Paula Gianino, CEO of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis region, is having a real problem with the effort to achieve legal recognition of personhood for all human beings—born and preborn. She has come to the conclusion that pro-personhood Americans don’t believe in “the right to safe, legal abortion.” http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/mailbag/article_e847eb82-8194-5fa8-bdef-0ef71ba74bcb.html

Of course, she’s right, since those of us who understand basic biology and human embryology know that direct abortion kills a living human being. http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/irv/irv_01lifebegin1.html Apparently, Gianino missed that chapter in her Biology 101 class.

She writes that a recently approved informed-consent law in Missouri http://www.kmov.com/news/local/Ethics-abortion-remain-at-end-of-Missouri-Legislature-93769874.html “is intended to add more distress, costs, burdens and barriers to abortion. It will create unnecessary delays and increase mid-trimester abortions (which has happened since the first waiting period law was passed).” http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/mailbag/article_e847eb82-8194-5fa8-bdef-0ef71ba74bcb.html

It’s this sort of rhetoric that helps proponents of abortion salve their consciences as they consistently deny that the act of abortion takes the life of a human being. The focus of such hyperbole is on the female, the expectant mother, who is never referenced as an expectant mother because abortion enthusiasts don’t admit that a child is growing inside his mother. Gianino wouldn’t write that abortion itself distresses and burdens the child in the womb to death, because she doesn’t believe it.

Gianino tells the reader, “An embryo and the fetus, for most of its nine months in utero, is not separate from the woman. It is completely dependent on the woman for its growth and development. Anti-choice groups disregard the woman entirely; the woman’s life, health and future do not matter. Elevating the status of the fetus over that of the woman is dangerous and dismissive of women, trivializes the issue and strips women of their integrity and humanity.”

First and most importantly, the preborn child has to depend on his mom for nutrition and housing, but so does a newborn infant. I never met a newborn who could lead a life of total independence. Why doesn’t Gianino give this little fact some thought? Just because the preborn child needs his mother in order to survive shouldn’t give anyone license to murder him.

Further, if pro-life Americans didn’t care for the expectant mom and want to do everything we could to assist her and her baby throughout her pregnancy and beyond, if she needs it, we wouldn’t be living up to our pro-life principles. We care deeply for each of these moms and their children, which is more than proven by the numerous pregnancy resource centers run by pro-lifers worldwide. http://www.heartbeatinternational.org/

This outpouring of unconditional love is also the reason why it’s pro-life people who minister to the post-abortive moms. http://www.rachelsvineyard.org Once she realizes that the actions she took have resulted in her being the mother of a dead child instead of a living, breathing bundle of joy, she can suffer numerous problems and even life-threatening illness. http://www.cirtl.org/syndrome.htm Pro-lifers are there for her because we care.

Stripping women of their integrity and humanity is precisely what happens every time a Planned Parenthood employee or any “reproductive health” specialist, for that matter, ignores the human personhood of the baby and the expectant mom’s real needs, focusing instead on getting rid of the “problem pregnancy” by requiring payment for and then committing an abortion.

Integrity begins with honoring the truth, and respect for humanity begins with recognition of motherhood and the fact that two people are involved in that pregnancy—mother and child.

So, if Planned Parenthood’s standard euphemisms are correctly translated, you’ll see that Gianino tells the truth when she writes, “Anti-choice groups never have worked with us on much-needed prevention programs for family planning or sexual health education. They openly oppose such bills and do nothing to address unintended pregnancy.”

If a pro-life American were to sidle up next to someone who promotes the killing of preborn children by denying their personhood, that would be an act of hypocrisy. I don’t know a single pro-life person who’s willing to do such a thing. We can’t help it that folks like Gianino refuse to recognize motherhood as a blessing but instead promote “reproductive choice” and a woman’s freedom to choose to kill her child.

Until such ideologues understand truth for what it really is, we have nothing to talk about.

An “unintended pregnancy” is a baby, and intended or not, that baby was planned by God. Our job is to affirm him and his mom, not betray her trust with falsehood.

No—we won’t sit down with folks who ignore undeniable facts. What we will do is keep struggling against the purveyors of death and destruction until every last one of them is out of business.

 

WesternFront America

By Kathleen Walker

Tireless efforts by pro-life leaders, dedicated to the rights of the preborn baby, are surging forth in Colorado. Stopping at nothing to ensure the right to life of all humans, these men and women of Colorado Personhood are hoping to make monumental changes for the state and its residents.

When Colorado pro-life folks decided to pursue human personhood four years ago, everybody who was anybody in pro-life political circles either panned the idea, saying the time was not right, or publicly argued that it wasn’t prudent to talk about preborn babies as persons because America wasn’t ready to hear the message. All gobbledygook to be sure!

For those of us who know that the battle to end the killing of the innocent can never be won through court cases or political/legislative efforts, human personhood is the only game in town. By talking about it, providing education and focusing on the child as someone whose human rights are being violated every time one of them is murdered chemically, medically, surgically or through human embryonic stem cell research, we are convincing more and more people that abortion is not an issue but, rather, a deadly act.

That is why American Life League has been talking about human personhood for more than 31 years.

And now strong, dedicated, young, aggressive pro-life leaders, like Keith Mason http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/2624912556.htmland Gualberto Garcia Jones http://www.personhoodusa.com/content/leadershipfrom the Colorado team, are doing likewise. For them and their legion of volunteers, the past four years in Colorado have been a time of testing, honing and now possibly achieving the first-ever state human personhood amendment to a state constitution.

The excitement is electric!

How did this happen? These young men, and their fellow champions Cal Zastrow http://prolifeprofiles.com/Cal and Rev. Walter Hoye, http://www.earnedmedia.org/phusa0721.htm have dedicated their lives to the truth that every single human being is a person from his biological beginning. Therefore each of these people logically deserves to have his rights protected by society and by the law. Through their single-minded efforts to teach, preach and literally walk the streets of Colorado, they have converted many, including a number of candidates who won their primary elections—in upsets we might add.

Having already said that we cannot achieve an end to the gruesome slaughter of innocents through political channels, you may think the above is contradictory. You would be wrong.

Had it not been for the sacrificial efforts of Garcia Jones, Mason and many others in Colorado over the past four years, hoeing the ground, planting seeds, spreading the word and focusing NOT on abortion but on who exists at the moment of creation—whether it occurs in a petri dish or a mother’s body—none of these candidates would have noticed this little known movement we call PERSONHOOD NOW!

Now that there are capable men in the public eye who have defied the odds and can speak clearly about Amendment 62, it is the responsibility of those of us who strive to convert the culture to step up our activities in the educational arena, and to do so with gusto, with financial support and with a whole lot of spiritual intercessory prayer.

It is my hope that you will join in these efforts no matter where you live. Time is of the essence and Personhood Colorado needs our support.

And lest we forget, the soul of this nation needs conversion! Through this human personhood message, each of us can offer all we do to God, hoping for a spiritual renewal in America.

