Entries Tagged 'Life Issues' ↓

The Pope has said that politicians who support abortion should not receive Communion. And yet, at his big masses in New York City and Washington, D.C., pro-abortion politicians from Nancy Pelosi to Rudy Giulianni took Communion. (Rudy should not have been allowed to anyway, due to his being in his third marriage.) This wasn’t Pope Benedict’s fault, who was not involved in the distribution; rather, it is being described as deliberate disobedience from the Archbishops of New York and Washington, who invited the politicians to the event, seated them prominently, and had them served Communion. See Robert D. Novak - For Pro-Choice Politicians, a Pass With the Pope - washingtonpost.com.

UPDATE: Now New York’s Cardinal Egan is saying that he had an “understanding” with the pro-abortion Giulianni that he would not receive the eucharist in NY parishes, but that he violated that agreement by receiving communion from the Pope. The Cardinal said that he would talk with the former mayor. See this. It still seems like this friendly arrangement–come see the pope, we’ve got great seats for you at Yankee Stadium, we’ll still hang out, we’re good buddies, just don’t take communion–stops short of actual church discipline.

Nearly 70% of Italian gynecologists are now refusing to perform abortions, citing moral grounds. And the number is growing. See this:

Between 2003 and 2007 the number of gynecologists claiming the conscience clause to avoid carrying out abortions rose from 58.7 percent to 69.2 percent, according to the report.

There are indeed pro-life Democrats, such as Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey and former Congressman from Indiana Timothy Roemer. They and other pro-life Democrats are coming out strong for Barack Obama, even though he has opposed every restriction on abortion, including the bill to ban partial birth abortion. But pro-life Democrats say that he at least supports abstinence education and admits that abortion poses a profound moral dilemma. They think the atmosphere of unity and transcending differences that Obama promises offer a chance to end the currrent deadlocks and to arrive at a consensus that will result in fewer abortions.

Read For Obama, Unexpected Support - washingtonpost.com. What do you think of such hopes?

Cow-human cross embryo lives three days:

HUMAN-cow embryos have been created in a world first at Newcastle University in England, hailed by the scientific community, but labelled “monstrous” by opponents.

A team has grown hybrid embryos after injecting human DNA into eggs taken from cows’ ovaries, which had most of their genetic material removed.

The embryos survived for three days and are intended to provide a limitless supply of stem cells to develop therapies for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and spinal cord injuries, overcoming a worldwide shortfall in human embryos.

Notice how this story IMMEDIATELY goes to the sob-story justification that generating such unnatural creatures and then killing them will have such great benefits by and by. The reporter, though, admits later in the story that this experiment, in fact, did NOT produce any stem cell lines.

Such cruel and unnatural experimentation, I believe, is the true Tower of Babel of our times. Instead of the spiral ramps of the Babylonian ziggurats, we are building spirals of DNA molecules.

Today is nine months before Christmas, making it the festival of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, the time to commemorate the conception of God in the flesh. We have the perfect way to bring back this holy day into our culture: Make it a time in the church to mark and protest and fight the evil of abortion!

The life of Jesus began with His conception. We proclaim Christ as not just the Baby in the Manger but the Embryo in His mother’s womb. For Christians, the Annunciation proves that human life begins with conception. Read this post from Scott Stiegemeyer and celebrate this anti-abortion day.

UPDATE: I should have said YESTERDAY, March 25, was Annunciation Day. I hope you had a happy one.

IN MY OWN DEFENSE: I thought TODAY was March 25.

Christianity Today online has dusted off an interview with the recently-deceased William F. Buckley from 1995, featuring his advice to Christian activists. The interview shows his own Christian faith, as well as points like these:

What frightens people most about the Religious Right is the rhetoric that is sometimes used. There ought to be some thought given, for example, as to how you formulate your antihomosexual position: it should be more pastoral than vitriolic….

If, at the end of a broadcast by Pat Robertson, fewer people are disposed to Christianity than were before he came on (I’m not saying that is the case), then that would be awful if that were so….

Whatever you want to say about the anti-abortionists, you have got to at least say this: Theirs is the most disinterested act of humanitarian concern since the Emancipation Proclamation. They are not talking about protecting their own child, they are talking about protecting children….

Thomas Aquinas once was asked, “If the public view was that a famine was imminent, would you be justified in charging injurious prices for your grain, knowing that a relief wagon of grain was coming?” Thomas said yes, you would, but it would be wrong. A Christian would not do that.Certain things which the market authorizes simply in terms of law are unchristian and ought not to be done.

