Mother Teresa: "The Greatest Destroyer of Love and Peace..."?

[Saint Frankenstein]

I don't see that. There women who have had an abortion and go on to have children later on, and our able to love those children.
It doesn't destroy love and peace in a board sense like mother Teresa was making out that it does.

I've known people who have gotten abortions and regretted it very deeply. One girl, in high school, was very upset and in tears telling me about how she regretted her abortion every day.

How does that promote using any form of violence to get what you want?
Has legal abortion increased the rates of violent crimes or something?

Because abortion is a violent act against a living being.

 

[Daemon Sophic]

.......
1) Do you think there's any merit to the notion that abortion is a destroyer of love and peace -- let alone the greatest?

2) Is there any truth to Teresa's statement that abortion teaches people to use "any violence to get what they want"?

This thread is about those two questions and only those two questions. Please stay on topic.

No. and No.

I believe that @Mestemia , @Valjean , and @Ingledsva have stated most of my thoughts on this topic.
Also, I would lump birth control in with abortions, only as a demonstration of the odd conflation many U.S. conservatives show between fetuses and children/babies. Almost all forms of birth control do not prevent fertilization, but rather simply prevent implantation of the fertilized egg into the uterine endometrium. Therefore, in the conservative's mind, since life begins at conception (unlike the biblical statements), then birth-control = abortion.

And as far as miscarriages are concerned. Yes, they are nature's (or God's if you wish) abortion clinic. Which, per Mother Teresa (who was a very good person by the way) would make God itself the "greatest destroyer of love and peace" throughout the world. Undeniably.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Separation, being autonomous - no longer being in a symbiotic relationship with the mother's body, = personhood, and sentience.

Where are you getting that fetuses in the womb are not sentient? You can argue over the level of sentience, but saying they are not sentient at all is just ridiculous.

 

[Wherenextcolumbus]

I've known people who have gotten abortions and regretted it very deeply. One girl, in high school, was very upset and in tears telling me about how she regretted her abortion every day.

What has individualistic regret after having an abortion got to do with abortion disturbing the peace for society at large?

Because abortion is a violent act against a living being.

Which has a specific context.
Again, how does abortion promote committing ANY type of violence?
Answer: it doesn't!

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

What has individualistic regret after having an abortion got to do with abortion disturbing the peace for society at large?

I didn't claim it disturbs the peace of society at large.

Which has a specific context.
Again, how does abortion promote committing ANY type of violence?
Answer: it doesn't!

I gave the only possible example I could think of - someone using it as a form of birth control, like getting knocked up and having multiple abortions. I guess rapists, especially incestual ones, could use it as a way of covering up the evidence of their crimes, but I think that may be getting outside of the scope of this discussion.

 

[Wherenextcolumbus]

I didn't claim it disturbs the peace of society at large.

I gave the only possible example I could think of - someone using it as a form of birth control, like getting knocked up and having multiple abortions. I guess rapists, especially incestual ones, could use it as a way of covering up the evidence of their crimes, but I think that may be getting outside of the scope of this discussion.

So therefore mother Teresa was wrong.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

So therefore mother Teresa was wrong.

Yeah, when speaking in generalities like that. She was a pretty Medieval, old-school sort of Catholic so her making statements like that wasn't out of the ordinary (like her rather discomforting statements about suffering).

 

[Ingledsva]

Abortion is only a symptom- an effect- of the destruction of love and peace.

Actually it is an effect of thousands of years of Patriarchy, and women deciding they've had enough of men controlling them through sex and reproduction.

There would not be an issue if they continued contraceptive studies that actually prevented a sperm from entering an egg, = no pregnancy.

It would also help prevent such if men would take more responsibility, and use some form of contraception too, at the same time as the woman, = double the protection.

And back to patriarchy, - and countries where women are owned and have no right to say no to sex, and also have no access to contraceptives because of Patriarchal religions.

*

 

[Ingledsva]

Where are you getting that fetuses in the womb are not sentient? You can argue over the level of sentience, but saying they are not sentient at all is just ridiculous.

If one reads the full encyclopedic definition, - sentience is tied to the ability to perceive unique experiences

Fetuses under around three months don't have this. They have auto responses. And we don't really know when after that they start to actually perceive.

This is why we have the compromise in the USA of abortion up to around three months, but not after, unless it is a life or death situation.

Perhaps I should have said sentience and sapience.

*

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

If one reads the full encyclopedic definition, - sentience is tied to the ability to perceive unique experiences

Fetuses under around three months don't have this. They have auto responses.

This is why we have the compromise in the USA of abortion up to around three months, but not after, unless it is a life or death situation.

Perhaps I should have said sentience and sapience.

*

Okay. That is reasonable.

 

[savagewind]

From that quote it doesn't seem like she cared about the reasons why women have abortions. She felt it promoted violence.

I don't think most women who abort their life within consider it might be a violent act. I think it might sometimes be like removing a bad tooth. They were taught that an embryo is not a person. I applaud the organizations which actually educate people about it.
I think that people who lay guilt on the women are not any better than any other sinner.

