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Campaign Life Coalition NS
March/April 2008 Newsletter
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Abortions in NS [FAQ's]
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1. Article From First Things - The Journal Of Religion, Culture And Public Life – April 8, 2008
Pro-Life Doctors: A New Oxymoron? http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1021 – By Christopher Kaczor
Tuesday, April 8, 2008, 5:43 AM
In November 2007, the Committee on Ethics of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (ACOG) published Committee Opinion # 385 entitled, “The Limits of Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine.” The committee opinion sought to “maximize accommodation of an individual’s religious or moral beliefs while avoiding imposition of these beliefs on others or interfering with the safe, timely, and financially feasible access to reproductive health care that all women deserve.”
Unfortunately, the balance struck by the committee between the right of conscience of physicians and the reproductive health care of women so emphasizes patient autonomy that it turns physicians into medical automatons forced to act against their best ethical and medical judgment. As pointed out on March 14, 2008, by Health and Human Services secretary Mike Leavitt: “The ACOG ethics report would force physicians to violate their conscience by referring patients for abortions or taking other objectionable actions, or risk losing their board certification.” Put simply, committee Opinion 385 could be the end of the pro-life doctor.
According to the ethics report, physicians objecting to abortion or contraception must refer patients desiring such services to other providers (recommendation # 4); may not argue or advocate their views on these matters though they are required to provide prior notice to their patients of their moral commitments (recommendation #3); and, in emergency cases or in situations that might negatively affect patient physical /or mental/ health, they must actually provide contraception and/or perform abortions (recommendation #5, emphasis added).
In order to justify these recommendations, the committee appeals to an idiosyncratic conception of ethics and conscience. The ACOG guidelines implicitly view ethics as a matter of private emotion and sentiment, rather than as common rationality and shared practical wisdom. Against Kant’s unconditional command, Newman’s magisterial dictate, and Butler’s famous dictum (”were its might equal to its right, it would rule the world”), the ACOG committee makes conscience a mere prima facie guide. “Although respect for conscience is a value, it is only a prima facie value, which means it can and should be overridden in the interest of other moral obligations that outweigh it in a given circumstance.”
This peculiar account of conscience stands in no small tension with the view expressed by Antigone in Sophocles’ tragedy, Socrates in the Crito, and Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae. Traditionally, conscience is the supreme proximate norm for human action precisely because it represents the agent’s best ethical judgment all things considered.
The ACOG’s own previous policy positions imply a very different understanding of the nature, scope, and claims of conscientious judgment, including the judgment that a proposed treatment is not in the best interest of the patient. In earlier statements, the ACOG defended the individual judgment of the physician in determining what is medically indicated as a buttress against laws criminalizing partial-birth abortion. If an individual doctor believes it is in the best interest of the patient’s health to perform a particular method of abortion, then this judgment must be defended. The ACOG Statement of Policy on Abortion (reaffirmed in 2004) affirmed that partial-birth abortion “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of the woman, and only the doctor in consultation with the patient, based on the woman’s particular circumstances, can make that decision. . . . The intervention of legislative bodies into medical decision making is inappropriate, ill advised, and dangerous.” Here the ACOG holds that the judgment of the physician is paramount in determining what is or is not medically indicated.
Some physicians, however, refuse to perform abortions and/or provide contraceptives precisely because in their view, having examined the empirical evidence, such as the recent Royal College of Psychiatrists statement on women’s mental health and abortion, these practices contradict the best interests of their patients. In such cases, the ACOG proposes to override their best medical judgment in favour of “standard care” as determined by the ACOG. It would seem that the conscientious judgment of the individual physician chosen by the patient is paramount only when this facilitates abortion.
Not only is the ACOG’s definition of conscience hardly representative and selectively invoked, but the recommendations themselves are perhaps even more problematic. “Physicians and other health care professionals have the duty to refer patients in a timely manner to other providers if they do not feel that they can in conscience provide the standard reproductive services that their patients request.” While this is clearly intended to facilitate abortion, clever pro-life physicians could fulfill the letter of the law by referring to another pro-life doctor. If construed as surely intended, however, the committee recommendation proposes a duty to cooperate in the wrongdoing of another. Foreseeing this objection, the committee responds, that it would be absurd to say, “I would have a guilty conscience if she did X.” It is not, however, at all absurd to say, “I would have a guilty conscience if I helped her to do X.”
