Cardinal Odilo Scherer #fundie

Cardinal Odilo Scherer #fundie nst.com.my

[Article about Brazil allowing abortions for fetuses lacking brains]

On Wednesday, protesters from several religious orders came to the court to pray, surrounded by images of fetuses and the patron saint of Brazil.

“The anencephalics are living human beings... Society, through its institutions, should foster full respect for their human dignity and their fragile and short lives,” wrote Cardinal Odilo Scherer in an editorial condemning abortion that was published in the media.

119 comments

old comment by Anon

>>His4Life

This is sad and tragic. From what I've read, there have been capses of anencephalics living for days or even months after birth, providing the family time with their child that these abortionists would take away. <<

They are not "with their child" in any conventional sense. Without a forebrain, there is no child in there, nobody to feel anything. And as tragic as it is, that does not change.

Quoting Wikipedia's sources: 55% of anencephaly cases do not survive birth, and the vast majority of the remainder die very soon thereafter. Although there are cases that have survived for up to 2.5 years (the "Baby K" case), that was only with nearly-continuous artificial ventilation, hydration, and feeding. But a low probability of longer-term survival is not an argument against aborting anencephalic fetuses. The normal procedure if a case survives birth is to provide palliative care and to not resuscitate.

Nobody is suggesting forcing abortion on women who are carrying anencephalic fetuses. It is simply a necessary option, a choice. The fetus is not likely to survive birth, even less likely to survive the next few days, and is incapable of ever thinking. If a woman chooses to spare everyone the pain of experiencing that, you should not hold it against her - or against the doctor that helps her.

That said: make sure you get enough folic acid. The rate of neural tube defects is a lot higher in women who don't have enough in their diets.

old comment by Osiris

@His4Life: You don't seem to understand that this is a brain dead, deformed, perversion of a baby. You'd have better luck consoling yourself with a harlequin fetus, at least it's screaming torments shows some vestige of life. I really believe you don't comprehend the horror of what you want to force on people for no good reason, so allow me to enlighten you.

image

Notice the completly flat head that ends right at the eyes, that's because this thing is literally born without a brain. Literally, not figuratively, it has no brain at all and is dead the instant they cut the umbilical cord. At this point, the mindless, arbitrary nature of random chance is less cruel than insisting some intelligence wanted to inflict this on you. If I where a woman who squeezed this thing out of my vagina, I wouldn't be overcome with joy, I would want to know what I did wrong for God to curse both my and my genetic legacy with this abomination.

old comment by ScrappyB

@Osiris - Did you have to post that fucking picture? It's going to give me nightmares.

The part of the fetus that develops into most of the brain and the top part of the skull never develops. All they have is a brain stem. They may live for a few minutes or a few hours, but they are not and will never become a person.

Anencephaly doesn't cause any additional risks to the mother, so that's not really an issue.

Some people choose to continue the pregnancy, but it's not something that society should force on them. It should be their choice.

Anencephalics may look like a baby from the eyes down, but they lack the organ that makes us what we are.

old comment by LDM

What would priests and cardinals, who forsake family life for their "calling", know about the painful decisions parents, and parents to be, must sometimes face anyway? Their not the ones who have to watch these babies suffer and die with anguish in their hearts.

@His4Life-
Several years ago, my cousin found out early on in her pregnancy that her baby was severely malformed and would, at best, live only a few hours after birth. She chose to abort rather than suffer through this, was pregnant again a couple months later and had a beautiful, healthy baby girl, who would not be here today had she not "taken the easy way out" and carried what was basically a dead baby walking to term.

Even her fundie brother was glad she did it. A few hours was a dead mass of cells is not worth the price of a lifetime with a happy healthy daughter.

old comment by Jockaira

Cardinal Scherer has confused a complex slab of meat with a live, feeling, conscious, human being...what an insult to humans!

In the Cardinal's theologies what does this say about the omnipotence and omnibeneficence of his god who looks over everybody and provides for them in every way? Does his god have lesser consideration for the anencephalic, the mother, and the family...or does he actually care?

Perhaps his god's sadism is beyond our simple human comprehension.

Would you wish this god upon anyone else, or even your worst enemy? If you would, then get thee to the nearest church and tell the priest, "Father, I want to be saved. Bathe me in the Blood of Jesus."

old comment by Indikins

@ His4Life:
Please go to Google Images and look up 'brainless baby', or scroll up the page and look at Osiris' picture. Thank you. Now, please read the rest of my post.
When they say 'brainless baby', they are not being figurative. They mean brainless LITERALLY. As in, LACKING AN ACTUAL BRAIN. The time spent with such a 'baby' will be time spent in a hospital, staring at a horribly deformed, likely unreponsive...thing. It will be traumatising because it will not be a real baby capable of emotion or sensing your presence, and because that THING was growing inside your belly. And it will DIE very soon. An abortion, should you choose to have one, would spare you the pain of seeing it and learning of its death, which would happen no matter what you did.

