Pro-life

Dawn Eden sent me the following story.

For the first time, a Republican in the state Assembly is co-sponsoring a Democratic initiative that would require hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims, considerably improving the bill’s chances of passage.

Significantly, the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, the public arm of Wisconsin’s bishops, is also no longer opposed to the bill.

Rep. Terry Musser, R-Black River Falls, said this morning he would begin circulating the Compassionate Care for Rape Victims bill to his Assembly colleagues today. Musser, who did not support the bill when it was introduced last session, said he changed his mind after hearing testimony from rape victims at a public hearing on the bill last week before a Senate committee.

…The only group lobbying against the bill is Pro-Life Wisconsin. Matt Sande, the group’s director of legislation, was not available for comment this morning, but said in a news release he opposed the bill because emergency contraception can work to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus and he considers this "pre-implantation chemical abortion."

Wisconsin Right to Life, which tends to focus more on abortion issues, is not taking a stand on the bill. Sue Armacost of Wisconsin Right to Life said it was important to the group that the Catholic bishops were not opposing the bill.

Groups supporting it include the Wisconsin Public Health Association, American College of Nurse-Midwives, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

Kim Wades of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference said many Catholic hospitals are already dispensing emergency contraception to rape victims. She said the group removed its objections to the bill after it was revised to allow hospitals to give women a pregnancy test before providing emergency contraception.

The Catholic Conference’s support might make a big difference to legislators who have opposed the bill in the past, Musser said.

It is not quite true that the Wisconsin Catholic Conference is supporting the bill, only that it has withdrawn objections to it. As a press release from their conference states.

"From our perspective, we believe this bill is not necessary as Catholic health care already provides victims of sexual assault with appropriate and compassionate medical care."

…"As regards SB 129, it must be understood that our lack of opposition is contingent upon two points, said Wadas. "First the language exempting hospitals from providing emergency contraception to a victim known to be pregnant shall be interpreted as allowing Catholic hospitals the flexibility to follow testing protocols that establish with moral certitude that a pregnancy has not occurred. Science is providing medicine with new tools everyday and our Catholic hospitals must retain the freedom to use the latest technology to ensure that treatment does not result in the taking of a human life."

The Church has not spoken definitively on the use of contraception in the case of rape and the language in Humanae Vitae is specific to "conjugal or between married persons" as Jimmy Akin points out. So far in the United States the interpretation has been that it is licit in these circumstances if they women has not become pregnant.

As you would probably guess there are plenty of questions in regards to obtaining the moral certitude that the women is not already pregnant. A good article on the subject can be found at Catholic Insight.

Many Catholic hospitals interpret “appropriate testing” as a hcG pregnancy test, which is accurate only if a woman is at least one week pregnant by the time of the test. …

…The problem is that the test may be falsely negative if the pregnancy is too recent. A further problem is that the woman may have ovulated at the time of the rape or shortly afterwards and there is, at present, no test that can detect this with certainty.

The Catholic Insight article goes over the controversy and surveys the opinions of various moral theologians on this topic, the degree of certitude required, and the varieties of medical tests that might be required to get to that point.

This is an area where doctrine is developing such as the case of to whether embryos can be adopted and implanted. There is also the question to just how diligent Catholic hospitals will be in ascertaining if a women is pregnant first.

Legislation like this is really stupid in the first place though. There is zero need for any legislatures to be mandating what medicines are to be used by hospitals in the first place. It is all about agendas and getting the Catholic Church through her hospitals to knuckle down to their pressure.

Developing doctrine is messy and if anybody has further insights into this I would be glad to hear it, especially if I have mischaracterized anything.

Update: Lifesite also is covering the story.

Ric Dugan stands outside the Student Union while holding a cross to protest abortion Wednesday afternoon. Dugan and others later made multiple passes in a van emblazoned with the phrase "STOP ABORTION NOW!" and depicting an aborted fetus.

Students received a shock yesterday as a moving truck bearing a giant photo of an aborted fetus made several circles in front of Free Speech Alley.

Colin Sallinger, music education sophomore, organized the demonstration consisting of several Catholic students touting signs and chanting, "Abortion is murder," and "Pray for Virginia Tech."

The driver of the truck, anti-abortion activist Rich Mahoney, said he was told about the demonstration by a representative from Students for Life, an anti-abortion student organization.