Opinion 385 diminishes the autonomy of physicians, not only in action, but also in speech. When confronting insurance companies and federal family-planning guidelines, the ACOG has argued against “gag rules” that inhibit free communication between physician and patient. They warned, “Serious ethical problems arise if organizational rules (so-called ‘gag rules’) preclude such disclosures.” In Opinion 385, by contrast, physicians may not speak freely about treatment options unless it is to parrot “professionally accepted characterizations of reproductive health services.” Physicians are also forced, even in contexts where such matters may not be at issue, to make their ethical views known to patients, and yet are expressly prohibited “to argue or advocate” views contrary to ACOG committee policy. Opinion 385 forces physicians to reveal what they believe but forbids them to disclose why.
By extension and analogy, the flawed understanding of conscience found in Opinion 385 commits the ACOG to repugnant positions. Similar rules for accommodating conscience adopted in a different cultural and legal milieu would force physicians to perform female genital mutilation (FGM) if another physician was not available to perform the procedure. Nor could the gynaecologist plead that FGM contradicts sound medicine, since he or she must mouth and act upon “professionally accepted characterizations” of the practice, as understood in the predominant cultural and enforced legal milieu. Can it be reasonably said that such a conception of conscience, for the doctor practicing in places where FGM is legally and culturally accepted, provide an adequate protection (let alone “maximize accommodation”) for the physician conscientiously objecting to the practice?
Consider homegrown examples. A warden in a maximum-security prison asks the resident doctor to facilitate giving a lethal injection to someone on death row. The doctor consciously opposes the death penalty and, further, having closely followed the case, is convinced the prisoner is innocent. But because other doctors are not available, the physician has a duty to execute the prisoner—this according to the ACOG’s guidelines for conscience. In like manner, physicians opposed to euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide would be forced to kill or help kill their patients if no other doctor were available. In the absence of available doctors willing to kill, an unwilling physician may be forced into the role of Dr. Kevorkian.
It is true, as the ACOG points out, that, in taking on the role of physician, a person undertakes certain obligations. What is unclear is how these obligations relate to a judgment of conscience. Consider someone volunteering for military service who receives all the benefits and responsibilities that come with the oath to obey superior officers. If a superior officer orders him to do something that he considers morally wrong, if we make use of the principles invoked by the ACOG, the soldier may only disobey the order if there are other soldiers available to carry that order out. Surely, however, the demands of conscience should not be gerrymandered by the availability of people who very well may be less enlightened and conscientious.
The committee also worries that the exercise of conscientious objection may create or reinforce racial discrimination or socio-economic inequalities in society by denying contraception and abortion to minorities and the poor. One form of discrimination conspicuous by its absence is a concern for prejudice on the basis of religion. Catholics, as well as any other group opposed to the taking of innocent human life, will find it difficult if not impossible to practice medicine in accordance with the ACOG recommendations. If these recommendations become part of board certification, then Catholics and a large number of others, including many evangelicals, who accept that it is wrong to kill intentionally the innocent or formally cooperate in such killing, will be simply unable to practice medicine. Since Latinos and African Americans are disproportionately Catholic and evangelical, Opinion 385, in effect, reinforces prejudice and discrimination against these ethnic minority groups.
Many of the problems occasioned by the ACOG ethics report could have been avoided by recognizing the proper scope of liberty enjoyed by both patients and physicians. Physicians should determine what they consider to be medically indicated and whether they will perform a given procedure. Patients should be able to choose their doctor and accept or reject whatever services their doctor offers, seeking a second opinion if desired. Doctors as well as patients may misuse this autonomy, but this prima facie balance is preferable to the one-sided emphasis on patient autonomy found in the recent ACOG Committee Opinion.
Christopher Kaczor, Ph.D., is director of the University Honours Program and associate professor of philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He is also co-author (with Janet E. Smith) of Life Issues, Medical Choices
http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FLife-Issues-Medical-Choices-Questions%2Fdp%2F0867168080%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1207246278%26sr%3D8-1&tag=firstthings-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325.
References: American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Committee Opinion # 385:
http://www.acog.org/from_home/publications/ethics/co385.pdf
Mike Leavitt response: http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2008pres/03/20080314a.html
2. Column Du Jour, Charlton Heston Made History – April 7, 2008
Charlton Heston made history, By Doug Patton
“Some people make headlines while others make history.”
— Philip Elmer-DeWitt, American Writer and Editor
There are few of the old stars left in Hollywood, men who loved their country enough to show her the respect, service and loyalty she deserves. Charlton Heston was one of those stars.
