Fetal Life and Abortion:  Human Personhood at Conception

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Displayed Responses 2008

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2008

December 30th:   Will this social revolution recognize the unborn?
December 2nd:  Stem-cells on the front burner - again
November 13th:  Reply:  Proof of personhood at conception
November 5th:  Reflecting on the U.S. National Election and the roots of the abortion problem
October 20th:  The morality of abortion is like the morality of the financial crisis
October 10th:  Pulling the plug on the world?
September 25th:  Human Conception (fertilization) is special - two articles
September4th:  Changing the basis for allowing abortions?
August 21st:  Does Roe say that before birth and after birth is like apples to oranges?
July 31st:  "Potential Human Being"
July 17th:  Environment, Abortion, Nature
July 8th:  The Body + The Soul + The Spirit = each one of us
June 24th:  Human Nature
June 15th:  Does Roe v. Wade legislate from the bench?
June 6th:  Common Good and Common Decency
May 23rd:  Right and Wrong? -- Absolutely!
May 7th:  The European Council of Europe's resolution is going too far!
April 25th:  Some international organizations are counter-productive with respect to abortion
April 15th:  Government of Finland Pressures Nicaragua to Legalize Abortion
April 2nd:  Malta protests European Council of the E.U.
March 17th:  Thoughts on Abortion
February 27th:  Stop the abortion epidemic!
February 13th:  The U.N., E.U. and World Bank's unethical influence in the affairs of small countries
January 28th:  What remains of Roe v. Wade after 35 years?

 

December 30, 2008

Reprinted from displayed responses November 12, 2002:

Editor's Note:  It is encouraging to see that the international community is beginning to make a stand on respect for human life, with emphasis on the unborn of our community.  Attempts at cloning humans is being vigorously debated and strong opposition has developed against it.  The banning of destructive fetal experimentation is also a priority of many nations.  It is hoped that these conscientious measures will prevent our culture of life from slipping into the culture of death. 

We've muddied the waters; we've soiled the skies.
What else to destroy before the planet dies?
We've tattered the fringes; now for the heart!
We'll kill off the people; we've made the start.

We've sold our future to sustain abortion;
Cannibalized our unborn beyond distortion.
We'll replace the blueprint with one of our own!
Then await the harvest of the seeds we have sown.

Comment:  Cultural revolutions, during the time of their development, go through cycles of emphasis, a basic direction, but zig-zagging on their lengthy way to their goal.  Our pro-life movement, stimulated by moral persuasion, began with political action, aided by education, and with aid for those with distressful pregnancies.  Declining success with political action gave way to public witness, culminating in Operation Rescue.  The point of emphasis, up to this time, had been the life of the child waiting to be born. 

With the absence of notable success in saving unborn babies, the child, inadvertently, seemed to have become secondary to a growing concern for the abortion-minded mother of the child.  At this point, our pro-life effort, mistakenly, appeared to blend in with that of the pro-choice propaganda, the woman as victim, sorrowfully and thoughtfully, making her difficult choice.  The reality, of course is that our pro-life intention was to save both the child and the mother, not to emphasize the mother at the cost of the child.  The erroneous perception might have a comfort to the abortion-minded community but it was, by no means, a concession to their strategy.

And, so, points of emphasis mark the history of a social movement.  Perhaps the zig-zagging is necessary, not only so that experience may be of profit to the movement, but that the stimulus of novelty might keep the movement going.   Frustration and fatigue have a way of entering into any prolonged human effort.  Points of emphasis eventually blend together and work simultaneously, since they are not in conflict with one another.  Yet, at any moment, they color the movement in the eyes of the casual observer.

The above observation leads us to the probability that it is time for our pro-life movement to re-emphasize the child's dignity and worth, continuing quietly all the other good practices of our resourceful history. 

A perspective:  The bedrock of our pro-life position is the firm conviction that each human individual begins his or her personal life at conception and, therefore, has an inalienable right to life thereafter.

There are some citizens of the United States who, having a Supreme Court's decision to reinforce their position,  disagree with our pro-life grasp of reality.  How can we best persuade them to consider and, eventually, to embrace our brothers and sisters who are waiting to be born?

At the level of public opinion, in a time when mental and moral disciplines are in decline, it is our opinion that the best teaching is by way of lived-example.  "Actions speak louder than words!"  How, then, shall we teach respect for human beings living in the womb?  We suggest celebrating the lives of our brothers and sisters currently in the wombs of their mothers, just as we do for all other members of our human community.

We propose that social consciousness needs to be raised to a higher level of awareness concerning that part of our community of human persons who are waiting to be born.  At the present time, only the parents and their other children know, and rejoice, that a new member of the human community has come into existence.  The family maintains this consciousness by mutual support and by joyfully anticipating the birth of their new family member.

It is suggested here that the whole world should know and rejoice at the conception of every human being and, enthusiastically, assist the new member of our society, and his or her parents, should there be need.  That is because all of us are a family, in the plan of our Creator.  We all feel the truth of the expression: "It takes the entire village to raise a child."  But we know that, in practice, the scope of this beautiful saying encompasses only the child already born.  Why not also the child waiting to be born!

The gist of this proposal is that respect for human life before birth could be taught to our society by celebrating that life on a daily and neighborly basis.  We feel that when such appreciation will be in place, legalized abortion would be ended.

To implement the proposal, we suggest that the first "reaching out" beyond the immediate family could be contact with the family's church community.  They could be invited to participate in the inter-uterine life of the newcomer to their community.  The parents who would wish to be involved in this program would announce the conception, and whenever there is a special need, briefly report on the gestational progress of their child.  The faith-community would respond with prayers of petition and thanksgiving for the welfare of the child and family, and with praise to our Creator who lovingly shares his power of creation with us, through parenthood.

It is reasonable to assume that  practicing this proposal in the churches would help others in our society also to become aware of the unborn members of our community and of their rightful place of dignity among the rest of us.  As a society, we could learn to practice respect for every unborn member of our community, our own and our neighbor's and, eventually, all who are waiting to enrich our society by their birth.  The dumpster would no longer be needed as a "solution" to the individual's "problem," which had now become also the shared-responsibility and privilege of the community.

For those of our society who may not be persuaded by faith and religious practice, we propose a process of reasoning, leading  toward awareness and acceptance of Natural Law.   Natural Law is the promulgation of our Creator's will, through human intelligence, sometimes called commonsense.  On behalf of the unborn, we invite all, believers and non-believers, to look over this web site into the reality of the human being's personhood, from the time of conception, and the consequent ethical obligation of respecting his or her right to life. 

Perhaps it would be helpful here to recall the ancient Chinese custom of giving the child, at birth, the age of one year.  We see here that the truth concerning the unborn members of our human society had prevailed in the past.  It might well prevail again!  We should be eager to lay the groundwork for that cultural revolution in our own time.  E.R.  reply@unbornperson.org

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December 2, 2008

Reprinted from displayed responses July 26, 2001.  There have been many advances in the use of adult stem cells since we posted this.  Here is a link to one of the latest cases:  British doctors help perform world's first transplant of a whole organ grown in lab - Telegraph

Question:  I am confused about stem cells.  I would appreciate knowing why there are contradictory claims favoring one kind over another.

Reply:  The name "stem" has been given to a cell from which a line of differentiated cells can be started.  Its name, by analogy, is taken from the trunk, or branch, with reference to that which grows outward from the trunk or branch, such as leaves, flowers and fruit.  In this discussion let us use the relationship of stem and flower, the flower being that which grows out of the stem.  The stem seems to give rise to a diversity of structures, principally reproductive, in the flower.  The relationship of stem to flower indicates that the flower, in some away, is present in the stem, even before it makes its appearance outside of the stem.

This, of course, is a simplification of a complex process of structure and function, attributable not to the stem, but to the entire plant of which the stem is only a part.  The concept helps us to understand that some of the cells which are part of the stem will divide, not to increase the size of the stem, but to produce new cells, different from themselves.  This is called differentiation. These new cells, in their turn, also differentiate as they divide, eventually producing cells which are petal cells, pollen and ova, or cells of pollen tubes and of other structures which form the flower.

I speak of my definition and example as a simplification because they do not explain how some cells constitute the stem and others, seemingly of the same kind, go on to produce the flower.  It might help here to suggest some items for further thought:  Cells come from cells.  This raises the question of whether, in any given line of cells, the initial cell possessed everything which the end of the line possesses.  The problem here is to have a sufficient cause to explain the effect, remembering that a thing cannot give what it hasn't got.

This production of flowers is but one example of how a cell can, in some manner, contain the "stuff" of cells more complicated than itself.  The most radical example is seen in the single-celled stage (zygote) of any organism produced by sexual reproduction.  It is both a stem-cell and an organism.  During its very early development the cells which the organism produces have been designated as embryonic stem-cells, about which we center this present discussion. 

In a very real sense, the zygote contains all of the "stuff" needed to bring itself to maturity.  However, it proceeds toward maturity by producing, sequentially, the next round of cells, as required by its genetic information.  In each succeeding "generation" of cells, the new cell will possess whatever is necessary for doing  its own job and for equipping the next "generation" to do likewise.  In this way the organism develops itself, through the production and proper use of its cells.  The organism, of course, "fleshes-out" its original "stuff" by using the material of its environment, as needed, in its progress toward maturity.

It is important to note that the total process is not only under the control of the organism, directed by its genetic "blueprint," but that it is always influenced by the immediate environment in which the process occurs.  Those environmental factors may be as simple as optimum temperature, adequate solvents for the reacting substances, electrical and magnetic, even gravitational, fields of force, along with the more complex factors, such as stimulus of neighboring cells, and the presence of compatible enzymes to act as catalysts for the chemical reactions. 

The claim of capability to develop organs from embryonic stem-cells, such as heart, is even more unfounded.  You may have seen a picture of muscle tissue "beating," but a functioning heart is more than its muscle.

If I may say, briefly, the living organism is not a machine, whose parts can be welded or bolted together, but rather a continuous whole whose "parts" are so interwoven, both in structure and in function, that none is independent of the others.  The action of the "parts," whether cells or organs, is sequentially "programmed," so that what a cell can do in its embryonic environment, should not be expected from that cell when transplanted elsewhere.  You must keep in mind that it is not the cell which is doing the acting.  The actor is the organism which possesses, and function through, the cell.  This might help you to understand why stem-cells of adult organisms are better than embryonic ones, when they are asked to serve mature tissues.  

