CBS and Katie Couric et al must be in a panic and rushing to reassure the White House that this is not network policy--re:
Folks, this is the year that we RE-TAKE AMERICA & CANADA
********* Get Ready *********
Keep this going around the globe. Read it and forward every time you receive it.. We can't give up on this issue.
Andy Rooney says:
I don't believe in Santa Claus, but I'm not going to sue somebody for singing a Ho-Ho-Ho song in December. I don't agree with Darwin , but I didn't go out and hire a lawyer when my high school teacher taught his Theory of Evolution.
Life, liberty or your pursuit of happiness will not be endangered because someone says a 30-second prayer before a football game. So what's the big deal? It's not like somebody is up there reading the entire Book of Acts. They're just talking to a God they believe in and asking him to grant safety to the players on the field and the fans going home from the game.
But it's a Christian prayer, some will argue.
Yes, and this is the United States of America and Canada , countries founded on Christian principles. According to our very own phone book, Christian churches outnumber all others better than 200-to-1. So what would you expect -- somebody chanting Hare Krishna?
If I went to a football game in Jerusalem , I would expect to hear a Jewish prayer.
If I went to a soccer game in Baghdad , I would expect to hear a Muslim prayer.
If I went to a ping pong match in China , I would expect to hear someone pray to Buddha.
And I wouldn't be offended. It wouldn't bother me one bit.
When in Rome ......
But what about the atheists? Is another argument.
What about them? Nobody is asking them to be baptized. We're not going to pass the collection plate. Just humour us for 30 seconds. If that's asking too much, bring a Walkman or a pair of ear plugs. Go to the bathroom. Visit the concession stand. Call your lawyer!
Unfortunately, one or two will make that call. One or two will tell thousands what they can and cannot do I don't think a short prayer at a football game is going to shake the world's foundations.
Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek while our courts strip us of all our rights. Our parents and grandparents taught us to pray before eating, to pray before we go to sleep. Our Bible tells us to pray without ceasing. Now a handful of people and their lawyers are telling us to cease praying.
God, help us. And if that last sentence offends you, well, just sue me.
The silent majority has been silent too long. It's time we tell that one or two who scream loud enough to be heard that the vast majority doesn't care what they want. It is time that the majority rules! It's time we tell them, "You don't have to pray; you don't have to say the Pledge of Allegiance; you don't have to believe in God or attend services that honour Him. That is your right, and we will honour your right; but by golly, you are no longer going to take our rights away. We are fighting back, and we WILL WIN!"
God bless us one and all...Especially those who denounce Him, God bless America and Canada , despite all our faults, We are still the greatest nation of all. God bless our service men who are fighting to protect our right to pray and worship God.
Let's make 2011 the year the silent majority is heard and we put God back as the foundation of our families and institutions. And our military forces come home from all the wars.
Keep looking up. If you agree with this, please pass it on. If not delete it.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Planned Parenthood Says Graphic Sex Guide for Youth is a Best Seller
Thursday November 11, 2010
By Seana Cranston, J.D.
NEW YORK, November 11 (C-FAM) - The world’s leading abortion provider is continuing to promote a graphic brochure advocating casual sex among youth. According to International Planned Parenthood Federation, the brochure called “Healthy, Happy and Hot” has become their most popular publication.
Aimed at young people with HIV, the brochure contains sexually explicit language and promotes casual sex with multiple partners, as well as oral, anal, and homosexual sex.
“Some people like to have aggressive sex,” says the brochure. “There is no right or wrong way to have sex.” It encourages young people who might have sex after drinking or using drugs to “plan ahead by bringing condoms.” Another section suggests readers visit family planning clinics for help in preventing or aborting unplanned pregnancies.
The publication encourages youth to keep their sexual activity secret from their parents, as well as visits to family planning clinics. “You should find out whether there are any centers near to you where you can go without needing the permission of your parents or guardians.”
The brochure criticizes countries with laws requiring disclosure of HIV status to sexual partners. Such laws violate the rights of people living with HIV, the pamphlet argues.
Planned Parenthood also distributed the brochure in August at the World Youth Conference in Leon, Mexico.
Originally published in January of this year, “Healthy, Happy and Hot” is now available in a Russian translation. Russia has the second-highest rate of HIV in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, according to USAID.
The Regional President of Planned Parenthood in Europe is Dr. Elena Dmitrieva, a Russian national who also directs the Healthy Russia Foundation. Funded by the United States through USAID, the foundation sponsors an ongoing health project there. Healthy Russia 2020 promotes HIV/AIDS prevention and contraception among youth and other vulnerable populations in Russia. Its self-proclaimed healthy lifestyles program for youth targets people aged 13-19.
Nearly $77 million in US taxpayer dollars went to programs in Russia in 2008, according to USAID’s website. Part of this $77 million enabled family planning and reproductive health messages to reach more than 25,000 Russians.
This comes despite Russia suffering from a demographic crisis. The UN predicts that Russia's population will fall by 23 million over the next 40 years. In response, President Vladimir Putin recently offered $11,000 to reward families who have at least two children.
As C-Fam’s Friday Fax reported earlier this year, a Mormon mother spotted the brochure at a closed-door, girls-only meeting sponsored by Girl Scouts USA at UN headquarters in New York. Since then, Girl Scout chapters around the United States have been roiled in a debate about the connections between Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood. Girl Scouts USA refuses to denounce the brochure and denies the brochure was in the UN room where the young girls met.
This article reprinted with permission from www.c-fam.org
URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/nov/10111106.html
Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.
By Seana Cranston, J.D.
NEW YORK, November 11 (C-FAM) - The world’s leading abortion provider is continuing to promote a graphic brochure advocating casual sex among youth. According to International Planned Parenthood Federation, the brochure called “Healthy, Happy and Hot” has become their most popular publication.
Aimed at young people with HIV, the brochure contains sexually explicit language and promotes casual sex with multiple partners, as well as oral, anal, and homosexual sex.
“Some people like to have aggressive sex,” says the brochure. “There is no right or wrong way to have sex.” It encourages young people who might have sex after drinking or using drugs to “plan ahead by bringing condoms.” Another section suggests readers visit family planning clinics for help in preventing or aborting unplanned pregnancies.
The publication encourages youth to keep their sexual activity secret from their parents, as well as visits to family planning clinics. “You should find out whether there are any centers near to you where you can go without needing the permission of your parents or guardians.”
The brochure criticizes countries with laws requiring disclosure of HIV status to sexual partners. Such laws violate the rights of people living with HIV, the pamphlet argues.
Planned Parenthood also distributed the brochure in August at the World Youth Conference in Leon, Mexico.
Originally published in January of this year, “Healthy, Happy and Hot” is now available in a Russian translation. Russia has the second-highest rate of HIV in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, according to USAID.
The Regional President of Planned Parenthood in Europe is Dr. Elena Dmitrieva, a Russian national who also directs the Healthy Russia Foundation. Funded by the United States through USAID, the foundation sponsors an ongoing health project there. Healthy Russia 2020 promotes HIV/AIDS prevention and contraception among youth and other vulnerable populations in Russia. Its self-proclaimed healthy lifestyles program for youth targets people aged 13-19.
Nearly $77 million in US taxpayer dollars went to programs in Russia in 2008, according to USAID’s website. Part of this $77 million enabled family planning and reproductive health messages to reach more than 25,000 Russians.
This comes despite Russia suffering from a demographic crisis. The UN predicts that Russia's population will fall by 23 million over the next 40 years. In response, President Vladimir Putin recently offered $11,000 to reward families who have at least two children.
As C-Fam’s Friday Fax reported earlier this year, a Mormon mother spotted the brochure at a closed-door, girls-only meeting sponsored by Girl Scouts USA at UN headquarters in New York. Since then, Girl Scout chapters around the United States have been roiled in a debate about the connections between Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood. Girl Scouts USA refuses to denounce the brochure and denies the brochure was in the UN room where the young girls met.
This article reprinted with permission from www.c-fam.org
URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/nov/10111106.html
Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Comments by Nat Hentoff concerning Terri Schiavo
Friday, March 28, 2008
Nat Hentoff on Obama and Schiavo
Nat Hentoff is a familiar name for those of us in the battles against euthanasia, assisted suicide, and infanticide.
The comments Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made during the February 26th debate with Hillary Clinton caught Hentoff's attention as well as ours.
Writing in Jewish World Review, Hentoff writes:
In none of the endless presidential candidates' debates has there been a meaningful discussion of the rights of disabled Americans. However, in the Feb. 26 debate in Cleveland, Barack Obama casually and ignorantly revealed his misunderstanding of the basic issue in the highly visible and still-resonating official death sentence of a disabled woman, Terri Schiavo. I have repeatedly called her death the result of "the longest public execution in American history."
In his first sentence, Hentoff has identified a silence that has escaped others in the media. No presidential candidate, of either party, has discussed the issues facing Americans with disabilities. Both Clinton and Obama have detailed positions on disability issues on their campaign sites, but it's not something they talk about in debates or on the stump. I'm not sure if John McCain has any positions on disability issues on his own campaign site, but his silence on our issues is as thorough as his Democrat counterparts.
The omission of disability issues in the presidential debates isn't his main point though:
When moderator Tim Russert asked Hillary Clinton and Obama if "there are any words or votes that you'd like to take back ... in your careers in public service," Obama answered that in his first year in the Senate, he joined an agreement "that allowed Congress to interject itself (in the Schiavo case) into the decision-making process of the families."
Obama added: 'I think that was a mistake, and I think the American people understood that was a mistake. And as a constitutional law professor, I knew better."
When he was a professor of constitutional law, Obama probably instructed his students to research and know all the facts of a case. The reason Congress asked
the federal courts to review the Schiavo case was that the 41-year-old woman about to be dehydrated and starved to death was breathing normally on her own, was not terminal, and there was medical evidence that she was responsive, not in a persistent vegetative state.
One of the leading congressional advocates of judicial review was staunchly liberal Democratic Tom Harkin of Iowa, because he is deeply informed about disability rights. By contrast, in all of this inflamed controversy, the mainstream media performed miserably, copying each other's errors instead of doing their own investigations of what Terri's wishes actually were. Consequently, most Americans did not know that 29 major national disability-rights organizations filed legal briefs and lobbied Congress to understand that this was not a right-to-die case, but about the right to continue living.
A caveat here - when Hentoff talks about "mainstream media" I hope he is including Fox News Channel along with MSNBC and other "mainstream" sources. Fox News was every bit as guilty as other networks in terms of framing the fight for Terri Schiavo's life as a "culture wars" controversy as the other networks were. This wasn't "liberal" bias - the right and the left worked in tandem on this - and in a way that kept the perspectives and involvement of disability advocates out of the public discourse.
Read the rest of the article here.
And for more info on safeguards recommended by disability advocates for people under guardianship in terms of treatment withdrawal, check out the STATEMENT OF COMMON PRINCIPLES ON LIFE-SUSTAINING CARE AND TREATMENT OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES and the list of organizational endorsements for the Statement. --Stephen Drake
Posted by Not Dead Yet at 2:25 PM 0 comments
Filed in: life-ending decisions, media coverage, politics, schiavo
Nat Hentoff on Obama and Schiavo
Nat Hentoff is a familiar name for those of us in the battles against euthanasia, assisted suicide, and infanticide.
The comments Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made during the February 26th debate with Hillary Clinton caught Hentoff's attention as well as ours.
Writing in Jewish World Review, Hentoff writes:
In none of the endless presidential candidates' debates has there been a meaningful discussion of the rights of disabled Americans. However, in the Feb. 26 debate in Cleveland, Barack Obama casually and ignorantly revealed his misunderstanding of the basic issue in the highly visible and still-resonating official death sentence of a disabled woman, Terri Schiavo. I have repeatedly called her death the result of "the longest public execution in American history."
In his first sentence, Hentoff has identified a silence that has escaped others in the media. No presidential candidate, of either party, has discussed the issues facing Americans with disabilities. Both Clinton and Obama have detailed positions on disability issues on their campaign sites, but it's not something they talk about in debates or on the stump. I'm not sure if John McCain has any positions on disability issues on his own campaign site, but his silence on our issues is as thorough as his Democrat counterparts.
The omission of disability issues in the presidential debates isn't his main point though:
When moderator Tim Russert asked Hillary Clinton and Obama if "there are any words or votes that you'd like to take back ... in your careers in public service," Obama answered that in his first year in the Senate, he joined an agreement "that allowed Congress to interject itself (in the Schiavo case) into the decision-making process of the families."
Obama added: 'I think that was a mistake, and I think the American people understood that was a mistake. And as a constitutional law professor, I knew better."
When he was a professor of constitutional law, Obama probably instructed his students to research and know all the facts of a case. The reason Congress asked
the federal courts to review the Schiavo case was that the 41-year-old woman about to be dehydrated and starved to death was breathing normally on her own, was not terminal, and there was medical evidence that she was responsive, not in a persistent vegetative state.
One of the leading congressional advocates of judicial review was staunchly liberal Democratic Tom Harkin of Iowa, because he is deeply informed about disability rights. By contrast, in all of this inflamed controversy, the mainstream media performed miserably, copying each other's errors instead of doing their own investigations of what Terri's wishes actually were. Consequently, most Americans did not know that 29 major national disability-rights organizations filed legal briefs and lobbied Congress to understand that this was not a right-to-die case, but about the right to continue living.
A caveat here - when Hentoff talks about "mainstream media" I hope he is including Fox News Channel along with MSNBC and other "mainstream" sources. Fox News was every bit as guilty as other networks in terms of framing the fight for Terri Schiavo's life as a "culture wars" controversy as the other networks were. This wasn't "liberal" bias - the right and the left worked in tandem on this - and in a way that kept the perspectives and involvement of disability advocates out of the public discourse.
Read the rest of the article here.
And for more info on safeguards recommended by disability advocates for people under guardianship in terms of treatment withdrawal, check out the STATEMENT OF COMMON PRINCIPLES ON LIFE-SUSTAINING CARE AND TREATMENT OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES and the list of organizational endorsements for the Statement. --Stephen Drake
Posted by Not Dead Yet at 2:25 PM 0 comments
Filed in: life-ending decisions, media coverage, politics, schiavo
Friday, November 5, 2010
Race for the Truth About the Susan G. Komen Foundation
Is Abortion and Hormonal Contraception a Prescription for Breast Cancer?
November 4, 2010
This article originally ran on Zenit.org on October 29, 2010
By Jenn Giroux
Everywhere I looked this month I saw a pink ribbon. It was on my dry cleaning bag, grocery bag, coffee cup, mail catalogs, receipts, billboards ... it goes on and on. Don't get me wrong. I love the color pink, and breast cancer prevention and finding a cure is critical to women today. However, I also love the truth.
That is why October 2010 is a good time to take Breast Cancer Awareness Month to a whole new level with some facts which can lead to both the physical and spiritual health of women in America and across the world.
We live in the world of media messaging where the one with the most money and the loudest message wins the day. What is the "Race for the Cure"? Why are we not being told the truth about the real risks and prevention for breast cancer? According to the SEER data at the National Cancer Institute, there has been a 400% increase in noninvasive -- or "in situ" (in the same place) -- breast cancer in pre-menopausal women since 1975. How do abortion, hormone replacement therapy, and hormonal contraception factor into the equation?
For years, abortion, hormonal replacement therapy and hormonal contraception have been largely ignored by most of the medical community and the media in general as significant risk factors for breast cancer. However, studies have consistently concluded that breast cancer risk increases as a result of these three factors.
Researchers in Iran have published results of a new study showing that women who have had an abortion face a 193% increased risk of breast cancer. This has to do with the interruption of breast tissue development during pregnancy. It is important to note that this (and other studies like it) have nothing to do with a person's belief in abortion. It has everything to do with the scientifically undeniable development and growth of breast tissue within a woman's body. There are many other studies that have been published as well that confirm that abortion presents increased risk to women for breast cancer, and that confirm that carrying a baby to full term provides a natural protection to the mother if the pregnancy is not unnaturally interrupted.
For years, doctors have been prescribing hormone replacement therapy for women who experience hot flashes and periods of sweating in menopause. The widespread belief was that these hormones would not only reduce a woman's risk for heart disease but also keep her "youthful, sexy, and healthy." This week the New York Times reported that studies have now confirmed that taking these hormones not only increases breast cancer risk, but "also make it more likely that the cancer will be advanced and deadly" (New York Times, Oct. 19, 2010).
This revelation, finally being recognized by the mainstream medical community and media, makes our final topic on hormonal contraception downright frightening.
Obstetricians and gynecologists across the country freely encourage long-term use of hormonal contraception such as "the Pill," the intrauterine device (IUD) Mirena, NuvaRing, Yaz, Yasmin, and all forms of emergency contraception without giving adequate attention to the short- and long-term side effects. Pediatricians have also joined in on this by encouraging mothers to place their young daughters on "the Pill" to help with acne or to relieve monthly menstrual cramps. Recently, a college student shared with me that inside her dorm, cell phones go off in the early morning hours as a reminder to the girls to take their birth control pills. This was at a Catholic college.
The number of young women on "the Pill" is alarming. Have these girls been told that "the Pill" has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency on Research for Cancer, a research arm of the World Health Organization? Are women in general being informed that any form of hormonal (estrogen-progestin combination) birth control (including "the Pill," the patch, Depo-Provera, Norplant, Ortho Vera Patch, or any others on the market) are actually increasing risk for breast, cervical, and liver cancer?
The sad reality is that any woman who takes a hormonal contraceptive for four years prior to her first full-term pregnancy increases her risk for breast cancer by 52%. It is worth noting that this same research arm of the World Health Organization also places "the Pill" in the same category with asbestos and cigarettes.
