On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 5:14:19 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 8/3/2019 6:53 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 12:19:50 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 8/3/2019 11:55 AM, jbeattie wrote:
... even a sensible Democrat is clearly superior to the insane asylum the Left has conjured up out of the fraudulent "oppression" of tiny minorities, who together cannot account for rolling a single log...

Agreed. And I think lots of people agree.

Murder is definitional -- and if it is licensed, it is not murder. Whether one can murder a fetus in the US varies from state to state. The religious and historical prohibition on murder was to maintain social peace and order. The Fifth Commandment did not apply to a fetus, at least not absolutely and not according to the Jews -- whose God god wrote the rule (although the original was lost for many years until found by Stephen Spielberg.) Regrettably, Catholics and conservative Christians have pushed for prohibition as an article of faith and without regard to what becomes of the fetus once born, and in fact Christian conservatives bemoan the "welfare state."

I disagree with that final sentence. At least around here, there are
many church-based institutions that care for women and children, and
there are ongoing congregational charity drives for them. We contribute.

I'm not "into" women's rights but can the death of a fetus that would
not survive if removed from the mother logically be termed "murder"?

And conversely, babies born after 24 weeks are now regularly saved. But
others are aborted after 24 weeks. Granted, it's not common - but what
should it be called?

Abortion. The termination of a pregnancy before a child is born is, by definition, an abortion. Legislatures have decided at what point in gestation an abortion amounts to a homicide or at least when it justifies some enhanced penalty for the assault on the mother. In Oregon, for example, you can't be convicted of murdering a human before it is born. https://www.oregonlaws..org/ors/163.005 There is an enhanced penalty for assaulting a pregnant woman. https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/163.185


BTW, you're right about the Catholic charities. I'm not sure if the church has any doctrine requiring the support of orphaned children, but they do have a long history of running orphanages -- for better or worse. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...nage-reactions Catholic charities, and in fact all religious charities combined, provide a tiny fraction of all social services. I'm all for charities, but when Trump suggested that federal welfare could be assumed by charities, that was debunked in about a second.

-- Jay Beattie.