note
DOCUMENTS: Any item you read about in this or any issue of Communique can be backed up with support documents. If you wish to receive a hard copy via postal mail, please e-mail your request, noting the exact excerpt from Communique, to “>Judith Adams, who will gladly send the material to you.
adolescents
CONTRACEPTION LEADS TO ABORTION: Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate among 15-19 year old of any country in Western Europe. The study, performed with clients from 14 British health offices and involving 240 young women, sought to examine why this rate is so high. Among the findings are these: “Teenagers who become pregnant have higher consultation rates than their age matched peers, and most of the difference is owning to consultation for contraception,” and “teenagers whose pregnancies end in termination are more likely to have received emergency contraception before conception, emphasizing the need for adequate follow up.”
(Reading: “Consultation Patterns and Provision of Contraception in General Practice Before Teenage Pregnancy: Case-control Study,” British Medical Journal, 8/19/00, pp. 486-489)
PRECOCIOUS PUBERTY: Stating that some girls reach puberty as early as age 8 or 9, and that parents are asking for a medical treatment to delay it, researchers who studied “early puberty” claim early changes can be traumatic. “Injections of Lupron, a hormone-suppressing drug originally approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1985 for treatment of prostate cancer, can fend off puberty in children which develop prematurely.” The condition is described as “precocious puberty.”
(Reading: “When Should Puberty Be Suppressed?” American Medical News, 8/28/00)
birth control pill
WARNING? ACOG has released an advisory on contraceptives pointing out that “women with such underlying conditions as hypertension, diabetes, migraines, fibrocystic breast tissue, uterine fibroids, or elevated cholesterol level” may be at risk when using the pill. The report states: “For some women, medications for a chronic condition may alter a contraceptive’s effectiveness. An unintended pregnancy could pose substantial health risks for the woman and her unborn child.”
QUESTION: A marketing tool for abortion?
(Reading: “Advisory on Contraceptives,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 8/23/00, p. 951; the actual ACOG bulletin is not available on line.)
hero
ARCHBISHOP ELDEN CURTISS: Delivering a resounding call to defend life, Archbishop Curtiss said, “Despite public media, which for the most part supports abortion as the right of women over their own bodies without any concern for the rights of their pre-born babies; despite massive opposition from a multimillion dollar abortion industry that has Planned Parenthood as a front; despite Supreme Court decisions which continue to leave pre-born and partially-born babies vulnerable to painful deaths, we Catholics must not cease our efforts to declare abortion a moral blight and a national scandal.”
(Reading: “We Are Pro-life People in a Pro-life Church,” The [Omaha] Catholic Voice, 9/1/00)
imposed death
PARKINSON’S INSTITUTE: A new e-mail news service from the Sunnyvale, California, Parkinson’s Disease Institute includes reference to the Partnership for Caring web site, which is described as a service that “allows you to gather information and download Living Wills and medical Power of Attorney (Advance Directive) forms. The fact is Choice in Dying, the pro-euthanasia group that introduced the first Living Will in 1967, is in the process of becoming Partnership in Caring: America’s Voice for the Dying.
The following statement from the Partnership for Caring position statement says it all: “Partnership for Caring will not join the debate about physician-assisted suicide and will take no position for or against its legalization because to do so would divert energy and attention Partnership for Caring’s mission to eliminate the suffering of dying Americans.”
(Reading: Parkinson’s Disease Institute newsletter, 8/28/00)
nfp
NEW STUDY: Verifying the reliability of the Billings Ovulation Method, world-renowned research Professor James Brown states “achieving the full potential of natural family planning is the greatest research challenge in human reproduction today … the Billings Ovulation Method is the nearest to achieving this aim.”
(Reading: “Endocrinologist Publishes Study on Billings Ovulation Method,” Zenit, 8/16/00; for the study see “Ovarian Activity and Fertility and the Billings Ovulation Method)
personhood
AT CONCEPTION! Columnist Mona Charen writes: “To use a human being, even a newly conceived one, as a commodity is never morally acceptable. Each person must be treated as an end in himself, not as a means to improve someone else’s life.
