The things one finds on a stroll down memory lane!

http://cardinalpole.blogspot.com/2008/11/more-on-sinister-relationship-between.html

Late last year I published a couple of posts on the relationship between the Parliamentary Group on Population and Development (P.G.P.D.) and the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance (A.R.H.A.). In that context I quoted a comment at The Australian's letters blog from an abortionite, one Iris Ashton. I mention this because after finding, in my blog's abortion tag, a reference which I needed for the post before the one which you're reading now, I thought I'd just have a bit of a browse through some of my old posts while I was there, a little stroll down memory lane, I suppose. Lo and behold, I came across a comment from the same Iris Ashton at one of my P.G.P.D./A.R.H.A. posts. Why had I not noticed this earlier? Because, oddly, the comment was submitted almost six months after I published the post! In fact, I had thought that comments were automatically disabled after less than such a considerable length of time, but there you go (and that's got me wondering how many other delayed responses are tucked away in the archives here). Here is how I respond to that comment (quotations from her comment first, in small type, then my response, in normal type):

I know Senator Moore personally and know that she is an intelligent, kind and humane Christian lady whose only thought in the matter of abortion is to save people, including the fetus, a life of pain and suffering.

A person can be saved from a life of pain either by relieving the pain, or by killing the person in pain. The latter option is not what I would call intelligent, kind, humane or Christian. The duty to minimise human suffering does not override the duty to preserve innocent human life.

I found your analysis of my comments skewed by religious dogma.

I found your advocacy for abortion skewed by nihilist dogma.

If, as you believe, we are completly dependent on God, is He not a kind and loving God who gave us free will?

Yes, God is kind and loving and gave us free will. The fact that someone freely wills this or that doesn't make it right or wrong though, so why have you mentioned this?

Nowhere in my letter did I mention the 'burden' on society of a deformed or disabled child

Nowhere in my blog post did I say that you did. Let's be clear: I observed, correctly, that an aversion to dependence was one of the themes in your original comment. Some people might, without any great leap of logic, take such an aversion even futher than you do and call into question the rights of the elderly or infirm who live in a condition of dependence, but I never said that you did--though you did speak, of course, of the burden on the family.

I also gave no opinion on the subject of euthanasia, especially as "being a way of 'freeing the infirm from being a burden on society", which I personally find to be a disgusting comment.

I never said that you gave an opinion on the subject of euthanasia, and I find such comments disgusting too. For instance, I found it digusting that euthanasia advocate Lady Warnock in the U.K. said recently that

... I feel there's a wider argument that if somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die because they're a burden to their family, or the state, then I think they too should beallowed to die.

"Actually I've just written an article called 'A Duty to Die?' for a Norwegian periodical. I wrote it really suggesting that there's nothing wrong with feeling you ought to do so for the sake of others as well as yourself."
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2983652/Baroness-Warnock-Dementia-sufferers-may-have-a-duty-to-die.html]

You see, Ms Ashton? The notion of 'freedom from burdening society' is not a straw man raised by the pro-life movement, it's a conclusion which follows without great difficultly from an aversion to dependence and a corresponding exaltation of autonomy, and is invoked by the pro-euthanasia movement. (Please do check that link, by the way, in case you fear that I might have taken Her Ladyship out of context. That ellipsis is where she talks about euthanasia being supposedly justified in cases of severe pain before she goes on to talk about the burden-to-others justification, which is what we're interested in just now so we can ignore the first part at present.)

the deformed fetus to be aborted is just that...a fetus, not a living, breathing child. If allowed to be born it then becomes a child and has my deepest sympathy on it's condition.

Why? What is the transmogrification which occurs during the child's passage from the womb to the outside world? What is the essential difference between, if you will, a t-minus-five-minutes baby and a t-plus-five-minutes baby? (I don't mind whether you or someone else from the pro-abortion movement answers me, I just hope that someone does, because I'm desperate to know.)

I found your comments to be not only offensive, but devious, inhumane and bigoted.

You believe that a baby is disposable until someone decides to 'allow' him or her the privilege of being born, but I'm the one who's offensive, devious, inhumane and bigoted?!

If I could finish with this reminder: as I point out at the right-hand side of this webpage, comments are not moderated, so if you have made a comment on an older post (by "older post" I mean roughly one which is no longer on the cardinalpole.blogspot.com main page), then please draw it to my attention.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Augustine of Hippo, Bishop, Confessor, Doctor of the Church, A.D. 2009