Ugh.
There is no desire for absolute uniformity. There are however, certain behaviors which are beneficial, and certain behaviors which are detrimental. That's a fact, there's no getting around it.
Redux: Rape, Abortion, and "Personhood"
- Thread starter Tiassa
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Ugh.
There is no desire for absolute uniformity. There are however, certain behaviors which are beneficial, and certain behaviors which are detrimental. That's a fact, there's no getting around it.
Wow. Who couldn't see this coming.
:Roll:
This is blatant misrepresentation that requires an absurdly superficial and literal level of thinking.
I agree. It's important to enforce a minimum degree of social norms. I doubt that anyone would be comfortable in a society in which all kinds of behavior were deemed equally valid.
They don't. Many people want ASPECTS of you to be predictable. A simple example is an employer who wants you to show up at 9am, or a state government that wants you to renew your car's registration every year.
I think you have this exactly backwards.
I think the fictional process you envision is:
"Doctor, I am perfectly happy with my life."
"Are you having sex four times a year?"
"Well, no, but that's fine with me."
"You are sick and need to be treated."
The real process is generally:
"Doctor, I'm really depressed. I feel like I don't have anyone."
"Do you have close relationships with anyone?"
"Not really, nothing I'd call close."
"OK let's work on that."
I don't even think it's about enforcing those norms. There's no law saying that the mentally ill are required to get treatment. I think it's about helping people when their behavior is harmful to themselves and to others and the root cause of it is a mental disorder.
Exactly. Fantastic post.
Sorry I haven't followed this thread
Those elements are the elements required for life to have occurred on earth. And no, when speaking of the potential, it does not mean that one already has it. That's actually the very difference between having the potential and having it. You have the potential to become the president of US. You have become the president. You're saying one follows the other, or one IS the other. It is not.
What does this have to do with the doctors ability to assess if quality of life is present? Do truths not exist because we cannot quantify it.
Ok I agree, pre-personhood beings should not have as much rights as personhood. but your presumption is in your question. You've already bestowed them the term "person". Either they exist as a person, or they are at a stage of non-existence. I guess you shouldn't care if non-persons get damaged or not, just like if I kick someone in the balls and a few of his gamete cells are damaged and die off, doesn't mean I killed a few people in the process. Cells don't deserve due compensation, until they exhibit signs of life they're merely cells.
Those elements are the elements required for life to have occurred on earth. And no, when speaking of the potential, it does not mean that one already has it. That's actually the very difference between having the potential and having it. You have the potential to become the president of US. You have become the president. You're saying one follows the other, or one IS the other. It is not.
What does this have to do with the doctors ability to assess if quality of life is present? Do truths not exist because we cannot quantify it.
Ok I agree, pre-personhood beings should not have as much rights as personhood. but your presumption is in your question. You've already bestowed them the term "person". Either they exist as a person, or they are at a stage of non-existence. I guess you shouldn't care if non-persons get damaged or not, just like if I kick someone in the balls and a few of his gamete cells are damaged and die off, doesn't mean I killed a few people in the process. Cells don't deserve due compensation, until they exhibit signs of life they're merely cells.
Notes on the Discussion
To bring you up to date, the original topic post, now at #2, concedes Life at Conception Personhood (LACP) in order to examine its implications.
Those implications are functionally problematic in the context of the United States Constitution; the question becomes what happens to women when we concede LACP and establish it by force of law. While some have attempted to wrap their heads around the problem, our neighbor LG is among those who, apparently, would prefer not to. His entire effort to argue personhood has the appearance of trying to avoid considering the legal status of a pregnant woman under LACP.
In the question of Thalidomide, I would also note that the births and birth defects in question took place between 1957 and 1962. Additionally, a 1995 article published by the American Life League asserts:
I note this because the question of compensation regarding Thalidomide is complicated by the fact that legal abortion was not available in 1962. The Guttmacher Institute reported, in 2003:
The coupling of Thalidomide and a pregnant woman who smokes is a bit disingenuous. The Thalidomide drama is still playing on the world stage; the Thalidomide Trust received additional funding from Diageo° in 2005 and the British government in 2009. In Australia, Diageo and Distillers, the drug's distributors in Australia and New Zealand, settled out of court with a single claimant, and it is expected that at least one hundred other Thalidomide survivors will have their claims heard in the coming year. While Harold Stock, CEO of Grünenthal, which developed and manufactured the drug, has offered a public apology, that apology was poorly received by Thalidomide survivors, and the company has yet to settle with claimants.
