What’s Wrong with the World

Doesn't this bestow upon them a degree of infallibility a Pope could only dream of?

Sort of like transubstantiation in the realm of facts.

Have we sunk so low as to make room for this blathering opportunist.
Are not facts weighed in light of principles?
Cast aside your principles, religious beliefs, and by all means cede the field.
Bill, bright as always, the Great Interrupter.

"6. If O'Reilly is against abortion (and I think he tries to be), and the rest of us adopted his argument, wouldn't we lose it from the outset?"

"7. O'Reilly doesn't like to be hung with political tags, but most people would probably say he leans more conservative than liberal. To which I say: not when it counts."

Bill, American opposition to abortion is largely based on emotion and is a mile wide and an inch deep. O'Reilly's "opposition" reflects that. I understand that your opposition is deeply principled but you are in the minority.

So, what's the upshot of all of this supposed to be, from Bill O's perspective? Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided? That sounds like it follows from what he says about colonial times. But if justices of the SCOTUS can create facts by their opinions, why can't they also create facts about what the 14th amendment protects?

If Bill O really means to be stating some kind of originalist opposition to Roe v. Wade, great as far as it goes, but in that case he shouldn't bluster about justices of the Supreme Court.

As for its being absolutely a fact that an unborn child is a potential human being, I don't even know where he thinks he's going with that. Is that supposed to be a scientific fact--that it's a potential human being but not a human being? Gosh, I never knew science could detect something like that. And is the idea supposed to be that even if Roe were overturned abortion shouldn't be made illegal by the states?

Am I trying to make this all into some sort of coherent position, when it really is just meaningless soundbites from Bill O?

4. I didn't know Supreme Court justices could turn opinions into facts. Doesn't this bestow upon them a degree of infallibility a Pope could only dream of?

This is what the entire process of constitutional law has become. According to many, including some of the commenters on this site, the Constitution simply means whatever the Supreme Court says it means. For example, if the Supreme Court were to rule that the 2nd amendment means that only the Army can have firearms, well, suddenly that's what it means (even though it explicitly uses the terms militia and people).

Politics and law being what they are, there is no need for divine intervention for a layman to be able to stand as an intellectual equal to the Supreme Court itself on these matters.

al: American opposition to abortion is largely based on emotion and is a mile wide and an inch deep

American opposition to abortion is based on the fact that a fetus is genetically a living human being (not a "potential human" as BOR states) and the fact that abortion ends that life.

"American opposition to abortion is based on the fact that a fetus is genetically a living human being (not a "potential human" as BOR states) and the fact that abortion ends that life."

OK. then you need to explain the vote last November in Colorado when the voters had the chance to amend their Constitution to reflect that. It failed big time. It even failed to carry, by a wide margin, the Colorado Springs area. The most it got was 45% in a small, rural, heavily Mormon and Catholic county. It lost by a 40% margin and in some counties with over 80% opposition..

You all have a problem here and Bill O's incoherence reflects that.

What is truth?

Al, d'you suppose that the failure of the CO amendment might, just possibly, have had something to do with the perception that the exercise would be futile because the SCOTUS would strike down any actual cash value legislation protecting the unborn as unconstitutional according the U.S. Constitution?

OK. then you need to explain the vote last November in Colorado when the voters had the chance to amend their Constitution to reflect that.

It's very simple. A majority of the voters were wrong then like they were when they denied blacks their legal and moral rights.

I'd have to go with al on this one. Most people are squeamish about abortion, but not so squeamish that they would do anything about the status quo. Just squirt a few tears about the Three Exceptions (life-of-mother, rape, incest) and watch most meaningful opposition evaporate.

Pro-life support for the Colorado amendment was not unified, in part for reasons Lydia suggests. Major players, including the Catholic bishops, won't get behind it because it could trigger an even worse SCOTUS decision, and also because you'd need 60-70% support for people to start respecting the law and demanding its enforcement.

