Pro-life

Not exactly Martin Luther King, but President Obama says:

“And as we remember this historic anniversary, we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.”

Well I guess some dreams are nightmares.

Surely it must be a nightmare since the President in his infamous Notre Dame speech said abortion “this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions.”    How many Constitutional rights came you named with “heart-wrenching” decisions in the moral and spiritual sphere?

From Mark Steyn’s recent column:

As I was leaving Fox News last night, I glanced up at the monitor and caught Juan Williams expressing mystification to Sean Hannity as to why Republicans in Congress were wasting the country’s time on a “little thing” like abortion.

Gee, I dunno. Maybe it’s something to do with a mass murderer in Pennsylvania, or Planned Parenthood clinics facilitating the sex trafficking of minors. From the Office of the District Attorney in Philadelphia:

Viable babies were born*. Gosnell killed them by plunging scissors into their spinal cords. He taught his staff to do the same.

This is a remarkable moment in American life: A man is killing actual living, gurgling, bouncing babies on an industrial scale – and it barely makes the papers. Had he plunged his scissors into the spinal cord of a Democrat politician in Arizona, then The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC and everyone else would be linking it to Sarah Palin’s uncivil call for dramatic cuts in government spending. But “Doctor” Kermit Gosnell’s mound of corpses is apparently entirely unconnected to the broader culture.

As for Juan Williams comment on the “little thing” like abortion, I guess it really is the little things that matter.

As they say, read the whole thing.

As a Catholic one of the most annoying things is to hear what some Catholic politicians has to say on the subject of life or many other moral questions. On both sides of the political divide they almost always induce a cringe for faithful Catholics. The occasion of a Catholic politician saying something totally in conformity with the faith and being able to correctly nuance more difficult questions is a rare event. When it comes to Catholics running for president that rarity becomes nonexistent.

So am I talking about a new brain-numbing dump reply by Nancy Pelos? Nope this time it’s Newt Gingrich.

TAPPER: Abortion is a big issue here in Iowa among conservative Republican voters and Rick Santorum has said you are inconsistent. The big argument here is that you have supported in the past embryonic stem cell research and you made a comment about how these fertilized eggs, these embryos are not yet “pre-human” because they have not been implanted. This has upset conservatives in this state who worry you don’t see these fertilized eggs as human life. When do you think human life begins?

GINGRICH: Well, I think the question of being implanted is a very big question. My friends who have ideological positions that sound good don’t then follow through the logic of: ‘So how many additional potential lives are they talking about? What are they going to do as a practical matter to make this real?’ I think that if you take a position when a woman has fertilized egg and that’s been successfully implanted that now you’re dealing with life. because otherwise you’re going to open up an extraordinary range of very difficult questions.

Another case of nuancing yourself into stupidity. Life at implantation is the ideological position purposely created to confuse people. It is not science, but ideology. There is no special magic that happens when an embryo implants. At fertilization a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed. Implantation does not change or add to the human organism already in development.

So has Gingrich flip-flopped on this? No he has been consistently stupid as he said back in 2001 “I have a 100 percent pro-life voting record, but I’ve always drawn a distinction at implantation.”

In addition I would say that I’ve never been for embryonic stem cell research per se. I have been for, there are a lot of different ways to get embryonic stem cells. I think if you can get embryonic stem cells for example from placental blood if you can get it in ways that do not involve the loss of a life that’s a perfectly legitimate avenue of approach.

What I reject is the idea that we’re going to take one life for the purpose of doing research for other purposes and I think that crosses a threshold of de-humanizing us that’s very very dangerous

But dehumanizing the not yet implanted is not dangerous? Plus whenever a politician adds the words “per se” you know they are lying. He did support distruction of embryos for research from fertility clinics. He also said in 2001:

But for many of us, there’s a very, very real distinction between doing something with an unborn child, a fetus that is implanted, and doing something with cells in a fertility clinic that are otherwise going to be destroyed.

So Newt Gingrich’s conversion for the Catholic Church has not affected his stance and just made him more of a hypocrite. He has touted his conversion to the Catholic Faith and produced a movie on Blessed John Paul II’s role in the overthrow of Communism. He just might want to pick up his Catechism.

2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person – among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.

Matthew at Creative Minority Report writes: “I don’t see how I could possibly look past this. Newt should remember a candidate isn’t really a nominee until he implants.”