Meanwhile, in the United States, at least, prosecutors in some states are charging mentally ill women with crimes for self-destructive behavior while pregnant, as well as those who suffer accidents while pregnant. Additionally, a doctor in Florida successfully won the power to forcibly imprison a pregnant woman in a hospital; while that decision was eventually overturned by a higher court, it was a pyrrhic victory, as the pregnancy miscarried three days into the forced confinement.
While there is some logic to the question of why one would engage in destructive behavior while intending to carry a pregnancy to term, a pregnant woman who took Thalidomide, which was recommended for morning sickness, fifty years ago is a considerably different case from one in which a pregnant woman smokes during pregnancy, attempts suicide while pregnant, or accidentally falls down stairs while carrying a pregnancy.
While our neighbor asserts, "The issue involves the rights of two living entities - not one," the pregnant woman is notably absent from his consideration.
And his question about due compensation only becomes more complicated under LACP.
_____________________
Notes:
° Diageo — Most famously known as the distributor of Guinness. Its connection to the Thalidomide scandal comes through Guinness, which acquired Distillers Company Ltd. in 1986. Distillers Biochemicals, a wing of DCL, arose in 1942, as an operation to produce penicillin during World War II. Diageo formed from a merger between Guinness PLC and Grand Metropolitan PLC, a property management conglomerate, in 1997.
Works Cited:
Wikipedia. "Thalidomide". January 18, 2013. En.Wikipedia.org. January 24, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide
Young, Brian. "Life Before Roe: A Brief Survey of US Abortion Law Before the 1973 Decision". 1995. EWTN.com. January 24, 2013. http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLIFE/LIFBFROE.TXT
Benson Gold, Rachel. "Lessons from Before Roe: Will Past be Prologue?" The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy, v. 6, n. 1. March, 2003. Guttmacher.org. January 24, 2013. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/06/1/gr060108.html
Rodereve said:
To bring you up to date, the original topic post, now at #2, concedes Life at Conception Personhood (LACP) in order to examine its implications.
Those implications are functionally problematic in the context of the United States Constitution; the question becomes what happens to women when we concede LACP and establish it by force of law. While some have attempted to wrap their heads around the problem, our neighbor LG is among those who, apparently, would prefer not to. His entire effort to argue personhood has the appearance of trying to avoid considering the legal status of a pregnant woman under LACP.
In the question of Thalidomide, I would also note that the births and birth defects in question took place between 1957 and 1962. Additionally, a 1995 article published by the American Life League asserts:
While the leaders of the American legal community were promoting radical changes in state abortion law, a 1962 case in Arizona generated sympathetic press coverage of the notion of "justifiable abortion."
Mrs Sherri Finkbine, a married mother, made public her intention to abort her fifth child. She had taken some tranquilizers/sleeping pills her husband had brought home from a trip to England. The pills turned out to be Thalidomide, a drug that had become associated with birth defects. Fearful of giving birth to a handicapped child, Mrs Finkbine traveled from Phoenix to Sweden, where she had her baby aborted.
(Young)
Mrs Sherri Finkbine, a married mother, made public her intention to abort her fifth child. She had taken some tranquilizers/sleeping pills her husband had brought home from a trip to England. The pills turned out to be Thalidomide, a drug that had become associated with birth defects. Fearful of giving birth to a handicapped child, Mrs Finkbine traveled from Phoenix to Sweden, where she had her baby aborted.
(Young)
I note this because the question of compensation regarding Thalidomide is complicated by the fact that legal abortion was not available in 1962. The Guttmacher Institute reported, in 2003:
A study of low-income women in New York City in the 1960s found that almost one in 10 (8%) had ever attempted to terminate a pregnancy by illegal abortion; almost four in 10 (38%) said that a friend, relative or acquaintance had attempted to obtain an abortion. Of the low-income women in that study who said they had had an abortion, eight in 10 (77%) said that they had attempted a self-induced procedure, with only 2% saying that a physician had been involved in any way.
