If the United States Senate approves the nomination of Senator Tom Daschle as Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services, America will have an avowed Catholic pro-abort  at the helm of one of the most crucial departments in the entire federal government. Bob Ellis reports,

In 2003 Daschle voted for a Senate resolution endorsing the Roe v. Wade decision. He fought the partial birth abortion ban every step of the way until it was going to pass anyway, and he was finally forced to vote for it to provide cover for himself. National Right to Life Committee gave him only a 27% approval rating his last year in office, 0% the year before that, 11% before that, and 20% before that.

In fact, Daschle's pro-abortion stance was so bad that the bishop in Sioux Falls sent Daschle a letter instructing him to stop referring to himself publicly as a Catholic.

That's right. Bishop Robert Carlson, in a private letter to the former United States senator,  instructed him that he should no longer call himself Catholic, due to the fact that he adamantly supports abortion and does so in public without remorse. Writing about the incident in 2003, J. Bottum explained,

This year, on January 16, Bishop Carlson received additional ammunition for his discussions with Daschle when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued in Rome a "Doctrinal Note" on Catholics in political life. "A well-formed Christian conscience,"  the note declared, "does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals."

The Doctrinal Note marks at least the beginning of the end of the Vatican's toleration of what the pope's biographer George Weigel has called "Cuomoism" in the American Church: the effort to finesse abortion by declaring oneself personally opposed but politically supportive of laws allowing abortion. Catholics have a "duty to be morally coherent," the Doctrinal Note declares, and the Catholic fight on the life issues – abortion, euthanasia, and cloning – is not some merely prudential question, to be decided by political give and take. The Catholic Church doesn't take political positions – except when politics intrudes into something, like the right to life, that ought to be beyond the power of politicians.

However, this history of Daschle's fall from grace has apparently fallen on some extremely deaf ears in the Catholic community, particularly those running the Catholic Health Association. Just this week, in fact, Sister Carol Keehan, president/CEO of the Catholic Health Association, issued a statement:

The Catholic Health Association welcomes President-elect Barack Obama's official nomination today of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to be his secretary of Health and Human Services and the person to oversee a new White House Office of Health Reform. Also, we are pleased that Obama named Jeanne Lambrew to serve as deputy director of new White House Office of Health Reform.

We applaud the President-elect for choosing these two extraordinary and capable leaders who bring an enormous understanding of health care delivery issues and the need for meaningful reform for American families and businesses.

If I might be so bold, and with all due respect to Keehan, who apparently drafted this statement, describing a man who is committed to the act of aborting innocent children as an "extraordinary and capable" leader who has an "enormous understanding of health care delivery issues" is like describing Slobodan Milosevic  as a compassionate leader. This statement issued by the Catholic Health Association is an outrage and a scandal!

There is no defensible reason for making nice with a man who apparently has never heard of an abortion he could not approve. In fact, his record is so bad that I have created a scenario that I would like to share with you. Please read carefully and see what you think.

I imagine in my mind's eye the following drama being played out in Daschle's offices:
Researchers from Spain are sitting in the new secretary's office, waiting to present their new evidence to him that mothers who abort their children have high rates of psychological problems and much higher mortality rates than women who have not had abortions. The leader of the group, Carmen Gomez-Lavin, wants the secretary to know that her published findings prove the following: 
 

80 percent of women who had had abortions suffer from symptoms of depression, and 40 percent have contemplated suicide.

In addition, 70 percent of such women exhibit irritability, 60 percent suffer behavioral disturbances, 40 percent experience sexual disturbances, and 30 percent have been involved in drug abuse.

The report also states that women who obtain abortions have a mortality rate 3.5 to 6 times higher, and a suicide rate between 6 and 7 times higher than that of women who give birth.

As Lavin and her associates are waiting, Patsy Montgomery of Planned Parenthood in Fresno, California is explaining to the secretary that due to the failing economy, her organization needs more money because so many poor mothers need abortions, birth control and other services, which only Planned Parenthood is prepared to offer. She tells him, "We have more and more families who need access to family planning... and to basic reproductive healthcare." What do you think would occur next in such a scenario? Would Daschle commiserate with Planned Parenthood? Or would he escort the Planned Parenthood woman out, stating that new evidence about to be presented to him that proves abortion is not good for anyone – preborn child, mother or father?

Barring divine intervention, I think you can visualize the likely conclusion of this imaginary scenario. That being said, why in the world is Sister Keehan applauding a nomination that she should be working very hard to oppose?

We are living in an age of contradictions, and pretty much all of us realize that this is so. But sin is still sin, and murder is still murder. And Catholic still means upholding truth, not groveling at the feet of one of the most rabid pro-abortion politicians ever to sit in the United States Senate and, God forbid, soon to be Secretary of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Oh, yes! And in case you were unaware, Lambrew received a ringing endorsement from Planned Parenthood Federation of America's president, Cecile Richards. 

So much for upholding Catholic truth at the Catholic Health Association!

