FReepmail me to subscribe to or unsubscribe from the SCOTUS ping list.
Posted on 03/23/2014 8:19:43 PM PDT by Olog-hai
The U.S. Justice Department is telling the Supreme Court that killing a human embryo by preventing the embryo from implanting in his or her mother’s uterus is not an “abortion” and, thus, drugs that kill embryos this way are not “abortion-inducing” drugs.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby. The crux of the administration’s argument in this case is that when Christians form a corporation they give up the right to freely exercise their religion—n.b. live according to their Christian beliefs—in the way they run their business.
It is in the context of this case, that the administration is making its argument that killing an embryo seeking to implant in his or her mother’s womb is not an abortion.
The dispute involves a regulation that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued under the Affordable Care Act. This regulation says that virtually all health insurance plans must cover, without any fees or co-pay, all FDA-approved “contraceptives.” …
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
How does one “kill” without being alive first?
Even if they are correct as they define the words, that is irrelevant. As the owners of Hobby Lobby define the words, an embryo is a person, the drugs they are ordered to pay for kill that person, and the owners of Hobby Lobby have a religious objection to killing people. Whether or not an action violates Obama's allegedly Christian values is irrelevant to whether government compelling a real Christian to perform the same action is a violation of the First Amendment Free Exercise Clause.
Next from the DOJ: Murder is nothing more than a late term abortion.
You cannot point at *any* event and say that is the start of life, because there is no such point. Life began billions of years ago, and we all exist on the continuum of that original life. The sperm and egg are alive before they fuse to become a zygote. As a scientist, I have grown millions, maybe billions of human cells for experimentation in the lab. They are alive. They are human. They are not, and will never be, human beings. In some cases, they even form higher level structures very much like tissues in an intact organism. But this low level of differentiation is not sufficient to make those cells into a person.
I see a number of things that people almost worship, which are hardly even significant. They worship the fusion of sperm and egg, as if cell fusion is some magical event--it is not. Any two cells can fuse. Also, it is possible to take stem cells and induce them to start embryogenesis--without any kind of fusion event taking place. A person resulting from that process would still be as human as anyone else. They worship the new mixture of DNA, as if it is something really special--it is not. Unique configurations of DNA are all around us, and mean quite little as far as personhood is concerned. If a thousand people were cloned from identical cells and all had identical DNA, they would still be separate people regardless of their lack of uniqueness.
I can go on and on, because I have observed first hand that human + alive does *not* equal human being. The defining attribute of a human being is that it has a nervous system that enables it to sense and interact with the world around it. The time that occurs has been thoroughly observed and documented. The nervous system starts to form with the folding of the neural tube at 3 weeks after conception, and sometime between 3 and 5 weeks, that nervous system takes over control of the body and begins sensing and responding to its environment. At that time, what was merely human and alive and not significantly different than the millions of cells I have grown for research becomes a human being.
FReepmail me to subscribe to or unsubscribe from the SCOTUS ping list.
Yes, but it was Jeb that killed Terry
What is it about the right to life that is so hard to understand? Human life begins at the moment of conception.
Perhaps you could back of the science and consider common sense. When a sperm and egg unite, a process begins - a natural process that, if not interrupted, will result in a baby. This cannot be disputed.
I wonder how many anti-abortion Freepers are using the abortion causing drugs in question.
So, what, besides a human embryo, could that ball of cells possible develop into?
You might be an ex-Dem, but you're still thinking like a DemocRat.
On that point, they are correct. It is not abortion. It is murder. It in infanticide. And on Judgment Day, those who practice it will be judged accordingly.
Oh, I agree — and this is the reason that they push the ex-felon's disbarment of arms — it conditions people to think of the right as something that may be legitimately abridged by law.
therefore rights cannot be lost except by becoming truly criminal.
I disagree, for the most part. There are some people here who make assertions like prisoner-rape is part of their sentence, that they lose a right to security [or self defense] by virtue of being convicts.
Yes, that ought not be part of “punishment”.
Then again, when contrasted with Biblical principles, we let far too many criminals live, and our prison system is way too large of a public expense.
The SCOTUS will find against Hobby Lobby. They’re simply a branch of government. Furthermore, the question of the limits of religious liberty was determined by the SCOTUS back in 1878.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._United_States
They doubled down on it in 1890, also indicating how far a majority could go to deprive a minority of its rights.
That gets us to today.
But they do not have the characteristics I described in post #31. Sperm and ovum do not have a unique DNA sequence. They don't even have one complete DNA sequence and they can't replicate their own cells. Those are the defining characteristics of a discrete individual living being and the type of DNA defines the type of being. Those characteristics come into existence at conception.
The current situation is worse, and the precedent should not control the decision. LDS permitted polygamy, while FedGov mandated at most monogamy. Monogamy was not a direct violation of LDS doctrine. Many Catholic and evangelical Christians consider abortion to be morally a type of murder. Mandating that Hobby Lobby’s owners and other Christians pay for murder is very different from prohibiting an action that is religiously permitted but not religiously required, such as polygamy. [I hope.]
Fortunately, this is in the hands of Chief Justice Roberts. What could go wrong?
There is nothing special or magical about that. It's just autonomic nerve function. Even the nervous system of a corpse can be stimulated.
We know that Adam became a living soul only upon God’s breath of life into him. Prior to that Adam wasn’t a living soul despite being fully formed.
So most “conceptions” don’t end in pregnancy. It’s estimated that some 75% of these end in miscarriages that the mother is unaware of.
After implantation nearly 1/3 of pregnancies end in miscarriage. So clearly, implantation is a critical step. Without it and the nutrition it brings the fetus cannot sustain life. God is a god of reason. It is reasonable to believe that a fetus becomes a living soul some time after implantation. Particularly given the importance of being born, baptized, etc. per the Scriptures.
It is further reasonable to believe that a baby becomes a living soul at some point around 3-5 weeks, given what we know about gestational development. It would be logical that a thinking, feeling human would become a living soul at that point. Just like Adam did.
4/5 of miscarriages occur before 12 weeks. It’s my understanding that the Catholic Church has renounced Limbo and that all pre-born deaths send the child directly to Heaven. Is that true?
We as a nation have to pick a point after which abortion is not allowed. Conception is too early, demonstrably so, and we don’t have a strong national consensus to limit abortion to that time. 20-22 weeks is medical viability, though still fairly difficult.
I believe you could find a national consensus for limiting abortions to before week 20. Then you’d see a state by state movement to lower that down to 12 weeks, with additional limitations on a state by state basis. Certainly, abortion should be treated as a surgery, outpatient, but to the same standards as any other medical procedure.
Many children who are born don't make it to adolescence.
Same logic.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.