Posted on 01/29/2022 4:57:24 AM PST by Kaslin
"All life is worthy of dignity and respect."
Inside St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Sisters of Life, Cardinal Timothy Dolan and others prayed for the protection of all human life. It was the 49th anniversary of the Supreme Court's grave Roe v. Wade decision, which ushered in a regime of "unfettered access to abortion," Cardinal Dolan said. Dolan also talked about two police officers who were shot the night before in New York City. The man who shot them was in the same hospital as the officers (both of whom would later die), being treated by a team of doctors. Because it's not the doctors' call to decide who lives and who dies, who is worthy of care and who isn't, each patient receives the care they need.
At least that's how medicine is supposed to work.
Outside the cathedral, people were yelling and swearing. A pro-choice gathering made a commotion. Some of the organizers and participants regularly protest prayer vigils and Masses for life in New York City.
But if Roe is overturned by the Supreme Court, abortion in New York will not end -- it's probably going to increase. Already the current governor has implored pregnant women in Texas, where a heartbeat bill has been in effect since September, to travel to the Empire State for their abortions.
The Vigil for Life at St. Patrick's was also the regular Saturday night Mass in anticipation of Sunday. So, while the people who were there because of the Roe anniversary stayed for an hour of prayer after, it was other Mass-goers, many of them presumably tourists, who wound up accosted after Mass with expletives from the abortion supporters. It's one thing to harass the people who by now know what they are getting into by praying for life on the hostile streets of New York. It's another for unassuming Sunday Mass congregants to see what abortion extremism looks like. It's basically what pro-abortion politics is, unvarnished. The professionals use words like choice and health care. These folks projected "God loves abortion" on the cathedral in bright colors.
The day before, Marist poll numbers commissioned by the Knights of Columbus found that 71% of Americans support legal limits on abortion. I don't think most Americans even know that you can get abortion pills in the mail under the Biden administration -- 63% of those polled oppose that policy. We are not actually an extremist nation when it comes to abortion. And the more people see the extremism, the more I pray that abortion will be seen as the human-rights travesty of our time that it is, one that touches so many aspects of human life, making people miserable and our society more violent, pitting mother against child -- the most fundamental relationship there is -- and letting men off the hook. Abortion is not good for women and the children who are killed by it, but it is a boon for men who want to selfishly use women -- and girls -- for their own gratification.
On the night before the March for Life in Washington, D.C., at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, there was an annual Mass. Unbeknownst to those of us praying inside, a much more professional group calling themselves Catholic projected pro-abortion language on the outside of the Basilica. A reporter who was outside tweeted a photo, or most of us wouldn't have known about it. That was a desecration beyond what the angry God-loves-abortion people were doing. None of them have told me they are Catholic. But for people who use the faith to make God in their own political image, that's an offense against God and His great gift of life, an offense that hurts and confuses -- and ultimately kills.
All life is "sacred and fragile," Cardinal Dolan said. "All life is God's alone, to give and to take." At the D.C. Mass, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore talked about so many of the ministries of the Catholic Church that serve women -- including women who have had abortions. And he challenged everyone present and listening to step up to the plate and support Walking With Moms in Need, an initiative of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. To combat the evil of abortion, we need more and more people showing what pro-life means: love for women and children, not violence. We need a culture where the alternatives to abortion are ubiquitous. This can be done. It must be. And we might just find some common ground along the way.
Either you're for murdering babies...or protecting them from the moment of conception.
I Asked Thousands of Biologists When Life Begins. The Answer Wasn’t Popular
written by Steve Jacobs
Shortly after being awarded my Ph.D. by the University of Chicago’s department of Comparative Human Development this year, I found myself in a minor media whirlwind. I was interviewed by The Daily Wire, The College Fix, and Breitbart. I appeared on national television and on a widely syndicated radio program. All of this interest had been prompted by a working paper associated with my dissertation, which was entitled Balancing Abortion Rights and Fetal Rights: A Mixed Methods Mediation of the U.S. Abortion Debate.
As discussed in more detail below, I reported that both a majority of pro-choice Americans (53%) and a majority of pro-life Americans (54%) would support a comprehensive policy compromise that provides entitlements to pregnant women, improves the adoption process for parents, permits abortion in extreme circumstances, and restricts elective abortion after the first trimester. However, members of the media were mostly interested in my finding that 96% of the 5,577 biologists who responded to me affirmed the view that a human life begins at fertilization.
