Fr. Pavone is alive and well, and he's behind the abortion "billboard truck" campaign!

The same is true for the potential person in the womb. The longer it survives its journey towards personhood the greater its potential to be come a person. The greater its potential for personhood, the more foolish it would be to end that journey towards personhood.

It is noteworthy that you have this gestationally-related sliding scale of worth, based on potential. It makes it sound as though you are relying on something extrinsic (time elapsed since conception) and something intrinsic (developmental level of the fetus) to decide how much value the fetus's life has.

You have something in common with the pro-choicers who think fetuses are "potential" humans (but think that fetuses have no worth in themselves) and something in common with the pro-lifers who think fetuses have worth (but think fetuses are more than merely potentially human).

You said that it becomes "More foolish" to abort a fetus as time elapses.

Why would it be more foolish?
Who would be the fool for the abortion taking place at that later time...the mother, the doctor, the fetus, society in general? Foolishness implies a person or people who are being foolish.
What standard of wisdom (non-foolishness) would be broken?

Strident pro-choicers see an antagonism between the fetus and the world the fetus would be born into.
In their minds a particular fetus has no worth to the world unless someone in the outside world determines the fetus has worth. (Like a non-aborting mother).

In their minds a particular fetus/embryo has no worth to the world unless someone in the outside world determines the fetus/embryo has worth.

Oh, I forgot.

People who want to use the fetus/embryo for human experimentation and people who want to use parts of its body to cure other humans think the fetus/embryo has some worth to them. But it is a different type of worth.

Those people find the fetus/embryo human enough to help science, but NOT human enough to be allowed to live. They might say pro-lifers are too judgmental of others, but at the same time they are perfectly willing to do their own judging of the worthiness of the fetuses to live. They are far more meddlesome in others' lives than the right-to-lifers are. They aren't just taking a moral or a religious or a humanistic stand. They are playing God, controlling who gets to live and who must die.

Their sliding scale of value would be based on the uses they can find for the fetus/embryo.

With their sliding scale the fetuses and embryos with the higher value are more likely to be dismembered.
With your sliding scale the fetuses and embryos with the higher value are more likely to get to live.

It is difficult for me to determine what you are asking. Maybe I can answer it this way:

It would be foolish to abort unto intentional death any fetus that could be delivered and survive (unless the life of the mother was somehow put a great risk by the attempted delivery)

I believe that it would be so foolish, that I would vote to make such abortions illegal.

It would be foolish to abort unto intentional death any fetus that could be delivered and survive (unless the life of the mother was somehow put a great risk by the attempted delivery). I believe that it would be so foolish, that I would vote to make such abortions illegal.

Would you say your religious beliefs "caused" your "abortion belief" that a viable fetus should not be aborted except to save the mother? Or is this a decision you arrived at through non-religious reasoning?

I hate hearing the pro-choicers lying when they insist that opposition to abortion is based on religious beliefs. To me, they have it all backwards. To me, the closer a religion comes to opposing abortion the closer it is to facing reality. I don't oppose abortion because a religion tells me I should, but I may (eventually) chose a church partly because I think it is correct in defending the basic right of humans to live.

My religious beliefs (which have changed back and forth through the years) don't determine my continuously anti-abortion beliefs. I simply believe that a human being exists from the moment he or she has enough DNA together to be considered a human.

If a scientist examined the DNA of the embryo/fetus and found that the "developing being" had the DNA of an individual human, that means there is an individual human. It's less intelligent than us and smaller than us and weaker than us. But, if smallness, weakness and mental slowness don't condemn to death those humans who are already born, I don't think those qualities should condemn a fetus or embryo to death.

I only believe in killing for self-defense or defense of others. (You could say that killing a defenseless tiny human does not fit the 'sliding scale' of an eye for an eye.)

My wife and I decided before we had our first child that we would never abort unless her life was in danger and that we would not do the tests for downs syndrome. That was our personal CHOICE.

I'm curious what test that would have been. I wasn't aware that Downs Syndrome tests were available before about 20-25 years ago, and then they weren't widespread.

When I first started watching Crossfire a number of years ago, the hosts were Pat Buchanan on the right and Tom Braden on the left. Every night, Buchanan would simply trounce Braden. Braden was so awful, my friends and I were convinced he was secretly a conservative trying to make Buchanan and the Conservative cause look good by portraying liberals as slow-witted and unreasonable.

I think pcl may be playing the Tom Braden role on this forum.

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.