The difference is the dose
So, you may ask, what is the difference between the hormones that are given to women during menopause, which cause deadly breast cancer, and the hormones that are given to young women in the form of "the Pill"? The answer is shocking. The hormones in the drugs are the same. The only difference is in the dose that is given to the younger women and girls. It is necessary to give a much higher dose than that given in hormone replacement therapy because younger women have active, healthy ovaries. Does this give better context to the 400% increase in "in situ" breast cancer in pre-menopausal women since 1975?
In order to silence the public discussion of the harms of contraception we have often been told that we are pushing our "Catholic" views on women. This has effectively kept many health care providers and pro-life groups silent on this issue. Do you know what has nothing to do with being Catholic? Experiencing breast cancer in your 30s, having a stroke in college, or having an undetected and sudden blood clot that results in permanent health damage or death are life-threatening side effects that visit women of all faiths.
Women deserve to know the truth. They have been failed by physicians in not being warned of the physical damage that they are doing to their bodies, and they have been failed by their priests in not being warned of the spiritual damage that they are doing to their souls.
The New York Times article on Oct. 19 published information by "The Journal of the American Medical Association" that is a real breakthrough and victory for women's health. The exposure of this important medical information further reveals the outrage against Komen affiliates who contributed a total of $3.3 million to Planned Parenthood programs from 2004-2009.
Komen spokesman John Hammarley told The Daily Caller that in 2009, affliates gave Planned Parenthood $731,303.
This was money from trustful donors who were unaware that they, indeed, gave to a cause working against the cure of breast cancer. Clearly, both abortion and hormonal contraception, a huge source of Planned Parenthood's income, are contributing risk factors for breast cancer.
October 2010 is the time to recognize the seamless pink ribbon that connects breast cancer with abortion, hormonal contraception and hormone replacement therapy. It is only then that we can get on with true prevention and, God willing, finish the race for the truth, which will then pave the path for the cure.
* * *
Jenn Giroux is the executive director of HLI America, a program of Human Life International. She is a registered nurse, wife, and mother of nine. She and her husband, Dan, live with their family in Cincinnati, Ohio. For more information go to hliamerica.org.
November 4, 2010
This article originally ran on Zenit.org on October 29, 2010
By Jenn Giroux
Everywhere I looked this month I saw a pink ribbon. It was on my dry cleaning bag, grocery bag, coffee cup, mail catalogs, receipts, billboards ... it goes on and on. Don't get me wrong. I love the color pink, and breast cancer prevention and finding a cure is critical to women today. However, I also love the truth.
That is why October 2010 is a good time to take Breast Cancer Awareness Month to a whole new level with some facts which can lead to both the physical and spiritual health of women in America and across the world.
We live in the world of media messaging where the one with the most money and the loudest message wins the day. What is the "Race for the Cure"? Why are we not being told the truth about the real risks and prevention for breast cancer? According to the SEER data at the National Cancer Institute, there has been a 400% increase in noninvasive -- or "in situ" (in the same place) -- breast cancer in pre-menopausal women since 1975. How do abortion, hormone replacement therapy, and hormonal contraception factor into the equation?
For years, abortion, hormonal replacement therapy and hormonal contraception have been largely ignored by most of the medical community and the media in general as significant risk factors for breast cancer. However, studies have consistently concluded that breast cancer risk increases as a result of these three factors.
Researchers in Iran have published results of a new study showing that women who have had an abortion face a 193% increased risk of breast cancer. This has to do with the interruption of breast tissue development during pregnancy. It is important to note that this (and other studies like it) have nothing to do with a person's belief in abortion. It has everything to do with the scientifically undeniable development and growth of breast tissue within a woman's body. There are many other studies that have been published as well that confirm that abortion presents increased risk to women for breast cancer, and that confirm that carrying a baby to full term provides a natural protection to the mother if the pregnancy is not unnaturally interrupted.
For years, doctors have been prescribing hormone replacement therapy for women who experience hot flashes and periods of sweating in menopause. The widespread belief was that these hormones would not only reduce a woman's risk for heart disease but also keep her "youthful, sexy, and healthy." This week the New York Times reported that studies have now confirmed that taking these hormones not only increases breast cancer risk, but "also make it more likely that the cancer will be advanced and deadly" (New York Times, Oct. 19, 2010).
This revelation, finally being recognized by the mainstream medical community and media, makes our final topic on hormonal contraception downright frightening.
Obstetricians and gynecologists across the country freely encourage long-term use of hormonal contraception such as "the Pill," the intrauterine device (IUD) Mirena, NuvaRing, Yaz, Yasmin, and all forms of emergency contraception without giving adequate attention to the short- and long-term side effects. Pediatricians have also joined in on this by encouraging mothers to place their young daughters on "the Pill" to help with acne or to relieve monthly menstrual cramps. Recently, a college student shared with me that inside her dorm, cell phones go off in the early morning hours as a reminder to the girls to take their birth control pills. This was at a Catholic college.
The number of young women on "the Pill" is alarming. Have these girls been told that "the Pill" has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency on Research for Cancer, a research arm of the World Health Organization? Are women in general being informed that any form of hormonal (estrogen-progestin combination) birth control (including "the Pill," the patch, Depo-Provera, Norplant, Ortho Vera Patch, or any others on the market) are actually increasing risk for breast, cervical, and liver cancer?
The sad reality is that any woman who takes a hormonal contraceptive for four years prior to her first full-term pregnancy increases her risk for breast cancer by 52%. It is worth noting that this same research arm of the World Health Organization also places "the Pill" in the same category with asbestos and cigarettes.
The difference is the dose
So, you may ask, what is the difference between the hormones that are given to women during menopause, which cause deadly breast cancer, and the hormones that are given to young women in the form of "the Pill"? The answer is shocking. The hormones in the drugs are the same. The only difference is in the dose that is given to the younger women and girls. It is necessary to give a much higher dose than that given in hormone replacement therapy because younger women have active, healthy ovaries. Does this give better context to the 400% increase in "in situ" breast cancer in pre-menopausal women since 1975?
In order to silence the public discussion of the harms of contraception we have often been told that we are pushing our "Catholic" views on women. This has effectively kept many health care providers and pro-life groups silent on this issue. Do you know what has nothing to do with being Catholic? Experiencing breast cancer in your 30s, having a stroke in college, or having an undetected and sudden blood clot that results in permanent health damage or death are life-threatening side effects that visit women of all faiths.
Women deserve to know the truth. They have been failed by physicians in not being warned of the physical damage that they are doing to their bodies, and they have been failed by their priests in not being warned of the spiritual damage that they are doing to their souls.
The New York Times article on Oct. 19 published information by "The Journal of the American Medical Association" that is a real breakthrough and victory for women's health. The exposure of this important medical information further reveals the outrage against Komen affiliates who contributed a total of $3.3 million to Planned Parenthood programs from 2004-2009.
Komen spokesman John Hammarley told The Daily Caller that in 2009, affliates gave Planned Parenthood $731,303.
This was money from trustful donors who were unaware that they, indeed, gave to a cause working against the cure of breast cancer. Clearly, both abortion and hormonal contraception, a huge source of Planned Parenthood's income, are contributing risk factors for breast cancer.
October 2010 is the time to recognize the seamless pink ribbon that connects breast cancer with abortion, hormonal contraception and hormone replacement therapy. It is only then that we can get on with true prevention and, God willing, finish the race for the truth, which will then pave the path for the cure.
* * *
Jenn Giroux is the executive director of HLI America, a program of Human Life International. She is a registered nurse, wife, and mother of nine. She and her husband, Dan, live with their family in Cincinnati, Ohio. For more information go to hliamerica.org.
Friday, October 15, 2010
JUST TAKE A PILL FOR THAT by Judie Brown ALL
It has always been my contention that nobody should take medicine without first reading all of the information and understanding that there is a possibility of unpleasant, or even dangerous, side effects. Of course the opportunity for those deleterious consequences becomes more plausible when you are taking more than one medication. As one wise older gentleman stated, it is always imperative to find out for yourself how one drug interacts with others.
But even if you are taking only a single medical prescription, it is still an absolute necessity to understand your own medical history, be able to share it with your doctor and then make an informed decision about whatever the medicine is that has been prescribed. Most doctors, if quizzed, will eventually give you all the information you need.
Having said that, one has to ask the logical question: What should make birth control pills any different?
Well, there are a couple of things that make that assortment of drugs unique. First, they are part of the medicine chest preferred by those who promote sexual promiscuity and abortion. These folks believe that pregnancy is a disease and the pill is the antidote. Such so-called professionals will go to any length to deny the side effects, bury or discredit the studies and generally deceive the public.
We know from the clinical information published by various pharmaceutical companies that the pill has three modes of action and that one of those is abortion. Abortion is caused by the pill thinning the uterine wall which, in turn, prevents the preborn child from implanting. Thus, the baby dies.
We know that those who market the pill and those who prescribe it or recommend it are people who argue that pregnancy does not begin at the biological beginning of a preborn human individual’s life. They have revised scientific fact to suit their political agenda even though, in truth, no words can actually change biology.
When it was brought to the attention of the National Cancer Institute that the birth control pill can contribute to an increased risk of breast cancer, the Institute denied that this was the case—even going so far as to ignore clinical studies that proved the connection.
In a speech earlier this month, Angela Lanfranchi, M.D., FACS said that it was after much research that a connection was made between hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and breast cancer. She pointed out, incredibly, that this information was known for over 20 years but never explained to women. “But when that knowledge was put in the hands of women who needed and considered it, many acted upon it and breast cancer rates fell.” She then asked her audience, “What do you think will happen when women learn that these same hormones are in oral contraceptives but in much higher doses? Will half of the 75% of premenopausal women in the United States who take hormonal contraceptives stop these hormones like their mothers did after menopause?”
Chris Kahlenborn, M.D., has studied extensively the relationship between breast cancer and the birth control pill. According to Kahlenborn, “If a woman takes the oral contraceptive pill before her FFTP [first full term pregnancy], she suffers a 40% increased risk of developing breast cancer compared to women who do not take OCPs [oral contraceptive pills]. If she takes OCPs for 4 years or more prior to her FFTP, she may have an even higher risk.”
So why isn’t this front page news, particularly during Breast Cancer Awareness Month?
There is no legitimate answer to this question. The fact is that, because the birth control pill is part of Planned Parenthood’s bag of tricks, the topic is off limits. Planned Parenthood’s goal is not to foster respect for the bodies of its clients, but rather to rake in the money by marketing all manner of perversion.
The solution: women must stand up and say they will no longer be human guinea pigs for the culture of death! They must refuse to “just take a pill for that.” After all, pregnancy is natural; dying of cancer or killing one’s baby is tragic.
Oct-15-2010
But even if you are taking only a single medical prescription, it is still an absolute necessity to understand your own medical history, be able to share it with your doctor and then make an informed decision about whatever the medicine is that has been prescribed. Most doctors, if quizzed, will eventually give you all the information you need.
Having said that, one has to ask the logical question: What should make birth control pills any different?
Well, there are a couple of things that make that assortment of drugs unique. First, they are part of the medicine chest preferred by those who promote sexual promiscuity and abortion. These folks believe that pregnancy is a disease and the pill is the antidote. Such so-called professionals will go to any length to deny the side effects, bury or discredit the studies and generally deceive the public.
We know from the clinical information published by various pharmaceutical companies that the pill has three modes of action and that one of those is abortion. Abortion is caused by the pill thinning the uterine wall which, in turn, prevents the preborn child from implanting. Thus, the baby dies.
We know that those who market the pill and those who prescribe it or recommend it are people who argue that pregnancy does not begin at the biological beginning of a preborn human individual’s life. They have revised scientific fact to suit their political agenda even though, in truth, no words can actually change biology.
When it was brought to the attention of the National Cancer Institute that the birth control pill can contribute to an increased risk of breast cancer, the Institute denied that this was the case—even going so far as to ignore clinical studies that proved the connection.
In a speech earlier this month, Angela Lanfranchi, M.D., FACS said that it was after much research that a connection was made between hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and breast cancer. She pointed out, incredibly, that this information was known for over 20 years but never explained to women. “But when that knowledge was put in the hands of women who needed and considered it, many acted upon it and breast cancer rates fell.” She then asked her audience, “What do you think will happen when women learn that these same hormones are in oral contraceptives but in much higher doses? Will half of the 75% of premenopausal women in the United States who take hormonal contraceptives stop these hormones like their mothers did after menopause?”
Chris Kahlenborn, M.D., has studied extensively the relationship between breast cancer and the birth control pill. According to Kahlenborn, “If a woman takes the oral contraceptive pill before her FFTP [first full term pregnancy], she suffers a 40% increased risk of developing breast cancer compared to women who do not take OCPs [oral contraceptive pills]. If she takes OCPs for 4 years or more prior to her FFTP, she may have an even higher risk.”
So why isn’t this front page news, particularly during Breast Cancer Awareness Month?
There is no legitimate answer to this question. The fact is that, because the birth control pill is part of Planned Parenthood’s bag of tricks, the topic is off limits. Planned Parenthood’s goal is not to foster respect for the bodies of its clients, but rather to rake in the money by marketing all manner of perversion.
The solution: women must stand up and say they will no longer be human guinea pigs for the culture of death! They must refuse to “just take a pill for that.” After all, pregnancy is natural; dying of cancer or killing one’s baby is tragic.
Oct-15-2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Suffering Children Should Be Smothered
UK Pundit to Shocked TV Host: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/uk-pundit-to-shocked-tv-host-suffering-children-should-be-smothered/
Suffering Children Should Be Smothered
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 8:17am by
Scott Baker
Advice columnists in Britain are known as “agony aunts” (or uncles). Virginia Ironside is one. Her latest bit of advice has drawn outraged reaction from television viewers who caught her comments on the BBC yesterday. She appeared during a segment called, “Can abortion be a kindness?” Here’s the Daily Mail account of her comments:
Miss Ironside said: ‘If a baby’s going to be born severely disabled or totally unwanted, surely an abortion is the act of a loving mother.’
She added: ‘If I were the mother of a suffering child – I mean a deeply suffering child – I would be the first to want to put a pillow over its face… If it was a child I really loved, who was in agony, I think any good mother would.’
Disability rights advocates called her pro-eugenics approach “despicable.” Even the host seemed stunned:
Programme host Susanna Reid appeared visibly shocked by her comments during the live debate, gasping: ‘That’s a pretty horrifying thing to say, that you would put a pillow over a suffering child.’
In the past, Ironside has said she believes doctors should not try to save the lives of “very premature babies.”
Comments (371)
Comments Page 2 →Page 1 of 12
JGP
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 8:25am
How could you be a “loving mother” and at the same time not want your child? The woman has no soul.
MSG
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 9:07am
It’s the mentality of the progressive agenda,,, just look at the violence against children and others in this video:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100056510/go-green-or-well-kill-your-kids-says-richard-curtis-eco-propaganda-shocker/
TruthTalker
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 9:50am
Apparently her own mother disagrees because this woman must have been suffering from mental illness for her entire life.
Report Post » jnword
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 9:51am
This woman most likely had gotten a Rhodes Scholarship… the crimal Cecil Rhodes wiped out Africa for his boss Rothschilds! Clinton another brainwased stooge had a Rhodes Scholarship, like 12 memeber of this current White House..we best wake up soon!
Report Post » CultureWarriors
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 9:54am
This is why I believe many so called liberals are just profoundly ignorant. They hear the compassion that progressives spin but aren’t smart enough to see through that spin. The liberal progressive elites actually believe that abortion is about not letting the poor reproduce while at the same time branding it as a women’s rights issue. They are truly evil and bereft of character. This born out of an overwhelming sense of insecurity. A liberal goes through life thinking deep down inside they aren’t good enough, so how could anyone else be able to take care of themselves? Like I’ve said before, liberalism is a mental disorder.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UtmTALMkU4
You don’t measure compassion by many get a hand handout, you measure it by how many don’t need a handout!
Report Post » theninthplanet
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 10:04am
Ironside said aloud what all other eugenics advocates believe. It’s OK though – we’re only talking about the physically and mentally deformed though, not the Jews. Unfortunately these people are unable to make the connection between eugenics and the holocaust.
Report Post » cdavehere
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 10:05am
I think we all need to stop here and deeply think about this. There has to be a point when prolonging life becomes cruel. What if it were you in agony? I find it hard to agree with this woman, but am I being selfish.
Report Post » Satai Delenn
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 10:27am
I can not begin to fathom how someone could be so cold hearted. I watched a movie recently called “Follow the Stars Home” amazing and far closer to how “any good Mother” would feel.
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/249254/Follow-the-Stars-Home/overview
Being a Mother is not an easy job, it is one of love and patience. Being the Mother of a disabled child is one of the most difficult jobs in the world. We should all remember that life is worth it. Children what ever package they come in are gifts from our Fahter in Heaven. He shares them with us for a short time and we are blessed to be part of the lives He gives us.
Report Post » /
Suffering Children Should Be Smothered
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 8:17am by
Scott Baker
Advice columnists in Britain are known as “agony aunts” (or uncles). Virginia Ironside is one. Her latest bit of advice has drawn outraged reaction from television viewers who caught her comments on the BBC yesterday. She appeared during a segment called, “Can abortion be a kindness?” Here’s the Daily Mail account of her comments:
Miss Ironside said: ‘If a baby’s going to be born severely disabled or totally unwanted, surely an abortion is the act of a loving mother.’