Sallinger said he organized demonstrations to "bring the rosary to people" and to inspire more students to take action for their beliefs. He said that although students currently hold prayer meetings in the Quad at night and hand out pamphlets, "it’s much more intense when you’re out here in the daylight."

"Faith without works is dead," he said. "Even if we don’t affect one person, we’re still out here for God."

Sallinger said the signs were intended to help onlookers make a connection between a modern tragedy and an ongoing struggle. The shootings at Va. Tech and abortion, Sallinger said, are related because "they are both murder."

Many students said they were appalled by the graphic image of the fetus.

Joseph Bridge, international studies senior, said the image was "shocking and disturbing."

"For most people whose minds are already made up, it was just tasteless," he said.

My minds made up – don’t challenge me with reality! I do wonder how many of those who were shocked and disturbed also went out to watch torture porn like Hostel? Of course there can be true debate about the prudence of using these images, but I pretty much don’t believe in this culture that these images are truly so shocking to them – other than having to fight back their conscience from popping back up

Update: Paul at Alive and Young has more.

Rae Stabosz has written a post on one aspect of ESCR and the cloning required that gets very little mention.

Senate Bill 5 allows for somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Most Delawareans by now are aware that SCNT creates a cloned human embryo that will be killed and stripped of its cells at the 5 th to 7th day of development (the blastocyst stage). Pro-cloning folks are content to sacrifice nascent human life in exchange for the possibility of cures for disease. But do even they understand the second reality of somatic cell nuclear transfer? Every instance of somatic cell nuclear transfer requires a human egg to be extracted from a young, fertile woman. To produce the thousands of cloned embryos needed for research, scientists will need thousands of young women to undergo the same complex, painful and risky procedure of egg extraction that IVF patients undergo.

She also goes on to explain how it is minority women that will most likely be exploited to get the multitude of eggs required. Though of course the media and liberals in general will care more about a stupid comment from a liberal talk show host then the risks of women undergoing ovarian hyperstimulation for the sake of a few bucks.

Taking advantage of women in ESCR is nothing new. Dr. Woo-Suk Hwang’s infamously fraudulent research involved pressured women working with him to donate eggs.

In a previous Crisis Magazine article they had a good article on the subject called How to Talk to Democrats About Embryonic Stem Cell Research.

In a 2005 editorial in the Boston Globe (“Risks to Women in Embryo Cloning”), Norsigian mentions the ESC controversy, noting, “Omitted from the polarized debate is any discussion of the thousands of women who will need to undergo egg extraction procedures for such embryo cloning. A primary concern is the substantial risks to women’s health posed by the extraction procedure and the inability to obtain true informed consent from egg donors given the current lack of adequate safety data.”

Getting more specific, she points out that 3 percent to 8 percent of women who take drugs to stimulate egg production—as women do when donating eggs—
develop Ovarian Hyper-Stimulation Syndrome, a condition that can be not only painful but occasionally fatal within “days after completion of egg collection.” A study published in the journal Animal Biology suggests the troubling possibility that ovarian hyper-stimulation treatments may lead to stillbirths and birth defects in future pregnancies. Additionally, the drug Lupron, which is “used to ‘shut down’ the ovaries before stimulation,” produces side effects including bone loss, liver problems, and acute pain. Finally, she discusses the philosophical issue of treating women’s eggs as commodities, a stance that objectifies women as mere producers of biological goods. “This is very much a women’s issue,” Norsigian says elsewhere; “there is a very strong pro-choice liberal contingent that believes there is something wrong with embryo cloning.”

Among that “contingent” was California’s Pro-Choice Alliance Against Proposition 71 (referring to the ESCR funding bill that eventually became law). The alliance points out that thousands of women will need to donate eggs to keep up with demand from researchers, a fact that “raises troubling questions about the exploitation of women, especially those who are young and poor.”

The feminist organization Hands Off Our Ovaries (www.handsoffourovaries.com) has as its slogan, “Because losing even one woman’s life is too high a price to pay.” They note that there have been “25 deaths and over 6,000 complaints of medical complications attributed to Ovarian Hyper-Stimulation Syndrome” and urge the FDA to investigate the possibilities of ovarian cancer, infertility, and birth defects that may also result from this procedure. Medical sociologist Diane Besson said in congressional testimony that in pursuing ever-increasing demands for human eggs, “We are being asked to make women the servants of biotechnology.” This idea should appall any Democrat concerned with women’s health issues, especially when he or she realizes that Dr. Hwang’s unsuccessful experiments into human cloning used 2,221 female egg cells (“Beyond Embryo Politics,” The Women’s Health Activist ).

