Tag Archives: Abortion

Feminism, Political, Political Correctness, radicalism

Is this the worst analogical argument you’ve ever heard?

There are feminists in high positions who seemed to have been born with a degraded reasoning faculty, compensated for by rampant emotions that we are to take as rational thinking.

Sarah Silverman thinks it’s time to start legislating male masturbation

Look, Sarah Silverman gets it. We live in a country filled with anti-abortion activists who feel they have the right to decide what a woman does with her body. It sucks, but that’s where we’re at. In 2016. Sure, fine, OK.

But if we’re going to defend the right of men to enact laws that limit the options of pregnant women, Silverman has just one follow-up question: Shouldn’t we do the same with men who wish to regularly masturbate without consideration for the poor sperm cells they kill every time they do so? Read on…

 

Catholic Church, Conservatism, Philosophy, Politics, Religion

Compulsory evil and the new totalitarianism

The Cardinal Van Thuan Observatory posted the following warning. The warning applies not just to Catholics but to all who see the same transgressions of the natural law.

COMPULSORY EVIL. NEW TOTALITARIANISM AND DISTRACTED CATHOLICS

The entry into force of a law in France that will penalize anyone who seeks via Internet to dissuade women from abortion is a new sign that the threshold of totalitarianism has been crossed. This threshold is crossed when national legislation not only permits evil, but also makes it compulsory and considers doing good to be a crime; when national legislation not only admits deviations from natural law, but imposes them, forcing compliance with an unnatural right; when non negotiable become principles contrary to the non negotiable ones.

It is evident to everyone that this threshold has now been crossed in many cases; for example, when the US Supreme Court made it compulsory for the 50 states to make same-sex marriage admissible by law; when the French parliament approved the Taubira law on “matrimony for all” without permitting mayors or other public officials to invoke conscientious objection. We also witnessed this in Italy with the approval of the Cirinnà law on civil unions. As of that moment, any family policy would have been to the advantage of civil unions as well. Therefore, no public administration would have been able to consider itself exempt from doing evil: it was compulsory for one and all. Another example was the recent case of the San Camillo Hospital in Rome where invited to apply for positions on the medical staff were only physicians willing to perform abortions. Continue reading Compulsory evil and the new totalitarianism →

Catholic Church, Philosophy, Politics, Religion

‘Gay marriage must be accepted’

Under the headline ‘Gay marriage vote must be accepted: Abbott’, 27 September 2016, the popular news website news.com.au informed its readers:

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has issued a message to politicians on all sides of parliament about a proposed national vote on same-sex marriage: whatever the people want must be accepted.

Despite his strong views against legalising same-sex marriage, he’s prepared to vote with the people should they say yes.

“This is a matter that is properly for the people and if the people vote for change, the parliament has to accept it,” he told 3AW on Tuesday.

“Individual members of parliament have to accept it.”

Equally, he hopes same-sex marriage supporters will do the same if the country votes no.

The proposed plebiscite won’t be binding and several coalition MPs have indicated they’ll vote no regardless of the result.

One wonders whether news.com.au has correctly paraphrased what Abbott said. If past media reports are any indication, Abbott is here talking about the politics of the issue of homosexual ‘marriage’ and not about its morality, his views of which have not changed, as the report indicates. It is not the first time that a media report has implied that Abbott has compromised his moral views. The report prompted friend Peter Janssen to comment: Continue reading ‘Gay marriage must be accepted’ →

Catholic Church, Philosophy, Politics, Religion

Abortion, Same-Sex Marriage and the Exercise of Prudence

In January 2013, an opinion piece by Tony Abbott, Leader of the Federal Opposition, appeared in the Herald-Sun, ‘For the record, I’m not opposed to IVF.’ This attempt to clarify his position did nothing to change the minds of Abbott’s critics. They simply went on warning women about his ingrained misogyny and the extreme danger he represents for their well-being and security should he be elected prime minister at the next Federal Election. Abbott would always be Captain Catholic for those shamelessly leading the sectarian campaign against him. The critical point here is that Abbott’s views on abortion and other such social matters, especially for his feminist critics, are in essence an issue of politics, and not of an exchange in which argument and counter argument are marshalled. I will come back to this.

On the other hand, just to show – again in the concrete circumstances – that often one cannot win in such hard-fought political matters, there were many conservatives who treated Abbott’s piece in the Herald-Sun as further evidence of Abbott’s (alleged) compromise on difficult moral issues, apparently to appease critics of his conservatism, outside and inside the Liberal Party. What had happened to the Tony Abbott who almost single-handedly took on the extreme left in student politics and came away with a famous victory, leaving his ideological opponents so decimated that they have not even today recovered and vent their frustrations by writing wimpy whingeing essays about Abbott’s brutal masculinity. There was a political brutality that Gillard’s John McTernan would be proud of. Continue reading Abortion, Same-Sex Marriage and the Exercise of Prudence →