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stufl

(96 posts)
Wed Dec 28, 2011, 10:02 PM Dec 2011

A Person's Right to Exist

Republicans call themselves "pro-life," refusing the mother's choice to carry a fetus even if it was created by a blood relative or rapist. Every person has a right to exist, so they say.

But when it comes to health care for living people, they would allow a person to die if he/she had not purchased insurance. They applauded that concept at one of the GOP debates. Isn't that depriving a person the right to exist? If the right to life applies to a fetus it should also be applicable to an existing person, rich or poor, with a pre-existing condition or not.

The availability of health care for the purpose of prolonging human life is a human right. It is not related to material possessions which are options for those who can afford to buy them. There is a reason that the US is the ONLY country in the world without uniform, low cost health care for all.

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A Person's Right to Exist (Original Post) stufl Dec 2011 OP
That's right. Around these parts, I will remind people that they are not "pro-life", they are PeaceNikki Dec 2011 #1
Catholic Church allows there are "other life issues" "proportionately more important than abortion Brettongarcia Feb 2012 #4
An Embryo is Not a HUman Person Brettongarcia Jan 2012 #2
A 700 page blog?! Lunacee2012 Feb 2012 #3

PeaceNikki

(27,985 posts)
1. That's right. Around these parts, I will remind people that they are not "pro-life", they are
Wed Dec 28, 2011, 10:48 PM
Dec 2011

anti-choice.

Welcome to DU... and to the Pro-Choice group!

Brettongarcia

(2,262 posts)
4. Catholic Church allows there are "other life issues" "proportionately more important than abortion
Fri Feb 3, 2012, 06:08 PM
Feb 2012

The main idea of this thread is right. And might be squared with say, Catholic beliefs, even.

Elsewhere we argue that abortion is not so serious, because embryos are not really full human persons. But? Even if embryos WERE human persons, even Catholic bishops today note that there are "other issues," that involve human lives; "life issues." Other issues that might be "proportionately" more important (as the Pope suggested, in his 2004 memo, "Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion&quot .

What other issues, could be more important than abortion? Consider first the lives lost, when we neglect 1) health care. And next? 2) Millions of lives already historically, biblically lost, by neglect/ignorance of environment issues. Like famines, floods. Then too? Consider 3) the millions of lives lost by "just" but unnecessary wars.

Conservative Catholics on EWTN/RN argue at times, that no issue could be as important as abortion, in terms of human lives lost or endangered. But key elements of the Church, many cardinals and the pope, note many "other issues" (Card. McCarrick) that are in effect, proportionately more important. Like health care; environmental disasters; and unncessary wars. Issues that have already killed millions, billions of people. And that could even destroy the whole planet. Unless we begin to take care of these life issues.

In partial recognition of this, elements of the Church leadership, like Cardinal Bernardin, began to refer to the "seamless garment" of many imortant social issues, that should attract Catholics' attention at the voting booth.

Brettongarcia

(2,262 posts)
2. An Embryo is Not a HUman Person
Mon Jan 30, 2012, 09:10 AM
Jan 2012

See my blog. With a 700-page working paper, presenting 200 rational and Biblical and Catholic arguments, that abortion should be allowed. In part, because the embryo is not a human person.

Brettongarcia, on Wordpress.

The essence of the anti-personhood argument, is that most theologian/philosophers agree, and the Science of Anthropology confirms, that the essence of being a person, the thing that makes us more than the animals, is our human intelligence, consciousness, or mind. And? An embryo hasn't got that.

The Bible itself, Ps. 139, said the embryo is not yet "formed"; science confirms its brain is not large enough, not formed enough, to have intelligence or a "rational soul," as Aquinas called it.

Lunacee2012

(172 posts)
3. A 700 page blog?!
Thu Feb 2, 2012, 09:51 PM
Feb 2012

Damn, you really took your time with this argument didn't you? I'm gonna go check it out right now.

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