These women paid a steep price for illegal procedures. In 1962 alone, nearly 1,600 women were admitted to Harlem Hospital Center in New York City for incomplete abortions, which was one abortion-related hospital admission for every 42 deliveries at that hospital that year. In 1968, the University of Southern California Los Angeles County Medical Center, another large public facility serving primarily indigent patients, admitted 701 women with septic abortions, one admission for every 14 deliveries ....
.... In the late 1960s, an alternative to obtaining committee approval emerged for women seeking a legal abortion, but once again, only for those with considerable financial resources. In 1967, England liberalized its abortion law to permit any woman to have an abortion with the written consent of two physicians. More than 600 American women made the trip to the United Kingdom during the last three months of 1969 alone; by 1970, package deals (including round-trip airfare, passports, vaccination, transportation to and from the airport and lodging and meals for four days, in addition to the procedure itself) were advertised in the popular media.
(Benson Gold)
These women paid a steep price for illegal procedures. In 1962 alone, nearly 1,600 women were admitted to Harlem Hospital Center in New York City for incomplete abortions, which was one abortion-related hospital admission for every 42 deliveries at that hospital that year. In 1968, the University of Southern California Los Angeles County Medical Center, another large public facility serving primarily indigent patients, admitted 701 women with septic abortions, one admission for every 14 deliveries ....
.... In the late 1960s, an alternative to obtaining committee approval emerged for women seeking a legal abortion, but once again, only for those with considerable financial resources. In 1967, England liberalized its abortion law to permit any woman to have an abortion with the written consent of two physicians. More than 600 American women made the trip to the United Kingdom during the last three months of 1969 alone; by 1970, package deals (including round-trip airfare, passports, vaccination, transportation to and from the airport and lodging and meals for four days, in addition to the procedure itself) were advertised in the popular media.
(Benson Gold)
The coupling of Thalidomide and a pregnant woman who smokes is a bit disingenuous. The Thalidomide drama is still playing on the world stage; the Thalidomide Trust received additional funding from Diageo° in 2005 and the British government in 2009. In Australia, Diageo and Distillers, the drug's distributors in Australia and New Zealand, settled out of court with a single claimant, and it is expected that at least one hundred other Thalidomide survivors will have their claims heard in the coming year. While Harold Stock, CEO of Grünenthal, which developed and manufactured the drug, has offered a public apology, that apology was poorly received by Thalidomide survivors, and the company has yet to settle with claimants.
Meanwhile, in the United States, at least, prosecutors in some states are charging mentally ill women with crimes for self-destructive behavior while pregnant, as well as those who suffer accidents while pregnant. Additionally, a doctor in Florida successfully won the power to forcibly imprison a pregnant woman in a hospital; while that decision was eventually overturned by a higher court, it was a pyrrhic victory, as the pregnancy miscarried three days into the forced confinement.
While there is some logic to the question of why one would engage in destructive behavior while intending to carry a pregnancy to term, a pregnant woman who took Thalidomide, which was recommended for morning sickness, fifty years ago is a considerably different case from one in which a pregnant woman smokes during pregnancy, attempts suicide while pregnant, or accidentally falls down stairs while carrying a pregnancy.
While our neighbor asserts, "The issue involves the rights of two living entities - not one," the pregnant woman is notably absent from his consideration.
And his question about due compensation only becomes more complicated under LACP.
_____________________
Notes:
° Diageo — Most famously known as the distributor of Guinness. Its connection to the Thalidomide scandal comes through Guinness, which acquired Distillers Company Ltd. in 1986. Distillers Biochemicals, a wing of DCL, arose in 1942, as an operation to produce penicillin during World War II. Diageo formed from a merger between Guinness PLC and Grand Metropolitan PLC, a property management conglomerate, in 1997.
