Pro-life

The Chilean government recently decided that contraception will be publicly available for all women over the age of 14. According to IPS, all public health centers must dispense birth control, including emergency contraception (EC), free of charge. The decree also ensures that younger women can without authorization from their parents obtain a prescription for birth control pills.

The Catholic Church and conservative politicians are already criticizing the decision that aims to give women of all ages and incomes control over their sexual and reproductive lives. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, a pediatrician, responded, saying to the Santiago Times, "The obligation of the state is to provide alternatives, and the obligation of families, of each one of us, is to communicate with our children, explain things to them, and to teach them." Government Spokesperson Ricardo Weber expanded on the real need for Chile to provide these services, telling IPS that 14 of every 100 young people are sexually active by the age of 14.

Yes it is the parents job to educate the children and the governments job to go behind their back.

Here is one really dumb medical explanation I found on a blog referring to this story. "Just so we all know what we’re talking about here, the morning after pill is virtually a condom in terms of its function. It prevents pregnancy from occurring and has NOTHING to do with the cessation of cell division…:"

I didn’t kill the man I just caused the cessation of his cell division. Of course cell divisions occur immediately after conception and even Plan B’s instructions says it can works prior to implantation. So this was a plain dumb statement no deserving of LARGES CAPS.

The World Health Organization is also holding the same line that pregnancy doesn’t start till implantation.

Every year for at least the past decade, about 100 Oregonians aged 65 and older have killed themselves — enough to place the state well above the nation’s elder suicide rate and fourth among states, all in the West, with the highest rates.

In Oregon and across the nation, suicide rates are highest among older adults — especially older men — and escalate sharply after age 65. But Oregon, for reasons that are not altogether clear, follows only Nevada, Wyoming and Alaska in 2003 for having high concentrations of suicide among its most senior citizens. The suicide in question is not the doctor-assisted variety.

Oregon officials, anticipating the wave of baby boomers approaching their vulnerable years, on Monday responded with an effort to hold down the suicide rate. Their plan, two years in the making, outlines ways groups can work together to promote awareness of suicide’s danger to older citizens.

So if the state does it then it is okay, but I guess they want to crack down on the do-it-yourself-ers. And of course the Oregonian never mentions the state-assisted suicide law in the article as it tries to analyze the reasons for the increase.

The good news is that Bob Casey Jr. is just as pro-life as many Republicans, the bad news is that of course most Republicans aren’t fully pro-life. On the recent debates between Sen. Santorum and Bob Casey Jr. Rod Dreher relates:

Then the Plan B issue came up. Santorum said flat-out that the pill is sometimes abortifacient, which is certainly true if you believe that life begins at conception; the pill can work by preventing the fertilized egg (that is, a human being) from implanting on the uterine wall. Santorum said he was against Plan B for that reason. Casey, who insists he’s pro-life, said he was in favor of Plan B because "the science is clear" that it’s contraception. That’s a shameful dodge. The science is clear about how Plan B works; whether or not that counts as abortion is a moral question — and a question that the Catholic Church answers very clearly. Casey is trying to lay claim to his father’s pro-life mantle, and he’s not worthy of it. Not only is he for a potentially bortifacient pill to be distributed over the counter, but he dissembles about what he perfectly well knows the pill is.

It would be nice to actually have one truly pro-life Catholic Democrat in the Senate, but this won’t happen with Casey. Though pro-life Democrats in the Senate are rather useless in that their views won’t be supported by the majority. Voting Casey over Santorum on the pro-life issue just doesn’t make any sense since giving Democrats a majority will kill any chances of a supreme court nominee that isn’t politically correct on abortion. Unfortunately as the situation stands a pro-life Democrat and an equally pro-life Republican doesn’t carry equal weight. The Republicans at least give some lip service and throw pro-lifers a bone every once in a while.

It does make you wonder if a Catholic Democrat who is fully inline with Church teaching could ever get supported in the Democratic Party? The Sen. Biden’s are pretty much the template for the Catholic Democrat. Of course in the Senate’s only consistent Catholics at least on issues that non-negotiable are Senators Santorum and Brownback. I would like to be optimistic on Sen. Santorum’s chances considering the poor performance of Bob Casey Jr. when it actually comes to discussing issues. But Pennsylvania has picked moral muddles like Sen Spectre so that isn’t a disqualifying attribute.

Via Michelle Malkin

Child abuse victim Haleigh Poutre, once deemed to be "virtually brain dead" by medical experts, continues to improve and is even speaking a few words, her biological grandmother said this week.

Sandra Sudyka, of the Feeding Hills section of Agawam, angered over the state Department of Social Services apparent termination of her and her daughter’s bimonthly visits to Haleigh at her Boston hospital, said she has decided to speak publicly of her granddaughter’s condition.

"She was doing well," Sudyka said of the last time she saw Haleigh on July 18. "She was bright-eyed and smiling. She is always responsive to us."

DSS had asked Sudyka and Haleigh’s biological mother, Allison Avrett, not to disclose the 12-year-old girl’s condition to the media.

"I decided since they broke the deal, I am going to talk. People should know how well she is doing," Sudyka said. Avrett declined comment this week.

DSS spokeswoman Denise Monteiro declined comment yesterday. DSS officials have said, however, that Sudyka’s and Avrett’s visiting privileges have been suspended and not terminated.

DSS took custody of Haleigh nearly a year ago after her adoptive mother and stepfather, Holli A. and Jason D. Strickland, of Westfield, were charged with beating her.

Doctors initially reported that the battered and emaciated Haleigh was in a vegetative state due to a sheared brain stem. Social services sought to end life support systems, a plan approved by the state Supreme Judicial Court on Jan. 17, before improvements in Haleigh’s condition were known.