Heston joined the military during World War II. After his discharge from the U.S. Army Air Corps, he went on to become one of the most famous actors of his generation.
Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille is said to have been struck by the muscular, 6-foot-3-inch Heston’s likeness to Michelangelo’s famous statue of Moses. Heston’s portrayal of the Old Testament prophet in DeMille’s 1956 biblical epic, “The Ten Commandments,” etched his image upon the American consciousness.
A few years later, Heston starred in “Ben-Hur,” a movie that stood for a generation as the most honored film in Hollywood history, receiving eleven Academy Awards, including best picture and best actor (Heston).
Both these movies dealt with great themes that stirred moviegoers to consider the nobility of their spiritual legacy. These two films stand as a testament, not only to the contribution of a great actor in a golden age of filmmaking, but also to the willingness of Hollywood to inspire us and to reinforce our faith, rather than degrade us and make us ashamed of our Judeo-Christian heritage, as does so much of today’s Hollywood fare.
Charlton Heston remains the enduring face of both these films, as well as many others, such as “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” a 1965 telling of the story of Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling for Pope Julius II.
But Heston was much more than just a handsome face or even a great actor. He was an activist. Long before he became known for his passionate leadership of the National Rifle Association, and long before it was fashionable in Hollywood, he joined the cause of desegregation. When an Oklahoma movie theater refused to allow blacks to attend the premier his 1961 film, “El Cid,” Heston joined the picket line outside the theater. Heston also accompanied the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the 1963 Washington, D.C., civil rights march.
Back in 1960, Heston had been a supporter of John F. Kennedy for president; but by 1980, he had switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican and became an ardent supporter of his old Hollywood friend, Ronald Reagan. A consistent foe of racial discrimination, Heston spoke out against affirmative action. He even resigned from the Actors Equity Association because of the union’s refusal to allow a white actor to play a Eurasian role in the stage version of “Miss Saigon.” Heston called the action “obscenely racist.”
And in an era when most of Hollywood was refusing to criticize violence and obscenity in “the arts,” Heston rebuked Time Warner at a stockholders meeting for releasing a violent rap album featuring the song “Cop Killer.”
Heston’s five-year tenure as president of the National Rifle Association, from 1998 to 2003, gave the organization visibility it had never had before. Perhaps the most memorable moment of his presidency came at the 2000 NRA convention. The group was strongly opposing the presidential candidacy of then Vice President Al Gore, who favored restrictive gun control. At the convention, Heston was presented with a hand-made Brooks flintlock rifle. To the delight of the crowd, Heston held the weapon over his head and declared, “From my cold, dead hands, Mr. Gore!”
In 2003, diagnosed with Alzheimer ’s disease, Heston stepped down as NRA president. In a stunning example of the lack of class displayed by today’s Hollywood nitwits, actor George Clooney joked about Heston’s affliction, saying that Heston deserved whatever was said about him for his involvement with the NRA. Heston, always the gentleman, said he felt sorry for Clooney, since he had as much chance of developing Alzheimer’s as anyone else.
Charlton Heston was a culture warrior. He was unapologetically pro-life, pro-family and pro-American. He once characterized political correctness as “tyranny with manners.”
When this great man died last Saturday with his beloved wife of 64 years at his side, he was 84 years old.
Thank you, Charlton Heston, for making history, not just headlines. May you rest in peace.
© Copyright 2008 by Doug Patton
Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.
3. Evangelical Christians See Lower Divorce Rate – April 3, 2008
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4. Friday Five, FRC President Tony Perkins – April 11, 2008
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5. HLA Weekly Wire, Mother’s Day Card Request – April 9, 2008
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Human Life Alliance | 2855 Anthony Lane S. | Suite B7 | Minneapolis | MN | 55418 |
6. Hug The Earth, Kill The Humans – April 8, 2008
Barbara Kay, National Post – Published: Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Yesterday, Post readers were moved by the image of our Prime Minister, in Poland on April 5, kneeling at the Death Wall of Auschwitz, the worst of the Holocaust extermination camps. In the museum guest book he wrote, "Lord, bless the souls of those who suffered and perished here, and deliver us from evil."
Stephen Harper's prayerful posture and traditional words of commemoration for the lost souls of a barbaric era reveal a sensibility noticeably out of sync with the religion of environmentalism that presently dominates our culture.
The contrast was illuminated in the coincidence of Mr. Harper's expression of reverence for human life with the contempt for human life displayed by Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society chief. In reaction to the March 29 maritime deaths of four seal hunters, Watson declared the deaths of seals a "greater tragedy."