Roe v. Wade didn't settle the abortion debate, it stalled it. When it's overturned, the debate will be much less theoretical.

Thanks, Kevin.

To me there's something unpleasant in Al's question. The left sets up court decisions that, unless defied, make it impossible to defend the unborn, then they sit back and make cynical comments about our supposed "shallowness" because we don't defend the unborn. In other contexts that would be called sadistic--like tying up a man's legs and then asking him why he doesn't run.

Am I trying to make this all into some sort of coherent position, when it really is just meaningless soundbites from Bill O?

He thinks the soundbites add up to a "coherent position." He thinks his way of arguing the matter a sophisticated one. So yes, you'd be doing him a big favor if you could make it so.

His appeal to the Supreme Court kind of took me aback. We all like to have authorities to back us up, but his "potential human being" mantra is theirs. He may want to help the little ones, but as long as he's willing to throw over the moral authority of Christian tradition in favor of the Supreme Court's, he'll end up riding Roe v. Wade into a blood-red sunset.

I understand that your opposition is deeply principled but you are in the minority.

I don't mind this, as it applies to me only, but I'm sorry for the unborn.

Opposition to abortion is based on the fact that a fetus is a person, but support for abortion is more complex. The strong pro-choicers simply don't care if it is a person for various reasons, and some even admit this. Here's an interesting quote I read in a book last night on the abortion question that made some interesting points I'd never considered. It's very thought provoking and I thought I'd see what others thought.

In her recent study, Abortion: The Politics of Motherhood, Kristin Luker concludes that the political issue of abortion is not an argument about "facts," the point at which life begins, but about the meaning and the value of motherhood. Women with education and economic skills can feel comfortable with the demands for career and individual life-styles that the new Feminism prescribes. Those who lack the education and economic skills find themselves highly dependent on the moral commitments, personal gratifications, and social esteem which marriage and motherhood convey. The conflict over abortion, although real, is also a ritual drama about what values in American life are dominant and which are to remain degraded and devalued. In this sense the status of the conflicting groups is also at stake in the political struggle. --Symbolic Crusade, Joseph R. Gusfield, 2nd edition, pg 203-5

Mark, that quotation makes me feel sorry for us poor, dependent, uneducated or economically unskilled pro-life women who don't "feel comfortable" with the high demands feminism. (Cough, cough.)

(If I felt more creative I'd write up a parallel one about the pro-abortion feminists who don't feel comfortable with the demands of motherhood and are highly dependent on the sense of social self-esteem and equality with men generated by their careers.)

Bill, does O'Reilly supposedly want abortion to be illegal, or not, or does he just never say? I've never really paid much attention to him, so I don't know what his stated position is or if he has one.

Ms. Luker is certainly right that the issue of abortion has something...hmmm...something to do with how much one values motherhood. It also has something to do with the facts (not "facts" in quotation marks): e.g., that a pregnant woman is already a mother.

Yes Lydia, it is bizarre to put facts in scare quotes, though that was Gusfield quoting her. I read it a little differently, though I'm not sure what you really said because I'm puzzled by your attribution of "uneducated" to yourself.

Well at least I think it is true that from the pro-abortion side it isn't about when life begins. The same is true at the end of life. People will accept or at least not deny personhood and still deny these persons have any right not to be killed.

does O'Reilly supposedly want abortion to be illegal...?

I think so. He makes noises in that direction. But now that you mention it, I can't recall him saying so explicitly.

Mark, I read the quotation as summarizing a feminist article that not-so-subtly implies that pro-life women hold their position out of some sort of need for motherhood to boost their self-esteem, while feminist women can handle the world of careers. The article appears, from the quotation, to be downplaying the importance of when life begins, not because Luker argues a Judith Jarvis Thompson position that it's okay to kill the child even if he is a person but rather because of a postmodern feminist position that facts are really "facts" that we manipulate for political purposes--in this case, the "needy" pro-life women (who, Luker evidently implies, lack education) using the supposed facts of when life begin against the strong, confident, feminist women.