ACTION: Contact the Catholic Health Association with your concerns at Catholic Health Association, 1875 Eye St. NW, Suite 1000, Washington, D.C. 20006-5409, call 202-296-3993 or e-mail Sister Carol Keehan at ckeehan@chausa.org.

Responses

Thank you for pointing out the insanity that abounds. Can't help but think that if the US Bishops as a body were to have upheld Canon 915 much of this scandal could have been averted.
Perhaps, other Bishops like Carlson might step up and tell the CHA to stop calling itself Catholic. Or, they could at least ask "Sister" Katleen to stop "applauding" and "welcoming" those who align themselves with darkness and death.
"O Rising Dawn, Radiance of the Light eternal and Sun of Justice; Come, enlighten those who sit in darkness & the shadow of death."
Fr. William J Kuchinsky | December 18, 2008

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Dera Father Bill

As my son recently said to me, "Mom, we need to find one good Bishop who will stand up and act in faith and courage, and consistently lead his sheep!"

Amen, alleluia and thank you, Father.

Judie Brown
Judie Brown | December 19, 2008

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It is great to see a person with "Fr." in front of their name posting beautiful words to this blog. God bless, Father.
David Volk | December 19, 2008

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Planned Parenthood is at it again, folks, but this time they are in for a whole bushel of trouble. The heroine in our story is a vibrant young woman named Lila Rose, who has taken it upon herself to expose the evils of Planned Parenthood – evils that that many may find more than disturbing, given the fact that PP characterizes itself as "a trusted health care provider.” Lila Rose took a small video camera into two separate Planned Parenthood facilities in Indiana, one in Indianapolis and the other, in Bloomington. She has experience with this sort of thing, for she is the very same UCLA student who exposed the misdeeds of a Los Angeles Planned Parenthood and was subsequently threatened with a lawsuit for her heroism. Michelle Malkin reported on Rose at the time,

Rose recently went undercover at a local campus Planned Parenthood clinic, posing as a 15-year-old minor seeking an abortion after being impregnated by a 23-year-old man. California’s mandatory reporting laws require abortion providers to report statutory rape involving girls under the age of 16. Rose secretly captured video of her visit.

Jill Stanek did as well:

She has also infiltrated two UCLA student health clinics and published two incredible underground newsletters exposing workers who lied about pregnancy, encouraged abortions, and suggested how to circumvent the law. Lila also named their school administrator enablers.

Both of these excellent commentators have kept tabs on Lila, and now it appears that the chickens could be coming home to roost at Planned Parenthood.

Just this past Saturday, American Life League Vice President Jim Sedlak flew to Indiana to participate in a press conference hosted by Right to Life of Indianapolis, 40 Days for Life-Indianapolis and Voice of the Innocents. He spoke about the travesty of Planned Parenthood’s ongoing ability to claim complete deniability as it counsels minors to keep quiet about the older men who have sexually assaulted them, while simultaneously claiming to have sincere concern for women and families. He said,

We have much reason to believe that the children of Indiana are in grave danger thanks to the money-making agenda of Planned Parenthood. It is more financially advantageous for Planned Parenthood to foster a culture of child endangerment and rape – therefore, they are more than willing to hand these kids back over to their tormentors. We look to Attorney General Carter to enforce the law that protects against this gross abuse and safeguards the innocent children of this state.

During the same press conference, Marc Tuttle, president of Right to Life of Indianapolis, said,

While Planned Parenthood claims to be in the business of promoting health, their own counselors appear to thumb their noses at child abuse reporting laws and parental notification laws. Far from advocating the "health" of young women, Planned Parenthood is profiting by covering up their abuse. We are requesting [A]ttorney [G]eneral Carter [to] investigate Planned Parenthood and act to protect our state’s young women.

Only three days later, on Monday, December 15, Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter announced that his office will investigate Planned Parenthood, due to the allegations that have been made and the videos that are now part of the public record, thanks to Lila Rose and her collaborators.

And in breaking news from yesterday, December 16, Lila's organization, Live Action Films, just released another video – this time, from an Indianapolis, Indiana Planned Parenthood facility, which documents a Planned Parenthood employee counseling the young woman, "The surrounding states don't have parental consent. I can't tell you any more. So think about the states that are surrounding Indiana and do some research."

Furthermore, the Planned Parenthood staffer tells the 13-year-old girl, "We don't really care about who – what the age of the boyfriend.  It's consensual.  It's your choice." And it doesn’t even change when Rose reveals the age of her boyfriend to be 31 years of age! Here is a clear case of statutory rape, and Planned Parenthood doing nothing about it.

And that's not all. Students for Life of America recently released a video documenting a Charlotte, North Carolina Planned Parenthood facility covering up the statutory rape of a young girl who presented herself as a 15-year-old, by a 30-something man.

Earlier this year, the Alliance Defense Fund filed a friend of the court brief at the Ohio Supreme Court, after Planned Parenthood had been accused of systematically concealing cases of statutory rape and sexual abuse.