She added: ‘If I were the mother of a suffering child – I mean a deeply suffering child – I would be the first to want to put a pillow over its face… If it was a child I really loved, who was in agony, I think any good mother would.’
Disability rights advocates called her pro-eugenics approach “despicable.” Even the host seemed stunned:
Programme host Susanna Reid appeared visibly shocked by her comments during the live debate, gasping: ‘That’s a pretty horrifying thing to say, that you would put a pillow over a suffering child.’
In the past, Ironside has said she believes doctors should not try to save the lives of “very premature babies.”
Comments (371)
Comments Page 2 →Page 1 of 12
JGP
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 8:25am
How could you be a “loving mother” and at the same time not want your child? The woman has no soul.
MSG
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 9:07am
It’s the mentality of the progressive agenda,,, just look at the violence against children and others in this video:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100056510/go-green-or-well-kill-your-kids-says-richard-curtis-eco-propaganda-shocker/
TruthTalker
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 9:50am
Apparently her own mother disagrees because this woman must have been suffering from mental illness for her entire life.
Report Post » jnword
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 9:51am
This woman most likely had gotten a Rhodes Scholarship… the crimal Cecil Rhodes wiped out Africa for his boss Rothschilds! Clinton another brainwased stooge had a Rhodes Scholarship, like 12 memeber of this current White House..we best wake up soon!
Report Post » CultureWarriors
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 9:54am
This is why I believe many so called liberals are just profoundly ignorant. They hear the compassion that progressives spin but aren’t smart enough to see through that spin. The liberal progressive elites actually believe that abortion is about not letting the poor reproduce while at the same time branding it as a women’s rights issue. They are truly evil and bereft of character. This born out of an overwhelming sense of insecurity. A liberal goes through life thinking deep down inside they aren’t good enough, so how could anyone else be able to take care of themselves? Like I’ve said before, liberalism is a mental disorder.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UtmTALMkU4
You don’t measure compassion by many get a hand handout, you measure it by how many don’t need a handout!
Report Post » theninthplanet
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 10:04am
Ironside said aloud what all other eugenics advocates believe. It’s OK though – we’re only talking about the physically and mentally deformed though, not the Jews. Unfortunately these people are unable to make the connection between eugenics and the holocaust.
Report Post » cdavehere
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 10:05am
I think we all need to stop here and deeply think about this. There has to be a point when prolonging life becomes cruel. What if it were you in agony? I find it hard to agree with this woman, but am I being selfish.
Report Post » Satai Delenn
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 10:27am
I can not begin to fathom how someone could be so cold hearted. I watched a movie recently called “Follow the Stars Home” amazing and far closer to how “any good Mother” would feel.
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/249254/Follow-the-Stars-Home/overview
Being a Mother is not an easy job, it is one of love and patience. Being the Mother of a disabled child is one of the most difficult jobs in the world. We should all remember that life is worth it. Children what ever package they come in are gifts from our Fahter in Heaven. He shares them with us for a short time and we are blessed to be part of the lives He gives us.
Report Post » /
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Update on Urban Outfitters catalog .
From Sandy Sasso
THINK I TOLD YOU ABOUT THIS - HERE'S THE OUTCOME.
Last week's Wednesday STOPP Report brought you the distressing news that Urban Outfitters was selling Planned Parenthood "Proper Attire" condoms on its website, and advertising them to young people as a "safe bet."
The condoms were in the "Toys and Novelties" section of the web catalog.
Only a day after we released the story and asked parents to contact Urban Outfitters and complain, the condoms were pulled from the website.
This protest is a case in point: Retailers should take notice that, if they choose to partner with Planned Parenthood or sell any of Planned Parenthood's products or services, there is a vast network of parents across the country who are ready and willing to protect their children from Planned Parenthood.
These parents want their teens to respect their sexuality and remain sexually abstinent until marriage, and want to do business with companies that support them in encouraging modesty and sexual abstinence until marriage. Parents want to know that they can allow their teens to browse a youth-oriented retailer's website without being exposed to Planned Parenthood's sexually oriented merchandise.
Thanks to all the parents and consumers who made contact with Urban Outfitters, and to the folks at Urban Outfitters who acted swiftly to stop the condom sales.
THINK I TOLD YOU ABOUT THIS - HERE'S THE OUTCOME.
Last week's Wednesday STOPP Report brought you the distressing news that Urban Outfitters was selling Planned Parenthood "Proper Attire" condoms on its website, and advertising them to young people as a "safe bet."
The condoms were in the "Toys and Novelties" section of the web catalog.
Only a day after we released the story and asked parents to contact Urban Outfitters and complain, the condoms were pulled from the website.
This protest is a case in point: Retailers should take notice that, if they choose to partner with Planned Parenthood or sell any of Planned Parenthood's products or services, there is a vast network of parents across the country who are ready and willing to protect their children from Planned Parenthood.
These parents want their teens to respect their sexuality and remain sexually abstinent until marriage, and want to do business with companies that support them in encouraging modesty and sexual abstinence until marriage. Parents want to know that they can allow their teens to browse a youth-oriented retailer's website without being exposed to Planned Parenthood's sexually oriented merchandise.
Thanks to all the parents and consumers who made contact with Urban Outfitters, and to the folks at Urban Outfitters who acted swiftly to stop the condom sales.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
MAAFA
I don't know how many have purchased or viewed this revealing documentary about Black Genocide and how Planned Parenthood has targeted minorities throughout their "eugenics" oriented elimination of Negro and latino unborn babies.
You can do a search for MAAFA and find the website to order a copy. I did, received mine and viewed it and now plan to show it to my fellow parishioners.
It would be better if pastors would purchase a copy and show it in their school halls.
Bill
You can do a search for MAAFA and find the website to order a copy. I did, received mine and viewed it and now plan to show it to my fellow parishioners.
It would be better if pastors would purchase a copy and show it in their school halls.
Bill
Parents Asked to Oppose Urban Outfitters Condom Sales
From ALL
Washington, D.C. (11 August 2010) – American Life League’s Stop Planned Parenthood project (STOPP) is mobilizing parents to counter Urban Outfitters Inc., the youth-oriented retailer selling Planned Parenthood’s “Proper Attire” condoms on its web site.
While condoms have an overall typical-use failure rate of 15 percent – with some studies reporting a failure rate as high as 36 percent for typical teen use – Planned Parenthood condoms scored at the very bottom in a February 2005 Consumer Reports study on condom effectiveness.
“By hawking Planned Parenthood’s condoms, Urban Outfitters has become part of the problem, not the solution,” said Rita Diller, STOPP’s national director. “The great majority of parents do not want a penny of their money going to an organization like Planned Parenthood, which works around the clock to undermine parental rights, sexualize children and protect their abusers.”
Billed as a “safe bet,” the item’s description in the Urban Outfitters online catalogue says, “Proceeds from Proper Attire condoms benefit advances in reproductive health.”
“Marketing condoms to young people and telling them it’s a safe bet is like giving them a revolver and inviting them to a rousing game of Russian roulette,” Diller said. “The only way to truly protect our youth from AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases and out-of-wedlock pregnancy is to do everything in our power to encourage them to remain sexually abstinent until marriage.”
A recent CDC study shows that most never-married teens are sexually abstinent. Most of the teens said the number-one reason for abstaining is the fact that sex outside of marriage is against their religion or morality. The rise in numbers of sexually abstinent teens and the downturn in teen pregnancy rates coincide with the availability and popularity of abstinence education.
Parents are encouraged to explain to Urban Outfitters that, if the retailer continues to promote Planned Parenthood condoms, they will boycott its stores and products, and will let other parents know about the connection between Planned Parenthood and Urban Outfitters. Parents are also encouraged to tell Urban Outfitters that they do not want it marketing any sexually oriented products to their children.
You can call the Urban Outfitters corporate office at 800-959-8794 (toll-free) or 215-454-5500, or e-mail it at http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/help/contactus.jsp.
American Life League was cofounded in 1979 by Judie Brown. It is the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization in the United States and is committed to the protection of all innocent human beings from the moment of creation to natural death. For more information or press inquiries, please contact Katie Walker at 540.659.4942.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
•Urban Outfitters: Planned Parenthood "Proper Attire" Condoms http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/productdetail.jsp?id=18607168&navAction=jump&navCount=0
Washington, D.C. (11 August 2010) – American Life League’s Stop Planned Parenthood project (STOPP) is mobilizing parents to counter Urban Outfitters Inc., the youth-oriented retailer selling Planned Parenthood’s “Proper Attire” condoms on its web site.
While condoms have an overall typical-use failure rate of 15 percent – with some studies reporting a failure rate as high as 36 percent for typical teen use – Planned Parenthood condoms scored at the very bottom in a February 2005 Consumer Reports study on condom effectiveness.
“By hawking Planned Parenthood’s condoms, Urban Outfitters has become part of the problem, not the solution,” said Rita Diller, STOPP’s national director. “The great majority of parents do not want a penny of their money going to an organization like Planned Parenthood, which works around the clock to undermine parental rights, sexualize children and protect their abusers.”
Billed as a “safe bet,” the item’s description in the Urban Outfitters online catalogue says, “Proceeds from Proper Attire condoms benefit advances in reproductive health.”
“Marketing condoms to young people and telling them it’s a safe bet is like giving them a revolver and inviting them to a rousing game of Russian roulette,” Diller said. “The only way to truly protect our youth from AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases and out-of-wedlock pregnancy is to do everything in our power to encourage them to remain sexually abstinent until marriage.”
A recent CDC study shows that most never-married teens are sexually abstinent. Most of the teens said the number-one reason for abstaining is the fact that sex outside of marriage is against their religion or morality. The rise in numbers of sexually abstinent teens and the downturn in teen pregnancy rates coincide with the availability and popularity of abstinence education.
Parents are encouraged to explain to Urban Outfitters that, if the retailer continues to promote Planned Parenthood condoms, they will boycott its stores and products, and will let other parents know about the connection between Planned Parenthood and Urban Outfitters. Parents are also encouraged to tell Urban Outfitters that they do not want it marketing any sexually oriented products to their children.
You can call the Urban Outfitters corporate office at 800-959-8794 (toll-free) or 215-454-5500, or e-mail it at http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/help/contactus.jsp.
American Life League was cofounded in 1979 by Judie Brown. It is the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization in the United States and is committed to the protection of all innocent human beings from the moment of creation to natural death. For more information or press inquiries, please contact Katie Walker at 540.659.4942.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
•Urban Outfitters: Planned Parenthood "Proper Attire" Condoms http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/productdetail.jsp?id=18607168&navAction=jump&navCount=0
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Citing new memo, Senators urge HHS to restrict abortion funding in high-risk pools. CNA.org
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.Related articles:
Submission to Department of Health
Review of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act
The “Morning-After Pill”, Rape Victims and Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services
Bringing Facts and Principles to the Health Care Debate
Legislative efforts in the United States to prohibit 'partial-birth abortion'
Washington D.C., Jul 29, 2010 / 05:16 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Responding to a new report that the 2010 health care law lacks restrictions that prohibit states from using federal funding to pay for abortions in the new high risk insurance pools, 13 Republican senators have written to the head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to urge regulatory action.
“We request your immediate assistance to ensure that federal dollars will not be used to pay for elective abortions,” the Senators’ July 28 letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius read. They asked Sebelius to identify specific actions to be taken and to set a timeline for them by July 30.
The letter cited a July 23 memo from the Library of Congress’ Congressional Research Service (CRS). The Senators said abortion funding restrictions in the health care legislation and in President Barack Obama’s executive order “fail to address high risk pools and the $5 billion in funding provided for their operation.”
CNA spoke with Janine D’Addario of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) who confirmed the authenticity of the memo, pointing to the Senate Health Committee's website for the “authoritative version.”
According to the CRS memo, the executive order does not “specifically” address the question of high-risk pools but directs the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the HHS Secretary to develop guidelines segregating federal funds from abortion funds.
Additionally, the CRS memo said that the HHS request for state proposals and the HHS model contracts “neither explicitly provide the authority to cover elective abortions with federal funds, nor do they specifically prohibit the use of federal funds.”
The senators’ letter noted that, according to the memo, current HHS restrictions on federal funds for elective abortion “would also not appear to apply to the funds appropriated” for the high-risk pools.
At the same time, the Congressional Research memo also noted the July 14 HHS press release which stated that abortions will not be covered, except under the conditions cited by the Hyde Amendment. The memo added that the press release is “not a formal policy issuance” but said it was “reasonable” to conclude that the HHS intends to issue regulations formalizing its stated policy.
The senators said they were “pleased” to see the recent HHS statements on abortion funding restrictions, but added that these statements do not have the force of law and will not prohibit the use of funds for elective abortions.
“We urge you to act immediately to prohibit all states operating (high-risk pools) from covering elective abortions,” the senators’ letter read. “Absent such contractual requirements, it will be necessary for Congress to modify the current law to include restrictions to prevent federal dollars from being used to provide such coverage.”
Signatories to the letter included Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Submission to Department of Health
Review of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act
The “Morning-After Pill”, Rape Victims and Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services
Bringing Facts and Principles to the Health Care Debate
Legislative efforts in the United States to prohibit 'partial-birth abortion'
Washington D.C., Jul 29, 2010 / 05:16 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Responding to a new report that the 2010 health care law lacks restrictions that prohibit states from using federal funding to pay for abortions in the new high risk insurance pools, 13 Republican senators have written to the head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to urge regulatory action.
“We request your immediate assistance to ensure that federal dollars will not be used to pay for elective abortions,” the Senators’ July 28 letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius read. They asked Sebelius to identify specific actions to be taken and to set a timeline for them by July 30.
The letter cited a July 23 memo from the Library of Congress’ Congressional Research Service (CRS). The Senators said abortion funding restrictions in the health care legislation and in President Barack Obama’s executive order “fail to address high risk pools and the $5 billion in funding provided for their operation.”
CNA spoke with Janine D’Addario of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) who confirmed the authenticity of the memo, pointing to the Senate Health Committee's website for the “authoritative version.”
According to the CRS memo, the executive order does not “specifically” address the question of high-risk pools but directs the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the HHS Secretary to develop guidelines segregating federal funds from abortion funds.
Additionally, the CRS memo said that the HHS request for state proposals and the HHS model contracts “neither explicitly provide the authority to cover elective abortions with federal funds, nor do they specifically prohibit the use of federal funds.”
The senators’ letter noted that, according to the memo, current HHS restrictions on federal funds for elective abortion “would also not appear to apply to the funds appropriated” for the high-risk pools.
At the same time, the Congressional Research memo also noted the July 14 HHS press release which stated that abortions will not be covered, except under the conditions cited by the Hyde Amendment. The memo added that the press release is “not a formal policy issuance” but said it was “reasonable” to conclude that the HHS intends to issue regulations formalizing its stated policy.
The senators said they were “pleased” to see the recent HHS statements on abortion funding restrictions, but added that these statements do not have the force of law and will not prohibit the use of funds for elective abortions.
“We urge you to act immediately to prohibit all states operating (high-risk pools) from covering elective abortions,” the senators’ letter read. “Absent such contractual requirements, it will be necessary for Congress to modify the current law to include restrictions to prevent federal dollars from being used to provide such coverage.”
Signatories to the letter included Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Life and Family: Letter To The Bishops Of The Catholic Church On The Pastoral Care Of Homosexual Persons :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
The following letter was published on Catholic News Agency web site. It is lenghty, but worthwhile reading that expresses the Catholic Church position regarding those who profess to be homosexual and engage in homosexual activity. It also encourages the Bishops to be active in reaching out to those homosexuals who remain chaste and to those who participate in homosexual acts.
It defines the church's reasoning that homosexuality is "intrinsically disordered".
Life and Family: Letter To The Bishops Of The Catholic Church On The Pastoral Care Of Homosexual Persons :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
It defines the church's reasoning that homosexuality is "intrinsically disordered".
Life and Family: Letter To The Bishops Of The Catholic Church On The Pastoral Care Of Homosexual Persons :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy
Now, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy told Politico that the upcoming Supreme Court confirmation process gives abortion advocates a chance to attack those conservative justices
================================================================================
This is great, We can always count on Sen. Leahy to fire up our conservative base by launching one of his nasty personal attacks on the "BEST" judges on the Supreme Court.
I hope he has the same negative effect that President obama had when he went on the campaign trail to "help" his candidates. They all lost.
This is just another statement how out of touch the Democrats are with the "mood" of the American people.
================================================================================
This is great, We can always count on Sen. Leahy to fire up our conservative base by launching one of his nasty personal attacks on the "BEST" judges on the Supreme Court.
I hope he has the same negative effect that President obama had when he went on the campaign trail to "help" his candidates. They all lost.
This is just another statement how out of touch the Democrats are with the "mood" of the American people.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
The following speech was delivered by Proffessor George at the 2010 Pennsylvanians for Human Life Banquet Feb. 28, 2010.
This speech should be studied in every Catholic High School and even 7th and 8th grades.
Thank you Dr. George, you make this subject very easy to understand.
Bil Miller
=================================================
Political Obligations, Conscience, and Human Life
Robert P. George
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence
Princeton University
================================================
The Catholic Church proclaims the principle that every human
being—without regard to race, sex, or ethnicity, and equally without regard
to age, size, stage of development, or condition of dependency—is entitled
to the full protection of the laws. The Church teaches that human beings at
every stage of development—including those at the embryonic and fetal
stages—and those in every condition—including those who are mentally
retarded or physically disabled, and those who are suffering from severe
dementias or other memory and mind-impairing afflictions—possess
fundamental human rights. Above all, each of us possesses the right to life.
