UN Report Says Pro-Life Laws Constitute Violence against Women
A new UN report, titled “15 years of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its causes and consequences (1994-2009) - A critical review,” states that “criminal sanctions against all forms of abortions and contraception” imposed by the state constitute an act of violence against women.
“Such state policies and measures infringe upon women's liberty, security, and life,” the report says.
The report continues on to argue that if a state does not readily provide contraception or “family planning services” to women then it is committing an indirect act of violence against women because they are not recognizing, nor enabling, “women's sexual autonomy.”
The U.K.’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) responded to the report, calling it an “extreme pro-abortion anti-family report.”
Pat Buckley of SPUC told the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), to whom the report was given, that “Irrespective of what the report says, there is not and never can be a human right to abortion.”
“The idea of trying to create a right to terminate the life of the most vulnerable human beings, by tearing them from their mothers' wombs, is in fact the very essence of violence against women and their babies.”
SPUC's is urging “government representatives to study the report carefully, as it appears to contain many unacceptable and disturbing claims against the value of human life, the status of the family and the dignity of women.”
The report has yet to be approved by the UNHRC, which is meeting until June 19th, when it will decide whether or not to adopt the report.
Contact: Alex Bush Source: LifeSiteNews.com Publish Date: June 4, 2009 Link to this article.
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Olbermann names Stanek "Worst Person in the World!"
Last night MSNBC's Keith Olbermann named Jill Stanek "Worst Person in the World!," an honor she accepts with pride despite the fact it was for a false assumption.
Olbermann claimed she made the supposedly last 2 late- term abortionists in the free world sitting ducks for George Tiller copycat killers by posting their addresses and photos of their mills.
Libs need to get a brain. The late-term abortionists in question, Warren Hern and LeRoy Carhart, advertise on the web. Google the names of their mills and up will pop maps and directions.
But to clarify, she did NOT post their addresses. Whatever photos I posted were either taken from one of their own web pages or were virtually identical to photos posted by the mainstream media.
Click here to read her rebuttal, she has requested a retraction, although she would like to keep the title.
Click here to view the video by MSNBC.
Contact: Jill Stanek
Source: JillStanek.com
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Adult Stem Cells Found to Cure Blindness – Three Patients Cured
Researchers hopeful the procedure could be applied to other organs
Medical researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have used simple contact lenses cultured with stem cells from a patient's own eye to return sight to sufferers of corneal disease.
The researchers worked with three patients who were each blind in one eye. The procedure involved scraping less than a millimeter of tissue from the sides of the cornea of each patient's good eye, culturing the contact lens with the stem cells in that tissue for ten days, and then having the patient wear the contact. Within two weeks the stem cells had begun attaching themselves to the patients' corneas and replenishing the damaged cells.
Within that short a span, the reported results were remarkable. Two of the patients were legally blind before the procedure, but can now read the big letters on the top of the eye chart. The other patient could read the top few rows of an eye chart, but can now pass the vision test for a driver's license.
After eighteen months, the improvement in the patients' vision has remained. "We're quietly excited," said team leader Nick Di Girolamo, as reported in The Australian. "We don't know yet if [the correction] will remain stable, but if it does it's a wonderful technique."
"The procedure is totally simple and cheap," says Dr. Di Girolamo on the UNSW website. "Unlike other techniques, it requires no foreign human or animal products, only the patient's own serum, and is completely non-invasive."
Dr. Stephanie Watson, who conducted the procedure, commented further. "The operation is relatively non-invasive. The patient merely comes into the hospital for a couple of hours to have their eye prepared and the lens put in place, and then they're able to go home," she said.
Dr. Di Girolamo is hopeful that this procedure could be used to repair other parts of the eye, or even other organs. "We're very excited about this technique because we think it might be applicable to other major organs of the human body such as the skin, because after all, the skin behaves in a very similar manner to the cornea," says Dr. Di Girolamo in a video put out on UNSW TV.
This research is another example of the remarkable success of adult stem cells, which have yielded a host of treatments for numerous diseases. Embryonic stem cell research, on the other hand, which tends to grab most of the headlines due to controversy over its ethicality, has yet to produce a viable treatment for a single condition.
Contact: Patrick Craine Source: LifeSiteNews.com Publish Date: June 4, 2009 Link to this article.
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Father Corapi on the "Flash Point" in Western Society
"Nothing will ultimately go well for the United States or any other country until the injustice of all injustices is remedied"
Flash point: The point at which something is ready to blow up. That has been my perception of Western society in general for some time now. Perhaps, a train wreck waiting to happen would be another way to put it. All evil can claim its ultimate origin in moral evil. Those that deny objective standards of morality merely facilitate the demise of their society. When it happens they will be nowhere to be found.
That apparently large numbers of people seem to be intellectually and morally numb is not news, but the near light-speed evaporation of our way of life is. Actions have consequences, and sometimes the consequences can't be seen this side of eternity. That does not mean they aren't real. You will be seeing some of the consequences very soon, however, not the worst, but the most immediate.
Personal liberty has already begun to be compromised. Various governments, including the United States, now own car companies like General Motors and Chrysler, mega insurance companies, soon perhaps health care and energy. Injustice is beginning to be seen from the smallest of individuals to the largest of corporations. The only problem with that is that governments have never been able to operate anything profitably, efficiently, or equitably. The little guy and the large corporation will all be equal opportunity recipients of heavy-handed injustice very soon.
The government is about to dictate what car you can drive, how you insure it, what your bank can pay you or not, what kind of heating you have in your home, if you can have air conditioning or not. And, oh, if you eat a Twinkie your health insurance premium is going up. If you get sick, perhaps the Twinkie did it, and you aren?t covered.
You might say that the government needs to control things to keep us safe, etc. That might work if the people in government could be trusted. They can't, but we elected them. We get what we deserve, and many chickens are about to come home to roost.
One of the inherent difficulties with a democratic republic is that it is only as good as the people in it. When a people lose their moral equilibrium, live in sin, and suffer the consequent loss of wisdom, then that nation's days are numbered.
Why? How have we come to this? It can be traced to the most compelling moral issue of our times, and we can't escape from it, no matter how uncomfortable it is - abortion and other life issues.
No matter what other rosy picture is painted by those that would have you believe all is well, God is not a disinterested spectator. Regardless of the high sounding rhetoric of the day, seeming progress in this or that area, it is an illusion.
Nothing will ultimately go well for the United States or any other country until the injustice of all injustices is remedied. Until every human being is respected and reverenced, from the moment of conception to the last moment of natural life, no one will be safe and secure.
Whether it is the helpless infant in the womb or the misguided and/or evil abortionist on the wrong end of a bullet, all deserve the safety and security of the law. Only God can in justice and wisdom decide when life begins and when life ends. When we attempt to usurp God's job description we always come up short.
This is republished from the most recent newsletter from SOLT
Contact: Fr. John Corapi Source: LifeSiteNews.com Publish Date: June 4, 2009 Link to this article.
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"Love Really Can Make Suffering Bearable": Woman with Spina Bifida Grapples with the Answer to "Unbearable Suffering"
Amid the euthanasia and assisted suicide debate, the objection is frequently raised: what about those who suffer what can truly be called "unbearable pain"?
Although euthanasia advocates often mount a compelling "right to die" argument for such cases, two U.K. activists intimately familiar with the depth of physical suffering strongly deny that assisted suicide and euthanasia provide an acceptable answer to pain. Instead, they say, a society that considers suicide a legitimate option deprives sufferers of the support they need the most, and implicitly shuns the power of love to overcome suffering.