“It is difficult to think of an embryo as a person. As one news story put it they are no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence–at the start. But that is part of the miracle of life. And a society that stops thinking so is not likely to be very humane.”
(Reading: “Torturing Language Rather than Troubling Consciences,” Jewish World Review, 8/29/00)
politics
BUSH: A “chat transcript” from CNN provides a George W. Bush response to the question, “If elected, will you support selection of Supreme Court judges who will eliminate Roe vs. Wade?”
Bush: “We will not have a litmus test for my judges. I don’t think there ought to be a litmus test for judges except for whether or not the judge will, you know, strictly interpret the Constitution, and will not use the bench from which to write social policy.”
(Reading: “Governor George W. Bush Gives First Online News Interview,” CNN, 8/30/00)
POLITICAL UPDATES: For analysis of the upcoming elections, visit Gary Bauer’s Campaign for Working Familiesand request to be placed on the e-mail update list. You may also “>e-mail for information.
premature birthLET DIE OR LET LIVE: ABC’s Nightline featured a discussion of micro-preemies, babies born very early who require intense medical care. Sister Carol Taylor, the director of clinical bioethics at Georgetown University, was asked about potential conflicts between medical personnel who feel obligated to save the premature baby and parents who did not expect to deliver a live child. She told the viewers, “What’s at stake is usually clinicians feeling there’s an obligation to intervene, and parents who had grieved and were expecting not live births and wanting not to have live births at that point, and a true conflict.”
(Reading: Nightline, ABC-TV, 8/21/00)
premature birth
LET DIE OR LET LIVE: ABC’s Nightline featured a discussion of micro-preemies, babies born very early who require intense medical care. Sister Carol Taylor, the director of clinical bioethics at Georgetown University, was asked about potential conflicts between medical personnel who feel obligated to save the premature baby and parents who did not expect to deliver a live child. She told the viewers, “What’s at stake is usually clinicians feeling there’s an obligation to intervene, and parents who had grieved and were expecting not live births and wanting not to have live births at that point, and a true conflict.”
(Reading: Nightline, ABC-TV, 8/21/00)
LET LIVE OR LET DIE: An 8/24/00 e-mail brought Communique a different take on the topic. What you are about to read is an edited version of the story. This amazed mother told us, “Jacob is our ‘surprise’ baby! He’s our gift from God. When I was pregnant with Jacob, I was 38 years old, so I had to have an alphafetoprotein (AFP) test done. The test came back saying something was wrong with the baby. After several more tests, the doctors sent us to a genetic counselor … While my husband and I listened, the counselor told us that our ‘fetus’ will have a number of defects, which ranged from Down syndrome, to Spina Bifida, to Tay Sachs disease. She told us that the fetus would be a huge burden on our family for the rest of our lives … and on and on. Then she said to us, but you have OPTIONS, meaning that we could, and … [moreover] should abort the fetus. … Well, Jacob was born three months early due to the fact that I had very low amniotic fluid. He weighed one pound, four ounces and was twelve inches long. He was in NICU for two months. We got to take him home when he weighed four pounds! Jacob does not have any of the diseases mentioned above. The problem was with my placenta. The only condition that Jacob will have the rest of his life is chronic cuteness.”
COMMENT: Maybe no parent would ever “expect” a dead child if more emphasis placed on the dignity of the human person, regardless of his perceived problems, and less emphasis were placed on utilitarian bioethical “standards.”
stem cell research
CONGRESS MUST HALT: As Congress prepares to deal with specific authorization for research involving the use of embryonic stem cells (S 2015), contacts need to be made in the Senate and in the House asking that this bill be soundly defeated. The bill allows for the destruction of embryonic babies who “otherwise would be discarded that have been donated from in vitro fertilization clinics with the written informed consent of the progenitors.” In other words: this bill allows aborting tiny boys and girls. When you contact your member of Congress, please notify Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and “>Congressman Jay Dickey (R-Ark.). Each of these men needs to know that grass roots people are opposed to such ghoulish practices, regardless of the source of funding.