But then, I'm guessing you don't have a womb, so you couldn't imagine the horror of seeing a deformed alien pop out of your nether regions. ):

@ Osiris:
Holy night terrors, Batman!

old comment by Anon

>>His4Life

I guess my problem here is that modern people are always looking for an easy way out. ...[therefore we shouldn't allow people the option of aborting fetuses that are not viable]<<

That is an incredibly stupid argument. Taking an "easy way out" is not a bad thing. You and I are both alive right now because of easy ways out - vaccination campaigns, the Green Revolution, antibiotics, airbags, and on and on.

I do not care what you assert is a gift from God. What I care about is reducing human suffering. And in the event of a woman wanting to abort an anencephalic fetus, to save herself and everyone around her pain, I will respect her judgement.

>>Even though the child may not have long to live, those precious moments the mother could spend with it are irreplaceable.<<

Echoing everybody else here: an anencephalic fetus is not a child in any normal sense.

It is no more a human being than I would be if somebody blew the top half of my head apart with a bullet and by some chance my heart kept on beating. In that case, my wife and my advance medical directives both would say to take any organs that somebody else could use and cremate the rest.

old comment by Wehpudicabok

You'd think the Onion had written this. It's getting hard to tell parody from reality anymore. Seriously, guys? We can't abort something that doesn't have a brain? I suppose a zero percent tax rate is too high, and people should be abstinent until they have children, right?

Let's take right-wing talking points to their logical conclusions... and then even further past that. I bet I can think of some others. Oh, I know! Not only make all pornography illegal, but make that include anything suggestive of sex, including kissing! DISNEY IS NOW PORN. Also: burn all books that don't have the world "Bible" at least twice per page. (This includes the Bible.)

old comment by ScrappyB

I don't think you can count an anencephalic baby as alive. Sure, it's alive in the biological sense that it eats and breathes and whatnot, but it's never going to be concious. It's just that normal babies aren't terribly responsive for the first month or so either so some people delude themselves into hoping for some kind of miracle that will make their child whole. And even if they do manage to hang on for awhile, what then?

An anencephalic baby will never talk. Never recognize anyone. Never think or feel. Never eat or move around on its own. Never have emotions. Never return your love. It's like a breathing potted plant in the shape of a kid with nothing above the eyebrows. What kind of life is that? It's not a life. It's merely an existance.

old comment by J. James

His4Life, your argument is downright sociopathic. How could you?! You are literally arguing that people should be FORCED to carry this abomination because of the PLEASURE it brings them, being with the "baby". What. The. Fuck.

First of all, not everyone is as sick, twisted and perverse as the people in the examples you gave. Almost everyone would be MORTIFIED, if not irreparably damaged, by being forced to deliver that... Thing, then watch as that horror is kept "alive", extending the trauma out, until it dies. You people constantly fucking tout the "damage" abortion supposedly does to mothers, but LOOK AT YOU being such a HYPOCRITE.

Second, you treat this travesty not as something completely unnecessary and avoidable, but as something you MUST go through, lest you become some horrible "modern" person who takes the easy way out. Good lord, woman, do you listen to yourself?! You might as well say that all of medicine is wrong and we should just fucking suffer and die rather than opt for the "EASY WAY OUT"!!

This thread shows aspects of your character that are absolutely horrifying. You advocate such authoritarian, indescribable evils by slapping a perversely saccharine, nurturing face on it. You are a monster, truly, if this is what you really believe.

old comment by Anon

>>ScrappyB

@ #1394969

I know, that's why I said 'additional.' It is no more or no less risky for the mother in the physical sense than a normal pregnancy would be.<<

It is actually slightly more risky to the mother. Over half of anencephalic fetuses die before birth. A stillbirth poses slight health risks to the mother (she's carrying a mass of dead tissue in her uterus until labor sets in), although they are not high.

The indicated treatment is of course to induce labor, unless it has started already.

