#665 - Peace & Life: Embryos Don't Make It? - June 9, 2023
So Many Embryos Don’t Make It –
What Does That Mean?
One argument on abortion that sometimes comes up is the idea that large numbers of fertilized eggs don’t succeed in implanting or don’t stay implanted for very long and flush out of the mother’s body without her ever having known she was pregnant. What percentage of the time this happens once the egg is fertilized varies – it’s a rather hard thing to study – but the idea is that this can’t really be accounted as a human being if so many of them don’t develop.
But the principle of not killing applies: If large numbers of human beings die at a very young age, it doesn't follow that it's all right to deliberately kill them. Any more than the fact that very few of us make it to the age of 100 means that it's ok to kill us.
Or that wars can be justified by the fact that tornados and hurricanes happen.
Quotes to Share?
You can see that our quotes of the week cover a wide variety, from classical things said years ago to articles published just last week. Most are from consistent-lifers, but we might publish a quote that’s excellent from a consistent-life viewpoint even if the person saying it isn’t consistently pro-life/pro-peace at all. And occasionally we’ll even do a seamless shroud quote – someone who connects the issues as we do and therefore makes a point we’re interested in, but who favors the connected violence.
If you know of any good quotes to share with the consistent-life community, please send them to CLNeditors@googlegroups.com.
Our Latest Blog Post
Jacqueline H. Abernathy expounds on the theme of where U.S. partisan politics goes awry in The Deserving and Undeserving Poor vs. the Worthy and Unworthy of Life: How Both Major Political Parties Pick and Choose Who They Help and Whom They Kill. Though focused on the major parties in the U.S., the same principles can apply to major parties in several other countries.
Quotation of the Week
Charles C, Camosy
Church Life Journal, July 12, 2022
Let us imagine an alternative U.S. American timeline in which, during the years following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, wealthy white racists who objected to school desegregation funded legal challenges to the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of race. Further suppose that a major Supreme Court case struck down the racial provision . . . Then suppose that virtually everything else stays the same . . . over the next 50 years — except that militant segregationists . . . eventually gained full control of the Democratic Party . . .
Now, one could imagine that some 2022 progressives in this alternative timeline would say things like: “Criminal law isn’t the way to handle this difficult issue. There’s always been racism and segregation. If you make it illegal, segregation will still happen but in a more deep and entrenched way. We need to address the underlying social causes of this problem before protecting the civil rights of people of color.” And then they would appeal to concerns about candidates and judges with objectionable views on other issues . . . Here is the bottom line of the ask: “Let’s support Democrats over Republicans and work to make segregation unthinkable.”