[2001 Quotes Source]

ORLANDO, FL, November 10, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Dr. James Pendergraft, a Florida abortionist who earlier this year was order to pay $36 million in damages after a botched abortion left a baby alive, but severely disabled, is now attempting to attract clients to his Orlando Women’s Center by offering a coupon for abortions, valid on Sundays only.

The coupon, which can be used to kill an unborn baby up to 24 weeks old, is advertised on the main page of the Center’s website.

“Limited time special! Print this page and bring it in for $50 savings only on Sundays!” reads the coupon. “VALID FOR ABORTIONS PERFORMED BY 5/31/12. You must present this page to the receptionist at the time of the abortion ON SUNDAYS ONLY. $50 credit towards cost of abortion. No cash value.”

The website says that the clinic was founded by Pendergraft in response to “a great need” for first trimester and late term abortions in the Orlando area.

The notorious abortionist, who has had his medical license suspended four times, owns four other clinics in the state. The most recent suspension of his medical license was imposed in August 2010 for allowing an employee to administer narcotics without a license. He was also found guilty of prescribing steroids for no apparent reason to an employee known to have a drug problem.”

[Source]

A “Choose Life” banner hanging from the entrance gate at Seton Hall University is causing some controversy on the Catholic campus.

The banner which was put up midway through October in honor of Respect for Life month shows a picture of a mother kissing a newborn baby with the words “Choose Life” followed by the phone number 1-800-848-Life for a pro-life help hot line. Father Stanley Gomes, director of Campus Ministry, told the Cardinal Newman Society he intends to keep the banner up for two more weeks.

But the student newspaper The Setonian says the banner has elicited “mixed reviews,” even quoting one student who said, “We are a college whose primary focus should be about providing a quality education to its students, not making a bold political statement before prospective students and families can even drive inside the gates and see what we have to offer.”

I wonder if there is a common thread between this controversy and the story of Muslims suing the Catholic University of America? Maybe people have come to expect Catholic schools to be so secular that the sign of a crucifix or a rather tame pro-life message can be controversial in any way.

In an interview with the Cardinal Newman Society, Fr. Gomes said he is aware of the controversy. “You see, even at a Catholic university like this one, students and even some intellectuals are not clear why we would put something like this up,” he said. “They think it’s a political statement. That’s how the world sees it but our idea is to celebrate life.”

Fr. Gomes said, “Some of the negative comments are that it’s an institution of learning, and they’re asking why are you making a political statement. But some students say it’s about time that we should celebrate our identity as a Catholic university and we should do this stuff more.”

Fr. Gomes said he expects more negative responses but he is undeterred. “I’m not afraid. We’re Catholic people. God loving. People loving people,” he said. “Even those who oppose us, we embrace them all.” [Source]

A recent story about “selective reduction” illustrates the wisdom of the Church’s teaching on technologies like IVF. Many people do not realize that abortion and IVF go hand in hand. To boost success rates, IVF practitioners implant more embryos than the couple wants babies in the hopes that at least one will take. When more embryos than are desired implant, doctors “reduce” the pregnancy down to the desired number of fetuses. “Reduce” is a euphemism for killing the unlucky fetuses with a shot of potassium chloride. It used to be that doctors would only “reduce” triplets or above, but now have taken to “reducing” twins down to a single fetus. One such story of reduction was recently in the New York Times. Jenny discusses why she is killing one of her IVF twins:

“If I had conceived these twins naturally, I wouldn’t have reduced this pregnancy, because you feel like if there’s a natural order, then you don’t want to disturb it. But we created this child in such an artificial manner — in a test tube, choosing an egg donor, having the embryo placed in me — and somehow, making a decision about how many to carry seemed to be just another choice. The pregnancy was all so consumerish to begin with, and this became yet another thing we could control.”

Jenny has articulated Church teaching on procreation and she doesn’t even know it. There is a natural order to things and when that is bypassed and life is created in an artificial manner, it is easy to rationalize the killing of an innocent life down to a simple matter of “control.” Just like William E. May (and the Church) said it would. [Source]

Though in some ways you have to wonder why this story on the murder (“reduction”) of one twin is such a news story in the first place. After all IVF almost always results in the death of siblings. Multiple implantations so that one survives is normal procedure and of course freezing embryos also results in death at some point.