Colin Harte, director of the U.K. anti-euthanasia group ALERT, addressed the question of suffering head-on at the Second International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide at the National Conference Center in Lansdowne, VA last weekend. The symposium was hosted by Canada's Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. Harte is the full-time caretaker of Alison Davis, the leader of the disability rights group No Less Human, who is disabled.
Davis herself spoke first at the symposium, and battled the growing notion that people with profound disabilities - and even those with "unbearable pain" - are "better off dead."
Davis has suffered all her life from spina bifida, hydrocephalus, emphysema, and multiple other disabilities that have confined her permanently to a wheelchair and cause immense suffering. Frequent doses of morphine, she said, only somewhat alleviate her pain. "I think it's important for us to know that some pain can't be relieved. That's the case for me," she said. "When the pain's at its worst, I can't move, I can't think, I can't speak. Doctors have told me that it will definitely get worse."
Davis said that about twenty years ago, when doctors assured her she didn't have long to live, she developed a "settled wish" to die that lasted for ten years. She attempted to kill herself several times. However, she said she regained her desire to live after a 1995 trip to India where she met disabled children whom she had sponsored, and whom she began to love "overwhelmingly and fiercely." Davis later set up Enable (Working in India), a charity for disabled Indian children.
"Had euthanasia or assisted suicide been legal then, and I'd been killed," said Davis, "I would have missed what actually have been the best years of my life, and nobody would ever have known."
Davis says that people often assume that because she is in a wheelchair, she is in favor of euthanasia. However, she said, openness to such an option is not what individuals who are disabled and in pain really need.
"In my experience, when the pain is bad, what I need is not to be told I'm burdensome and it's my choice whether I want to live or die, and that perhaps I would be better off dead," said Davis. "What I need is to be surrounded by people who tell me, yes, my life does have value, and I'm not burdensome ... they can't take the pain away, but sometimes it's not the pain that hurts the most, it's the fear of being abandoned."
Davis' full-time assistant, Colin Harte, criticized the deep fear of both experiencing and witnessing suffering that he says is behind the euthanasia movement. "In many people's minds, the whole of the debate about euthanasia is fixated on the question of suffering," said Harte.
While advanced palliative care usually means the elimination of severe pain, he said sometimes, as in Davis' case, the question of suffering must be faced head-on.
In examining the modern reaction to "unbearable" suffering, Harte questioned why prisoners of Nazi concentration camps rarely committed suicide - although, he noted, firsthand accounts attest that "the thought of suicide was entertained by nearly everyone in the camps, if only for a brief time."
"Suicide was, in fact, an easy option," said Harte. "Yet in spite of contemplating suicide, very, very few went through with it. Why should this be?" Harte concluded that the main deterrent was the "solidarity in suffering" and "mutual sense of encouragement" among prisoners who collectively rejected suicide as a viable option. Amid such encouragement, he said, a "natural human resilience" emerges in spite of great suffering.
However, said Harte, "once suicide is considered a legitimate option, those words of hope lose their power - because death itself is seen as a means of liberation, the means of satisfaction. Death is regarded as the source of hope."
If assisted suicide had been legal while Alison had given up on life, said Harte, "it would have made my job absolutely impossible." "I would have been regarded as being cruel to her to encourage her to live," he said. "Once you have a law allowing the so-called 'compassionate choice' to die, if you want to emphasize another option which is going to involve suffering, you are suddenly becoming the person who is not compassionate, who is inflicting suffering."
"We live in a ... world today where those who give up the fight are called tenacious, and those who abandon their use of free will by killing themselves somehow achieve an independence. It's madness!" said Harte. "We should be able to say plainly: it's mad. It's absurd."
Contrary to the typical assumption, said Harte, death is not the only means of overcoming unstoppable pain: while Davis' physical pain did not improve after her visit to India, and in many ways has become "much worse," Harte said the children had "provided a particularly powerful motivation for her to persevere." "And that motivation has another name, a simple name: love," he said.
Harte quoted Holocaust survivor and psychoanalyst Victor Frankl, who said that, amid his suffering: "I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. ... In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment."
"That profound insight that resulted from Frankl's own intense suffering, which in all probability would not have been realized without that suffering," said Harte. "Love really can, and does make suffering bearable."
"Even though committed euthanasia advocates may deride the idea that there can be any point in suffering, many people would like to be convinced of its value, said Harte. "They would love to be convinced of its value. And I think we alone can show them this value."
Contact: Kathleen Gilbert Source: LifeSiteNews.com Publish Date: June 5, 2009
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The Biggest Danger From the Killing of George Tiller
The pro-life leadership has gone out of its way – and rightly so – to condemn the violence that took the life of abortionist George Tiller on Sunday. I join with those voices, as I always have done, that declare that the end never justifies the means, and that violence has no place in the effort to end abortion.
I have been asked what I think the biggest negative effect of this killing will be on our pro-life movement. Does it tar the movement’s reputation? Yes, it does, despite the fact that those who kill abortionists are always disconnected from pro-life organizations. Does it make the government reach too far in clamping down on First Amendment activity against abortion? Yes, it does and it will.
But those are not the biggest dangers.
The biggest danger is the enemy within. It is the fear and self-doubt to which we can all too easily fall victim. It is the voice inside that makes us feel guilty for saying “Abortion is murder” or “Abortion is a holocaust” or “The babies who are being killed need to be defended now.” It is the fear inside that keeps us from going out to the abortion mills and intervening to save the children scheduled to be killed there each day.
The biggest danger is that some will listen to those in the pro-abortion movement who try to lay blame for violence on us and who, as one person wrote on my blog, think that saying “Abortion is murder” should be prosecuted because it leads to violence against abortionists.
The Church teaches us that we have to look evil in the eye. John Paul II, in “The Gospel of Life, said that we have to call evil by its proper name. This is no time to shrink back from the reality of what is going on every day in abortion. Children are being killed, and the reason it continues is that too many of our fellow citizens are blind to it.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, responded to criticisms that the civil rights activists were fomenting violence. No, he said. That’s like saying the person who owns money is fomenting the activity of the robber. To expose the violence that is already occurring, to call it what it is, and to sound the alarm that it has to stop, is not to foment violence.
The pro-life movement is a movement of non-violence. As Ghandi and Dr. King taught, and as we teach, non-violence is not passivity, and it is not obscurity. It is a force. It is a clear and strong response against violence, in whatever form that violence takes.
Let the outcry against Tiller’s murder be loud and clear. And let the outcry against the murders he committed – and that other abortionists commit -- be loud and clear as well.
Contact: Fr. Frank Pavone Source: Priests for Life Publish Date: June 4, 2009 Link to this article.
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Disclaimer: The linked items below or the websites at which they are located do not necessarily represent the views of The Illinois Federation for Right to Life. They are presented only for your information.
Legislation Would Protect Minors from Abortion
Sen John Ensign, R-Nev., is set to reintroduce the Child Custody Protection Act, which would prohibit taking minors across state lines to circumvent laws requiring the involvement of parents in abortions.
Then-Sen. Barack Obama voted against identical legislation in 2006.