Let’s face it, there are too many in the so-called pro-life political movement who have acknowledged long ago that the best way to be a foot stool for the GOP is to keep abortion around, nibbling at the outer edges in order to give an appearance of victory while carrying on with politics as usual.

That has got to end, and now we have the potential of turning such defeatism and despair into heroic action for human rights.

Come and join us! It will be a great experience because win, lose or draw, the Lord is in charge and we are blessed to be serving Him.

Contact Information:

Personhood USA: http://www.personhoodusa.com/

Personhood Colorado: http://personhoodcolorado.com/

Personhood background material and talking points: http://www.all.org/personhood/

© Kathleen Walker

 

WesternFront America

When it comes to stem cells, it seems to be every man for himself. Far too few seem to be able to get all the facts straight. In the words of Dr. Dianne Irving, “Pro-life people need to be very careful not to allow the still controversial iPS stem cells to slip through without scrutiny simply by calling it ‘adult stem cell’ research.” That’s what the Washington Times attempted to do recently. It’s getting more difficult with the passing of each day to sort out fact from fiction, as our commentary makes painfully clear.

Headlines and news itself are frequently misleading. Among recent examples is the celebratory announcement “Green light given to the world’s first stem cell treatment on humans.” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1299518/Green-light-treat-humans-stem-cells.html

The accurate headline would have read, “Green light given to the world’s first human embryonic stem cell treatment on humans,” thus alerting the reader immediately that the intent of California’s biotech giant, Geron, is to kill younger human beings for the purpose of perhaps providing groundbreaking treatment to older human beings suffering from spinal cord injuries.

At this point there is no guarantee that the experimental treatment will bear fruit for the victim of the injury, but every guarantee that human beings will be killed so that the unproven procedure can be tested and applied.

A second headline addressing the same story http://www.ewtnnews.com/new.php?id=1314 “Human trials for embryonic stem cell treatment a crime, says Bishop Sgreccia” puts the subject in the proper moral perspective. The Vatican is continuing to expose the lies behind the cruel promises made by Geron’s experts—professionals who are willing to kill embryonic babies by denying that they are, in fact, anything more than leftover trash. Sgreccia defined the experiment as a moral crime regardless of whether it succeeds or fails.

Sgreccia stressed the fact, overwhelmingly denied in the secular media, that the use of human embryos in treatments should be rejected, “not only from the Catholic moral code but by whoever respects the human individual.”

At the same time that Geron was making its misleading pitch and the Vatican was attempting to set the record straight, another announcement came from Dr. Thomas Einhorn in a report entitled “Adult stem cell research far ahead of embryonic.” http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hrAL-sM2yHMyelQ3ZOhCiuZYjYvgD9HB46M80

While Einhorn’s work is at this juncture anecdotal, it should be of immense national interest. Einhorn treated a patient suffering from a broken ankle that was not healing. With a needle, he extracted bone marrow from the patient’s pelvic bone, reduced it to about four teaspoons of “rich red liquid,” and injected that into the patient’s ankle. In just four months the gentleman’s ankle had healed completely.

The most curious aspect of this single experience, as well as the others cited in the news report, is that success with ethical sources of stem cells have never received the national attention that is focused on the immoral practice of human embryonic stem cell research. It seems that the media is promoting snake oil salesmen who always fail to deliver while ignoring the real success stories that crop up constantly. Something is definitely wrong with this picture!

A final example tells the story. This disturbingly misleading headline, “Adult stem cells said to ‘forget’ retooling.” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/19/adult-stem-cells-said-to-forget-retooling/ invites attention to a report that is fraught with error. To begin, as Professor Dianne Irving pointed out, the Washington Times’ headline is inaccurate. http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/irvi/irvi_69ipsstemcell.html. The first is the factual error that the stem cells in question are not and never were “adult stem cells.” They are rather “induced pluripotent stem cells” (iPS). The difference between the two is stark: adult stem cells are never manipulated to become “pluripotent” whereas iPS stem cells are. What this means is that iPS stem cells can be deprogrammed and are, in fact, capable of being reverted back to new single-cell human embryos who would, in turn, be destroyed.

The other disturbing fact about what is missing from this news report is that, in order for iPS research to take place, “biological materials” are being used “that are derived originally from human embryos and human fetuses.”

Finally, Washington Times’ reporters even misquote Debra Vinnedge, founder of Children of God for Life. Though in this case, as Dr. Irving explains, reporters as well as the general public do not have the scientific background required in order to use precise language.

Clearly the two little words—stem cell—are being bandied about by folks who either have no understanding of the confusion they are creating or are intentionally misrepresenting facts for their own personal gain, be it financial or political.

Either way, by ignoring or denying that the human embryonic person is an individual worthy of respect, these manipulators of science and research are condoning direct killing without batting an eyelash. This is but another reason why America’s pro-life activist movement must achieve total protection for all human beings whose human rights are in constant jeopardy.

Human Personhood now!

© Judie Brown

 

WesternFront America

…when God is replaced by man.

Between the government bureaucrats who want to impose abortion on the African nation of Kenya http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=22728 and the World Bank http://www.worldbank.org/ choosing to mix it up with the pro-aborts, there resides an axis of demonic agendas the likes of which we have not seen in many a year. It would seem that the reign of President Obama is bringing out aspects of the culture of death that used to creep in the shadows and is now proud to expose itself to the light of day without fear of opposition.

This is why it was heartening to learn that Representatives Chris Smith (R-NJ), http://www.ewtnnews.com/new.php?id=640 Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) are exposing possible violations of federal laws being perpetrated by the Obama administration. The administration publicly advocated for a new constitution in Kenya that would “enshrine a new constitutional right to abortion in Kenya and dramatically change Kenya’s abortion law.” Smith’s office points out that this is a violation of the Siljander Amendment, which is contained in the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Act and prohibits lobbying for or against abortion using U.S. funds.

The Kenya situation has been heating up since January, when it was reported that an expansion of so-called “abortion rights” could derail the acceptance of the new constitution, which is scheduled for a vote in August of this year. Religious leaders in Kenya, who are unaffected by the undue pressure from the U.S., have said, http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=22728

It must be understood that pregnancy is God’s design, results from sexual contact between a man and a woman. God, therefore, holds the man and woman responsible to control themselves and engage in sex as a husband and wife. In any case, that a pregnancy results, it is not the problem of the unborn child. Why kill the innocent, helpless human life when it has resulted from the behavior of adults?

It is hoped that as Smith and his colleagues move forward with their request for an urgently needed audit of the government funds used in Kenya, the entire truth comes to light and the press toward unfettered abortion is defeated.

The cartel that continues to pressure third-world nations to abort babies as a solution to poverty is composed of not only the U.S. government, but other entities such as the World Bank, which has resources and exerts political pressure of its own. The World Bank has a new five-year “Reproductive Health Action Plan.” http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64A53620100511 While claiming that the new plan is designed to prevent maternal deaths due to complications from childbirth, the truth beneath the surface resides in the expressed concern that the fertility rates in the third world are too high. And the answer to putting the breaks on babies, according to the news reports about the World Bank plan, is more birth control and more “reproductive programs” to stem the tide of births.

