Thursday 24 November 2011

Homicide, Fratricide, Deicide, Regicide, Suicide, Patricide, Matricide, Feticide...

Rorate and Fr Tim have both drawn our attention to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynacologists and their frank admission that abortion amounts to murder because that's what descriptions of taking of life that end in '-cide' are.

Own goal? I would say so...

'Recommendation 6.21:

Feticide should be performed before medical abortion after 21 weeks and 6 days of gestation to ensure that there is no risk of a live birth [...] failure to perform feticide could result in a live birth and survival, which contradicts the intention of the abortion.'

Pelerin drew my attention to this article highlighted at Maria Stops Abortion which includes another horrific dimension to the horror that is abortion. Heaven help us all.

8 comments:

Paul said...

"Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynacologists and their frank admission that abortion amounts to murder because that's what descriptions of taking of life that end in '-cide' are."

Jesuitical in several ways. Firstly, you imply that the RCO 'admit' to 'murder'. They do no such thing, this 'admission' is an inference you have drawn based on their use of the term 'feticide'. Secondly, the suffix -cide does not, as you would have it, mean 'murder', but 'killing'. Please see the OED/Chamber's/any good dictionary for a reference. This much is clear from your own examples: homicide does not mean murder (as Wikipedia notes [yeah, I know, but it's correct in this case]): "Homicide is not always a punishable act under the criminal law, and is different than a murder from such formal legal point of view."; Fratricide just means killing a brother, not murdering a brother; Deicide doesn't exist because the gods are a fiction; Regicide means killing a king, in most monarchic systems this is de facto a crime and therefore regicide would be, by implication, a murder, but at the suspension of the monarchy (e.g. in a revolution) the term merely means killing a king, not murdering a kind; etc etc etc

So, they do not 'admit' that feticide is 'murder'

pelerin said...

Have you seen the tragic story today from Australia when the 'wrong' healthy twin was aborted by mistake. When the 'mistake' was realised the other twin was then aborted. Two more lives lost.

georgem said...

Killing is killing whichever way you look at it.

The Bones said...

Do you have a link for that story?

pelerin said...

Yes it's on the Daily Mail website and the BBC one too.

The Bones said...

Paul

I don't mean to sound uncharitable, but this is a Catholic blog. The nature of the Faith defends unborn life as human life, from conception to death. It isn't a debating forum on whether abortion is the taking of human life or not, neither is it a debating forum on a whole raft of truths that the Church proclaims, so please, on your bike.

pelerin said...

I see that the news about the twins has now reached the French Catholic blogosphere where I learnt that the twins were actually 8 months gestation. It is noticable that the BBC website states 32 weeks which I know is the same but being numerically challenged 32 weeks did not register with me - until I saw 8 months. The Daily Mail does not give the length of the pregnancy at all. Of course we believe the killing of these two babies would be wrong at whatever age - but at 8 months .... The poor little souls would have been the size of my new grandchild born three days ago. How do the medical staff live with what they do?

georgem said...

Even more chilling are many of the comments on this story on the Mail website.
It's hard to understand how both babies were not allowed to come to term.
It is even harder to understand how the medical profession has so inverted its principle of preserving life that it has become the chief perpetrator of destroying it.

The Pope Who Won't Be Buried

It has been a long time since I have put finger to keyboard to write about our holy Catholic Faith, something I regret, but which I put larg...