From our discussion, you can see that stem-cells are not limited to organisms in their embryonic stage of existence, called embryonic stem-cells.  Even in your adult body there are stem-cells, just as in the flowering plant which may be several years of age.  The red blood cells, active in your circulatory system, are the end product of a line of less-differentiated cells resident in the marrow of your bones.  In older terminology the beginning of the line was called a "mast- cell."  This example is not far different from that of the cells in the stem and flower of the plant.  

Another source of adult stem-cells is body fat.  It is also amazing that most organs of the body contain stem cells, which nature provides for regeneration and repair of their damaged tissues.  Recent research shows that the "islands of Langerhans," cells scattered around in the pancreas (which produce insulin for metabolizing sugars) can be replaced by the action of pancreatic stem-cells, after the "destroyer" of those "islands" has been vanquished.

Although embryonic stem-cells have been thought to be superior to adult stem-cells for the purpose of "repair or replacement," there is not sufficient evidence to support the claim.  In fact, embryonic stem-cells inserted into ailing, adult brain tissue have sometimes worsened the disability.  Adult stem-cells, on the other hand, do show promise which is upheld by ample evidence.

In a previous Reply I have stated clearly that the use of human, embryonic stem-cells, even if they were of utility to others, would be unethical to "harvest," since that would involve killing the embryonic human who possesses them.  This brief, overly-simplified glimpse into the biology of embryonic stem-cells adds a pragmatic reinforcement to that moral prohibition.  Adult stem-cells, on the other hand, can be obtained without injury to the volunteer donor, and could be used ethically for research and healing.  E.R  reply@unbornperson.org

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November 13, 2008

Editor's Note: We appreciate this viewer's helpful comment on our recent posting:  The morality of abortion is like the morality of the financial crisis.  The viewer presents our text, in part, and then comments upon it:

Thx for:

(1) Making my article shorter and more readable. I'm sure you are a better judge of what style is more appropriate

(2) presenting a conclusion which in my article is presumed, but not stated:

   It should be hoped that whatever lesson we can learn from our financial distress would be applied to protecting that which is worth more than our money, namely the lives of our brothers and sisters waiting to be born. 

   However, in connection with your statement:

 For uncounted centuries, prior to January 22, 1973, it was taken for granted by human society that what a pregnant woman is carrying is a human baby.  Roe refused to honor this presumption and placed the burden of proof on those members of the human society who rose to the defense of their unborn brothers and sisters. 

    I think the use of the word "presumtion" should be reconsidered. A presumption is a reasonable assumption made because ther is a lack of info. 

   Indeed it might be that, in some individual persons' thinking, they might have presumed that a baby is growing in the woman, but I suspect that people in prior eras, most of whom were in agricultural work or close by, would know that women carry human babies just as all the animals which farmers breed do.

   When the legislatures of the states, in the 19th c. , enacted laws protecting the unborn, did they just presume the baby was a baby, or upon investigation of their work could we not find arguments pointing to that fact? And I say fact, because the fact is that when any two species capable of it mate, the product of their mating is a member of the same species, and there is no reason either in the 19th c. or after to presume that such a product is anything but human. A fact is not a presumption. It is reasonable to conclude based upon human experience that the woman is carrying a child / baby. And I bet an examination of the arguments offered by those legislators in those states that had anti-abortion laws prior to Roe, that there is a lot more than just presumptions that they offered fot the law. I bet that an examination of the record would show - and this would be a very good term paper - that, according to the best evidence they had, they CONCLUDED WITH GOOD EVIDENCE that the pre-born was human, and that they were to be given the right to protection under the law (i.e. for the private good of the baby and for the common good which all anti-murder laws serve). Legislators do not lightly enact their laws. Clearly, they thought that the baby was human. But I doubt, given the nature of murder, that it was mere presumption. They were attempting, and I think largely successfully, to add a minor premiss to a general principle stated by Mr. Jefferson in the Declaration, so that that which could not, for reasons of time, have been stated then could be stated later unequivocally and prehaps universally. But a sound conclusion is knowledge. Take Aristotle's famous example of a syllogism:

Every man is mortal. Socrates is a man. Socrates is mortal.

Do we know that Socrates is mortal?

   Very well, take the following syllogism:

Every human has a right to life. Every woman's preborn child is human. Every woman's preborn child has a right to life.

    I realize this is a fine point, and might be considered scholastic "hair-splitting" but, in this media-dominated world in which we live, we need to make our position as forceful as possible. Our predecessor's information was cruder, scientifically, than our own, but their conclusions were sounder.  Take as an example the above passage restated as follows:

  For uncounted centuries, prior to January 22, 1973, human society knew and often stated clearly in Law that a pregnant woman is carrying a human baby.  Roe refused to honor these laws and has attempted to transfer the burden of proof to those members of the human society who rose to the defense of their unborn brothers and sisters. 

    Would it be untrue? Would it strengthen the presentation? Because, if they KNEW from factual experience what our jurists now do not know despite all the extra information we have, then we have suffered a decline of knowledge, not just a decline of presumptions.

Add to this, the inadequate pretense of the Court that no one, including themselves, knows when the human individual comes into existence. 

 Again, if it is a pretense that they don't know, then they do know. 

Yet, professing their ignorance, they sanctioned the killing of what, by their own admission, might be human beings.  This is a violation of elementary ethics that prohibits acting in the face of substantial doubt. The Court, according to their twisted “logic,” insults the human dignity of us all, by saying that the unborn are “not persons in the full sense.”

   This "persons in the full sense" introduces the "the quality of life" criteria that Fr. Newhouse, the ex-Lutheran convert ot Catholicism pointed out in a lecture given here in Dallas once. He said that he looked out from his podium in church and realized that the majority of the people in his poor church probably wouldn't have met  the minimum standards of the liberal "quality of life" criteria. Adults now, not just "blobs of tissue"

   The inference following from their assumption is that none of us are persons in the “full sense,”

    For the future, this is one of the most ominous conclusion. What Roe establishes with this phrase is the foundation of the above-mentioned "quality of life" possibility, because once personhood is defined in accordance with some level of accomplishment, many things become allowable: infanticide, euthanasia, genocide. Roe is not just about fetuses. We're next. 

Editor's note:  Thanks for your clarification of the term "presumption."  We were using the term in the sense of "in the U.S., a person is presumed to be innocent until proved guilty." E.R. reply@unbornperson.org

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November 5, 2008

Editor’s Note:  On the day following the U.S. National Elections, we of the pro-life community are asking ourselves what “went wrong” in our hope for a political victory in our defense of the unborn.  A choice was available.  Would our nation choose as our president a man dedicated to furthering legalized abortion, or one pledged to overcome legalized abortion?  We make no attempt here to analyze the political process, but we offer some thoughts on another element entering into the results of that lengthy process:

Since abortion is contrary to the natural inclination of parents to nurture their children, and since God is the author of nature, we pro-lifers have strongly turned to God, in prayer, for help to elect as our president, the man who opposes legalized abortion.  In pondering reasons for the apparent unfavorable response to our prayer, we suggest that it is because our world is not yet ready for a mere political solution to legalized abortion.

It is obvious to us, now, that legalized abortion is a symptom of a more generalized problem of our culture, and that removing its legalization, although a step in the right direction, would be like putting a band aid over a cancerous lesion.  Winning a political victory at this time could distract us from working and praying to remedy the problem at its root level, from which it would appear at a later date.

It should be obvious to all of us, from other symptoms of the disease process in our current culture that something has “gone wrong” in our lack of conformity to the original design of our human nature.  In this current election do we not see the attempts to change the nature of marriage and, therefore of family, and to legalize assisted suicide?  Are these not fatal blows against our human nature?  If more examples are needed, consider the denial of objectivity in truth and justice, a denial of the distinction between right and wrong.

We do not suggest the absence of some good in the recent election, such as a proof of racial equality.  But, even here, speaking against a long held inequality, we are speaking of another symptom of the root problem: “Am I not my brother’s keeper!” 

May we suggest that respect for human life, at all levels of existence, is a moral value expressed in our Declaration of Independence:  “All men are created equal and have the inalienable right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”  To prefer other goods in place of our brothers and sisters waiting to be born, is unfitting to our fundamental concept of what it is to be a human being. “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but suffers the loss of his soul?”

Now that racial hurts have begun to be alleviated in the U.S. as a result of this election, we encourage our viewers to assist in facing the next challenge of our common heritage, to uphold the equality of the unborn members of our human society. Along with the immediate pro-life work, of course, or even independent of it, let’s be refurbishing the root system of our culture.

We would appreciate any questions or comments from our viewers. E.R.

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October 20, 2008

Editorial Note:  I have never understood, until now, how abortion came to be legalized in a society of human beings.  Abortion is so contrary to the concept of what a human being is!  And this is true not only of the victim of abortion, a human being waiting to be born. It is true also of the parents of the victim, adult members of a society that, in the majority, are naturally inclined to nurture their offspring. It is in the world-wide threat to our financial institutions that I begin to see Roe v. Wade in the United States and similar abortion decisions in other countries as the collapse of faulty, man made legal institutions that have separated themselves from objective reality and ethical guidance.

I see the financial problem as resulting from the departure of universal agreement on what a loan is. A loan is a borrowing of goods with the agreement that the goods, or their monetary equivalent will be returned to the lender, less a fixed amount of interest as a “service charge” for the use of the loaned property. The condition of return is reinforced by a guarantee called security.  This totality of its elements defines what a loan is. It goes without saying that institutions whose business is lending money, especially when it is not their own money, must abide by this concept of a loan. When such institutions lend and borrow among themselves, deviations from the universally approved structure of a loan can bring about a collapse of the entire system.  Put bluntly, some of what are being called loans should not be called loans.  They are more like donations, whether because adequate security is lacking in “risky loans” or because honesty and trust are no longer presupposed in such transactions.   Because a loan is a man-made entity it must seek its authenticity in defining itself as the product of reasonable and honest persons.  Anything short of that should not be called a loan.

With reference to legalized abortion, moral and social collapse have come about because of abandoning the truth that the unborn of human parentage are human beings. As with faulty loans, when objectivity is displaced in favor of whatever some human beings want something to be, the system, otherwise based on rational, responsible behavior, has collapsed.  One individual’s “freedom” to dispose of other human beings has redefined the reality of what it is to be a member of the human race. It is a denial of being human.