In an excellent legal analysis prepared last year, attorney Andrew Flusche revealed that the same pattern has emerged in other states. 

Numerous cases suggest that Planned Parenthood does not properly report statutory rape. Under state laws, workers at Planned Parenthood clinics are mandatory reporters. It must report child abuse to the authorities. In every state, a child under 14 years of age cannot consent to sexual activity. If Planned Parenthood knows that a young child is sexually active with an older partner, it must report this activity. However, it doesn’t always do so.

Planned Parenthood Golden Gate even bragged about one egregious case on its web site. It displayed a letter from a girl praising the clinic for keeping her rape secret. But the girl was 11 years old at the time of her rape by her 17-year-old boyfriend. After American Life League uncovered this story, Planned Parenthood promptly removed the letter, but did not even claim to have reported the rape to authorities.

Another alarming report came out of Waco, Texas. Planned Parenthood of Waco claims that it reports 98 statutory rape cases per year. However, Waco researchers dug into all official records and only found 7.3 reports per year. Planned Parenthood never explained the absence of each year’s 91 missing reports. Why isn’t it held accountable?

Flusche puts his finger on the real question, which appears to have no answer. This situation in Indiana is nothing new for Planned Parenthood, yet time and time again, the organization seems to escape the full force of criminal judgment against it. The truth is that, from all accounts, it seems that the American system of jurisprudence only works in the area of reproductive health when it accommodates the agenda of organizations like Planned Parenthood. So let’s not break out the champagne just yet.

Is there a sacred cow mooing in the background, orchestrating its own set of criminal laws or lack thereof in order to amply provide for full coffers, more dead bodies of preborn children and increasing victimization of the young? As Stop Planned Parenthood International has pointed out,  "Planned Parenthood sells sex, but merely as bait to steal souls – your children's souls."

This is the most urgent reason why not a day should go by without each of us raising our voices against this foul foe.

Responses

How awful! Apparatly they care more about protecting themselves and their money, then children!
Chantell
Chantell | December 17, 2008

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Recently, a document began circulating around the nation's capital, and it fell into our hands as well. It is cleverly titled Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration: Steps for Improvement and Change. The word on the street is that this intriguing piece of work won't stay in the public eye for too long, so if you want your own personal copy, you should probably download it sooner than later. That's recommendation number  one.

The list of organizations endorsing the goals set forth in this publication reads like the "who's who" of America's most committed abortion advocates. Everything from Planned Parenthood to the Sierra Club to NARAL is included. My guess is that the combined energy of all those listed means that President-elect Obama is in for more pressure than he could possibly imagine. But then again, he is a Chicago politician, so he probably knows how to keep or break a promise, depending on the stakes.

This 55-page manifesto appears designed to get the greatest amount of funding possible for everything from increased dollars for Title X of the Public Health Service Act  to demanding that more death and destruction be exported to the nations where the poor would much prefer a plow to a pill. But then again, America knows best, or so the population controllers think.

The list of needs is mainly focused on the multitudinous ways in which the government could expand its reach into sexual intimacy, so that not a single person can possibly evade the pressure to use birth control and abortion while remaining sexually active and self-indulgent. This may sound like a damning pronouncement about a very large group of high-profile organizations, but the history of the past 40 years tells us a lot about where they have succeeded and where they have failed.

The concept of failure is not in their strategy, of course, but that does not negate the reality. Here's but one example:

While the most recent reports say that abortion rates among teenagers are on the decline, they do not address the increasing incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among this same age group. Newsweek reported,

Public health initiatives have focused on reducing pregnancy and abortions among teenagers but haven't put as much thought into how to educate older groups. Teenagers, after all, do seem like the most vulnerable group. Millions of dollars have been poured into programs to educate teenagers about safe sex and contraceptives. By most accounts, those efforts have been fairly successful in targeting and changing the sexual health habits of teens. Centers for Disease Control statistics show teenage contraceptive use to have gone up noticeably between 1995 and 2005. The decline in abortion rates among teens mirrors a decline in teen pregnancies--from 107 for every 1,000 teenagers ages 15-19 in 1982, to 75 per 1,000 teenagers in 2002 (the most recent year for which data is available).

Please note that Newsweek says that teenagers are the most vulnerable group, but does not explain that teens are also the only group literally held hostage during scurrilous Planned Parenthood sex instruction courses, which are even more prevalent today than they were 10 years ago.

Newsweek appears to have literally partnered with organizations that promote sex education. Such people want to make sure that children of all ages are exposed to the philosophy underlying the reproductive health cartel. The sexualization of our children is the goal. These children are not having abortions at the rate they used to, but the problems they are dealing with – be they emotional, spiritual or physical – are not addressed in this one-sided examination of statistics.

Obviously, from Planned Parenthood's perspective, there has to be even more funding because it can point to the decreased teen abortion rate as a reason to provide more funds so that it can convince (brainwash) even more young people to buy into the sexual revolution it has fostered over the years.

