America's Catholic bishops have now unleashed forces they can't control
A 2021 investigation by the National Catholic Reporter found that major anti-abortion groups were funding voter suppression efforts in key states, endorsing Donald Trump's Big Lie and pushing for future Republican victories.
Worse, abortion bans could be the first step toward a police state for pregnant women and anyone who may help them terminate a pregnancy. As the New Yorker's Jia Tolentino predicts, pregnant people could conceivably be surveilled to ensure they do nothing to endanger a "preborn" child — and could be charged with murder if a miscarriage or stillbirth is confused with an abortion.
But women who want to get pregnant may also be at risk. The Catholic church condemns in vitro fertilization (IVF) because of its doctrine that life begins at conception, wary that some fertilized eggs could be discarded or used in medical research. If a state decides to take the same position, where does that leave infertile women and couples?
In their statement hailing the Roe decision, the bishops congratulated anti-abortion activists on all the alleged good they have done to support pregnant women over the years. But they might also consider all the money that was squandered on this decades-long struggle, and the moral compromises they made along the way.
The bishops also might meditate on the fact that the so-called help that pregnant women received was clearly insufficient. The U.S. has the highest rate of maternal mortality among wealthy nations and also ranks poorly on infant mortality, with rates far higher than other major Western nations like France and the U.K.
On the bishops' planet, only the innocent "preborn" have any real right to life. The rest of us must adjust to the dictates of what increasingly looks like a doctrinaire Supreme Court dominated by ultra-conservative Catholics.
https://www.rawstory.com/america-s-catho...t-control/
A 2021 investigation by the National Catholic Reporter found that major anti-abortion groups were funding voter suppression efforts in key states, endorsing Donald Trump's Big Lie and pushing for future Republican victories.
Worse, abortion bans could be the first step toward a police state for pregnant women and anyone who may help them terminate a pregnancy. As the New Yorker's Jia Tolentino predicts, pregnant people could conceivably be surveilled to ensure they do nothing to endanger a "preborn" child — and could be charged with murder if a miscarriage or stillbirth is confused with an abortion.
But women who want to get pregnant may also be at risk. The Catholic church condemns in vitro fertilization (IVF) because of its doctrine that life begins at conception, wary that some fertilized eggs could be discarded or used in medical research. If a state decides to take the same position, where does that leave infertile women and couples?
In their statement hailing the Roe decision, the bishops congratulated anti-abortion activists on all the alleged good they have done to support pregnant women over the years. But they might also consider all the money that was squandered on this decades-long struggle, and the moral compromises they made along the way.
The bishops also might meditate on the fact that the so-called help that pregnant women received was clearly insufficient. The U.S. has the highest rate of maternal mortality among wealthy nations and also ranks poorly on infant mortality, with rates far higher than other major Western nations like France and the U.K.
On the bishops' planet, only the innocent "preborn" have any real right to life. The rest of us must adjust to the dictates of what increasingly looks like a doctrinaire Supreme Court dominated by ultra-conservative Catholics.
https://www.rawstory.com/america-s-catho...t-control/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