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How UNICEF, WHO Manipulate Latin American Catholics to Cooperate on Abortion
Church members, clergy considered social workers to recruit to implement UN agenda
When is abortion not really "abortion"? When it is promoted as "therapeutic" by UN-supported international health organizations trying to make a "strategic alliance" with the Catholic Church in Latin America. The Population Research Institute (PRI) has just posted a 6-minute video of highlights from interviews conducted by its Latin American Director that reveal the slick language tactics used by UN agents to manipulate Catholics to cooperate with its anti-life, anti-family agendas.
Dr. Oscar Suriel, International Consultant on Family, Health and Community, for the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a member organization of the World Health Organization (WHO), told PRI's Carlos Polo in March, that it is not "abortion per se" that they support, but only "therapeutic abortion."
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Euthanasia Bill Introduced in Tasmanian Parliament
Nick McKim, an MP from the political party the Tasmanian Greens, has tabled a bill that would legalize euthanasia. The bill “seeks to confirm the right of those suffering from a terminal illness and experiencing intolerable pain to request assistance from a medically qualified person to end voluntarily their lives in a humane and dignified manner.”
McKim has responded to critics of the bill who suggest that the bill will be abused, saying that it has “safeguards” in place, including psychiatric evaluations and limitations to Tasmanian residents. The MP also cited an Enterprise Marketing and Research Services (EMRS) poll that estimated Tasmanian support for legal euthanasia at 78%.
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News from Spain....
Massive pro-life demonstration being organized in Spain
More than 40 civic organizations have joined together to organize a massive pro-life demonstration in support of pregnant women and in opposition to the government’s proposal to reform Spain’s abortion laws. The demonstration is set to take place on October 17 in Madrid.
The spokesperson for the organization Right to Life, Gador Joya, told reporters this week that the pro-life community intends to make its voice heard and to urge the government to turn back from the “most violent and radical abortion program in Europe.”
“Our more than 100,000 volunteers will do their best to make the October demonstration another success for an independent and free society in the face of imposition and abuse by our leaders,” she said.
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Former Spanish president slams 'right to abortion'
The former president of Spain, Jose Maria Aznar, has criticized the government’s proposal to overhaul the laws on abortion saying, “Abortion is not and can never be a right” because “what is a right is the right to life.” He also slammed the government for “pretending to make the ending of human life into a right.”
During a speech at the University of San Pablo in Madrid, Aznar warned that Spaniards should be suspicious of a government that “manifests grave difficulties in distinguishing between what is human and what isn’t,” especially in a scientific sense, which he said was “especially alarming.”
“To proceed down a path that leads to the destruction of the right to life and to pervert it into a false right to end life is, simply, to go backwards on the path of civilization,” the former president said.
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Spanish Feminists Seek to Lower Age of Consent for Abortions to 13 Years
Deliver petition with 12,000 signatures to Spanish government
The Governmental Coordinator of Feminist Organizations has gathered 12,000 signatures on a petition demanding that the Spanish government depenalize unlimited abortion on demand, provide abortions in public hospitals, and lower the age of consent for abortion to 13 years.
"We want the text [of the law] of the government not to be so restrictive, so that we truly have one of the most advanced norms in Europe like the socialist parliamentarians say," said Yoland Iglesias, a spokesman for the group.
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Former Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) Donates $50,000 to Susan B. Anthony List Education Fund to Launch Young Leaders Board
Today the Susan B. Anthony List Education Fund (501(c)(3)) launched its first project, the Young Leaders Board, a new outreach effort to engage young people in the pro-life movement. Former Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) donated $50,000 from her congressional campaign committee, Musgrave for Congress, to launch the board. Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) will serve as the Board's Honorary Chairwoman.
I am so pleased to support the Susan B. Anthony List Education Fund's youth outreach efforts by supporting the new Youth Leaders Board," said Marilyn Musgrave, Director of Regional Outreach for the Susan B. Anthony List. "As technology advances and sonograms continue to offer compelling visual evidence of the humanity of unborn children, we're finding that the younger generation is more pro-life. I'm confident the Susan B. Anthony List Education Fund will effectively marshal the energy and enthusiasm found among young pro-lifers to be a voice for women and the unborn for years to come."
The Youth Leaders Board will be comprised of young pro-life women leaders from across the country. The Board's early focus will be youth leadership training, with a special emphasis on communications, in order to train effective pro-life spokeswomen. The Board will also permanently integrate a youth perspective into existing Susan B. Anthony new media outreach efforts, like Lia's Challenge, the organization's recent YouTube youth video contest.
Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) will serve as Honorary Chairwoman of the Youth Leaders Board.
"One of my priorities in Congress is to encourage women to get involved," said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA). "Through the use of new media and other communications tools, I look forward to helping the SBA List's Young Leaders Board reach out to young, pro-life women."
Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rogers is a member of the House Pro-Life Women's Caucus. She serves as Vice Chair of the House Republican Conference, making her the fourth-highest ranking Republican and the highest-ranking Republican woman in the House of Representatives. She also works to recruit women candidates for Congress through the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).
Former Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave joined the Susan B. Anthony List (501(c)(4)) in March as Director of Regional Outreach to run the organization's new pro-life voter education effort, Votes Have Consequences.
Contact: Joy Yearout Source: Susan B. Anthony List Publish Date: June 4, 2009 Link to this article.
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A Good Journalist May Be Hard to Find, But Not a Late-Term Abortionist
In the aftermath of the murder of late-term abortionist, George Tiller, a number of media stories have reported that Tiller was one of only three remaining late-term abortionists in the United States. However the claim does not square up with numbers released by the Alan Guttmacher Institute and further evidence that indicates that late-term abortion has plenty of willing practitioners across the country.
The Associated Press called Tiller “one of the nation's few providers of late-term abortions” on May 31. The AP stated, “Tiller's Women's Health Care Services clinic is one of just three in the nation where abortions are performed after the 21st week of pregnancy.”
According to the New York Times, “Some described Dr. Tiller as one of about only three doctors in the country who had, under certain circumstances, provided abortions to women in their third trimester of pregnancy, and said his death would mean that women, particularly in the central United States, would have few if any options in such cases.”
The Los Angeles Times called Tiller, “One of the few American physicians who performed late-term abortions.” The Times added that “the doctor had always overcome the daunting legal and physical challenges of his work, terminating pregnancies of women and girls who were in the 22nd week of gestation or beyond.”
However the fact is that statistics show that many doctors perform such late-term abortions in the United States. Tiller, on the other hand, was actually notorious for being among the few doctors willing to perform very late-term abortions, way past the point of viability, right up until birth.
Although no week demarcates the precise beginning of what is defined as a late-term abortion, the procedure is regarded as beginning in the second trimester, around the point of fetal viability outside the womb. In general, viability begins 21 weeks – although advances in medical technology and a number of cases show this number might actually be lower. If this figure is taken as a benchmark, then the statistics of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, indicate that late-term abortion is a very busy industry indeed.
Fr. Frank Pavone yesterday drew attention to this data on his blog where he wrote: “The Alan Guttmacher Institute (the research arm of Planned Parenthood) reports that abortions of pregnancies at 21 weeks or later comprise about 1.1 percent of the nation’s abortions, which that same institute also indicates are in the area of 1.21 million.”
A quick crunching of the numbers means that for the year 2005 (the latest available data from Guttmacher), 13,310 late-term abortions were performed in the United States. A corresponding CDC report (which does not include data from California and several states) reported that in Kansas – where Tiller conducted his grisly business - only 452 abortions of unborn children were performed at 21 weeks and beyond. This is a mere fraction of the total number, despite the fact that aborting children late in pregnancy was Tiller's avowed specialty.