Now this teaching is disputed by some. There are those, including
some Catholics, who deny that human embryos are human beings. They
assert that and human embryo is merely "potential" human life, not nascent
human life. The trouble with this position is not theological but scientific. It
flies in the face of the established facts of human embryology and
developmental biology. A human embryo is not something distinct in kind
from a human being—the way that, for example, a rock or potato or alligator
is something different from a human being. A human embryo is a human
being at a particular, very early, stage of development. A human embryo,
even prior to implantation, is a whole, distinct, living member of the species
Homo sapiens. The embryonic human being requires only what any human
being at any stage of development requires for his or her survival, namely,
adequate nutrition and an environment sufficiently hospitable to sustain life.
From the beginning, each human being possesses—actually and not
merely potentially—the genetic constitution and active disposition for self-
directed development from the embryonic into and through the fetal, infant,
child, and adolescent stages and into adulthood with his or her distinctness,
unity, determinateness, and identity intact. In this crucial respect, the
embryo is quite unlike the gametes—that is, the sperm and ovum—whose
union brought a new human being into existence. You and I were never
sperm or ova; those were genetically and functionally parts of other human
beings. But each of us was once an embryo, just as each of us was once an
adolescent, and before that a child, an infant, a fetus. Of course, in the
embryonic, fetal, and infant stages we were highly vulnerable and dependent
creatures, but we were nevertheless complete, distinct human beings. As the
leading textbooks in human embryology and developmental biology
unanimously attest, we were not mere "clumps of cells," like moles or
tumors. So the basic rights people possess simply by virtue of their
humanity—including above all the right to life—we possessed even then.
Another school of thought concedes that human embryos are human
beings; however, it denies that all human beings are persons. There are,
according to this school of thought, pre-personal and post-personal human
beings, as well as severely retarded or damaged human beings who are not,
never will be, and never were, persons. Proponents of this view insist that
human beings in the embryonic and fetal stages are not yet persons. Indeed,
logically consistent and unsentimental proponents say that even human
infants are not yet persons, and therefore do not possess a right to life;
hence, the willingness of Peter Singer, Michael Tooley, and others to
countenance infanticide as well as abortion. Permanently comatose or
severely retarded or demented human beings are also denied the status of
persons. So euthanasia is said to be justified for human beings in these
conditions. Although some who think along these lines will allow that
human individuals whom they regard as "not yet persons" deserve a certain
limited respect by virtue of the purely biological fact that they are living
members of the human species, they nevertheless insist that "pre-personal"
humans do not possess a right to life that precludes them from being killed
to benefit others or to advance the interests of society at large. Only those
human beings who have achieved and retain what are regarded as the
defining attributes of personhood—whether those are considered to be
detectable brain function, self-awareness, or immediately exercisable
capacities for characteristically human mental functioning—possess a right
to life.
The trouble with this position is that it makes nonsense of our
political, philosophical, and, for many of us, theological commitment to the
principle that all human beings are equal in fundamental worth and dignity.
It generates puzzles that simply cannot be resolved, such as the puzzle as to
why this or that accidental quality which most human beings eventually
acquire in the course of normal development but others do not, and which
some retain and others lose, and which some have to a greater degree than
others, should count as the criterion of "personhood." The superior position,
surely, is that human beings possess equally an intrinsic dignity that is the
moral ground of the equal right to life of all. This is a right possessed by
every human being simply by virtue of his or her humanity. It does not
depend on an individual’s age, or size, or stage of development; nor can it be
erased by an individual’s physical or mental infirmity or condition of
dependency. It is what makes the life of even a severely retarded child equal
in fundamental worth to the life of a Nobel prize-winning scientist. It
explains why we may not licitly extract transplantable organs from such a
child even to save the life of a brilliant physicist who is afflicted with a life-
threatening heart, liver, or kidney ailment.
In any event, the position that all human beings equally possess
fundamental human rights, including the right to life, is the definitively
settled teaching of the Catholic Church. It is on this basis that the Church
proclaims that the taking of human life in abortion, infanticide, embryo-
destructive research, euthanasia, and terrorism are always and everywhere
gravely wrong.
And there is more. For the Church also teaches that it is the solemn
obligation of legislators and other public officials, as servants of the
common good, to honor and protect the rights of all. The principle of
equality demands as a matter of strict justice that protection against lethal
violence be extended by every political community to all who are within its
jurisdiction. Those to whom the care of the community is entrusted—above
all those who participate in making the community’s laws—have primary
responsibility for ensuring that the right to life is embodied in the laws and
effectively protected in practice. Notice, by the way, that the obligation of
the public official is not to "enforce the teaching of the Catholic Church," it
is, rather, to fulfill the demands of justice and the common good in light of
the principle of the inherent and equal dignity of every member of the
human family.
Yet, today many Catholic politicians are staunch supporters of what
they describe as a "woman’s right to abortion." Most of these politicians
also support the creation and government funding of an industry that would
produce tens of thousands of human embryos by cloning for use in
biomedical research in which these embryonic human beings would be
destroyed.
Catholic politicians in the United States and in other nations who
support abortion and embryo-destructive research typically claim to be
"personally opposed" to these practices but respectful of the rights of others
who disagree to act on their own judgments of conscience without legal
interference. Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo famously
articulated and defended this view in a speech at the University of Notre
Dame in 1984. Recently, Cuomo revisited the issue, speaking in
Washington at a Forum on Politics and Faith in America. He offered an
argument which, if successful, not only justifies Catholic politicians in
supporting legal abortion and embryo-destructive research, but requires them
to respect a right of people to engage in these practices despite their admitted
moral wrongfulness.
Cuomo asserted that holders of public office—including Catholic
office-holders—have a responsibility "to create conditions under which all
citizens are reasonably free to act according to their own religious beliefs,
even when those acts conflict with Roman Catholic dogma regarding
divorce, birth control, abortion, stem cell research, and even the existence of
God." According to Cuomo, Catholics should support legalized abortion
and embryo-destructive research, as he himself does, because in
guaranteeing these rights to others, they guarantee their own right "to reject
abortions, and to refuse to participate in or contribute to removing stem cells
from embryos." But Cuomo’s idea that the right "to reject" abortion and
embryo-destructive experimentation entails a right of others, as a matter of
religious liberty, to engage in these practices is simply, if spectacularly,
fallacious. The fallacy comes into focus immediately if one considers
whether the right of a Catholic (or Baptist, or Jew, or member of any other
faith) to reject infanticide, slavery, and the exploitation of labor entails a
right of others who happen not to share these "religious" convictions to kill,
enslave, and exploit.
By the expedient of classifying pro-life convictions about abortion
and embryo-destructive experimentation as "Roman Catholic dogmas,"
Cuomo smuggles into the premises of his argument the controversial
conclusion he is trying to prove. If pro-life principles were indeed merely
dogmatic teachings—such as the teaching that Jesus of Nazareth is the only
begotten Son of God—then according to the Church herself (not to mention
American constitutional law and the law of many other republics) they could
not legitimately be enforced by the coercive power of the State. The trouble
for Cuomo is that pro-life principles are not mere matters of "dogma," nor
are they understood as such by the Catholic Church, whose beliefs Cuomo
claims to affirm, or by pro-life citizens, whether they happen to be Catholics,
Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, or atheists.
Rather, pro-life citizens understand these principles and propose them to
their fellow citizens as fundamental norms of justice and human rights that
can be understood and affirmed even apart from claims of revelation and
religious authority.
It will not do to suggest, as Cuomo seems to suggest, that the sheer
fact that the Catholic Church (or some other religious body) has a teaching
against these practices, and that some or even many people reject this
teaching, means that laws prohibiting the killing of human beings in the
embryonic and fetal stages violate the right to freedom of religion of those
who do not accept the teaching. If that were anything other than a fallacy,
then laws against killing infants, owning slaves, exploiting workers, and
many other grave forms of injustice really would be violations of religious
freedom. Surely Cuomo would not wish to endorse that conclusion.
Yet he provides no reason to distinguish those acts and practices
putatively falling within the category of religious freedom from those falling
outside it. So we must ask: If abortion is immunized against legal
restriction on the ground that it is a matter of religious belief, how can it be
that slavery is not similarly immunized? If today abortion cannot be
prohibited without violating the right to religious freedom of people whose
religions do not object to abortion, how can Cuomo say that the prohibition
of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in
1866 did not violate the right to religious freedom of those in the nineteenth
century whose religions did not condemn slaveholding? Cuomo says that
the Catholic Church "understands that our public morality depends on a
consensus view of right and wrong," but it would be scandalous to argue that
Catholics should have opposed a constitutional amendment abolishing
slavery in the nineteenth century, or legislation protecting the civil rights of
the oppressed descendants of slaves in the mid-twentieth century, on the
ground that "prudence" or "realism" requires respect for "moral pluralism"
where there is no "consensus" on questions of right and wrong.
At one point at the forum on Politics and Faith, Cuomo suggested that
laws against abortion and embryo-destructive research would force people
who do not object to such things to practice the religion of people who do.
But this is another fallacy. No one imagines that the constitutional
prohibition of slavery forced those who believed in slaveholding to practice
the religion of those who did not. Would Cuomo have us suppose that laws
protecting workers against what he, in line with the solemn teaching of every
pope from Leo XIII to Benedict XVI, considers to be exploitation and abuse
have the effect of forcing non-Catholic factory owners to practice
Catholicism?
[At another point, in denying that there was any inconsistency
between his willingness as governor to act on his anti-death penalty
views but not on his antiabortion views, Cuomo denied ever having
spoken against the death penalty as "a moral issue." He claimed, in fact,
that he "seldom talk[s] in terms of moral issues" and that, when he
speaks of the death penalty, he never suggests that he considers it a
moral issue. Then, in the very next sentence, he condemned the death
penalty in the most explicitly, indeed flamboyantly, moralistic terms: "I
am against the death penalty because I think it is bad and unfair. It is
debasing. It is degenerate. It kills innocent people." He did not pause to
consider that these are precisely the claims made by pro-life citizens
against the policy of legal abortion and its public funding—a policy that
Cuomo defends in the name of religious liberty.]
The fact is that Catholics and others who oppose abortion and
embryo-destructive research oppose these practices for the same reason we
oppose postnatal homicide. Pro-life citizens of every faith oppose these
practices because they involve the deliberate killing of innocent human
beings. Our ground for supporting the legal prohibition of abortion and
embryo-destructive research is the same ground on which we support the
legal prohibition of infanticide, for example, or the principle of
noncombatant immunity even in justified wars. We subscribe to the
proposition that all human beings are equal in worth and dignity and cannot
be denied the right to protection against killing on the basis of age, size,
stage of development, or condition of dependency.
One cannot with moral integrity be "personally opposed" to abortion
or embryo-destructive research yet support the legal permission of these
practices and even, their public funding as so many Catholic politicians do,
including most Catholic Democrats and some Catholic Republicans in the
United States. For by supporting abortion and embryo-destructive research
they unavoidably implicate themselves in the grave injustice of these
practices.
Of course, it is possible for a person wielding public power to use that
power to establish or preserve a legal right to abortion, for example, while at
the same time hoping that no one will exercise the right. But this does not
get such a person off the moral hook. For someone who acts to protect legal
abortion necessarily wills that abortion’s unborn victims be denied the
elementary legal protections against deliberate homicide that one favors for
oneself and those whom one considers to be worthy of the law’s protection.
Thus one violates the most basic precept of normative social and political
theory, the Golden Rule. One divides humanity into two classes: those
whom one is willing to admit to the community of the commonly protected
and those whom one wills to be excluded from it. By exposing members of
the disfavored class to lethal violence, one deeply implicates oneself in the
injustice of killing them—even if one sincerely hopes that no woman will
act on her right to choose abortion. The goodness of what one hopes for does
not redeem the evil—the grave injustice—of what one wills. To suppose
otherwise is to commit yet another fallacy.
If my analysis so far is correct, the question arises: What should the
leaders of the Church do about people like Cuomo and his successor as New
York’s Governor, Republican George Pataki who evidently takes the same
position? What should they do about those who claim to be in full
communion with the Church yet promote gravely unjust and scandalous
policies that expose the unborn to the violence and injustice of abortion?
In the run up to the last American presidential election, St. Louis
Archbishop Raymond Burke offered an answer. He declared that public
officials who support abortion and other unjust attacks against innocent
human life may not be admitted to Holy Communion, the preeminent
sacrament of unity.
Pro-life citizens of every religious persuasion applauded the
Archbishop’s stand. Critics, however, were quick to condemn Archbishop
Burke. They denounced him for "crossing the line" separating church and
state.
But this is silly. In acting on his authority as a bishop to discipline
members of his flock, who commit what the Church teaches are grave
injustices against innocent human beings, Archbishop Burke is exercising
his own constitutional right to the free exercise of religion; he is not
depriving others of their rights. Freedom is a two way street. No one is
compelled by law to accept ecclesiastical authority. But Archbishop
Burke—and anyone else in the United States of America or other freedom-
respecting nations—has every right to exercise spiritual authority over
anyone who chooses to accept it. There is a name for people who do accept
the authority of Catholic bishops. They are called "Catholics."
In many cases, the charge that Archbishop Burke and other bishops
who adopt the policy of excluding pro-abortion politicians from Communion
"are crossing the line separating church and state" is also hypocritical. A
good example of this hypocrisy comes from the Bergen Record, a prominent
newspaper in my home state of New Jersey. John Smith, the Bishop of
Trenton, did not go as far as Raymond Burke had gone in forbidding pro-
abortion Catholic politicians from receiving communion. Bishop Smith did,
however, in the words of the Bergen Record, "publicly lash" Governor
James McGreevey, a pro-abortion Catholic, for his support of abortion and
embryo-destructive research. For criticizing the Governor on these grounds,
the Record lashed the Bishop in an April 25th editorial. The paper accused
him of jeopardizing the delicate "balance" of our constitutional structure,
contrasting Bishop Smith’s position unfavorably with President John F.
Kennedy’s assurance to a group of Protestant ministers in Houston in 1960
that he, as a Catholic, would not govern the nation by appeal to his Catholic
religious beliefs. Since the Record had seen fit to take us back to 1960 for
guidance, I thought I would invite its editors to consider a case that had
arisen only a few years earlier than that. In a letter to the editor, I proposed a
question that would enable readers to determine immediately whether the
editors of the Bergen Record were persons of strict principle or mere
hypocrites.
I reminded readers that in the 1950s, in the midst of the political
conflict over segregation, Archbishop Joseph Rummel of New Orleans
publicly informed Catholics that support for racial segregation was
incompatible with Catholic teaching on the inherent dignity and equal rights
of all human beings. Archbishop Rummel said that "racial segregation is
morally wrong and sinful because it is a denial of the unity and solidarity of
the human race as conceived by God in the creation of Adam and Eve." He
warned Catholic public officials that support for segregation placed their
souls in peril. Indeed, Rummel took the step of publicly excommunicating
Leander Perez, one of the most powerful political bosses in Louisiana, and
two others who promoted legislation designed to impede desegregation of
diocesan schools. So I asked the editors of the Bergen Record: Was
Archbishop Rummel wrong? Or do Catholic bishops "cross the line" and
jeopardize the delicate constitutional balance, only when their rebukes to
politicians contradict the views of the editors of the Record? To their credit,
the editors published my letter—but I am still waiting for them to reply to
my question.
Now, some good and sincere people have expressed concern that
Archbishop Burke and bishops of similar mind are guilty of a double
standard when it comes to demanding of politicians fidelity to Catholic
teaching on justice and the common good. They point out that the bishops
who would deny communion to those who publicly support abortion and
embryo-destructive research do not take the same stand against politicians
who support the death penalty, which Pope John Paul II condemned in all
but the rarest of circumstances, and the U.S. invasions of Iraq, of which the
Pope and many other Vatican officials were sharply critical.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church indeed teaches that the death
penalty should not be used, except in circumstances so rare these days as to
be, in words of the late pope, "practically non-existent." However, two
points must be borne in mind in considering the obligations of Catholics and
the question whether Catholic politicians who support the death penalty have
in fact broken faith and communion with the Church. First, neither the Pope
nor the Catechism places the death penalty on a par with abortion and other
forms of direct killing of the innocent. (Indeed, the Church will probably
never equate the death penalty with these forms of homicide, even if it
eventually issues a definitive condemnation of the practice.) Second, the
status of the teaching differs from the status of the teaching on abortion. As
John Paul II made clear in the great encyclical Evangelium Vitae, the
teaching on abortion (as well as on euthanasia and all forms of direct killing
of the innocent) is infallibly proposed by the ordinary and universal
magisterium of the Church pursuant to the criteria of Lumen Gentium 25.
The same is plainly not true of the developing teaching on the death
penalty. Moreover, Cardinal Avery Dulles and others have interpreted the
teaching against the death penalty as essentially a prudential judgment about
its advisability, not a moral prohibition following from the application of a
strict principle. As it happens, I don't agree with their analysis, but no one
will be able to say with confidence from a Catholic point of view which side
in this debate is right until the magisterium clarifies the teaching. So, it
cannot be said that supporters of the death penalty are "obstinately persisting
in manifest grave sin," and may or should be denied Holy Communion
pursuant to Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law. No one can legitimately
claim for opposition to the death penalty the status of a definitively settled
moral teaching of the Church. (Nor can one claim that the Church teaches or
will ever teach that the death penalty—except in cases where it is applied
unjustly—involves the grave intrinsic injustice attaching to any act involving
the direct killing of the innocent.)
Regarding the question of the U.S. invasions of Iraq, it is important to
understand the precise terms of Catholic teaching on just and unjust warfare.
