This is how Nancy Pelosi answered Tom Brokaw’s question about when life begins: “I would say that as an ardent practicing Catholic this is an issue that I have studied for a long time, and what I know is over the centuries the doctors of the Church have not been able to make that definition. And St. Augustine said three months. We don’t know. The point is it that it shouldn’t have an impact on a woman’s right to chose.”
Does she really mean to say that if we did know when life begins (which we do), and it turns out life begins prior to the time abortions are allowed, that this should not impact a woman’s right to have an abortion? Is Pelosi so pro-abortion, that even in when the evidence is clear that what is being aborted is a living human being, that the right to an abortion trumps the life guaranteed to that human being in the Constitution? Talk about a radical position!
HT: Justin Taylor
Thinking to Believe 
August 28, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Insanity. The absurdity of modern progress.
Fiddlesticks on the doctors of the Church, doctors today know the answer to that question.
Hopefully one day Americans will look back at such comments (as Pelosi’s) and put them in the same class as a John Calhoun argument for the right to slavery.
Chad
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August 28, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Chad,
I agree. It is a closed case scientifically speaking.
Several Catholic bishops have voiced opposition against Pelosi’s as seriously misinformed about Catholic theology, and the history of the Catholic teaching on this issue. I was reading one bishop today, who tackled her reference to Augustine and his three month reference. According to the bishop, Augustine was addressing the question of when children are ensouled, but he was opposed to abortion at any time, even prior to ensoulment. I don’t know if that is true, but those Catholics usually know their historical theology pretty good, so I’ll take his word for it until and unless I hear otherwise.
Jason
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August 29, 2008 at 4:37 am
It’s just annoying to hear the dodge and weaving of the pro-choice politicians on this stuff. Obama’s response at the Saddleback Civil Forum was like this: this question is “above my paygrade”…but “I’m pro-choice.”
It seems amazing to some of us, does it not, that people can speak so boldly out of both sides of their mouths-and contradict themselves so plainly. There must be a really good, catchy word journalists, essayists, and pundits use for this and I just don’t know it… When I hear it I think of a foghorn going off and a stab in the gut – a visceral reaction. It’s just that obvious – can anybody else see the pink elephant in the room??
Chad
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August 29, 2008 at 10:10 am
Yes, many found Obama’s response ridiculous. First, he didn’t really address Warren’s question. Arguably though, Obama understood that in order to properly answer Warren’s question about policy, one must first determine when a human being comes into existence, so he chose to address that. That’s fine, but his response was both uninformed, and made him look like a bafoon. It was uninformed because the question of when a human being comes into existence has been settled scientfically. It made him look like a bafoon because he is endorsing policies that deny the unborn human rights, without knowing whether they are human beings or not. That would be like a construction manager giving the order to demolish a building after having confessed to the media that he doesn’t know whether there are any humans in the building. Furthermore, he is running for the office of the President of the United States. It is within his pay grade to be informed of such matters.
Jason
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August 29, 2008 at 8:32 pm
“when the evidence is clear that what is being aborted is a living human being”
An embryo is not a “living human being”. When does the brain devleop? At what stage can it can it ‘suffer’?
A substantial percentage of pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion. Is ‘God’ the greatest abortionist of them all?
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September 4, 2008 at 11:29 am
dbes02,
You need to read up on embryology. There is no question, biologically speaking, that that even at the zygote stage, the unborn is a biological member of the human species. You say it is not a “living human being.” Then what is it? A frog? It is obviously alive. It obviously has being (existence). And the type of being it has is determined by its genetic code, which id definitively human. That means it is a “living human being.”
Does it have a brain at the zygote stage? No, but how is that relevant to what kind of thing it is? It is still a human being. Whether or not one has a brain, or one can feel pain centers on a philosophical question about personhood. Don’t confuse the philosophical question about personhood, and moral status, with the biological question of what the unborn entity is. The biological question has been answered, and there is no doubt it is a human being. Whether it is a person, and whether it possesses moral status, are philosophical questions that are debated.
Personally, I think the philosophy underpinning your view is deficient, but I am not going to critique your philosophical viewpoint or defend mine here in the comments section.
Yes, a substantial number of pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion. What follows from that? Does it follow that if nature kills off a significant number of unborn babies naturally, that it is ok for us to do so purposely? In many 3rd world countries there is a high infant mortality rate. Does the fact that nature kills so many newborns mean the women in those countries can purposely kill their newborns? Of course not. So what follows from the observation that Mother Nature spontaneously aborts a lot of embryos? Nothing.
If you stick a bunch of human adults in the desert, many of them will not survive. Would that justify me willingly going to the desert and bumping off some of them myself? Mother Nature killed over 200,000 Southeast Asians in 2004. Does that mean we can kill Southeast Asians as well? Of course not. While nature may be responsible for spontaneously aborting a high number of embryos that does not give us the license to deliberately abort more.
Besides, scientists aren’t exactly sure why embryos spontaneously abort, but they hypothesize it is because they were not formed correctly in the beginning. In other words, they were defective, and possibly never even rose to the level of a human being (being more like a teratoma).
Jason
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