While publicly we read that http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/41135 “the Bank considers unsafe abortion a serious public health issue for women and supports family planning services that help to prevent or reduce unsafe abortion as part of a country’s basic health program,” one has to wonder if indeed its definition of “family planning” incorporates abortion. The question becomes, is the World Bank collaborating with the U.S. government to provide access to abortion in the same way as the culture of death achieved its victory in America? Perhaps behind closed doors, the pursuit of protecting abortion as a so-called “constitutional right” is ongoing in the poor nations of the world. We will not know the answer to this, of course, until those committed to population control actually begin talking honestly about their agendas.

As the poor countries suffer under the efforts of the powerful to oppress the weak by killing their babies, wealthier nations are experiencing an increasing interest in techno-babies for those who are desperate to have designer children. The business, for example, of purchasing eggs from women rather than encouraging women to “donate” them has actually become a concern among certain ethicists. The New York Times reports, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/health/11eggs.html “Demand for human ova has been growing in recent years, fueled by infertility treatments and increased investment in stem cell research. Young women at top colleges and universities, long a prized source of eggs, are now being recruited not just through advertising in student newspapers but on web sites like Facebook and Craigslist, even on highway billboards.”

But the problem is that ethicists are beginning to question, not the practice of donating eggs but rather the business angle of fertility clinics purchasing the eggs for thousands of dollars. It does not seem to have occurred to these so-called concerned professionals that the crux of the problem is not the buying or donating of female ova but the fundamental problem of man attempting to fashion human beings in his image and likeness. It is that practice that should be getting the headlines, not the money being spent to acquire the perfect egg donor.

In case the culture has forgotten, there are many in the reproductive technology industry who consider the practice of egg acquisition by payment or donation to be nothing more than another form of reproductive technology, fertility treatment or genetic investigation. In man’s quest to replace God, nothing is off limits these days. Just ask the folks at Pathway Genomics, http://www.pathway.com/ the company that is marketing genetic testing kits for sale in your local drug store.

Among this Pandora’s box of unknowns is the pregnancy planning test, which, according to at least one reporter, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/10/AR2010051004904_2.html?wprss=rss_health “could prompt couples to decide not to get married or have children when their risk of having a baby with a disorder could be small. Or it could lead those who decide to proceed to seek genetic testing of the fetus, which could lead to more abortions.”

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has told the Washington Post that it “planned to investigate the test,” Pathway argues that, under current regulation, the test does not need to be approved. Whether or not this is the case remains to be seen, but it is clear that the company is in business to make a profit and all it needs are curious customers ready to spit in a vial so they can assure themselves of their health, or lack thereof, or even whether or not they ever want to “risk” bearing an imperfect child.

Pathway’s web site says it all: http://www.pathway.com/more_info

If you’re like most people, you’ve always wondered about the genes you have inherited and what traits you will pass on to future generations. Discover your genetically inherited predispositions and characteristics and whether they are beneficial or potentially harmful. You may also find that some traits are simply fun to uncover. Take the time to know who you are. It’s the science of you.”

In other words, forget about who you are and how you came into being, but rather get down to your molecular substance so you can more easily understand the fact that you, as a human being, are not a child of God but a mere product of your genetics. Yes, that’s the message and I have a sneaking suspicion that in this world of ever-burgeoning paganism, these tests could sell like hot cakes.

It’s clear to me that between Big Brother looking in on the third world to make sure fewer babies are born and the genetic manipulators plying their trade among those seeking to achieve perfection through technology, nothing good can possibly result. But much havoc can and will continue to be wrought.

As Saint Peter warned his fellow Christians in the early days of the Church (2 Peter 2:1-2), “[Y]ou too will have your false teachers, who will insinuate their own disruptive views and disown the Master Who purchased their freedom…. [T]here will be many who will copy their sinful behavior and the Way of Truth will be brought into disrepute on their account.”

Obviously, our day is no different. A plethora of false teachers abound. One can only hope and pray that people will, one by one and with strength of purpose, see through the evil and do all they can to undo the harm. Until enough of us courageously stand up to these ministers of death and deception, such atrocities committed against human dignity and human personhood will continue.

© Judie Brown

 

WesternFront America

…Among International Pro-Life Leaders.

Over the past few weeks, a rumor has emerged among Vatican sources that the current president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Archbishop Salvatore “Rino” Fisichella, may be appointed as the head of a new dicastery in the Vatican. http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2010/04/fisichella-tipped-for-new.html

As reported by LifeSiteNews: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10042602.html

Italian journalist and specialist on the Vatican, Andrea Tornielli, wrote in Italian daily Il Giornale this weekend that it will soon be announced that the pope will create a new department dedicated to re-evangelization of the West, which will be chaired by Archbishop Fisichella.

Pope Benedict, Tornielli said, is preparing an apostolic letter about the institution of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, dedicated to re-spreading the Catholic religion in countries where the Gospel has already been known for centuries, “but today where its effectiveness in people’s lives seems to have lost.”

Perceived by some commentators as a promotion, it has stirred the ire of several pro-life leaders around the world—including mine.

As leader of the British Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, John Smeaton has written in his blog entitled “Archbishop Fisichella should be sacked, not promoted” http://spuc-director.blogspot.com/2010/05/archbishop-fisichella-should-be-sacked.html :

How would such a scandalous appointment affect the world’s perception of Catholic moral teaching on abortion? And, in Obama’s push for a universal right to abortion, how would such an appointment affect the world’s perception of conscientious objection to abortion on the part of health professionals?
According to Catholic Online:

“The new department will be aimed at bringing the Gospel back to Western societies that have lost their Christian identity … There is a desperate need for such a new evangelization. Many Catholic Christians do not know what the Church actually teaches and have embraced what some have called a ‘cafeteria Catholicism’- choosing what parts of their faith they will follow.”

Yes – and that’s precisely the problem with appointing Archbishop Rino Fisichella to such a role. The position set out by Archbishop Fisichella, like the collaboration http://spuc-director.blogspot.com/2010/02/theres-light-and-dark-in-english.html of the bishops of England and Wales with the British government on life issues, are cancers which are threatening to destroy countless human lives. A perception that cafeteria Catholicism prevails in the Church will end up serving up the right to abortion worldwide.
In the interests of the lives of unborn babies worldwide, Archbishop Fisichella should be removed from the Pontifical Academy for Life without the consolation prize of a promotion, especially one which might make him a cardinal.

We concur with Smeaton and others http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/may/10050608.html who expressed grave concerns about the archbishop’s statements. So, I have sent the following letter to officials in the Vatican:

As the president of American Life League, a lay Catholic pro-life educational organization, and as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, I write to express my grave concerns about the rumors currently circulating concerning Archbishop Salvatore “Rino” Fisichella. It has been suggested by some sources in the Catholic media that the archbishop will soon head a new Vatican dicastery. This is astounding, and we are perplexed because of the archbishop’s previous writings and the serious problem that he created for the pro-life movement last year.

