in this issue:
hot button issues: CALIFORNIA DEADLY DOZEN / CAMPUS FOR LIFE / STOPP
abortion: MICHIGAN / UNBORN VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE ACT
activism: CHOOSE LIFE
graduation watch: PENNSYLVANIA
human cloning: FLORIDA
physicians: AAP AGENDA
planned parenthood: DEFEAT IN NEVADA
stem cells: WORD GAMES
reflection for prayer: ARCHBISHOP CHARLES J. CHAPUT, OFM CAP.
appendix: COMMENTARY
hot button issues
CALIFORNIA DEADLY DOZEN: American Life League has unveiled a list of 12 pro-abortion elected officials who claim the Catholic faith while supporting legal abortion. A newspaper ad features Gov. Gray Davis, U.S. Reps. Loretta and Linda Sanchez, and nine other officeholders. All’s “Crusade for the Defense of Our Catholic Church” continues to stress the teaching that one cannot be Catholic and pro-abortion.
(Reading: “American Life League launches California Deadly Dozen,” ALL news release, 5/7/03)
CAMPUS FOR LIFE: The Battin’ 1000 campaign that is raising support for American Life League’s Campus for Life is gaining additional media attention. The San Francisco Chronicle is the latest to exhibit curiosity about a project that uses the endorsements of current and former big league baseball stars to spread the Gospel of Life.
(Reading: “Battin’ for dollars – and against abortion,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/4/03)
STOPP: American Life League’s STOPP International is quoting fresh research which counters Planned Parenthood’s claim that better contraception is the reason teen pregnancy and birth rates have dropped.
(Reading: “Teen pregnancy and birth rates lowered; credit goes to abstinence, not contraception,” STOPP news release, 5/5/03)
abortion
MICHIGAN: A state senate panel approved a bill that “would define the moment a person is born” indicating that when a baby is born alive, or even partially alive, the law would protect that person. “If enacted, the measure would be the first in the nation that uses the concept of defining when a person is born to try to prevent the controversial technique that involves a partial removal of the fetus from the uterus.”
COMMENT: Quoting Canadian disability rights activist and pro-life leader Mark Pickup: “A minor victory for which I could not cheer. Only sadness came at reading the story to see how corrupt things have become. America’s founders could not have imagined it. Legislation is needed to stop killing children as they are being born! We kill before then, and after. Not even the moment for birth is safe from the killing without a law. We truly are a culture of death.”
(Reading: “Partial-birth abortions: bill legally defines birth,” 4/30/03, The [Traverse City, Mich.] Record-Eagle; Legal Birth Definition Act, SB 395, Michigan legislature, 2003)
UNBORN VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE ACT: Subsection (a) of the bill states that prosecution would not be permitted in the following case: “(1) for conduct relating to an abortion for which the consent of the pregnant woman has been obtained or for which such consent is implied by law in a medical emergency.”
COMMENT: Pro-life Americans who support this bill argue that the legislation must make this statement because the ‘law’ protects abortion. Could it be that we pro-lifers are wasting our time working for the passage of a bill that gives credence to the unjust, inhumane Roe v Wade/Doe v Bolton decisions? Why grant credence to injustice?
(Reading: Unborn Victims of Violence Act, S 146, U.S. Congress, and search by bill number)
activism
CHOOSE LIFE: Pro-lifers can use an online order blank or write to Illinois Choose Life to purchase a unique “choose life” license plate holder. The group is gathering support for a “choose life” license in Illinois.
(Reading: Choose Life license plate holder order form, Illinois Right to Life.
graduation watch
PENNSYLVANIA: The Cardinal Newman Society has flagged two more commencement ceremonies where pro-abortion speakers are scheduled to address graduates at Catholic colleges. MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews will speak at the Jesuit-run University of Scranton, and Cokie Roberts will address grads at College Misericordia, which is affiliated with the Sisters of Mercy. Bishop James Timlin will not attend either ceremony. He told local media, “the diocese cannot attend a ceremony or appear on a stage if its presence makes it seem like the Catholic Church has gone soft on abortion.”
(Reading: “Two local Catholic colleges may be facing protests and the absence of high-ranking clergy at this year’s commencement ceremonies,” The [Wilkes-Barre] Citizens Voice, 5/3/03)
human cloning
FLORIDA: According to scientific experts, the failed SB1726, touted as a ban on human cloning, would not have banned any human cloning, because the bill addressed only one way of cloning humans but failed to define even that method accurately.
(Reading: SB1726, Florida Senate, 2/28/03, search by bill number; “Bills that failed during the 2003 regular legislative session,” Associated Press, 3/5/03)
physicians
AAP AGENDA: Former American Academy of Pediatrics president Joseph Zanga, M.D., is quoted regarding a proposed resolution that would have acknowledged the value of marriage: “Somebody got up and said that going on record in support of married parents would be upsetting to single parents, so it was defeated. If the academy won’t admit the value of married mothers and fathers, how much credibility does it have? On social issues the academy more often strives to be politically correct than to be an advocate for the optimum health and well-being of children.”