It was the reporting of this view—that human zygotes, embryos, and fetuses are biological humans—that created such a strong backlash. It was not unexpected, as the finding provides fodder for conservative opponents of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court had suggested there was no consensus on “the difficult question of when life begins” and that “the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, [was] not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”
* * *
The U.S. abortion debate has raged for generations, and remains divisive to this day. As a lawyer, mediator and researcher, I sought to assess whether there is room for compromise. I believed that such an approach could help Americans on both sides develop a shared understanding of the main issues—particularly surrounding the question of when life begins. My approach was similar to that implemented by Yale Professor Dan Kahan in his 2003 gun-control debate manifesto, in which he declared his objective as “not to take any particular position on gun control but instead to take issue with the terms in which the gun control debate is cast.” I was being idealistic, yes, but this approach was not without precedent.
“This dissertation seeks to explain why the abortion debate persists and whether it can be resolved,” I wrote in my dissertation’s introduction. “While the U.S. Supreme Court was able to end the national segregation controversy with its holding in Brown v. Board [of Education], the Court has twice failed to end the national abortion controversy [in the landmark Supreme Court cases of Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992]. The controversy has been resilient for decades, and it grows as some states pass laws to ban abortions throughout pregnancy, and other states legalize abortion throughout pregnancy. [T]his dissertation aims to understand whether the national controversy surrounding abortion is trivial or insurmountable.”
I employed a theoretical approach that was recently codified by graduates from my department: “[A] proposal to have a synthetic approach to social psychological research, in which qualitative methods are augmentative to quantitative ones, qualitative methods can be generative of new experimental hypotheses, and qualitative methods can capture experiences that evade experimental reductionism.” In practice, this meant going back and forth between qualitative and quantitative methods, leading in-person mediations with small groups, reviewing literature, and conducting surveys of Americans and the experts whose opinions they respected. My research timeline was roughly as follows, with each step being guided by what I already had learned from the previous steps:
I led discussions between pro-choice and pro-life law students. Little progress was made because both sides were caught up with the factual question of when life begins.
I surveyed thousands of Americans using Amazon’s MTurk service. I found that most Americans believe that the question of “when life begins” is an important aspect of the U.S. abortion debate (82%); that most believe Americans deserve to know when a human’s life begins in order to give informed consent to abortion procedures (76%); and that most Americans believe a human’s life is worthy of legal protection once it begins (93%). Respondents also were asked: “Which group is most qualified to answer the question, ‘When does a human’s life begin?’” They were presented with several options—biologists, philosophers, religious leaders, Supreme Court Justices and voters. Eighty percent selected biologists, and the majority explained that they chose biologists because they view them as objective experts in the study of life.
I consulted with biologists, including a female University of Chicago Ph.D. genetics student; a female University of Chicago Ph.D. graduate; and a male professor—the biology expert in my department, who later served on my dissertation committee.
I reviewed aggregated lists of biologists’ views in this area, studied the opinions of experts who testified before a 1981 Senate Committee on a Human Life Amendment, and the 2005 South Dakota Abortion Task Force. I also reviewed polls of Americans’ views on the question of when life begins.
Since these sources suggested the most common view was that a human’s life begins at fertilization, I designed a survey to understand biologists’ assessment of that view. I emailed surveys to professors in the biology departments of over 1,000 institutions around the world.
As the usable responses began to come in, I found that 5,337 biologists (96%) affirmed that a human’s life begins at fertilization, with 240 (4%) rejecting that view. The majority of the sample identified as liberal (89%), pro-choice (85%) and non-religious (63%). In the case of Americans who expressed party preference, the majority identified as Democrats (92%).
These data were not as surprising as some might imagine. Philosophers such as Peter Singer and Judith Jarvis Thomson have outlined abortion defenses that recognize a fetus’ humanity, while also rejecting the argument that fetuses have rights, or arguing that a pregnant person’s right to abort supersedes a fetus’ right to life. Unfortunately, that did not stop some academics from being angered by the very idea of being asked about the ontogenetic starting point of a human’s life. Some of the e-mails I received included notes such as:
“Is this a studied fund by Trump and ku klux klan?”
“Sure hope YOU aren’t a f^%$#ing christian!!”
“This is some stupid right to life thing…YUCK I believe in RIGHT TO CHOICE!!!!!!!”
“The actual purpose of this ‘survey’ became very clear. I will do my best to disseminate this info to make sure that none of my naïve colleagues fall into this trap.”
“Sorry this looks like its more a religious survey to be used to misinterpret by radicals to advertise about the beginning of life and not a survey about what faculty know about biology. Your advisor can contact me.”
“I did respond to and fill in the survey, but am concerned about the tenor of the questions. It seemed like a thinly-disguised effort to make biologists take a stand on issues that could be used to advocate for or against abortion.”
