November 11, 2008
Congratulations — and challenge — from Cardinal George
(SDG)
Gratifyingly balanced comments from Cardinal George addressing the U.S. Catholic bishops. John Allen has the story (hat tip, as usual, to AmP):
Cardinal Francis George, speaking this morning as president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, said all Americans should “rejoice” that a country which once tolerated slavery has elected an African-American as president – and, in the same breath, he issued a blunt challenge to the new administration on abortion.
“If the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, that African Americans were other people’s property and somehow less than persons, were still settled constitutional law, Mr. Obama would not be President of the United States,” George said.
"Today, as was the case a hundred and fifty years ago, common ground cannot be found by destroying the common good," he said.
“The common good can never be adequately incarnated in any society when those waiting to be born can be legally killed at choice,” George said, drawing sustained applause from the bishops.
This bit is intriguing:
George also appeared to encourage individual bishops to be bold, almost apart from whatever consensus positions may come out of the bishops’ conference.
“As we all know, the church was born without episcopal conferences, as she was born without parishes and without dioceses, although all these structures have been helpful pastorally throughout the centuries,” George said.
“The church was born only with shepherds, with apostolic pastors, whose relationship to their people keeps them one with Christ, from whom comes authority to govern the church,” he said.
Posted by SDG in Abortion | Permalink | Comments (24)
November 10, 2008
Unborn Between Barack and a Hard Place
(Tim Jones)
You've likely heard already, but soon-to-be Senior Class President Obama will be wasting no time in advancing his number one priority... soda machines in the cafeteria!... I mean... keeping the world safe from the Unborn Menace! Sheila Liaugminas (a font of chewy, red-meat news bites) outlines the story at her InForum blog.
Beware the Unborn Menace! They are coming! Coming to take our precious disposable income and big-screen televisions, coming to rob our young of higher education and cool clothes. In these tough economic times, the Unborn Menace threatens to undermine the vacuous, materialistic lifestyle Americans have fought so hard to establish over the last 50 years.
This is why we must fight them on their own ground... in the womb!... so we won't have to fight them here.
Our Fearless Leader Elect is readying his most reliable fountain pen, and is limbering-up his bony wrist, preparing to clear away by executive fiat all the narrow-minded restrictions that have so unfairly hampered progress against this most insidious of enemies. Indeed, what good will it do if, having sealed our borders against illegal immigration, we should be overrun with a wave of progeny! They are a drain on the economy, they contribute to overcrowded classrooms and account for a huge portion of health care costs. Their diapers clog the landfills.
(In fact, by exporting abortion and encouraging its use among our - er - more pigment-rich neighbors, we can significantly reduce unwanted immigration, as well! They can't sneak across the border if we nab them early, one at a time, in a sterile clinical setting.)
Aren't they human beings, you may ask? But now, I submit, is not the time for such moral fastidiousness. As other great leaders have recently and so wisely noted, sometimes, in order to get things done, we have to work the dark side. If you could save New York City by allowing just one abortion, wouldn't you do it? What if twenty ninjas were threatening to punish your daughter with a baby? We can't afford to be squeamish.
The unborn don't play by our rules. They don't care if you die of cancer, and would probably withhold their valuable stem cells if we asked them for permission, all nice and proper-like. What do these high-minded "pro-lifers" want us to do, send the unborn an engraved invitation to invade our homes and communities? Throw them a tea party?
Fret not. Our new Decider-In-Chief is ready to decide for all of us, so we don't have to.*
*Face it, most of us have problems making big decisions. It's tough... unless you are a frightened, pregnant thirteen year old... then it's best to have as little input and advice as possible, especially from your parents. You'll be comforted to know that in a couple of months - no matter where you are in this great country of ours - should your boyfriend (or your uncle, or a school teacher) leave you pregnant, your parents need never know. Because we're looking out for you.
(Visit Tim Jones' blog Old World Swine)
P.S. - The poignancy of this post appearing right above SDG's blessed and happy news (below) has not escaped my attention. Hearty congratulations again, Steven.
Posted by Tim Jones in Abortion, Current Affairs, Social Analysis | Permalink | Comments (28)
October 15, 2008
"Roe v. Wade probably hangs in the balance"
(SDG)
So says Barack Obama, in the third and final presidential debate, speaking about the importance of the Supreme Court nominations to be made by the next administration.