The big issue today has to do with the fidelity of marriages. The tendency now to leave your wife because you have an infatuation with a younger woman of tenderer flesh is an enormous temptation. It’s carnal, and it’s also easy to justify with all the solipsistic reasoning that we hear today. That is about the gravest offense that a human being can commit, to throw away a wife.

 Our younger daughter and her husband are having a baby! Here is his or her first picture:           
  

One of John McCain’s lapses, according to us pro-lifers and as commenter Organshoes reminds us, is his support of embryonic stem cell research. He has indeed, like other ostensible pro-lifers in Congress, voted to use “discarded” embryos from fertility clinics for their stem cells. But here is his position now, from his  official website:

 Stem cell research offers tremendous hope for those suffering from a variety of deadly diseases - hope for both cures and life-extending treatments. However, the compassion to relieve suffering and to cure deadly disease cannot erode moral and ethical principles.For this reason, John McCain opposes the intentional creation of human embryos for research purposes.To that end, Senator McCain voted to ban the practice of “fetal farming,” making it a federal crime for researchers to use cells or fetal tissue from an embryo created for research purposes. Furthermore, he voted to ban attempts to use or obtain human cells gestated in animals. Finally, John McCain strongly opposes human cloning and voted to ban the practice, and any related experimentation, under federal law.As president, John McCain will strongly support funding for promising research programs, including amniotic fluid and adult stem cell research and other types of scientific study that do not involve the use of human embryos.Where federal funds are used for stem cell research, Senator McCain believes clear lines should be drawn that reflect a refusal to sacrifice moral values and ethical principles for the sake of scientific progress, and that any such research should be subject to strict federal guidelines.

Does this position have holes? Probably. But how does it compare to what the Democrats are calling for?

Insurgents in Iraq made use of mentally handicapped women as suicide bombers. Indeed, they loaded up two women with Down’s Syndrome, those sweet-tempered children, and blew them up, killing nearly 80 other people.

How much more monstrous than the jihadists get? Can moral relativists rationalize THIS?

According to movie critic John Podheretz, the academy-award nominee “Juno” is a profoundly culturally-conservative-in-the-best-sense movie, being against both abortion and, even more subversively to today’s pop culture, against the very concept of “cool.” Now I want to see it.

Great and widely-applicable story from Dawn Eden at National Review Online, from a discussion of Planned Parenthood and the left’s absolute hatred of abstinence education:

Some 1,700 years ago, a hermit living in the Egyptian desert predicted “a time is coming when people will go mad.”“And when they see someone who is not mad,” continued the man known today as St. Anthony the Great, “they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us.’”

What are some examples of this syndrome?

Today is the 35th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. We need a word for the commemoration of a bad event that we mark with the opposite of celebration: This is not a holiday, but an unholy day. Thousands will mourn the unholy day here in D. C. in frigid weather at the March for Life.

But perhaps we are seeing a little progress. A study of every abortion facility in the country has found that the number of abortions has declined sharply. From ABC News: Why Are Abortions Down in America?:

The study, conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, which researches issues related to reproductive health and sexuality, found that in 2005, the U.S. abortion rate fell to 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 to 44, the lowest level since 1974. The total number of abortions also declined, to a total of 1.2 million in 2005, well below the all-time high of 1.6 million abortions in 1990.

But the study raises a fascinating and tricky question: Why?

The researchers who conducted the study said they simply don’t know, but they do have two theories.

One reason could be that since people now have easier access to contraception — including emergency contraception like Plan B — there are fewer unwanted pregnancies.

Another reason could be that there are also fewer abortion clinics.

OR, maybe pro-lifers are winning the debate. It is absurd to take too much comfort when abortions are “only” numbering 1.2 million. Notice, though, how many recent movies are about “keeping” the baby, evidence perhaps of a cultural shift.

Today’s Washington Post is marking the anniversary with a celebratory article on the increasing use of RU-486, the abortion pill, which supposedly makes abortion easier.

“The impact and the promise is huge,” said Beth Jordan, medical director of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals. “It’s going a long way towards normalizing abortion.”

But, from what I can tell from the article, abortions done by RU-486 are counted in the declining abortion statistics. So if abortion has become easier and more widely available, as the article claims, and yet are STILL going down, we may be making more progress in the battle for hearts and minds than we realize.