"They don’t want people to know how she is doing after they wanted to pull the plug," Sudyka said.

That is certainly good news. The fact that DSS had a deal to not disclose the girl’s improving condition just shows that cover up is more important for than truth. Just whatever happened to "where there is life there is hope?"

Sep. 01 (CNA/CWNews.com) – A federal attorney in Argentina admitted this week that the country’s health minister, Gines Gonzalez Garcia, released falsified statistics related to the number of clandestine abortions in the country, but he rejected calls to investigate the incident, saying lying is not a crime.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, cofounder of NARAL and now both pro-life and Catholic has talked previously about how they made up statistics. "… we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case — not the mass statistics. But when we spoke of the latter, it was always 5,000 to 10,000 a year."

Fred Barnes has a piece on how do people become pro-lifers and lists the stories of Henry Hyde, Ramesh Ponnuru, Wesley Smith, and himself. [Via Kevin Miller]

I once wrote an essay in High School defending abortion. This was just a couple of years after Roe v. Wade. My pro-choice views though died when I became a father. The idea that a baby was not yet a human being became repugnant to me during my wife’s pregnancy. Though until reading the Gospel of Life that I came upon in a library I had been only partly pro-life in that I held to the rape and incest exceptions. The great thing about being Catholic is that you become fully pro-life when you understand the totality of Church teaching. From contraception, to abortion, euthanasia, IVF, ESCR, ect the Church has a consistent life ethic that fully understands the human person without the hypocrisy inherit in other understanding of people who consider themselves pro-life and especially those that are not.

A reader sent me a link to a story on NFP only OB-GYNs from the Washington Post. Overall plosive article but with the normal balance to try to outweigh the positive message.

Some women, however, report being dismayed after stumbling into one of these practices without realizing what they were.

"It never crossed my mind that it would be an issue," said Katie Green, 26, who was refused a birth-control prescription by Jones-Nosacek. "I was really irritated. It just rubbed me the wrong way."

"It caught me completely off guard," said Elizabeth Dotts, 25, who had a similar experience in Birmingham. "I felt like he was judging me and putting pressure on me. . . . I am the patient. I am the client. It should have been about me — what I needed. Not what he needed or believed."

On Catholic Answers last week they had Dr. William Toffler [mp3] who recently came in the news in Oregon for challenging a new ethics policy where he worked. The show was quite interesting since he made many cogent examples in reply to secular doctors. At OHSU where he works they wanted to place a sign outside his office listing the procedures he would do and not do. He replied that it was a fine idea and thought that there be a similar sign outside the office of all the doctors there listing the same thing. Well they didn’t like that idea so no one has such a sign.

I also liked his example about Doctors and Pharmacists being required to refer patients to other doctors/pharmacists. His example was a blacksmith when slavery was legal and a slave owner coming to them with a slave and wanting manacles made. If you were against slavery not only wouldn’t you make the manacles but you certainly wouldn’t refer the slave master to another blacksmith who does. This idea of forcing people to do referrals for something they could not in conscience do themselves is nonsensical.

So what if minor girls can’t buy emergency contraceptives without a prescription?

Their rapists can.

When last week the FDA authorized over-the-counter access of ECs to women 18 and older, it also authorized over-the-counter access to men 18 and older.

Why would men buy ECs?

Ask them in Thailand, where ECs have been marketed for 20 years. In Thailand, ECs are advertised in men’s magazines….

I don’t know whether acting FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach was caving to or cavorting with radical feminists when making his decision, but it was irresponsible and dangerous.

Have you ever heard of the FDA making the high dose of any drug available on the store shelf while locking the lower dose in the pharmacy?

Here’s the magnitude of difference between prescription-only birth control pills and now nonprescription ECs: Planned Parenthood recommends taking 40 Ovrette brand birth control pills at one time to equal the dosage of the EC….

You can watch a 35 minute video of segments of the groundbreaking ceremony on the 60 acres of land on which the new headquarters for Priests for Life and the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life will be built.

Check out Bishop Yanta’s snazzy construction mitre. Though Cardinal Ranato Martino had a nice bright red one. Towards the beginning of the video it shows Fr. Pavone in the new habit of his order. All white like the Dominicans but with a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the front. Quite a beautiful habit.

Also shown speaking in the video are Norma McCorvey of Roe v. Wade, Alveda King, and Bob Schindler, and a few others.

Update: A reader lets me know I probably mistook a chasuble for a habit.

A reader informed me about the following curious omission.

On the FDA site it says:

3. What is Plan B?

Plan B is emergency contraception, a backup method to birth control. It is in the form of two levonorgestrel pills (0.75 mg in each pill) that are taken by mouth after a contraceptive fails or after unprotected sex. Levonorgestrel is a synthetic hormone used in birth control pills for over 35 years. Plan B can reduce the chances of a woman becoming pregnant when taken

Notice anything missing? The FDA also has a PDF of the product label and lists some other information.

There have been claims that this product only works as a contraceptive, yet the label says that it can prevent a fertilized egg (a.k.a. embryo) from implantation.

The insert that has the detailed information included with Levonorgestrel says:

The first line in an outright lie. If the egg is fertilized than the women is pregnant. The Columbia Encyclopedia says "period of time between fertilization of the ovum (conception) and birth, during which mammals carry their developing young in the uterus (see embryo)." This is just more of the intentional blurring of when conception occurs. Conception is not implantation. The same insert talks about the increased risks of Ectopic Pregnancies from Plan B. If implantation is the process of attachment of the embryo to the endometrial lining of the uterine wall and implantation equals pregnancy then they shouldn’t use the word Ectopic Pregnancy seeing implantation has not occurred because the embryo has settled in a location other than the uterus. They forgot to redefine pregnancy in these cases. I would be interested in what my readers think about this?

So which side is anti-science?