Life Advocacy Briefing

Back to Work

CONGRESS RETURNS TO CAPITOL HILL today (Monday), following a two-week break. And we are back to publishing “timely news you can use in the cause of Life,” after a week off with family. We thank our readers for your forbearance.

Changing the Debate

FORMER PENNSYLVANIA SEN. RICK SANTORUM SUSPENDED his campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination last Tuesday, drawing appreciation from many who cited the Santorum campaign’s tying of the pro-life/family “social conservative” message with the GOP’s more comfortable “economic” agenda.

Said Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, writing in the April 10 FRC Action Update, “[Sen. Santorum’s] historical run for President achieved remarkable success because his campaign was based not on money spent but on the pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-freedom message he carried. Millions of voters flocked to his campaign,” noted Mr. Perkins, “… because he passionately spoke of the connection between America’s financial strength and its moral and cultural wholeness. …

“He explained,” commented Mr. Perkins, “that real problem solving starts with an understanding that the economy and the family are indivisible and that big government denies freedom. … If the Republican establishment hopes to generate this same voter intensity in the fall elections,” cautioned Mr. Perkins, “… values voters must see the GOP demonstrate a genuine and solid commitment to core moral issues in addition to fiscal conservatism.” Indeed, this is a formula for success for candidates of any party.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, agreed that the momentum Sen. Santorum’s campaign generated sprang largely from pro-life voters. “Pro-life voters are a consistent and growing constituency,” Mrs. Dannenfelser said in an SBA news release responding to the Santorum announcement, “who proved invaluable to Sen. Santorum in state after state throughout the primary elections. We will continue to reach out and mobilize those voters and millions more like them across the country,” she vowed. “The political muscle of the pro-life movement will be critical to defeating Pres. Obama in November.”

A political scientist at the University of Notre Dame, Dr. David Campbell, analyzed the unique approach of Sen. Santorum in an interview last Wednesday with Catholic News Agency (CNA), commenting “that the ‘intriguing link’ that [Mr.] Santorum drew between morality and economics has the potential to ‘change our national discussion.’ …

“After thanking his followers for their support and prayers,” reports CNA, “[Sen.] Santorum concluded his campaign by reiterating his often-repeated argument that in order to have a strong economy, America needs ‘strong families and a strong moral fiber.’”

We thank Sen. Santorum for standing his ground when advocating the protection of every human life, and we thank him for demonstrating how appealing such a candidate can be. The grassroots electricity of the Santorum campaign demonstrated on a national scale: Life is a winning issue.

Pulling the Plug on the Protest?

THE FIGURES ARE NOW IN. The late-March nationwide protest against the ObamaCare contraception/sterilization mandate drew 63,000 citizens to simultaneous rallies in 145 cities.

The “Stand Up for Religious Freedom rallies,” writes Kathleen Gilbert for LifeSiteNews.com, “sprang up across the country as part of a grassroots-driven protest that saw hundreds and even thousands in each city standing, some in pouring rain, in opposition to the rule they say represents an unprecedented attack on religious freedom.”

One of the rallies, which drew some 2,500 standing in pouring rain, also, according to Bill Beckman of Illinois Right to Life Committee, drew seemingly hostile attention from a federal agency already under fire for outrageous taxpayer expenditures on a lavish convention.

Employees of the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages federal properties, participated in the Chicago Stand-Up rally in a way which could at best be called inappropriate.

Since the Chicago rally, which Mr. Beckman attended, convened in a downtown federal building plaza, organizers relied on the GSA for electricity to power their sound system, a customary arrangement facilitating the Constitutionally-guaranteed right of the people to assemble and petition their government.

For a half-hour, organizers sought to solve the no-sound problem created by refusal of the GSA to provide power to the rally sound system. When at last an extra-lengthy extension cord was secured and power acquired from an adjacent Post Office, the speakers could at last be heard, calling on the President to abandon his assault on religious freedom.

