truth but you need to to make it palatable. Unfortunately when you do it puts it at war with everything else.

I thank God for one thing especially ...AFTER the gratitude I feel for the presence and the insights. I am grateful for the protection from what might appear to everyone else to be real big and powerful but would run at the sight of my defenses. There is nothing on Earth to equal the living literal truth of actually being able to walk through the valley of the shadow.

Therein is the test my friend. What I call 'the demons of the deep thing'

You never see who walks among you. You never see the sun for what it is or that everything is living and that nothing ever dies. You can't convert the mist of morning into the blessed synergistic energy of heaven and earth nor walk with impunity among all things wild and tame. Until you can well, "Rave on MacDuff."

if that's what she asked for, i'd give it to her.

Sarvis ignored the post...especially when you read his further "summations" regarding the answers he'd been given.

I will bring this post forward here. To Zues Boy and others who did not recieve a direct reply to every one of the 100+ posts in that thread:

Many of the well meaning but generally long posts suffered from a single major flaw: they kept trying to insist that I just change my mind and adopt one or two conclusions of theirs:

- the baby doesn't not really exist until after birth, maybe a little earler, maybe a little later, but certainly not at conception.

- when all is said and done, the mother gets all the rights and the father and baby get none.

The point I was trying to make, and granted perhaps obstinately so, is that this argument is not going to cut it.

At which point someone inevitably mentions MLK.

As I added a couple posts above: the goal (not directly stated this way) also was to articulate an argument in laymen's terms using community college language.

This is an argument you cannot win and one I had the good sense to stay out of. What it comes down to is that everyone is convicted by their conscience- the final judge of all personal activity. I'm much more concerned with the way the fetus gets treated after it gets here than I am the fact that it couldn't arrive through any particular vehicle. It will get through, trust me on that. My personal position is summed up in a bumper sticker. "Don't like abortion? Don't have one."

Parasite or victim? That's the kind of down-the-line passing shot that makes a match of it.

I was going for a morally neutral angle, as far as causation (see also the responsibility continuum and the verifiability issue - carelessness or broken condom?). It's like God's prank - mother fetus (or Sarvis-Gregor) both on the Titanic and it's each man (<-- Dawn bait/insult) for himself.

in your eagerness to stalk me up into this thread, the "to sum up" post is an obvious homage to our friend b-a. If you are familiar with her summaries, then you will see the parady was in fact splendidly delivered.

Anticipating that some numbskull would react strongly to my summation -- an expectation to which you did not dissappoint -- you might now revisit it and note the caveat that it only seeks to summarize the replies that were not well meaning and not satisfactory.

Not satisfactory: that's you, hon.

but none matches the epithet "post-collegiate liberal arts major", to say nothing of being accused of holding a law degree or being a postmodernist.

I have my flaws but this was excessive.

in B-school or reading Sgt. Rock comics. You can take it from me on that.

My intuition tells me that an elective abortion at some stage should be illegal and that would be the point when a parent(s)/child relationship exists. The cute sonogram test doesn't cut it for me but some clinical evaluation of gestational development certainly would. I realize that both sides feel safer in the tug of war if the moat in between is wider.