As current president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the well-documented position of Archbishop Fisichella regarding the Recife affair in Brazil has created a scandal. As you may know, his public statement provides the impression that the abortion of twins was somehow not as intrinsically evil as abortion in general.

The archbishop has remained intransigent regarding his comments, even though those comments are in direct contradiction to the teaching of the Church’s magisterium.

As you will recall, he wrote in a column for the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano (March 15, 2009), http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/mar/09031811.html

Choices like this, albeit with different cases, are repeated every day in the intensive care units and in the conscience of the medical doctor who finds himself alone in the act of having to decide what is best to do.

No one, however, arrives at a decision of this nature in a careless way. It is unjust and offensive even to think about this possibility.

Due respect to the professionalism of the medical doctor is a rule that should involve all of us and cannot allow us to arrive at a negative judgment without having first considered the conflict that has arisen within the doctor. The doctor carries within himself his history and his experience. A choice like whether to save a life, knowing that he is putting at risk a second life, is never carried out easily.

The archbishop’s written comments encouraged the pro-abortion movement the world over. For example, dissident Frances Kissling, founder of the pro-abortion Catholics for a Free Choice, wrote the following (www.religiondispatches.org, March 23, 2009):

http://www.religiondispatches.org/blog/religionandtheology/1254/vatican_official_challenges_excommunication_in_brazil

In an amazing shift in the Vatican’s strategy of no dissent from its position that direct abortion is never permitted, even to save a woman’s life, the Vatican’s top bioethics official, Archbishop Rino Fisichella opined that the doctors in Brazil who performed an abortion on a nine-year-old who was 15 weeks pregnant with twins did not merit excommunication. … But, this modest deviation by the [a]rchbishop who heads the Pontifical Academy of Life opens the door for Catholics who follow [C]hurch teachings on reproduction to discuss the possibility that there are some cases officially acknowledged where individuals can choose abortion and have a calm conscience.

Yet, to this very day, Archbishop Fisichella has declined to even admit that his column may have created a perception that he did not intend. When asked for a clarification, he refused. Thus, it is not surprising that we are extremely concerned about the current rumor circulating in the Catholic media.

It is our sincere hope that Archbishop Fisichella will not be elevated to a new position in the Church. It is our view that he has created one of the worst disasters we have ever seen, with regard to Catholic teaching on the act of abortion.

Please give this matter your attention, and know of our sincere gratitude to you and our prayers for your special intentions.

Sincerely yours in the Lord Who IS Life,

Judie Brown, President

American Life League, Inc.

Member, Pontifical Academy for Life

To register your concerns on this matter, please note the following contact information:

Giovanni Battista Cardinal Re, Prefect
Francesco Monteresi, Secretary
Congregation for Bishops
Palazzo della Congregazioni
Piazza Pio XII, 10
00193 Vatican City State, Europe

Phone: 06.69.88.42.17
Fax: 06.69.88.53.03

William Cardinal Levada, Prefect
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Piazza del S. Uffizio, 11
00193 Vatican City State, Europe

Phone: 06.69.88.33.57
Fax: 06.69.88.34.09
E-mail: cdf@cfaith.va

Pope Benedict XVI
benedictxvi@vatican.va

© Judie Brown

 

WesternFront America

When the word “care” is used, I think immediately of some of the finest pro-life charitable works of mercy in the world. Organizations such as Care Net https://www.care-net.org/ come to mind and, on the international scale, MaterCare International http://www.matercare.org/default_.asp, an organization dedicated to the care of mothers and babies, both born and preborn, through new initiatives of service, training, research and advocacy, which are designed to reduce the tragically high rates of maternal mortality, morbidity and abortion.

The founder of MaterCare International, Dr. Robert L. Walley, MPH (Harvard), executive director and honorary research professor of obstetrics and gynecology, testified during a hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/wal031308.htm:

Some 200 million women are pregnant worldwide each year. Most mothers deliver in villages without access to safe, clean facilities in which to deliver and without a trained person to assist them. Most maternal deaths occur during the last trimester and in the first week following delivery. Prior to going to Nigeria in 1981, I had never been present or had a mother die under my care from a direct obstetrical cause. Maternal deaths in Canada are at the level of what is called irreducible minimums, 1/100.000 live births. However, in the mission hospital maternal deaths were almost a daily event and I recall one weekend during which there were four deaths of mothers who had arrived at the hospital in extremis from hemorrhage, one in agony from obstructed labor, and another after days in labor with a ruptured uterus as she was young and consequently her pelvis was too small. Others would arrive unconscious due to pregnancy-induced hypertension or suffering from malaria, or severe anemia resulting from malnutrition. Many more mothers die in Africa alone and in terror in the villages, as they have no way of getting to the hospital. Not only are the lives of these mothers abruptly ended but also the lives of their babies and, in the aftermath, the chances of survival of their young children decrease dramatically, resulting in the disintegration of their families.

The situation for these mothers, their babies and their families is indeed a cause of much concern for the entire, worldwide pro-life community, as well it should be. This is why I was very interested to hear of Care’s National Conference http://careconference.org/ being held in Washington, D.C. next week on May 11 and 12. But my initial hopes were dashed as I began to read a bit more about this meeting. This celebration, designed to bring women together from around the world to fight global poverty, has an underlying theme that is not readily apparent to the casual observer.

A quick scan of the agenda tells the real story. The keynote speech is to be delivered by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton—no friend of the preborn. And, throughout the event, other known proponents of abortion, birth control and sterilization will be featured. The bottom line, it would seem, is population control, not “care” in the sense one might think.

CARE describes itself as an organization that defends dignity and fights poverty. It has been in the business of helping the poor for many years and works with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in 66 http://www.care.org/newsroom/publications/annualreports/index.asp countries. All of the public relations material about this organization sound good, but at least some of what it promotes is not good for mothers, expectant mothers and the future generations in the third world. Just below the surface of these fine-sounding words, one detects the same old problems that have plagued the third world for many years when the USA gets involved, and that is so-called reproductive health programs. CARE is certainly no exception.

When discussing the work of the organization http://www.care.org/careswork/whatwedo/health/srh/ , CARE informs the web site visitor:

Effective programming in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) is a vital component of CARE’s work to reduce poverty and social injustice. Improving SRH and addressing the unmet need for family planning are central to CARE’s commitment to poverty reduction and gender equity. It is clear that improvements in SRH – and health in general – are linked to economic and social development and must be addressed to achieve sustainable reductions in poverty. CARE is committed to improving access to, and use of, quality SRH information and services by poor and vulnerable people. CARE is equally committed to addressing the underlying causes of poor SRH status.

Such semantics represent the same old broken record that we have heard for years. The solutions to poverty and injustice for women always seem to commence in a direct line toward dangerous birth control chemicals and easily available abortion. Nothing has changed over the years—except that now with the push forward being orchestrated by the Obama administration, the speedy progress toward more killing in the name of ending poverty seems a foregone conclusion.

