Conclusive proof that the Catholic Church is stupid.

[BigBen]

^If you were a mother pregnant heading into your second trimester and you found out your baby had down syndrome or something worse would you abort it? Consider the difficulties you would have in raising the child and the quality of life the child would have (average IQ of a person with downs is 50-60). :icon_ninja:


^away from the hypothetical, its not a "human yet" is very valid. What defines a human? A beating heart? Ability to think? Animals all show these traits. What seperates animals from humans? The ability to think and communicate with complexity with consciousness and with feeling. Can a foetus do that? No. Will it be able to do that? It doesn't matter, it isn't able to currently.

If its going to harm the mother mentally or physically i see no harm in giving her the choice to abort it.

Ironslave, i thought ud have a better outlook on this topic then "everything has a right to life".

I disagree with that, their is no argument whether it is human or otherwise. When the sperm and the egg are separate their is no third party present at that time, it would be as if the woman went through her cycle and did not conceive. Once the egg has accepted the sperm a third party exists. This third party cannot be classified in essence as anything but human. The third party came from two humans and the result is a third human in essence. In form, which is the shape of what the essence exists in you can call it a cell or tissue or a fetus, they are all names for the different stages of growth cycle. But what exists in that form is 100% human. No one can make an argument against the essence of humanity in a pregnancy between two humans. You cant argue that two humans had sex and what the woman is currently pregnant with has the essence of a cow because it does not. Or that what she is pregnant with has the essence of something undefined, because that first cell is human in the form of a single cell.

 

[tim290280]

I disagree with that, their is no argument whether it is human or otherwise. When the sperm and the egg are separate their is no third party present at that time, it would be as if the woman went through her cycle and did not conceive. Once the egg has accepted the sperm a third party exists. This third party cannot be classified in essence as anything but human. The third party came from two humans and the result is a third human in essence. In form, which is the shape of what the essence exists in you can call it a cell or tissue or a fetus, they are all names for the different stages of growth cycle. But what exists in that form is 100% human. No one can make an argument against the essence of humanity in a pregnancy between two humans. You cant argue that two humans had sex and what the woman is currently pregnant with has the essence of a cow because it does not. Or that what she is pregnant with has the essence of something undefined, because that first cell is human in the form of a single cell.

I understand the point but disagree.

I stated above that this new life hasn't become life outside of that supported by the mother. If the mother is sick, injured, not healthy, etc, etc, etc pregnancies will abort, naturally!! So it isn't a new life as such because the function of life is yet to be fully fledged. Premature babies and incubators are showing that there is a certain stage that the fetus has to reach to be a sustainable life.

It isn't about it being human or life of whatever. It is about the fact that without the mother that life is meaningless (please no-one go into the mother philosophy stuff ). If the birth can still be naturally terminated by the mother's own body (still birth anyone?) then you are counting your chickens before they are hatched, literally.

 

[El Freako]

They're still fucking retards...

Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'

Pope Benedict XVI, who is making his first papal visit to Africa, has said that handing out condoms is not the answer in the fight against HIV/Aids.

The pontiff, who preaches marital fidelity and abstinence, said the practice only increased the problem.

"A Christian can never remain silent," he said, after being greeted on arrival in Cameroon by President Paul Biya.

The Pope is also due to visit Angola on his week-long trip, where thousands are expected to attend open-air Masses.

Some 22 million people are infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, according to UN figures for 2007.

This amounts to about two-thirds of the global total.


HIV/Aids is a tragedy that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem

Is Catholicism good for Africa?
According to Vatican figures, the number of Catholics in Africa has been rising steadily in recent years.

Baptised Catholics made up 17% of the African population in 2006, compared with 12% in 1978, the Vatican says.

Pope Benedict said on the eve of his trip that he wanted to wrap his arms around the entire continent, with "its painful wounds, its enormous potential and hopes".

HIV/Aids was, he argued, "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem".

The solution lay, he said, in a "spiritual and human awakening" and "friendship for those who suffer".

Speaking at the airport in Cameroon's capital, Yaounde, the Pope called on Christians to speak up in the face of violence, poverty, hunger, corruption and abuse of power.

Sexual abstinence

While in Africa, the pontiff is expected to talk to young people about the Aids epidemic and explain to them why the Catholic Church recommends sexual abstinence as the best way to prevent the spread of the disease.

He gave a similar message to African bishops who visited the Vatican in 2005, when he told them that abstinence and fidelity, not condoms, were the means to tackle the epidemic.

The BBC's Caroline Duffield, in Cameroon, says people in Yaounde have been energetically sweeping and cleaning everywhere in preparation for Pope Benedict's visit.

The Pope meets an imam in Yaounde
The Pope also met an imam from Cameroon's Muslim minority

The Pope will stay until Friday in Yaounde, where he will meet bishops from all over Africa who will be taking part in a meeting at the Vatican later this year to discuss the Church's role in Africa.

In Angola, which is still recovering from 27 years of civil war, Pope Benedict will meet diplomats posted in Luanda and is expected to urge the international community not to abandon Africa.

The pontiff is also due to hold private talks with political leaders in the two countries, both of which have been accused of corruption and squandering revenues from natural resources.

Do you think that if the Pope was about to be raped by a man who was HIV positive and he had the choice of whether his attacker would use a condom or not he would still say they were wrong?

Pope says condoms are not the solution to Aids - they make it worse

The Pope courted further controversy on his first trip to Africa today by declaring that condoms were not a solution to the Aids epidemic – but were instead part of the problem.

In his first public comments on condom use, the pontiff told reporters en route to Cameroon that Aids "is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems".

Pope Benedict has previously stressed that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against Aids. The Vatican encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease.

After his election as Pope, Benedict described Aids as a "a cruel epidemic which not only kills but seriously threatens the economic and social stability of the continent", but reiterated the Vatican ban on the use of condoms.

He said the "traditional teaching of the Church" on chastity outside marriage and fidelity within it had proved to be "the only sure way of preventing the spread of HIV and Aids".

The Pope, who will also visit Angola, is making his first trip as pontiff to Africa, the continent where the Roman Catholic Church is growing fastest.

Two years ago there was speculation that the Vatican might amend its ban on condoms after Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the former Archbishop of Milan, said that in couples where one partner had HIV/Aids, the use of condoms was "a lesser evil".

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan of Mexico, the Vatican Health Minister, also said condoms could sometimes be exceptionally condoned, for example when a married woman was unable to refuse her HIV-positive husband's sexual advances.

"You can defend yourself with any means," he said. A subsequent Vatican study of the issue reiterated the blanket ban on condoms, however.

In 2003 a senior Vatican official claimed condoms had tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass, exposing thousands of people to risk.

The then head of the Vatican Pontifical Council for the Family, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, said: "The Aids virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the 'net' that is formed by the condom."

He added "These margins of uncertainty... should represent an obligation on the part of the health ministries and all these campaigns to act in the same way as they do with regard to cigarettes, which they state to be a danger."

The World Health Organisation responded at the time by saying that "These incorrect statements about condoms and HIV are dangerous when we are facing a global pandemic which has already killed more than 20 million people, and currently affects at least 42 million."

The WHO said that "consistent and correct" condom use reduces the risk of HIV infection by 90 per cent.

Jerkoffs.

 

[Ironslave]

yeah i saw this yesterday.... I had no idea the pope was an Epidemiologist or physician qualified to give this advice.

Very stupid.