IS THE BAN ON ABORTION IN RELIGIOUS CIRCLES REALLY ABOUT LOVING THE MOTHER AND THE UNBORN BABY?

The Roman Catholic Church says that doctors must never perform an abortion. They cannot even delegate other doctors who have no conscientious objections to abortion to do it for them. That is a sin too. This an alarming interference by the Church in the medical profession and shows how it is willing to force continued pregnancy on women.

Do you think people are right to suspect that the ban on abortion is based on religious bigotry disguised as love? Here is an example of that mentality. Three true Catholics, Fr Kevin Doran, Sr Eugene Nolan and John Morgan, who were members of the Mater Hospital Board in Dublin managed to stop trials of a drug for lung cancer patients at the hospital. They did so on the basis that females taking the drug were required to use contraception in case they would get pregnant.

The Vatican likes to be seen as a paragon of pro-life virtue doesn't it? What would happen if people knew what happened during the civil war in the Congo in 1966? Black soldiers occupied many Catholic convents and some of the white nuns were left pregnant by them. The Vatican organised that these women be given surgeries for various problems - in fact the surgeries never happened. What really happened was abortions were performed on Vatican instructions. This was covered up.

From the Catholic perspective, Ivan at Medjugorje was told by the Virgin Mary that aborted babies become angels. Is abortion really that serious of a sin then? She has virtually never condemned abortion in her hundreds of messages given since 1981. The claims that she did once or twice hardly count and she is speaking to one visionary so it is really just hearsay. Is it really God’s business what we do? It cannot do him any harm as he is all-powerful and all-happy.

The Church likes the story of how God said he would not destroy evil and violent and barbaric Sodom and Gomorrah if there were a handful of righteous people there. Yet it permits war where there will be a huge loss of unborn life! And life which it says is the only true innocent life!

Even if abortion were a major sin it does not justify the Church levying an excommunication against Catholics who have abortions or who procure them. Little girls who were compelled to have an abortion and who were not doing it freely were still excommunicated.

The Church says abortion is such a great evil that if a girl plans a secret abortion you must tell the father or her parents and encourage them to stop her. Hide her car keys. This is gross interference in the business of another. The Church never stops women being sent to prison for having an abortion. No pope has been on their side.

The foetus is part of the mother and has no potential to live apart from her. Life by itself does not establish a right to life. A kidney may be killed. A woman has a right over her body but is it enough to forbid abortion? Is banning abortion bad in so far as it has to pass over her right to her own body? It is possible that abortion considered on its own is a very bad thing. But it is made less bad and even tolerable on the basis that the woman's body is important too.

Men have responsibility for the foetus but not the right to make decisions about its future. A foetus unlike one of us adults does not have a concept of its future and will not undergo horror that its life is going to be taken. Very few consider a woman rejoicing over her miscarriage as being on a par with a woman who is delighted that her newborn dies. The Church doesn't either though it would lie and say it does.

It is total lunacy to put the life of an unborn baby who isn't viable before the life of the mother who is. It is like saying you should risk a person's life by taking their organs to keep a person alive who is dying and who will still be dying after the transplants.

What if during IVF or the use of fertility drugs too many embryos implant in the womb? Do we want to deprive the woman of the right to have one or more embryos removed? Is it better to remove them at an early stage than to be faced with the huge risk that the babies will have to be delivered non-viable later and die?

Ectopic pregnancies need to be ended. The embryo will not live and the mother will die if it continues. Medications can stop and end ectopic pregnancy. They work by killing the embryo. The Church does not like to hear of any of that for it shows its abortion ban is just insane. Abortion cannot be always wrong! What about directly removing the embryo during an ectopic pregnancy? This is forbidden though it is best for the woman. If there were some reason why the tube cannot be taken away which indirectly kills the baby, the Church forbids direct removal. The mother will die. Think of the principle and how cruel it is. Can you believe in the good will of people with principles like that?

The newly fertilised egg is said by the Church to be a person as much as a grown-up is. Is it one individual? It has the power to become twins. Are we two people at conception? Is killing the zygote killing two people or what could be a million people if nature allowed it to divide that much?

Can the Catholic Church be trusted when it says science says that abortion is never necessary to save a life and cannot quote any peer-reviewed medical science journals to justify its assertion? The Church steals the role of science.

World over-population will sentence many people to a horrible existence and death. Has abortion done a lot to delay the over-population catastrophe?

Anti-abortionists like anti-same sex marriage campaigners say they worry about a slippery slope. But we are already on the slope. Being on the slope has the advantage that you can see how the law permitting something is being abused and you can address those abuses.

A woman has an abortion. The "baby" is gone. Any pro-life person is not taking this alleged murder very seriously by saying, "What is done is done! It is time to focus on the girl." So in a sense they are on the slippery slope anyway.

If you are anti-abortion and pro-life, then you are not helping your cause by trying to give the Catholic Church credibility by being a member of it. If you are a member of a religion you have acquiesced your right to disobey that religion in its teachings regarding faith and morality. You are giving it credibility by staying on the membership list and are giving away your own credibility if you dissent from it in a way it has forbidden. The reason the Catholic Church is better at getting people to become pro-choice than pro-life is because of its self-righteous smug attitude and hypocrisy. It is hypocrisy to forbid the killing of an embryo that barely knows it is alive and to allow the killing of adult animals for they are more advanced.