Requited Love

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ADDRESSED PLANNED PARENTHOOD via a recently released video, reports Kathleen Gilbert for LifeSiteNews.com, “assur[ing] the billion-dollar abortion organization of his continued support and tout[ing] his record blocking efforts to defund the group by pro-life ‘professional politicians. …

“‘For you and for most Americans, protecting women’s health is a mission that stands above politics,’ said the President in a video posted to YouTube by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund,” writes Miss Gilbert. “‘Yet in the past year, you’ve had politicians who want to deny millions of women the care they rely on and inject themselves into decisions that are best made between a woman and her doctor. …

“‘I know you’ll never stop fighting to protect the health care and the choices that America’s women deserve,’” code-phrased the President of the United States. “‘And as long as I have the privilege of being your President, neither will I.’”

As of this writing, the video was posted here.

The Obama bouquet comes in the midst of “an onslaught of bad publicity for the abortion giant in recent months,” notes Miss Gilbert. But far from distancing himself from the scandal-ridden enterprise, the President, through his overt election-year embrace, is demonstrating once again why one of his nicknames is The Abortion President.

Stand-Up Guv

EMBATTLED WISCONSIN GOV. SCOTT WALKER LAST WEEK SIGNED three pro-life measures into law; all three were backed by Pro-Life Wisconsin. The first-term Republican is in the fight of his political life, seeking to resist a recall campaign launched against him by the nation’s public employee unions.

The first new law repeals a contraception education mandate enacted in 2010, restoring authority to public school districts to adopt abstinence-only curricula in teaching on human growth and development.

A further new law bars abortion coverage by any health insurance “exchange” established in Wisconsin under ObamaCare.

And the third aims to stop “telemed” abortions by barring prescriptions for the RU-486 abortion drug without an onsite physical exam of the aborting mother and requiring the prescribing “physician” to be physically present – in the room – when the abortion-causing drug is dispensed.

Another Killing Shop Closing

A BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA, ABORTUARY HAS BEEN ORDERED to surrender its operating license no later than May 18, according to a news release from the Alabama Dept. of Public Health (ADPH), cited by Operation Rescue in an OR release.

A state inspection of New Women All Women abortuary followed a complaint by a pro-life activist after observing “an incident on Jan. 21, 2012, where two women were photographed being hand-carried from NWAW,” reports OR, “past a broken safety rail to awaiting ambulances parked in a trash-strewn alley.” Two 911-call recordings, secured via “open record requests,” covered emergency calls by the abortuary’s owner indicating two of the shop’s customers “had been overdosed on the drug Vasopressin.”

Some 76 pages were needed to document the outfit’s deficiencies, covering nine distinct categories. “Under threat of revocation and fines,” reports OR, “the clinic reached an agreement to surrender their license next month.”

Quoteworthy

Pope Benedict XVI, in a Saturday night Easter vigil service in Rome April 7, quoted by Associated Press (AP) writer Frances D’Emilio: “Life is stronger than death. Good is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Truth is stronger than lies. … The darkness that poses a real threat to mankind, after all, is the fact that he can see and investigate tangible material things but cannot see where the world is going or whence it comes, where our own life is going, what is good and what is evil. … The darkness enshrouding God and obscuring values is the real threat to our existence and to the world in general. … If God and moral values, the difference between good and evil, remain in darkness, then all other ‘lights,’ that put such incredible technical feats within our reach, are not only progress but also dangers that put us and the world at risk.”

Down the Slippery Slope of Situation Ethics

March 8, 2012, blog commentary by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) at The Hill’s Congress Blog

Late last month, two bioethicists – Dr. Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva – published an outrageous “paper” in the Journal of Medical Ethics justifying the deliberate, premeditated murder of newborn babies during the first days and weeks after birth.

Giubilini and Minerva wrote, “when circumstances occur after birth that would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.”

If a newly born child poses an economic burden on a family or is disabled or is unwanted, that child can be murdered in cold blood, because the baby lacks intrinsic value and, according to Giubilini and Minerva, is not a person.

