Pro-Life/Pro-Baby ping!
Please FReepmail me if you would like to be added to, or removed from, the Pro-Life/Pro-Baby ping list...
" From the moment of conception, the life of every human being is to be respected in an absolute way because man is the only creature on earth that God has "wished for himself" and the spiritual soul of each man is "immediately created" by God; his whole being bears the image of the Creator. Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains forever in a special relationship with the Creator, Who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being"
--The Gift of Life (Donum Vitae) No. 5 of introduction. Published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, February 22, 1987. http://www.usccb.org/prolife/tdocs/donumvitae.htm
Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
ABORTION AND THE “HARD CASES”: rape, incest, and life of the mother.
What about abortion in cases of rape or incest?
Abortion Q & A -- BY JOHN CARDINAL O'CONNOR, ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK
July 1990 http://priestsforlife.org/magisterium/cardocqanda.html#qa13
Some evils are what we call intrinsic evils, that is evil in themselves, so that no circumstances can justify them. Direct abortion is such an evil. It simply can not be morally justified. This principle holds even in regard to rape or incest. An unborn baby is an innocent human being who has committed no crime, regardless of how conception came about. It is never morally right to destroy an innocent human being.
What About Rape? http://www.prolife.org.uk/about/keyabortion.htm
Abortion is often recommended in cases of rape. But abortion does not undo the rape; instead it compounds violence with violence. It is an indefensible response to a complex situation. Putting aside the injustice of an innocent child being killed for her father's crime, there is evidence that abortion only deepens the trauma of the rape victim as well as taking the innocent life of her child. A rape victim requires special emotional care regardless of whether or not she obtains an abortion. By recommending abortion as a quick and easy way to “lessen the impact”, a disservice is done to raped women.
By promoting abortion specifically in the case of rape one implicitly argues that the means of conception determines the value of a human life. This line of reasoning fails to acknowledge that, biologically speaking, there is no difference between a human being conceived by a loving couple and a human being conceived by rape. Are we to deem born children conceived by rape as having no right to life?
It is also worth noting that statistically speaking, violent rape is extraordinarily unlikely to result in pregnancy; moreover, women tend to love their babies even if they hate the father.
Priests for Life Q&A on Abortion
http://priestsforlife.org/questions.html
A key study on this topic is the book Victims and Victors: Speaking out about their Pregnancies, Abortions, and Children Resulting from Sexual Assault, By David C. Reardon. In this book, read the testimonies of 192 women who reveal that most pregnant sexual assault victims don't want abortion, and those who do abort only suffer more. This is the most comprehensive study published on this theme. www.afterabortion.org
Dr. Theresa Burke also addresses this topic in her book Forbidden Grief, www.forbiddengrief.com. One example from that book is this testimony: "The rape was bad, but I could have gotten over it. The abortion is something I will never get over. No one realizes how much that event damaged my life. I hate my rapist, but I hate the abortionist too. I can’t believe I paid to be raped again. This will affect the rest of my life."
Please also see the following testimony from Jenni Speltz, who was conceived in rape: http://www.priestsforlife.org/testimony/jennispeltz.htm.
In many cases the best choice is adoption. It is important to note that there are hundreds of thousands of couples that want to adopt but have been unable to because so many children are never allowed to be born.
What about the life of the mother? (by Fr. Frank Pavone) http://priestsforlife.org/questions.html
Answer: There are two questions at issue here. One is medical (Is there ever need for an abortion to save the mother's life?) and the other is moral (Would an abortion in that case be justified?) The answer to both questions is no. There is no medical situation whose only solution is a direct abortion, as many doctors have testified. Morally speaking, furthermore, it is never right to directly kill an innocent person, even if good results are foreseen. We do not say that a baby's life is more important than the mother's. We do say that they are equal. You may never directly kill either one of them. If, in spite of the best medical efforts, one or both of them die, nothing morally wrong has been done, because an effort has been made to save life, but has failed. That is far different from killing.
Planned Parenthood demanded an immediate recount.
So does Catholic theology teach that the soul enters the body at the moment of conception?
Wow, what a nutjob.
So you have sex, and before an embryo is implanted, it is a christian.
How many abortions would happen if those having them would lose ten years of their life for each abortion? I kind of think they would stop most abortions them. I just have that feeling.
