Pro-life

TORONTO, July 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Archbishop of Toronto has today called on all Catholics in Canada’s largest city to demand that the award of the Order of Canada to arch-abortionist Henry Morgentaler be revoked.

The full statement of Archbishop Collins follows:

Canada’s highest honour has been debased. Henry Morgentaler has been awarded the Order of Canada. We are all diminished.

A community’s worth is measured by the way it treats the most vulnerable, and no one is more vulnerable than in the first nine months of life’s journey. No person may presume to judge the soul of Henry Morgentaler, but it cannot be denied that the effect of his life’s work has been a deadly assault upon the most helpless amongst us.

Canada glories in the names of Banting and Best, and the other medical heroes who selflessly brought healing where there was disease and suffering. Now it honours with the Order of Canada a medical man who has brought not healing, but the destruction of the defenseless and immeasurable grief. This award must not stand.

…

The Sheepcat

TORONTO – Controversial abortion activist Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who was named a member of the Order of Canada this week, said Wednesday he deserves the recognition for helping Canadian women be safe.
“The work I’ve done over the years and the sacrifices and the sentence of imprisonment that I have suffered, I think that finally now the government has recognized my contribution to Canadian women and I am very proud of it,” Morgentaler, 85, told a news conference in Toronto.

The prestigious appointment Tuesday refuelled the abortion debate and was slammed by one of Canada’s top Catholics as debasing the order.

Morgentaler said he wasn’t shocked that the Catholic Church was so opposed to him receiving the distinction. “I’m surprised it is not more violent than it is,” he said. “They are adamantly opposed to the right to safe abortion.”

So a person who dismembers babies for a living is surprised that the reaction is not more violent? Since he says “more violent” he must think Catholics protesting him getting this honor is an act of violence. I guess his understanding of the word violence differs from my own. Though his understanding of the word safe is probably at odds with the person he cuts up also.

Dawn Eden reports:

Father James Martin S.J., associate editor of America, has confirmed in an e-mail to me that, as I reported yesterday, the Jesuit magazine sold its mailing list to an abortion-advocacy group, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

Here is his statement:

“As a result of an error by our business office staff, the magazine did inadvertently sell its list to that organization, and apologize to subscribers who received their mailing. Our publisher will request that they no longer use our list for their mailings, and we have already put in a tighter system to ensure that we don’t mistakenly sell to any group remotely like this one in the future.”

What is really sad here is that this pro-abortion group sees America Magazine readership as an audience for them and that they are probably right. I do not doubt that Father James Martin S.J. is pro-life himself. Though the America blog seems to see the most pro-abortion presidential candidate not only as a possible choice but is slanted towards him.

Though I guess a story about a mailing list is nowhere near as bad as the legalistic response from Bishop DiLorenzo when he was told Catholic Charity workers would be talking a girl under their charge to get an abortion.

Doctors screened out from the woman’s embryos an inherited gene that would have left the baby with a greater than 50% chance of developing the cancer.

The woman decided to have her embryos screened because her husband had tested positive for the gene and his sister, mother, grandmother and cousin have all had the cancer.

The couple produced 11 embryos, of which five were found to be free from the gene. Two of these were implanted in the woman’s womb and she is now 14 weeks pregnant.

By screening out embryos carrying the gene, called BRCA-1, the couple, from London, will eliminate the hereditary disease from their lineage.

Dawn Eden writes that British Docs are saying breast-cancer patients should never be born. My own mother died from breast cancer so I am well aware of the suffering that comes from this disease, but this is not only the wrong approach it is an evil approach.

There is another tragedy here that society just totally ignores. Eleven persons were created. Six persons were killed for not being good enough. Three were presumably put into cold storage to more than likely to also be killed some day. Two embryos get a chance to continue living with the hope that just one survives. This is so callous and cruel that it just drives me to prayer. Dawn Eden also writes:

There is a difference, and I am afraid we may find out about it too late. Unless good people speak up, insurance companies will continue to pressure doctors to pressure women to undergo procedures such as this, as with preimplantation genetic diagnosis for Down syndrome and other conditions that would be costly to treat. In time, those women who do have breast cancer or other “eliminable” hereditary diseases may come to be seen as “useless eaters.”