Publicly discomfited, Green party leader Elizabeth May resigned from the advisory board of Sea Shepherd, but tellingly (rather like Obama with his racist pastor, Jeremiah White) wouldn't distance herself personally from Paul Watson. As a faithful adherent to their mutual church – Our Gaia of all that is Non-Human – to which she remains fully committed, May elected to stand by Watson for the sake of his "good work."
But what "good work" can compensate for Watson's advocacy of a population-decimating cap of one billion people, or calling human beings "the AIDS of the Earth?"
Watson should be a social pariah. Instead he's been touted by Time, that iconic pulse-taker of our culture, as an "Environmental Hero of the Twentieth Century," which speaks volumes about the inability of our society's wildly vacillating moral compass to locate true north.
Watson is the symbol of a movement that originated in a desire to improve the planet's physical condition, but transmogrified into the zero-sum dogma of eco-spirituality, in which the object of worship is the environment, and the messianic goal its return to a pre-civilization Edenic state. In this scenario, Earth is perennial victim, mankind eternal villain, the consumption of natural resources original sin. No emotionally manipulative appeal is beyond the pale for this pagan religion's demagogues, even the shameful appropriation of racist tropes. Alpha eco-spiritualist novelist Alice Walker claims, "The Earth is the nigger of the world."
The case of Englishwoman Toni Vernelli illustrates the disturbingly irrational nature of this death-friendly replacement of Christianity. In 2000, at age 27, Vernelli had herself sterilized so as to "reduce her carbon footprint" and "protect the planet." "Every person who is born," Vernelli lamented, "uses more food, more water, more land…and produces more rubbish, more pollution."
The West's plunging demographics suggest that, however extremist their views, Watson and Vernelli do represent an influential cultural shift. Canada's fertility rate is presently 1.54%, lower than China's one-baby 1.7%. Italy, whose fertility rate is a shocking 1.23%, "has lost a little of its will for the future," understates Rome's Mayor, Walter Veltroni.
The anti-natalist movement's guru is a philosophy professor from Cape Town University, David Benatar. In 2006 Benatar published Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence, which unabashedly advocates the extinction of humanity. It is always wrong to have children, Benatar claims, urging a "pro-death" view of abortion.
Is anti-natalism an historical first, a natural consequence of easy birth control? No. Cultural defeatism isn't technology dependent. In about 150 BC an ancient called Polybius wrote, "The whole of Greece has been subject to a low birthrate and a general decrease of the population." His explanation: "For as men had fallen into such a state of pretentiousness, avarice and indolence that they did not wish to marry, or if they married to rear children born to them, or at most as a rule one or two of them … the evil rapidly and insensibly grew."
Anti-natalists are gentler exterminators than Nazis. No gassings, no ovens, just ideology-induced suicide. The perfect world of the Nazis was judenrein – free of Jews. The ideal world of antinatalists like Watson is menschenrein – people-free.
Wringing our hands and letting the Pope and other theological polemicists do the heavy intellectual lifting on this issue won't do. A return to the Judeo-Christian values that produced Western civilization is our best offence against the hollow purposelessness of militant secularism, the abhorrent vacuum that loves the moral cretinism of anti-natalism.
We can love the Earth without hating its inhabitants. Demonstrating reverence for the dead is not enough. Mr. Harper must institute policies that show reverence for the lives to come.
bkay@videotron.ca
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=428909
7. Human Life Alliance Newsletter Cover Spring 2008 – April 2, 2008
"You did what last night?"
Comprehensive Sex Education programs that "address abstinence" and then tell kids how to have sex in varied and graphic forms continue to proliferate around the country. Unsurprisingly, STD rates continue to skyrocket and our teens are becoming more and more confused about what constitutes a genuinely healthy relationship.
A recent study in California that appeared in the /Journal of Adolescent Health /found that many teens don't even know the meaning of abstinence-let alone practice it.
For the full article, click here:
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Human Life Alliance's quarterly 8-page newsletter, HLA Action News, online here:
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8. If The Silent Majority Stays Silent Much Longer, It Won’t Be A Majority Anymore – April 4, 2008
Two More Cracks in the Dam, By Lee Duigon, MichNews.com – Apr 4, 2008
The American people had one bright shining moment last summer, when they rose up to stop a bipartisan bill to pour the country down the drain. All our leaders—president, Congress, Wall Street, the media, the academics, the mainline clergy—pushed a blanket amnesty for tens of millions of illegal aliens. The payoff: cheap labour, cheap votes. They tried to slip it past when they thought no one would be watching, twice, on long holiday weekends. It was a sure thing, a done deal—until an unprecedented public outcry against it buried it.