(Reading: A copy of the bill can be retrieved from the Library of Congress site – enter bill number and search)
EMBRYOS NOT NECESSARY: The Lancet comments: “calling [embryos] pre-embryos is sophistry,” and: “In just a few days a moral issue that ought to trouble even those with no religious beliefs has been taken over by scientists, by politicians and by money. The irony is that by the time the matter is resolved it may no longer be relevant. If stem cells do turn out to be a significant source of therapeutic agents they could come not from human embryos but from alternatives such as reprogrammed adult cells.”
(Reading: “Overexcitement on Embryo Stem Cells,” The Lancet, 9/2/00, p. 693)
warning
HARRY POTTER AGAIN! St. Joseph’s Covenant Keepers has published an entire edition of its newsletter (July/August 2000) on the matter of Harry Potter and the effect such stories have on young minds. For subscription information and more see St. Joseph’s Covenant Keepers.
zingers
DOOZIES: Sometimes the statements people make need no comment:
VIVETTE GLOVER, M.D., on giving preborn babies anesthesia before aborting them: “I am pro-choice, but one should not muddle the two. One should thing about how one is doing it [abortion] in the most pain-free way.”
(Reading: “Babies May Feel Pain of Abortion,” Electronic Telegraph [U.K.], 8/29/00)
MORRIS VAN ANDEL, M.D., B.C. (Canada) College of Physicians and Surgeons, “Our [abortion-related policies] have always been made on a medical decision, not a moral decision.”
(Reading: “UBC Researcher Backs British Fetus Findings,” Vancouver [British Columbia] Province, 8/30/00)
LIANNE LACROIX, M.D., of Planned Parenthood, B.C. (Canada), on using a sonogram during an abortion: “Abortion is a hard enough thing for any woman to decide without the torture of seeing the baby on an ultrasound screen.”
(Reading: “Anti-Abortionist Not Interested in Preventing Pregnancy,” Kelowna [British Columbia] Daily Courier, 8/24/00)
reflection for prayer
The origin and the foundation of the duty of absolute respect for human life are to be found in the dignity proper to the person and not simply in the natural inclination to preserve one’s own physical life. Human life, even though it is a fundamental good of man, thus acquires a moral significance in reference to the good of the person, who must always be affirmed for his own sake. While it is always morally illicit to kill an innocent human being, it can be licit, praiseworthy or even imperative to give up one’s own life (cf. John 15:13) out of love of neighbor or as a witness to the truth.
Pope John Paul II
The Splendor of Truth, Section 50
DOCUMENTS: Any item you read about in this or any issue of Communique can be backed up with support documents. If you wish to receive a hard copy via postal mail, please e-mail your request, noting the exact excerpt from Communique, to “>Judith Adams, who will gladly send the material to you.
adolescents
CONTRACEPTION LEADS TO ABORTION: Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate among 15-19 year old of any country in Western Europe. The study, performed with clients from 14 British health offices and involving 240 young women, sought to examine why this rate is so high. Among the findings are these: “Teenagers who become pregnant have higher consultation rates than their age matched peers, and most of the difference is owning to consultation for contraception,” and “teenagers whose pregnancies end in termination are more likely to have received emergency contraception before conception, emphasizing the need for adequate follow up.”
(Reading: “Consultation Patterns and Provision of Contraception in General Practice Before Teenage Pregnancy: Case-control Study,” British Medical Journal, 8/19/00, pp. 486-489)
PRECOCIOUS PUBERTY: Stating that some girls reach puberty as early as age 8 or 9, and that parents are asking for a medical treatment to delay it, researchers who studied “early puberty” claim early changes can be traumatic. “Injections of Lupron, a hormone-suppressing drug originally approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1985 for treatment of prostate cancer, can fend off puberty in children which develop prematurely.” The condition is described as “precocious puberty.”
(Reading: “When Should Puberty Be Suppressed?” American Medical News, 8/28/00)
birth control pill
WARNING? ACOG has released an advisory on contraceptives pointing out that “women with such underlying conditions as hypertension, diabetes, migraines, fibrocystic breast tissue, uterine fibroids, or elevated cholesterol level” may be at risk when using the pill. The report states: “For some women, medications for a chronic condition may alter a contraceptive’s effectiveness. An unintended pregnancy could pose substantial health risks for the woman and her unborn child.”