>>His4Life

ScrappyB, so now you're judging it based on appearance? You make God want to run and throw up. <<

Please stop telling God what to do. You do not speak for God, unless you are declaring yourself to either be God or be a prophet. You speak only for yourself and your own opinions.

old comment by His4Life

Danarth, I am well acquainted with suffering. I came out of an abusive marriage and was literally homeless for two years. While all of us could always use more empathy, I believe I do have a strong sense of caring for other people. In this case, I am seeing a lot of empathy for the mother (which is reasonable) but no empathy for the child or what it has to go through being born this way. Also, to all of you, please stop and look at the words you are using. "Monstrosity." "Abomination." These terms sent chills up my back when I first saw them here and I am seeing them more and more now. These are the very same terms that people in the dark ages would have used to describe hunchbacks, dwarves or other physically deformed people. Once we start of thinking of human beings as "monstrosities" or "abominations," we have lost all sense of humanity and we are well on our way to adopting a mentality like that of Nazi Germany. I sincerely pray that this is not really how any of you would think about your fellow human beings, made in God's image. Let's all pause and turn the temperature down on this debate, please.

old comment by Danarth

@His4life

I call bullshit on that. The lack of empathy you display on various subjects is telling.

As for the supposed lack of empathy for a child born with no brain? That's equally telling. What is going to happen? The child will be born with no brain, no autonomous functions, no future. How could it be kind to let a child with absolutely no future and no chance of a life be born? That's just cruelty.

As for the mother? She will go through the pains and possible complications of birth, just to see a child that will fade away before long. I wonder, can you imagine the pyschological and emotional impact that would have on not only the mother but the father too?

I doubt it. you live in your God blinkered universe where the suffering of real people takes a backseat to the bronze age laws and rules of your supposed god.

As for the whining and bitching about people using the terms monstrosities and abominations to describe other human beings..Well, I wonder who it is who uses those terms to describe people who are homosexual?

So, in conclusion, His4life. you are full of shit.

old comment by J. James

@His4Life

Dwarves and hunchbacks are fully human. They have brains. They feel, love, care, and weep just like the rest of us. But when I said that a mother being forced to go through the dangerous, unspeakable agony of labor in order to birth a dead thing that was never, at any point, alive or human, I called that an abomination. Because it is. No person should EVER be subjected to that kind of suffering against their will. It's torture, plain and simple. But for using that term, calling it an abomination, and calling you a monster for advocating such inhuman acts, you labeled me a Nazi.

Get back to me when you actually have the moral high ground to label me a Nazi, you horrendous, sadistic thing, you. If you truly have known suffering in your life, it makes it all the more egregious and monstrous that you would force it upon other people. It shows that you have no empathy, and empathy is no small part of what makes us human.

old comment by Anon

>>His4Life

And yet in the two examples I gave, the child clearly had a partially developed brain and survived outside of the womb. It smiled, laughed, ate and was able to feel pain. <<

Those cases were not total anencephaly, so using them as examples is not valid.

Also, your sources are biased and I do not consider them to be reliable. My reasoning: normal infants exhibit laughter beginning around 4 months of age; with the total lack of higher brain function in these cases, saying that there was laughter at less than 3 months is very implausible. I have no intention of trivializing the pain that the women in those two cases have been and are going through. But they are saying things that did not happen.

And I notice that you are not addressing even a fraction of the objections that have been raised against your statements, or admitting your factual mistakes when they have been clearly pointed out to you.

old comment by ScrappyB

"And yet in the two examples I gave, the child clearly had a partially developed brain and survived outside of the womb. It smiled, laughed, ate and was able to feel pain."

I know I'm wasting my time, but...

As far as laughter goes, I'll bet you dollars to donuts they were random noises the mother convinced herself was laughter. Babies with normal brains don't even laugh that early. It's like how the mother was deluding herself into posting the baby was 'advanced' for her age because she could sit up at only a few days old. You know why most normal babies can't sit up at that age? Because they don't have the muscle tone to hold up the weight of their head. Obviously for this baby that wasn't an issue.

I sincerely doubt they were able to feel pain either, since the part of the brain that processes pain never developes. It was just reflexes. Like how if you touch something hot, the signal travels to the spine, which causes your hand to jerk away before your brain even registers you've been burned. No brain required.

As for the rest, those are autonomous functions. They are controlled by the brain stem with no conscious thought. People who are in a vegetative state due to trauma or illness can breathe and digest food. They even smile, make noises and flail around. The lights are on, but there's no one home. Even these people are better off than anencephalics. For them, there's a microscopic chance they could heal and improve. For anencephaly, there is no chance at all because there's nothing to heal.

We're not talking about someone who is merely physically deformed or developmentally disabled. Anencephalics have no higher brain functions. No future. No understanding. No conciousness. No hope. The ability to process thought is totally beyond them. I do have empathy for them in the sense that if it were me in the same situation, I'd rather not have been born in the first place.