One of the downsides of this sort of one-sided propagandizing is the fact that today, one of four adolescents has a sexually transmitted disease. Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America points out,

Pushing kids to be sexually active, withholding medical screenings to deny parents information about their teens, and encouraging young women to skip screenings for STDs are irresponsible policies that have put teens' health at risk.
 
Public health officials need to admit their failures that have led to kids paying the price. Funding irresponsible sex-ed programs, ones that encourage kids to be sexually active, twelve times higher than funding abstinence programs unsurprisingly results in more kids being sexually active. Experts note that a key prevention strategy is screening for STDs. Yet by making the morning-after pill available without a prescription, officials are discouraging young women from seeing a doctor when they are at risk of an STD.

Wright's analysis of the promiscuity project pushed by reproductive health proponents is accurate, but is not the tune the pied pipers of promiscuity play in their new document. Quite the contrary! Those who favor more government funding for "comprehensive sex education" programs are the very people who will not address failures, even when the result is death. In fact, according to Planned Parenthood itself, its number-one goal is as follows: 

"Planned Parenthood will ensure that sexuality is understood as an essential, lifelong aspect of being human and that it is celebrated with respect, openness, and mutuality."

In response to this Jim Sedlak, STOPP's national director, writes,

Wow. Planned Parenthood doesn't see a cure for cervical cancer, or breast cancer, or stopping the spread of pelvic inflammatory disease or chlamydia as its number-one goal. Rather, it will focus its top priority on making sure that sex is celebrated!

We thought we must be misinterpreting this goal. Planned Parenthood provided eight paragraphs of further explanation of what it meant and we eagerly read it for clarification. What we found was PP talking about "Our statement of beliefs attests . . . to our recognition of the joy and fulfillment that the healthy expression of sexuality can bring to the human experience;" and "In many industrialized countries, parents and social institutions foster healthier, more accepting, and positive feelings about sexuality among young people;" and "Discomfort with sexuality . . . inhibits many parents from talking with their teens and prevents them from achieving positive, joyful sexual relationships themselves;" and "many politicians seem to want to punish people for non-procreative sex;" and, finally, "We must help people understand that the mind, body, and spirit are enriched by the healthy and responsible enjoyment of sex."

No, nobody is misinterpreting the blatant bias against human dignity that is fundamental to every page of this new document.

To my mind, the future of our entire nation, which resides in the hands of our children and our children's children, is at stake. We cannot allow Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration: Steps for Improvement and Change to become the social policy platform of the next four years.

So, sharpen your pencils, rev up your computers, buy some post cards, sign the Stop Planned Parenthood Tax Funding petition and get ready to exert pressure on any elected official who even tries to support the trash that is masquerading as strategy in this document.
 

Responses

Also, "sharpen your pencils, rev up you computers," et al, to encourage our Bishops post election promises to fight against this "trash" (more accurately: "toxic waste").
Come, Lord Jesus!
Fr William J Kuchinsky | December 17, 2008

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With only 10 days left until Christmas and a waning economy threatening retailers, it is remarkable to read about a business that is increasing its effectiveness and bringing in the bucks. I am not referring to the latest craze in footwear, but rather a far more intricate market … baby production.

Interesting? Well, perhaps it is better to describe this increase in sales as troublesome at nearly every level. Recently the Wall Street Journal reported that some fertility clinics are experiencing a surge in the number of women making applications for the possible sale of their eggs, or to serve as surrogates for women who want a child but do not want to or cannot carry their baby themselves. And as they are quick to point out, the actual donation of a female egg carries risks of its own, even to donors who stand to reap the reward of $3,000 or more if they qualify. The report states,

Once selected, an egg donor undergoes several weeks of daily hormone injections to synchronize her menstrual cycle with the recipient's, stimulate her ovarian follicles and then ripen the eggs. Donors are monitored every few days with blood tests and ultrasound scans. The eggs are harvested using a needle through the vaginal wall, with the donor under general anesthesia.

Many applicants turn back once they learn what's involved. "The other thing is the lifestyle changes required: no drinking, no smoking, NO SEX ... that's the one that gets them the most," e-mails Darlene Pinkerton, executive director of A Perfect Match in San Diego, which offers up to $50,000 for egg donors with high SATs. She says she's seen a doubling of inquiries recently. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine considers compensation above $10,000 to be inappropriate; Ms. Pinkerton argues that the offer brings in donors who might not otherwise be interested.

There are some risks to the donor – including possible bleeding and infection at the injection sites, and, in rare cases, ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, in which several dozen eggs ripen at once and the ovaries become dangerously swollen. But careful monitoring can avoid that. "If egg donation is done in an experienced clinic, that complication rate is very, very low and the success rates are quite high," says Zev Rosenwaks, director of reproductive medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, which performs about 200 egg transfers per year, more than half of which result in live births.