(Reading: “Whither the AAP?” Physician, 6/03)
planned parenthood
DEFEAT IN NEVADA: State senators have tabled a Planned Parenthood-backed bill that would have told pharmacists they could not refuse on moral grounds to dispense certain drugs. The bill targeted Catholic and Mormon pharmacists who cited religious reasons for refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and morning-after pills.
(Reading: “Senate tables bill to force pharmacists to fill prescriptions,” Las Vegas Review Journal, 5/6/03; AB144, Nevada legislature, 2/14/03)
stem cells
WORD GAMES: Nicholas Wade has written an article for the New York Times concerning Pennsylvania scientists who claim to have shown how cells can be converted in the laboratory into egg cells, exactly like those produced in the female ovary. Wade notes, “This work has some theologians reconsidering their ideas about the nature of life.”
A commentary by Prof. Dianne Irving is included as an appendix to this issue of Communique. She comments on the specific failure of Catholics to stand up for the full truth in these matters, rather than joining in word games that kill.
(Reading: “Pennsylvania researchers turn stem cells to egg cells,” New York Times, 5/2/03; Dr. Irving’s complete analysis of this article and the salient portions of the article are available upon request)
reflection for prayer
ARCHBISHOP CHARLES J. CHAPUT, OFM CAP: A nation cannot systematically kill its unborn children and then witness to the world about human dignity. To the degree that Americans tolerate and even encourage abortion, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, we contradict our own founding principles as a people. These acts of violence-“legal” or not-are direct attacks on the sanctity of the human person, direct and grievous violations of human dignity. No Catholic can willingly collaborate in them without turning away from his or her faith and undermining any personal claim to discipleship.
If we’re disciples of Jesus Christ, we need to act like it. If we don’t, we’re not. Every abortion kills an innocent life. No disciple can have any willing part in such violence. And wherever abortion is part of the culture, part of the law, we have the duty to work to change it through personal involvement in the public debate, and by holding our elected officials accountable not only at election time, but throughout the year.
(Reading: “Right to life foundation on which all other rights rest,” Archdiocese of Denver, 10/9/02)
appendix
COMMENTARY: A reaction to claims that cells can be converted in the laboratory into egg cells, exactly like those produced in the female ovary.
Dianne N. Irving, M.A., Ph.D.
May 3, 2003
COMMENT: If nothing else, this research has exposed not only the fake science that has been flooding the free (libertine) market place on these issues for years now, but also the fake dissident “Catholicism” (on both the right and on the left) that has always accompanied it, as well as the fake cloning “bans” currently being propagated on all sides of the political aisle – and so successfully perpetrated through the Hallowed Halls of Bioethics and of Congress. The latest application of this fraud as revealed in this New York Times article represents the “joyous” revisiting of Humanae Vitae. A nice package.
Continued ignorance of, or the acquiescence in and approval of, these frauds will eventually result in the establishment of:
- a permanent bank of living human embryos worldwide for any and all types of pure destructive human embryo research;
- a constant source of human embryonic biological “materials” to advance eugenics;
- the appropriation of these issues by the same dissident Catholic theologians (on the right and on the left) who have historically and directly (and knowingly) used fake science about the early developing human embryo as a favorite means of bashing Humanae Vitae;
- the tenets of international bioethics that define a human “person” only in terms of the active exercising of “rational attributes” and “sentience” (which would eliminate even all adult mentally and physically disabled human beings from “personhood”). These fake scientific, theological and bioethical “ethical” tenets will then be
- concretized into local, state, federal, and worldwide legislations that purport to be “total bans” on such “fundamentally offensive” activities in order to assuage the concerns and consciences of the public.
For those who are interested Catholics, there is one more major consequence of not stepping up to the plate on these issues: the gradual dissolution of the Catholic Church Herself. Why? What could possibly be the connection? Consider the following: If the scientific definition of “a human being and when he/she begins to exist” is scientifically fake, then the definition of “a human person and when he/she begins to exist” is fake. If the definition of “a human person and when he/she begins to exist” is fake, then that erroneous definition of “a human person” can be (and already has been) transferred to virtually every other issue in bioethics and applied to adult human beings (e.g., euthanasia, physician assisted suicide, removal of food and hydration, the use of abortifacients and early abortions, etc.). If the definition of “a human person and when he/she begins to exist” is fake, then the empirically derived definition of “human nature” (which is the basis of philosophical natural law theory) is also fake. If the definition of “human nature” is fake, then philosophical natural law theory is also fake. If philosophical natural law theory is fake, then the Moral Law is fake. If the Moral Law is fake, then the Church’s teachings based on the Moral Law are fake. If the Church’s teachings are fake, then the moral teaching authority of the Church is invalid. Like dominoes.
For my published articles on this and on the “personhood” issues, they are accessible on LifeIssues.net, and on the University Faculty for Life web site.