"Pro-life pro-Obama"-ites: Are you listening?
Disaffected third-party quixotic voters: Are you listening?
How far back will an Obama administration set us? How long until we get this close again?
Posted by SDG in Abortion | Permalink | Comments (63)
March 17, 2008
A Voice Of Sanity?
(Jimmy Akin)
Despite the current UK government's seeming desire to plunge headlong into as much babykilling as possible, there are a couple of interesting developments on the pro-life front in Britain at the moment.
First, the Royal College of Psychiatrists has reversed its earlier stance (PDF warning) that abortion's mental health risks to the mother were outweighed (before 24 weeks) by the relief of getting an abortion when the mother found the pregnancy distressing.
Now they have announced (PDF warning), based on a review of the literature, that the possible mental health risks of abortion are significant enough that they need to be taken seriously and that the whole question of the mental health risks associated with abortion needs to be revisited, with possible changes to medical practice and public policy.
Legislation, which is not supported by the UK government, is also being introduced that would shorten from 24 to 20 weeks the time when abortions can be performed "for social reasons" (ick!). I assume, since this proposal isn't backed by the government, that it isn't likely to pass, but it's at least a sign that the pro-life movement in Britain isn't so dead that it's unwilling to try a legislative route to protecting babies' lives.
(NOTE: One of the mental health accounts in the story will rip your heart out.)
One other thing: It might be too much to hope for, but in the Royal College of Psychiatrists' re-evaluation of this subject, I hope they don't overlook the importance that a mother's faith can have in helping her cope with post-abortion syndrome. Finding forgiveness from God is important in a situation like this, not just pharmacology and secular counseling.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Abortion | Permalink | Comments (10)
January 22, 2008
Chesterton on Babies
(Tim Jones)
In honor of those who march today...
"I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small. . . we feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that [God] might feel. . ."
from Chesterton's essay In Defense of Baby Worship from The Defendant 1903.
For more, visit the Catholic Education Resource Center
(http://www.catholiceducation.org/)
Posted by Tim Jones in Abortion, Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (52)
November 26, 2007
Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4, c-Myc
(Jimmy Akin)
What are the strange alphanumeric expressions in the title of this post?
Are they stock numbers?
Perhaps the key to cornering the market?
No. They're human genes, but they are--potentially--the solution to a raging social issue: the embryonic stem cell debate.
Writing in The Weekly Standard, Ryan Anderson--an assistant editor at First Things--states:
The stem cell wars are over. Leading scientists are telling us that they can pursue the most promising stem cell research without using--much less killing--human embryos. This breakthrough enables researchers to create human embryonic stem cells directly from adult cells. In fact, the new method may actually prove superior to embryo-destructive alternatives. This is the biggest stem cell advance since James Thomson became the first scientist to isolate embryonic stem cells, less than a decade ago.
It is a new study by Thomson himself that has caused the present stir, but this time Thomson is not alone. Accounts of independent research by two separate teams of scientists were published on November 20--one in the journal Cell and one in the journal Science--documenting the production of pluri-potent human stem cells without using embryos or eggs or cloning or any morally questionable method at all.
The new technique is so promising that on November 16, Ian Wilmut announced that he would no longer seek to clone humans. Wilmut, you may remember, is the scientist who cloned Dolly the sheep. He recently sought and received a license from the British government to attempt to clone human embryos for research purposes. Now, citing the new technique, he has abandoned his plans.
Now, I've head prospective ways of creating pluripotent stem cells without embryos before--and I haven't been convinced that they were what they were said to be. The ones I've heard before struck me as ways of creating, or potentially creating, severely deformed human embryos and harvesting their stem cells, so I'm skeptical of new miracle procedures that will get around the problem.
I'd like to learn more about the technique that Anderson writes about, but from the description he gives of it in his Weekly Standard article, it sounds as if we may have the genuine article here.
The idea is that you take adult cells and--rather than turning them into totipotent stem cells, which could conceivably be an embryo under another name, you reprogram only select genes in them--those in the article title--and you get a pluripotent-but-not-totipotent stem cell directly from an adult cell.