Giubilini and Minerva wrote, “Actual people’s well-being could be threatened by a newborn even if healthy child requiring energy, money and care which the family might happen to be in short supply of.”

Many parents – especially moms – will tell you, children in general and newborns in particular require enormous energy, money and boatloads of love. If any of these are lacking or pose what Giubilini and Minerva called a “threat,” does that justify a death sentence?

Are the lives of newborn babies so cheap? Are babies so expendable?

The murder of newly born children is further justified by Giubilini and Minerva because newborn infants, like their slightly younger sisters and brothers in the womb “cannot have formed any aim that she is prevented from accomplishing.”

In other words, no dreams, no plans for the future, no “aims” that can be discerned, recognized or understood by adults – no life.

This preposterous, arbitrary and evil prerequisite for the attainment of legal personhood is not only bizarre – it is inhumane in the extreme. Stripped of its pseudo-intellectual underpinnings, [the] Giubilini and Minerva rationale for murdering newborns in the nursery is indistinguishable from any other child predator wielding a knife or gun.

Giubilini and Minerva say the devaluation of newborn babies is inextricably linked to the devaluation of unborn children and is indeed the logical extension of the abortion culture, and wrote that they “propose to call the practice afterbirth abortion rather than infanticide, to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed – the newborn baby – is comparable with that of a fetus. … Whether she will exist is exactly what our choice is about.”

These anti-child, pro-murder rationalizations remind me of other, equally disturbing rants from highly credentialed individuals. Princeton’s Peter Singer suggested a couple of years ago that “there are various things you could say that are sufficient to give some moral status [to a child] after a few months, maybe six months or something like that, and you get perhaps to full moral status, really only after two years.”

Dr. James Watson, Nobel laureate for unraveling the mystery of DNA, wrote in Prism magazine, “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die, if the parents so choose, and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”

In like manner, Dr. Francis Crick, who received the Nobel Prize with Watson, said that “no newborn should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests, it forfeits the right to live.”

The dehumanization of newborns isn’t new, but it’s getting worse.

Giubilini and Minerva’s article must be a wakeup call. The lives of young children – an unprotected class – are under assault. Hard questions need to be asked and answered, and defenders of Life must be mobilized. We have a duty to protect the weakest and most vulnerable from violence.

As lawmakers, we must strive for consistency.

Why do so many who claim to be proponents of human rights systematically dehumanize and exclude the weakest and most vulnerable human beings from legal protection? Why the modern-day surge in prejudice and ugly bias against unborn children and newborns? Why the policy of exclusion rather than inclusion? Why is lethal violence against children – abortion and premeditated killing of newborn infants – marketed and sold as benign, progressive, enlightened and compassionate?

Why have so many “good people” turned a blind eye and looked askance as mothers are wounded by abortion and babies in the womb are pulverized by suction machines 20 to 30 times more powerful than household vacuum cleaners or dismembered with surgical knives or poisoned with chemicals? Looking back, how could anyone in this House – or Senate, or both Presidents Obama and Clinton – justify the hideous procedure called partial-birth abortion?

Since 1973, over 54 million babies have had abortion forced on them. Some of those children have been exterminated in the second and third trimester – pain-capable babies – who suffered excruciating pain as the abortionist committed his violence.

Why are some surprised that the new emerging class of victims – newborns – are being slaughtered in Holland and elsewhere, while a perverse proposal to murder any newborn child – sick or healthy – is advanced in an otherwise serious and respected ethics journal?

Children – born and unborn – are precious. Children – sick, disabled or healthy – possess fundamental human rights that no sane or compassionate society can abridge.

The premeditated murder of newborn babies is being justified as morally equivalent to abortion.*

The Congress, the courts, the President and society at large have a sacred duty to protect all children from violence, murder and exploitation. We don’t have a moment to lose.

*Life Advocacy Briefing editor’s note: We believe Rep. Smith would agree with us that they are morally equivalent – both unremittingly wrong.