If the parents think it's the right thing to carry the fetus to term, that's fine. If they think it would be too traumatic and want to abort, that should be fine too.

old comment by Danarth

@His4life

Seems that the joke about Conservatives of your ilk thinking people have a right to life until they leave the womb has some basis in reality.

You also don't seem to understand the difference between a fetus that doesn't develop a brain and one that posseses only part of a brain.

One has to presume you are either blinded by your religion or you are a dolt.

Apart from that, you still show your utter lack of empathy by the fact you are ignoring, rather utterly, the need for a person to have a quality of life rather than just a right to life.

A fetus that grows with no brain will have 'no' quality of life, no life at all. It beggers belief that you are unable to recognize this.

What does one honestly do by letting such a fetus develop? Emotional distress, potential health risks, potential pyschological tramua?

It's hardly a secret that you derive your opinions from your narrow religious belief, so I find it sickening that the words of your bible and supposed god trump quality of life.

But, you aren't going to listen to any of this.

old comment by Canuovea

His4Life,

Anencephalics are born without any brain whatsoever, those examples given had a portion. There is a difference very very important difference.

Anencephalics do not experience anything, they physically cannot. Hence, they do not actually go through being born that way. They never were. Never were conscious and never were alive any more than I would be if you severed my head and pumped artificial blood through the rest of my body. The brain dies, the person dies. The brain was never there? The person was never there.

As such, we can't really have empathy for them, because we cannot put ourselves in their place. It is impossible. We cannot imagine, or even grasp, never having been or ever being able to be. We may be able to intellectually process such a thing, but to imagine what it could be like? Impossible.

Additionally, your argument shifted (I believe), from how the experience of birth would benefit the mother to how there needs to be empathy for the child. Probably because you recognized that the idea was about forcing mothers to give birth to anencephalics.

The only real question, then, is "do you believe a person fully without a brain to be alive?" My answer is no, because they are never conscious and never experience anything. They physically cannot.

From a religious perspective, one can question whether or not anencephalics would have a soul. Where is the seat of the soul? How does it connect to the body? There have been some who claim that the brain is the case. Though some believe that it inhabits the whole body, in which case, the Anencephalics do have a soul. Are they required to be born in order for the soul to be present? What happens to a soul that experiences nothing? Ever?

old comment by J. James

@His4Life

Ah, yes, so the trump card appears again, those two babies that were supposedly "alive".

First, as Scrappy points out, those examples you gave aren't exactly scientific. It's just a bunch of people seeing what they want to see. And even brain-dead people do respond on reflex, just look at what people swore up and down they saw Terry Schiavo do, but she didn't. Speaking of which, healthy babies aren't exactly that much more active by comparison, relative to an adult.

Second, and most importantly, those examples have absolutely no bearing on anencephalics, because they did have brains, fragmented though they may be. It would be as if we were pointing out that a penguin has never flown, and you charge in saying, "nuh-uh, here's proof that both seagulls AND puffins can fly!" Simply put, you are entirely missing the point.

So instead of debating on whether a literally brainless lump of cells is alive, can we get back to what really matters in this case, which is the MOTHERS, who are clearly and unambiguously people?

Edit: Canuovea scooped me. I guess that means we're both double-correct.

old comment by demodocos

PZ Myers once wrote an excellent article, explaining exactly what anencephaly is about and why it's important:

"There's an important phenomenon in development called neurulation. This is a process that starts with a flat sheet of ectodermal cells, folds them into a tube, and creates our dorsal nervous system. Here's a simple cross-section of the process in a salamander, but in general outline we humans do pretty much the same thing. Cells move up and inward, and then zipper together along the length of the animal to produce a closed tube.

It's a seemingly simple event with a great deal of underlying complexity. It requires coordinated changes in the shape of ectodermal cells to drive the changes in tissue shape, and invisible in simple diagrams to the right are all the inductive interactions going on that trigger the differentiation of the tube into a nervous system.

This is also a relatively early event in humans. It begins about 18 days after fertilization, with a thickening of the ectoderm to form the initial sheet, called the neural plate. By day 19, the edges of the plate thicken and rise, and the whole thing folds at the midline and looks something like an open hot dog bun. The photo below is of a pair of 20 day old human embryos; the midline seam is open and clearly visible. [...]"

READ ON

old comment by Anon

>>His4Life

A matter of fact, I have a certificate in prophecy from my church.<<

That is entirely irrelevant to this discussion, and also almost entirely irrelevant to my more general point that you do not speak for God. It's a logical fallacy called "argument from authority".