Works Cited:
Wikipedia. "Thalidomide". January 18, 2013. En.Wikipedia.org. January 24, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide
Young, Brian. "Life Before Roe: A Brief Survey of US Abortion Law Before the 1973 Decision". 1995. EWTN.com. January 24, 2013. http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLIFE/LIFBFROE.TXT
Benson Gold, Rachel. "Lessons from Before Roe: Will Past be Prologue?" The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy, v. 6, n. 1. March, 2003. Guttmacher.org. January 24, 2013. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/06/1/gr060108.html
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Thanks for updating me. Well, I don't agree with Life at Conception Personhood. I believe life begins past conception, but before childbirth. Qualities of life like heart beating, brain activity and lung development are apparent before childbirth, but not at conception. How would we determine if they are alive? Well how do doctors determine if people are dead? Usually they look to, 1) functioning heart, 2) functioning respiratory system, 3) functioning brain. Even after cardiac arrest or respiratory arrest, I think the brain can survive a few minutes afterwards so the person must be deemed braindead to be considered dead. I believe once the heart is functioning and sufficient brain activity exists, the fetus should be considered a person. I'm unsure if a functioning respiratory system is required because a fetus doesn't breath prenatally.
Before that point of personhood of the fetus, women should have the right to abortion. I don't believe in forcing women to use their bodies to carry a fetus to personhood. But I do believe women have the responsibility to carry 'persons' to term. What I mean by that is, once the fetus has qualities of life to become a person (call it fetus-person), then they should not have an abortion. I don't like the idea of anyone being forced against their will about choices of their own body, but an abortion affects both the bodies of the mother and the fetus-person. Think of it like this: if a mother kills her 2-month newborn baby because it is too taxing on her physically, emotionally and financially to care for it day and night, its considered murder. But it should be considered murder, outside her body and inside her body, regardless of the "burdens" the fetus-person may have.
Lastly, I think these things should be considered on a case-by-case basis, no law concerning abortions and persons should be a one-size-fits-all. The government has a duty to protect the rights of the vulnerable, whether this be the rape victim, or the unborn person from the unfit mother.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
The fetus had no legs and only one arm. It was so badly deformed in many other ways that its sex could not be determined and it could not possibly have survived ex utero.
You are still operating out of a gross, idiotic strawman.
Why?
I have addressed your concern so many times already with the concept of triage.
But you and some Catholics go on and on and on, even as you are on opposite sides, you have the same idea of what personhood of the unborn means, and you both insist in the same idiocity of "If there are two persons, we can not and must not do anything."
There is social pressure and stigmatization that enforce those norms.
In some ways, that can be a lot more effective than laws.
I don't have anything backward. I have sketched out how social stigmatization works, and this is what I have been talking about.
mod queue
You are still operating out of a gross, idiotic strawman.
Why?
I have addressed your concern so many times already with the concept of triage.
But you and some Catholics go on and on and on, even as you are on opposite sides, you have the same idea of what personhood of the unborn means, and you both insist in the same idiocity of "If there are two persons, we can not and must not do anything."
There is social pressure and stigmatization that enforce those norms.
In some ways, that can be a lot more effective than laws.
The issue is - which aspects?
I don't have anything backward. I have sketched out how social stigmatization works, and this is what I have been talking about.
Whether people are happy or not with their life, whether they can function or not, is irrelevant to those who want to stigmatize them.
One can be happy and productive, and still be the target of stigma.
Afterwards, though, one possibly suffers from the effects of stigma. But the cause of the suffering is the stigma, not one's system of beliefs, values and practices.
For example, a vegetarian may suffer greatly (and later even become a meat-eater) - but suffesr not because vegetarianism would be bad, but because they have been so heavily stigmatized by meat-eaters that coexisting with them has become unbearable.
You are still operating out of a gross, idiotic strawman.
Why?
I have addressed your concern so many times already with the concept of triage.
But you and some Catholics go on and on and on, even as you are on opposite sides, you have the same idea of what personhood of the unborn means, and you both insist in the same idiocity of "If there are two persons, we can not and must not do anything."
There is social pressure and stigmatization that enforce those norms.
In some ways, that can be a lot more effective than laws.
The issue is - which aspects?
I don't have anything backward. I have sketched out how social stigmatization works, and this is what I have been talking about.
Whether people are happy or not with their life, whether they can function or not, is irrelevant to those who want to stigmatize them.
One can be happy and productive, and still be the target of stigma.
Afterwards, though, one possibly suffers from the effects of stigma. But the cause of the suffering is the stigma, not one's system of beliefs, values and practices.