It won’t be long before the movie Gattaca is no longer a cautionary tale, but a reality. The Eugenicists are back and this time they will be supported by the insurance companies.

WASHINGTON, DC (JUNE 17, 2008) – Catholic anti-abortion activist, Joseph Landry, on trial for “trespass” at St. Jude’s Cathedral, St. Petersburg, Florida, under the authority of Bishop Robert N. Lynch.

On Wednesday, June 18, at 8:30 a.m., Joseph Landry will stand trial at 14250 49th St N, Clearwater, FL 33762 (County of Pinellas: Criminal Justice Center) for "criminal trespassing" for handing out pro-life flyers in the parking lot of St. Jude’s Cathedral during mass.

Mr. Landry is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville; he majored in philosophy and theology; since graduating he has spent the last four years in full-time service to church in missions, youth work at the diocesan level, and pro-life work.

Mr. Landry was in the news several times for his work against pro-abortion candidate Rudy Giuliani in New Hampshire and Florida.

The flyer is a political parity entitled, "Real Solutions for the Negro Problem." The tract argues that a Christian cannot vote for a racist under any condition, even if the voter agrees with the candidate on all other issues; i.e., racism is an automatic disqualifier for a candidate seeking political office.

The flyer then uses this logic and ethical foundation to show that likewise, a Christian may not in good conscience vote for a candidate who supports the killing of unborn children by abortion; support of child killing is an automatic disqualifier for a candidate seeking political office.

The flyer states specifically: "Should a Christian vote for someone who supports slavery? No! Should a Christian vote for a racist who supports segregation? No! Then how can a Christian vote for a candidate that supports the murder of children by abortion?"

…For months, Catholics have been calling Bishop Lynch’s office, asking the church to drop him the charges. The church has told people that it is not pressing charges, or that the charges "have been taken care of," or indicated in some way that Mr. Landry is not going to be tried for trespass for handing out pro-life literature in a Catholic parking lot.

Unfortunately, none of these assertions have proven true; Mr. Landry will now stand trail by jury for “trespassing” at the Church he loves and serves faithfully.

Well it is hard to know if all of these details are true. But when it comes to Bishop Lynch it sounds pretty plausible. This was the Bishop that did not help Terri Schiavo whose situation he described as a "family dispute" and managed to even misspell her name on the press release on her death. The same bishop who latter allowed Michael Schiavo to marry within Catholic church in his diocese. A Bishop who has ordered the cessation of the regular exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for adoration by the faithful.

Listening to the Hugh Hewitt show he was playing back clips from a speech that Sen. Obama gave before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund on July 17, 2007. Theblog here has the complete transcript.

Thanks to all of you at Planned Parenthood for all the work that you are doing for women all across the country and for families all across the country, and for men, who have enough sense to realize you are helping them, all across the country.

I guess I am glad to be senseless enough to not equate murdering children in the womb with helping me. Yes the great work they are doing for "families" I guess even when it comes to abortion they are doing it for the children.

And as I look out over these crowds and they are a wonderful cross-section of the country, male, female, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, disabled, gay, straight, old, young what I’m heartened to see is particularly the young people who are getting their first chance to be part of a larger movement of Americans. I see young women who are Ariana’s age and younger, and I think about my own two daughters, Sasha and Malia, and sometimes it makes me stop and makes me wonder: what kind of America will our daughters grow up in?

What kind of America will our daughters grow up in?

Of course looking out in the audience he did not see any of the the 49 million people killed since Roe v. Wade. Plus just try to imagine a world where your daughters couldn’t abort your grandchildren. Oh the horror! Of course this year Obama went on to say about his daughters "I don’t want them punished with a baby." So I guess one of his themes is worryingly that his daughters can’t get abortions. He goes on to talk about the Supreme Court’s Gonzales versus Casey.