Bill, in that case, I can't quite figure out O'Reilly. Maybe he thinks it should be illegal to kill merely potential persons?

Al: "I understand that your opposition is deeply principled but you are in the minority."

William: "I don't mind this, as it applies to me only, but I'm sorry for the unborn."

Well said, Bill. I, however, might take it somewhat more personally. I was born in 1961 to an unwed mother and adopted at 4 months. My sister, ditto, in 1963. Had I been conceived in 1981 instead of 1961 (ditto my sister with her dates) there's a good chance that neither of us would be here, and therefore, neither would my daughter or my sister's three sons.

I too feel sorry for the never-born, especially when I consider that I might very well have been one of them.

On another note, it might be interesting to take Al's quote and apply it to slavery, desegregation, ethnic cleansing or the Holocaust. At certain times and places opposition to all those things was a "minority" view. Al, being a good liberal, should know that the majority isn't always right. But I fear that modern liberals have no problem with the tyranny of the majority provided they're part of that majority.

O'Reilly is a bit like like several "Catholic" politicians....in that his level of catechesis is shallow in some areas. It would seem that he is compartmentalizing his faith so that it does not inform ALL of what he does. You would think that the author of a book, titled CULTURE WARRIOR, would be more informed about the far-reaching direct/indirect effects of relativism and the influence of our cultural milieu.

Catholic Dictionary–

FETICIDE. The direct killing of an unborn child. It is always murder and therefore gravely sinful. (Etym. Latin fetus, the young in the womb + -cidium, a killing.)

Catholic Catechism

Abortion

2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.72

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.73
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.74
2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:
You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.75
God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.76
2272 Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae,"77 "by the very commission of the offense,"78 and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law.79 The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.
2273 The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation:
"The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin. Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being's right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death."80
"The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined. . . . As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child's rights."81
2274 Since it must be treated from conception as a person, the embryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed, as far as possible, like any other human being.
Prenatal diagnosis is morally licit, "if it respects the life and integrity of the embryo and the human fetus and is directed toward its safe guarding or healing as an individual. . . . It is gravely opposed to the moral law when this is done with the thought of possibly inducing an abortion, depending upon the results: a diagnosis must not be the equivalent of a death sentence."82
2275 "One must hold as licit procedures carried out on the human embryo which respect the life and integrity of the embryo and do not involve disproportionate risks for it, but are directed toward its healing the improvement of its condition of health, or its individual survival."83
"It is immoral to produce human embryos intended for exploitation as disposable biological material."84
"Certain attempts to influence chromosomic or genetic inheritance are not therapeutic but are aimed at producing human beings selected according to sex or other predetermined qualities. Such manipulations are contrary to the personal dignity of the human being and his integrity and identity"85 which are unique and unrepeatable.

Mr. O'Reilly is flat out wrong

Sort of like transubstantiation in the realm of facts.

Dear Lydia. Transubstantiation would be a great topic in here and I imagine it'd generate a few responses.

On another note, it might be interesting to take Al's quote and apply it to slavery, desegregation, ethnic cleansing or the Holocaust. At certain times and places opposition to all those things was a "minority" view. Al, being a good liberal, should know that the majority isn't always right. But I fear that modern liberals have no problem with the tyranny of the majority provided they're part of that majority.

According to them, we are to believe it is sick and immoral to allow blacks to be sold as property at auction and live their lives as slaves, but it is a moral right for a black woman to regard the black child in her body as a thing to be disposed of according to her whim. Once can only conclude that their morality and thinking here is either purely relativistic or just plain stupid.

Though I suppose that may be unfairly presented as an inherent dichotomy...