But that was just patching a single crack when the whole dam’s crumbling. There are thousands of cracks. Today let’s look at two of them.
McDonald’s, the fast food giant, has joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and pledged its whole-hearted support for Organized Sodomy’s agenda. A chunk of all those zillions of dollars Americans spend on burgers, fries, and Egg McMuffins will now be used to fund the deconstruction of America. McDonald’s calls this “being socially responsible.”
And in Mullica, New Jersey, Clearview High School has a new sex education program called PEP, in which teenagers “educate” each other. As is always the case in America’s public schools, the PEP curriculum reads like some of the more lurid passages of My Secret Life. You can see it for yourselves at http://www.purepioneers.org/id24.html . Parents are trying to get this program shut down. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
I picked these because they are just two of many examples that readers have asked me to comment on. They illustrate a rapid breakdown of our culture. They also illustrate the futility of looking to our leaders for the answers.
Some of our leaders are afraid to address the issue. The few who try get smothered under an avalanche of mockery and hate. Many more, in both political parties, never met an anti-American scheme they didn’t like. Whatever erodes our culture, our national sovereignty, our religious faith, or our hard-won liberty, they’re all for it. Whether it’s another weird international treaty to build up the U.N. at America’s expense, another slap-down of the Boy Scouts, another wasteful earmark, or just another hate speech bill, they’re pulling for it.
And a few leaders, a few organizations, just keep plugging away, trying to stop the madness. Some of them seem to accomplish little more than just to keep themselves in business. The rot spreads, and keeps on spreading.
We put our money in banks that sponsor “pride parades,” we buy hamburgers from a corporation pledged to push “gay marriage,” we send our children to public schools to be immersed in anti-Christian, anti-family, anti-American indoctrination. We have three presidential candidates: two are socialists (one of whom is a racist, to boot), and the third sponsored the amnesty for illegal aliens. It’s very hard to avoid the impression that we are consenting to our own destruction.
America can no more tolerate “gay marriage,” “alternative families,” or the new “transgender” movement than it can absorb and assimilate 30 million illegal aliens in a single gulp.
Every one of these cracks in our cultural dam has its source in the humanist delusion that we create ourselves, create our own moral laws as needed, create and re-create the world according to our own desires, even control the global climate by depriving ourselves of SUVs and toilet paper, and be as gods. It is a religious delusion, pure and simple. They can call it being socially responsible, but it’s really being theologically irresponsible.
As Ronald Reagan famously observed, God can do without America, but America cannot do without God. Our rebellion against God’s moral laws can only end in our enslavement to false gods. http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_19894.shtml
Copyright by Lee Duigon
Lee Duigon is a Christian free-lance writer whose work can be seen regularly at www.chalcedon.edu.
9. It Appears That Hilary Clinton Supports Assisted Suicide – April 5, 2008
Comment by Alex Schadenberg – It appears that Hilary Clinton supports assisted suicide.
In a comment (below) to the Register-Guard editorial board Hilary Clinton makes a statement that would suggest that she supports assisted suicide.
Even-though she is guarded in her comments she does say that, "I think it's an appropriate right to have."
It shouldn't surprise people that she would favour assisted-suicide but it must be considered a factor when people are decided who to vote for in November. – End of Comment
Excerpt from Hillary Clinton's conversation with the Register-Guard Editorial Board (Eugene, Oregon-04/05/08):http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.cms.support.viewStory.cls?cid=89060&sid=4&fid=1
Q: What's your attitude toward Oregon's assisted suicide law?
A: I believe it's within the province of the states to make that decision. I commend Oregon on this count, as well, because whether I agree with it or not or think it's a good idea or not, the fact that Oregon is breaking new ground and providing valuable information as to what does and doesn't work when it comes to end-of-life questions, I think, is very beneficial.
Q: Would you have voted for it if you were a resident of the state?
A: I don't know the answer to that. I have a great deal of sympathy for people who are in difficult end-of-life situations. I've gone to friends who have been in great pain and suffering at the end of their lives. I've never been personally confronted with it but I know it's a terribly difficult decision that should never be forced upon anyone. So with appropriate safeguards and informed decision-making, I think it's an appropriate right to have.