“The relevant biological issues are obvious and have nothing to do with when life begins. That is a nonsense position created by the antiabortion fanatics. You have accepted the premise of a fanatic group of lunatics. The relevant issues are the health cost carrying an embryo to term can impose on a woman’s body, the cost they impose on having future children, and the cost that raising a child imposes on a woman’s financial status.”
Given those responses, one might suspect that I had asked loaded questions such as: “Since the human life cycle begins at conception, isn’t abortion tantamount to murder?” But I didn’t. I asked an open-ended question to ensure that respondents were able to fully express their views on when life begins. Moreover, I asked respondents to assess the following elements of the view that “a human’s life begins at fertilization”:
“The end product of mammalian fertilization is a fertilized egg (‘zygote’), a new mammalian organism in the first stage of its species’ life cycle with its species’ genome.”
“The development of a mammal begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.”
“A mammal’s life begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete unites with a female gamete to form a single cell called a zygote.”
“In developmental biology, fertilization marks the beginning of a human’s life, since that process produces an organism with a human genome that has begun to develop in the first stage of the human life cycle.”
“From a biological perspective, a zygote that has a human genome is a human because it is a human organism developing in the earliest stage of the human life cycle.”
After assessing the above statements and answering an essay question, the respondent biologists were then told that the survey “relates to the controversial public debate surrounding abortion.” It was at this point in the procedure that I received hostile responses, some of which are excerpted above.
In my dissertation, I proposed three possible motivations for these hostile reactions:
Motivated Reasoning: Respondents experience cognitive dissonance when they recognize that their view of a fetus as a human complicates their political convictions in regard to abortion policy.
Cultural Cognition: Respondents fear that public recognition of the scientific views they are expressing could lead to other people supporting abortion restrictions.
Identity-Protective Cognition: Respondents fear that expressing their views may serve to estrange them from pro-choice liberals, on whom they might rely for social, emotional, or financial support.
I understand the subject of my research might have political ramifications. But, as neuroscientist Maureen Condic has noted, “establishing by clear scientific evidence the moment at which a human life begins is not the end of the abortion debate. On the contrary, that is the point from which the debate begins.” Yet the reception to my research suggests that many are going to ignore my findings out of fear of political repercussions.
I have concluded that one of the biggest reasons the abortion debate can’t be bridged is mistrust. I think this is primarily due to the stakes being so high for both sides. One side sees abortion rights as critical to gender equality, while the other sees abortion as an epic human rights tragedy—as over a billion humans have died in abortions since the year 2000.
Despite the one-sided stance of the majority of 2020 presidential candidates, my research indicates that Americans on both sides agree that the nation’s abortion laws should both ensure some abortion access while also providing some protections for humans in the womb. Indeed, I found that a majority of both pro-choice and pro-life Americans supported a compromise that restricted access after the first trimester of pregnancy, as described at the outset of this essay. This combination of policies is quite similar to the law of the land in many of the most socially liberal countries of Europe, which tend to balance abortion rights with fetal rights.
In my research, I was not advocating for such a compromise. However, advancing my own preferred outcome was not the point of my academic project. My goal was to use my training to establish common ground, learn whether a compromise was possible, and report on the most likely form such a compromise might take. An important takeaway is that both sides do agree on the arbiters of the question of when life begins.
While the justices in Roe could not answer the difficult question of when life begins, the U.S. Supreme Court might well revisit this question in the future. The Court can trust the uncensored viewpoints of biologists and acknowledge that scientific experts affirm the view that a human’s life begins at fertilization—even if some would prefer that this fact be hidden from view.
Steve Jacobs Tweets at @drstevejacobs.
Featured image: Stop Abortion Bans Rally, St. Paul, Minnesota, May 21, 2019.
Catholics want to take credit. Ho hum, okay. But it was Donald Trump who really started putting the nails in that coffin. Catholics’ hypocrisy has been in full flower for decades and decades, while abortion just goes on and on. Donald Trump - not a catholic or even a very morally upright guy, but wanting to do the right thing with the power he wielded in office - finally took the first steps to truly ending abortion in the USA.
But it’s okay for catholics to hog all the attention for themselves. We have a “catholic” president now!
I met the author of the book ‘You Carried Me’.....Melissa Ohden
She is a beautiful, articulate, educated woman by the grace of God.
Her mother tried to abort her at 31 weeks
..the doctor tried to ‘burn/kill’ her with a saline infusion
It failed and she was born .......but barely alive and much to overcome
A nurse whisked her to NICU and they saved her life, and loving parents adopted her
Melissa is a motivational speaker for LIFE!
“All life is God’s alone, to give and to take.”
He’s wrong. God ordained the death penalty as a matter of justice. To be against it, is to be against justice.
In my church, adding being against the death penalty is how democrats explain their morality and why voting for them is OK. Killing the innocents = executing the guilty.