These terms are set forth with clarity and precision in the Catechism. In line
with the Church’s historic teaching on the subject, neither Pope John Paul II
nor Pope Benedict XVI has asserted that opposition to the war is binding on
the consciences of Catholics. John Paul II’s statements opposing the use of
force in the run up to both invasions plainly questioned the prudential
judgments of political leaders who, in the end, had and have the right and
responsibility (according to the Catechism and the entire tradition of
Catholic teaching on war and peace) to make judgments as to whether force
is in fact necessary. That is why the Pope and the bishops have not said, and
will not say, that Catholic soldiers may not participate in the war. This
contrasts with their clear teaching that Catholics may not participate in
abortions or other forms of embryo-killing or support the use of taxpayer
monies for activities involving the deliberate killing of innocent human
beings.
I wish to close with a word to those in politics and the media—
Catholics and non-Catholics alike—who have expressed anger, even
outrage, at the world’s Catholic bishops for teaching that the faithful must
never implicate themselves in unjust killing by supporting legal abortion and
embryo-destructive research. In scolding the bishops, the editors of the New
York Times, for example, have insisted that "separation of church and state"
means that no religious leader may presume to tell public officials what their
positions may and may not be on matters of public policy. But if we shift
the focus from abortion to, say, genocide, slavery, the exploitation of labor,
or racial segregation we see how implausible such a view is. When
Archbishop Rummel excommunicated the segregationist politicians in the
1950s, far from condemning the Archbishop, the editors of the New York
Times praised him. They were right then; they are wrong now.
This speech should be studied in every Catholic High School and even 7th and 8th grades.
Thank you Dr. George, you make this subject very easy to understand.
Bil Miller
=================================================
Political Obligations, Conscience, and Human Life
Robert P. George
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence
Princeton University
================================================
The Catholic Church proclaims the principle that every human
being—without regard to race, sex, or ethnicity, and equally without regard
to age, size, stage of development, or condition of dependency—is entitled
to the full protection of the laws. The Church teaches that human beings at
every stage of development—including those at the embryonic and fetal
stages—and those in every condition—including those who are mentally
retarded or physically disabled, and those who are suffering from severe
dementias or other memory and mind-impairing afflictions—possess
fundamental human rights. Above all, each of us possesses the right to life.
Now this teaching is disputed by some. There are those, including
some Catholics, who deny that human embryos are human beings. They
assert that and human embryo is merely "potential" human life, not nascent
human life. The trouble with this position is not theological but scientific. It
flies in the face of the established facts of human embryology and
developmental biology. A human embryo is not something distinct in kind
from a human being—the way that, for example, a rock or potato or alligator
is something different from a human being. A human embryo is a human
being at a particular, very early, stage of development. A human embryo,
even prior to implantation, is a whole, distinct, living member of the species
Homo sapiens. The embryonic human being requires only what any human
being at any stage of development requires for his or her survival, namely,
adequate nutrition and an environment sufficiently hospitable to sustain life.
From the beginning, each human being possesses—actually and not
merely potentially—the genetic constitution and active disposition for self-
directed development from the embryonic into and through the fetal, infant,
child, and adolescent stages and into adulthood with his or her distinctness,
unity, determinateness, and identity intact. In this crucial respect, the
embryo is quite unlike the gametes—that is, the sperm and ovum—whose
union brought a new human being into existence. You and I were never
sperm or ova; those were genetically and functionally parts of other human
beings. But each of us was once an embryo, just as each of us was once an
adolescent, and before that a child, an infant, a fetus. Of course, in the
embryonic, fetal, and infant stages we were highly vulnerable and dependent
creatures, but we were nevertheless complete, distinct human beings. As the
leading textbooks in human embryology and developmental biology
unanimously attest, we were not mere "clumps of cells," like moles or
tumors. So the basic rights people possess simply by virtue of their
humanity—including above all the right to life—we possessed even then.
Another school of thought concedes that human embryos are human
beings; however, it denies that all human beings are persons. There are,
according to this school of thought, pre-personal and post-personal human
beings, as well as severely retarded or damaged human beings who are not,
never will be, and never were, persons. Proponents of this view insist that
human beings in the embryonic and fetal stages are not yet persons. Indeed,
logically consistent and unsentimental proponents say that even human
infants are not yet persons, and therefore do not possess a right to life;
hence, the willingness of Peter Singer, Michael Tooley, and others to
countenance infanticide as well as abortion. Permanently comatose or
severely retarded or demented human beings are also denied the status of
persons. So euthanasia is said to be justified for human beings in these
conditions. Although some who think along these lines will allow that
human individuals whom they regard as "not yet persons" deserve a certain
limited respect by virtue of the purely biological fact that they are living
members of the human species, they nevertheless insist that "pre-personal"
humans do not possess a right to life that precludes them from being killed
to benefit others or to advance the interests of society at large. Only those
human beings who have achieved and retain what are regarded as the
defining attributes of personhood—whether those are considered to be
detectable brain function, self-awareness, or immediately exercisable
capacities for characteristically human mental functioning—possess a right
to life.
The trouble with this position is that it makes nonsense of our
political, philosophical, and, for many of us, theological commitment to the
principle that all human beings are equal in fundamental worth and dignity.
It generates puzzles that simply cannot be resolved, such as the puzzle as to
why this or that accidental quality which most human beings eventually
acquire in the course of normal development but others do not, and which
some retain and others lose, and which some have to a greater degree than
others, should count as the criterion of "personhood." The superior position,
surely, is that human beings possess equally an intrinsic dignity that is the
moral ground of the equal right to life of all. This is a right possessed by
every human being simply by virtue of his or her humanity. It does not
depend on an individual’s age, or size, or stage of development; nor can it be
erased by an individual’s physical or mental infirmity or condition of
dependency. It is what makes the life of even a severely retarded child equal
in fundamental worth to the life of a Nobel prize-winning scientist. It
explains why we may not licitly extract transplantable organs from such a
child even to save the life of a brilliant physicist who is afflicted with a life-
threatening heart, liver, or kidney ailment.
In any event, the position that all human beings equally possess
fundamental human rights, including the right to life, is the definitively
settled teaching of the Catholic Church. It is on this basis that the Church
proclaims that the taking of human life in abortion, infanticide, embryo-
destructive research, euthanasia, and terrorism are always and everywhere
gravely wrong.
And there is more. For the Church also teaches that it is the solemn
obligation of legislators and other public officials, as servants of the
common good, to honor and protect the rights of all. The principle of
equality demands as a matter of strict justice that protection against lethal
violence be extended by every political community to all who are within its
jurisdiction. Those to whom the care of the community is entrusted—above
all those who participate in making the community’s laws—have primary
responsibility for ensuring that the right to life is embodied in the laws and
effectively protected in practice. Notice, by the way, that the obligation of
the public official is not to "enforce the teaching of the Catholic Church," it
is, rather, to fulfill the demands of justice and the common good in light of
the principle of the inherent and equal dignity of every member of the
human family.
Yet, today many Catholic politicians are staunch supporters of what
they describe as a "woman’s right to abortion." Most of these politicians
also support the creation and government funding of an industry that would
produce tens of thousands of human embryos by cloning for use in
biomedical research in which these embryonic human beings would be
destroyed.
Catholic politicians in the United States and in other nations who
support abortion and embryo-destructive research typically claim to be
"personally opposed" to these practices but respectful of the rights of others
who disagree to act on their own judgments of conscience without legal
interference. Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo famously
articulated and defended this view in a speech at the University of Notre
Dame in 1984. Recently, Cuomo revisited the issue, speaking in
Washington at a Forum on Politics and Faith in America. He offered an
argument which, if successful, not only justifies Catholic politicians in
supporting legal abortion and embryo-destructive research, but requires them
to respect a right of people to engage in these practices despite their admitted
moral wrongfulness.
Cuomo asserted that holders of public office—including Catholic
office-holders—have a responsibility "to create conditions under which all
citizens are reasonably free to act according to their own religious beliefs,
even when those acts conflict with Roman Catholic dogma regarding
divorce, birth control, abortion, stem cell research, and even the existence of
God." According to Cuomo, Catholics should support legalized abortion
and embryo-destructive research, as he himself does, because in
guaranteeing these rights to others, they guarantee their own right "to reject
abortions, and to refuse to participate in or contribute to removing stem cells
from embryos." But Cuomo’s idea that the right "to reject" abortion and
embryo-destructive experimentation entails a right of others, as a matter of
religious liberty, to engage in these practices is simply, if spectacularly,
fallacious. The fallacy comes into focus immediately if one considers
whether the right of a Catholic (or Baptist, or Jew, or member of any other
faith) to reject infanticide, slavery, and the exploitation of labor entails a
right of others who happen not to share these "religious" convictions to kill,
enslave, and exploit.
By the expedient of classifying pro-life convictions about abortion
and embryo-destructive experimentation as "Roman Catholic dogmas,"
Cuomo smuggles into the premises of his argument the controversial
conclusion he is trying to prove. If pro-life principles were indeed merely
dogmatic teachings—such as the teaching that Jesus of Nazareth is the only
begotten Son of God—then according to the Church herself (not to mention
American constitutional law and the law of many other republics) they could
not legitimately be enforced by the coercive power of the State. The trouble
for Cuomo is that pro-life principles are not mere matters of "dogma," nor
are they understood as such by the Catholic Church, whose beliefs Cuomo
claims to affirm, or by pro-life citizens, whether they happen to be Catholics,
Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, or atheists.
Rather, pro-life citizens understand these principles and propose them to
their fellow citizens as fundamental norms of justice and human rights that
can be understood and affirmed even apart from claims of revelation and
religious authority.
It will not do to suggest, as Cuomo seems to suggest, that the sheer
fact that the Catholic Church (or some other religious body) has a teaching
against these practices, and that some or even many people reject this
teaching, means that laws prohibiting the killing of human beings in the
embryonic and fetal stages violate the right to freedom of religion of those
who do not accept the teaching. If that were anything other than a fallacy,
then laws against killing infants, owning slaves, exploiting workers, and
many other grave forms of injustice really would be violations of religious
freedom. Surely Cuomo would not wish to endorse that conclusion.
Yet he provides no reason to distinguish those acts and practices
putatively falling within the category of religious freedom from those falling
outside it. So we must ask: If abortion is immunized against legal
restriction on the ground that it is a matter of religious belief, how can it be
that slavery is not similarly immunized? If today abortion cannot be
prohibited without violating the right to religious freedom of people whose
religions do not object to abortion, how can Cuomo say that the prohibition
of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in
1866 did not violate the right to religious freedom of those in the nineteenth
century whose religions did not condemn slaveholding? Cuomo says that
the Catholic Church "understands that our public morality depends on a
consensus view of right and wrong," but it would be scandalous to argue that
Catholics should have opposed a constitutional amendment abolishing
slavery in the nineteenth century, or legislation protecting the civil rights of
the oppressed descendants of slaves in the mid-twentieth century, on the
ground that "prudence" or "realism" requires respect for "moral pluralism"
where there is no "consensus" on questions of right and wrong.
At one point at the forum on Politics and Faith, Cuomo suggested that
laws against abortion and embryo-destructive research would force people
who do not object to such things to practice the religion of people who do.
But this is another fallacy. No one imagines that the constitutional
prohibition of slavery forced those who believed in slaveholding to practice
the religion of those who did not. Would Cuomo have us suppose that laws
protecting workers against what he, in line with the solemn teaching of every
pope from Leo XIII to Benedict XVI, considers to be exploitation and abuse
have the effect of forcing non-Catholic factory owners to practice
Catholicism?
[At another point, in denying that there was any inconsistency
between his willingness as governor to act on his anti-death penalty
views but not on his antiabortion views, Cuomo denied ever having
spoken against the death penalty as "a moral issue." He claimed, in fact,
that he "seldom talk[s] in terms of moral issues" and that, when he
speaks of the death penalty, he never suggests that he considers it a
moral issue. Then, in the very next sentence, he condemned the death
penalty in the most explicitly, indeed flamboyantly, moralistic terms: "I
am against the death penalty because I think it is bad and unfair. It is
debasing. It is degenerate. It kills innocent people." He did not pause to
consider that these are precisely the claims made by pro-life citizens
against the policy of legal abortion and its public funding—a policy that
Cuomo defends in the name of religious liberty.]
The fact is that Catholics and others who oppose abortion and
embryo-destructive research oppose these practices for the same reason we
oppose postnatal homicide. Pro-life citizens of every faith oppose these
practices because they involve the deliberate killing of innocent human
beings. Our ground for supporting the legal prohibition of abortion and
embryo-destructive research is the same ground on which we support the
legal prohibition of infanticide, for example, or the principle of
noncombatant immunity even in justified wars. We subscribe to the
proposition that all human beings are equal in worth and dignity and cannot
be denied the right to protection against killing on the basis of age, size,
stage of development, or condition of dependency.
One cannot with moral integrity be "personally opposed" to abortion
or embryo-destructive research yet support the legal permission of these
practices and even, their public funding as so many Catholic politicians do,
including most Catholic Democrats and some Catholic Republicans in the
United States. For by supporting abortion and embryo-destructive research
they unavoidably implicate themselves in the grave injustice of these
practices.
Of course, it is possible for a person wielding public power to use that
power to establish or preserve a legal right to abortion, for example, while at
the same time hoping that no one will exercise the right. But this does not
get such a person off the moral hook. For someone who acts to protect legal
abortion necessarily wills that abortion’s unborn victims be denied the
elementary legal protections against deliberate homicide that one favors for
oneself and those whom one considers to be worthy of the law’s protection.
Thus one violates the most basic precept of normative social and political
theory, the Golden Rule. One divides humanity into two classes: those
whom one is willing to admit to the community of the commonly protected
and those whom one wills to be excluded from it. By exposing members of
the disfavored class to lethal violence, one deeply implicates oneself in the
injustice of killing them—even if one sincerely hopes that no woman will
act on her right to choose abortion. The goodness of what one hopes for does
not redeem the evil—the grave injustice—of what one wills. To suppose
otherwise is to commit yet another fallacy.
If my analysis so far is correct, the question arises: What should the
leaders of the Church do about people like Cuomo and his successor as New
York’s Governor, Republican George Pataki who evidently takes the same
position? What should they do about those who claim to be in full
communion with the Church yet promote gravely unjust and scandalous
policies that expose the unborn to the violence and injustice of abortion?
In the run up to the last American presidential election, St. Louis
Archbishop Raymond Burke offered an answer. He declared that public
officials who support abortion and other unjust attacks against innocent
human life may not be admitted to Holy Communion, the preeminent
sacrament of unity.
Pro-life citizens of every religious persuasion applauded the
Archbishop’s stand. Critics, however, were quick to condemn Archbishop
Burke. They denounced him for "crossing the line" separating church and
state.
But this is silly. In acting on his authority as a bishop to discipline
members of his flock, who commit what the Church teaches are grave
injustices against innocent human beings, Archbishop Burke is exercising
his own constitutional right to the free exercise of religion; he is not
depriving others of their rights. Freedom is a two way street. No one is
compelled by law to accept ecclesiastical authority. But Archbishop
Burke—and anyone else in the United States of America or other freedom-
respecting nations—has every right to exercise spiritual authority over
anyone who chooses to accept it. There is a name for people who do accept
the authority of Catholic bishops. They are called "Catholics."
In many cases, the charge that Archbishop Burke and other bishops
who adopt the policy of excluding pro-abortion politicians from Communion
"are crossing the line separating church and state" is also hypocritical. A
good example of this hypocrisy comes from the Bergen Record, a prominent
newspaper in my home state of New Jersey. John Smith, the Bishop of
Trenton, did not go as far as Raymond Burke had gone in forbidding pro-
abortion Catholic politicians from receiving communion. Bishop Smith did,
however, in the words of the Bergen Record, "publicly lash" Governor
James McGreevey, a pro-abortion Catholic, for his support of abortion and
embryo-destructive research. For criticizing the Governor on these grounds,
the Record lashed the Bishop in an April 25th editorial. The paper accused
him of jeopardizing the delicate "balance" of our constitutional structure,
contrasting Bishop Smith’s position unfavorably with President John F.
Kennedy’s assurance to a group of Protestant ministers in Houston in 1960
that he, as a Catholic, would not govern the nation by appeal to his Catholic
religious beliefs. Since the Record had seen fit to take us back to 1960 for
guidance, I thought I would invite its editors to consider a case that had
arisen only a few years earlier than that. In a letter to the editor, I proposed a
question that would enable readers to determine immediately whether the
editors of the Bergen Record were persons of strict principle or mere
hypocrites.
I reminded readers that in the 1950s, in the midst of the political
conflict over segregation, Archbishop Joseph Rummel of New Orleans
publicly informed Catholics that support for racial segregation was
incompatible with Catholic teaching on the inherent dignity and equal rights
of all human beings. Archbishop Rummel said that "racial segregation is
morally wrong and sinful because it is a denial of the unity and solidarity of
the human race as conceived by God in the creation of Adam and Eve." He
warned Catholic public officials that support for segregation placed their
souls in peril. Indeed, Rummel took the step of publicly excommunicating
Leander Perez, one of the most powerful political bosses in Louisiana, and
two others who promoted legislation designed to impede desegregation of
diocesan schools. So I asked the editors of the Bergen Record: Was
Archbishop Rummel wrong? Or do Catholic bishops "cross the line" and
jeopardize the delicate constitutional balance, only when their rebukes to
politicians contradict the views of the editors of the Record? To their credit,
the editors published my letter—but I am still waiting for them to reply to
my question.