The rest of these late-term abortions are performed at other abortion centers and hospitals across the country, which pro-life columnist Jill Stanek says are hardly an endangered species.
“The reality is late-term abortions are committed pretty much in every pocket of the country, contrary to claims by the other side,” said Stanek on WorldNetDaily.com.
While a number of abortion facilities and hospitals perform late-term abortions, Tiller was among a handful who offered to perform very late-term abortions, even right before birth. One non-exhaustive listing of abortion providers listed at least six facilities that would perform abortions beyond 24 weeks, which is twice the number of late-term abortion providers the mainstream media have reported, whom they define as those performing abortions beyond 21-22 weeks.
Guttmacher spokeswoman Rebecca Wind told LifeSiteNews that while she had no specific information on Tiller’s abortion practice, she stated, “the other two physicians who have been cited as performing abortions very late in pregnancy are Dr. Carhart in Nebraska and Dr. Hern in Colorado.”
That may explain the media misapprehension that Tiller was one of three doctors providing simply late-term abortions, while in fact they were very late-term abortions in very advanced pregnancies.
Despite Tiller's death, his abortion facility in Wichita will once again be open for business. Dr. Leroy Carhart, a friend of Tiller and the abortionist behind two Supreme Court cases, Stenberg v. Carhart, and Gonzales v. Carhart, has said that he is leaving his abortion practice in Nebraska temporarily to continue providing very late-term abortions at the Tiller facility.
Contact: Peter J. Smith Source: LifeSiteNews.com Publish Date: June 3, 2009 Link to this article.
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Climate of Hate, World of Double Standards
When a right-wing Christian vigilante kills, millions of fingers pull the trigger. When a left-wing Muslim vigilante kills, he kills alone. These are the instantly ossifying narratives in the Sunday shooting death of late-term abortion provider George Tiller of Kansas versus the Monday shootings of two Arkansas military recruiters.
Tiller’s suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, is white, Christian, anti-government and anti-abortion. The gunman in the military recruitment center attack, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, is black, a Muslim convert, anti-military and anti-American.
Both crimes are despicable, cowardly acts of domestic terrorism. But the disparate treatment of the two brutal cases by both the White House and the media is striking.
President Obama issued a statement condemning “heinous acts of violence” within hours of Tiller’s death. The Justice Department issued its own statement and sent federal marshals to protect abortion clinics. News anchors and headline writers abandoned all qualms about labeling the gunman a terrorist. An almost gleeful excess of mainstream commentary poured forth on the climate of hate and fear created by conservative talk radio, blogs and Fox News in reporting Tiller’s activities.
By contrast, Obama was silent about the military recruiter attacks that left 24-year-old Pvt. William Long dead and 18-year-old Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula gravely wounded. On Tuesday afternoon—more than 24 hours after the attack on the military recruitment center in Little Rock, Ark.—Obama held a press conference to announce his pick for Army secretary. It would have been exactly the right moment to express condolences for the families of the targeted Army recruiters and to condemn heinous acts of violence against our troops.
But Obama said nothing. The Justice Department was mum. And so were the legions of finger-pointing pundits happily convicting the pro-life movement and every right-leaning writer on the planet of contributing to the murder of Tiller. Obama’s omission, it should be noted, comes just a few weeks after he failed to mention the Bronx jihadi plot to bomb synagogues and a National Guard airbase during his speech on homeland security.
Why the silence? Politically and religiously motivated violence, it seems, is only worth lamenting when it demonizes opponents. Which also helps explain why the phrase “lone shooter” is ubiquitous in media coverage of jihadi shooters gone wild—think convicted “Jeep Jihadist” Mohammed Taheri-Azar at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill or Israel-bashing gunman Naveed Haq, who targeted a Seattle Jewish charity or Los Angeles International Airport shooter Hesham Hedayet, who opened fire at the El Al Israeli airline ticket counter—but not in cases involving rare acts of anti-abortion violence.
Even Jeffrey Goldberg of the left-leaning Atlantic magazine noticed the double standards. He called attention to a National Public Radio report on the military recruiter attack that failed to mention the religion and anti-military animus of the suspect.
Wrote Goldberg: “Why not tell people what is actually happening in the world? We saw this a couple of weeks ago, when the press only gingerly acknowledged that the malevolent though incompetent suspects in the synagogue bombing-conspiracy case in New York were converts to Islam. How is the public served by this kind of silence? The extremist Christian beliefs of George Tiller’s alleged murderer are certainly relevant to that case, and no one in my profession is hesitant to discuss them. Why the hesitancy to talk about the motivations of the man who allegedly killed Pvt. William Long?”
The truth is that the “climate of hate” doesn’t have just one hemisphere. But you won’t hear the Council on American-Islamic Relations acknowledging the national security risks of jihadi infiltrators who despise our military and have plotted against our troops from within the ranks—including convicted fragging killer Hasan Akbar and terror plotters Ali Mohamed, Jeffrey Battle and Semi Osman.
You won’t hear about the escalating war on military recruitment centers on the op-ed pages of The New York Times—from vandalism to obstruction to Molotov cocktail attacks on campus stations across the country; to the shutdown of a Pittsburgh military recruitment office by zealots holding signs that read “Recruiters are Child Predators”; to the prolonged harassment campaign against the Marine recruiting center in Berkeley, where Code Pink protesters called America soldiers assassins; to the bomb blast at the Times Square recruiting center last March.
And you’ll certainly hear little about the most recent left-wing calls to violence by a Playboy magazine writer who published a vulgar list of conservative female writers and commentators he said he’d like to rape (the obscene slang word he used is not printable). The list was hyped by the magazine’s publicity team and light-heartedly promoted by mainstream publications such as Politico.com (founded by Washington Post reporters).
Is it too much to ask the media cartographers in charge of mapping the “climate of hate” to do their jobs with both eyes open?
Contact: Michelle Malkin Source: CNSNews.com Publish Date: June 4, 2009 Link to this article.
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Senator Feinstein Assures Pro-Aborts: Sotomayor "Respects Precedent" Set by Roe v. Wade
Judiciary committee member Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Tuesday told reporters that Judge Sonia Sotomayor had satisfied her concern that the nominee to become the next Supreme Court judge would uphold liberal access to abortion as founded in Roe v. Wade.
Following a meeting with Sotomayor, who has spent the last two days at Capitol Hill meeting with senators, the pro-abortion senator admitted that the discussion broached the topic of abortion. Asked to elaborate on that topic, Feinstein praised Sotomayor's "respect for precedent."
"I think she is a woman who is well-steeped in the law and well-steeped in precedent," said Feinstein. "And I believe that she has a real respect for precedent, and that she was not just saying that. And if that is really true, then I would agree with her. And I believe it is."
Feinstein's words confirm earlier reports that point to pro-abortion proclivities in Obama's choice to replace retiring Supreme Court judge David Souter. While several pro-abortion groups have expressed concern that Obama's Sotomayor has not proven herself as a champion of abortion, Planned Parenthood, like Feinstein, had assured constituents of Sotomayor's fidelity to "precedent."
Feinstein also said that Sotomayor regretted the wording of her controversial statement decried by conservatives as revealing a "reverse racist" viewpoint.
"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," Sotomayor had told an audience at the University of California-Berkeley Law School in 2001.
“She said, 'Obviously it was a poor choice of words, if you read on and read the rest of my speech you wouldn’t be concerned with it, but it was a poor choice of words,'" Feinstein told reporters.