Generalizing ‘all Catholics’ as hypocritical is not right nor fair.
I’m not Catholic but it was the Catholics in my county who caught my attention, many years ago, when I wasn’t aware enough to care about abortion.
They made the headlines day after day protesting and even risking arrest because of abortion.
This would have been in the 1980’s....
.....and they were definitely the ‘tip of the spear’...
...and I was ‘red pilled’ before ‘red pill’ was even a thing.
I owe them for waking me up......and then my own non Catholic Church and other churches joined the Protest.
Eventually we had a good ecumenical grouping of denominations agreeing as one body of Christ that abortion was wrong and unborn babies needed help!
Catholics’ denial of even birth control to members of their church - one was not even supposed to use condoms or anything like that - was part of what drove the pro-abortion movement. It was a really big part of the rage.
They didn’t start out standing up against abortion, but against women working outside the home, women being able to drive cars and vote, and use birth control so they could plan families.
As a catholic kid, the message I got was: A bunch of priests, many of whom are child-molesting gaywads, are going to watch you all the time. They’re going to lecture you about sex and why you shouldn’t do it unless you’re married, and then when you do get married, you are going to be pregnant a lot. That is “God’s plan” for you.
I’m not one of those people who thinks all women should have careers and only have one or two kids and that’s it, and so forth. I think a lot of women bought the “independent career girl” lie and they’re very unhappy now (and so are their kids). Just so you’ll know.
But this heavy-handed “We are your masters and you must do as we tell you! And you’re here to have babies and LOTS of them!” - and it’s coming from these guys who we now find out are flaming perverts - that’s what made me turn into Ms Pro Abortion in grade school, basically. I saw my own mom and other kids’ moms having lots of conflicts and problems - for example, feeling guilty about taking birth control pills when finally they became legal. Am I committing murder? You know? Having miscarriages, getting pregnant again, having another miscarriage. Kinda dreary.
Protests are effective if they change people’s minds. These protests had the opposite effect: They just made people against abortion seem like stalkers and crackpots. They go on the attack and they are very aggressive sometimes.
I started to change my mind about abortion when a friend talked to me about how bad the Roe v Wade ruling as far as legality and the Constitution go - but I REALLY changed my mind when Project Veritas did their expose of Planned Parenthood. I had formerly considered those folks kind of heroic - they’re monsters! lol All the socialist cant started to fall apart then. Just a little bit of truth did the trick.
The protesters just hardened my heart. A lot of them really are just stalkers and freaks, you know. They want to control people and hurt people, they’re not interested in saving innocent life. A lot of them have guilt issues and feel that if they harangue others who seem in favor of abortion that will redeem them somehow.
I’m not saying that you and your friends are wrong, by the way. However you get there, you’ve gotten to the right place. And congratulations!
I’ve never seen a catholic - priest or lay person - use anything but emotional appeals when discussing abortion. They get emotional and throw a fit and lecture people. It’s a real turn-off and I think that if catholic lawyers and congress critters could have mobilized against Roe v Wade in the courts they would have made more of a difference. My impression is that they just go over and over the morality aspect of it again, trying to reassure themselves that they’re on the right side and exempt themselves from any blame for the problem.
If you get in my face and yell at me about being a bad girl, I’m just going to laugh at you. If you give me a truth that I didn’t already have that helps me grow, change, and live a better life, then we are both blessed.
Thanks for posting.
Good post.
Thx.
Personally, I agree with Bill O’Reilly in that we both believe the death penalty is way too lenient a punishment. In his book “Keep it pithy”, he says drug dealers, rapists and murders should be banished to a faraway penitentiary in Alaska and sentenced to hard labor.
Beautifully stated!
Eventually we had a good ecumenical grouping of denominations agreeing as one body of Christ that abortion was wrong and unborn babies needed help!What has that done for abortions?
Emotions and "caring" (without results) is all that's important for some people.
"Kill the baby" has been the Democrat party Prime Directive since 1970.
Justice is giving what is due. In this context justice for stealing a life is giving a life.
Life imprisonment doesn’t really do it. However for most murders life imprisonment is Ok by me.
Reminds me of a joke. An Italian man was being lectured on proper sexual behavior by a priest. His reply was "Hey, Fatha, you no play-a da game, you no make-a da rules".
I've advocated something similar but a bit more brutal for many years now. It can be found in my FReeper profile.
Because that was the ‘outward’ expression.....
...to unite and bring hope
A lot more was going on behind the scene....
....including a Pregnancy Resource Center that not only did counseling.....
....but provide physical and viable help to the young women.....excluding abortion
Yeah, and even the Pope ain't Catholic.
And bears are using toilet paper in the woods.
Word.
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