For example, a vegetarian may suffer greatly (and later even become a meat-eater) - but suffesr not because vegetarianism would be bad, but because they have been so heavily stigmatized by meat-eaters that coexisting with them has become unbearable.
Well, you were talking about "A psychiatric / psychological treatment . . . the desired results whether they are desired by the doctors . . . undergo a psychiatric treatment with the desire to suppress a particular behavior . . .Notably, the DSM . . . the profession is misdiagnosing . . .the actual beneficiary of psychiatric diagnoses"
But OK, let's switch direction and talk about social stigmatization.
Absolutely. And no matter what you do, someone will disagree with your choices. And there's nothing wrong with that, either - provided they don't force their choices on you.
And PC has the power to promote the vilest enforcement under the guise of "free choice."
What "enforcement" would that be?
The term "work" here is so broad that it includes indoctrination, brainwashing, and torture, which is why it is problematic to use "work" here.
People who are claimed to be "mentally ill" are pushed to fit a particular social norm.
Fear and reason are not mutually exclusive. Fear is the emotion, concern is the reasonable thought that goes hand in hand with that fear.
Didn't you have classes in school on self-esteem?
Or, e.g.
Nothing of that sort.
It's the idea that mental illness can be conceptualized and approached in much the same way as physical ailments are, that is problematic.
Not all psychiatrists agree that a categorical approach to diagnosing mental issues is valid or helpful:
There is some ongoing scientific doubt concerning the construct validity and reliability of psychiatric diagnostic categories and criteria[41][42][43] even though they have been increasingly standardized to improve inter-rater agreement in controlled research. In the United States, there have been calls and endorsements for a congressional hearing to explore the nature and extent of harm potentially caused by this "minimally investigated enterprise".[44][45]
Other specific criticisms of the current schemes include: attempts to demonstrate natural boundaries between related syndromes, or between a common syndrome and normality, have failed; the disorders of current classification are probably surface phenomena that can have many different interacting causes, yet "the mere fact that a diagnostic concept is listed in an official nomenclature and provided with a precise operational definition tends to encourage us to assume that it is a "quasi-disease entity" that can be invoked to explain the patient's symptoms"; and that the diagnostic manuals have led to an unintended decline in careful evaluation of each individual person's experiences and social context.[30]
Psychodynamic schemes have traditionally given the latter phenomenological aspect more consideration, but in psychoanalytic terms that have been long criticized on numerous grounds.
Some have argued that reliance on operational definition demands that intuitive concepts, such as depression, need to be operationally defined before they become amenable to scientific investigation. However, John Stuart Mill pointed out the dangers of believing that anything that could be given a name must refer to a thing and Stephen Jay Gould and others have criticized psychologists for doing just that. One critic states that "Instead of replacing 'metaphysical' terms such as 'desire' and 'purpose', they used it to legitimize them by giving them operational definitions. Thus in psychology, as in economics, the initial, quite radical operationalist ideas eventually came to serve as little more than a 'reassurance fetish' (Koch 1992, 275) for mainstream methodological practice."[46] According to Tadafumi Kato, since the era of Kraepelin, psychiatrists have been trying to differentiate mental disorders by using clinical interviews. Kato argues there has been little progress over the last century and that only modest improvements are possible in this way; he suggests that only neurobiological studies using modern technology could form the basis for a new classification.[47]
According to Heinz Katsching, expert committees have combined phenomenological criteria in variable ways into categories of mental disorders, repeatedly defined and redefined over the last half century. The diagnostic categories are termed "disorders" and yet, despite not being validated by biological criteria as most medical diseases are, are framed as medical diseases identified by medical diagnoses. He describes them as top-down classification systems similar to the botanic classifications of plants in the 17th and 18th centuries, when experts decided a priori which visible aspects of plants were relevant. Katsching notes that while psychopathological phenomena are certainly observed and experienced, the conceptual basis of psychiatric diagnostic categories is questioned from various ideological perspectives.[39]
Psychiatrist Joel Paris argues that psychiatry is sometimes susceptible to diagnostic fads. Some have been based on theory (overdiagnosis of schizophrenia), some based on etiological (causation) concepts (overdiagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder), and some based on the development of treatments. Paris points out that psychiatrists like to diagnose conditions they can treat, and gives examples of what he sees as prescribing patterns paralleling diagnostic trends, for example an increase in bipolar diagnosis once lithium came into use, and similar scenarios with the use of electroconvulsive therapy, neuroleptics, tricyclic antidepressants, and SSRIs. He notes that there was a time when every patient seemed to have "latent schizophrenia" and another time when everything in psychiatry seemed to be "masked depression", and he fears that the boundaries of the bipolar spectrum concept, including in application to children, are similarly expanding.[48] Allen Frances has suggested fad diagnostic trends regarding autism and Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.[49]
Since the 1980s, psychologist Paula Caplan has had concerns about psychiatric diagnosis, and people being arbitrarily "slapped with a psychiatric label". Caplan says psychiatric diagnosis is unregulated, so doctors aren’t required to spend much time understanding patients situations or to seek another doctor’s opinion. The criteria for allocating psychiatric labels are contained in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which can "lead a therapist to focus on narrow checklists of symptoms, with little consideration for what is causing the patient’s suffering". So, according to Caplan, getting a psychiatric diagnosis and label often hinders recovery.