In the event you are curious about why a company like A Perfect Match would be concerned about eggs from women with high SAT scores, you clearly have not been keeping up with designer baby  marketing strategies. These strategies focus on the same thing: ordering a baby that meets your specifications with the option of killing him or her if there appears to be a problem at some point during the gestation of that baby.

When the term "designer baby" made it into the Oxford English Dictionary, it was only a matter of time before what once appeared to be pure science fiction would become a practice the upper crust would find appealing.

If you are still incredulous, this excerpt from A Perfect Match's web site will give you a small glimpse of how designer baby marketers attempt to cater to prospective parents who know exactly what they want:

While many people do not understand or agree that personality or intelligence matters when it comes to choosing a donor, there are many studies that show both personality and intelligence are very heritable traits. A Perfect Match is committed to allowing our intended parents the right to choose their own egg donor based on the specific characteristics each individual family deems most important to them. Not every intended parent or infertile family values the same thing in an egg donor, and A Perfect Match believes there is no one who can make a better decision about the right donor for a family than the family itself. For some Intended families, ethnicity will be the most important item, but for others, it will be hair and eye color. For some it will be the intelligence of a donor demonstrated through SAT scores, ACT scores, MCAT or LSAT scores.

By now, you have probably gotten the picture about as well as anyone can who still believes that God is the author of life and that children are a gift rather than a commodity to be examined, tweaked, observed and perhaps discarded for one reason or another. Picking a child as one might pick a new car simply does not compute for the vast majority of Americans  … at least not yet.

But there are no guarantees about what the future may hold nor is there any real hope that the baby manufacturing business will come to its senses and cease operations in the near future. This is why Focus on the Family Action's senior bioethics analyst, Carrie Gordon Earll, commented,  "Even if the risks are minimal, this type of idea enters into creating life outside of the marital union, and that’s something Focus on the Family does not support." And as Wall Street Journal writer Thomas Frank pointed out in a recent editorial,

When money is exchanged for pregnancy, some believe, surrogacy comes close to organ-selling, or even baby-selling. It threatens to commodify not only babies, but women as well, putting their biological functions up for sale like so many Jimmy Choos. If surrogacy ever becomes a widely practiced market transaction, it will probably make pregnancy into just another dirty task for the working class, with wages driven down and wealthy couples hiring the work out because it's such a hassle to be pregnant.

Sound surreal? Believe me, it is not; it is a practice that is growing in popularity and is, even in a bleak economy, destined for greater success in the future, according to many. The bottom line, no pun intended, with companies that profit from the marketing of baby making, is that pregnancy is simply a mechanical function of the human body. It can be planned and executed, along with the proper quality control standards in place at every step of the process.

Perhaps the suffering automotive industry should take a cue from these folks.

On the other hand, it may be high time for moral sanity to make a comeback, which is in my view, why the Vatican's timely new document, Dignitas Personae, is so urgently needed. In section 16, we find the correct explanation regarding this crazed science that equates human beings with product lines:
 

In reality, it seems that some researchers, lacking any ethical point of reference and aware of the possibilities inherent in technological progress, surrender to the logic of purely subjective desires and to economic pressures which are so strong in this area.

And as we all know, where money is involved and huge sums are to be made, economic principles frequently give way to greed and corruption. Such is the case with the baby making industry.

Such reproductive technologies embody the philosophy that is the cornerstone of the culture of death: Human beings are mere machines and the "production" of their offspring is just one of the many mechanical functions performed by the machinery.

Responses

Terrible! Humans are NOT machine's!
Chantell
Chantell | December 15, 2008

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Have you ever noticed that pro-choice people say abortion helps with the over-populated earth, yet they are for cloning, (which would make more people), they are for surrogates and IVF which would make more people on this earth just not the natural way. They are all for these "new" technologies that create new people, just not the old fashion way... sad isn't it?
elisabeth | December 17, 2008

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American Life League is grateful to the Vatic an Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for today’s release of its new document, Instruction Dignitas Personae on Certain Bioethical Questions. While we are concerned that the document does not clarify the word “conception” immediately after the first time it is used, upon reading further, we do appreciate the fact that the Vatican has made it clear that “conception,” as used in this document, refers to all human beings irrespective of the method of reproduction employed. The clarification is evident in the document’s language, though not explicitly stated at the outset. For example, in Section 5, the document states,

Indeed, the reality of the human being for the entire span of life, both before and after birth, does not allow us to posit either a change in nature or a gradation in moral value, since it possesses full anthropological and ethical status (emphasis added). The human embryo has, therefore, from the very beginning, the dignity proper to a person.

On the subject of embryo adoption, with reference to those thousands upon thousands of human embryonic children who are currently living in a frozen state, the Vatican has set forth an honest answer to this most tragic situation. In Section 19, the document states,

All things considered, it needs to be recognized that the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved (emphasis added). Therefore John Paul II made an “appeal to the conscience of the world’s scientific authorities and in particular to doctors, that the production of human embryos be halted, taking into account that there seems to be no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of ‘frozen’ embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and should therefore be protected by law as human persons.”