With one more vacancy on the Court, we could be looking at a majority hostile to a woman’s fundamental right to choose for the first time since Roe versus Wade and that is what is at stake in this election. The only thing more disturbing than the decision was the rationale of the majority. Without any hard evidence, Justice Kennedy proclaimed, It is self-evident that a woman would regret her choice. He cited medical uncertainty about the need to protect the health of pregnant women. Even though the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found no such uncertainty. Justice Kennedy knows many things, my understanding is he does not know how to be a doctor.

When I read the supposed quote from Justice Kennedy I knew immediately it wasn’t real. I wish he had ever said such a thing, but he certainly did not write this or anything like it in the actual opinion. And if you Google the quote it only shows up in reference to Obama’s speech. But I guess I am just one of those bitter Americans who actually reads the text of the decision. After all he is only a lawyer and taught Constitutional law so we can’t expect him to correctly quote a decision.

Sen. Obama also does not mention that the American Medical Association testified that a partial-birth abortion bore no relevance to any measure needed to advance the health of any woman. The AMA also wrote Sen. Santorum and said "Thank you for the opportunity to work with you towards restricting a procedure we all agree is not good medicine."

He dismissed as mere preferences the reasoned judgments of the nation’s doctors. We’ve seen time after time these last few years when the president says otherwise, when the science is inconvenient, when the facts don’t match up with the ideology, they are cast aside. Well, it’s time for us to change that. It is time for a different attitude in the White House. It is time for a different attitude in the Supreme Court. It is time to turn the page and write a new chapter in American history.

Let me see if I can flesh this out about the science of a partial-birth abortion. From the court opinion. "The main difference between the two procedures is that in intact D&E a doctor extracts the fetus intact or largely intact with only a few passes, pulling out its entire body instead of ripping it apart. In order to allow the head to pass through the cervix, the doctor typically pierces or crushes the skull." So according to Sen. Obama a mothers life is more at risk if the baby is delivered normally than if the baby is killed as it is being delivered and then fully delivered. I guess the "science is inconvenient" that the only difference is that in one case a live baby is delivered and the other that a dead baby is delivered. Now you could ask Obama what is the difference between this in infanticide, but he doesn’t have a problem with that either. He then goes on to call abortion "most fundamental freedoms we have in this country" using the argument of equal rights where the idea is that if a women gets pregnant it destroys her career and keeps her from being equal to men. Ironically he also goes on to say about another court case " it’s an approach to the law that favors the powerful over the powerless." I wonder who is more powerless than an infant in the womb?

There will always be people, many of goodwill, who do not share my view on the issue of choice. On this fundamental issue, I will not yield and Planned Parenthood will not yield. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t find common ground. Because we know that what’s at stake is more than whether or not a woman can choose an abortion.

Then we get a bunch of typical Obama boilerplate about turning the page, moving on, change, hope, yada yada yada. Then he talks about the "tragedy" of teenagers becoming pregnant and then

Not even to the brave servicewomen fighting for our country who aren’t getting the support they need when they come home as veterans of the United States of America. [Applause] If they’re fighting for us, they should be getting the services that they deserve. It’s time to turn the page on a policies that provides almost 1.5 billion dollar to teach abstinence in our schools but refuses to teach basic science and basic contraception.

Yes the real problem is teaching abstinence and not a toxic culture that created the hook-up culture where "first base" is now sexual relations. A world where sex ed classes and increased sex among teenagers is never correlated and if only we dumped even more money into this kind of sex education we will have such a wonderful world.

There’s a moral component to prevention. And we shouldn’t be shy about acknowledging it. As parents, as family members, we need to encourage young people to show reverence toward sexuality and intimacy. We need to teach that not just to the young girls, we need to teach it to those young boys. [Applause] But [Applause] But even as we are teaching those lessons, we should never be willing to consign a teenage girl to a lifetime of struggle because of a lack of access to birth control or a lifetime of illness because she doesn’t understand how to protect herself. That’s just commonsense. There’s common ground on behalf of commonsense there we have an opportunity to move forward and agree.