Conservative leaders such as Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, who had questioned Sotomayor's racism, have more recently softened their approach to Sotomayor. Limbaugh said his support for the nomination rested on the Catholic Latina judge proving that she is not hostile to the pro-life cause.
"I can see a possibility of supporting this nomination if I can be convinced that she does have a sensibility toward life in a legal sense," the radio guru told his audience today.
The Senate Judiciary committee has not yet scheduled hearings to examine the nominee. Though promising to look carefully at Sotomayor's record, leading GOP senators on Sunday indicated that the party was not planning a filibuster to block the nomination.
Contact: Kathleen Gilbert Source: LifeSiteNews.com Publish Date: June 3, 2009 Link to this article.
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Notre Dame Not Seeking Leniency for Arrested Pro-Life Protesters: Thomas More Lawyers Now on the Case
Thomas More Society attorneys appeared in St. Joseph County Criminal Court to defend two prominent pro-life advocates against trespass charges brought this morning by local prosecutors in the wake of protests at the University of Notre Dame. The attorneys join the fight with pro-life attorney Tom Dickson, who is representing dozens more pro-lifers arrested at the campus.
Laura Rohling and Jane Brennan went onto the Notre Dame campus to educate students about the after-effects of abortion, based on their own personal experiences with abortion. Ms. Brennan, author of “Motherhood Interrupted,” is a frequent guest on Catholic TV and radio. She serves as regional coordinator in Colorado of “Silent No More,” a group which brings public attention to the plight of women who have experienced emotional and psychological trauma following abortion. Ms. Rohling serves as assistant regional coordinator of that group.
Brennan and Rohling, like dozens of other pro-life advocates who travelled across the country to protest President Obama's commencement speech at Notre Dame, were arrested for criminal trespass upon entering campus.
Witnesses say that only individuals who bore a pro-life display of protest - including a large cross, photographs of aborted children, and images of Mary - were arrested, while other passersby and pro-Obama demonstrators were allowed to roam free.
While South Bend prosecutor Michael Dvorak is pursuing charges against the pro-lifers, defense attorneys say they are concerned that the University has not sought leniency for the protesters.
“The Thomas More Society is urging the University to request that these trespass charges be dropped,” said Tom Brejcha, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Society. “Such a magnanimous gesture will go far toward healing the divisions that have arisen between Notre Dame and the pro-life movement, in light of recent events.”
The Society has assembled an all-“Fighting Irish” team, including President and Chief Counsel Thomas Brejcha, Notre Dame class of ’65, Executive Director Peter Breen, Notre Dame Law class of ‘00, and South Bend attorney David Wemhoff, Notre Dame class of ’79, in defense of Ms. Rohling and Ms. Brennan.
“What’s vitally needed is dialogue about pro-life issues of abortion, stem-cell research, euthanasia, marriage, as well as about capital punishment and peace issues rather than confrontation in South Bend’s criminal court,” Brejcha continued. “The pro-life movement is the next stage of America’s civil rights movement, and Notre Dame is not Birmingham.”
The Thomas More Society has a history of partnership with the University of Notre Dame. The late Fr. Ned Joyce, former Executive Vice President of the University, was a regular financial supporter of the Society. Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, former President of the University, wrote fundraising letters in support of the Thomas More Society’s successful defense of peaceable, non-violent abortion protests in the landmark United States Supreme Court case, NOW v. Scheidler.
To contact University of Notre Dame president Fr. John Jenkins:
Office of the President
400 Main Building
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Phone: 574.631.3903
Email: president@nd.edu
Contact: Kathleen Gilbert Source: LifeSiteNews.com Publish Date: June 4, 2009
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Neb. adopts strong abortion ultrasound law
Nebraska has enacted what is being described as one of the country's strongest ultrasound bills for women considering abortion.
The single-chamber Nebraska legislature voted 40-5 May 29 for the legislation, and Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican, signed the measure into law the same day.
What sets apart the new Nebraska law from other states is its requirement when an ultrasound is performed that an abortion doctor display the image for the mother to see rather than requiring the woman to ask for the sonogram to be shown, according to the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). Under the law, the mother can choose whether to view the image.
The law also requires an abortion provider to inform the woman considering abortion of the medical risks of the procedure and the estimated age of the unborn child. In addition, it mandates she be told she cannot be forced to choose an abortion and that assistance is available if she decides to give birth.
"It is absolutely vital that a woman, at this most crucial life-and-death juncture, be provided all the information possible about the abortion procedure and the development of her unborn child," said Mary Spaulding Balch, National Right to Life's state legislative director. "Simply put, the abortion decision cannot be undone. Women deserve all the facts."
Eighteen other states have ultrasound laws, according to National Right to Life.
Nebraska's legislature is non-partisan.
Contact: Tom Strode Source: Baptist Press
Publish Date: June 3, 2009
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CNN's Cooper Spotlights Woman Who Decided Against Late-Term Abortion
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper conducted a five-minute long interview of Diane Elder, a woman who decided to let her infant daughter live despite her severe genetic defects, during his program on Tuesday evening. The interview came about after Elder wrote Cooper after watching a similar interview he conducted the previous night of Lynda Waddington, a “pro-choice” blogger for the Huffington Post and RH Reality Check, who decided to have a late-term abortion herself (the anchor did not mention Waddington’s left-wing affiliations during the interview). Click here for the video.
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Abortion Ban Donor Still Secret - For Now
Judge gives state 2 weeks to respond
The name of the donor to a failed 2006 attempt to ban most abortions in South Dakota will remain secret for now after a Sioux Falls judge ruled Monday against state lawyers at a motions hearing. Judge Kathleen Caldwell gave the South Dakota attorney general's office two weeks to respond to a motion by lawyers for state Rep. Roger Hunt to settle the case before a trial after Hunt refused to name the donor of $750,000 to a group who sought a ban on abortions. Caldwell rejected the state's argument that it needed to know details about Hunt's corporation, Promising Future Inc., before it could properly respond to Hunt's motion for summary judgment.
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One-Child Policy Would Make Australia Unsustainable says Australian Pro-Life Advocate
In April, a leading population control group in Australia issued a call for the government to institute a one-child policy in order to drastically reduce the population from its current 21.3 million to 7 million. But a sustainable Australia, said Anthony Ozimic, an Australian and the political secretary of Britain’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), must be based on the understanding that people are the country’s most valuable primary resource.
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Genocide Awareness Display Vindicated in Highest Slovak Court after Police Disruption
The highest court of the Slovak Republic ruled in favor of a pro-life group Tuesday in its lawsuit against police. Attorney Dr. Alan Bohm together with Alliance Defense Fund attorneys represented the Centre for Bio-ethical Reform Europe, which filed suit after police disrupted a peaceful pro-life rally that was held in full compliance with domestic law. The court ruled that police violated the pro-life group’s constitutional right to free speech.
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Pro-Life Leader Responds to National Post Article Blaming Pro-Life Movement for Tiller Murder
On June 2, Colby Cosh of the National Post published this article, in which Cosh blamed the pro-life movement for the murder of Kansas late-term abortionist George tiller. What follows is the response of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, the Canadian affiliate of the organization that was specifically named by Mr. Cosh in his piece, "Who’s to blame for George Tiller’s Murder."
Colby Cosh is completely wrong when he says, "If you believe that abortion is tantamount to murder... then you should be willing to stand up and celebrate the murder of Dr. George Tiller."
