Free Republic

On February 24th, a few days before a Florida judge issued Terri Schiavo a stay of execution until the 18th of March, I wrote for the first time on a subject I admittedly knew little about in a piece titled Okay… I’ll talk About Terri Schiavo… Once! As I stated in that piece, I was writing in response to reader mail asking me to take a position on a national debate that I had spent little time researching. Both before and since, I have been inundated with mail from folks on both sides of the debate, most of whom, knew...

Republic Fr. Frank Pavone National Director, Priests for Life "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." That quote is not from an anarchist or a totalitarian leader. It is, perhaps surprisingly, from John Adams, the second President of the United States, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Similar quotes can be found in the writings of other Founding Fathers of our nation, because although they had the opportunity to do so, they did not establish a democracy. What they established for America,...

PHOENIX, January 5, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Only days after taking on his new position as the Bishop of Phoenix, Thomas J. Olmsted, joined some 200 pro-lifers in praying outside a Planned Parenthood abortuary - on Christmas Eve. The Arizona public reported it as the bishop's first public non-liturgical act as the new bishop. The bishop's participation, although kept quiet, swelled the numbers at the prayer rally to the largest in several years. Commenting to the media on his presence at the prayer rally Bishop Olmsted said: "Christmas is a celebration of God becoming one of us, entering fully into our...

November 9, 2003 The Very Reverend Bishop Wilton B. Gregory President, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Your Excellency: An unprecedented phenomenon in the struggle between the sanctity of life and the culture of death confronts us. A hitherto unknown Catholic woman, Mrs. Theresa Schindler Schiavo, has become a unifying symbol for the disabled, the abandoned, and those persons for whom society has no use. [See www.terrisfight.org] Terri Schiavo, a 39 year-old Florida woman rendered cognitively disabled from an undetermined cause, embodies the characteristics of persons whose lives appear to lack "quality," whom a pagan society would willingly eliminate through...

A Test for Us All Fr. Frank Pavone National Director, Priests for Life; President, National Pro-life Religious Council The case of Terri Schindler-Schiavo is a test for all of us. It's not a test of whether we will kill cognitively disabled people by refusing them food and water. That's a test we've already failed, because it happens routinely throughout the country. Rather, Terri's case is a test of whether we will wake up and realize that letting patients decide they want to be killed means that some patients will be killed against their will. People often leave advance directives saying...

The good news is that scientific testing is getting more and more sensitive; the bad news is that humans remain as insensitive as ever. Between modern medicine and mod language, we're now able to describe feticide - never call it that! - as peace of mind. The story, on Page 2 of the morning paper, caught my attention. ("New testing method spots Down's Syndrome earlier") How's that for good news? The opening paragraph of the AP story sounds as sunny as a spring day, as therapeutic as modern medicine, as cheering as a baby's first smile: "A new combination of...

Date:    October 27, 2003 To:       Attorney General John Ashcroft             Delegate Bob Marshall Ref:      Continuation for Request of Intervention on behalf of Terri Schiavo (October 21st)  As in previous letters dated October 21st, 22nd and 23rd, this letter serves as our request for urgent action on behalf of Terri Schiavo by Federal officials.  We are asking for: An immediate criminal investigation of Michael Schiavo, Judge George Greer and the Federally funded Woodside Hospice Center in Pinellas Park Fl, all who have grossly violated Terri Schiavo’s rights under both State and Federal statutes. We further request an immediate intervention to...

An attempt to cure infertility by creating babies with three genetic parents was halted when twins died in the womb, it emerged yesterday. The experiment, in which researchers combined elements from two newly-conceived eggs to create a single viable embryo, was designed to help women whose eggs are not good enough to reactivate a pregnancy. But while two of the "reconstructed" embryos developed into foetuses in the womb, one died at 24 weeks and the other at 29 weeks. American researchers who handed the work over to colleagues in China, after the experiment was effectively banned in the United States,...

If the nineteenth century was the age of the machine and the twentieth century the information age, this century is, by most accounts, the age of biotechnology. In this biotech century we may witness the invention of cures for genetically linked diseases, including Alzheimer’s, cancer, and a host of maladies that cause tremendous human suffering. We may see amazing developments in food production with genetically modified foods that actually carry therapeutic drugs inside them. Bioterrorism and high-tech weaponry may also be in our future. Some researchers are even suggesting that our future might include the remaking of the human species....