Suit yourself.
If you think it is perfectly sane and well to expect people to absolutely trust total strangers in matters such as mental health ... then I have nothing to say to you.
Whatever it takes to make people fit a particular social norm.
Such as that one's employment is at risk - over things that don't actually have anything to do with one's performance on the job, but which have to do with fitting in with a particular mentality of other employees.
Oh, I've been outside norms all my life; no one has ever taken "enforcement" action against me.
In many cases that's true. If your "mentality" is that you want to sleep until 11am every day, then you might well be given the boot - even if your performance while you are actually at work is excellent. If your "mentality" is that you don't suffer fools, and call idiots idiots etc. then you might lose your job as HR director. If your "mentality" is that you hate everyone in your office - and tell them that regularly - then you might be asked to find another job.
That's their right as employers, to get people that THEY THINK are good fits for the position. Fortunately you also have the right to quit and find a new job - and an environment - you like.
Bells
Staff member
Ah the irony and hypocrisy..
We have seen, time and again in the past, Conservatives and the Catholic Church especially push their right to life views to extremes. The Catholic Church has for years argued for the personhood of the unborn. We have seen them ex-communicate whole hospitals for having performed a life saving termination and we have seen them ex-communicate medical staff, a rape victim and her mother, who sought an abortion for her 9 year old daughter who fell pregnant with twins after being sexually abused by her stepfather (the stepfather was not excommunicated).
The underlying belief behind the actions of the Church has been that the unborn foetus is a person from the moment of conception. That life begins at conception.
And this has been their underpinning argument against abortion in the US and elsewhere around the world.
But it seems there is an exception to their firmly held belief that life begins at conception.
And that exception will only show itself if the Church is sued for wrongful death of unborn 'children'.
St. Thomas More Medical Center in Canon City, Colorado, was sued a few years ago by a Mr Stodghill, for the wrongful death of his unborn twin children, who were 28 weeks along when Mr Stodghill's wife suddenly fell ill and died shortly after reaching St. Thomas More Medical Center. At no time did the medical staff attempt to save the unborn twins, and they tragically died along with the mother. St. Thomas More Medical Center is operated and owned by Catholic Healthcare Initiatives (CHI). Mr Stodghill decided to sue the hospital for what he believed to be the wrongful death of his unborn twins, as well as for his wife's death. In short, he assigned 'personhood' to his twins. Something the Catholic Church firmly believes in.. supposedly..
Now, knowing what we know about the Church, we would have expected them to not fight Mr Stodghill on his assigning personhood to his unborn twins. Not so.
The Judge agreed with the Church and their lawyers that the unborn twins were not 'person's' and thus, dismissed the suit.
Of course, when this became public very recently, it opened a floodgates of complaints and astonishment. And the Church was left to scramble for an excuse for their craven dismissal of their own doctrines in the face of possibly monetary loss and they have issued a statement that they will no longer argue that the twins were not "person's"..
I guess it's only a person if it does not cost them anything.