10. Letters From WWW.Robertjason.CA Re: MacDonalds And Bill C484 – April 2, 2008
Letter to McDonald's Corporation, By Jim Christian
Andrew McKenna, President
McDonald's Corporation
McDonald's Plaza
Oak Brook, IL 60523 USA
Dear Mr. McKenna,
I am horrified to learn that McDonald's leadership has decided to put their entire corporate strength behind the promotion of the homosexual agenda. Sadly, I and my family can no longer feel comfortable in any of your golden arches locations.
I'm asking McDonald's to remain neutral in the culture war. Your efforts should be in providing the finest fast food products possible, not in a political agenda - especially one that promotes an aberrant and destructive behaviour.
Truly, Jim Christian
April 2, 2008.
CC: Family, friends and associates.
Background – http://www.afa.net/Petitions/Issuedetail.asp?id=314
Letter to McDonald's Corporation, By Dr. Frank Joseph
Dear Chairman McKenna:
The CEO of McDonald’s said, "Being a socially responsible organization is a fundamental part of who we are. We have an obligation to use our size and resources to make a difference in the world … and we do."
And the difference McDonald's is making is that this once great family organization has taken upon itself to being a party to the spread of AIDS. Gays make up just 2% of the population but have 45% of all the AIDS. The reason is because the rectum was made for one purpose only. It tears and bleeds easily when used for sex purposes, thus all viruses and bacteria have easy access to the blood stream which is also why all other sexually transmitted diseases are MUCH higher in gays. Plus, statistics show that gays have numerous partners, even with strangers.
I will never again buy anything at McDonald's and I will advise all my friends not to and the reason why.
As a physician, I am appalled by your actions. Why are you being a party to the spread of AIDS AND OTHER SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES?
You are just encouraging gays to continue their sick and deadly lifestyle and to die 20 years before their time. Contact the CDC (Center for Disease Control) and they will give you the statistics if you do not believe me.
I might add that your restaurants in a short time will be the hang out for gays and your bathrooms will be used for sick acts and the spread of diseases and an earlier death.
If you insist on going through with your disease disseminating plan, put a sign in your windows stating “Children not allowed in our restaurants”.) Have you never heard of gays using public bathrooms for sex purposes?
Frank Joseph MD
Children, foetuses and Bill C-484, By Ken Epp, MP
National Post, Published: Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Re: Bill C-484 Is All About Abortion, Joyce Arthur, April 1.
Joyce Arthur says that referring to a human foetus as a "child" in my bill C-484 is "unprecedented" in the Criminal Code (CC). In fact the exact opposite is true. I used the term "child" precisely because that is the term currently used in the CC to refer to a woman's offspring before birth – not "foetus." The CC states: "223. (1) A child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother…"
The word "becomes" implies that at some point in time, i.e., before fully exiting the mother's body, a child is not a "human being" for purposes of the CC. My bill does not change this.
Furthermore, the very section of the CC, which my bill amends, namely 238, also uses the term "child" to refer to the unborn child/foetus.
My bill extends criminal law protection to unborn children in a very narrow circumstance that is not currently covered by section 238, using existing CC terminology, and despite the fact they are not considered "human beings" in the code. As the Law Reform Commission of Canada pointed out in its 1989 report: "to decide whether to give the foetus criminal law protection we don't need to decide if it is a person… There is nothing which limits criminal law protection to persons."
I think that if Ms. Arthur would debate what my bill actually says instead of basing her arguments on a misrepresentation, she would be advocating for C-484. How can she argue against protecting in law the unborn child which the pregnant woman has chosen to keep, and to provide criminal sanctions against any third party who would unilaterally take that choice and that anticipated new life away from her, without her consent, against her will and with violence?
Ken Epp, MP, Edmonton-Sherwood Park, Alta.
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=415307
Supporting Bill C-484, By Marg Brazil Pasadena
The Telegram (St. John's) 2008.04.03
It seems when a woman decides to have a child, becoming pregnant is getting harder and harder; and so pregnancy is a precious, albeit vulnerable, time for mother and baby.
Therefore, I think Bill C-484 is an issue that should be decided by those who want to protect the life of their unborn child, and who would want justice if their child were harmed while in the womb? In judging this bill, shouldn't we give priority to these voices – those of the people most deeply affected – rather than to those who are simply worried about the "right" to abortion? Particularly when this bill does not even address the abortion issue, except to say that it will not impact upon it.
Please support Bill C-484. This bill will make it an offence to threaten, injure or kill an unborn child during an attack on the mother.