Perhaps those who support violence (through abortion) in the face of difficult life circumstances don't comprehend when other people don't resort to violence in the face of difficult life circumstances (a society where abortion is legal). But nonetheless, that's our point. Take a message from the pro-life textbook, Mr. Cosh: killing people isn't the way to deal with problems. It’s the reason why we are more than just "anti-abortion."
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Tiller's Abortion Clinic May Remain Closed
'Killing is never the answer, whether it’s an unintended pregnancy or to stop abortion.'
Nebraska abortionist LeRoy Carhart says George Tiller's abortion clinic in Wichita, Kan., will reopen Monday. Carhart, who was at the center of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on partial-birth abortion, has been helping at Tiller's clinic for more than 10 years.
But the family said it has not made a decision about the long-term plans for the clinic, after Tiller was shot to death Sunday.
"The Tiller family's focus, of course, is to determine what is in the best interests of the employees and the patients," the family said in a statement.
Carrie Gordon Earll, senior bioethics analyst at Focus on the Family Action, said it's clear what is in the best interest of the patients.
"Killing is never the answer, whether it’s an unintended pregnancy or to stop abortion," she said. "We’re speaking the truth about the precious lives of these preborn children. And, despite this tragedy, we are not going to stop."
Source: CitizenLink
Publish Date: June 2, 2009
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A Pro-Life 'Jihad?'
In the very heart of the pro-life community, there is nothing they wanted less than another shooting of an abortionist. An unhinged vigilante's shooting of notorious Kansas late-term abortion "provider" George Tiller prompted an avalanche of press releases from pro-life groups denouncing the killing.
Why bother? Let's face it. The national media had zero interest in spotlighting a pro-life spokesman expressing horror, because let's face it, they don't believe it. Instead, as with ABC, they found anonymous citizens on the website Twitter saying "Oh, happy, day. Tiller the baby killer is dead." Another wrote, "God bless the gunman."
It was time for a barrage of liberal mudslinging. Keith Olbermann started his MSNBC program with these words: "A religious jihad by fundamentalist crusaders who believe that murder is justified, their acts of violence having the intended effect of changing behavior. Our fifth story on the Countdown: Not the Taliban, not Hamas, not al Qaeda."
He was referring to conservative politicians and bloggers and the Fox News Channel. Olbermann insisted there was a "straight line" of culpability from Fox News to the Tiller shooter.
He played clips of O'Reilly disparaging Tiller: "For 5,000 dollars, Tiller, the baby killer, as some call him, will perform a late-term abortion for just about any reason." And: "Tiller the baby killer out in Kansas, acquitted. Acquitted today of murdering babies. There's got to be a special place in hell for this guy."
Olbermann was so offended he called for a boycott of businesses that allow a Fox News infection in public.
"Don't write a letter, don't make a threat, just get up and explain, if they will not change the channel," he exclaimed, "leave the place and say calmly why it is you are taking your business elsewhere. If you know a viewer of that channel, show them this tape, or just the tape of the attacks on Dr. Tiller that set the stage for his assassination.
"Fox News Channel will never restrain itself from incitement to murder and terrorism, not until its profits begin to decline, when its growth stops. So not so much a boycott here as a quarantine, because this has got to stop."
The Tiller assassination? Olbermann insisted that the mere act of denouncing Tiller as a killer of babies – as if he were instead removing tumors – is an invitation to terrorism and murder. This was not a call for moderation by the pro-life movement, but for rhetorical surrender.
The media demanded that pro-lifers stop defining abortion as the ending of a human life. Such a definition was so raw and emotional that it somehow disfigured the "truth" that this is merely a woman-saving health procedure that was not only legal, but commendable.
While they pawed through Twitter looking for anti-Tiller "hate speech," liberal journalists expressed no distaste for the revoltingly gilded rhetoric in praise of this monster.
In the Washington Times, reporter Julia Duin found the "Very Reverend" Katharine Ragsdale of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts to express how the "choice" advocates felt.
"This is about the loss of a man who was a saint and a martyr," she said in an interview. "He was a prayerful man who put his life at risk to protect others and died for it."
Over on National Public Radio, "Talk of the Nation" host Neal Conan was hoping the polls would tilt back to the left: "There was a recent Gallup poll that suggested that opinion on abortion had actually shifted in this country toward the pro-life side, sort of, outside of the context of Kansas in – on the national level – there might be some concern that if the pro-life movement is associated with vigilante tactics like this, again, that could cut in to those gains."
His guest, Wichita Eagle reporter Dion Lefler, agreed: "Yeah. I think that it could. I mean, you know, every time there's an incident like this, I mean, you will – one prominent pro-life person here in town told me that he thought that if this guy is linked to the movement then it's going to set them back 20 years."
That's exactly what the pro-abortion media would love to accomplish. They're willing to smear the pro-life movement with the mud of the militia movement or al-Qaeda if it will enable their cause. There is no extreme, and no mainstream. There is only a ghastly, murderous blur.
George Tiller was a monster who personally murdered 60,000 babies. May God have mercy on his soul.
Contact: L. Brent Bozell III Source: CNSNews.com Publish Date: June 2, 2009 Link to this article.
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National Post Columnist Blames Pro-Life Movement for Tiller Murder
National Post Columnist Colby Cosh has accused the pro-life movement of being responsible for George Tiller’s murder. Tiller, a Kansas abortionist who specialized in late-term abortions, was murdered this past Sunday. Scott Roeder, a man with a history of involvement in fringe anti-government organizations and mental illness, has been arrested in connection with the murder, for which he was charged earlier today.
In an article titled, “Who’s to blame for George Tiller’s Murder,” Cosh argues that the natural consequences of believing – as the pro-life movement the world over does - that abortion is indeed the murder of unborn children is to believe that the murder of abortionists is in turn justifiable.
“If that is your belief, then you should be willing to stand up and celebrate the murder of Dr. George Tiller and the richly merited sorrow of a family gorged with blood money,” he says.
Cosh took particular aim at a statement issued by Jim Hughes of Campaign Life Coalition in response to the news of Tiller’s death, writing that it was a “charming, coy thing to say.” Hughes had condemned the murder and said that “Those of us in the pro-life movement do not want to see abortionists die, we want to see them convert.”
Cosh, however, accused Hughes of being “simply a purveyor of beliefs whose literal truth he does little or nothing to act seriously upon.”
Cosh then goes on to suggest that pro-life advocates who say that abortion is the murder of unborn children are responsible when “some ardent religious loner is confused enough to hear those beliefs, conclude they are true, and follow through. And a doctor somewhere ends up maimed or dead.”
He concludes, “And we blame only the individual who pulled the trigger.”
However, Barbara Kay, a writer for the National Post’s religion blog, Holy Post, responded to Cosh’s column, arguing that the pro-life movement has expressed its outrage to Tiller’s late-term abortion practices admirably through civil obedience. It “took a real nutter to translate his grievance into violence,” said Kay of the man who killed Tiller.
“To follow through on Cosh's implication that the pro-life movement must accept blame in this murder, what should we say about those who attempt to assassinate presidents? Should we indict, say, the entire peace movement if a brooding activist attempted to knock off George Bush for invading Iraq?”
“That's is a dangerous road to go down, and surprising in such a staunch libertarian as Cosh professes to be. Pursuit of such a thread will lead to a chill on the free expression of opinion and belief,” she concluded.