And as if this were not bad enough, Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute’s (C-FAM) Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. http://www.c-fam.org/blog/id.132/blog_detail.asp reports that CARE Executive Director Helene Gayle “is an avid advocate for an international human right to abortion on demand. She was a key figure at the 2007 Women Deliver conference and a founding partner of the International Initiative on Maternal Mortality and Human Rights which seeks to make abortion rights part of a new international right to maternal health.”

Clearly, there is a problem waiting to happen in Washington, D.C. on May 11 and 12th. And while we can all agree that there is nothing wrong with fighting discrimination against women, not to mention the many abuses that occur in some countries due to a warped vision of how women should be treated in a just society, the way to go about correcting such inequities should not depend on killing preborn children.

The challenge of striving to restore respect for the human person should never be consonant with the very practices that result in women being deceived and, in many cases, used as human guinea pigs as researchers and pharmaceutical companies work to refine abortion techniques and abortion-causing chemicals. There is no equality when the poor are treated in such an inhumane fashion, regardless of the candy coating that is wrapped around the ugliness beneath the surface.

As Dr. Walley pointed out to the U.S. Congress when describing the tactics of the NGOs http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/wal031308.htm :

The consensus of the obstetrical community is that mothers need essential prenatal care, skilled attendants at all deliveries and specialist care for life-threatening complications. While billions of dollars have been spent on reproductive health programmes and as more is demanded, only a small fraction is focused on providing the services that ensure mothers survive their pregnancies.

In my experience, mothers in Africa are optimistic and want to have babies, as they know they are the future of their families, communities and countries. Mothers in developing countries do not expect to die or to suffer birth injuries and those who die obviously have no voice, only ours, to plead their cases for adequate care—care of the sort which mothers have access to in the United States of America and Canada, which is second to none, but which is frequently taken for granted. I have found that mothers in Africa are becoming aware of what has been done to unborn babies in the rich world. They are becoming increasingly angry and resistant at attempts at coercion by NGOs to make them accept the killing of their babies, which is totally contrary to their faith and cultural and beliefs. It is egregious that any government or international health agency should suggest that the lives and health of African mothers should be improved by the killing of their unborn babies. We are all too familiar with the violence caused to women by commission (e.g., by sexual assault, genital mutilation and torture), but this neglect of mothers is violence as the result of omission. The root cause of all this suffering will not be solved by more death and despair.

Indeed!

It’s time to protest events that are fundamentally committed to anything but restoring respect for the human person. If you will be in the vicinity of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue next week, make it a point to stand up for human personhood and against the ongoing population-control manipulators of the poor.

© Judie Brown

 

WesternFront America

By Michael Barnett

The standard claim currently made by pro-lifers who oppose the human personhood movement is that if any legal measure recognizing the personhood of all human beings—from the beginning of their biological development—reaches the Supreme Court, this would set back the pro-life movement by 25 years. If it is possible for a single Supreme Court decision to set the pro-life movement back a quarter of a century, then the pro-life movement in this country has made no progress at all.

The success of a movement, as the word itself implies, is measured by the amount of people it moves and how far it moves them. If I inspire one person to go from being radically pro-abortion to being radically pro-life, I’ve fully impacted one person. If a commercial moves a million people to be slightly more pro-life, then it has perhaps done the equivalent of moving 100 people to change their views entirely.

To argue that the Supreme Court has complete control over the success or failure of a movement is to say that the movement has done nothing but focus on nine people. What if those nine people were suddenly a different nine? Using this “logic,” perhaps the entire movement, until that point, would have to be considered a waste.

Fortunately, the pro-life movement has not actually focused on the nine Supreme Court justices and has rejoiced at the realization that most Americans are at least nominally pro-life. Even those pro-lifers who are so upset about personhood measures recognize that the primary value of incrementalist efforts to regulate abortion is their potential to create converts to the pro-life position by forcing people to examine false assumptions about the nature of abortion.

Laws in a democracy are meant to reflect and enshrine culture, not create it. However, if the federal government has become a means of controlling people, a strange elitism is turning our representative democracy into a totalitarian regime. Such control itself would naturally contradict the pro-life movement, because a representative democracy, wherein the population governs itself, is based on recognition of the dignity of the human person. And our ultimate goal as pro-lifers is not necessarily to overturn Roe v. Wade, or to merely end abortion, euthanasia and other offenses against human dignity. Our ultimate goal is to fix the core problem, which is a deep disrespect for humanity itself. Granted, restoring our culture’s recognition of human dignity would mean the enactment of laws outlawing abortion and enshrining human rights, but those are means, not ends.

Even more important is to realize that to lose sight of restoring recognition of human dignity is to fail to lead. Leadership is hard, but the test of a leader is their ability to present an inspiring vision and to convince others to strive to achieve that vision. The hardest part is promoting belief in that vision and in the possibility of achieving that vision. To believe that human beings can learn to respect one another and not view other human beings as mere instruments of their own self-centered pleasure might be seen by some as a vision that is absurdly unrealistic to achieve. Yet, to deny this goal is to deny the dignity of the human person. If it is impossible for human beings to respect one another, then we have no dignity at all. Thus, unless we profess the fullness of our goal, we deny it entirely.

This argument is now often portrayed as pragmatism versus idealism. An opponent of the personhood movement might say, “While what you say is right, it isn’t possible or will be slower than a more incremental approach to ending abortion.” They might even say that it is impossible to achieve these ideals. In doing so, they ignore the fact that forsaking ideals is surrendering the core of what makes us human. Previously, in our society, it was illegal to have an abortion. Clearly, then, upholding human dignity is not impossible and human persons are capable of respecting others. Therefore, it is merely a matter of time and influencing others before what might currently be deemed impossible becomes a reality. For example, we could claim that it is impossible for a hypothetical person named Sally to visit the moon. In fact, Sally can visit the moon; she just needs time, energy and maybe some help from Richard Branson. http://www.parabolicarc.com/2009/11/14/branson-stop-moon/

Further, if denying our goal even slightly causes us to deny human dignity, then pragmatism becomes the ideal. Consider this commentary by Jeff Schweitzer on the passage of a fetal pain bill in Nebraska, published by the far-left Huffington Post blog site: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/i-feel-your-pain-even-whe_b_537118.html

If abortion opponents use pain as the threshold for deciding when abortion is acceptable, then they must agree that all abortions prior to the threshold of pain are no longer in dispute. If not, why use pain in the discussion at all? If abortion prior to pain is unacceptable, what use is pain then as a measure of when abortion is acceptable (if never)?

Setting abortion at the threshold of pain perception also has another important implication. With pain now in the mix, the idea of “personhood” for a fetus must also be abandoned. Think about it: you cannot argue that a fertilized egg deserves all the rights of a fully-formed adult when you agree an egg can be aborted because an egg cannot perceive pain. Can’t have it both ways.

