Time Immortal

…but some commenters are…crazy.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/09/11/mtl-turcotte0911.html?ref=rss&loomia_si=t0:a16:g4:r4:c0

Two in a row say that Jean-Claude Turcotte either should not have been given the award (if so, then so should not evry other person appointmed by that committee) or should have been stripped of it.

Another argues that human babies in the womb are not more important than born humans (they are not — all humans are of equal, high dignity) and goes on to claim that they are not as important as those killed in ‘back alley abortions’¹. The poster mentions ‘hundreds’ of such women while neglecting the fact that over 100 thousand babies are killed due to abortions. I say killed only because I wish to speak within the current legal framework, although each direct abortion is morally akin to murder, with certain mitigating factors such as compulsion lessening but not eliminating culpability. As a result, the poster is claiming that unborn babies are worth, AT MOST, 1% of a born woman. Even giving generous numbers for back alley victims — in the 10 thousand range — would yeild a value of one tenth. If one thinks an unborn child is worth, say, half as much as an adult, abortion on demand is a moral tragedy, let alone if one thinks mother and baby are of equal worth. Henry Morgentaler apparently saved countless Canadian lives (the ‘hundreds’ or even ‘thousands’ of women from back alley abortions) but since there are a finite number of women in Canada, they can be counted, as can the number of Canadians killed because of abortion (to the tune of 100 thousand unborn Canadians a year).

As to the Church wanting ‘barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen’ women, that does not follow from an apreciation for the feminine genius and for, arguably, the only thing which one sex (female) can do that the other cannot — carry children in pregnancy. (I think that everything else has at least an analogue in both sexes — competition in sports, management of organizations, contribution of gametes — and any differences are only of degree, not kind (lifting 700 pounds versus 400 pounds, for example)). Just because the Church promotes that which is unique to femininity (and to masculinity) and the particular ways in which, aside from pregnancy, one sex has greater ease or proclivity with certain aspects (say, empathy or spatial orienteering), but not the monopoly on said aspects (men can be very empathetic, women great in spatial thinking, even if women tend to have greater empathy and men spatial ability (whether they do is an empirical question which I do not have an answer for, but I am using these as illustrative exampels only)), does not mean that She wishes to determine the life course of individual people. (Holy run on sentence, batman)

That She prescribes and proscribes various actions as praiseworthy or blameworthy does circumscribe an area in which our actions can describe a moral life or not. But, I would think that the church would say that a couple comprised of a wife who was a successful lawyer, say, and a husband who was quite nurturing and worked part time in a school to help children with early literacy and was otherwise a househusband would be perfectly alright. That the woman would have to take some time off of work for children is not the Church’s fault and the Church would actually ask that her employer support her in her journey of motherhood with leave and employment guarantees. That is the way She would approach mothers-to-be, not by admonishing them to return to the kitchen and their husbands to ‘man up’ and get ‘real’ jobs. The Church supports the uses of the gifts of the husband and wife to the betterment of their family and of society, however that may come about. She simply reminds us that there are some things which nature imposes on us and which we must respect, lest we, say, birth control our fish to death by lack of reproductive ability through our abuse of our own nature and that of the rest of the world.