I phrased things badly before. There are two distinct statements: "You speak for God" and "You say you speak for God". The latter would be true if you asserted that you were God or were a prophet. However, the latter being true does not at all imply the former (i.e. why should we believe you and not all of the other people who claim to be prophets? And, no, that certificate by itself does not count)

>>I wasn't prophesying when I said God was sickened by what he sees on this board; that was my opinion, but it was based on His word. <<

Then you are either writing things that are unclear (either deliberately or inadvertently), or you are engaged in another logical fallacy. This one is known as "moving the goalposts". i.e. you first said "God is X". Now you say "I think that God is X". See how you changed your statement to avoid being wrong?

And you still have not provided any reason why a mother who is carrying a fetus that has no brain should be forced to carry it to term and endure entirely unnecessary physical and emotional pain, including a ~0.02% chance of death due to complications late in the pregnancy as compared to a ~0.0006% chance of death due to the abortion (using current USA maternal death and abortion side-effect rates as reported by the CDC - maternal death rates in Brazil are a factor of six to eight higher). Forcing all women who have an anencephalic pregnancy to carry them to term would kill one woman every ten years in the US without there being any more children; allowing such abortions in Brazil will save at least one woman a year without there being any fewer children.

You have said that abortion is always wrong. How many women would have to be dying easily preventable deaths for you to change your mind?

old comment by Anon

>>His4Life

Anon, I don't know. How many fetuses would have to die easily preventable deaths for you to have to change your mind? <<

I would prefer that everybody (women, men, and any other categories that we may want to make) had easy and free access to effective contraceptives, and used them unless they were actively trying to have a child. This is the only effective way to reduce the abortion rate - banning abortion doesn't decrease the rate and leads to lots of women dying from unsafe abortions. If all abortions were to be outlawed in the US again, something like 3000 women per year would be dying preventable deaths (once again, you can find the relevant references via Wikipedia).

But that is irrevelant here. You are trying to employ another logical fallacy - this one is known as "false dichotomy".

An anencephalic fetus will die, and die without ever having any awareness of anything. It has no brain. No brain means no person. Medical intervention for the sake of the fetus is futile.

>>I never said that abortion is wrong if the mother's life is in jeopardy.<<

I interpreted your comment here http://fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=68454&Page=2 to mean that you were opposed to abortion even in the case of ectopic pregnancy. If I have misunderstood your statements, I am sorry.

But you still haven't answered my question. What level of risk to the woman is acceptable? Remember, in these cases the status of the fetus is irrelevant, because medical intervention is futile. Are you insisting that the women risk an extra 0.02% chance of dying just to appease your religion? If it were ~0.14%, like it is in Brazil? If it were ~4%, as it is for an untreated ectopic pregnancy? If it were 80%, as it is for pregnant women who contract Lassa fever?

(for both ectopic pregnancy and Lassa fever, the fetus' odds of survival are very low, so the medical futility argument still applies).

>>But look at those two blogs I posted. The women in both are alive and well, and so is the fetus. <<

For about the sixth time: those cases are not the same as the cases that are being considered here. Also, "well" is not a good description of what those women have been through.

>>The certificate just means that the congregation recognizes you as holding the biblical office of prophet.<<

Your congregation does not count as an independent review board. And if you were really a prophet, you could get an easy million and a quarter US from James Randi, or predict the lottery numbers and get ten million, so I am not inclined to believe you.

old comment by J. James

Suddenly, a lot of what His4Life does makes total sense. She's a Prophet. An honest-to-God Prophet, you guys! That would explain the sense of entitlement, the uncompromising refusal to admit wrongdoing, the sociopathic "moral" edicts she issues, the judgmental way she proclaims people murderers and Nazis, the insistence that she is right despite being shown to be wrong COUNTLESS TIMES, and of course her outrageous, flaming hypocrisy.

Oooh, this is too cool. I can't believe she hasn't brought this up before! I'm going to refer to her only as the Prophet from now on. Seriously, how often do you get to interact with an ACTUAL FRIGGIN' PROPHET OF THE LORD?! This has boundless potential.

"Hey, Cody, did you hear that I told a Prophet of God a she is a cruel, sociopathic bitch? No, really, I totally did!"

"Ma'am, I don't care whose prophet you are, you were going forty-five in a school zone."

"You ever wonder what would happen if a Prophet of Yahweh got into a heated argument with a bunch of progressives and atheists? CHECK THIS SHIT OUT!"

Cardinal Odilo Scherer #fundie nst.com.my

119 comments

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