To speak of a human being, society speaks of a thing of nature, of something having a nature that causes it to be the kind of thing that it is.  When speaking of a loan, society speaks of a man-made entity, based on concepts that are conformable to nature, such as are pertinent to contracts drawn up by human beings.  When speaking of “the nature of a loan,” we are using analogy.  A loan does not have a nature in the sense of “the world of nature.”  A natural thing is an individual, not a composite of individuals, as is an artificial thing, such as a loan.

The concept of a “bailout process” is worthy of thought, but here, in the arena of legalized abortion there can be no application.  Neither the aborted victim nor its equivalent can be returned to those who have suffered that loss in their transaction.  With respect to the future, however, with an election year in progress, in the States, and other legislative initiatives around the world, the human society could begin to get back to its original definition, by legally affirming that babies, including those waiting to be born are, indeed, our brothers and sisters and that we have the obligation, as well as the privilege, of sharing our destinies with each and every one of them.

For viewers who wish to examine the thoughts mentioned above, consider Roe v. Wade’s holdings on the nature of the unborn human.  That Court attempted to deprive the unborn of their human nature by saying that they “are not persons in the full sense.”  For uncounted centuries, prior to January 22, 1973, it was taken for granted by human society that what a pregnant woman is carrying is a human baby.  Roe refused to honor this presumption and placed the burden of proof on those members of the human society who rose to the defense of their unborn brothers and sisters.  Add to this, the inadequate pretense of the Court that no one, including themselves, knows when the human individual comes into existence.  Yet, professing their ignorance, they sanctioned the killing of what, by their own admission, might be human beings.  This is a violation of elementary ethics that prohibits acting in the face of substantial doubt. The Court, according to their twisted “logic,” insults the human dignity of us all, by saying that the unborn are “not persons in the full sense.” The inference following from their assumption is that none of us are persons in the “full sense,” since we are no different in our human nature than those of us who are waiting to be born. Should not the Court have said,  simply, “We are human persons, therefore, they are also. We could hope that the responsible people of the great financial institutions will speak plainly now, and not continue the thirty-five year, bad example of Roe v. Wade. 

It should be hoped that whatever lesson we can learn from our financial distress would be applied to protecting that which is worth more than our money, namely the lives of our brothers and sisters waiting to be born.  E. R. reply@unbornperson.org

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October 10, 2008

Reprinted from displayed responses:  September 12, 2001.

Question:  Do you think that our human society could destroy itself by disregarding the limits of beneficial research?

Reply:  I am presuming that you refer to biological experimentation on human individuals.  Your question prompts a wide range of thoughts.  The world is becoming smaller, because of facilitated communication and transportation.  It is also becoming more unified, in the sense of abandoning traditional criteria of human culture.  If one country legalizes abortion, others will strain to follow.  And experimentation in human reproduction has become universal.

Already, in this early stage of mass media, a large part of a nation (world population?) can be "hypnotized" simultaneously.  Orson Wells' hoax about the invasion from Mars, is an early example in our own country.  The volume of electronic stock-trading, in our day, shows instantaneous response to the merest hint of almost any rumor.

It is not necessary to mention the declining condition of our physical environment and the poised nuclear missiles, since these are conditions subject to change, even change for the better.  The moral environment, however, should be mentioned.  It's effects are more lasting, and more influential on the totality of mankind.

"Do your own thing!" and "Me, first!" are anti-social directives.  They lead to senseless killing, sometimes mass-murders, not only on the streets, but within the home.  Individuals who had never been trained in social responsibility are not likely to see the preservation of the human race as their objective.

Fatal modifications of the concept of what it is to be human are already underway, often with public approval.  Attempts at cloning humans is only one expression.  Family has degenerated to include same-sex association.  Gender, and its social significance, has recapitulated to sexual-preference, with emphasis on self, rather than on society. 

Among examples in history, Hitler's ruthless campaign to change the society by world conquest is evidence that the maintenance of what we are, and have been, is a fragile thing.  How he could have accomplished it with all the world looking on is best illustrated by the Holocaust, a destruction of society, piece by piece, behind the blinding rhetoric of euphemisms. 

It should not be thought that something like Hitler's program of eugenics will never happen again, simply because we are aware of such possibilities. What about legalized abortion, a world-wide holocaust in our time!  Add to that the further "elimination" of embryonic human beings through the groundless expectations  of embryonic stem-cell research!

I will not attempt to say whether genetic and other cellular modifications are  capable of destroying the human race.  Isolated genetic modifications resulting from mutations occurring without man's intervention tend to be eliminated by nature over a course of time, as are recessive inheritable characteristics.  Large-scale, man-made modifications might well be beyond the ability of nature to handle.  The English legalization of cloning humans for research stipulates that the human clones must be killed before 14 days of life.  Does this not indicate a very real fear that meddling with the structure of human beings could irreversibly "contaminate" the entire human race, or destroy it altogether?

In response to your question, may I suggest that unless there is reasoned restraint in the current "feeding-frenzy" over embryonic stem-cells, and if genetic engineering can destroy the human race, it probably will.  E.R.  reply@unbornperson.org

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September 25, 2008

Reprinted from displayed responses:  September 24, 2001.

Question:  I was just wondering what your stance is on the idea of the soul.  Do you believe that at conception a fetus and a soul are created at the same time, or does a soul follow conception, or a fetus follow a soul?

Reply:  The reality of the human soul, in reference to the human being, is the principal focus of our entire web site.  We carefully examine the beginning of the human person in the very terms which you are using: When does the human soul begin to vitalize the human body?  For a definition of "soul" and its function, may I suggest that you read a portion of Section 2 on this site.  You will find special, historical interest in the discussion of Aristotle's opinion on "ensoulment," in Section 3.  For a more complete answer to your question you may wish to study all of Sections: #2, 3and 4, along with the Additional Readings which follow them.  For now, I will attempt only a simplified reply.

Your question, in part: "Do you believe that at conception a fetus and a soul are created at the same time?"  People often use the term "fetus" in reference to the unborn at any stage of development, as you are doing here.  So, you are asking about that moment when the human being's soul begins to vitalize the material furnished by his or her parents, and which, then, becomes the body of their offspring.

A human being comes into existence when the two reproductive cells, sperm and ovum of the parents, combine to produce the single-cell stage of their offspring. That which causes the parental cells to combine into one, functioning human being is the soul of that offspring. This happening is called conception.

This does not mean that the soul was created before the human began to exist.  It does mean, though, that the soul was existing and functioning at that time.  There would be no reason for it to have existed prior to that time.  The Creator would have no problem in creating that particular soul for that individual at the moment when it was first needed, that is, at conception.

It goes without saying that there could not be a human individual without a human soul, and that would be true at any stage of his or her development. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org 

Reprinted from displayed responses:  October 17, 2001.

Question:  In the course of 20 years I desperately tried to become pregnant.  I was told, over and over that, indeed, I was producing viable eggs and my husband was producing viable sperm.  Therefore, fertilization was occurring - but somewhere after fertilization, my body failed.  In other words, when zygotes entered into my uterus, either they did not implant properly, or if they did implant, they could not hold on (for lack of better words).  In my understanding, these zygotes, fully coded with all the genetic material needed to become full grown, possessing of a soul, simply were not implanted.  This does not mean that they were not humans, they simply never passed this stage.

Given that leap of faith, then these zygotes, possessing a soul. returned to their Creator, unborn, unimplanted. but equally loved by God as if they had been born.  So it is my belief that when and if I do meet God in Glory, I will have many (who knows how many?) children, whom I will meet for the first time.  Life on earth is but a moment; in heaven it is forever.  I may never have had the big family on earth that I yearned for, but I pray that I will in heaven.

Is this totally wacky? Or do I have a partly true thesis?  This is a very comforting theory.

Reply:  I see no problem in your conclusions.  Your case is clearly presented, and your conclusions are logical.  Each new human being comes into existence at conception.  Regardless of his or her circumstances after that moment, he or she will continue to live forever.  This is not only a matter of belief, but demonstrable to reason.  Aristotle says, simply, that the human soul, being a non-material substance, cannot cease to exist.  Only material things, because they are made of parts, can cease to exist, by coming apart.  Non-material substances have no parts.  

That some human beings die before birth, even in their earliest days of gestation, is conformable to the ordinary workings of nature, as presented in the biology of organisms  In some instances there is a deficiency in the parentage, sometimes in the offspring, and sometimes the cause is environmental.  This cannot be construed as being outside of the Creator's plan for the individual destiny of all human beings, since God works through the nature which He created.  Because nature is highly purposive, I would be inclined to think that the number of those who die before implantation is small in comparison with those who accomplish it successfully.  Your individual experience would be an exception to that of the majority.

May I hasten to say that I admire your outlook in the face of present disappointment.  Although you are reinforced by faith in the supernatural, it is not beyond reason for you to plan a reunion with your children.  Our social nature prompts all of us to desire that such familial relationships would last forever.  And our nature does not deceive us, since the Author of our nature cannot lie.  E.R. reply@unbornperson.org

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September 4, 2008

http://www.lifenews.com/nat4252.html

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Change Basis for Allowing Abortions to Slavery Amendment
 

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 3, 2008

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In an amazing admission, pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told a feminist group that the basis for legalized abortion should be changed from the so-called right to privacy to the anti-slavery provisions found in the Constitution.

Ginsburg made the comments in a speech to the Veteran Feminists of America which saluted her along with other pro-abortion attorneys who were involved in the women’s rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

During the June event, according to a story on the pro-abortion RH Reality web site, she responded to a questioner who asked if Roe should be recast based on the thirteenth amendment against slavery.

“I think the notion of a woman's autonomy to determine her life's course, that has come more and more into the ... more recent cases,” she said agreeing with the questioner.
“I think the notion (is) that it isn't just some private act; it is a woman's right to control ... her own life,” Ginsburg added, according to the web site.

"I think lawyers have argued that -- in the Casey case, for example. It's not privacy, in the sense that ‘This something I want to do and hide from everybody, and, seal myself in a cocoon.' It's autonomy (which) is the idea; it's a woman's right to choose,” Ginsburg said.

RH Reality indicated Ginsburg also talked about the future of the case.

"People tend to think that Roe v Wade has to be preserved at all costs. What has to be preserved is the right of a woman to have access to the means to control her own reproductive capacity,” she said.