Ruth "Darth Bader" Ginsburg complains in her dissent on upholding the PBA ban.

The Court’s hostility to the right Roe and Casey secured is not concealed. Throughout, the opinion refers to obstetrician-gynecologists and surgeons who perform abortions not by the titles of their medical specialties, but by the pejorative label ‘abortion doctor.’ Ante, at 14, 24, 25, 31, 33.

Some such as Stuart Buck wondered "Just when?" NRO has had a discussion of this and Robert George responded to Jonah Goldberg.

Dear Jonah:

The irony is that the label "abortion doctor" was actually introduced by supporters of legal abortion and its public funding as a way of softening the image of physicians who engage in the rather grisly practice of deliberate feticide. They were traditionally known as abortionists, and that remains the accurate label. The truth is that persons performing what we ordinarily think of when we use the term "abortions" are not acting as doctors (i.e., healers) at all. Whether or not they hold a medical degree and license to practice medicine, the object of their action is not healing but killing. The (attempted) abortion is a success or a failure depending precisely on whether they transform a living human fetus into a corpse. Anything short of fetal death—-including live birth—-is a failed abortion.

Pregnancy as such is not a disease; and abortion as such is not a therapeutic treatment. Of course, sometimes pregnancy induces dangerous maternal health problems, and physicians (including physicians who are pro-life) sometimes take actions unavoidably causing fetal death in order to save women’s lives or prevent serious irreparable damage to their health. A classic case is the removal of a cancerous, but gravid, uterus. These were traditionally described as "indirect abortions," to distinguish them from abortions in the straightforward sense, i.e., interventions whose precise objective is killing the fetus. (The issue can be, though it need not be, discussed in terms of the "doctrine of double effect.")

U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, a leading opponent of abortion who also happens to be an obstetrician, notes the relevant distinction and refers to cases in which he himself has performed procedures that unavoidably caused fetal death in order to save maternal life. Obviously, he doesn’t regard himself as an abortionist or even an "abortion doctor." In the tragic cases to which he refers, he would have been pleased—not disappointed—if somehow the baby miraculously proved able to survive after being removed from its mother’s body. When we use the term "abortionist" (or "abortion doctor"), we refer to someone who accomplishes what he sets out to accomplish precisely in causing the fetus’s death. His job is turning a living human being in utero into a dead one, then extracting the body or its severed parts to prevent infection. If the baby somehow miraculously survived, he would not be pleased — he would not even be paid. And he would probably be sued.

Sincerely,
Robby

Abortion doctor isn’t a pejorative, its an oxymoron.

Creative Minority Report blogs on an editorial in yesterday’s student run Georgetown Voice responded to a single study which claimed that abstinence-only education hasn’t had the desired effect.

The poor dears complain that condoms are still not available on campus and use this as proof that the school administration is not actually pro-life. Got it. Condoms mean pro-life.

They write:

“An institution that is pro-life both before and after birth should care about health and preventing unintentional pregnancies. While it’s an oft-sung song on campus, the fact is Georgetown should be encouraging safe sex, not no sex.”

They then uncomprehendingly revile the Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold the ban on partial birth abortion.

“While abortion should not be celebrated, riding the slippery slope to illegalize it robs women of the freedom to make choices about their own bodies. A real anti-abortion policy would eliminate the need for them in the first place, with real sex education and contraception.”

Yes the slippery slope to stop murdering children in the womb. The article ends saying:

Georgetown is a Jesuit University; it should seek truth. The White House should have learned by now not to blind itself with ideology. Both should make a truly pro-life decision by ending abstinence-only policies.

Funny how liberals are really forgiving about the results of all the programs they advocate when time and time again by every metric they are a failure, yet abstinence education as it is currently taught must be immediately dropped. No adjustments need to be made or consideration that teaching something that goes against the tide of modern morality and has very little support in the culture might be an uphill struggle. Let us stop teaching about the preferential love for the poor since so many ignore them. Dump that love thy neighbor idea since it is just not practical and so difficult to do.