While it is heartbreaking to realize the truth of this statement, it is yet another reason why American Life League will work with diligence to assure personhood for these and all innocent human beings.

We would be remiss if we did not quote from the document yet again, to remind our fellow Americans that the entire practice of embryo reduction, based on “quality control” notions, is indeed a heinous crime and a violation of the rights due to each innocent embryonic child. In Section 21, the document states,

From the ethical point of view, embryo reduction is an intentional selective abortion (emphasis added). It is in fact the deliberate and direct elimination of one or more innocent human beings in the initial phase of their existence and as such it always constitutes a grave moral disorder.

We are grateful as well that the Vatican has drawn attention to the “interceptive” and “contragestative” actions of many so-called contraceptive chemicals and devices, making it crystal clear that “the use of means of interception and contragestation fall within the sin of abortion and are gravely immoral” (emphasis added).

The document Dignitas Personae is a welcome statement that clarifies, in nearly all cases, the teachings of the Catholic Church regarding the human person, his identity, his value and his integrity.
 

Responses

I'm not Catholic, but this is great!
Chantell
Chantell | December 12, 2008

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Mrs. Brown,
I understand that the creation of the embryo by in-vitro fertilization is immoral, but I have difficulty understanding why the embryo cannot be adopted by a married man and woman. Do you understand that it is the Church's teaching in this document that the embryo is to forever remain in liquid nitrogen, or must rescuers develop an artificial womb so that the embryo can grow to infancy? I find the situation similar to war: the Church teaches that murder is wrong, but killing does take place when one is defending one's self against an aggressor. Do you think the frozen embryo presents "an exceptional situation"?

Thank you for your pro-life work.
Paul Bergeron | December 13, 2008

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Dear Paul

As you know, I have been an advocate of embryo adoption, but frankly, when I sit down and think through what this new document states, I am left agreeing with it.

I would have to say, in all honesty, that based on the text of Donum Vitae, which is now 21 years old, there is nothing else that the Vatican could say on this subject. First and foremost, though the world waxes cold to it, the truth is that IVF is gravely immoral and unethical. What the practice has literally created is a mentality of farming children in order to weed out the undesirables, have spares in waiting in case a cycle fails and so forth. This commodification of children has led, as the Holy Father said years ago, to a grave injustice. Now that this document has come out, there will be complaints about what it states regarding the fate of these embryonic children, but the real question is why are they there? Why were they produced/manufactured? The answers to those questions support the Church teaching that IVF should never be practiced. IF society had listened to the Church years ago, this question would not now be upon us.

Each of those frozen embryos is a person; each deserves to be taken home by their own parents and each deserves to have a home, that is, if they survive the thawing process.

What's wrong with their parents? These parents have indeed orphaned their own children because their self interest has been satisfied and, to my mind, they could care less about their children yet to be welcomed into the family, yet to be given a chance at life. This is not the Church's fault.

This is the result of a cultural attitude that denigrates the worth and dignity of the being. The plight of these embryonic children must be addressed by their parents.

Judie Brown
Judie Brown | December 17, 2008

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Contemporary sloganeering, coupled with biased reporting, is a sure recipe for misinformation. Recent writings prove the point far better than I ever could on my own.

Take, for example, this National Public Radio headline: "Traffic accidents top cause of fatal child injuries."

This article is not about scenes outside abortion mills where clients are trampling each other in order to be first in line to kill their baby. The reporter is writing about actual traffic in the streets and the accidents that occur when vehicles collide with each other or immovable objects such as telephone poles. The report tells us, "Nearly a million children worldwide die every year as a result of unintentional injuries, and the biggest killer is traffic accidents, according to a report from the World Health Organization."

This report is erroneous. The number of children murdered by abortion worldwide every year numbers more than 50 million! This fact should be, overwhelmingly, the top news story worldwide. But lest we forget, in order for that to occur, reporters would have to recognize preborn children as persons rather than political issues or blobs of cells.

This refusal to face reality is revealed repeatedly in the language of abortion proponents. When the New York Times published letters responding to Ross Douthat's commentary, "Abortion Politics Didn't Doom the G.O.P.", we glimpsed how our foes cower behind cute phrases and idiotic words.
One Connecticut woman writes, "The leaders of the anti-choice movement need to understand that pro-choice Republicans are not absolutists."

Oh my, what a grand buffet of slippery slogans in that line! All of a sudden, defenders of human beings, each of whom should have an equal right to life outside the womb as well as inside are labeled "anti-choice." The reason is clear: Those who are "pro-choice" are the good guys, even though the choice to which she refers is the decision to execute an innocent human being simply because of where he resides at the moment.

Such nonsense should make Americans think twice about how the pro-aborts' twisted logic works, but first they would have to think. That seems to be an entirely different problem for far too many, even among our friends. But I digress.

