in this issue:
hot button issues: ALL CALLS FOR MAHONY RESIGNATION
adolescents: ABSTINENCE
are human embryos human beings? MARIO CUOMO
hospice: BAIT AND SWITCH
human embryonic stem cell research: HERITAGE FOUNDATION WRONG / IRVING WIESSMAN / THIRD REICH
morning-after abortion pills: NURSE SUES / WAL-MART
physicians: ACOG, AAP SAY NO TO ABSTINENCE
schiavo: ARCHIVE / FELOS FEELS COMPASSION / MURDER
wisdom: POPE JOHN PAUL II
zinger: ABORTION BY ANOTHER NAME
reflection for prayer: ST. AMBROSE
hot button issues
ALL CALLS FOR MAHONY RESIGNATION: Security teams at Cardinal Roger Mahony’s Los Angeles cathedral threatened to arrest college students participating in American Life League’s California crusade walk who planned to protest the inauguration of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a pro-abortion Catholic.
(Reading: “Catholic students threatened with arrest at Los Angeles cathedral,” American Life League news release, 7/1/05; 2005 Crusade walk updates, Crusade for Life 2005)
adolescents
ABSTINENCE: A new study finds that teens in abstinence-only sex-ed programs are more likely to oppose having teen sex.
(Reading: “Teens in abstinence-only sex ed programs more likely to oppose teen sex, HHS-funded report says, USA,” Medical News Today, 6/27/05)
are human embryos human beings?
MARIO CUOMO: Pro-abortion Catholic Mario Cuomo has suggested that an expert committee guide Congress in deciding whether human embryos are human beings. In response to this incredibly bad proposal, Mercator News interviewed Professor Dianne Irving, whose profound insights will help you understand the rhetorical hand stands of the culture of death.
(Reading: “Cuomo cuts through ethical knot with a committee,” Mercator.net, 6/24/05)
hospice
BAIT AND SWITCH: Illinois Right to Life is exposing the alliance that National Hospice Association has with proponents of assisted suicide and euthanasia.
(Reading: “Hospice bait and switch,” Illinois Right to Life Committee news release, 6/22/05)
human embryonic stem cell research
HERITAGE FOUNDATION WRONG: In a recently paper, Kelly Hollowell and others opine, “Twenty-four hours after conception, the new life splits into two cells, and eight days later, pregnancy officially begins.”
COMMENT: Wrong! Misleading the public has become both a conservative and a liberal pastime. When those perceived to be on the pro-life side cannot even get the facts right, the babies are in big trouble!
(Reading: “Federal stem cell research: what taxpayers should know,” Heritage Foundation, 6/24/05)
IRVING WEISSMAN: In his ongoing effort to pressure Congress and the White House to fully fund human embryonic stem cell research, Weissman claims the United States is falling behind other countries.
COMMENT: We presume this means money is more important than moral or ethical principles.
(Analysis: “What human embryo? Funniest mental gymnastics from medicine and research,” Dianne N. Irving, Ph.D.)
(Reading: “Stanford scientist tells McLaughlin gathering stem cell research restrictions should be lifted,” Great Falls Tribune, 7/1/05)
THIRD REICH: Columnist Nicholas Jackson accurately argues that the human embryo, as a human being, if subject to research and experimentation, is no different that those in Nazi Germany who were subjected to the same and subsequently died.
(Reading: “Embryonic stem cell research: shades of the Third Reich,” Sierra Times, 6/27/05)
morning-after abortion pill
NURSE SUES: Toni Lemly of Bogalusa, La., is suing St. Tammany Parish Hospital for demoting her to part-time status because she objected to dispensing the morning after pill.
(Reading: “Nurse sues parish hospital,” Times-Picayune, 6/29/05)
WAL-MART: Feminists are howling because Wal-Mart continues to keep the chemical abortion combo “Plan B” off its shelves.
(Action: E-mail a note of thanks to Wal-Mart and ask them to protect the consciences of their pharmacists so that those who know that filling such a prescription is providing abortion do not have to refer the customer elsewhere for the killer pills.)
(Reading: “As it eyes cities, Wal-Mart has no Plan B,” Women’s eNews, 7/1/05)
physicians
ACOG, AAP SAY NO TO ABSTINENCE: A June 17 e-mail bulletin to ACOG members states that ACOG will oppose any abstinence-only federal program funding. “ACOG supports the implementation of scientifically accurate and rigorously evaluated sexuality education programs?” The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a similar statement. Planned Parenthood’s Karen Pearl said AAP “is to be applauded … for having medicine trump ideology.”
COMMENT: If adolescents practice abstinence, OB/GYN business would decrease, of course, due to the lack of “need” for birth control, treatment for sexually transmitted disease or abortion. Twisted thinking.
(Reading: Key Contact Listserv, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 6/17/05; “Doctors denounce abstinence-only education,” Associated Press, 7/5/05)
schiavo
ARCHIVE: Marshall Fritz, president of Alliance for the Separation of School and State, asks whether public schools helped kill Terri Schiavo, noting, “public schools have worked hard to convince children that there are no permanent moral truths.”
(Reading: “Did public schools help kill Terri Schiavo,” Alliance for the Separation of School and State, 3/31/05)
FELOS FEELS COMPASSION: Telling a Unitarian audience that he had received life-threatening phone calls, George Felos, attorney for Michael Schiavo, said he felt “compassion for the person who called me at 3 am and sentenced me to death.” In the same report he explained that starving Terri to death was “compassion.”
(Reading: “Schiavo threats taught sympathy,” St. Petersburg Times, 6/27/05)
MURDER: Rabbi Shlomo Yaffe told an audience that the court-ordered removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was “an act of murder.”
(Reading: “Schiavo death was ‘murder,’ rabbi says,” 6/30/05)
wisdom
POPE JOHN PAUL II: In seeking the deepest roots of the struggle between the “culture of life” and the “culture of death” ?. We have to go to the heart of the tragedy being experienced by modern man: the eclipse of the sense of God and of man, typical of a social and cultural climate dominated by secularism, which, with its ubiquitous tentacles, succeeds at times in putting Christian communities themselves to the test. Those who allow themselves to be influenced by this climate easily fall into a sad vicious circle: when the sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man, of his dignity and his life; in turn, the systematic violation of the moral law, especially in the serious matter of respect for human life and its dignity, produces a kind of progressive darkening of the capacity to discern God’s living and saving presence.”
(Reading: Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), Section 21)
zinger
ABORTION BY ANOTHER NAME: Culture of death physician James Trussell admits the morning-after pill regimen can abort by interfering with implantation; but he also claims breast feeding does that as well!
COMMENT: Any claim to help bolster the culture of death; that has always been Trussell’s problem.
(Reading: “‘Morning after pill’ debate lies in details,” Chicago Tribune, 6/21/05)
reflection
ST. AMBROSE: Remove, Lord Jesus, the rottenness of my sins. Whilst you hold me bound with bonds of love, cure what is sick within me ? I have met a physician who lives in heaven and pours out His medicine on earth. Only He can cure my wounds, for He himself has none; only He can remove sorrow from my heart, wanness from my soul, for He alone knows my innermost secrets.
(Reading: “Prayer of St. Ambrose,” In Conversation with God)