The pro-abortion judge, who is thought to be one of the likely members of the high court to step down in the next few years because of health issues, also admitted that she wants to overturn the 1977 case that allowed the federal government to protect taxpayers from paying for abortions.

Instead, she wants poor women to have a constitutional right to use public funds to pay for abortions, the RH Reality web site indicated.

“Our government has a policy that there is no Medicaid reimbursement for abortion, that there is for childbirth. I think that the concentration really should be at the legislative level, in the states, and in Congress, assuming the composition of Congress will continue to change, as it has recently,” she said.

“It has to be much more than the bare right of a woman of means to obtain an abortion,” she concluded.

The above quotations of Justice Ginsburg should be considered as informal, “off the record” statements, and I will consider them in that light.  The concept of pregnancy as a form of slavery, especially as “slavery” is used in the 13^th Amendment, would require a quantum leap of imagination. However, such a mental gymnastic already has been accomplished through Roe v. Wade’s  “right to privacy,” a leap from Griswold to Roe. 

Looking at the entire quotation cited above, I see the underlying structure of the pro-choice position: Because you are a woman, you have a right to “reproductive freedom,” that is, the disposal of your unborn child.  The “right to privacy,” “slavery” or whatever other claims that might arise periodically in the future, are mere window dressing.  All that is required is that the person in control of the procedure be a woman, the mother of an unborn child.

My conclusion here is not facetious, nor is it a calloused statement.  As in other instances wherein “truth hurts,” it could be a deterrent for women against experiencing a non-reversible deception that could bring deeper and longer lasting hurt as its consequence.

It is not unreasonable to ask Justice Ginsburg what it is in the nature of a woman to justify her disposal of her and her partner’s offspring. Or, since justification is not legally required, may I ask whether it makes sense to her that one human being is free to dispose of another.  What about fair play?  Isn’t that something we, and the U.S. Supreme Court, are not free to disregard?  E.R.     

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August 21, 2008

Reprinted from displayed responses July 5, 2002:

Question:  Did the Roe v. Wade Court want us to think that what we were before birth and what we are after birth is like apples and oranges?  Two different things, I mean, so that the mother may kill one but not the other?

Reply:  If the Court said that we are non-human before birth and human only after birth, your apples and oranges would explain why one may be killed but not the other.  If the Court did make such a statement, they provided no proof to back up their position.  In fact, there is no proof for such a statement.  What the Court said, in my opinion, is that we are purple-humans (unborn) before birth and green-humans (born) after birth.  On this basis the Court should have had no claim to legitimize our killing  before birth, anymore than after birth, since humans are not to be killed in either instance.  It is pertinent here to note, clearly, that the Court did not prove that we are not human beings before our birth. 

Recently I commented on the caption of the Reuters' news story: "French court rules foeus not living human."   A court does not take it upon itself to affirm or deny whether a fetus is or is not a living human being.  Such a declaration could be made only by a biologist in conjunction with a philosopher or, perhaps, by the majority of the people from the beginning of human history until now.  Neither the Roe court nor the French court offered evidence of having undertaken any serious consultation with these two specialists in science, nor had they fairly considered the estimation of the entire society in its time-honored respect for its unborn members.

The news story itself says: "An unborn foetus does not have the legal status of a living person."  By "living person" do they infer that a fetus in not a living person, or do they merely mean a person already born? 

What the courts said is that the human being, before birth, being purple (unborn) is not protected by the law of the land.  Only green-human beings (born) are protected.  And who made the rule upon which the declaration is founded?  The courts, themselves, fabricated the rule!

This is the point of my recent writing: The Roe court and the French court have arbitrarily consigned the unborn segment of our society to their deaths, relinquishing the prime responsibility of a government, that of protecting the lives of all persons living within its boundaries.

In an attempt to explain my harsh judgment of the Roe v. Wade court, let me add this comment:  Although it is in the nature of a court to build upon precedent, this court failed to find in our Constitution an explicit reference to the humanity-status of the unborn.  As a consequence it should have been their responsibility either to locate an implicit precedent in the Constitution or to ask the federal legislature to formulate an explicit one.  Lacking these, the Court should have employed the ethical principle of "non-action in the face of uncertainty" and recognized, in practice, the unborn's right to life.

Whether the Court fulfilled this responsibility with regard to the second option, (ask the legislature) the answer is in the negative.  In fact they obstructed the federal and state legislatures' right to decide on such issues, even to the present day.  As for the first option (locate a legitimate, implicit reading of the Constitution) many competent Constitutional experts agree that the Court's "fringes of the shadows of the Constitution" do not fulfill the requirements of a valid, implied interpretation of the Founding Fathers' intention.  As to the third alternative (do not act in doubt) there is no evidence that the Court gave it any consideration.

Instead of facing their designated responsibility, the Court took upon themselves the role of "legislating" the Constitution, rather than the role of interpreting it.  Justice White, a member of the Court, in his dissenting opinion, spoke of the Court's action as "an exercise in raw, judicial power."  In denying Constitutional protection for the unborn, the Court misrepresented the U.S. Constitution.

The absence of reference to the unborn in the Constitution is not a "green-light" for their extermination.  When the Founding Fathers wrote that document, it was a time when every human being was treasured as a valuable resource for a pioneering nation.  Those men, many of them fathers with children, could never have foreseen a need to put into writing the obvious fact that parents should not kill their unborn children. 

For more on Roe v. Wade see Section 9.

 E.R.  reply@unbornperson.org

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July 31, 2008

Reprinted from displayed responses, May 8, 2000:

Question:  You speak strongly against the Court's use of the expression: "potential human being."  Is it because you see this as a ploy for denying, or at least questioning, human existence at conception?

Reply:  Our first objection to the expression "potential human being" is that it has no corresponding reality in the concrete universe.  For a more detailed explanation, may I refer you to Section 3.

For this moment, keep in mind that a potentiality (capability) has to exist in, and be possessed by, a subject.  This subject must be capable of possessing it.  A doorknob, for example, could not have the capability of reproducing itself, because it is not a living thing.)  To say that something has the capability of doing something, we would have to demonstrate compatibility between that something and the supposed capability.

There are two different situations in which potentialities can be considered.  In the first, the subject having the potentiality continues to exist in its own nature after the potentiality has been actualized.  An embryonic rabbit, for example, has the capability for reproduction.  Time and further physical development will be required for that potentiality to become actualized.  It is the same rabbit, individually and specifically, which in its embryonic condition had only the potentiality to reproduce, that is now actually a parent.

That which is possessed potentially must be rooted in the kind of thing which is capable of possessing its actuality.  If something had the potential for acting, even in the distant future, as a human,  it would already have to have been a human to possess that potentiality.

In the second situation, if it were possible for something to have the "potential for being a human," it would cease to exist as soon as the potential is actualized.  (The something would have been replaced by a human being.) 

But nothing in the natural world has the capability of becoming something of another kind, that is, having a different nature.  Its only capability, in the realm of being, is to continue being what it already is.  The biologist notes that there is no transition from one species to another.  Even Darwin's observed changes were always from one variety to another, within the species.  (When he spoke in "Origin of  Species," despite its title, he was speaking of the origin of varieties within the species.)

A special problem enters into this second situation, wherein something of one specific identity (nature) is said to become something which has a different nature.  Examined carefully, it can be seen that there are no examples of such a transition ever having taken place in our natural world.  We must be careful not to assume that we have an example of a transition from the potential to the actual, by saying that "the first something" had a potential for becoming "the other something" (that the potential is in one subject and its actualization is in another.)

If it were said that sodium has the capability of becoming table salt (sodium chloride) we would see no basis for the claim.  Left to itself, sodium never becomes table salt.  It is only when sodium interacts chemically with chlorine that table salt is produced.  In the process, both the sodium and chlorine lose their individual and specific identities in favor of the compound.

It has been suggested that the sperm and the ovum are "potential human beings."  In the same sense as in the chemistry example, neither becomes a human being.  At conception both lose their identities in favor of the new, single individual product, the "conceptus," which has a nature quite different for either of theirs.  

Another problem:  Those who assume that the product resulting from the natural fusion of the sperm and the ovum is "only a potential human being," must embrace the problem of how that potentiality is ever to be actualized.  See how Aristotle-------- attempted to handle this problem.

It is our position that there is nothing in the world of nature which could possess the capability of becoming a human being.  E.R. reply@unbornperson.org

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July 17, 2008

Reprinted from displayed responses October 21, 2002:

We've muddied the waters; we've soiled the skies.
What else to destroy before the planet dies?
We've tattered the fringes; now for the heart!
We'll kill off the people; we've made the start.

We've sold our future to sustain abortion;
Cannibalized our unborn beyond distortion.
We'll replace the blueprint with one of our own!
Then await the harvest of the seeds we have sown.

Editor's Note:  It is encouraging to note that most people who have thought about it, agree with our position, as presented in our last week's posting: IT IS UNREASONABLE FOR PARENTS TO KILL THEIR UNBORN OFFSPRING, SINCE ABORTION IS CONTRARY TO NATURE'S DESIGN FOR REPRODUCTION.  Some persons, however, object to our position by claiming that certain circumstances present a reasonable choice of over-riding the nurturing inclination of nature, by abortion.  We invite the viewers to examine this objection with us:

Comment:  The objection presupposes that there are "goods" greater in value than the life of the unborn offspring.  This supposition can take two forms, by under-valuing the life of the offspring, or by over-valuing the apparent "good."  Both of these approaches are faulty, because they attribute only a relative value to the offspring's life.  The human being has an absolute value, as indicated in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal and have an inalienable right to life.

As for under-valuing the offspring, it should not be necessary to examine the claim of those who do not admit to the humanity of the offspring.  Frozen embryos are protected by law, not only because they represent someone's "property," but because, when implanted, they continue to mature as do all other human beings and, so, should not have their humanity questioned.  How much, more so, should embryos brought about by normal conception be recognized as human beings.

As for over-valuing the "goods" that are offered as justification for abortion, it should be noted that those "goods" usually "benefit" one, or both, of the parents, at the cost of the unborn offspring's life.  In no instance can such "benefits" be equated with the right to life which is inherent in the human offspring.  Even the mother's right to life does not exceed that of her offspring's.  If anyone is confused on this point, I would suggest an examination of the phrase: "except to save the life of the mother."  This exception is found in the laws of the individual states of the U.S. which were in force prior to 1973.