The lady from the Constitution State tells the readers that pro-abort Republicans "are not absolutists," and she support her thesis by citing polls that, she claims, show that most Republicans and pro-life voters believe "the issue of abortion should be decided by a woman, not the government." In other words, the fate of an innocent person should be left in the hands of his mother, not the law of the land.

That might be true in a sane society, but in America, there is now a ravenous desire to kill that which is inconvenient, so her statement flies in the face of what we know is true.

In the same letters column, another commentator writes, "An unexpected, unwanted pregnancy can be mentally, emotionally and physically devastating for a woman. It can be a financial catastrophe (more than half of all teenage mothers end up on welfare) and can result in a woman's death. Exactly which part of this agonizing ordeal is Ross Douthat willing to compromise on?"

Notice the emphasis on the negative once again. But this time it is the child himself who becomes unacceptable. Any time I see the phrase "unplanned" or "unwanted" pregnancy, I immediately wonder quite the opposite of what this New Yorker is telling her fellow readers. I wonder why the supporters of abortion are so fearful of using the accurate terms that apply to pregnancy, such as "child in the womb," "baby" and "mother." It would seem that those words stir feelings of indignation and rage in such people, rather than helping them see, through the eyes of reason, that their perspective is in error. Funny how such simple truths can make a pro-abort come unglued, isn't it?

But you cannot deceive the public if you choose your words honestly, so that accurate visions of motherhood and children come into focus. Why else would someone describe a little baby as a "financial catastrophe" or his mere existence as a possible threat to life and limb?

Fear tactics are the framework in which pro-abortion logic works best. This is why a mother who is experiencing pregnancy at a time in her life when she least expected it is frequently described as a woman with a crisis pregnancy,  rather than an expectant mother in need of support – be it emotional, spiritual, financial or all three. Why muddy the waters with reality?

But the most outrageous line in Ms. Herzmansky's letter, hands-down, is this one: "President-elect Barack Obama and the Supreme Court must continue to protect the lives of women by maintaining pro-choice laws. On this there can be no compromise."

Never mind what might happen if the president-elect and the Supreme Court justices chose to protect every single human being's life! Don't think about the possibility of these political powers finally telling parents that it is their moral obligation to accept responsibility for their decision to become sexually involved and choose life for the children they have indeed procreated themselves. God forbid that the nation would witness return to civility after the barbarism of the past 35 years.

"No compromise," says she. Well on that, we agree. The only difference is that we will never compromise the truth; we will never settle for death, and we will never manipulate words, scientific facts or Christian principles to achieve victory.

American Life League exists specifically to insist on personhood, and that is why we will not condone, agree to or otherwise buy into any proposal that omits even one baby from the total protection that each and every human being deserves.

No compromise, no apologies and, most importantly, no junk jargon. We speak the truth, and sooner or later, the people will listen.

Responses

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/opinion/l10abortion.html

Dear Judie, you respond well to the pro-abort letters at this site. The one pro-life letter, from Michael J. Burke, expresses my voting rationale.
David Volk | December 11, 2008

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Of all the now familiar terms we have seen and heard applied to preborn children, perhaps the most heartless is "Embryos on ice." While the term was coined by a Raleigh, North Carolina News & Observer reporter covering fertility clinics, the idea reappeared just a few days ago in a New York Times article entitled "Parents Torn Over Fate of Frozen Embryos."

The underlying idea in both articles is that parents are faced with a dilemma involving "extra" embryos that were not needed for the in vitro fertilization procedure they underwent in order to have a child. These parents – loving and well meaning, I am sure – have unwittingly contributed to the ongoing growth of the culture of death by agreeing with the hypothesis that there are embryonic children who are somehow less human than those who were implanted in their mom and brought to term. It is as if there are some embryonic children who are really children and others who are not.

In the News & Observer article, published in July 2007, Tim and Kelly Jo Vancelette had embryos created to "start a family when they could not conceive on their own." In 2004, their twins, conceived through IVF, were born. Subsequently, "the Vancelettes were faced with an increasingly common dilemma: what to do with their unused embryos." The report states,

Their choices are limited. With a ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, they have few avenues for scientific donations. They could give the fertilized eggs to another couple, they could have the embryos destroyed, or they could freeze them.

For now, they're freezing them. The Vancelettes think they may want one more child, though they probably won't need five embryos for that.
 

Faced with a similar dilemma, the Bests, featured by the New York Times, are perplexed. The report states,

Although the couple, who live in Brentwood, Tenn., have known for years that they wanted no more children, deciding what to do with the extra embryos has been a dilemma. He would have them discarded; she cannot.

"There is no easy answer," said Ms. Best, a nurse. "I can't look at my twins and not wonder sometimes what the other nine would be like. I will keep them frozen for now. I will search in my heart.'"
 

