in this issue:
hot button issue: ALITO
abortion: MEDICAL MANAGEMENT
abortion and rape: NEVER JUSTIFIED
abortion and state law: MISSOURI
in vitro fertilization: WASTAGE
personhood: ARIZONA / RIGHT TO LIFE ACT
stem cell research: IMMORAL
vaccines: CLARIFYING
web news: DEFEND LIFE / PURE LOVE CLUB
wisdom: FR. JOHN HARDON, SJ
zinger: LYING
reflection for prayer: GOD IN US
hot button issue
ALITO: Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito’s dissenting opinion in the 1991 Planned Parenthood v. Casey appeals court decision noted that Pennsylvania lawmakers were within their rights in requiring married women to tell their husbands before aborting their children. “It’s amazing how pro-abortion advocates have railed against Alito for stating that even such a minor restriction of their extreme abortion-on-demand agenda should be constitutionally permitted,” said American Life League president Judie Brown.
(Reading: “Judge Samuel Alito worthy of support as associate justice of Supreme Court,” American Life League news release, 11/1/01)
abortion
MEDICAL MANAGEMENT: The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s logo for its Practice Bulletin is a woman kissing an infant. The October issue deals exclusively with managing medical abortions. The report discusses a variety of chemical combinations that will result in the death of the preborn child as far into a pregnancy as 63 days. In the section dealing with methotrexate plus misoprostol, it says, “If abortion has not occurred, the misoprostol dose is repeated. Further follow-up for women requiring a second dose of misoprostol is performed in 4 weeks unless embryonic cardiac activity is still visible on ultrasound examination, in which case patients return in 1 week. If gestational cardiac activity is present 2 weeks after initiating treatment or expulsion has not occurred by the 4-week follow-up visit, aspiration is performed.”
COMMENT: “Cardiac activity” means the baby’s heart is still beating; “aspiration” is the surgical killing of the child; “still visible on ultrasound examination” is the callous pictures of a living child that tell the practitioner he or she needs to kill it.
(Reading: “Medical management of abortion,” ACOG Practice Bulletin, 10/05)
abortion and rape
NEVER JUSTIFIED: The “deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his life is always morally wrong and can never be licit, neither as an end nor as a means to a good end.”
COMMENT: For those who pander to politicians who support abortion in the cases of rape, incest and threat to the life of the mother, this statement from Bishop Jose Francisco Ulloa Rojas of Costa Rica should end such cowardice.
(Reading: “Protect mother and baby, say Costa Rican bishops,” Catholic News Agency, 10/12/05)
abortion and state law
MISSOURI: Missouri’s governor signed a law on September 15 that requires abortionists to be on staff at a local hospital. The only abortion clinic in Springfield closed its doors on October 19, leaving only two such facilities in the entire state.
(Reading: “Clinic is caught in the fog of abortion war,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10/27/05)
in vitro fertilization
WASTAGE: Researchers found that a large percentage of those human embryos created during IVF procedures die. The conclusion exposes the mentality of those who play God in the laboratory: “The vast majority of embryos produced in vitro and transferred fail to develop into an infant [sic] … Clinicians should strive to reduce embryonic wastage without an adverse effect on delivery rates by perfecting methods of ovarian stimulation and embryo screening and by transferring fewer embryos.”
COMMENT: No, you are not reading about products on an assembly line, you are reading about human persons.
(Reading: “Embryos implanted in IVF fail more often than note: Doctors,” Fertility Neighborhood, 9/20/05; “High rates of embryo wastage with use of assisted reproductive technology: a look at the trends between 1995 and 2001 in the United States,” Fertility and Sterility, 8/05, pp. 325-329)
personhood
ARIZONA: An Arizona appeals court ruled that a human embryo who is not inside his mother’s womb is not a person under Arizona law. An Arizona couple had accused the Mayo Clinic of destroying their embryos, and thus sued for wrongful death. In the process the court chose to call these embryonic children pre-embryos, a fake scientific term.
COMMENT: This ruling is further evidence of the pro-life movement’s failure to demand personhood for all preborn human beings.
(Reading: “Appeals court: Embryo outside womb not a ‘person’ under lawsuit statute,” Arizona Herald, 10/28/05)
RIGHT TO LIFE ACT: This bill (HR 552) states, “The terms ‘human person’ and ‘human being’ include each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including, but not limited to, the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.” See Right to Life Act for details.
COMMENT: Is your member of Congress a co-sponsor? If not, ask!
stem cell research
IMMORAL: An editorial in the St. Louis Review accurately presents the problem with the Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, describing it among other things as “ICKY” Missourians (Initiative for Cloning and Killing Youngest Missourians) and “NASTY” (No Actually Safe Therapies Yet).
(Reading: “Acronyms abound for immoral ballot proposal,” St. Louis Review, 10/21/05)
vaccines
CLARIFYING: After analyzing the recent Pontifical Academy for Life statement on parents and vaccinating their children with vaccines manufactured using aborted fetal cells, theologian Fr. Stephen Torraco wrote, “while acknowledging that there is not a rigorous obligation to avoid even passive material cooperation with evil in a case in which it would be greatly difficult to do so — as in the case of those parents who use vaccines prepared from cells derived from voluntarily aborted fetuses in order to avoid the danger of the spread of a disease — the Academy clearly notes that the parents’ passive material cooperation by their use of these vaccines is morally permissible on a temporary basis” [emphasis added].
(Reading: “Overcoming tunnel vision,” Children of God for Life, 8/5/05)
web news
DEFEND LIFE: The anti-euthanasia Nightingale Alliance, including pro-life luminaries such as Dr. William Toffler and Mary Jane Owen, has a new web site.
PURE LOVE CLUB: Emphasizing chastity and purity, this new site by Jason and Crystalina Evert is outstanding.
wisdom
FR. JOHN HARDON, SJ: In teaching, for example, Babylonia religion which I have for several years, I would quote from Babylonian Hammurabi. Abortion was punishable by execution of the women who had the abortion and all her accomplices. Date 1800 BC, place Babylonia. And we call the Babylonians pagan! My God! What shall we call our American abortionists?
(Reading: “A Catholic’s responsibility as a leader in the right to life,” The Real Presence Association)
zinger
LYING: French bioethicist Sebastian Tassy writes, “In July, 2005, stem-cell biologists discussed a proposal to refrain from using the term ’embryo’ when referring to blastocysts, in order to limit the negative scrutiny induced by this emotive term.” He went on to write that morals are “prosocial emotions.”
COMMENT: Mr. Tassy, you should refrain from using the word ethicist when referring to your line of work!
(Reading: “Prenatal research: a very sensitive field,” The Lancet, 10/1/05)
reflection for prayer
GOD IN US: The Spirit of the Lord is a lantern, searching the hidden places of our inmost being.
(Reading: From a letter to the Corinthians by St. Clement pope)