Abortion - Edited 4/4/2010

EDIT: 4/4/2010 - I am being unfair to religion (Catholic here) in this post. Not because my point is bad, but because of my intentions and emotions when I wrote this. I have a personal policy not to censor or edit my "published" writings. (By edit I mean change what I wrote.) I believe when I click publish it will republish to 4/4/2010, but I posted this in late 2009. That said, when I wrote this it was with a bit of a personal vendetta\agenda against religion. I wish to apologize for this, and any (of the one or two that look at this :) ) offenses I might have caused. I believe if I am to cultivate wisdom under the context of virtue, it must be clear, logical, and without motivation in itself of agenda. Intentions do matter, and my intentions here were not virtuous. I still do however hold the same stance in regard to abortion.
END EDIT

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/23/kennedy.abortion/index.html
This article is about the rejection of communion for being pro-choice.

I replied to the article and I am posting the comment I made here, as I believe I conveyed my idea (view on pro-choice vs pro-life) well.

"The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops lobbied...."
I believe we should have stricter definitions for allowing religious institutions to skip out on taxes since they are an exception (i.e. tax most of them). I find it ridiculous that untaxed money can go to politics indirectly through religious groups.

Second I will bump a comment which I whole heartedly agree with, and corrects a misunderstood concept in regard to abortion debate:
"Whats interesting is how many of my uncles in the priesthood are for abortion rights. They are old enough to remember the days of coat hangers and back alley abortions and the mess that that causes. They still believe its a sin, but they believe that your sins are between you and god. And that as a public policy outlawing abortion does more harm then good."

When someone is "pro-choice" it does not mean they are "pro-abortion" What it can mean is they believe the choice is the person''s to make and that current judicial enforcement has consequences which may generate other moral conflict without actually solving anything i.e. creating more problems (wasted resources, angry debates, politics, and bureaucracy, compromising of rights for enforcement) and not solve what it's supposed to or "All pain, no Gain". In other words making it a law, does not mean people won't get abortions. You might say the same about murder, but the difference with abortion is that the risks of getting caught can be reduced to almost zero (unless you also want to video record every american woman 24/7) making the law almost impotent except for closing clean facilities and creating government waste. With the above mentioned I find it ridiculous for Church representatives to "punish" someone for the above viewpoint out of moral virtue for babies when in fact it's not directly that at all.
It is not the question "Would you let this baby die, or save it?" it is more like "This baby could die and we want to go about fixing it in way X"
X might mean all kinds of nasty consequences, and disagreeing with X does not directly imply a support for the clause of the issue X is to fix. Disagreement simply implies belief in either ineffectiveness of X, little chance of success vs. high cost, or compromising of other values (virtues or morals) which compromise the virtue of X making X non-virtuous.

I also find this religiously condratictive for the Catholic religion especially after a prior pope (Pope John Paul II) condoned (in that he gave) communion to "pro-choice" supporters. So allowing these actions to occur or continue is either 1. Saying the previous pope (highest physical moral authority for Catholics) was wrong on this critical "moral issue" or that 2. The previous pope was right, and these actions will be allowed to continue out of indecision or compromise of integrity (as apparently the denial of communion for this has been done with others in the past.)

All this is imho, and held under the condition the above article is accurate.


EDIT: 4/4/2010 - I am being unfair to religion (Catholic here) in this post. Not because my point is bad, but because of my intentions and emotions when I wrote this. I have a personal policy not to censor or edit my "published" writings. (By edit I mean change what I wrote.) I believe when I click publish it will republish to 4/4/2010, but I posted this in late 2009. That said, when I wrote this it was with a bit of a personal vendetta\agenda against religion. I wish to apologize for this, and any (of the one or two that look at this :) ) offenses I might have caused. I believe if I am to cultivate wisdom under the context of virtue, it must be clear, logical, and without motivation in itself of agenda. Intentions do matter, and my intentions here were not virtuous. I still do however hold the same stance in regard to abortion.
END EDIT

Nov 24, 2009