Clearly, there is suffering, in one way or another, for those parents facing the very same questions that these two couples are facing. Perhaps they hoped IVF would be a magic bullet and that they could somehow resolve this quandary without paying dearly, both emotionally and spiritually. No matter how they deal with their embryonic children who were not fortunate enough to be chosen for possible birth, a difficult decision will have to be made.

But what disturbs many of us most of all is the manner in which these children are discussed, even by their parents. It is difficult to conceive of a mother who could reflect on her entire family and not be torn, at some level, by the reality of her babies left in a sort of cryogenic limbo.

It is my humble opinion that regardless of the praise that many, even in the Catholic community, give to the "miracle" of reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization, there is a dehumanization taking place that is unhealthy for the parents, the children who have been welcomed and the children who may be killed, dissected and killed, or simply left in a tray somewhere to die.

Yes, we are talking about children. We are not talking about "fertilized eggs" or "leftovers" or rejects tossed off an assembly line. Even though the media would like us to think of these children as nothing but cells with no identity and no humanity, we know that quite the opposite is the case.

And what is perhaps most surprising about these parents, according to a recent survey of 1,020 fertility patients at nine clinics, which will be published in the Fertility and Sterility medical journal, is that there is a disconnect – between what they have chosen and what they hope for – that defies logic. The Times reports,

Among patients who wanted no more children, 53 percent did not want to donate their embryos to other couples, mostly because they did not want someone else brining up their children, or did not want their own children to worry about encountering an unknown sibling someday.

Forty-three percent did not want the embryos discarded. About 66 percent said they would be likely to donate the embryos for research, but that option was available at only four of the nine clinics in the survey. Twenty percent said they were likely to keep the embryos frozen forever.

Obviously, some of these parents don't view their embryonic children as "their own children." Perhaps the problem is that among these parents there is a twisted view of when their children are actually children and when they are something less than children.  Perhaps they really don't want to face the fact that, regardless of what their future may hold, they are the parents of every one of their children – embryonic and otherwise. Maybe they find it hard to fathom their own decision to suspend some of their children in a time warp.

It is appalling, is it not, that embryonic children are really not perceived as children even by their own parents? I will list but a few of the ideas that arise when researchers and reporters ask the parents what they might do with their "unused" children. Perhaps this list will give you some idea of how incredibly inhumane our culture has become as preborn babies continue to be perceived as property with expiration dates.

• Donate a child.

• Agree to allowing the child's body to be sliced up so a stem cell can be harvested.

• Discard the embryonic child as though he were nothing more than a rotten egg.

• Thaw the child out and watch him die so that he can then be disposed of.

• Have the child placed in the womb during a time in the woman's cycle when she is not likely to become pregnant so the child can die there instead.

Note: I use the word child because that is who we are speaking about, despite the fact that the articles' authors and the parents quoted therein don't use that word when referring to human embryos.

When the Catholic Church issued Donum Vitae (Instruction on Respect for Human Life) in 1987,  many decried the document as heartless. To my mind, it is among the most prophetic teachings ever promulgated. I dare not quote it in its entirety here, but I will provide an excerpt that summarizes perfectly what I have just explained to you:

Fertilization is licitly sought when it is the result of a "conjugal act which is per se suitable for the generation of children to which marriage is ordered by its nature and by which the spouses become one flesh."  But from the moral point of view procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not desired as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say of the specific act of the spouses' union [emphasis in original]…

Such fertilization entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children.

This quote exposes the tragedy that is inherent in the medicalized manufacture of embryonic children. In vitro fertilization and other such techniques are not miracles. They are practices that are morally illicit. They are practices that have resulted in the deaths of millions of preborn children whose fate was decided by people who refused to understand that they were in fact sanctioning the murder of human beings with characteristics not unlike their own at the same stage of human development.

Such practices are among the best arguments for personhood . By restoring the legal recognition of personhood to every innocent human being from his beginning, practices such as IVF will cease, because every human embryo will have the very same rights you and I have. Personhood now!  

Responses

Things like this aren't only horrible, they are ridiculas!
Chantell
Chantell | December 10, 2008

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Thank you, Judie. Your post helps me appreciate all the more the horror of commonly accepted practices. Also, the beauty and treasure of our Church's wisdom.
David Volk | December 11, 2008

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http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=92487

An article posted on EWTN's website says, "In a report published at the end of last November, the IPF estimated that at present, abortion has become the leading cause of death in Spain, with 1.2 million deaths since 1985." Imagine, intentional killing is the leading cause of death in a "civilized" society. Where does abortion rank in our country's causes of death?
David Volk | December 11, 2008

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http://www.ncbcenter.org/FrTad_MSOOB_42.asp

Models other than ours, here in the U.S., exist.
David Volk | December 12, 2008

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David

The Embryo Protection Law would be a wonderful addition to the legal framework in the United States, but as you know, the argument that these children need protection begs the question of personhood, which thusfar has been denied by lawmakers, judges and the white house.

Judie Brown
Judie Brown | December 17, 2008

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