So I say we call the bluff. With Nebraska’s precipitous action we reduce the abortion argument down to one single question: at what developmental stage can a fetus experience the sensation of pain? Unintentionally the Nebraska lawmakers created the formulation that before pain perception, abortion is always OK; after, only under tightly prescribed circumstances. Let us all agree then, using this logic from the Nebraska law, that abortion prior to the day that a fetus can feel pain is never again to be questioned. No more legal challenges or legislative roadblocks to any abortion prior to pain perception.

Schweitzer, an ardent abortion proponent, is making my argument for me. As soon as we deny that our goal is the full recognition of human dignity, we deny human dignity itself and, in this case, deny the humanity of people who don’t feel pain.

Alternatively, a good law would legislate that all medical procedures must not unduly cause pain to any human beings involved, including but not limited to preborn human beings. Such a law clears the threshold of being valid regardless of abortion or other attacks on the dignity of the human person and doesn’t reinforce decriminalized abortion.

Promoting human dignity is also pragmatic in “progressive” settings. Imagine me being on a college campus where I approach a student, saying, “Hi can I ask you a quick question?” They respond, “Sure.” I ask, “Are you pro-life?” Immediately there is a stock reply from at least 60 percent of such students. His mind is already made up about this. He has been force-fed information either in favor of or opposed to abortion since the moment he was born; in the case of those who support abortion, ironically, it starts after not being aborted himself.

Fortunately, most freshmen are pro-life. Unfortunately, most seniors are pro-abortion, as a result of numerous situational and academic experiences.

Now, imagine instead that I ask the student, “Do you think all human beings deserve basic rights?” The few students whose nature doesn’t compel them to say yes immediately either say yes eventually, don’t understand the question because the answer is seemingly too obvious, or realize that their normal Friday night activities might contradict human rights. Yet, what is important here is not that we received a yes or then obtained a petition signature from them. What’s important is that we radically altered the debate.

No longer is the person thinking of opposition to abortion in terms of radicals, religious zealots or political biases; they are now thinking strictly in terms of principles, of right and wrong apart from considerations of utility. Now they are also thinking in terms of the scientific fact that, upon penetration of an oocyte by a sperm, there is a new human being

Finally, a vision that inspires billions is the greatest achievement any movement can have, because the movement’s vision is what inspires people to give time, money, energy and other sacrifices, other acts of love. The more loving the vision, the more you can exchange it for acts of love from others. So the only question left is what is more loving, what is more inspiring: promoting the dignity of the human person or merely arguing against abortion?

Michael Barnett is the director of American Life League’s leadership development and its LiveCampus college outreach program.

 

WesternFront America

By Johanna Dasteel

It is hard to believe. Many of us are still pinching ourselves, hoping that it was only a dream or, rather, a nightmare, but the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as “the Senate bill” is now law. We now stand face to face with a brave new America, home of a nationalized health care system complete with taxpayer-financed murder, most commonly committed by surgical and medical abortions. Not only does brave new America, under this law, usurp our personal responsibilities to charitably care for our neighbors but a few other dastardly delinquencies will also be carried out under its dominion:

1. It gives Planned Parenthood the financial boost it has been posturing to receive for decades, essentially making it the government family planning agency. STOPP National Director Rita Diller outlined the financial (and deadly) boon in her March 26 commentary entitled “Planned Parenthood’s Obamacare Grand Slam.”

2. It funds abortifacient contraceptives through the new insurance option.

3. It does not provide any conscience protection for health care providers, insurance companies or taxpayers with moral objections to providing and funding fatal assaults on vulnerable human beings, particularly the preborn (medical, surgical and chemical abortions, human fetal research, fertility “treatments”), infirm (severely mentally and physically handicapped, people artificially aided with food and hydration) and elderly.

4. Building on the stimulus package’s health information technology, it will use a cost-efficiency model of health care to determine the course of treatments for U.S. citizens—an affront to the dignity of the human person, especially the vulnerable infirm and elderly.

5. And worst of all, it directly funds abortions; notwithstanding the executive order that merely reiterates the language of the health care law, so now those who did not fit in the “status quo” of the traditional abortion funding bans on Capitol Hill will also face taxpayer-funded deaths.

While some in the pro-life movement talked about upholding the “status quo,” Denver’s Archbishop Chaput instead discussed the “minimum moral standards” necessary for Catholic support of the Senate health care bill in his March 17 column for the Denver Catholic Register http://www.archden.org/index.cfm/ID/3583 :

It does not meet minimum moral standards in at least three important areas: the exclusion of abortion funding and services; adequate conscience protections for health-care professionals and institutions; and the inclusion of immigrants.

Archbishop Chaput’s message fell on the deaf ears of Catholics in the House of Representatives, and, worse, what Archbishop Chaput articulated as the Catholic Church’s “minimum moral standards” are not even met by the “status quo”:

- America funds Planned Parenthood, but this occurred even before the passage of HR 3590. Every cosponsor of Rep. Mike Pence’s amendment to the Labor, Health and Human Service’s Appropriation Bill’s Title X, banning Planned Parenthood from receiving any of those grant monies, will tell you that we have been funding abortion for decades. Funding Planned Parenthood is funding for abortions, not to mention the pornographic materials it bills as “comprehensive sex education.”

- America currently directly funds abortions that kill children conceived in rape and incest. Stupak’s language http://www.necn.com/03/21/10/Stupak-Maintaining-status-quo-on-abortio/landing.html?blockID=201691&feedID=4215 perpetuates this discriminatory policy and maintains this “status quo.”

- The “status quo” perpetuates the fallacy that mothers’ lives must be pitted against their childrens’, that doctors are incapable of providing equal care to both mother and child, that when a mother’s health is compromised while with child, that it is not only justifiable to kill her child because it tugs at the strings of our empathetic sentiments, but that it is necessary. It is never necessary to kill one human being so that another might live. The Hippocratic Oath http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=20909 , which requires doctors to provide equal care to every person, just as the government is required to give equal protection to every person, is undermined by this “status quo.” Stupak’s language is a continuation of this lie commonly referred to as the “life of the mother” exception.

Stupak’s language, although lauded as adhering to the “status quo”, was clearly not acceptable. So, why were pro-life groups promoting his amendment, saying that it barred the bill from funding abortion and creating the illusion that it would solve the “pro-life problem?” Of course, his language didn’t survive the process, and now many of these same leaders and their faithful grassroots support are feeling deeply betrayed by their gone-in-the-night hero, Rep. Bart Stupak.

Unavoidably, compromise breeds compromise, and, aside from the parliamentary tricks used to pass HR 3590 into law, it is safe to say that the support of now-infamous and so-called “Catholic” and pro-life organizations was instrumental in the passage of the final bill.

In the wake of this health care nightmare, American Catholics have been left confused and asking that dreaded question: “What now?”

I offer a humble suggestion; one that stalwart pro-lifers have been calling for as well: A recommitment to our original focus and intent to win back the right to life of the preborn, essentially ending all of the compromises.

