From Associates
- Pharmacists for Life International—Pharmacists are being challenged across our country for seeking the right of conscience to fill or not fill a prescription for a medication to which they have a conscientious objection. Recent reports of legislative attempts in several states lead PFLI to suspect that this attack on the profession either is, probably is, or will in the near future, confront all pharmacists. PFLI believes that it is a top national agenda item for many "pro-choice" organizations and that there is value in pharmacists banding together to share legislative or regulatory attempts that are directed at limiting this First Amendment right.
PFLI has offered to act as a conduit in this effort to ban together and is inviting interested parties to join with PFLI to form a national coalition of pro-conscience rights pharmacists. This coalition will:
- Collect, into a permanent "knowledge base," all current or proposed legislative and/or regulatory documents that either grant or refuse pharmacists the right to exercise their properly formed conscience in refusing to fill a prescription to which they morally object;
- Identify pharmacists that are currently involved in these legislative and/or regulatory efforts, as well as pharmacists involved in or considering litigation in the area of pharmacist rights of conscience and religion and who would like to collaborate with other like-minded pharmacists;
- Create a coalition of like-minded pharmacists to assist each other in defeating these attacks against their First Amendment rights and to share our successful and our failed strategies; and
- Address any other issue or area of importance in the field of pharmacist conscience and religious rights which may arise in the future.
If you are a pharmacist, or you know of a pro-life pharmacist, interested in this coalition to protect rights of conscience, please email PFLI at conscience@pfli.org.
In addition, if you are involved in legislation, regulation, state Board of Pharmacy activity, or litigation concerning pharmacists' rights of conscience and religion, please include a succinct summary of your circumstances and your pertinent info along with the above contact information.
Tip of the Month – What about protecting the life of the mother?
By Judie Brown
We hear the question often when we're defending a no-exceptions approach to abortion: What if the pregnancy poses a threat to the health or life of the mother? Many people, who do not understand the inherent value of every person from fertilization, struggle with the question of abortion for the health or life of the mother. Do pro-lifers oppose abortion even in these cases? The answer is yes.
Sir Albert William Liley, the father of modern fetology, teaches, "No matter how severe the mother's heart disease, renal complaint, diabetes or mental illness, no one would be suggesting abortion was essential if the mother wanted the baby."
Abortion is intentional killing
It is important to distinguish between direct abortion, which is the intentional and willed destruction of a preborn child, and a legitimate treatment a pregnant mother may choose to save her life. Such operations—such as the removal of a cancerous uterus or an ectopic pregnancy that poses the threat of imminent death—are not considered direct abortions.
They are justified under a concept called the "principle of double effect." Under this principle, the death of the child is an unintended effect of an operation independently justified by the critical necessity of saving the mother's life.
The baby is the second patient
The preborn baby is a patient to be cared for and treated just as the mother is cared for and treated. This means that both the mother and her child are to be respected as human beings and are deserving of equal protection. There is a moral obligation to do everything medically possible to save the lives of both mother and child in life-threatening circumstances. Abortion will not "cure" any life-threatening condition a mother might have. In certain circumstances, pregnancy may, in fact, relieve a medical condition. The outcome of a problem" pregnancy can never be guaranteed, and we need to remember that doctors are not God.
The point: No exceptions
Once pro-lifers say that there can be a "good reason" to kill a preborn baby, the foundation of the pro-life position crumbles. Either the preborn child is a person, or the child is not a person. Since the preborn child is a person, there can be no exceptions for abortion.
The Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision allowed abortion on demand at any time during the full nine months of pregnancy. In his written opinion on the case, Justice Harry Blackmun made a point that goes right to the heart of the "life of the mother" exception. In Roe v. Wade, the state of Texas argued to the Supreme Court "that a fetus is entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protection as a person."
Blackmun pointed out the illogic of the statement in light of the state's "life of the mother" exception. "If the fetus is a person who is not to be deprived of life without due process of law," Blackmun wrote, "does not the Texas exception appear to be out of line with the [Fourteenth] Amendment's command?" Indeed, it was ruled out of line, thus paving the way for unlimited abortion in America.
News
How can something be both immense and minute at the same time, something upon which all of human history depends, yet fragile and almost non-existent to the eye? It is the union of an egg and sperm—an embryo. Such is God's way. He takes something smaller than a mustard seed and brings forth all of civilization. After creating everything in the universe single-handedly, He created us in his own image and bestowed upon us the power to become co-creators with Him.
I have often observed that, when it comes to defending legalized abortion, the pro-choice mob has more tricks than a monkey on a hundred yards of grapevine. Of course, this is probably a natural response given that the task they have chosen is to defend the indefensible.
In any event, among their catalogue of rhetorical gymnastics, one of the most amazing is their contention that the unborn child is simply a part of the mother's body. They make this argument hoping that the public will conclude that, since society would never interfere with a woman's decision to have her appendix out, it likewise has no place interfering with her decision to have an abortion.
The moratorium arose as an unexpected response to a United Nations' resolution calling on its member states to submit to a voluntary moratorium on the death penalty. The resolution, a "landmark step" passed in December, justified its call for the moratorium because the death penalty "undermines human dignity." Furthermore, the resolution states the moratorium contributes to a "progressive development of human rights."
While the world focuses its energies and its fears on a purported global-warming crisis, a new, not-yet-released documentary claims that if there is any global crisis, it is not global warming, but rather demographic winter.
Researchers at the University of Newcastle have created three-parent embryos in the lab as part of research into genetic diseases involving the mitochondria. The ten cloned embryos were constituted from genetic material collected from two women and one man, and the alteration—should the child be implanted in the womb and allowed to develop normally—could be carried through generations.
A toddler with a rare form of cancer has been saved after she became the second person in Britain to be given a transplant using frozen umbilical-cord stem cells.