Yes instead of trying to put out the fire we should throw more gasoline on it. Funny also the article fails to mention that where just the type of sex education is fully endorsed you don’t see the Utopian results they prophesy. Abortion clinics are not closing in areas where condoms are handed out in abundance. The funniest thing about the article was how it was wrapped in a Jesuit tradition of seeking truth. They idea that seeking truth means safe sex outside of marriage is confused at best.

WASHINGTON April 18 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday upheld the federal ban on "partial-birth abortions" in a major victory for the Bush administration and abortion foes.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion for the majority as the court split 5-4 voting to uphold the 2003 law as written. Kennedy — joining Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — said lawsuits challenging the law banning "partial-birth" abortion should not have been allowed.

The proper way to make a challenge, if an abortion ban is claimed to harm a woman’s right to abortion, is through an as-applied claim," Kennedy wrote.

The decision said the federal ban would be unconstitutional "if it subjected women to significant health risks" but that "safe medical options are available."

Writing for the minority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the decision failed "to take seriously" the 1992 Supreme Court decision reaffirming Roe vs. Wade and a 2000 decision that struck down a state "partial-birth" abortion law.

This is a small step, or in fact a baby step, but good news indeed.

Dawn Eden has a YouTube video from Planned Parenthood using guardian angels to encourage wearing condoms and saying "Safe is Sexy." The Guardian Angel of safe sex along who lustily watches with another angel sit on a bed headboard while a couple starts to have sex. Besides the Christian bashing and the soft pornography of the commercial it is really not surprising. They have choice on Earth cards at Christmas, have enlisted clergy to spread the message since the days of Margaret Sanger’s, so using guardian angels to hock condoms is a natural progression

Interesting that they went with two angels and not the classic devil and angel combination used since classic cartoons. Though two devils would have been more fitting. I guess they wanted no downside.

Here is part of Planned Parenthood Golden Gate’s press release that Dawn posts.

"I love the fact that this ad challenges popular conceptions of religion and sexuality," said Lisa Sargent, Chaplain at Planned Parenthood Golden Gate. "I think it will really break through the clutter and get people thinking about sexual responsibility as part of their larger value system, which may be religiously influenced."

So a lusty snack-eating condom promoting angel "challenges popular conceptions of religion and sexuality?" Do they really believe such nonsense that idiotic propaganda challenges anything? That sex outside of marriage becomes wonderfully transformed by latex? That the larger value system means avoiding both children and STDs.

Dawn also goes on to make other great points.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented on this ad, and a bill that Planned Parenthood is opposing, today:

“Given the moral hollowness of Planned Parenthood, it is not surprising to learn that it is now in the business of hijacking religious imagery to pander its sex-without-consequences message. But as with PETA before it, the anti-natal salesmen will find that the faithful will tune them out.

“Ironically, while PPGG is ripping off Guardian Angels, the California chapter of Planned Parenthood is lobbying to defeat the ‘Missing Angels Act.’ This bill, which is being pushed by women who have experienced stillbirth, would require a certificate of birth when this occurs. Currently, all states are required to issue a death certificate for a stillbirth; they also require the family to bury or cremate the baby. But as Joanne Cacciatore, who heads the Missing Angels Foundation, has said, ‘How in the world do states ethically justify telling someone they have to bury someone who they are not willing to say existed?’ What really galls Planned Parenthood is the fear that the bill would help the pro-life movement by acknowledging the humanity of the unborn child; the bill says the fetus must have advanced beyond the 20th week of gestation.

“It looks like the only kinds of angels Planned Parenthood wants to affirm are those that service its deadly agenda. Planned Parenthood is to religion what matricide is to Mother’s Day.”

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Mexico said Wednesday that legislators who vote in favor of a proposed bill to legalize abortion in Mexico City would automatically be excommunicated when the first procedure was performed under the law.

Bishop Marcelino Hernandez said that, rather than any specific canonical procedure, that lawmakers who back the bill would automatically separate themselves from the church.

"The person excommunicates himself, it’s not that the Church goes around with a rod, looking for people who make mistakes, in order to hit them on the head," Hernandez told reporters when speaking of an expected vote in April by Mexico City lawmakers on a proposal to legalize abortion during the first three months of pregnancy.