Murder is not negotiable. Lives are not negotiable, nor are they political “issues” with which we can bargain. It is not the role of government to mitigate injustice, but to prosecute and correct it. Until it is formally and legally recognized that the preborn are persons, the prospect of publicly funding their executions will always be on the table and used for political gains.

In a time in which states’ rights are being discussed at length in order to combat Obamacare, it must be noted that there has been a movement afoot for several years now that has been doing just that.

Meet the answer to “what now?”

The human personhood movement has active initiatives in ten states, among them, Amendment 62 in Colorado, to define the term “person” as one that applies to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being. In a time when the federal government is demonstrably turning its back on the will of the people, it is time to reclaim our liberties through our local and state governments. The human personhood movement realized this sooner than the rest of us. I suggest we hop on board and ride the wave of the states’ rights movement so that the preborn, whose very lives are at stake, have a fighting chance.

Let us pray, recollect ourselves and unite on the only thing that can save the pro-life movement: The bedrock principle that every human being is a person, each possessing inherent dignity, and with a claim to certain inalienable rights that we have an obligation to defend, chiefly the right to life, without exception and without compromise. Personhood Now!

Johanna Dasteel is American Life League’s senior legislative liaison.

 

WesternFront America

By Dianne N. Irving, M.A., Ph.D.
Most issues in medical ethics require a sound understanding of “human personhood.” While the issue of personhood itself is a philosophical question and cannot be determined empirically, it is possible to determine with empirical and scientific accuracy when the material aspect of a human being begins to exist.

Scientifically, for over 100 years, it has been documented empirically that, in human sexual reproduction, the material aspect of a human being begins to exist when the sperm makes first contact with the oocyte at the beginning of the process of fertilization. In human asexual reproduction, a human being begins to exist when the DNA in a cell and its other cell constituents are “appropriately reorganized,” i.e., are “reorganized” within the cell in such a way that the cell becomes a new human organism— a new human being.

Philosophically, a human person is defined properly as a human being who possesses a rational soul, and that rational soul must always include all three powers of the soul simultaneously—i.e., the sensitive, vegetative and rational powers of the soul cannot be separated. No power of the soul can exist alone, and no whole soul can exist alone without the human body. There is no “soul/soul” split and no “soul/body” split. Therefore, there is no delay between when a human being and when a human person begin to exist. The human being and the human person refer to the same being and must always exist simultaneously.

Since we can know empirically when the material aspect of a human being begins to exist, we can therefore reason back to when that human person begins to exist. Thus, the human person must begin to exist immediately when the human being begins to exist.

When discussing medical ethics questions that involve when a human being begins to exist, it is crucial that the starting point of our inquiry is empirically based, i.e., based on the accurate scientific facts of human embryology. The need for scientific accuracy becomes particularly clear when addressing the legal protection of the right to life of all human beings. However, there are some —including some Catholics—who do not understand the need for accurate language.

And yet Catholics should understand this need more than anyone else, for the following reason: To make a scientific error at the beginning, in determining when a human being begins to exist, will automatically cause an error in determining philosophically when a human person begins to exist—which, in turn, will destroy our understanding of the foundation of the natural law and the moral law. And that will ultimately bring to an end the moral authority of the Catholic Church and her teachings on the value and dignity of the human person.
Don’t believe it? Consider this:

1. If the scientific definition of a “human being” and when he/she begins to exist is scientifically false, then the philosophical definition of a “human person” and when he/she begins to exist is automatically false and therefore invalid. This is especially a problem when false scientific “facts” are used as false empirical starting points for the purpose of falsely claiming that there is a delay or “split” between the human being and the human person.

Erroneous definitions of a human person can be (and already have been) applied to virtually every bioethical question. Instead of understanding that there is only one human soul that possesses three different powers—the vegetative, sensitive and rational powers—many bioethicists claim that there are three human souls— the vegetative, sensitive and rational souls— and that they are added to the human body one at a time. That is, they claim that first the human body possesses the vegetative soul, then later the sensitive soul is added, and even later the rational soul is added. It is the rational soul, they claim, that confers personhood on that human being.

So, in the view of these bioethicists, before the rational soul is present, certain actions are ethically justified because there is no person there—e.g., abortion, the use of abortifacients, infanticide, destructive human embryo and fetal research, human cloning, human genetic engineering, etc.

They also apply those erroneous bioethical concepts of the soul to the end of life. Thus, they claim, first the rational soul leaves the body (and thus personhood is lost), then the sensitive soul leaves the body, and finally there is nothing left there but a human vegetative soul—the very basis of their claim that there is a “vegetative state.” This erroneous belief allows them to justify withholding/ withdrawing food, hydration and oxygen; withholding /withdrawing medical care and other forms of euthanasia; physician-assisted suicide; erroneous definitions of death; illicit organ transplantation, etc.

2. If the philosophical definition of a human person and when he/she begins to exist is automatically false and therefore invalid, then the definition of “human nature” is also automatically false and therefore invalid. This will necessarily have a deleterious effect not just on medical ethics, but also on related fields such as philosophy, theology, law, social theory, etc., since human nature is synonymous with human personhood.

3. If the definition of human nature is automatically false and therefore invalid, then the definition of the “natural law” is automatically false and therefore invalid.

The natural law is a philosophical concept derived through the use of reason alone. It is based on an empirically derived concept of human nature— i.e., what we observe is common among all human persons as human persons. All human persons possess the same kind of human nature. Among the many things common to their human natures is when and how they begin to exist.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (section 1954), “The natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and every man, because it is human reason ordaining him to do good and forbidding him to sin … [T]his command of human reason … [is] the voice and interpreter of a higher reason to which our spirit and our freedom must be submitted.”

Section 1956 explains that the natural law “expresses the dignity of the person and determines the basis for his fundamental rights and duties.”

4. If the definition of the natural law is automatically false and therefore invalid, then the definition of “moral law” in Catholic theology is also automatically false and therefore invalid. The moral law is grounded in the natural law, but perfected through divine revelation and the Church’s magisterium (teaching authority).

The Catechism (section 1950) tells us, “The moral law is the work of divine Wisdom…. It prescribes for man the ways, the rules of conduct that lead to the promised beatitude; it proscribes the ways of evil which turn him away from God.”

The Catechism (section 1959) also explains the moral law’s relationship to the natural law: “The natural law, the Creator’s very good work, provides the solid foundation on which man can build the structure of moral rules to guide his choices. It also provides the indispensable moral foundation for building the human community.”

5. If the definition of the moral law is automatically false and therefore invalid, then the Catholic Church’s teachings based on the moral law are automatically false and therefore invalid.

Among the Church’s moral teachings is its prohibition of all forms of murder, at all stages of life: “From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person—among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life” (CCC, section 2270, emphasis added).

6. If the Church’s moral teachings are automatically false and therefore invalid, then the Church’s moral authority is automatically false and therefore invalid.

“To the Church belongs the right always and everywhere to announce moral principles … and to make judgments on any human affairs to the extent that they are required by the fundamental rights of the human person or the salvation of souls” (CCC, section 2032).

