Today's Telegraph piece, on which comments are welcome over there as well as here:
When Pope Benedict XVI comes to Britain next year, then I hope that he will have plenty to say about social justice, a term which the Church invented. Plenty to say about peace. And plenty to say about sex.
He will, after all, be visiting a country where condoms are practically thrown at children. Yet sexually transmitted infections are at epidemic levels among teenagers and twentysomethings. One woman in three will have an abortion at some point in her fertile life. No one really knows how many underage pregnancies there are, because abortions on underage girls are frequently recorded as other things, if at all, in order to distort the figures. Hardcore pornography is everywhere. Lap-dancing clubs, unknown here (except perhaps in Soho, I don’t know) even only ten years ago, are now all over the place.
Everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, should read my friend Ann Farmer’s Prophets and Priests: The Hidden Face of the Birth Control Movement (Saint Austin Press, 2002). In addition to its unyielding racism, the war against fertility is, and has always been, the war against the working class, the war against the poor at home and abroad, the war against the electoral base of the Left, the war against the social provisions for which the Left exists, and, above all, the war against women.
The idea of fertility as a medicable condition, requiring powerful drugs or even surgical interventions to prevent a woman’s body from doing exactly what it does naturally, is basically and ultimately the idea that femaleness itself is such a condition, a sort of XX Syndrome. I can think of nothing that is actually more misogynistic than that, although some things are equally so, notably the view that the preborn child is simultaneously insentient and a part of the woman’s body. Is it the whole of a woman’s body that is insentient, or only the parts most directly connected with reproduction?
No one did more work than the then Cardinal Ratzinger on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which magnificently presents the inseparability of the sanctity of life, sexual morality, social justice, and the pursuit of peace. When he comes here as Pope, let that be his theme.
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Lets hope the news is confirmed very soon.
ReplyDeleteDo you realise that in September2010 you COULD be a MP and will probably (as a practising Catholic) actually get to meet the Pope.
I envy you. I spent a night travelling to Knock in County mayo and got detached from my parish and spent a hungry, cold, wet and bleak 8 hours sitting on a bag until the arrival of Pope John Paul II. I thought I was a long distance from the altar but it transpired that he walked just a few feet from where I was standing.
And little did we know then that this "new" Pope would be so wonderfully influential. A saint.
And the long long journey home was worth it.
"Is it the whole of a woman’s body that is insentient, or only the parts most directly connected with reproduction?"
ReplyDeleteNo, I'm pretty sure their elbows are also insentient. And their teeth. And their lymph-nodes.
Their adrenal glands, on the other hand, are often to be found completing Sudoku when not writing up papers for obscure philology journals.
So there we have it. The parts of a woman's body most directly connected with reproduction are made out of knuckle, or tooth enamel, or such like.
ReplyDeleteYou may have been joking (not exactly in good taste), but present laws and widespread attitudes presuppose that this is in fact the case, pretty much.
You asked which parts of a woman's body were considered to be insentient. I gave you some answers, though not an exhaustive list. In fact, most parts of a woman's body are not sentient. This shouldn't come as a big surprise. And there are no laws which presuppose that teeth are involved in reproduction. That's just a fact.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, I'm pretty sure that hard-core pornography is not, in fact, everywhere. Or even most places. Your experience might be different, but you'll be amazed how many days go by without my stumbling across any.
I see that you haven't denied that a woman's reproductive organs are insentient, as must be the case if the preborn child is both insentient and part of those organs. Clearly, such is in fact your view.
ReplyDeletePornography is now ubiquitous in a way unimagineable even a very few years ago. All part of the culture of death, which is the first sex cult (sex cults themselves being very common indeed) to worship sterility instead of fertility, which is the "free" market in action.
As I hope that the Holy Father says explicitly while he is in Britain.
"And plenty to say about sex."
ReplyDeleteYes about why the age of consent in Vatican City is 12.
And I bet that is not for the benefit of the Swiss Guard.
It isn't. It'll be whatever it is in Italy, you ridiculous little man.
ReplyDeleteYou're obviously using "insentient" to mean something other than "lacking consciousness". Because I'm quite sure that women's reproductive organs aren't conscious, any more than her teeth are conscious. If it helps clear things up for you, I'm happy to state that for any given definition of insentient, a woman's reproductive organs are no more and no less insentient than her spleen, her eyes or her quadriceps.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that makes me irredeemably evil in some way, but you're going to have to explain how.
No, it means that you are going to have to explain which is in that case your position: that the preborn child is not "no more and no less insentient than her spleen, her eyes or her quadriceps"; or that the preborn child is not part of the woman's body? It must be one, the other, or neither. It cannot, from the view that you have already expressed, be both. So, which is it? And why?
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm using the medical-scientific rather than any of the various philosophical definitions of sentience - capable of feeling pain, as the abortion industry denies that the preborn child is, while simultaneously asserting that it is part of the woman's body. Perhaps that is what has confused you.
The age of consent in Italy is 14, with a close-in-age exception that allows those aged 13 to engage in sexual activity with partners who are less than 3 years older.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Europe#Italy
There is an equal age of consent set at 12 years of age in Art. 331 (1). When there is a relationship of dependence (like teacher/student, etc.) the age of consent is 15 years in Art. 331 (2)
The criminal law was introduced 1929 and was the same law as the Codice Penale in Italy on 8 June 1929. Because of the death penalty, reintroduced in 1926 in Italy, the reference point was changed in 1969 to 31 December 1924, but this has no effect on the age of consent laws. The age of consent in the Codice Penale from Italy was changed in 1930, but this no longer had any effect on Vatican City. Vatican law provides that criminal suspects arrested in Vatican City are to be tried under Vatican law in Italian courts, while those who escape to Italy before their arrest are to be tried under Italian law, even if their alleged crime occurred on Vatican territory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Europe#Vatican_State
I believe that women should have the right to abortion on demand throughout pregnancy. Like many people who hold this view, I do not believe that a foetus is part of a woman's body. I also do not believe that a foetus has a right to live inside a woman's body against her will.