Hernandez repeated the Roman Catholic Church’s traditional opposition to abortion, on the same day that representatives of Orthodox and some evangelical Protestant churches issued a joint press statement opposing legalized abortion in Mexico.

While some Catholics have proposed holding a referendum on the proposed Mexico City law, Hernandez said the church’s position is that "life is not subject to a vote."

I wish this was actually the case, but Canon 1398 in no way can be interpreted to support this and has been interpreted to only include those directly involved in the abortion and not generically to those who support or directly vote for abortion.

A person who actually procures an abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication.

"The Challenge of the homeless in St. Petersburg has made national news and it has been embarrassing to many people. I am convinced that both on Judgment Day and in history, we will more likely be judged not by the things which might have considered personally important to ourselves in life but how we took take of others less fortunate.

This statement by Bishop Lynch of the Diocese of St. Petersburg in the Tampa Tribune can be seen as quite ironic to many. Robert Schindler Jr., the brother of Terri Schiavo, certainly sees it that way and writes a letter to Bishop Lynch [PDF]. I guess the homeless are not just a "family dispute" for the Bishop.

Terri’s legacy is one of life and love. Sadly, your legacy will be that of the shepherd that stood silently by as one of his innocent disabled lamb was slowly and needlessly slaughtered by removing her food and water — while you persistently ignored the cries of her family for help ("her family" being the ones who merely wanted to care for her.)

… I beg the Lord to spare us another successor of the apostles who would exhibit the same scandalous inaction and silence by which you remain complicit in my sister’s murder via euthanasia.

I realize that for the sake of my salvation I must come to a point to at least want to forgive you, Bishop Lynch, for aiding and and giving comfort to the evildoers who took my sister’s innocent and vulnerable life (and yes, she was objectively more innocent and more vulnerable that any homeless person.) The Catholic Church however, has spoken on Terri’s case, and she has decreed in favor of Terri’s right to life and everything our family did to save her.

Your behavior by contrast, have brought scandal to the Universal Church and to the faithful, particularly here in Florida. Your indifference towards the Truth is appalling, but seems to indicative of the all-too-prevalent corruption of priestly formation in the 1960’s and 70’s, so perhaps your culpability is somewhat mitigated. Even so, the fact of my sister’s murder under your "pastoral care" is a fact you should acknowledge publicly.

Because the lie worked so well in Missouri, Sen Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Utah’s Orin Hatch (R-UT) have introduced "Human Cloning Ban and Stem Cell Research Protection Act of 2007" (S. 812)."

You will not be surprised to learn that the title and text are quite deceptive. As Wesley J. Smith posts:

Here is how "human cloning" is defined in S. 812:

The term `human cloning’ means implanting or attempting to implant the product of nuclear transplantation into a uterus or the functional equivalent of a uterus.

So once again Somatic cell nuclear transfer is determined not in itself to be cloning but SCNT along with implantation is. Hey I didn’t kill that guy, I terminated him with extreme prejudice. In Missouri as this lie was exposed by an under funded opposition it did over time decrease the percentage of people who supported the bill so that the end result was quite close.

Orin Hatch on his site say:

Allow the most promising form of stem cell research (somatic cell nuclear transplantation) to be conducted on a human egg for up to 14 days only

SCNT itself is not stem-cell research, but is pretty much required for embryonic stem-cell research. Again we hear the lie of "most promising" when ESCR so far has kept its promise as much as any politician.

Allow this stem cell research only to take place on unfertilized eggs.

This is such a forthright lie it is hard to believe it is even being made at all. The whole purpose of SCNT is to produce an embryo and they hope to take stem-cells from that produced embryo. As if they are going to do embryonic stem-cell research without embryos. Though in this case what they done is to redefine the word fertilization.

(B) FERTILIZATION- The term `fertilization’ means the fusion of an oocyte containing a haploid nucleus with a male gamete (sperm cell).

Fertilization is fusion of gametes to form a new organism of the same species, unless of course if the term in inconveniently and want to limit it to referencing using sperm only.

Once again the dominant feature of the Culture of Death is lying and it is no surprise that they advance the agenda of the father of lies. Also no surprise here. Satan told Eve you will not die and the Culture of death is trying to promise the same thing through the "promise" of ESCR. Unfortunately the Senate and House will be effective as Adam was in protecting Eve.