It should be observed carefully that this exception does not say that the offspring may be killed in order to save the mother's life.  No innocent human being may be killed, even to save many lives.  The exception covers difficult situations in which saving the mother's life will be the occasion of her offspring's death, as when a ruptured Fallopian tube containing an ectopic pregnancy must be removed from her body.  There is no direct attack on the innocent life, even though the death can be foreseen.  The surgical procedure is initiated as the only means of saving her life.  At the moment of initiation, her offspring's life had not been in the process of being lost.  The mother needed immediate help; her offspring did not.  SEE the ethical principle "double-effect."

With these added elements of discussion in place, I invite students to continue thinking about legalized abortion as an example of a civil law in opposition to Ethics, which is sometimes called the science of reasonable behavior."  I ask the students to keep in mind that this discussion is not merely academic; it pertains to the way things are.  It is my feeling that the young people of the world deserve something better than the injustice and falsehood found at work in the society which they are about to inherit.  I also feel that there will be no major ethical improvement in their generation, unless they, the students, are willing to bring it about.  Fortunately there is a trend in that direction and, in that, there is hope.  E.R.   reply@unbornperson.org

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July 8, 2008

Reprinted from displayed responses October 25, 2001:

Question:  Considering the entire person, what do you feel is the relationship between the body and the soul, and the soul and the spirit?  How does this relate to us and to the unborn?

Reply:  The human being is an individual having a material body vitalized by a non-material principle of life called his/her soul.  He/she is a person, an individual having a rational nature.  You may refer to Section 2 for a detailed explanation of this definition.

As to your question concerning the relationship between soul and spirit, I have usually found that these terms refer to the same reality, and are used interchangeably.  In a few instances I have seen "spirit" identified with "human nature."  Also, "spirit" (from the Latin word for "breath") is sometimes identified with "life."  As you ponder these usages you will see that they are inter-related, emphasizing different aspects of the same reality, the human person.  While engaging in that thought process, you will help yourself by remembering that the terms "spiritual" and non-material are synonymous.

These concepts refer to us and to the unborn in exactly the same way.  The unborn are human beings; we are human beings.  The unborn are persons, just as we are.  They are our brothers and sisters.  E.R.  reply@unbornperson.org

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June 24, 2008

Reprinted from displayed responses July 8, 2001:

Question:  In your posting of June 29th, you suggested that our present culture is not very well tuned to the promptings of our human nature.  I'm wondering whether that might be due to the artificialities which have replaced much of our original human nature?

Reply:  Many thanks for your perceptive question!  I would help me if you had included some examples of the artificial modification of our humanity.  If I were to guess at what you have in mind, I might generalize one area of mischief: the confusion of good and evil.  Legalized abortion would provide us with an example.

My Reply to which you refer is linked to a small verse called "The Now Generation."  I was suggesting that our full human nature might not be at work in us because we are not giving it an opportunity to function totally.  Because of our preoccupation with our five external senses, whose objects rivet us to their material presence, we limit our time-awareness to the present moment.  There is insufficient awareness of the past and, as a result, no practical awareness of the future.  To whatever extent this appraisal is correct, we neglect the inner-senses of memory and imagination and, more seriously, the process of thought.

For this discussion, permit me to add a corresponding problem, with respect to the use of free-will and the consequent reality of responsibility.  I would suggest here the questions: Are we always free to "do our own thing?" and are we not our "brother's keeper?"

Your question prompts an additional consideration, one which goes beyond human speculation.  It is a faith-based insight to explain the lessened beneficial influence of our human nature.  For those who believe that the first humans were gifted at creation with a level of life above their human nature, but subsequently forfeited that gift, a reasonable explanation can be offered:  Without the help of the supernatural, our nature, however perfect in itself, is not sufficient to accomplish our original destiny of always being at our best, within ourselves and in our relationships with others.  E.R.  reply@unbornperson.org

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June 13, 2008

Reprinted from displayed responses November 28, 2005

Question:  In the case of Roe v. Wade, do you think that the courts were constrained to  make significant public policy or not?  Were the courts constrained doctrinally, institutionally, or culturally?

Reply:  It is my opinion that the "Roe" court aimed at establishing a change in public policy, in response to what they perceived to be a change in the nation's culture. 

In reading what follows, you should keep in mind that the Supreme Court prides itself on being the living Constitution, not merely a Constitution frozen in time. 

"We, the people," during the past century had given protection to the unborn by having criminalized abortion.  Now, "We, the people," in the eyes of the Court, were clamoring to remove that protection.  The Court, seeing the Constitution as the will of the people, seems to have disregarded the original Constitution, in favor of the articulated will of the current generation.  In their haste to up-date the Constitution, the Court failed to see that the clamor arose, not from the majority of the people, but from a mere handful of opportunistic revolutionaries.

In the years immediately prior to Roe v. Wade, we had become a permissive society.  "Do your own thing!" had been the rebellious norm of individual behavior, progressing into institutional behavior and, possibly, influencing the behavior of the Court.

I cite here, from among many, peculiarities of the Court, a few examples:  In ample time before the 1973 decision was handed down by the Court, the plaintiff, Jane Roe was no longer seeking an abortion.  She had carried her child to term and entrusted her to others, by adoption.  Under normal circumstances, the Court would have terminated the case, as moot, since there was no longer a cause for complaint.  But the "Roe" court did not desist in pursuing their action.  Did the Court have a mission to fulfill?  They continued the case, it would seem, to favor all women in the country who might, forever, be seeking abortions.  They accomplished this by prohibiting the states from interfering with the mother's choice to abort her baby.

Equally revealing is the Court's disregard of a fundamental principle of ethics:  After admitting their ignorance about the beginning of a human being's life, they proceeded to sanction the killing of what they knew could be human beings.  They covered this breach of ethics by speaking of "potential human beings," an expression which has no correspondence to anything in the real world of nature.

By an inexcusable error in reasoning, the "marital privacy" of a previous case, called "Griswold," was illogically tailored by the Court into a "right to privacy."  It is this fabrication in "Roe" which protects the maternal parent's choice of killing her unborn baby.  The two cases have nothing substantial in common.  Nor is there any Constitutional basis for the newly contrived "right to privacy."  The Court themselves admit that.  The closest they could approach the Constitution to locate such a "right" was in the "fringes of the shadows" of that otherwise revered document.

And something must be said about the Court's total disregard of the paternal parent's right to fulfill his natural obligation to defend his baby's life, in the face of the mother's "right" to dispose of their baby.  Does this not indicate the single-mindedness of the Court?  The unborn "potential human," as they termed the baby, and the father were given no serious consideration by the Court.

Did the Court's preoccupation with the mother leave women, and the rest of the nation, better off because of Roe v. Wade?  Has it improved our culture?  Does it even reflect our culture?  I suggest giving the full membership of  "We, the people" an opportunity to answer those and similar questions, without interference from the Court.

You may read Roe v. Wade, verbatim, here.  If you wish to consider our commentary, read Section 9, from our text material.  E.R 

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June 6, 2008

Reprinted from displayed responses March 28, 2007:

Editorial Note:  This posting may be added to the preceeding postings, about the common good and about common decency, with reference to legalized abortion.

To legalize abortion is to strike a fatal blow at the common good.  That is because the common good encompasses every member of the human race, whereas abortion excludes those waiting to be born.  Agencies that are, supposedly, custodians of the common good, who promote, or even tolerate, abortion are doubly guilty of destroying the common bond of decency that relates the members of human society. 

Among such agencies, at the international level, are the United Nations and the European Union, who pressure member, and perspective member, nations to “update reproductive rights” by legalizing abortion.  At a more local level, individual nations that legalize abortion, such as Portugal, which succumbed as recently as last month, and Mexico, now toying with the means of their own extinction, are destroyers of the common good.  In the United States, the fatal blow was dealt by “judicial fiat,” in 1973, by its Supreme Court. 

There is a faulty understanding that is breaking down the common good, the assumption that the common good is attained by seeking the “good of the many,” rather than the good of all.  In the case of legalized abortion, the good of “already-born women” is made to outweigh the good of human females who are waiting to be born.

What is involved here is the failure to see that every individual human being is valued at the same level of goodness as every other human being.  In this very real sense, even a multitude of human beings’ good does not outweigh the goodness of any one of them.  This reality is celebrated in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, where it is proclaimed: “All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”

The good of the human individual is non-negotiable, not only for “others,” but also for the individual possessor of that good.  The prohibition against suicide is an example.  This goodness, sometimes called human dignity, is the basis of human rights, such as the right to life. Legalized abortion is an infringement of the right to life and, therefore an attack upon the common good.

In this simplified form of the argument, the viewer might feel that too much of “the real stuff” is being left out of the statement.  Don’t pregnant women also have rights?  What about rape and incest?  Or, a deformed child, in the womb!  Practical solutions can be worked out to handle these problems, but never at the cost of forfeiting an innocent human being’s life for the sake of another.

The destruction and restoration of social order can occur gradually and by way of reaction, as expressed in “the swing of the pendulum.”  Degradation of social order can be promoted also by forces that are outside of the normal, human propensity for change.  Often the pursuit of ones own advantage must be paid for by another’s disadvantage, sometimes by the negation of the other’s non-negotiable good.  Such practices, in the course of time, might become legalized, and the culture changed, away from the common good.  Legalizing definitions of marriage and family that are contradictory to the time-honored, natural concepts of these institutions, could serve as an example.

At this point of this discussion, one might ask whether the common good is ever under direct attack, as when someone denies any obligation to respect the common good.  Since the common good is an essential characteristic of our human nature, that denial is also a denial of nature.  Without nature, there would be no guidance, and no standard of evaluation, for the behavior of individuals or of their social groupings. 

Indirect attacks against the common good are in ample evidence, as in the case of unreasonably legalized protection for the dissemination of pornography.  Legalized abortion, with its focus on the woman, disregarding the rights of the child and of the child’s father and the rights of human society, is the prime example.  E.R. reply@unbornperson.org

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May 23, 2008

Reprinted from displayed responses December 6, 2000:

Question:  How do you respond to someone who says there are no absolutes, especially in the moral realm?  The presumption is that everything is relative.  This is a philosophical question, not a medical question.  Can you demonstrate that moral absolutes exist?