What does modern science conclude about when human life begins? (Excerpts)
By Dr. John Ankerberg and John Weldon
http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/apologetics/AP0805W3.htm
The complete article is available in print friendly PDF format at: http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/_PDFArchives/apologetics/AP3W0805.pdf
The scientific authorities on when life begins are biologists. But these are often the last people consulted in seeking an answer to the question. What modern science has concluded is crystal clear: Human life begins at conception. This is a matter of scientific fact, not philosophy, speculation, opinion, conjecture, or theory. Today, the evidence that human life begins at conception is a fact so well documented that no intellectually honest and informed scientist or physician can deny it.
In 1973, the Supreme Court concluded in its Roe v. Wade decision that it did not have to decide the "difficult question" of when life begins. Why? In essence, they said, "It is impossible to say when human life begins." The Court misled the public then, and others continue to mislead the public today.
Anyone familiar with recent Supreme Court history knows that two years before Roe V. Wade, in October 1971, a group of 220 distinguished physicians, scientists, and professors submitted an amicus curiae brief (advice to a court on some legal matter) to the Supreme Court. They showed the Court how modern science had already established that human life is a continuum and that the unborn child from the moment of conception on is a person and must be considered a person, like its mother. The brief set as its task "to show how clearly and conclusively modern science—embryology, fetology, genetics, perinatology, all of biology—establishes the humanity of the unborn child." For example,
In its seventh week, [the pre-born child] bears the familiar external features and all the internal organs of the adult.... The brain in configuration is already like the adult brain and sends out impulses that coordinate the function of other organs…. The heart beats sturdily. The stomach produces digestive juices. The liver manufactures blood cells and the kidneys begin to function by extracting uric acid from the child’s blood.... The muscles of the arms and body can already be set in motion. After the eighth week… everything is already present that will be found in the full term baby.
This brief proved beyond any doubt scientifically that human life begins at conception and that "the unborn is a person within the meaning of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments."
Thus, even though the Supreme Court had been properly informed as to the scientific evidence, they still chose to argue that the evidence was insufficient to show the pre-born child was fully human. In essence, their decision merely reflected social engineering and opinion, not scientific fact. Even during the growing abortion debate in 1970, the editors of the scientific journal California Medicine noted the "curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death."
In 1981, the United States Congress conducted hearings to answer the question, "When does human life begin?" A group of internationally known scientists appeared before a Senate judiciary subcommittee.
The U.S. Congress was told by Harvard University Medical School’s Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, "In biology and in medicine, it is an accepted fact that the life of any individual organism reproducing by sexual reproduction begins at conception...."
Dr. Watson A. Bowes, Jr., of the University of Colorado Medical School, testified that "the beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter—the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political or economic goals."
Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School noted: "The standard medical texts have long taught that human life begins at conception."
He added: "I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty... is not a human being. This is human life at every stage albeit incomplete until late adolescence."
Dr. McCarthy De Mere, who is a practicing physician as well as a law professor at the University of Tennessee, testified: "The exact moment of the beginning [of] personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception."
World-famous geneticist Dr. Jerome Lejeune, professor of fundamental genetics at the University of Descarte, Paris, France, declared, "each individual has a very unique beginning, the moment of its conception."
Dr. Lejeune also emphasized: "The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence."
The chairman of the Department of Medical Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, Professor Hymie Gordon, testified, "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."
He further emphasized: "now we can say, unequivocally, that the question of when life begins… is an established scientific fact…. It is an established fact that all life, including human life, begins at the moment of conception."
This Senate report concluded:
Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.
In 1981, only a single scientist disagreed with the majority’s conclusion, and he did so on philosophical rather than scientific grounds. In fact, abortion advocates, although invited to do so, failed to produce even one expert witness who would specifically testify that life begins at any other point than conception.
Again, let us stress that this is not a matter of religion, it is solely a matter of science. Scientists of every religious view and no religious view—agnostic, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, Christian, Hindu, etc.—all agree that life begins at conception. This explains why, for example, the International Code of Medical Ethics asserts: "A doctor must always bear in mind the importance of preserving human life from the time of conception until death."
This is also why the Declaration of Geneva holds physicians to the following: "I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception; even under threat, I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity." These statements can be found in the World Medical Association Bulletin for April 1949 (vol.1, p. 22) and January 1950 (vol. 2, p. 5). In 1970, the World Medical Association again reaffirmed the Declaration of Geneva.
What difference does it make that human life begins at conception? The difference is this: If human life begins at conception, then abortion is the killing of a human life.
To deny this fact is scientifically impossible.
Please FReepmail me if you would like to be added to, or removed from, the Pro-Life/Pro-Baby ping list...
BTTT!