OK. then you need to explain the vote last November in Colorado

Just squirt a few tears about the Three Exceptions (life-of-mother, rape, incest) and watch most meaningful opposition evaporate

The explanation: most opposition to abortion is based upon emotion/feelings, which, in a morally weak/ignorant populace, often trumps reason.

About six years ago I called into The O'Reilly Radio Show and I was put on the air. As succinctly as I could, I corrected this persistent heresy of his about the fetus, rapidly citing Catholic Tradition, Magisterium, and the Catechism etc, before he dumped my call and labeled me a bomb-throwing extremist.

As to what O'Reilly really believes, who knows? There is a website that claims he is pro choice and anti death penalty.

http://hamsandwich66.blogspot.com/2008/12/bill-oreilly-leaves-radio-air-waves.html

I don't watch him anymore so I dunno. I stopped watching his show years ago. But, I do know he is very uninformed and ill-formed when it comes to Catholic Doctrine

Mark, I read the quotation as summarizing a feminist article that not-so-subtly implies that pro-life women hold their position out of some sort of need for motherhood to boost their self-esteem, while feminist women can handle the world of careers. The article appears, from the quotation, to be downplaying the importance of when life begins

Lydia, I didn't read it that way, but I understand now on reflection I should have added a summary of what I think it meant from the context of the book. I don't think I'll do that now just since maybe it will take us off-topic. In context, which I see now I should have provided, I don't think he is downplaying the importance of when life begins, and is rather bringing out a possible side of it just like he did with slavery in the book. Anyway, maybe for another time. Sorry for the confusing comment.

Just squirt a few tears about the Three Exceptions (life-of-mother, rape, incest) and watch most meaningful opposition evaporate

The same might be true for euthanasia. "Would you want to live like that!!!!" It doesn't make it right, and the fact is most people would rather adapt to their diminished circumstances rather than die when the choice is real so it is the bravado of the healthy anyway.

I understand that your opposition is deeply principled but you are in the minority.

Minority? SCOTUS has trumped popular will since RvW so this is a strange claim to make. If a liberal pro-abortion regime were a majority wish, there would be no need to impose it from above.

Opposition to abortion is based on the fact that a fetus is a person, but support for abortion is more complex. The strong pro-choicers simply don't care if it is a person for various reasons...

If it's not about when life begins, then it's about which life has more value. A million pro-choice reasons for supporting abortion do not add up to even one complexity, since it all boils down to the same thing: a baby may be killed to protect some greater value. Call it the consequentialism of the masses.

Maybe he thinks it should be illegal to kill merely potential persons?

Looks like we're back to incoherence.

Had I been conceived in 1981 instead of 1961 (ditto my sister with her dates) there's a good chance that neither of us would be here, and therefore, neither would my daughter or my sister's three sons.

The inability of so many to see that if your worth is not to be found in your beginning then you have none at all is indeed astonishing. But that it's not is apparently obvious to millions. And that's what O'Reilly is saying, though I don't think he knows it.

al: OK. then you need to explain the vote last November in Colorado

You said that opposition to abortion was shallow and emotional and I said it had to do with human life and its preservation. How does the fact that the majority of voters last November in Colorado didn't oppose abortion have any bearing whatsoever on my argument?

al, belief in the value of one's own life is an inch deep and a mile wide. Yes, no? And as the Colorado Springs area goes so goes the nation, and the history of the country, and a moral belief in life, and intelligence and a civilized, humane regard for what could be children., and what might be called empathy, the civilized belief and hope for the lives of other humans, the binding that above all makes us a people .
All Gone? Good old Colorado Springs, and who needs our human past?
What can you do, destruction is fun. But we still have al, and all the rest.

Look, we know that Bill's quasi-relativist talk is quite shallow. We also know that he is not speaking according to Church teaching. The real problem is that we have people like this who represent conservatism and are considered to be a face for it (whether Bill admits it or not, many Americans consider him an exemplar of the conservative Catholic).

What we should really be complaining about is the fact that this guy represents conservatives. We already know he's wrong.