 

[McBell]

From that quote it doesn't seem like she cared about the reasons why women have abortions. She felt it promoted violence.

She was against abortion and used the most effective tactic she could must to fight against it...
Appeal to emotion.

 

[Valjean]

Where are you getting that fetuses in the womb are not sentient? You can argue over the level of sentience, but saying they are not sentient at all is just ridiculous.

They have no comprehension of time. no sense of self or other. With neither self-awareness nor anticipation of futurity they have no self-interest. These are sine qua non of personhood.
What moral consideration is owed non-persons?

 

[Sleeppy]

Actually it is an effect of thousands of years of Patriarchy, and women deciding they've had enough of men controlling them through sex and reproduction.

There would not be an issue if they continued contraceptive studies that actually prevented a sperm from entering an egg, = no pregnancy.

It would also help prevent such if men would take more responsibility, and use some form of contraception too, at the same time as the woman, = double the protection.

And back to patriarchy, - and countries where women are owned and have no right to say no to sex, and also have no access to contraceptives because of Patriarchal religions.

*

Patriarchy is as much a shallow term as matriarchy.

You do point out ignorance, which I would argue, precedes most other catalysts in any governance, self-governance included.

 

[Ingledsva]

Patriarchy is as much a shallow term as matriarchy.

You do point out ignorance, which I would argue, precedes most other catalysts in any governance, self-governance included.

What? We have thousands years of actual patriarchal history, - continuing right up to today.

*

 

[Sleeppy]

What? We have thousands years of actual patriarchal history, - continuing right up to today.

*

Of course. But, are you implying that men simply are not able to govern with womens' rights in mind?

 

[Satyamavejayanti]

"Sunstone, post: 4660018, member: 499"]“By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. … Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.” -- Mother Teresa.

Namaste,

No wounder she worked in a heavily populated city in India, Pretending to Help, like other "Good Intention", Christians.

1) Do you think there's any merit to the notion that abortion is a destroyer of love and peace -- let alone the greatest?

Me personally, No. Because i just don't see a correlation. Are there any places where abortion is legal which can be shown to have less "Peace and Love", compared to a place where there is no abortion?.

2) Is there any truth to Teresa's statement that abortion teaches people to use "any violence to get what they want"?

IMO probably not. On the contrary weren't there violence committed against abortion clinics somewhere? did those people use "any violence to get what they want", and what they wanted was to harm abortion clinics.

Dhanyavad

 

[Prestor John]

1) Do you think there's any merit to the notion that abortion is a destroyer of love and peace -- let alone the greatest?.

I feel that this notion has a lot of merit.

A human infant is one of the most vulnerable things in this world. An infant, simply for being, should inspire feelings of gratitude and safeguarding in a person more than any other thing.

Now imagine something that is even more vulnerable than an infant, so vulnerable that it cannot survive independent of the body of one of the two participants in its creation.

The forced ending of a person's life is the greatest violation of a human being's most basic rights to life and happiness.

War is not horrible because of the destruction to the landscape, architecture or economy. It is horrible because it takes lives away.

Murder is not horrible because it robs the market of another consumer or a nation of a citizen. It is horrible because it disregards a person's basic right to life and possible happiness. Another human being makes the decision to act outside of his/her natural abilities to give/sustain life and instead destroys it. It is against the nature of our bodies.

I would say that to destroy something so vulnerable for no reason other than convenience can potentially destroy a person's ability to love and may affect their peace of mind.

2) Is there any truth to Teresa's statement that abortion teaches people to use "any violence to get what they want"?

I would agree with this statement.

 

[Agondonter]

“By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. … Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.” -- Mother Teresa.

Personally, the shallowness of the notion that abortion is the greatest destroyer of love and peace grates on me like nails screeching across a chalkboard grate on some folks. I wince at it.

But I have two questions:

1) Do you think there's any merit to the notion that abortion is a destroyer of love and peace -- let alone the greatest?

2) Is there any truth to Teresa's statement that abortion teaches people to use "any violence to get what they want"?

This thread is about those two questions and only those two questions. Please stay on topic.

Yes and yes.

 

[Valjean]

I feel that this notion has a lot of merit.

A human infant is one of the most vulnerable things in this world. An infant, simply for being, should inspire feelings of gratitude and safeguarding in a person more than any other thing.

People should be grateful for all sorts of things, vulnerable or otherwise, but, as we all know, gratitude and moral consideration are petty circumscribed in most people. Nor are we talking about infants. We're talking about foetuses.

Now imagine something that is even more vulnerable than an infant, so vulnerable that it cannot survive independent of the body of one of the two participants in its creation.

I'm imagining a tapeworm....

The forced ending of a person's life is the greatest violation of a human being's most basic rights to life and happiness.

Yes, but the whole argument here revolves around what constitutes personhood. The features that define personhood are largely absent in foetuses.
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