If that's what's really happening in this technique, we may--indeed--have a solution to the stem cell wars.
If so, we have a cause for rejoicing.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Abortion | Permalink | Comments (29)
October 16, 2007
Rome Really Needs To Get Involved on This One
(Jimmy Akin)
The U.S. bishops continue to hold diverse opinions about whether or not canon law requires one to withhold Communion from pro-abortion politicians.
Many, out of an apparent desire not to alienate those who hold pro-abortion views--as part of a "woo them back gently" strategy--resist the idea that Communion should be withheld from such politicians.
The replies given by some bishops involve arguments that strike one variously as (a) dodges of the real issue, (b) subversive of canon 915, or (c) simply incoherent.
For the record, canon 915 states:
Can. 915 Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy Communion.
This is the Church's law. Yet some quotes from bishops in the media give the appearance that the respective bishops have never heard of this canon, which is difficult to believe after the "Can John Kerry receive Communion?" controversy of the 2004 election.
Part of the problem we are encountering at present is that bishops do not like to be pitted against each other in the press and, since there is not a consensus among them about whether canon 915 should be applied to the case of pro-abortion politicians, many are engaging in diplomatic contortions to avoid bringing the disagreement among them into sharp public focus on the eve of an election season.
So we have a significant disagreement among Church leaders on how the Church's law is to be applied.
Well, that's why God created the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts.
We need an authentic interpretation on this point--one way or the other.
For myself, I am strongly of the opinion that both canon and moral law require the withholding of Communion from a politician with a pro-abortion voting record (even if it's with an "I'm personally opposed, but" dodge).
But Rome needs to sort this out for the good of the Church--both here in American and wherever in the world abortion is being promoted, which includes Rome's own back yard: Europe.
It's time for the Church to take a stand on this, for as canonist Ed Peters writes:
We are living through a terrible, perhaps unprecedented, unraveling of respect for Jesus in the Eucharist. Such a crisis compels all of us, I think, to examine our consciences for how our sins might have contributed to this disaster.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Abortion | Permalink | Comments (281)
September 05, 2007
UK Embryo Horror
(Jimmy Akin)
You may have seen press stories recently about UK scientists pleading for the use of hybrid human-animal embryos in stem cell research.
Now the British press is reporting that it looks like the plan will be given the go-ahead.
If this were a matter of just splicing a few human genes into a clearly non-human organism, matters would be different, but it appears that the plan involves the creation of an organism that is 99.9% human (see diagram, left).
Basically, they're talking about eliminating the nuclear genetic information in an animal (most likely cow) cell and shoving in the nucleus of a human cell, then stimulating the result to develop into an embryo.
It's true that there is non-nuclear genetic material that is found in cells--in organelles besides the nucleus. For example, you may have heard of mitochondrial DNA (DNA found in the mitochondria, which are not part of the nucleus). The process as described would appear to leave that genetic material intact from the animal providing the ovum.
But I'm sorry, this really looks like creating a human being that has a slight admixture of cow genes, not creating a cow that has a slight admixture of human genes.
As a result, one must err on the side of caution and conclude that such embryos are human beings with the right to life and the British government is planning on murdering them or funding their murder.
The stories in the British press cite polling done of people suggesting that the British public favors the use of embryos in trying to find cures for Parkinson's and Altzheimer's.
I bet the pollsters didn't ask, "Are you in favor of research that involves killing something that might be a human being and that in fact has 99.9% human genetic material."
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Abortion | Permalink | Comments (145)
August 21, 2007
Anne Rice on Clinton and Abortion
(Jimmy Akin)
I've been writing a (much) longer post dealing with the story I'm about to link, but I realized that I'm just not going to get it finished tonight and--after a few days of being unable to blog--I didn't want to go with nothing again today.
So let the discussion begin.
Keep it polite.
GET THE STORY.
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Abortion | Permalink | Comments (320)
August 06, 2007
Mitt Romney on Pro-Abort Mormons
(Jimmy Akin)
It's this kind of performance that will make pro-lifers wonder just how pro-life Romney really is.
(NOTE: The most revealing exchanges are in the off-the-air portion of the interview)
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Abortion | Permalink | Comments (64)