Marg Brazil Pasadena
Foetuses, children and abortion, By Ralph and Rachel Mooney
National Post 2008.04.03
Re: Children, Foetuses And Bill C- 484, letter to the editor, April 2;
Bill C-484 Is All About Abortion, Joyce Arthur, April 1.
Thanks to Ken Epp for clearing up the horrendous errors of Joyce Arthur's column. As was stated, Bill C-484 protects the unborn child, which the pregnant woman has "chosen" to keep and is looking forward to cradling, loving and enjoying. When someone takes that away from her in a violent act, how can anyone be against that?
We appreciate the efforts of Mr. Epp, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and many other MPs who are making Canada a safer country to live and raise children in.
Ralph and Rachel Mooney, Woodstock, Ont.
11. May March For Life & May Pro-Life Vigil – Posted April 7, 2008
Please see the CLC, NS newsletter for March/April for details regarding NS March for Life, May 8th, 12 Noon and the pro-life vigil at the VGH on South Park at 8PM May 7th.12. News And Views From A Canadian On Suicide And Euthanasia – April 12, 2008
Please check out Alex Schadenberg's new blog comment on: Suicide Promotion by Website. (Good read)
Go to Alex Schadenberg's new blog comment at: www.alexschadenberg.blogspot.com
13. PRI Weekly Briefing – April 7, 2008
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14. Renowned Oncologist Changes Position On Euthanasia After Contracting Cancer – April 12, 2008
Go to Alex Schadenberg's new blog posting at: www.alexschadenberg.blogspot.com.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Renowned oncologist changes position on euthanasia after contracting cancer.
15. Terri Schiavo's Lifesaving Legacy & Nat Hentoff On Barack Obama vs. Terri Schiavo – April 3, 2008
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/hentoff040308.php3
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Jewish World Review April 3, 2008 / 27 Adar II 5768
Terri Schiavo's Lifesaving Legacy, By Nat Hentoff
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In 2001, the Schindler family the parents, brother and sister of Terri Schiavo formed the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation to try to save the life of their loved one who, as her brother, Bobby Schindler, said to me recently, "was deemed unworthy of life because she was cognitively disabled." The judiciary and the press did not agree with that justified accusation that Terri was cruelly starved and dehydrated to death.
The foundation continues. "We fight daily," Bobby Schindler emphasizes, "to shed light on the fact that having a disability of any kind does nothing to diminish a person's inherent value and worth." A considerable number of calls come into the Schindlers from members of families faced with the desperate need to save the lives of their disabled loved ones from those who would end them.
"When the foundation gets a call," says Terri's brother, "we first ask if they need legal representation or also help from a neurologist or other medical expert." Referrals are then made to lawyers and doctors who agree with the foundation's vital educational, lifesaving work.
This is just the start, however, of the Schindler family's mission to counter the growing pressures for euthanasia; physician-assisted suicide; and the "futility doctrine" at hospitals that judge certain lives not worth living. The Foundation is now seeking support as it establishes such programs as:
"Terri's Alert an emergency notification system to notify our network and supporters when a person like Terri is threatened with the loss of care or treatment. Also, creating a Terri Schindler Schiavo Medical Center as a safe haven for those like Terri who need life-sustaining medical treatment denied to them elsewhere." (Terri was fatally deprived of water and food, though she was not terminal, and was responsive.)
Also in the works is a Terri Schindler Schiavo Legal Defence team in-house attorneys prepared to provide immediate legal assistance to families; a network of medical professionals around the country willing to provide lifesaving care as well as sustaining treatment for brain-injury victims.
Already, the foundation is involved in educating the public on guardianship laws in the states; health care surrogates; and advance directives; and warnings of the continuing introduction of what are actually pro-euthanasia bills in state legislatures, from so-called "right to die" organizations.
Bobby Schindler as funds are raised to implement these programs in a society also facing increased rationing of health care, with more lives that will be considered too "costly" to continue is an energetic presence on college campuses around this nation, while lecturing abroad to expose the practitioners of "the culture of death."
On one of his journeys, he spoke at Castle Hartheim, a center of killing unworthy lives in Linz, Austria during the Nazis T4 euthanasia program. It is now a memorial site to remind visitors of such ongoing crimes against humanity.
Currently, most of the financial support for the current work of the Foundation is mostly from small amounts sent by those concerned with cases of removal of feeding tubes, and other forms of abandonment of patients by judicial decree or decisions of hospital bioethicists.