Reply:  We appreciate your question and its significance in a society confused and short-changed by the assumption that there are no absolutes.  If someone proclaims that there are no absolutes, he or she proclaims a contradiction, because the proclamation is itself an absolute.  It says, without equivocation or exception, that there are no absolutes.  What could be more absolute than that!

It is strange that the proclaimer would insist on putting gasoline into the gas-tank of his automobile, whereas water might be what others would prefer.  Would it be idle conversation to ask what the engine requires, according to the design of its builder?   

G. K. Chesterton, in his thoughtful book, Orthodoxy, speaks to an art student who had assumed that the drawing of a giraffe with a short neck would constitute a denial of the absolute.  Chesterton replied, simply: "If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.  The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits.  You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature.  You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes.  Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may free him from being a camel."  (Chap. 3 - The Suicide of Thought)

The denial of moral absolutes is equally ridiculous.  If "right" and "wrong" are to have any meaning, they would have to mean two different things.  They could not be used interchangeably.  Each, then, must be something unique, something "in itself" and "of itself," in other words, something absolute.

The correct application of the concepts, "right" and "wrong," to human behavior is the subject matter of Ethics.  Ethics is the product of intellectual intuition and human reasoning, both of which must be assumed to be reliable sources of truth.  To possess truth, said simply, is to know things as they are.  So, those who deny absolutes also deny truth or, at least, the ability to possess it.

If I may suggest something for your further thinking, you might ask yourself why do some persons discard the absolutes.  They seem to be content with saying that the circumstances surrounding the human act are what totally determine its morality, the proponents of "Situation Ethics, for example.  They are partly right in their in their assumption, since circumstances must be weighed during process of making moral judgments.  However circumstances can never make "right" something which is intrinsically (by its very nature) "wrong."  It is here that the absolute must be reckoned with.

What if someone were to say that telling a lie, under some urgent circumstances, is not "wrong?"  You might ask that person whether telling a lie is ever "wrong" and, if so, why.  Eventually it will be seen that a lie is driven by the intention of one person to deceive another, which by its nature is contrary to justice and, therefore, "wrong."  A lie deprives another person of what is due to him, an honest statement.  Without the expectation of honesty in one another, a society could not function, and would soon collapse.  The legal "taking an oath" (calling on God to witness to the truth of a statement) is a solemn "back-up" to implement the necessity of honest communication.  So important is the need for truth, the lie-detector, despite its debatable reliability, is sometimes thought necessary for the maintenance of justice.

Pertinent  to this web site, abortion is never "right" under any circumstances, because it is a deliberate, direct attack against the life of an innocent human person, which is always "wrong" by its very nature.  Circumstances often influence one's judgment, by way of one's emotions, but morality does not rest on circumstances alone.  If you note carefully you will observe that the double-effect  principle, which is applied only under specified circumstances, does not, itself, resort to circumstances for its ethical justification.  E.R.   reply@unbornperson.org

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May 7, 2008

Editor's Note: Again, is the European Union "playing fair?" Following are two articles from recent press releases:

New Paper Warns Against European Union “Moral Regulation” of Abortion
by Samantha Singson of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute
New York, NY -- In a recently released research paper on the European Union (EU) social agenda, scholar Maciej Golubiewski argues that the EU has overstepped its mandate by pursing a regime of “moral regulation” by funding controversial social policy initiatives on the family and the beginning and end-of-life issues. The European Institutions are doing this despite the frequent objections of individual EU member states. In “Europe’s Social Agenda: Why is the European Union Regulating Morality?,” Golubiewski uses the term “moral regulation” to encompass all EU social and human rights policies and initiatives that intrude or potentially intrude on democratic national jurisdiction over moral matters. The paper catalogues controversial programs and policies that are sponsored by the EU such as: competitions and publicity campaigns aimed at ... bureaucratic promotion of reproductive rights encompassing abortion, criticism of pro-life views, anti-religious educational programs aimed at youth, and funding of NGOs that explicitly advocate the legalization of abortion. The author concludes that “Only timely and effective action by national capitals to assert their rights can protect and preserve national traditions of marriage, family, and human life – arguably the most important issues of our time.” Golubiewski is a Polish national working on a doctorate in international relations at Johns Hopkins University and serves as C-FAM's analyst of European affairs.
 

The Council of Europe Presses Member States to Lift All Restrictions on Abortion by Carlos Beltramo A resolution approved by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is demanding that its 47 member states "legalize abortion if they have not done so." Although legally non-binding, the resolution not only effectively endorses the "right" to kill the unborn, it puts pressure on nations to lift any and all restrictions on abortion throughout the whole continent. The resolution, named "Access to Safe and Legal Abortion in Europe," was approved by a vote of 102-69, with 69 abstentions. (See http://assembly.coe.int/ASP/Votes/DBVotesResults_EN.asp?VoteID=793&DocRef=11537&SessionID=317). The full text of the resolution is available at the official website of the Council of Europe. (See http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/AdoptedText/ta08/ERES1607.htm ) The first section of the resolution states: "The Parliamentary Assembly reaffirms that abortion can in no circumstances be regarded as a family planning method." (Resolution, n. 1). While this statement sounds pro-life, in fact it has the opposite intent. What the Council of Europe is actually demanding is that the countries in which abortion is permitted, but carefully restricted, make the procedure readily available to all women who ask for it. Abortion on demand, in other words. Although the Parliamentary Assembly's decision is non-binding on member states, it puts pressure on the Council of Europe to make abortion an unconditional "right." Even without a formal and binding decision from the Council of Europe, the resolution has a certain moral force, and can be used to intimidate countries such as Poland into establishing a "right to abortion." Gisela Wurm, an Austrian Socialist parliamentarian, was the chief promoter of the resolution. She was at pains to explain that the resolution is intended to ensure that "society can protect women who don't want to continue with their pregnancies." She made no mention of particular countries. In fact, however, the resolution is clearly targeted at three countries which forbid all abortions: Ireland, Poland, and Malta. Much of the resolution simply details the current European status quo. It reads: "In most of the Council of Europe member states the law permits abortion in order to save the woman's life for a number of reasons including to preserve physical and mental health, rape and incest, fetal impairment, economic and social reasons and in some countries on request.". The only three European countries that do not conform to this standard are, once again, Ireland, Poland, and Malta. The seventh paragraph of the resolution--although it doesn't name names--is clearly directed at these holdouts. It states, "The Assembly invites the member states of the Council of Europe to ... decriminalize abortion within reasonable gestational limits, if they have not already done so."   Abortion in Ireland has been illegal since the founding of the Republic. The operant law, the "Offences Against the Person Act," was inherited from the United Kingdom. Under this Act, procuring or performing an abortion is an "unlawful" act, with both the person performing the abortion and the pregnant woman subject to imprisonment. While Great Britain later changed its laws to allow abortion up to 20 weeks gestation, Ireland moved in the opposite direction. The 1983 abortion referendum added even stronger anti-abortion language to the Irish Constitution. A 1992 decision by the Supreme Court of Ireland weakened the Offences Against the Person Act by ruling that an abortion could be lawfully performed if the continuation of the pregnancy would cause substantial risk to the woman's life. This decision aside, Ireland today has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. The legal situation in Malta is even more straightforward, and thus poses even more of an irritant to the pro-abortion lobby. The Criminal Code of Malta simply prohibits abortion under all circumstances. Moreover, when Malta joined the Council of Europe, it insisted on the following condition: It would not change its laws concerning human life.   The resolution passed by the Parliamentary Assembly essentially targets three pro-life nations: Ireland, Malta, and Poland.       Abortion resolution or no, Malta is not about to back down. In the words of Maltese lawmaker Leo Brincat: "It is impossible to legalize abortion" in Malta. Even the country's socialists oppose the practice. In Poland, abortion is illegal except for certain narrow exceptions. Moreover, it is as a practical matter, almost impossible to obtain. The Population Policy Data Bank of the U.N. Population Division notes that "the pregnant [Polish] woman would be required to undergo counseling, give written consent to the operation, and wait three days after the counseling until the abortion took place. . . At the same time, growing numbers of physicians and hospitals refused to perform abortions, as they were allowed to do under a conscience clause contained in the law. In some cities, there were no public institutions willing to perform abortions, leaving private clinics with much higher fees as the only resort for women seeking abortions. Some estimates were that almost half of all public hospitals in Poland had adopted this approach to the issue." The resolution itself recounts in detail the various roadblocks that the country of Pope John Paul II has placed in the way of abortion: "The Assembly also notes that, in member states where abortion is permitted for a number of reasons, conditions are not always such as to guarantee women effective access to this right: the lack of local health care facilities, the lack of doctors willing to carry out abortions, the repeated medical consultations required, the time allowed for changing one's mind and the waiting time for the abortion all have the potential to make access to safe, affordable, acceptable and appropriate abortion services more difficult, or even impossible in practice." Pope John Paul II would be proud of his nation, as well as of the other two. They constitute three small holdouts of Christian decency against a continent that has accepted the barbarism of abortion. The Council of Europe is not happy with this deviation from the prevailing cultural line. It is attempting to use its diplomatic clout to bludgeon these three countries into line. Let us hope that it does not succeed. Carlos Beltramo is a PRI correspondent, European Union.

 

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April 25, 2008

Editor's Note:  We appreciate this viewer's wider ethical evaluation of the problem of permitting international organizations to dictate their agenda upon member nations which, in their own right, are sovereign nations.

Comment:  Good. I'm glad you're presenting one of the most interesting paradoxes of the so-called liberal mindset.  Almost nothing is more apparent to those who are familiar with a liberal mind than their tyrannical character.

The reason for this is simple: they're not liberals at all. A liberal is someone who believes that free choice operating in a rational context is the best mode of self-control for economic systems (18th c. Free enterprise), religion (Protestantism), and politics.

But the modern 'liberal' has no use for  any of the above. Indeed, the above might be a fairly good characterization of a conservative. The reason for all this confusion is that the original use of the term 'liberal' had a definite meaning. The modern Liberal is simply someone who is opposed to its correlative, the conservative.

So, now a liberal is merely some form of a socialist, since socialism is the post-liberal(in the original sense) system of thought.  And socialists are as doctrinaire as they come.

The old story that the nuns told us comes in pat here. They used to say that whenever someone points an accusing finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointing back at them.  

Now the liberals I used to know would say that the anti-abortion laws were an imposition on people, as if any command or allowance, whether law and/or right or not, doesn't have some value at its foundation. Actually, a negative law deposes a disvalue.  The affirmative commands impose a value.