Now, some good and sincere people have expressed concern that
Archbishop Burke and bishops of similar mind are guilty of a double
standard when it comes to demanding of politicians fidelity to Catholic
teaching on justice and the common good. They point out that the bishops
who would deny communion to those who publicly support abortion and
embryo-destructive research do not take the same stand against politicians
who support the death penalty, which Pope John Paul II condemned in all
but the rarest of circumstances, and the U.S. invasions of Iraq, of which the
Pope and many other Vatican officials were sharply critical.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church indeed teaches that the death
penalty should not be used, except in circumstances so rare these days as to
be, in words of the late pope, "practically non-existent." However, two
points must be borne in mind in considering the obligations of Catholics and
the question whether Catholic politicians who support the death penalty have
in fact broken faith and communion with the Church. First, neither the Pope
nor the Catechism places the death penalty on a par with abortion and other
forms of direct killing of the innocent. (Indeed, the Church will probably
never equate the death penalty with these forms of homicide, even if it
eventually issues a definitive condemnation of the practice.) Second, the
status of the teaching differs from the status of the teaching on abortion. As
John Paul II made clear in the great encyclical Evangelium Vitae, the
teaching on abortion (as well as on euthanasia and all forms of direct killing
of the innocent) is infallibly proposed by the ordinary and universal
magisterium of the Church pursuant to the criteria of Lumen Gentium 25.
The same is plainly not true of the developing teaching on the death
penalty. Moreover, Cardinal Avery Dulles and others have interpreted the
teaching against the death penalty as essentially a prudential judgment about
its advisability, not a moral prohibition following from the application of a
strict principle. As it happens, I don't agree with their analysis, but no one
will be able to say with confidence from a Catholic point of view which side
in this debate is right until the magisterium clarifies the teaching. So, it
cannot be said that supporters of the death penalty are "obstinately persisting
in manifest grave sin," and may or should be denied Holy Communion
pursuant to Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law. No one can legitimately
claim for opposition to the death penalty the status of a definitively settled
moral teaching of the Church. (Nor can one claim that the Church teaches or
will ever teach that the death penalty—except in cases where it is applied
unjustly—involves the grave intrinsic injustice attaching to any act involving
the direct killing of the innocent.)
Regarding the question of the U.S. invasions of Iraq, it is important to
understand the precise terms of Catholic teaching on just and unjust warfare.
These terms are set forth with clarity and precision in the Catechism. In line
with the Church’s historic teaching on the subject, neither Pope John Paul II
nor Pope Benedict XVI has asserted that opposition to the war is binding on
the consciences of Catholics. John Paul II’s statements opposing the use of
force in the run up to both invasions plainly questioned the prudential
judgments of political leaders who, in the end, had and have the right and
responsibility (according to the Catechism and the entire tradition of
Catholic teaching on war and peace) to make judgments as to whether force
is in fact necessary. That is why the Pope and the bishops have not said, and
will not say, that Catholic soldiers may not participate in the war. This
contrasts with their clear teaching that Catholics may not participate in
abortions or other forms of embryo-killing or support the use of taxpayer
monies for activities involving the deliberate killing of innocent human
beings.
I wish to close with a word to those in politics and the media—
Catholics and non-Catholics alike—who have expressed anger, even
outrage, at the world’s Catholic bishops for teaching that the faithful must
never implicate themselves in unjust killing by supporting legal abortion and
embryo-destructive research. In scolding the bishops, the editors of the New
York Times, for example, have insisted that "separation of church and state"
means that no religious leader may presume to tell public officials what their
positions may and may not be on matters of public policy. But if we shift
the focus from abortion to, say, genocide, slavery, the exploitation of labor,
or racial segregation we see how implausible such a view is. When
Archbishop Rummel excommunicated the segregationist politicians in the
1950s, far from condemning the Archbishop, the editors of the New York
Times praised him. They were right then; they are wrong now.
Speech by Professor Robert P. George At Pa. For Human Life 2010 Banquet
The following is the text of a great "teaching" given by Proffessor George. Share it with your children and grandchildren. It would be great if we could get Catholic politicians to read it.
Bill Miller
==============================================
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Political Obligations, Conscience, and Human Life
Robert P. George
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence
Princeton University
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Robert P. George
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence
Princeton University
===============================================
The Catholic Church proclaims the principle that every human
being—without regard to race, sex, or ethnicity, and equally without regard
to age, size, stage of development, or condition of dependency—is entitled
to the full protection of the laws. The Church teaches that human beings at
every stage of development—including those at the embryonic and fetal
stages—and those in every condition—including those who are mentally
retarded or physically disabled, and those who are suffering from severe
dementias or other memory and mind-impairing afflictions—possess
fundamental human rights. Above all, each of us possesses the right to life.
Now this teaching is disputed by some. There are those, including
some Catholics, who deny that human embryos are human beings. They
assert that and human embryo is merely "potential" human life, not nascent
human life. The trouble with this position is not theological but scientific. It
flies in the face of the established facts of human embryology and
developmental biology. A human embryo is not something distinct in kind
from a human being—the way that, for example, a rock or potato or alligator
is something different from a human being. A human embryo is a human
being at a particular, very early, stage of development. A human embryo,
even prior to implantation, is a whole, distinct, living member of the species
Homo sapiens. The embryonic human being requires only what any human
being at any stage of development requires for his or her survival, namely,
adequate nutrition and an environment sufficiently hospitable to sustain life.
From the beginning, each human being possesses—actually and not
merely potentially—the genetic constitution and active disposition for self-
directed development from the embryonic into and through the fetal, infant,
child, and adolescent stages and into adulthood with his or her distinctness,
unity, determinateness, and identity intact. In this crucial respect, the
embryo is quite unlike the gametes—that is, the sperm and ovum—whose
union brought a new human being into existence. You and I were never
sperm or ova; those were genetically and functionally parts of other human
beings. But each of us was once an embryo, just as each of us was once an
adolescent, and before that a child, an infant, a fetus. Of course, in the
embryonic, fetal, and infant stages we were highly vulnerable and dependent
creatures, but we were nevertheless complete, distinct human beings. As the
leading textbooks in human embryology and developmental biology
unanimously attest, we were not mere "clumps of cells," like moles or
tumors. So the basic rights people possess simply by virtue of their
humanity—including above all the right to life—we possessed even then.
Another school of thought concedes that human embryos are human
beings; however, it denies that all human beings are persons. There are,
according to this school of thought, pre-personal and post-personal human
beings, as well as severely retarded or damaged human beings who are not,
never will be, and never were, persons. Proponents of this view insist that
human beings in the embryonic and fetal stages are not yet persons. Indeed,
logically consistent and unsentimental proponents say that even human
infants are not yet persons, and therefore do not possess a right to life;
hence, the willingness of Peter Singer, Michael Tooley, and others to
countenance infanticide as well as abortion. Permanently comatose or
severely retarded or demented human beings are also denied the status of
persons. So euthanasia is said to be justified for human beings in these
conditions. Although some who think along these lines will allow that
human individuals whom they regard as "not yet persons" deserve a certain
limited respect by virtue of the purely biological fact that they are living
members of the human species, they nevertheless insist that "pre-personal"
humans do not possess a right to life that precludes them from being killed
to benefit others or to advance the interests of society at large. Only those
human beings who have achieved and retain what are regarded as the
defining attributes of personhood—whether those are considered to be
detectable brain function, self-awareness, or immediately exercisable
capacities for characteristically human mental functioning—possess a right
to life.
The trouble with this position is that it makes nonsense of our
political, philosophical, and, for many of us, theological commitment to the
principle that all human beings are equal in fundamental worth and dignity.
It generates puzzles that simply cannot be resolved, such as the puzzle as to
why this or that accidental quality which most human beings eventually
acquire in the course of normal development but others do not, and which
some retain and others lose, and which some have to a greater degree than
others, should count as the criterion of "personhood." The superior position,
surely, is that human beings possess equally an intrinsic dignity that is the
moral ground of the equal right to life of all. This is a right possessed by
every human being simply by virtue of his or her humanity. It does not
depend on an individual’s age, or size, or stage of development; nor can it be
erased by an individual’s physical or mental infirmity or condition of
dependency. It is what makes the life of even a severely retarded child equal
in fundamental worth to the life of a Nobel prize-winning scientist. It
explains why we may not licitly extract transplantable organs from such a
child even to save the life of a brilliant physicist who is afflicted with a life-
threatening heart, liver, or kidney ailment.
In any event, the position that all human beings equally possess
fundamental human rights, including the right to life, is the definitively
settled teaching of the Catholic Church. It is on this basis that the Church
proclaims that the taking of human life in abortion, infanticide, embryo-
destructive research, euthanasia, and terrorism are always and everywhere
gravely wrong.
And there is more. For the Church also teaches that it is the solemn
obligation of legislators and other public officials, as servants of the
common good, to honor and protect the rights of all. The principle of
equality demands as a matter of strict justice that protection against lethal
violence be extended by every political community to all who are within its
jurisdiction. Those to whom the care of the community is entrusted—above
all those who participate in making the community’s laws—have primary
responsibility for ensuring that the right to life is embodied in the laws and
effectively protected in practice. Notice, by the way, that the obligation of
the public official is not to "enforce the teaching of the Catholic Church," it
is, rather, to fulfill the demands of justice and the common good in light of
the principle of the inherent and equal dignity of every member of the
human family.
Yet, today many Catholic politicians are staunch supporters of what
they describe as a "woman’s right to abortion." Most of these politicians
also support the creation and government funding of an industry that would
produce tens of thousands of human embryos by cloning for use in
biomedical research in which these embryonic human beings would be
destroyed.
Catholic politicians in the United States and in other nations who
support abortion and embryo-destructive research typically claim to be
"personally opposed" to these practices but respectful of the rights of others
who disagree to act on their own judgments of conscience without legal
interference. Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo famously
articulated and defended this view in a speech at the University of Notre
Dame in 1984. Recently, Cuomo revisited the issue, speaking in
Washington at a Forum on Politics and Faith in America. He offered an
argument which, if successful, not only justifies Catholic politicians in
supporting legal abortion and embryo-destructive research, but requires them
to respect a right of people to engage in these practices despite their admitted
moral wrongfulness.
Cuomo asserted that holders of public office—including Catholic
office-holders—have a responsibility "to create conditions under which all
citizens are reasonably free to act according to their own religious beliefs,
even when those acts conflict with Roman Catholic dogma regarding
divorce, birth control, abortion, stem cell research, and even the existence of
God." According to Cuomo, Catholics should support legalized abortion
and embryo-destructive research, as he himself does, because in
guaranteeing these rights to others, they guarantee their own right "to reject
abortions, and to refuse to participate in or contribute to removing stem cells
from embryos." But Cuomo’s idea that the right "to reject" abortion and
embryo-destructive experimentation entails a right of others, as a matter of
religious liberty, to engage in these practices is simply, if spectacularly,
fallacious. The fallacy comes into focus immediately if one considers
whether the right of a Catholic (or Baptist, or Jew, or member of any other
faith) to reject infanticide, slavery, and the exploitation of labor entails a
right of others who happen not to share these "religious" convictions to kill,
enslave, and exploit.
By the expedient of classifying pro-life convictions about abortion
and embryo-destructive experimentation as "Roman Catholic dogmas,"
Cuomo smuggles into the premises of his argument the controversial
conclusion he is trying to prove. If pro-life principles were indeed merely
dogmatic teachings—such as the teaching that Jesus of Nazareth is the only
begotten Son of God—then according to the Church herself (not to mention
American constitutional law and the law of many other republics) they could
not legitimately be enforced by the coercive power of the State. The trouble
for Cuomo is that pro-life principles are not mere matters of "dogma," nor
are they understood as such by the Catholic Church, whose beliefs Cuomo
claims to affirm, or by pro-life citizens, whether they happen to be Catholics,
Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, or atheists.
Rather, pro-life citizens understand these principles and propose them to
their fellow citizens as fundamental norms of justice and human rights that
can be understood and affirmed even apart from claims of revelation and
religious authority.
It will not do to suggest, as Cuomo seems to suggest, that the sheer
fact that the Catholic Church (or some other religious body) has a teaching
against these practices, and that some or even many people reject this
teaching, means that laws prohibiting the killing of human beings in the
embryonic and fetal stages violate the right to freedom of religion of those
who do not accept the teaching. If that were anything other than a fallacy,
then laws against killing infants, owning slaves, exploiting workers, and
many other grave forms of injustice really would be violations of religious
freedom. Surely Cuomo would not wish to endorse that conclusion.
Yet he provides no reason to distinguish those acts and practices
putatively falling within the category of religious freedom from those falling
outside it. So we must ask: If abortion is immunized against legal
restriction on the ground that it is a matter of religious belief, how can it be
that slavery is not similarly immunized? If today abortion cannot be
prohibited without violating the right to religious freedom of people whose
religions do not object to abortion, how can Cuomo say that the prohibition
of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in
1866 did not violate the right to religious freedom of those in the nineteenth
century whose religions did not condemn slaveholding? Cuomo says that
the Catholic Church "understands that our public morality depends on a
consensus view of right and wrong," but it would be scandalous to argue that
Catholics should have opposed a constitutional amendment abolishing
slavery in the nineteenth century, or legislation protecting the civil rights of
the oppressed descendants of slaves in the mid-twentieth century, on the
ground that "prudence" or "realism" requires respect for "moral pluralism"
where there is no "consensus" on questions of right and wrong.
At one point at the forum on Politics and Faith, Cuomo suggested that
laws against abortion and embryo-destructive research would force people
who do not object to such things to practice the religion of people who do.
But this is another fallacy. No one imagines that the constitutional
prohibition of slavery forced those who believed in slaveholding to practice
the religion of those who did not. Would Cuomo have us suppose that laws
protecting workers against what he, in line with the solemn teaching of every
pope from Leo XIII to Benedict XVI, considers to be exploitation and abuse
have the effect of forcing non-Catholic factory owners to practice
Catholicism?
[At another point, in denying that there was any inconsistency
between his willingness as governor to act on his anti-death penalty
views but not on his antiabortion views, Cuomo denied ever having
spoken against the death penalty as "a moral issue." He claimed, in fact,
that he "seldom talk[s] in terms of moral issues" and that, when he
speaks of the death penalty, he never suggests that he considers it a
moral issue. Then, in the very next sentence, he condemned the death
penalty in the most explicitly, indeed flamboyantly, moralistic terms: "I
am against the death penalty because I think it is bad and unfair. It is
debasing. It is degenerate. It kills innocent people." He did not pause to
consider that these are precisely the claims made by pro-life citizens
against the policy of legal abortion and its public funding—a policy that
Cuomo defends in the name of religious liberty.]
The fact is that Catholics and others who oppose abortion and
embryo-destructive research oppose these practices for the same reason we
oppose postnatal homicide. Pro-life citizens of every faith oppose these
practices because they involve the deliberate killing of innocent human
beings. Our ground for supporting the legal prohibition of abortion and
embryo-destructive research is the same ground on which we support the
legal prohibition of infanticide, for example, or the principle of
noncombatant immunity even in justified wars. We subscribe to the
proposition that all human beings are equal in worth and dignity and cannot
be denied the right to protection against killing on the basis of age, size,
stage of development, or condition of dependency.
One cannot with moral integrity be "personally opposed" to abortion
or embryo-destructive research yet support the legal permission of these
practices and even, their public funding as so many Catholic politicians do,
including most Catholic Democrats and some Catholic Republicans in the
United States. For by supporting abortion and embryo-destructive research
they unavoidably implicate themselves in the grave injustice of these
practices.
Of course, it is possible for a person wielding public power to use that
power to establish or preserve a legal right to abortion, for example, while at
the same time hoping that no one will exercise the right. But this does not
get such a person off the moral hook. For someone who acts to protect legal
abortion necessarily wills that abortion’s unborn victims be denied the
elementary legal protections against deliberate homicide that one favors for
oneself and those whom one considers to be worthy of the law’s protection.
Thus one violates the most basic precept of normative social and political
theory, the Golden Rule. One divides humanity into two classes: those
whom one is willing to admit to the community of the commonly protected
and those whom one wills to be excluded from it. By exposing members of
the disfavored class to lethal violence, one deeply implicates oneself in the
injustice of killing them—even if one sincerely hopes that no woman will
act on her right to choose abortion. The goodness of what one hopes for does
not redeem the evil—the grave injustice—of what one wills. To suppose
otherwise is to commit yet another fallacy.
If my analysis so far is correct, the question arises: What should the
leaders of the Church do about people like Cuomo and his successor as New
York’s Governor, Republican George Pataki who evidently takes the same
position? What should they do about those who claim to be in full
communion with the Church yet promote gravely unjust and scandalous
policies that expose the unborn to the violence and injustice of abortion?
In the run up to the last American presidential election, St. Louis
Archbishop Raymond Burke offered an answer. He declared that public
officials who support abortion and other unjust attacks against innocent
human life may not be admitted to Holy Communion, the preeminent
sacrament of unity.
Pro-life citizens of every religious persuasion applauded the
Archbishop’s stand. Critics, however, were quick to condemn Archbishop
Burke. They denounced him for "crossing the line" separating church and
state.
But this is silly. In acting on his authority as a bishop to discipline
members of his flock, who commit what the Church teaches are grave
injustices against innocent human beings, Archbishop Burke is exercising
his own constitutional right to the free exercise of religion; he is not
depriving others of their rights. Freedom is a two way street. No one is
compelled by law to accept ecclesiastical authority. But Archbishop
Burke—and anyone else in the United States of America or other freedom-
respecting nations—has every right to exercise spiritual authority over
anyone who chooses to accept it. There is a name for people who do accept
the authority of Catholic bishops. They are called "Catholics."