QUESTION: A marketing tool for abortion?
(Reading: “Advisory on Contraceptives,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 8/23/00, p. 951; the actual ACOG bulletin is not available on line.)
hero
ARCHBISHOP ELDEN CURTISS: Delivering a resounding call to defend life, Archbishop Curtiss said, “Despite public media, which for the most part supports abortion as the right of women over their own bodies without any concern for the rights of their pre-born babies; despite massive opposition from a multimillion dollar abortion industry that has Planned Parenthood as a front; despite Supreme Court decisions which continue to leave pre-born and partially-born babies vulnerable to painful deaths, we Catholics must not cease our efforts to declare abortion a moral blight and a national scandal.”
(Reading: “We Are Pro-life People in a Pro-life Church,” The [Omaha] Catholic Voice, 9/1/00)
imposed death
PARKINSON’S INSTITUTE: A new e-mail news service from the Sunnyvale, California, Parkinson’s Disease Institute includes reference to the Partnership for Caring web site, which is described as a service that “allows you to gather information and download Living Wills and medical Power of Attorney (Advance Directive) forms. The fact is Choice in Dying, the pro-euthanasia group that introduced the first Living Will in 1967, is in the process of becoming Partnership in Caring: America’s Voice for the Dying.
The following statement from the Partnership for Caring position statement says it all: “Partnership for Caring will not join the debate about physician-assisted suicide and will take no position for or against its legalization because to do so would divert energy and attention Partnership for Caring’s mission to eliminate the suffering of dying Americans.”
(Reading: Parkinson’s Disease Institute newsletter, 8/28/00)
nfp
NEW STUDY: Verifying the reliability of the Billings Ovulation Method, world-renowned research Professor James Brown states “achieving the full potential of natural family planning is the greatest research challenge in human reproduction today … the Billings Ovulation Method is the nearest to achieving this aim.”
(Reading: “Endocrinologist Publishes Study on Billings Ovulation Method,” Zenit, 8/16/00; for the study see “Ovarian Activity and Fertility and the Billings Ovulation Method)
personhood
AT CONCEPTION! Columnist Mona Charen writes: “To use a human being, even a newly conceived one, as a commodity is never morally acceptable. Each person must be treated as an end in himself, not as a means to improve someone else’s life.
“It is difficult to think of an embryo as a person. As one news story put it they are no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence–at the start. But that is part of the miracle of life. And a society that stops thinking so is not likely to be very humane.”
(Reading: “Torturing Language Rather than Troubling Consciences,” Jewish World Review, 8/29/00)
politics
BUSH: A “chat transcript” from CNN provides a George W. Bush response to the question, “If elected, will you support selection of Supreme Court judges who will eliminate Roe vs. Wade?”
Bush: “We will not have a litmus test for my judges. I don’t think there ought to be a litmus test for judges except for whether or not the judge will, you know, strictly interpret the Constitution, and will not use the bench from which to write social policy.”
(Reading: “Governor George W. Bush Gives First Online News Interview,” CNN, 8/30/00)
POLITICAL UPDATES: For analysis of the upcoming elections, visit Gary Bauer’s Campaign for Working Familiesand request to be placed on the e-mail update list. You may also “>e-mail for information.
(Reading: Nightline, ABC-TV, 8/21/00)
premature birth
LET DIE OR LET LIVE: ABC’s Nightline featured a discussion of micro-preemies, babies born very early who require intense medical care. Sister Carol Taylor, the director of clinical bioethics at Georgetown University, was asked about potential conflicts between medical personnel who feel obligated to save the premature baby and parents who did not expect to deliver a live child. She told the viewers, “What’s at stake is usually clinicians feeling there’s an obligation to intervene, and parents who had grieved and were expecting not live births and wanting not to have live births at that point, and a true conflict.”