Take, for example, abortion. When legalized and made into a right, instead of being called the legalization of murder, it is paraded as a progressive addition to the already-existing list of human rights, and the previous laws against it are characterized as barbaric, repressive, which merely imposed outdated values, etc, etc. The reason they can play the 'freedom card' is due to their having substituted a right for a negative law forbidding an evil. But this 'right' gives the woman an opportunity to become a tyrannical murder, acting on her own behalf with no regard for the other person. Every negative law forbids some evil. But because a law is a command and more clearly imposes a value or renounces a disvalue, it is easy for the anti-lifers to act as though they are not imposing any value, when as a matter of fact, the erection of a right which actually promotes murder doesn't impose a value, It promotes a disvalue, and teaches people that human life is less important than mere preference. To make a grave evil, which formerly was identified and forbidden, into the subject of a 'right' is a catastrophic legal and political error, is the wronging of righteousness, a destruction of that part of law which does not command good to be done, but an evil to be avoided.

To put the matter in terms of an example, by what stretch of the imagination would a alcoholic patient be liberated who was told not to get drunk by his doctor, but who fired that doctor for one who told him he had a perfect right to get drunk ? The first doctor has forbidden getting drunk for moral and health reasons. The second is teaching the doctrine that choice, based on pleasure, is more important than health or morality.

                   
As everyone knows who has dealt with a drunk, a drunk is enslaved to their passion. You don't liberate them by encouraging them to do evil. 

And this, or something like it, is what the pro-murderers have done when they made abortion a 'right'. They first substituted an allowance to do a serious evil for a negative command to avoid a that serious evil.  What it really means is: The formerly 'serious' evil is not seriously evil.

I wonder if we 'put the shoe on the other foot' and removed the impositional law forbidding rape, and substituted for that repressive command a 'liberated' right for men or women to rape anyone they wanted if they so pleased; but, if they didn't want to, they didn't have to. The only thing worse would be to require rape. 

 
So also with abortion. It would be worse to require abortions, but it is a step backwards, not a step forward to remove safeguards against serious evils. And that is what they have done in the name of choice, liberation, progress, and , of course, rationality.

 
We have a law on the books stating that robbing a bank is forbidden.  If we use the same logic as was used in the case of abortion, we should allow people to have the right to rob banks, if they so choose. But if they didn't want to, well, that's ok, too.

But if its evil to throw away laws forbidding evil and substituting encouragements to do those evils, then its evil for international agencies to require nations to permit and encourage evils as a condition for economic membership.

Please. Remember that the modern nation which began encouraging abortions was the Soviet Union in the 1920's. What is one of Russia's greatest problems now? Population decline.

Why were/are so many Arab foreigners allowed in Western Europe – in Germany and France ? Because they don't have enough laborers from their own country. Abortion, in the long run, is economically disastrous. So, why make it a condition for economic membership?

If they are that stupid, then my own primitive suggestion is this:
Those nations that are not embracing and will not embrace the madness of murdering their young - why don't you form your own economic union, since you have a future and the others do not? Your populations will be growing. So will your economies. Why hitch your star to these other nations whose murderous policies are the death bell for those nations' futures? Their populations will continue to decline. They will have to continue to encourage foreign invasion with its predictable conflicts, and if the foreigners are fruitful and are finally  enfranchised, those nations will have to look  forward to the day when they are no longer in control of their own countries. Furthermore, if they are so short-sighted in these present circumstances, they will in the future want you to partake of all the costs and difficulties and pseudo-solutions that result from their former imprudence that they have forced upon you.  You'll have the same problems they do. They'll want you to follow them again, like lemmings,  in the future when they come up with equally absurd solutions. Please don't require me to enumerate them. I will just say that like Macbeth, they will be chasing tomorrow after tomorrow's petty solutions as their candle dwindles. What advantage is there to that?

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April 15, 2008

Editor's Note:  We present this article to inform our viewers of what appears to be an unwarranted infringement by one Nation on the sovereignty of another.

http://www.lifesitenews.com:80/ldn/2008/apr/08040907.html

Government of Finland Pressures Nicaragua to Legalize Abortion

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

MANAGUA, April 9, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Finnish government, following the practice of its Scandinavian neighbors, is pressuring Nicaragua to legalize abortion during a visit that will determine if Finland will continue its $16 million annual aid package to the country.

During his recent visit to Nicaragua to "evaluate" the state of the country, the Finnish minister of Exterior Cooperation and Trade, Paavo Väyrynen, made his desire clear: legalize abortion.

"We are aware of the legislation that you have in Nicaragua to restrict abortion," he told the Managuan daily El Nuevo Diario on April 2. "When your Minister of Exterior Relations visited us, we talked to him about the laws that are typical of all countries regarding therapeutic abortion, and how they are a basic human right of the woman, and important for the health of pregnant women and children."

"We think that the legislation in Nicaragua is very strict, and affects the human rights of the woman and the quality of life of children, and for that reason we think that we have a justification for discussing this topic with the government of Nicaragua," he added.

Väyrynen did not address the issue of the health of children who die as a result of the abortion procedure, nor did he cite any international treaty establishing abortion as a "right".

Väyrynen made it clear that he was not at all sure if the aid package would continue. "It's a controversial topic. It's positive for donating countries to hold a discussion with respect to it, to influence basic progress, but on the other side, there are some negative aspects that we need to discuss. And we are now deciding the levels of direct support in the budget for each country. The future is something that we are going to discuss. I still don't know if we will continue."

Finland's thinly veiled threat against Nicaragua follows on the heels of a recent decision by Sweden to cut off aid to the country, which followed months of tension over Nicaragua's decision to apply criminal penalties to all abortions in 2006 (except for medical procedures to save a woman's life), a measure that was overwhelmingly ratified in Nicaragua's new penal code in 2007.  Although Sweden did not cite Nicaragua's abortion law in its decision, it was widely seen as a punishment for violating the pro-abortion standards of the European country.

Representatives from Scandinavia and other European countries have also expressed concern to Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, who has consistently defended the law (see LifeSiteNews coverage at http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jan/08010804.html).

Nicaragua's "Women's Network Against Violence" (RMCV), a pro-abortion feminist group, applauded Väyrynen's statements. "We feel that his declarations are a window of opportunity so that we can again put the topic on the national agenda," said Ruth Marina Matamoros, a Network spokesman, in a separate interview with El Nuevo Diario.  She added that the statement was an "open call" by "international jurisdictions" to legalize abortion in the country.

Related LifeSiteNews.com Coverage:

Excerpts from "Democracy is Realized in a Parliamentary System": Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jan/08012401.html

Nicaraguan President Denounces International Media for Campaign Against Country's Anti-Abortion Laws
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jan/08010804.html

Sweden Cuts Aid to Countries that Oppose its Pro-Abortion Stance
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/aug/07083106.html

EU Threatens to Withdraw Aid to Nicaragua if Pro-Life Law Remains
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/feb/07020902.html

 

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April 2, 2008

Editor's Note:  We have recently spoken of what we see as an infringement of the sovereignty of nations by the United Nations and the European Union.  We see this in their demand that member nations legalize abortion.  We presume permission to present this article indicating that demand, and the protest of Malta against that attempted, unjust  imposition.

The following article is from maltaStar.com

 

Decriminalization of abortion: "Council of Europe imposing values" - Pro-life activist                                                            Tuesday 25 March 2008