"We only hear," says Bobby Schindler, "of the cases in which there is family disagreement. But thousands of conscious and unconscious patients will continue to die deliberate dehydration, and other often disguised or euphemized forms of euthanasia.
I am surprised that so far there have been no major donors. It's an indication that disability rights, including denial of life itself, are still of minor interest to much of the public and the far-flung media including the struggles of those families. The struggles of those families whose loved ones are far from dead, but, like Terri, are in imminent danger of being disappeared.
As Terri's father, Bob, has said: "We pay great lip service in this country to disability rights, but as the degree of a person's disability increases, the level of legal protection that person receives decreases." This can be changed only by action from those Americans who realize that we are all only temporarily able.
Those who do not want others to decide when they should die should consider helping sustain the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation.
To learn more about the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, its Web site is terrisfight.org. Located at 5562 Central Ave., Suite 2, St. Petersburgh, FL 33707, the phone number is (727) 490-7603. All donations to this nonprofit foundation are tax deductible.
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http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/825351.html
Barack Obama vs. Terri Schiavo, By Nat Hentoff
Published 12:00 am PDT Tuesday, April 1, 2008
In none of the endless presidential candidates' debates has there been a meaningful discussion of the rights of disabled Americans.
However, in the Feb. 26 debate in Cleveland, Barack Obama casually and ignorantly revealed his misunderstanding of the basic issue in the highly visible and still-resonating official death sentence of a disabled woman, Terri Schiavo. I have repeatedly called her death the result of "the longest public execution in American history."
When moderator Tim Russert asked Hillary Clinton and Obama if "there are any words or votes that you'd like to take back ... in your careers in public service," Obama answered that in his first year in the Senate, he joined an agreement "that allowed Congress to interject itself (in the Schiavo case) into the decision-making process of the families."
Obama added: "I think that was a mistake, and I think the American people understood that was a mistake. And as a constitutional law professor, I knew better."
When he was a professor of constitutional law, Obama probably instructed his students to research and know all the facts of a case.
The reason Congress asked the federal courts to review the Schiavo case was that the 41-year-old woman about to be dehydrated and starved to death was breathing normally on her own, was not terminal, and there was medical evidence that she was responsive, not in a persistent vegetative state.
One of the leading congressional advocates of judicial review was staunchly liberal Democratic Tom Harkin of Iowa, because he is deeply informed about disability rights. By contrast, in all of this inflamed controversy, the mainstream media performed miserably, copying each other's errors instead of doing their own investigations of what Terri's wishes actually were. Consequently, most Americans did not know that 29 major national disability-rights organizations filed legal briefs and lobbied Congress to understand that this was not a right-to-die case, but about the right to continue living. Among them were: The National Spinal Cord Injury Association; the National Down Syndrome Congress; the World Association of Persons with Disabilities; Not Dead Yet; and the largest American assembly of disability-rights activists, the American Association of People with Disabilities.
AAPD's head, Andrew J. Imparato, has testified before the Senate that: "When we start devaluing the lives of people with disabilities, we don't know where that's going to stop. You also need to take into account the financial implications of all of this. We have an economy that is not doing as well as it once was and ... one way to save money is to make it easier for people with disabilities to die." I recommend to Obama – if he wants to make amends – that he consult the disability-rights experts at Not Dead Yet for the facts of the Terri Schiavo case and its acute relevance to many Americans in similar situations.
Not Dead Yet is about 12 miles from Chicago at 7521 Madison St., Forest Park, Ill.
If this presidential contender and former law professor had bothered to do his own research, he would have discovered – as I did in four years of covering this story and interviewing participants, including neurologists, on both sides, that: The husband of the brain-damaged Terri Schiavo, Michael Schiavo, had stopped testing and rehabilitation for her in 1993, 12 years before her death. Moreover, for years he had been living with another woman, with whom he had two children, and whom he has since married.
Michael Schiavo has continually insisted that he finally succeeded in having Terri's feeding tube removed because he was respecting Terri's wishes – which she could no longer communicate – that she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means.
But at a January 2000 trial – as reported by Notre Dame law school professor O. Carter Snead in "Constitutional Quarterly" (published by the University of Minnesota Law School) in its winter 2005 issue: Five witnesses testified on whether Terri would have refused artificial nutrition, including water, in the condition she was in.
Her mother and a close friend of Terri testified she had said clearly she would want these essential life needs. The other three witnesses said Terri would have approved the removal
'Faith has a positive impact on marital health and durability.'
How do a white Republican and a black Democrat find common ground?
