Pro-life

A reader sent me the following story:

Family and friends farewelled Dr Ellice Hammond, 37, at a funeral service yesterday, the same day anti-solarium campaigner Clare Oliver succumbed to melanoma.

Dr Hammond lost her battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma on Sunday, three weeks after daughter Mia Ellice was born nine weeks prematurely at the Monash Medical Centre, where she remains in neonatal intensive care, The Herald Sun said today.

Dr Hammond was diagnosed in the 22nd week of pregnancy and refused high-level chemotherapy that could have saved her but might have killed Mia, whose induced birth took place on August 20.

Dr Hammond had three reduced-strength chemotherapy treatments during the pregnancy, but the cancer returned worse than before each time and full-strength treatments following Mia’s birth did not save her.

Husband, Peter Wojcik said he was proud of his wife’s devotion to their child.

�It feels like I got robbed of a wife and a mother,� he told the Herald Sun.

�I guess she didn’t expect it to go this way, and if she did she wasn’t telling us.

�But she would just want what is best for Mia and for everyone to love her and carry on with life.

�Her whole life was looking forward to being a mum. She loved it.

Please pray for her family.

The story does remind you of Saint Gianna Beretta Molla another doctor, though in her case she had developed a fibroma on her uterus which was successfully removed. She actually died of peritonitis after delivery of her child suggesting a botched C-section.

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responses to certain questions of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops concerning artificial nutrition and hydration.

First question: Is the administration of food and water (whether by natural or artificial means) to a patient in a "vegetative state" morally obligatory except when they cannot be assimilated by the patient’s body or cannot be administered to the patient without causing significant physical discomfort?

Response: Yes. The administration of food and water even by artificial means is, in principle, an ordinary and proportionate means of preserving life. It is therefore obligatory to the extent to which, and for as long as, it is shown to accomplish its proper finality, which is the hydration and nourishment of the patient. In this way suffering and death by starvation and dehydration are prevented.

Second question: When nutrition and hydration are being supplied by artificial means to a patient in a "permanent vegetative state", may they be discontinued when competent physicians judge with moral certainty that the patient will never recover consciousness?

Response: No. A patient in a "permanent vegetative state" is a person with fundamental human dignity and must, therefore, receive ordinary and proportionate care which includes, in principle, the administration of water and food even by artificial means.

Once again the CDF has issued a document with nothing really new in it, but it is great to see them give such a clarification since there is so much confusion on the subject and theologians around the world and especially here in the states whose own views are out of whack with what Pope John Paul II had taught on the subject.

The CDF has also issued a lengthy commentary on this.

American Papist

In a document approved by Pope Benedict, the Vatican’s doctrinal department said tube-feeding such patients presumed to be near death was "ordinary" care that should not be discontinued because the patients still had human dignity.

Reuters in an article distorts what the CDF said since there is no mention of "near death."

The Church opposes euthanasia but teaches that extraordinary — that is, overly aggressive and possibly painful — means of artificial life support can be stopped if the family wishes.

The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care services states:

A person has a moral obligation to use ordianr or proportionate means of preserving his or her life. Proportionate means are those that in the judgment of the patient offer a reasonable hope and do not entail an excessive burden or impose excessive expense on the family or community.

A person may forego extraordinary or disproportionate means of preserving life.

Notice how it is not what the family wishes, but what the individual wishes and that the criteria is not pain.

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Democrats who take a strong stand against abortion are few and far between — especially in the United States Senate. When Bob Casey defeated Rick Santorum for a Pennsylvania seat in the Senate pro-life advocates hoped Casey would vote the same as his predecessor; but, Casey cast his first pro-abortion vote last week.

Last Thursday, the Senate debate an amendment to a bill sponsored by pro-abortion Sen. Barbara Boxer of California regarding the Mexico City Policy.

Boxer’s amendment overturns the policy that President Reagan first instituted and President Bush revived in 2001 that protects taxpayers from funding groups that perform or promote abortions overseas.