We have seen, time and again in the past, Conservatives and the Catholic Church especially push their right to life views to extremes. The Catholic Church has for years argued for the personhood of the unborn. We have seen them ex-communicate whole hospitals for having performed a life saving termination and we have seen them ex-communicate medical staff, a rape victim and her mother, who sought an abortion for her 9 year old daughter who fell pregnant with twins after being sexually abused by her stepfather (the stepfather was not excommunicated).
The underlying belief behind the actions of the Church has been that the unborn foetus is a person from the moment of conception. That life begins at conception.
And this has been their underpinning argument against abortion in the US and elsewhere around the world.
But it seems there is an exception to their firmly held belief that life begins at conception.
And that exception will only show itself if the Church is sued for wrongful death of unborn 'children'.
St. Thomas More Medical Center in Canon City, Colorado, was sued a few years ago by a Mr Stodghill, for the wrongful death of his unborn twin children, who were 28 weeks along when Mr Stodghill's wife suddenly fell ill and died shortly after reaching St. Thomas More Medical Center. At no time did the medical staff attempt to save the unborn twins, and they tragically died along with the mother. St. Thomas More Medical Center is operated and owned by Catholic Healthcare Initiatives (CHI). Mr Stodghill decided to sue the hospital for what he believed to be the wrongful death of his unborn twins, as well as for his wife's death. In short, he assigned 'personhood' to his twins. Something the Catholic Church firmly believes in.. supposedly..
Now, knowing what we know about the Church, we would have expected them to not fight Mr Stodghill on his assigning personhood to his unborn twins. Not so.
Attorneys for CHI in 2010 filed court papers asking a judge to dismiss the case because the plaintiffs couldn't prove negligent care killed Lori Stodghill and her fetuses. They also argued that "under Colorado law, a fetus is not a `person,' and Plaintiff's claims for wrongful death must therefore be dismissed."
The Judge agreed with the Church and their lawyers that the unborn twins were not 'person's' and thus, dismissed the suit.
The trial judge agreed, finding that previous state cases required a fetus to be "born alive" to have a legal claim. An appellate court upheld the dismissal on other grounds. Stodghill's attorneys are now asking the state Supreme Court to hear the case.
Of course, when this became public very recently, it opened a floodgates of complaints and astonishment. And the Church was left to scramble for an excuse for their craven dismissal of their own doctrines in the face of possibly monetary loss and they have issued a statement that they will no longer argue that the twins were not "person's"..
I guess it's only a person if it does not cost them anything.
Ta-ra ta-ra ta-ra boom-dee!
Yeah, I've been tempted to drop that one into this discussion, but I've held back largely because I didn't want to put the effort into making the point civilly. And, besides, there is only so much I can cuss out the Church on this one; we haven't yet heard back from the hierarchy.
Additionally, this is how the American justice system works. One's beliefs are not binding under law. The current law of the land does not recognize LACP. However, in the spirit of good faith, both legally and religiously, the hospital should have settled for a decent sum, and not remind everyone in the world that the Catholic Church institution has no integrity whatsoever.
I'm so glad to not be Catholic. I do not envy my Catholic neighbors this Jacob and Esau of the soul.
Yeah, I've been tempted to drop that one into this discussion, but I've held back largely because I didn't want to put the effort into making the point civilly. And, besides, there is only so much I can cuss out the Church on this one; we haven't yet heard back from the hierarchy.
Additionally, this is how the American justice system works. One's beliefs are not binding under law. The current law of the land does not recognize LACP. However, in the spirit of good faith, both legally and religiously, the hospital should have settled for a decent sum, and not remind everyone in the world that the Catholic Church institution has no integrity whatsoever.
I'm so glad to not be Catholic. I do not envy my Catholic neighbors this Jacob and Esau of the soul.
Bells
Staff member
The hierarchy in the US have released a statement saying that they should never have argued from the standpoint that the twins were not 'person's' since they were going directly against their own religious doctrines [and they have been pushing for States to grant "personhood" from the moment of conception].
What makes this case stunning is that they have openly argued for "personhood" and for legislating for "personhood", yet the first opportunity arises in a court of law which goes directly to their own "personhood" argument, they use the very laws and definitions they are trying to change to ensure they do not lose any money..
- Status