In many cases, the charge that Archbishop Burke and other bishops
who adopt the policy of excluding pro-abortion politicians from Communion
"are crossing the line separating church and state" is also hypocritical. A
good example of this hypocrisy comes from the Bergen Record, a prominent
newspaper in my home state of New Jersey. John Smith, the Bishop of
Trenton, did not go as far as Raymond Burke had gone in forbidding pro-
abortion Catholic politicians from receiving communion. Bishop Smith did,
however, in the words of the Bergen Record, "publicly lash" Governor
James McGreevey, a pro-abortion Catholic, for his support of abortion and
embryo-destructive research. For criticizing the Governor on these grounds,
the Record lashed the Bishop in an April 25th editorial. The paper accused
him of jeopardizing the delicate "balance" of our constitutional structure,
contrasting Bishop Smith’s position unfavorably with President John F.
Kennedy’s assurance to a group of Protestant ministers in Houston in 1960
that he, as a Catholic, would not govern the nation by appeal to his Catholic
religious beliefs. Since the Record had seen fit to take us back to 1960 for
guidance, I thought I would invite its editors to consider a case that had
arisen only a few years earlier than that. In a letter to the editor, I proposed a
question that would enable readers to determine immediately whether the
editors of the Bergen Record were persons of strict principle or mere
hypocrites.
I reminded readers that in the 1950s, in the midst of the political
conflict over segregation, Archbishop Joseph Rummel of New Orleans
publicly informed Catholics that support for racial segregation was
incompatible with Catholic teaching on the inherent dignity and equal rights
of all human beings. Archbishop Rummel said that "racial segregation is
morally wrong and sinful because it is a denial of the unity and solidarity of
the human race as conceived by God in the creation of Adam and Eve." He
warned Catholic public officials that support for segregation placed their
souls in peril. Indeed, Rummel took the step of publicly excommunicating
Leander Perez, one of the most powerful political bosses in Louisiana, and
two others who promoted legislation designed to impede desegregation of
diocesan schools. So I asked the editors of the Bergen Record: Was
Archbishop Rummel wrong? Or do Catholic bishops "cross the line" and
jeopardize the delicate constitutional balance, only when their rebukes to
politicians contradict the views of the editors of the Record? To their credit,
the editors published my letter—but I am still waiting for them to reply to
my question.
Now, some good and sincere people have expressed concern that
Archbishop Burke and bishops of similar mind are guilty of a double
standard when it comes to demanding of politicians fidelity to Catholic
teaching on justice and the common good. They point out that the bishops
who would deny communion to those who publicly support abortion and
embryo-destructive research do not take the same stand against politicians
who support the death penalty, which Pope John Paul II condemned in all
but the rarest of circumstances, and the U.S. invasions of Iraq, of which the
Pope and many other Vatican officials were sharply critical.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church indeed teaches that the death
penalty should not be used, except in circumstances so rare these days as to
be, in words of the late pope, "practically non-existent." However, two
points must be borne in mind in considering the obligations of Catholics and
the question whether Catholic politicians who support the death penalty have
in fact broken faith and communion with the Church. First, neither the Pope
nor the Catechism places the death penalty on a par with abortion and other
forms of direct killing of the innocent. (Indeed, the Church will probably
never equate the death penalty with these forms of homicide, even if it
eventually issues a definitive condemnation of the practice.) Second, the
status of the teaching differs from the status of the teaching on abortion. As
John Paul II made clear in the great encyclical Evangelium Vitae, the
teaching on abortion (as well as on euthanasia and all forms of direct killing
of the innocent) is infallibly proposed by the ordinary and universal
magisterium of the Church pursuant to the criteria of Lumen Gentium 25.
The same is plainly not true of the developing teaching on the death
penalty. Moreover, Cardinal Avery Dulles and others have interpreted the
teaching against the death penalty as essentially a prudential judgment about
its advisability, not a moral prohibition following from the application of a
strict principle. As it happens, I don't agree with their analysis, but no one
will be able to say with confidence from a Catholic point of view which side
in this debate is right until the magisterium clarifies the teaching. So, it
cannot be said that supporters of the death penalty are "obstinately persisting
in manifest grave sin," and may or should be denied Holy Communion
pursuant to Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law. No one can legitimately
claim for opposition to the death penalty the status of a definitively settled
moral teaching of the Church. (Nor can one claim that the Church teaches or
will ever teach that the death penalty—except in cases where it is applied
unjustly—involves the grave intrinsic injustice attaching to any act involving
the direct killing of the innocent.)
Regarding the question of the U.S. invasions of Iraq, it is important to
understand the precise terms of Catholic teaching on just and unjust warfare.
These terms are set forth with clarity and precision in the Catechism. In line
with the Church’s historic teaching on the subject, neither Pope John Paul II
nor Pope Benedict XVI has asserted that opposition to the war is binding on
the consciences of Catholics. John Paul II’s statements opposing the use of
force in the run up to both invasions plainly questioned the prudential
judgments of political leaders who, in the end, had and have the right and
responsibility (according to the Catechism and the entire tradition of
Catholic teaching on war and peace) to make judgments as to whether force
is in fact necessary. That is why the Pope and the bishops have not said, and
will not say, that Catholic soldiers may not participate in the war. This
contrasts with their clear teaching that Catholics may not participate in
abortions or other forms of embryo-killing or support the use of taxpayer
monies for activities involving the deliberate killing of innocent human
beings.
I wish to close with a word to those in politics and the media—
Catholics and non-Catholics alike—who have expressed anger, even
outrage, at the world’s Catholic bishops for teaching that the faithful must
never implicate themselves in unjust killing by supporting legal abortion and
embryo-destructive research. In scolding the bishops, the editors of the New
York Times, for example, have insisted that "separation of church and state"
means that no religious leader may presume to tell public officials what their
positions may and may not be on matters of public policy. But if we shift
the focus from abortion to, say, genocide, slavery, the exploitation of labor,
or racial segregation we see how implausible such a view is. When
Archbishop Rummel excommunicated the segregationist politicians in the
1950s, far from condemning the Archbishop, the editors of the New York
Times praised him. They were right then; they are wrong now.
being—without regard to race, sex, or ethnicity, and equally without regard
to age, size, stage of development, or condition of dependency—is entitled
to the full protection of the laws. The Church teaches that human beings at
every stage of development—including those at the embryonic and fetal
stages—and those in every condition—including those who are mentally
retarded or physically disabled, and those who are suffering from severe
dementias or other memory and mind-impairing afflictions—possess
fundamental human rights. Above all, each of us possesses the right to life.
Now this teaching is disputed by some. There are those, including
some Catholics, who deny that human embryos are human beings. They
assert that and human embryo is merely "potential" human life, not nascent
human life. The trouble with this position is not theological but scientific. It
flies in the face of the established facts of human embryology and
developmental biology. A human embryo is not something distinct in kind
from a human being—the way that, for example, a rock or potato or alligator
is something different from a human being. A human embryo is a human
being at a particular, very early, stage of development. A human embryo,
even prior to implantation, is a whole, distinct, living member of the species
Homo sapiens. The embryonic human being requires only what any human
being at any stage of development requires for his or her survival, namely,
adequate nutrition and an environment sufficiently hospitable to sustain life.
From the beginning, each human being possesses—actually and not
merely potentially—the genetic constitution and active disposition for self-
directed development from the embryonic into and through the fetal, infant,
child, and adolescent stages and into adulthood with his or her distinctness,
unity, determinateness, and identity intact. In this crucial respect, the
embryo is quite unlike the gametes—that is, the sperm and ovum—whose
union brought a new human being into existence. You and I were never
sperm or ova; those were genetically and functionally parts of other human
beings. But each of us was once an embryo, just as each of us was once an
adolescent, and before that a child, an infant, a fetus. Of course, in the
embryonic, fetal, and infant stages we were highly vulnerable and dependent
creatures, but we were nevertheless complete, distinct human beings. As the
leading textbooks in human embryology and developmental biology
unanimously attest, we were not mere "clumps of cells," like moles or
tumors. So the basic rights people possess simply by virtue of their
humanity—including above all the right to life—we possessed even then.
Another school of thought concedes that human embryos are human
beings; however, it denies that all human beings are persons. There are,
according to this school of thought, pre-personal and post-personal human
beings, as well as severely retarded or damaged human beings who are not,
never will be, and never were, persons. Proponents of this view insist that
human beings in the embryonic and fetal stages are not yet persons. Indeed,
logically consistent and unsentimental proponents say that even human
infants are not yet persons, and therefore do not possess a right to life;
hence, the willingness of Peter Singer, Michael Tooley, and others to
countenance infanticide as well as abortion. Permanently comatose or
severely retarded or demented human beings are also denied the status of
persons. So euthanasia is said to be justified for human beings in these
conditions. Although some who think along these lines will allow that
human individuals whom they regard as "not yet persons" deserve a certain
limited respect by virtue of the purely biological fact that they are living
members of the human species, they nevertheless insist that "pre-personal"
humans do not possess a right to life that precludes them from being killed
to benefit others or to advance the interests of society at large. Only those
human beings who have achieved and retain what are regarded as the
defining attributes of personhood—whether those are considered to be
detectable brain function, self-awareness, or immediately exercisable
capacities for characteristically human mental functioning—possess a right
to life.
The trouble with this position is that it makes nonsense of our
political, philosophical, and, for many of us, theological commitment to the
principle that all human beings are equal in fundamental worth and dignity.
It generates puzzles that simply cannot be resolved, such as the puzzle as to
why this or that accidental quality which most human beings eventually
acquire in the course of normal development but others do not, and which
some retain and others lose, and which some have to a greater degree than
others, should count as the criterion of "personhood." The superior position,
surely, is that human beings possess equally an intrinsic dignity that is the
moral ground of the equal right to life of all. This is a right possessed by
every human being simply by virtue of his or her humanity. It does not
depend on an individual’s age, or size, or stage of development; nor can it be
erased by an individual’s physical or mental infirmity or condition of
dependency. It is what makes the life of even a severely retarded child equal
in fundamental worth to the life of a Nobel prize-winning scientist. It
explains why we may not licitly extract transplantable organs from such a
child even to save the life of a brilliant physicist who is afflicted with a life-
threatening heart, liver, or kidney ailment.
In any event, the position that all human beings equally possess
fundamental human rights, including the right to life, is the definitively
settled teaching of the Catholic Church. It is on this basis that the Church
proclaims that the taking of human life in abortion, infanticide, embryo-
destructive research, euthanasia, and terrorism are always and everywhere
gravely wrong.
And there is more. For the Church also teaches that it is the solemn
obligation of legislators and other public officials, as servants of the
common good, to honor and protect the rights of all. The principle of
equality demands as a matter of strict justice that protection against lethal
violence be extended by every political community to all who are within its
jurisdiction. Those to whom the care of the community is entrusted—above
all those who participate in making the community’s laws—have primary
responsibility for ensuring that the right to life is embodied in the laws and
effectively protected in practice. Notice, by the way, that the obligation of
the public official is not to "enforce the teaching of the Catholic Church," it
is, rather, to fulfill the demands of justice and the common good in light of
the principle of the inherent and equal dignity of every member of the
human family.
Yet, today many Catholic politicians are staunch supporters of what
they describe as a "woman’s right to abortion." Most of these politicians
also support the creation and government funding of an industry that would
produce tens of thousands of human embryos by cloning for use in
biomedical research in which these embryonic human beings would be
destroyed.
Catholic politicians in the United States and in other nations who
support abortion and embryo-destructive research typically claim to be
"personally opposed" to these practices but respectful of the rights of others
who disagree to act on their own judgments of conscience without legal
interference. Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo famously
articulated and defended this view in a speech at the University of Notre
Dame in 1984. Recently, Cuomo revisited the issue, speaking in
Washington at a Forum on Politics and Faith in America. He offered an
argument which, if successful, not only justifies Catholic politicians in
supporting legal abortion and embryo-destructive research, but requires them
to respect a right of people to engage in these practices despite their admitted
moral wrongfulness.
Cuomo asserted that holders of public office—including Catholic
office-holders—have a responsibility "to create conditions under which all
citizens are reasonably free to act according to their own religious beliefs,
even when those acts conflict with Roman Catholic dogma regarding
divorce, birth control, abortion, stem cell research, and even the existence of
God." According to Cuomo, Catholics should support legalized abortion
and embryo-destructive research, as he himself does, because in
guaranteeing these rights to others, they guarantee their own right "to reject
abortions, and to refuse to participate in or contribute to removing stem cells
from embryos." But Cuomo’s idea that the right "to reject" abortion and
embryo-destructive experimentation entails a right of others, as a matter of
religious liberty, to engage in these practices is simply, if spectacularly,
fallacious. The fallacy comes into focus immediately if one considers
whether the right of a Catholic (or Baptist, or Jew, or member of any other
faith) to reject infanticide, slavery, and the exploitation of labor entails a
right of others who happen not to share these "religious" convictions to kill,
enslave, and exploit.
By the expedient of classifying pro-life convictions about abortion
and embryo-destructive experimentation as "Roman Catholic dogmas,"
Cuomo smuggles into the premises of his argument the controversial
conclusion he is trying to prove. If pro-life principles were indeed merely
dogmatic teachings—such as the teaching that Jesus of Nazareth is the only
begotten Son of God—then according to the Church herself (not to mention
American constitutional law and the law of many other republics) they could
not legitimately be enforced by the coercive power of the State. The trouble
for Cuomo is that pro-life principles are not mere matters of "dogma," nor
are they understood as such by the Catholic Church, whose beliefs Cuomo
claims to affirm, or by pro-life citizens, whether they happen to be Catholics,
Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, or atheists.
Rather, pro-life citizens understand these principles and propose them to
their fellow citizens as fundamental norms of justice and human rights that
can be understood and affirmed even apart from claims of revelation and
religious authority.
It will not do to suggest, as Cuomo seems to suggest, that the sheer
fact that the Catholic Church (or some other religious body) has a teaching
against these practices, and that some or even many people reject this
teaching, means that laws prohibiting the killing of human beings in the
embryonic and fetal stages violate the right to freedom of religion of those
who do not accept the teaching. If that were anything other than a fallacy,
then laws against killing infants, owning slaves, exploiting workers, and
many other grave forms of injustice really would be violations of religious
freedom. Surely Cuomo would not wish to endorse that conclusion.
Yet he provides no reason to distinguish those acts and practices
putatively falling within the category of religious freedom from those falling
outside it. So we must ask: If abortion is immunized against legal
restriction on the ground that it is a matter of religious belief, how can it be
that slavery is not similarly immunized? If today abortion cannot be
prohibited without violating the right to religious freedom of people whose
religions do not object to abortion, how can Cuomo say that the prohibition
of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in
1866 did not violate the right to religious freedom of those in the nineteenth
century whose religions did not condemn slaveholding? Cuomo says that
the Catholic Church "understands that our public morality depends on a
consensus view of right and wrong," but it would be scandalous to argue that
Catholics should have opposed a constitutional amendment abolishing
slavery in the nineteenth century, or legislation protecting the civil rights of
the oppressed descendants of slaves in the mid-twentieth century, on the
ground that "prudence" or "realism" requires respect for "moral pluralism"
where there is no "consensus" on questions of right and wrong.
At one point at the forum on Politics and Faith, Cuomo suggested that
laws against abortion and embryo-destructive research would force people
who do not object to such things to practice the religion of people who do.
But this is another fallacy. No one imagines that the constitutional
prohibition of slavery forced those who believed in slaveholding to practice
the religion of those who did not. Would Cuomo have us suppose that laws
protecting workers against what he, in line with the solemn teaching of every
pope from Leo XIII to Benedict XVI, considers to be exploitation and abuse
have the effect of forcing non-Catholic factory owners to practice
Catholicism?
[At another point, in denying that there was any inconsistency
between his willingness as governor to act on his anti-death penalty
views but not on his antiabortion views, Cuomo denied ever having
spoken against the death penalty as "a moral issue." He claimed, in fact,
that he "seldom talk[s] in terms of moral issues" and that, when he
speaks of the death penalty, he never suggests that he considers it a
moral issue. Then, in the very next sentence, he condemned the death
penalty in the most explicitly, indeed flamboyantly, moralistic terms: "I
am against the death penalty because I think it is bad and unfair. It is
debasing. It is degenerate. It kills innocent people." He did not pause to
consider that these are precisely the claims made by pro-life citizens
against the policy of legal abortion and its public funding—a policy that
Cuomo defends in the name of religious liberty.]
The fact is that Catholics and others who oppose abortion and
embryo-destructive research oppose these practices for the same reason we
oppose postnatal homicide. Pro-life citizens of every faith oppose these
practices because they involve the deliberate killing of innocent human
beings. Our ground for supporting the legal prohibition of abortion and
embryo-destructive research is the same ground on which we support the
legal prohibition of infanticide, for example, or the principle of
noncombatant immunity even in justified wars. We subscribe to the
proposition that all human beings are equal in worth and dignity and cannot
be denied the right to protection against killing on the basis of age, size,
stage of development, or condition of dependency.
One cannot with moral integrity be "personally opposed" to abortion
or embryo-destructive research yet support the legal permission of these
practices and even, their public funding as so many Catholic politicians do,
including most Catholic Democrats and some Catholic Republicans in the
United States. For by supporting abortion and embryo-destructive research
they unavoidably implicate themselves in the grave injustice of these
practices.