Since the news of Tiller’s murder broke, most, if not all, mainstream pro-life organizations in North America have issued statements condemning the killing. Pro-life leaders have said that the pro-life movement is seeking to protect unborn children through legal means, and not through violence. (To see many of the statements, go here)
National Post Contact Information:
Click here for the Editor-in-Chief Douglas Kelly
Click here for Colby Cosh
Click here for Barbara Kay
Contact: Alex Bush and John Jalsevac Source: LifeSiteNews.com Publish Date: June 2, 2009 Link to this article.
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"Pop Can" Miracle Baby Set to Go Home – Born at 12.5 Ounces
"There's a God in this world, and if it's meant to be, it will be" mother says to parents with similar difficulties.
On March 12, parents Brittany Rideout and Adam Bouchat welcomed their beautiful and extraordinarily tiny little girl, Taylor Rideout, at Magee-Women's Hospital of UPMC in Pittsburgh. Born at 26 weeks gestation, Taylor was a mere 12.5 ounces or 350 grams, about the size of a pop can.
Ms. Rideout suffers from lupus, and about six weeks into the pregnancy she underwent two strokes and two seizures, says Mr. Bouchat in a video on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's website. She was hospitalized for a month. Then, two months after she was released, she was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome. "Her blood pressure was sky-high and her liver was failing," said Mr. Bouchat.
Faced with the possibility of death for both mother and child, they chose to deliver baby Taylor at 26 weeks. According to Taylor's doctor, Dr. Jennifer Kloesz, the smallest babies they had delivered before Taylor were about 500 grams, but these babies were only 24 weeks gestation. Dr. Kloesz said that Taylor was about half the size of a normal 26-week baby.
"The reason that she's still here and is going to survive and be discharged is that she was 26 weeks," Dr. Kloesz said. "Her organ systems had developed more like a 26-weeker so that she was able to respond to our resuscitation."
Dr. Kloesz said that if Taylor had not been gestated so long, they might not have made the attempt. Referring to her being 26 weeks, she said, "That's kinda the main thing that makes her so different and why it was worth giving it a try, with her parents' wishes," continues Dr. Kloesz.
But Ms. Rideout urges parents facing similar difficulties never to give up, reports WXPI in Pittsburgh. "I would tell them," she said, "don't give up on their child if they're born small or have a disease or anything. There's a God in this world, and if it's meant to be, it will be."
Taylor is now 83 days old, and weighs 3 pounds. She has been transferred into a transitional unit for a couple weeks in preparation for leaving the hospital.
Her parents, of course, are overjoyed. "I was scared that she wasn't going to make it, but she made it, so it's great," said Ms. Rideout.
They are looking forward to bringing her home, but are grateful for the care she has received. "We're just really looking forward to the time we can bring her home. But we're just so thankful that she's here, though, and just getting the care and attention. So even if we can't have her home, we feel safe that she's here," said Mr. Bouchat.
"Despite all she's been through, she seems to be a very happy person," he said.
Contact: Patrick B. Craine Source: LifeSiteNews.com Publish Date: June 3, 2009 Link to this article.
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"Obsessional" Fear of Suffering Ushering in Euthanasia Culture: Prominent Bioethicist
"If the point of society is to make sure you don't suffer, that will often be making sure there aren't any sufferers."
A culture that seeks to escape suffering and inconvenience at all costs will end by eliminating not only pain, but by ending the lives of those suffering or whose condition burden their families, warned bioethicist Wesley J. Smith this weekend.
Smith spoke at the Second International Euthanasia Symposium held at the National Conference Center in Lansdowne, Virginia. The symposium was hosted by Canada's Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.
Reflecting on the euthanasia agenda amid the modern advances of palliative care, Smith asked, "Why now?"
"We live in a time of - even despite the problems we're having - such tremendous prosperity," said Smith. "If you had a burst appendix 100 years ago, you died in agony. Today, people don't have to, at least in the developed world, die in agony."
Smith said he was further baffled after receiving piles of hate mail in 1993 for writing an article warning against euthanasia. "What happened to my culture, and where was I when it happened?" he mused.
Smith said he found the answer in the reflections of philosopher and bioethicist Yuval Levin, who stated: "Health has become the primary good for society ... not only as a beginning, but also as an end, relief and preservation from disease and pain, from misery and necessity, become the defining ends of human action and therefore human societies."
"The purpose of society had shifted from when I was growing up in my formative years," said Smith. "From the concept of justice, from the concept of eqality, mutual caring and mutual support, to - I would say - an obsessional fear and loathing and avoidance of not only suffering, but difficulty. ...
"It is distorting our culture ... into something that is not as compassionate as we should be, that is not as caring as we should be," said Smith. "If the point of society is to make sure you don't suffer, that will often be making sure there aren't any sufferers. Which isn't only about making sure the sufferer doesn't suffer, but putting the sufferer out of our misery."
"If we're going to defeat euthanasia and assisted suicide, we're going to have to recognize that for a lot of people, the principle of right and wrong don't matter anymore," said Smith. "What matters is making sure there isn't suffering. And that can lead to some very bad and dark places."
Smith told the story of a mentally ill, depressed woman who paramedics allowed to die after drinking antifreeze, because she had left a note asking not to be treated. Smith related the sentiments of her attending physician, who said: "It's a horrible thing to have to do, but I thought I had no alternative but to go with her wishes."
"Think about the kind of mental anguish somebody is going through to drink antifreeze, and to do it more than once," said Smith. Allowing her to die, he said, was "abandonment of the most profound kind."
"There are many things today that are better than in my formative years, racism being one of them," he continued, "but there are a lot of things that are not, and this is one of them: abandoning suffering people, mentally ill, mentally anguished people, to suicide."
In an interview with LifeSiteNews.com, Smith noted that an avoidance of suffering logically leads to "greater and greater extremes to try to prevent the suffering to the place where you end up preventing the sufferer." The current culture, he said, tries to prevent "not only the suffering of the patient, but the suffering of the family and the suffering of society who has to put up with these people, and see them or pay for them, and be reminded of our own mortality."
Smith called the current trend toward euthanasia "a rather desperate and sad attempt to avoid part of the human condition, which is difficulty and suffering." "If you took it to the full extreme, we'd all end up totally infantile, because the way people grow and gain wisdom is to go through difficulties," he said. "It's not the only way, but it's the essential way."
Although aware that such anti-humanistic policies as deep ecology and euthanasia are becoming mainstream, Smith said he was optimistic about the possibility of turning back the tide.
"This is not a shift that is a fait accompli, we are in the midst of what I call a 'coup d'culture,' but the coup has not succeeded, the contest is being waged," he said.
Smith urged those opposed to euthanasia and assisted suicide to be proactive in asserting the sanctity and equality of human life.
"Unless people engage that with a clear eye that they're in a 'coup d'culture,' that they need to man the battlements and ramparts to keep the barbarians from getting through the gates, they'll get through the gates," said Smith. "And believe me, if these people get through the gates, they're not going to be gentle about 'tolerance' and 'freedom,' because that's not their gig. That's their gig when they're on the outside; when they're on the inside, their gig is power."
Contact: Kathleen Gilbert Source: LifeSiteNews.com Publish Date: June 3, 2009 Link to this article.
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Ethicists warn against money for human egg donations
The state of New York is considering several proposals which would pay women who donate their eggs for research purposes, leading some Catholic ethicists to worry the move would induce poorer women to risk their health and become involved in unethical human embryo research.