Once again he views pregnancy very negatively and this time as causing a lifetime of struggle. The thing about liberals talking about abstinence is that it is always done with a "wink, wink" and Obama even says that it is the "ideal but often not the reality." "You know you shouldn’t be having sex at your age, but if you do here is a pile of contraceptives and a key to a hotel room along with some gas money." He then brags about his support for the Prevention First Act which is of course all about contraceptives. I guess when it comes to a "moral component to prevention" contraception isn’t included as a concern. He can’t even bring himself to say that they shouldn’t be having sex but that they should show a "reverence toward sexuality and intimacy" whatever that means. My sneaking suspicion is that it would be totally at odds with the Theology of the Body. More along the plot to Sex in the City.

The theme then once again returns to his daughters Sasha and Melia and that we must not " leave them in ignorance is potentially consigning them to illness, pregnancy, poverty and in some cases death and that’s absolutely unacceptable." Yes whenever I think of pregnancy I also think of illness and poverty. They just go together I guess if you are Barack Obama. Or really "Moloch" Obama the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever and that says a lot. NARAL was quite happy to endorse him recently. While surely NARAL would have endorsed Sen. Clinton if she had been ahead, they are very happy that they truly have somebody exactly on the same page as them. And this is a page he won’t be turning.

A reader sent me a link to a video of pro-life display vandalism at Michelle Malkin’s site.

It has happened again. In January 2006, pro-abortion thugs destroyed a pro-life memorial of wooden crosses at Louisiana State University. In April 2006, a nutball feminist professor at Northern Kentucky University led another destructive raid on a pro-life Cemetery of Innocents. And this week, at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, pro-abortion vandals struck–pulling up hundreds of crosses from a display sponsored by Pointers for Life. College Republican Ryan Wrasse sent me a video of one of the pro-abortion thugs gone wild– a student government senator named Roderick King:

. Jill Stanek is also covering the story and has plenty of info.

The display was rows of crosses called the Cemetery of the Innocents to commemorate babies killed by abortion.

Unbelievably, even after a university security guard showed up and told King to stop, he didn’t, and the wimpy campus cop just let him continue ripping up crosses. King’s illogical excuse was, "If there is a student on this campus that has had an abortion or that might be having an abortion, might be going through this, you want this up in front of them? Are you crazy?"

Well maybe the Security Guard thought he heard the guy name was Rodney King vice Roderick King. Seriously thought there is a large trend in vandalizing pro-life displays especially when they are rows of crosses. In my own diocese where they display multi rows of crosses once a year in front of the Mission of Nombre de Dios and Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche this has also happened.

You have to wonder what leads to this type of rage in the first place. It this some kind of rage of denial where some are outraged to see a symbolic representation of the reality of what abortion means. I also wonder if just using the representation of the cross in the first place adds to this anger? But a culture that supports killing the innocent is a violent culture in the first place so it isn’t exactly a shock that someone who supports violence against the unborn will also react violently if reminded of this. They mostly play semantic games with words such as choice, tissue mass, product of conception, etc so they are not forced to confront their own views to their logical conclusion. Rows of crosses in memorial of the innocents surely jolts them and some become unhinged.

Let’s is pray for Mr. King.

Here is something that will never make it to a Law & Order episode or in fact any script.

Santiago, Apr 25, 2008 / 02:21 pm (CNA).- A group called the Insurrectionalist Federation has claimed responsibility for an attack on the University of Los Andes in Santiago, Chile in which a homemade explosive device was detonated in one of the bathrooms.

The group in question sent a statement to a local radio station claiming responsibility for the attack as a rejection of the Constitutional Court’s ruling to prohibit distribution of the morning-after pill at public health facilities. One of the most reknown professors at the university is a member of the High Court.

Fr. Malloy