(no subject)

[theweaselking]

So there's a Japanese Catholic hospital.

They don't like abortion, predictably, but they have a relatively sensible take on it for Catholics: rather than just working to ban it, they try to actually address the causes of abortion and came up with a novel solution they hoped would reduce both the number of people who want abortions *and* the number of babies who die from being abandoned.

Their solution: "The Stork's Cradle", a place where unwanted newborns could be dropped off anonymously - allowing parents to have their child adopted, and hopefully reducing the number of abandoned babies left in dangerous places, or where they would not be found in time.

It opened last Thursday.

On the first day of operation, they also had their first drop-off: A toddler, approximately three years old, who was only able to tell the police that he'd come there with "daddy", that he'd taken the train with his daddy to the city and that he really didn't know where home was, or what his daddy's name is.

Comments

[anivair.livejournal.com]

See, that's the problem though. What you're saying is that it's the best solution they're willing to make use of.

What they believe is their choice and they need to be held accountable for their own decisions. Much of the time, religious doctrine like this is used to pass the buck. Of course they can believe anything they like, but they still have to be responsible for their own actions, whether god told them they were right or not.

[siouxsyn.livejournal.com]

Imagine for a second that birth control, abortion, infanticide and murder were all exactly the same.

For all we know they are, and all we condom using folks are horrendous mass murders.

How can anyone be "held accountable" for doing what they believe to be correct?

[torrain.livejournal.com]

...through all those external rules and societal constraints and all the merry s--t which actually establishes what people are responsible for and what's not permissable and then *does* go and hold them accountable for what they do?

I'm just theorizing, here. :)

[siouxsyn.livejournal.com]

I don't understand... Are you missing a word or something?

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Nope.

You asked "How can anyone be held accountable for doing what they believe to be correct?" and I answered that they can be held accountable if the social context they're operating in says they're responsible for their own actions.

F'r example, if you're an adult and believe it's correct to raise and clothe and educate your child as best as possible, you are held accountable for the actions you take of your own free will while working to fulfill that belief. If you believe it's correct to blow up abortion clinics, you are held accountable for the actions you take of your own free will while working to fulfill *that* belief.

Note that it doesn't really matter if the actions are *acceptable* to society or not; in general (e.g., discounting children and the insane to certain degrees), if you are a person choosing to act in a certain way, you are held accountable for your actions.

If you meant "How can you justify holding anyone accountable for doing what they believe to be correct?" that's a different question.

[siouxsyn.livejournal.com]

I did mean "How can you justify..." but on greater reflection I do take it back.
Of course there are many things which people do with the best of intentions that they really shouldn't.

I just feel that some other commenters are taking the view that because there are other options they feel to be superior, everyone should take those other options. I'm trying to say that you shouldn't force or expect people to do what they feel is wrong.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

because those things are not the same. the only reason these nut jobs think they're the same is that they are willfully ignorant of the facts involved. most birth control doesn't even let fertilization occur and even the most insipid religious nuts think that life begins at fertilization, not before.