ReplyDeleteIn that case, you must believe (which I don't, by the way) that the preborn child is making a rational, moral choice to live in its mother's body, and is therefore capable of such.
ReplyDeleteI find that view bizarre. But it is also incompatible with support for abortion. Or else, which other rational, moral agents may be killed on demand? And why?
Pre-born at what stage? I don't feel any great difficulty in stating that a microscopic clump of cells can't feel pain, or that it is, at that point, part of the woman's body. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure an 8.5 month foetus is capable of feeling pain and is considerably, but obviously not totally, separate from its mother. But these are two completely different entities and I don't see any reason to treat them in the same way.
ReplyDelete"In that case, you must believe (which I don't, by the way) that the preborn child is making a rational, moral choice to live in its mother's body, and is therefore capable of such."
ReplyDeleteNo. Why? That would be silly.
Why? A newborn baby is "considerably, but obviously not totally, separate from its mother". So is a two-year-old. So is a five-year-old.
ReplyDeleteFrom the start, half of the preborn child's DNA is from its father. Half of preborn children have Y chromosomes, unlike every cell of their mothers' bodies.
Thatcher legalised abortion up to birth "under certain circumstances", and it is by no means unheard of for such procedures to be recorded as other things such as still births.
What does being "microscopic" have to do with the capacity to feel pain? We are all "clumps of cells". And we are all made of of "microscopic clumps of cells".
What does "being a clump of cells" have to do with feeling pain, for that matter? Some clumps can, some clumps can't. It really depends what kind of cells they are.
ReplyDeleteRosie, you were the one who said that the preborn child, which you explictly denied was part of the mother's body (unlike, say, a tuma), and which is certainly not of any species but our own, was living in that body against the mother's will. Well, then, it must have made a rational, moral choice to do so.
ReplyDeleteI repeat that I find that position bizarre. But I also repeat that it is also incompatible with support for abortion. Or else, which other rational, moral agents may be killed on demand? And why?
Grimble, that's something else entirely, and brings us back to where we started.
ReplyDeleteIn Italy it is 14.
ReplyDeleteWork it out.
You silly bigot.
"Rosie, you were the one who said that the preborn child, which you explictly denied was part of the mother's body (unlike, say, a tuma), and which is certainly not of any species but our own, was living in that body against the mother's will. Well, then, it must have made a rational, moral choice to do so."
ReplyDeleteEh? Are you suggesting that anything which lives somewhere must have made a rational, moral choice to do so? Does a tree make a rational, moral choice to live in a park? Does a squirrel make a rational, moral choice to live in a tree? Does a tapeworm make a rational, moral choice to live in a squirrel's gut? (I don't think they do.)
14 is not 12, you silly innumerate.
ReplyDeleteWork it out.
14, as advocated by Peter Tatchell, would have rendered perfectly legal almost all the acts that brought scandal to the Church rather fewer years ago than it now seems.
I'm not a doctor David, but I'm running with the idea that you at least need nerves to feel pain. Apparently, pre-born babies don't even respond to physical stimulus until the second month after conception. So before that time, I'd say they were definitely insentient.
ReplyDeleteRosie, as I said, it is certainly not of any species but our own. Is it? When does it change, then? How?
ReplyDeleteHadrian, I'm not a doctor, either. But I do know that both in medicine and in veterinary medicine, the assumption is always that pain can be felt, not that it can't be. In principle, Rosie, even if you were minded to operate on a tapeworm. Never mind on what we are all agreed, it seems, is a human being, whether in itself or as part of one.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe that a two-year old living in Enfield has made a rational, moral choice to live in Enfield. That isn't the same as saying I think it's OK to kill two-year olds. It's just that your living in a place isn't evidence of your having made a rational, moral choice.
ReplyDeleteSomeone has made the rational, moral choice to put that human being in Enfield. Who has made the rational, moral choice to put that other human being in the womb?
ReplyDelete"Who has made the rational, moral choice to put that other human being in the womb?"
ReplyDeleteQuite possibly, nobody. It depends.
The exception to that rule, David, is quite clearly the one we're discussing. The medical position is that embryos feel no pain. They've taken that position for a reason. It might be because they're cold-hearted tools of Satan, or it might be because they're doctors who've studied this issue and made a decision based on the facts. No nerves=no pain isn't an assumption as much as it is a definition of what nerves do.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow - for the sake of argument, let's say that a doctor you agree is qualified to do so tells you that in the first month, embryos can't feel pain. What would follow from that?
Rosie, no, that isn't possible.
ReplyDelete"They've taken that position for a reason."
Oh yes...
I am going to ask everyone to make a rational, moral choice and please stop saying "preborn" when they mean unborn.
ReplyDeletePrecooked ham and uncooked ham are not the same thing. One is safe to eat right out of the package, and the other isn't.
When attached to the past tense of a verb, pre- means it's already been done, and un- means it hasn't been done yet. So preborn babies would have to be those who have already been born.
Prebusecent? Pre-existing?
ReplyDelete