Paul Vincenti, Gift of Life Malta coordinator and pro-life activist, harshly criticised the Council of Europe after its call for the decriminalization of abortion. Vincenti told maltastar.com in an interview on Tuesday that he believes that the CoE’s (Council of Europe’s) agenda “is not to seek the truth here, but just to impose their values upon others. This is most alarming.” The pro-life activist criticised the Council of Europe because it sought the opinion of pro-abortion groups without inviting pro-life organisations to contribute to the Council’s deliberation. Mr Vincenti once again stresses the Gift of Life’s stand to amend the Constitution of Malta because the “vast majority at 93% of Maltese, is absolutely against abortion and believe that the unborn child should have the clear right to life.” When challenged with the CoE argument that legal abortions would reduce the chance of illegal and unsanitary abortions, Mr Vincenti said that as far as is known, there have never been any recorded instances of illegal back street abortions taking place in Malta. He argues that those Maltese who opt for an abortion go to Sicily or the UK and have an abortion in private clinics there, “and not in someone’s dirty garage as the pro-abortion side would try to have the uninformed believe to solicit fear and support for abortion.” Anja Schulze bounces questions and ideas with Paul Vincenti about the recent developments in the Council of Europe: AS: What is the Gift of Life's opinion about the Council of Europe's to decriminalise abortion? PV: The Council of Europe is the guardian of human rights. Human life begins at conception and it is simply incomprehensible how the CoE can call for the legal destruction of human life in its most exposed and defenceless stage of development. If the CoE were so interested in abortion, why did they only take testimonies from pro-abortion groups? They did not invite the pro-life organizations to give their expert advice. Why is this? Clearly, their agenda is not to seek the truth here, but just to impose their values upon others. This is most alarming. AS: Why do you want to fix the law which makes abortion illegal in the constitution? Will you be sustaining your stance even under the new legislature? PV: We do not want to touch the law as it stands. We want to amend the Constitution of Malta. The unborn child does not have the clear right to life in Malta, even if the vast majority at 93% of Maltese, is absolutely against abortion and feel that the unborn child should have the clear right to life. We have already made contact with the key people to start a parliamentary debate on the matter. We will keep on working at this as the people want this. AS: The Constitution of Malta guarantees the "freedom of choice" for everybody. But women do not have the right to decide for themselves for an abortion. Isn't it a contradiction? How do you justify this fact? PV: I am not aware of any part in the Constitution which allows for free choice for murder, rape or theft. These are all free choices people may make also. Some things however are clearly wrong and that includes all the above and abortion to the Maltese. Laws are there to protect human life, which starts at conception. To elevate the ideal of choice to a state above that or moral rights and wrong and sensible reason is a very dangerous slippery slope to travel on. Yet some are prepared to walk it all the same. AS: The report from the "Community on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men" that a ban doesn't cause fewer abortions and mainly leads to clandestine abortions which are more dangerous for women. Do you (GoL) still believe in a ban on abortion when mothers-to-be are taking such high risks to find a way out their situation, because of the law? PV: Being pro-life means being in favour of the protection of all human life from the beginning to a natural end. Whether abortions are more common, legal or illegal does not make abortion any less fatal for the child that dies within his mother’s womb and any less traumatic for the mother either. Abortion hurts the mother. Times are changing now with more and more women mustering the courage to come forward in ever increasing numbers, laden with harrowing stories of life long silent suffering following an abortion. This is now a psychologically accepted syndrome called Post Abortion Syndrom (PAS). Women have thoughts of suicide, some act on this; many fall into deep depression, become addicted to alcohol and drugs. They have flashbacks and cannot get over their grief. Many support groups of pro-life volunteers, now even in Malta are reaching out to these victims of a male dominated society which tells women, abortion is good for them and will make them equal to men. There is nothing more anti-female than abortion and we must defend women from this male dominated business. The pro-aborts have turned pregnancy into a disease and abortion is the cure. They have robbed us of the wonder of pregnancy and the unique wonder and beauty of motherhood. They have indoctrinated people with the lie that for a women to be equal to men, they have to shed their motherhood, the very thing that makes them so much more special then us men. As far as is known, there have never been any recorded instances of illegal back street abortions taking place in Malta. Those Maltese who opt for an abortion go to Sicily or the UK and have an abortion that is generally carried out by doctors in their private clinics and not in someone’s dirty garage as the pro-abortion side would try to have the uninformed believe to solicit fear and support for abortion.   Abortion whether legal or not, carries the same risks to the mother and these real risks are always conveniently ignored by the pro-abortion industry. AS: Point 5 in the CoE report states: "In no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning. But in circumstances where abortion is not against the law, such abortion should be safe and accessible." When the pregnancy results from a rape, women should be given the choice of having an abortion." Why should a mother who gets pregnant out of rape carry the burden of such a pregnancy? PV: What always amazes us is how the pro-abortion movement is so ready to admit that abortion is a necessary wrong. They will still however excuse it and refer to it as some kind of unavoidable evil. Abortion is medically never safe. Abortion always carries a risk for the mother because it is simply not natural. It is not natural to force open a woman’s cervix before the time, it is not natural to insert all manner of surgical instruments into her womb, it is simply not natural to cut away a human life from her womb. To give people the false impression that abortion is in any way safe is nothing less than absolute dishonesty. There have been numerous recorded instances of women who have died, been rushed into emergency treatment rooms with profuse bleeding and countless others who have become sterile because of legal, so called safe abortions. Dr David C Reardon, who wrote about the only known study on abortion and rape victims available “Victims and Victors”, testified that the vast majority of women who had an abortion following rape, said that the experience of having an abortion after the rape was far worse than the actual rape itself which they tended to get over much sooner. Rape is a powerful word that evokes high emotions. The use of a pretence such as abortion in cases of rape is an unfair tactic that seeks to enrol a level of deep sympathy for abortion in restricted cases and to also attempt to get those who are in favour of life to seem heartless in the face of such a terrible ordeal. It is true that rape is a horrendous crime against women, but if abortion makes post- rape victims even worse, then we should all be helping that person keep her child and avoid an even greater trauma. It is the women themselves who are telling us that abortion is not a solution in cases of rape and incest so why are the pro-abortion groups, including the CoE systematically ignoring these documented facts? This is a very important question that must be answered.

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March 17, 2008

Abortion (1973 -      )

A red, red rosebud was unfolding

Within its bassinet of green,

In wonder, there I stood beholding,

As though the hand of God were seen.

The sunlight sparkled on its beauty,

Through a drop of dew upon its side,

But now it is the sadness of my duty

To tell you how the rosebud died.

A little boy came swinging,

With hockey stick in air,

And sent the rosebud flinging

Broken treasures everywhere!

The poor rosebud was a living flower,

About to share its blessings here,

Transplanted fresh from Heaven’s bower,

With shiny dewdrop!  Perhaps a tear?

This sad, sad story is not saying

That all abortions show no care,

But I tell it as my way of praying

To save God’s creatures, anywhere.

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Abortion’s Destination

We’ve muddied the waters; we’ve soiled the skies.

What else to destroy before the planet dies?

We’ve tattered the fringes; now for the heart;

We’ll kill off the people; we’ve made the start.

We’ve sold our one future to sustain abortion;

We’ve cannibalized our unborn beyond distortion.

We’ll replace the blueprint with one of our own!

Then await the harvest of the seeds we have sown.

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                                                       Abortion 

The cruelest part is not the pain.

Or that the blood is shed,

But that the measure of ones gain

Is that a man is dead

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February 27, 2008

Editor’s Note:  In the hectic, world-wide push to legalize the abortion of unwanted, unborn babies, the morality of abortion has been given no place in the evaluation of this senseless “Crusade.”  Women now have “rights” to destroy their young. Their male partners have no rights to defend their offspring. That part of the abortionists’ conquest seems to be an accomplished fact. 

But there are consequences flowing from “choice.”  Among these, I would place national shame.  Yes, shame, even if not a factor in our present culture, shame will become an embarrassment for the centuries to come….  that is, if the society will not already have collapsed, because shame is the guardian of both personal and social integrity.

The “hubris” of a people, turning lethal weapons against defenseless members of their own constituency, will go down in history as the vilest betrayal of human decency!

But, “everyone is doing it.”  No, there is still a bit of decency left in our society.  Valiant countries, such as Nicaragua, Jamaica, Ireland, Poland, Malta, Uruguay, Mexico (nation) and Brazil, are a few examples of defiance against the pressures being placed on them by organizations such as UN and EU, who demand legalized abortion in exchange for economic advantages.

The writer of this Editorial is not unaware of suffering throughout the world, physical and emotional, individual and communal, curable and incurable.   But this writer can see no circumstances that warrant the deliberate killing of unborn babies as a valid remedy for any of those problems.  Our society is “off the track” in supposing that legalized abortion is a cure for anything.  It only adds to the problems that it has already imposed upon our human society.

The basic, human, right to life is being disregarded and denied by the advocates of legalized abortion.  And it is here that recovery to social sanity and justice must begin.  Every baby, even those waiting to be born, from the time of his or her conception, has the right to continue living the life given by the Creator in conjunction with the baby’s parents. Remember that the co-relative of rights is obligation. Let us encourage one another to fulfill our obligation to defend our brothers and sister waiting to be born.  Do not permit your nation to be consumed by the “social engineers,” who would desecrate your birthright by depriving others of your human family the birthright that is theirs!   E.R.

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February 13, 2008

Editor’s Note:  We reprint this previous posting to reinforce our contention that much of the present conflict about legalizing abortion is being forced upon smaller nations by   international organizations, such as the U.N., E.U. and the World Bank. We still ask why there is no protection against their incursions into smaller, though sovereign nations.

Response (August 23rd):  The road we are headed down, at the very least, is the well-beaten path that has characteristically destroyed republics in the past: liberty gradually turning into license.  The ridiculous idea that by instituting changes into a common law legal system, operating by precedent, which allow and encourage larger, more powerful, more experienced humans to destroy smaller, weaker, and less experienced humans is a  tyranny in the case of the individual.  Wide scale use of such a ‘right’ (I can’t think of a clearer case of a ‘wrong’) can only encourage tyranny on a wider scale.  Such changes are not ‘enlightened and progressive refreshments and renewals of the traditional American love of freedom’.  They are cancerous implants in the body politic which encourage lust, murder, and greed.

Reply:  Your observation expresses our concern about self-established, international organizations that would dictate their social agenda to the world.  Under the enticement of economic aid, these organizations, such as the United Nations and the European Union, demand that prospective member nations “modernize” their laws pertinent to “reproductive rights, ” to include legalized abortion.  The enticement, of course, is subtly hidden under the claim that great numbers of women are dying from the consequences of illegal abortion.

Even assuming the claim to be correct, we question whether abortion is the proper solution to this problem.  Would it not be better for the underprivileged country to save their man power and build up an economic sufficiency?  The international organization could provide a “jump-start” to that economy, such as offering the poorer nation maternal health care and by discouraging abortion.  Educational and nutritional assistance should be added to build the small nation into an economic partnership with the rest of the world.  Then, the international organization will be able to reap its profit, the well being of our human society.

The international organization cannot vote, directly, in any national election, but it can, and does, prejudice the process, from within the country, by a well-planned strategy of economic persuasion.  Pressures on Third World countries, in South and Central America and in Africa, are especially evident to a reader of current events.  In the European arena, one may well question the “surprise attack” and consequent pro-life defeat in Portugal, and the current pressure play against Ireland, Poland and Malta.

While writing these lines, I ponder the events of six years ago today, September 11^th, when terrorists portrayed their social agenda in bloody violence against innocent and defenseless human beings, in the United States of America.  Without doubt, the international organizations do not intend to become partner to such violence but, in reality, their “stealth approach” to eliminating the offspring of human parentage, has the same end effect, the violation of human rights and the refusal to honor the dignity of human individuals.

We ask the obvious question:  Where is the overview of the self-appointed, international organization?  And, a more telling question: Why does the rest of the world stand by and allow the depredation of our smaller, less affluent nations, the destruction of their moral culture and their rightful self respect?  E.R.

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January 28, 2008

Editor’s Note:  Thirty-five years have passed since the shock of Roe v. Wade paralyzed our nation. This is longer than one-third of an average lifetime!  I use the term “paralyzed” because we, of the United States, are still “in shock” with reference to a united response to that deeply divisive decision.  Paralysis of thought and action!  How, otherwise, could we go on killing our offspring during these thirty-five years? Unreasonable and irresponsible conduct can be explained only by a lack of clear thinking and an unwillingness to conform to ethical standards of behavior.

What could arouse us from our current culture-slumber?  The logical answer to this logical question is: justice and truth.  As a first application of justice, we should ask whether legalized abortion is fair treatment toward the unborn victim, toward the society of which he or she is a member, and toward the Creator of all living things. 

Truth is the knowledge of things as they are. Truth would affirm that the offspring of human parents is a human being. As a basic principle of Biology, the offspring inherits his or her species-status, at the moment of conception (fertilization.)  The truth of Ethics tells us that all human beings have a right to life.  Truth, rooted in nature, would tell us that nurture is an obligation of parenting, and that abortion is a violation of that responsibility.

Put in these simple terms, it should be evident that Roe v. Wade is an unjust decision, and that its message is untruthful.  Will it take us another thirty-five years to discover that! E.R.

 

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