New York state funds may be awarded to researchers who pay women to harvest their egg cells for research purposes if a recommendation of the ethics committee of the Empire State Stem Cell board is accepted. Writing in National Review Online, Fr. Thomas Berg reported that the May 12 vote to recommend the practice passed “overwhelmingly.” He said the state is also considering using state funds to “reimburse” women directly for their egg donations, possibly paying several thousand dollars per donor.
If such proposals are approved, New York would become the first U.S. state to allow such payments.
Donated eggs could be used to create human embryos for research purposes, like embryonic stem cell research, or for attempts at human cloning, warned Fr. Berg, who is also a CNA columnist.
Fr. Berg also expressed concern that egg donation entails “very serious health risks” for women. Risks include moderate to serious ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome (OHSS) which results in maladies ranging from bloating and nausea to infertility, organ failure and death.
The long-term risks of egg donation have rarely been studied, he said. One of the few studies conducted found that about one-third of 155 donors suffered OHSS-related health complications and five percent suffered infertility.
However, the general lack of knowledge about the effects of egg donation calls into question whether an egg donor truly has “informed consent,” Fr. Berg wrote.
Noting that egg donors for assisted-reproductive technology receive as much as $10,000 per donation, Fr. Berg said low-income women may be unduly swayed by the prospect of financial gain at the expense of their health. He noted one fertility clinic head’s comments that paid egg donations go up during times of high unemployment.
“We’re even getting men offering up their wives; it’s pretty scary,” Robin von Halle, president of Alternative Reproductive Resources, a Chicago-based fertility clinic, told the Wall Street Journal.
Seeking further comment, CNA spoke with Dr. Stephen Napier, an ethicist with the National Catholic Bioethics Center.
When payments are offered for egg donation, he said, “only poor women are really going to respond. It’s a way of taking advantage of women’s poverty.”
This raises concerns about justice, he said.
He repeated concerns about the medical effects of hyperovulation hormones, saying the hormones themselves pose medical dangers to women.
Noting the eggs are paired with sperm to create human embryos, he said research would be conducted on “basically young human beings.”
“That’s really the main worry. These women would be contributing necessary material to conceive young human beings who would serve as subjects for destructive research. No one should be involved in that activity.”
“They’d be contributing to the creation of young human life [that is] only to be destroyed for research purposes.”
Source: Catholic News Agency
Publish Date: June 3, 2009
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Eric Holder Directs U.S. Marshals to Protect Abortion Providers After 'Murder'
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder dispatched the U.S. Marshals Service to protect "appropriate people and facilities around the nation" in the wake of the murder of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas on Sunday morning. U.S. Marshals spokesman Jeff Carter, who confirmed the new security measures, told FOX News, "I can not disclose the subjects of our security efforts as it is the policy of the U.S. Marshals not to comment on the status of any protective detail."
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Grove Doctor Subject of Abortion Documentary
A film crew from Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania was in Grove nearly three years ago to film a documentary about a country doctor who many believe is one of the pioneers in abortion rights. The film on Dr. William Jennings Bryan Henrie lacks one piece, however. "We really want to talk to women who had abortions by Dr. Henrie," said Jennifer Hansen, a professor at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. The documentary provides a glimpse into women's reproductive rights before 1973, the year a U.S. Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade made certain abortions legal.
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Tiller Shooting Prompts PETA Ad Campaign
A national animal rights group plans to erect billboards in Wichita urging people on both sides of the abortion debate to go vegetarian. One version of the billboard says, “Pro-Life? Go Vegetarian.” The other says, “Pro-Choice? Choose Vegetarian.” Both feature a photo of three baby chicks. Lindsay Rajt, campaign manager for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said the billboards were prompted by the recent shooting death of abortion doctor George Tiller, who was killed Sunday at his church. “The discussion of the value of life is front and center right now in the public conversation,” Rajt said.
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Abortion 'absolutists' blocking bill to support pregnant women, pro-life Dem says
The U.S. House of Representatives
Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, has criticized the lack of support among the more "absolutist" Democratic supporters of abortion rights for a bill that aims to reduce the number of abortions by helping pregnant women. Day claimed the bill's opponents think the bill "goes too far toward common ground."
Day authored a May 22 essay in Newsday, titled "Is there a middle on abortion?", explaining the provisions of the Pregnant Women Support Act (PWSA) and the proposed legislation's political reception.
A "minority of Democrats on the pro-choice side" object to a provision requiring that abortion providers offer women the voluntary option of receiving pre-abortion counseling to learn of the risks associated with abortion, Day said.
"The opposition may even extend to objecting to the bill's providing pregnant women much-needed financial support," Day wrote in her Newsday.com essay.
Describing the PWSA, Day said the bill would lead to fewer abortions and provide more support for women to carry their pregnancies to term.
The proposal would prohibit health insurance issuers from discriminating against a woman by classifying a pregnancy as a pre-existing condition. It would allocate more funds to campaigns against domestic violence targeting pregnant women, some of whom are "forced to undergo abortions" because of threats by the violent father of their child, she explained.
The bill would provide grants to colleges and universities for pregnant and parenting student services to help women and mothers finish school. Additionally, PWSA would increase support for food stamps for new parents and amend the tax code to increase the adoption tax credit.
Day reported that opponents' biggest objection to PWSA was that "pregnancy-prevention measures" such as family planning services for the poor and "medically accurate" sex education programs about contraception are not funded by the bill.
She said that sponsors left such proposals out of the PWSA because they are addressed in bills such as the Prevention First Act.
Despite opposition from "absolutists" on the side of abortion rights, Day said that many are attracted to the legislation and want to expand it. However, she explained that efforts to merge teen pregnancy prevention, sex education and more funding for contraception programs failed in the 110th Congress and "detracted from the central premise" the PWSA, which Day characterized as "a comprehensive effort to address the needs of pregnant women."
In a Monday phone interview, CNA asked Day to expand on her comments about pro-choice "absolutists" who think the PWSA goes too far towards common ground.
"A lot of people don't want the abortion debate to be settled because it keeps people in business," she said. "To actually solve this great problem, people don't want to move in that direction. Or they want an 'all-or-nothing' approach. Some people just want to ban abortions, but don't work towards reducing it."
"It's the same on the other side. Any compromise goes too far."
Day told CNA that to her knowledge President Obama has not personally been asked to support the PWSA.
"We're talking to the administration on a regular basis and whenever we do we bring it up," she explained. "We're very hopeful that we can get the support of the White House. The indications are moving that way."
She cited President Obama's comments at Notre Dame about more support for pregnant women as one such indication.
Asked about Congressional leaders' views of PWSA, Day explained that DFLA had been talking to Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid's office. She told CNA there were "good indications" from them.
"They're looking into the bill," she reported, noting that in the last Congress, House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) was a co-sponsor of the bill.
PWSA supporters were concentrating on building "bipartisan support" in the House especially, Day said.
"If you simply have a Democratic bill with only pro-choice Democrats on board, that's not common ground," Day said. "What we've built here is really a common ground proposal."
"If we are serious about reducing abortion and helping actually end it we have to step in and look at the value of life," she continued, saying the bill took into account measures which have successfully reduced the number of abortions.
Day told CNA that one part of the bill would help direct women to a 1-800 number to secure assistance. A similar program in Michigan helped reduce the abortion rate by 11 percent, she reported.
"The lower numbers we have, the better. Even if we cut the abortion rate in half, that is a lot of lives we're saving.
"If we are serious about most vulnerable, we need to use money to do it." she said, then posing the question: "What is the value of life?"
Source: Catholic News Agency
Publish Date: June 2, 2009
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