Pro-life groups strongly opposed the Boxer Amendment, but it was adopted on a 53-41 vote. Just 20 minutes later, pro-life Sen. Sam Brownback offered an amendment to undo the Boxer amendment but senators defeated it by the same margin.

Casey voted for the Boxer amendment and but also for the Brownback amendment — taking a seemingly contradicting stand on the abortion funding issue.

On Monday, as David Freddoso of National Review notes, Casey said on the Senate floor that he had made a mistake — but not because he voted to fund foreign abortions and abortion advocacy.

He said that, on the pro-life Brownback amendment, �it was my intention to vote �nay.� Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote since it will not affect the outcome of that vote.�

Well at least Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson voted against it, but of course it passed with the help of the usual suspects of pro-abortion Republicans or Republicans that have a mixed pro-life record.

As for Sen. Casey I wished this surprised me at all.

Fighting Irish Thomas has the latest on the fight against Planned Parenthood setting up in Aurora.

The above is a picture a blogger at Fighting Irish Thomas took during a candlelight vigil in front of the Aurora Planned Parenthood clinic that tried to sneak into the the area. It almost looks like a concentration camp where they are ready to do some hangings.

They have plenty of coverage of the vigil along with a video of a segment that appeared on a Hannity’s America segment.

care for the unborn.

No good can come of animal-human hybrids.

For proof I cite Manimal.

You know it is an odd day when the USCCB and Christina Aguilera both issue statements against Amnesty International for their change on abortion.

In an article on emergency "contraception" in a Catholic hospital the latest defense by EC proponents.

"The research is very clear. EC has no impact on an established pregnancy. If there’s been implantation on the uterine wall, there’s no impact. That’s in everything I’ve read," said Lon Newman, executive director of Family Planning Health Services.

Now the product insert itself says:

So what this means is that EC can cause problems with implantation and this is of course after conception has occurred. The true part of the their statement is only that once implantation has occurred that it is not effective. So their argument is quite deceptive in not mentioning embryos that fail to attach due to altering the endomentrium. But this is part of their non-scientific claim that you are not pregnant until implantation occurs and the attempt to move the start of life away from conception. They really can’t keep their stories straight. Out of one mouth it isn’t a human life until it is born and out of the other end life doesn’t occur until implantation. This is like the "it isn’t a clone until you implant it in the womb" argument and then they claim pro-lifers are anti-science.

"Think about it. If there was any risk to a current pregnancy, the FDA would never have accepted EC for over-the-counter status," Newman said.

As if this was a medical decision instead of a political one. They never mention that the regular birth control pill which uses a much lower dosage is not over-the-counter. This is a major discrepancy that is political and not medical.

Diogenes also has some perfect commentary on this new claim.

"Some critics– including Roman Catholic leaders– consider the pill tantamount to abortion, although Barr says it has no effect on women who are already pregnant."

Really? So if a woman has already conceived, the pill will do nothing?

If that’s what Barr wants us to believe, then let’s have a new advertising campaign for the "Plan B" pill. Right on the package, put a banner that reads: "If you’re already pregnant, this pill will do nothing." See what that does to the sales figures.

Rome – A botched abortion in which a healthy twin foetus was terminated instead of its sibling with Down syndrome has reignited the abortion debate in Italy and raised allegations of eugenics.

"The time has come to re-examine the abortion law" that dates back to 1978, wrote leftist Senator Paola Binetti, who is close to the Vatican, in the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

"What happened in this hospital was not a medical abortion but an abortion done for the purposes of eugenics," she said, referring to the belief that the human species can be improved through selective reproduction.

The abortion was performed on a 38-year-old woman in Milan in June, but news of its outcome has only recently become public. Doctors blamed the mistake on movement of the foetuses between the examination and the abortion.

"They wanted to kill the sick foetus and save the healthy one and what didn’t work properly in this business was the selection," Binetti wrote.

I just hope and pray that the surviving twin doesn’t get aborted.