Thread by EternalVigilance.
The problematic nature of pandering to politicians with half-measures while announcing to pro-life troops that a victory has been achieved is not a new malady. It has been a relatively consistent pattern woven into National Right to Life Committee politics for many years now. Having said that, the problem with what is currently being said about the Stupak Amendment to the Pelosicare bill is the most egregious I have seen in my 40 years of pro-life activism. As NRLCs congressional scorecard for the 111th Congress will clearly explain, a vote against the Stupak-Pitts Amendment only be construed as a position-defining vote in favor of establishing a federal government program that will directly fund abortion on demand, with federal funds, and a second federal program that will provide government subsidies to private insurance plans that cover abortion on demand. NRLC regards this as the most important House roll call on federal funding of abortion since the House last voted directly on the Hyde Amendment in 1997. If you do not wish to go on record in support of creating major new federal programs that will both fund abortions directly and subsidize private abortion coverage, please vote for the Stupak-Pitts Amendment. NRLC will regard a present vote as equivalent to a negative vote on the Stupak-Pitts Amendment. While it could appear that NRLC is threatening members of Congress with a bad score if they vote against the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, the fact is that the amendment itself is halfhearted and fraught with problems. And if one examines the actual text of H. R. 3962, the Pelosicare bill, one finds the following:
This should make it obvious to anyone with a heart for the principles upon which the pro-life movement was founded to see right through the smoke and mirrors that NRLC is now using to deflect criticism from its political misjudgment. The aftermath of the Stupak amendment vote hasnt been pretty. Ive read countless comments on Twitter and Facebook from pro-life people who are livid at one side or the other. Ertelts description of the pro-abortion forces is, of course, correct. NARAL Pro-Choice America has described the Stupak Amendment as extreme anti-choice politics. Of course its riled; not a single baby should be protected by law, according to its strategic plan. And its united with its fellow pro-deathers, including Planned Parenthood, which claims the Stupak Amendment is an unacceptable addition to the health care reform bill that, if enacted, would result in women losing health benefits they have today. Respect for human personhood, respect for human personhood and respect for human personhood. If this single principle were the cornerstone of reasonable health care reforma reform based on justice for allthere would be no anti-life provisions in at all. As of this writing and regardless of which bill we read, none measure up to this standard, and thus all should be opposed. |
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Judie Brown |
Thread by me.
ROME, November 13, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - If an embryo is human, it is a person - this is the golden rule for bioethics if it wants to uphold the full dignity of the human person, said the secretary of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) on Tuesday.
The "concept of person" and its application to all human beings at every stage of their development is the key to understanding the Catholic teachings on the life issues Archbishop Luis Ladaria told a conference in Rome.
Archbishop Ladaria was speaking to an audience of students at a conference sponsored by the Lay Centre at Foyer Unitas, on the document, "Dignitas Personae" ("The Dignity of the Person"), an instruction from the CDF published in 2008 on "certain bioethical questions." These included developments in artificial reproductive technologies, such as genetic manipulation of embryos and cloning. Ladaria noted that when US President Barack Obama was visiting Rome, he was presented with a copy of the document by Pope Benedict XVI.
Pope Benedict, while Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Prefect of the CDF, was responsible for the 1987 publication of the landmark document Donum Vitae, upon which Dignitas Personae was based. The much-ignored "Donum Vitae" ("The Gift of Life"), laid down the Church's teaching on the moral inadmissability of nearly all artificial reproductive technologies currently in use around the world.
Both documents emphasize that the fundamental moral objection to such practices as genetic manipulation, artificial insemination, cloning and in vitro fertilization is that they invariably result in the deaths of innumerable human beings at the embryonic stage and that they deny the fundamental right of the child to be conceived and nurtured naturally in the context of marriage.
Archbishop Ladaria spoke of the "new approach" the document presents for bioethicists based on the nature of the human person and the special relationship of man to God who was incarnate in Jesus Christ.
Human beings cooperate with God when they reproduce, he said. "Procreation is a special cooperation. Only in human love, which is a reflection of divine love, in mutual donation, is found the context for cooperation with the love of God the creator."
This teaching, Ladaria said, holds that human dignity is "not granted" by human agency, but "is recognized as a previous fact."
The Church's teaching is based on the now-scientifically proved fact that human life begins in its entirety at the moment of conception. The basic rule for ethicists, he said, is, "If it is a human, it is always a person." This includes the zygote, the single-cell product of the union of ovum and sperm.
From the first moment, he said, the embryo "has a full anthropological qualification; there is a continuity; there are no leaps that have in them substantial mutations; the embryonic body develops. One can see the decisive reason to accept the very dignity of the person."
(With files from Zenit News Agency)