(Reading: Nightline, ABC-TV, 8/21/00)
LET LIVE OR LET DIE: An 8/24/00 e-mail brought Communique a different take on the topic. What you are about to read is an edited version of the story. This amazed mother told us, “Jacob is our ‘surprise’ baby! He’s our gift from God. When I was pregnant with Jacob, I was 38 years old, so I had to have an alphafetoprotein (AFP) test done. The test came back saying something was wrong with the baby. After several more tests, the doctors sent us to a genetic counselor … While my husband and I listened, the counselor told us that our ‘fetus’ will have a number of defects, which ranged from Down syndrome, to Spina Bifida, to Tay Sachs disease. She told us that the fetus would be a huge burden on our family for the rest of our lives … and on and on. Then she said to us, but you have OPTIONS, meaning that we could, and … [moreover] should abort the fetus. … Well, Jacob was born three months early due to the fact that I had very low amniotic fluid. He weighed one pound, four ounces and was twelve inches long. He was in NICU for two months. We got to take him home when he weighed four pounds! Jacob does not have any of the diseases mentioned above. The problem was with my placenta. The only condition that Jacob will have the rest of his life is chronic cuteness.”
COMMENT: Maybe no parent would ever “expect” a dead child if more emphasis placed on the dignity of the human person, regardless of his perceived problems, and less emphasis were placed on utilitarian bioethical “standards.”
stem cell research
CONGRESS MUST HALT: As Congress prepares to deal with specific authorization for research involving the use of embryonic stem cells (S 2015), contacts need to be made in the Senate and in the House asking that this bill be soundly defeated. The bill allows for the destruction of embryonic babies who “otherwise would be discarded that have been donated from in vitro fertilization clinics with the written informed consent of the progenitors.” In other words: this bill allows aborting tiny boys and girls. When you contact your member of Congress, please notify Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and “>Congressman Jay Dickey (R-Ark.). Each of these men needs to know that grass roots people are opposed to such ghoulish practices, regardless of the source of funding.
(Reading: A copy of the bill can be retrieved from the Library of Congress site – enter bill number and search)
EMBRYOS NOT NECESSARY: The Lancet comments: “calling [embryos] pre-embryos is sophistry,” and: “In just a few days a moral issue that ought to trouble even those with no religious beliefs has been taken over by scientists, by politicians and by money. The irony is that by the time the matter is resolved it may no longer be relevant. If stem cells do turn out to be a significant source of therapeutic agents they could come not from human embryos but from alternatives such as reprogrammed adult cells.”
(Reading: “Overexcitement on Embryo Stem Cells,” The Lancet, 9/2/00, p. 693)
warning
HARRY POTTER AGAIN! St. Joseph’s Covenant Keepers has published an entire edition of its newsletter (July/August 2000) on the matter of Harry Potter and the effect such stories have on young minds. For subscription information and more see St. Joseph’s Covenant Keepers.
zingers
DOOZIES: Sometimes the statements people make need no comment:
VIVETTE GLOVER, M.D., on giving preborn babies anesthesia before aborting them: “I am pro-choice, but one should not muddle the two. One should thing about how one is doing it [abortion] in the most pain-free way.”
(Reading: “Babies May Feel Pain of Abortion,” Electronic Telegraph [U.K.], 8/29/00)
MORRIS VAN ANDEL, M.D., B.C. (Canada) College of Physicians and Surgeons, “Our [abortion-related policies] have always been made on a medical decision, not a moral decision.”
(Reading: “UBC Researcher Backs British Fetus Findings,” Vancouver [British Columbia] Province, 8/30/00)
LIANNE LACROIX, M.D., of Planned Parenthood, B.C. (Canada), on using a sonogram during an abortion: “Abortion is a hard enough thing for any woman to decide without the torture of seeing the baby on an ultrasound screen.”
(Reading: “Anti-Abortionist Not Interested in Preventing Pregnancy,” Kelowna [British Columbia] Daily Courier, 8/24/00)
reflection for prayer
The origin and the foundation of the duty of absolute respect for human life are to be found in the dignity proper to the person and not simply in the natural inclination to preserve one’s own physical life. Human life, even though it is a fundamental good of man, thus acquires a moral significance in reference to the good of the person, who must always be affirmed for his own sake. While it is always morally illicit to kill an innocent human being, it can be licit, praiseworthy or even imperative to give up one’s own life (cf. John 15:13) out of love of neighbor or as a witness to the truth.
Pope John Paul II
The Splendor of Truth, Section 50