The Catholic Church has always done more to protect human beings from harm than any other institution. But such protection gets in the way of evil agendas. Thus, how to overcome the positive and life-affirming influence of the most powerful institution in the world? Destroy it, one level at a time.

Do you now see how all the levels fall, one after the other—like dominoes—when you start with a false definition of a human being and when he/she begins to exist?

Dr. Irving is a professor of the history of philosophy and medical ethics and former career-appointed bench research biochemist/biologist for the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute. She earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

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WesternFront America

Things are really heating up in California as Pastor Walter Hoye continues his grassroots campaign to help assure that human personhood makes the ballot in the state. The California Human Rights Amendment http://www.californiahumanrights.com/ makes a simple statement that everyone can agree is logical and should indeed have already been part of the state’s constitution. The language reads,

The term “person” applies to all living human organisms from the beginning of their biological development, regardless of the means by which they were procreated, method of reproduction, age, race, sex, gender, physical well-being, function, or condition of physical or mental dependency and/or disability.

Further, harkening back to the struggle over slavery in the nineteenth century, the CHRA web site quotes the illustrious Joshua R. Giddings, who commented on the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution regarding the fact that human personhood is absolute: http://www.californiahumanrights.com/content/amendment

Our fathers, recognizing God as the author of human life, proclaimed it a “self evident truth” that every human being holds from the Creator an inalienable right to live … If this right be denied, no other can be acknowledged. If there be exceptions to this central, this universal proposition, that all men, without respect to complexion or condition, hold from the Creator the right to live, who shall determine what portion of the community shall be slain? And who shall perpetrate the murders?

What is perhaps most stunning however is not that Giddings was focused on protecting every single individual, but that he made his statement based on the facts about the founding fathers of this nation and their perspective on the Creator and moral absolutes.

Rev. Edward J. Melvin, C.M., in analyzing the problematic nature of a secularist Supreme Court, has written, http://catholiceducation.org/articles/history/us/ah0007.html “The Founders placed belief in God and acceptance of natural moral law (derived from reason and corroborated in Judeo-Christian revelation) as the foundation of the American system.”

In fact, Melvin quotes George Washington himself:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports … In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness—these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens … And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

It is this very point that makes the case for the current struggle to achieve protection for the least in our midst by constitutionally clarifying through human personhood amendments the identity and the rights of the preborn. There is no question that the fact of human personhood is grounded in those very principles that Washington so brilliantly enunciated, that our founding fathers so artfully included in the United States Constitution and which Giddings reiterated during the 14th Amendment debates.

The California Human Rights Amendment proponents are doing nothing less than carrying on with the agenda George Washington and his peers put in place for this nation and her laws. This is why so many individuals and organizations of national repute have joined Pastor Hoye and his colleagues in this effort.

Dr. Alveda King http://www.kingforamerica.com/Groups/1000031878/King_for_America/Speakers_Bureau/Dr_Alveda_King/Dr_Alveda_King.aspx, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; leaders of BlackGenocide.org http://www.blackgenocide.org/; the Family Research Council www.frc.org; Frederick Douglass Foundation http://www.frederickdouglassfoundation.com/; Theology of the Body Institute http://www.tobinstitute.org/ and others endorse CHRA.

These leaders and organizations represent the majority position of Americans. This is why they are lining up to endorse an initiative that is currently reigniting the pro-life movement. By focusing on the human rights and civil rights of every human person, these efforts embrace a different way of looking at abortion and other threats against human beings’ lives.

That’s the message of the personhood movement and the California Human Rights Amendment lead by black pastor and civil rights icon, Walter Hoye http://www.vac.org/WalterHoyeBio.html.

Hoye knows what is at stake and writes in an essay entitled “The Unarmed Truth”: http://issues4lifefoundation.wordpress.com

When accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10th, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “I believe that ‘unarmed truth’ and ‘unconditional love’ will have the final word in reality. This is why “right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil “triumphant.”

Today, the “unarmed truth” is that the preborn child is a person not property.

I believe personhood is God-given and not government-granted. It is not offered to the elite and denied to the “least of these.”

I believe personhood, addresses the most important RIGHT of all … the RIGHT to LIVE, without which all other rights are meaningless.

I believe personhood is RIGHT.

The “unconditional love” for the preborn child in my heart, is rooted in the love Christ has for all. While the current conditions may have “temporarily defeated” the personhood of the preborn child I believe the “righteousness of personhood” is stronger than the “evil of prenatal murder” and will ultimately prove triumphant.

I believe personhood is the final word in reality of the pro-life movement.

Hoye is joined by such California luminaries as Dr. Jim Garlow http://www.jimgarlow.com/ , Proposition 8 leader and founding director of the California Pastors Rapid Response Team. In his endorsement of CHRA, Garlow said, http://www.californiahumanrights.com/content/endorsements-0

Is it not amazing that we are forced, in our so-called advanced society, to defend the notion of personhood? Is it not shocking that supposedly bright people will not protect the most innocent and helpless person, the one in the womb? Have we not learned from slavery how to properly define a person? Have we learned nothing from Hitler’s Reich regarding the definition of personhood?

Not only that, but the president of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, stated in his endorsement: “Other states should draw inspiration from the commitment and perseverance of those behind the California Human Rights Amendment. This is not about party affiliation or ideology. This is about recognizing the sanctity of human life and citizens’ obligation to enact laws to protect it.”

Likewise, Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, applauded the California initiative: “Let’s start healing this national shame by affirming the personhood of every human being – in law – and start living as if we meant it.”

“Even as Dred Scott was considered less than fully human, such is the case for the preborn babies in the womb,” said Dr. Alveda King in her endorsement of the CHRA.

Dr. Clenard Childress of BlackGenocide.org pointed out that human personhood is the crux of the nation’s struggle against racism. “Our prayer is that personhood would be restored to its proper place in the minds, hearts and legislation of America,” Childress said.

Other endorsers http://www.all.org/newsroom_releases.php of the CHRA include La Verne Tolbert, PhD, former Planned Parenthood board member, Georgia; Rebecca Kiessling, family law attorney, Michigan; Kurt Ramspott, founder, Guys For Life, Inc.; Dana Cody, president and executive director, Life Legal Defense Foundation; Kristen L. Chestnut, RN, JD, member, board of directors, California Nurses for Ethical Standards; Dean Nelson, executive director, Network of Politically Active Christians and vice chairman, Frederick Douglass Foundation; Jennifer Roback Morse, PhD, founder and president, The Ruth Institute; David Bereit, national director, 40 Days for Life and the California Republican Assembly.

It is a blessing for American Life League to be part of this remarkable drive that is moving throughout the state of California like a whirlwind. All who have endorsed this project are of the same mind: PERSONHOOD NOW!

To learn more, to get involved or, if you reside elsewhere, to donate to CHRA, please visit http://www.californiahumanrights.com/content/get-involved .

The time is now, the cause is just.

© Judie Brown

 

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