Of course, it is possible for a person wielding public power to use that
power to establish or preserve a legal right to abortion, for example, while at
the same time hoping that no one will exercise the right. But this does not
get such a person off the moral hook. For someone who acts to protect legal
abortion necessarily wills that abortion’s unborn victims be denied the
elementary legal protections against deliberate homicide that one favors for
oneself and those whom one considers to be worthy of the law’s protection.
Thus one violates the most basic precept of normative social and political
theory, the Golden Rule. One divides humanity into two classes: those
whom one is willing to admit to the community of the commonly protected
and those whom one wills to be excluded from it. By exposing members of
the disfavored class to lethal violence, one deeply implicates oneself in the
injustice of killing them—even if one sincerely hopes that no woman will
act on her right to choose abortion. The goodness of what one hopes for does
not redeem the evil—the grave injustice—of what one wills. To suppose
otherwise is to commit yet another fallacy.
If my analysis so far is correct, the question arises: What should the
leaders of the Church do about people like Cuomo and his successor as New
York’s Governor, Republican George Pataki who evidently takes the same
position? What should they do about those who claim to be in full
communion with the Church yet promote gravely unjust and scandalous
policies that expose the unborn to the violence and injustice of abortion?
In the run up to the last American presidential election, St. Louis
Archbishop Raymond Burke offered an answer. He declared that public
officials who support abortion and other unjust attacks against innocent
human life may not be admitted to Holy Communion, the preeminent
sacrament of unity.
Pro-life citizens of every religious persuasion applauded the
Archbishop’s stand. Critics, however, were quick to condemn Archbishop
Burke. They denounced him for "crossing the line" separating church and
state.
But this is silly. In acting on his authority as a bishop to discipline
members of his flock, who commit what the Church teaches are grave
injustices against innocent human beings, Archbishop Burke is exercising
his own constitutional right to the free exercise of religion; he is not
depriving others of their rights. Freedom is a two way street. No one is
compelled by law to accept ecclesiastical authority. But Archbishop
Burke—and anyone else in the United States of America or other freedom-
respecting nations—has every right to exercise spiritual authority over
anyone who chooses to accept it. There is a name for people who do accept
the authority of Catholic bishops. They are called "Catholics."
In many cases, the charge that Archbishop Burke and other bishops
who adopt the policy of excluding pro-abortion politicians from Communion
"are crossing the line separating church and state" is also hypocritical. A
good example of this hypocrisy comes from the Bergen Record, a prominent
newspaper in my home state of New Jersey. John Smith, the Bishop of
Trenton, did not go as far as Raymond Burke had gone in forbidding pro-
abortion Catholic politicians from receiving communion. Bishop Smith did,
however, in the words of the Bergen Record, "publicly lash" Governor
James McGreevey, a pro-abortion Catholic, for his support of abortion and
embryo-destructive research. For criticizing the Governor on these grounds,
the Record lashed the Bishop in an April 25th editorial. The paper accused
him of jeopardizing the delicate "balance" of our constitutional structure,
contrasting Bishop Smith’s position unfavorably with President John F.
Kennedy’s assurance to a group of Protestant ministers in Houston in 1960
that he, as a Catholic, would not govern the nation by appeal to his Catholic
religious beliefs. Since the Record had seen fit to take us back to 1960 for
guidance, I thought I would invite its editors to consider a case that had
arisen only a few years earlier than that. In a letter to the editor, I proposed a
question that would enable readers to determine immediately whether the
editors of the Bergen Record were persons of strict principle or mere
hypocrites.
I reminded readers that in the 1950s, in the midst of the political
conflict over segregation, Archbishop Joseph Rummel of New Orleans
publicly informed Catholics that support for racial segregation was
incompatible with Catholic teaching on the inherent dignity and equal rights
of all human beings. Archbishop Rummel said that "racial segregation is
morally wrong and sinful because it is a denial of the unity and solidarity of
the human race as conceived by God in the creation of Adam and Eve." He
warned Catholic public officials that support for segregation placed their
souls in peril. Indeed, Rummel took the step of publicly excommunicating
Leander Perez, one of the most powerful political bosses in Louisiana, and
two others who promoted legislation designed to impede desegregation of
diocesan schools. So I asked the editors of the Bergen Record: Was
Archbishop Rummel wrong? Or do Catholic bishops "cross the line" and
jeopardize the delicate constitutional balance, only when their rebukes to
politicians contradict the views of the editors of the Record? To their credit,
the editors published my letter—but I am still waiting for them to reply to
my question.
Now, some good and sincere people have expressed concern that
Archbishop Burke and bishops of similar mind are guilty of a double
standard when it comes to demanding of politicians fidelity to Catholic
teaching on justice and the common good. They point out that the bishops
who would deny communion to those who publicly support abortion and
embryo-destructive research do not take the same stand against politicians
who support the death penalty, which Pope John Paul II condemned in all
but the rarest of circumstances, and the U.S. invasions of Iraq, of which the
Pope and many other Vatican officials were sharply critical.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church indeed teaches that the death
penalty should not be used, except in circumstances so rare these days as to
be, in words of the late pope, "practically non-existent." However, two
points must be borne in mind in considering the obligations of Catholics and
the question whether Catholic politicians who support the death penalty have
in fact broken faith and communion with the Church. First, neither the Pope
nor the Catechism places the death penalty on a par with abortion and other
forms of direct killing of the innocent. (Indeed, the Church will probably
never equate the death penalty with these forms of homicide, even if it
eventually issues a definitive condemnation of the practice.) Second, the
status of the teaching differs from the status of the teaching on abortion. As
John Paul II made clear in the great encyclical Evangelium Vitae, the
teaching on abortion (as well as on euthanasia and all forms of direct killing
of the innocent) is infallibly proposed by the ordinary and universal
magisterium of the Church pursuant to the criteria of Lumen Gentium 25.
The same is plainly not true of the developing teaching on the death
penalty. Moreover, Cardinal Avery Dulles and others have interpreted the
teaching against the death penalty as essentially a prudential judgment about
its advisability, not a moral prohibition following from the application of a
strict principle. As it happens, I don't agree with their analysis, but no one
will be able to say with confidence from a Catholic point of view which side
in this debate is right until the magisterium clarifies the teaching. So, it
cannot be said that supporters of the death penalty are "obstinately persisting
in manifest grave sin," and may or should be denied Holy Communion
pursuant to Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law. No one can legitimately
claim for opposition to the death penalty the status of a definitively settled
moral teaching of the Church. (Nor can one claim that the Church teaches or
will ever teach that the death penalty—except in cases where it is applied
unjustly—involves the grave intrinsic injustice attaching to any act involving
the direct killing of the innocent.)
Regarding the question of the U.S. invasions of Iraq, it is important to
understand the precise terms of Catholic teaching on just and unjust warfare.
These terms are set forth with clarity and precision in the Catechism. In line
with the Church’s historic teaching on the subject, neither Pope John Paul II
nor Pope Benedict XVI has asserted that opposition to the war is binding on
the consciences of Catholics. John Paul II’s statements opposing the use of
force in the run up to both invasions plainly questioned the prudential
judgments of political leaders who, in the end, had and have the right and
responsibility (according to the Catechism and the entire tradition of
Catholic teaching on war and peace) to make judgments as to whether force
is in fact necessary. That is why the Pope and the bishops have not said, and
will not say, that Catholic soldiers may not participate in the war. This
contrasts with their clear teaching that Catholics may not participate in
abortions or other forms of embryo-killing or support the use of taxpayer
monies for activities involving the deliberate killing of innocent human
beings.
I wish to close with a word to those in politics and the media—
Catholics and non-Catholics alike—who have expressed anger, even
outrage, at the world’s Catholic bishops for teaching that the faithful must
never implicate themselves in unjust killing by supporting legal abortion and
embryo-destructive research. In scolding the bishops, the editors of the New
York Times, for example, have insisted that "separation of church and state"
means that no religious leader may presume to tell public officials what their
positions may and may not be on matters of public policy. But if we shift
the focus from abortion to, say, genocide, slavery, the exploitation of labor,
or racial segregation we see how implausible such a view is. When
Archbishop Rummel excommunicated the segregationist politicians in the
1950s, far from condemning the Archbishop, the editors of the New York
Times praised him. They were right then; they are wrong now.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Stop the Abortion Health Care legislation
The article below was published on Lifenews.com, PLEASE READ IT !!
I have inserted the communication numbers for Representative Patrick Murphy 8th Congressional District of Pa.
Rep. Murphy and Rep. Nancy Pelosi both claim that there is NO federal funding of abortion in the final legislation. Is it ironic that Nancy represents the 8th District of California and Rep. Murphy the 8th of Pa. He follows her lead like a puppy.
PLEASE call and urge Rep. Murphy to vote NO on any legislation that in any way provides federal funds for abortions. Remind him that ABORTION IS NOT HEALTH CARE.
Bill
Bristol Office
414 Mill Street
Bristol, PA 19007
(215) 826-1963
Fax: (215) 826-1997
Washington Office
1609 Longworth HOB
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-4276
Fax: (202) 225-9511
Doylestown Office
72 North Main Street
Doylestown, PA 18901
(215) 348-1194
Fax: (215) 348-1449
Obama, Democrats Set March 18 as Date for Pro-Abortion Health Care Vote
Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com Editor, 3/4/2010
Mark your calendars for March 18 as that is the target date President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress have set as the target date for a vote on the pro-abortion Senate health care bill. That means pro-life advocates have two weeks to contact lawmakers and urge them to vote no. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said today that Obama hopes to get the bill approved by that date. March is when Obama leaves for an international trip and Gibbs told reporters at a briefing this morning that it makes a convenient target. "We're leaving on March 18 and we believe that we're on schedule, based on our conversations with the Speaker and the majority leader, to get something done by then," Gibbs said Thursday morning on MSNBC. "I think this is going to get done in the next couple of weeks." With the reconciliation bill that will follow not making any changes to the massive abortion funding and pro-abortion problems the Senate bill invites, stopping the Senate bill in the House is the main priority. Thanks to the opposition from pro-life Democrats, pro-life advocates may be able to complicate the numbers game for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But Gibbs thinks there will be enough votes for the bill. "We're going to work every day to make sure we have the votes," he said. "My sense is that if the vote were held today, we would have the votes." Jim Geraghty, a writer for the conservative National Review, wonders why Obama and Pelosi are pushing for March 18 -- when special elections come after that that could provide them with more yes votes. "Looking over the upcoming special House elections, and how they could affect the oh-so-close vote on health care in that chamber, I'm beginning to think President Obama is a fool," he writes. "On April 13, residents of Florida's 19th congressional district fill the seat left empty by the retirement of Robert Wexler, and will pick either Democrat Ted Deutch or Republican Ed Lynch. It's a very Democratic district, " Geraghty notes. And in May, Pennsylvania voters will choose a replacement for Democratic rep. John Murtha, who passed away. Also in May, Hawaii voters will choose a replacement for Hawaii's 1st district, which has typically gone to a Democrat. "In other words, it's entirely possible Obama could have an extra three votes if he put off the health-care vote until late May or later," Geraghty writes. "I guess Obama's not in a gambling mood." The Senate bill that is the basis of the reconciliation push in Congress contains massive abortion funding and has other pro-abortion problems. Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, emailed LifeNews.com about how that works. "Every version of the health care bill has contained multiple pro-abortion mandates and federal subsidies for abortion -- except for the version that was fixed by adoption of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, over Speaker Pelosi's objections," Johnson explained. "But President Obama and Senator Reid succeeded in keeping that fix out of the Senate bill -- indeed, the Senate produced a final bill that is the most pro-abortion single piece of legislation to reach the floor of either house of Congress since Roe v. Wade." He said the current Senate bill that Obama and Democrats are promoting through reconciliation, "would result in direct federal funding of abortion through Community Health Centers, tax subsidies for private abortion plans that cover abortion (including some federally administered plans), and pro-abortion federal administrative mandates, among other problems."
Under the Senate health care bill that will be the main bill Obama and Democrats push through Congress, there is no ban on abortion funding.
While some states can opt out of funding abortions under the plan, taxpayers in other states will be forced to pay for them. But the bill contains other pro-abortion problems that are concerns for pro-life advocates. The bill requires that at least one health care plan be promoted across the country that pays for abortions, more abortion funding would come via the affordability credits, and many of the so-called limits on abortion funding in the Senate bill are temporary and could expire or be overturned at a later date. The Senate health care bill also pays for abortions under the Indian Health Service program. And it contains the Mikulski amendment that would allow the Obama administration to define abortion as preventative care and force insurance plans to pay for abortions. Finally, the Senate bill does not contain language needed to offer full conscience protection for pro-life medical workers and facilities. The new Obama health care plan proposing final changes to the Senate bill so it can move through Congress corrects none of these problems outlined by leading pro-life groups as reasons for pro-life advocates to oppose the government-run health care bill. And the changes Obama submitted for the Senate bill under reconciliation actually increases the potential abortion funding for Community Health Centers. ACTION: Click here to find your member of the House and urge a NO vote on the pro-abortion Senate health care bill.
I have inserted the communication numbers for Representative Patrick Murphy 8th Congressional District of Pa.
Rep. Murphy and Rep. Nancy Pelosi both claim that there is NO federal funding of abortion in the final legislation. Is it ironic that Nancy represents the 8th District of California and Rep. Murphy the 8th of Pa. He follows her lead like a puppy.
PLEASE call and urge Rep. Murphy to vote NO on any legislation that in any way provides federal funds for abortions. Remind him that ABORTION IS NOT HEALTH CARE.
Bill
Bristol Office
414 Mill Street
Bristol, PA 19007
(215) 826-1963
Fax: (215) 826-1997
Washington Office
1609 Longworth HOB
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-4276
Fax: (202) 225-9511
Doylestown Office
72 North Main Street
Doylestown, PA 18901
(215) 348-1194
Fax: (215) 348-1449
Obama, Democrats Set March 18 as Date for Pro-Abortion Health Care Vote
Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com Editor, 3/4/2010
Mark your calendars for March 18 as that is the target date President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress have set as the target date for a vote on the pro-abortion Senate health care bill. That means pro-life advocates have two weeks to contact lawmakers and urge them to vote no. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said today that Obama hopes to get the bill approved by that date. March is when Obama leaves for an international trip and Gibbs told reporters at a briefing this morning that it makes a convenient target. "We're leaving on March 18 and we believe that we're on schedule, based on our conversations with the Speaker and the majority leader, to get something done by then," Gibbs said Thursday morning on MSNBC. "I think this is going to get done in the next couple of weeks." With the reconciliation bill that will follow not making any changes to the massive abortion funding and pro-abortion problems the Senate bill invites, stopping the Senate bill in the House is the main priority. Thanks to the opposition from pro-life Democrats, pro-life advocates may be able to complicate the numbers game for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But Gibbs thinks there will be enough votes for the bill. "We're going to work every day to make sure we have the votes," he said. "My sense is that if the vote were held today, we would have the votes." Jim Geraghty, a writer for the conservative National Review, wonders why Obama and Pelosi are pushing for March 18 -- when special elections come after that that could provide them with more yes votes. "Looking over the upcoming special House elections, and how they could affect the oh-so-close vote on health care in that chamber, I'm beginning to think President Obama is a fool," he writes. "On April 13, residents of Florida's 19th congressional district fill the seat left empty by the retirement of Robert Wexler, and will pick either Democrat Ted Deutch or Republican Ed Lynch. It's a very Democratic district, " Geraghty notes. And in May, Pennsylvania voters will choose a replacement for Democratic rep. John Murtha, who passed away. Also in May, Hawaii voters will choose a replacement for Hawaii's 1st district, which has typically gone to a Democrat. "In other words, it's entirely possible Obama could have an extra three votes if he put off the health-care vote until late May or later," Geraghty writes. "I guess Obama's not in a gambling mood." The Senate bill that is the basis of the reconciliation push in Congress contains massive abortion funding and has other pro-abortion problems. Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, emailed LifeNews.com about how that works. "Every version of the health care bill has contained multiple pro-abortion mandates and federal subsidies for abortion -- except for the version that was fixed by adoption of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, over Speaker Pelosi's objections," Johnson explained. "But President Obama and Senator Reid succeeded in keeping that fix out of the Senate bill -- indeed, the Senate produced a final bill that is the most pro-abortion single piece of legislation to reach the floor of either house of Congress since Roe v. Wade." He said the current Senate bill that Obama and Democrats are promoting through reconciliation, "would result in direct federal funding of abortion through Community Health Centers, tax subsidies for private abortion plans that cover abortion (including some federally administered plans), and pro-abortion federal administrative mandates, among other problems."
Under the Senate health care bill that will be the main bill Obama and Democrats push through Congress, there is no ban on abortion funding.
While some states can opt out of funding abortions under the plan, taxpayers in other states will be forced to pay for them. But the bill contains other pro-abortion problems that are concerns for pro-life advocates. The bill requires that at least one health care plan be promoted across the country that pays for abortions, more abortion funding would come via the affordability credits, and many of the so-called limits on abortion funding in the Senate bill are temporary and could expire or be overturned at a later date. The Senate health care bill also pays for abortions under the Indian Health Service program. And it contains the Mikulski amendment that would allow the Obama administration to define abortion as preventative care and force insurance plans to pay for abortions. Finally, the Senate bill does not contain language needed to offer full conscience protection for pro-life medical workers and facilities. The new Obama health care plan proposing final changes to the Senate bill so it can move through Congress corrects none of these problems outlined by leading pro-life groups as reasons for pro-life advocates to oppose the government-run health care bill. And the changes Obama submitted for the Senate bill under reconciliation actually increases the potential abortion funding for Community Health Centers. ACTION: Click here to find your member of the House and urge a NO vote on the pro-abortion Senate health care bill.
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