Amnesty International on the wrong side in Nicaragua

AI is soliciting support for "women's rights activists" in Nicaragua who helped a rape victim obtain an abortion. They consider the activists victims, persecuted for defending the right of women to abort their child. They're not mentioning that the activists helped the stepfather rapist escape to Costa Rica. With the rape victim. By whom another child was conceived (now a toddler, I guess).

You'd think that AI would know enough to recognize the real crimes committed here.

[More background details here.]

A remarkable turn of events in Uruguay

What a refreshing development in Uruguay when their president vetoed an abortion law reform bill of sorts, despite the push from his own party in the other direction. Truth and no small degree of charity saved the day. In his own words:

"There is a consensus that abortion is a social evil which must be avoided. Nonetheless, in those countries where abortion has been liberalised, it has increased. In the United States, in the first ten years, they tripled, and the figure has been maintained. It has become customary. The same thing happened in Spain. Laws cannot ignore the reality of the existence of human life in its gestational stage, just as science reveals it. Biology has evolved greatly. Revolutionary discoveries, such as IVF or sequencing the human genome, show that from the moment of conception there is a new human life, a new being. So much so, that in modern legal systems, including our own, DNA has become the acid test of determining the identity of persons, independent of their age, even if the body is destroyed, or when practically nothing is left of the human being, and even after a long time. The true degree of civilisation of a nation is measured by how the neediest are protected. Therefore we must protect the weakest amongst us. Because the criterion is not the value of the subject with respect to how others respond to him, or his usefulness, but the value which exists due to his mere existence... This text also affects freedom of enterprise and association when it imposes upon medical institutions with legally approved statues which have, in some cases, been functioning for more than a hundred years, an obligation to perform abortions, expressly contrary to their foundational principles. The law, furthermore, describes, erroneously and in a strained fashion, against common sense, abortion as a medical act, ignoring international declarations... which reflect the principles of Hippocratic medicine which characterise the doctor as someone who acts in favour of life and physical integrity. In accordance with the particular characteristics of our people, it is better to seek a solution based upon solidarity which promotes women and their babies, giving them the freedom to be able to choose other ways, and in this fashion, to save both of them. We need to tackle the true causes of abortion in our country which are rooted in our socio-economic circumstances. There are many women, particularly in the poorest sectors, who are alone in the task of raising children. Hence, we should protect abandoned women with solidarity, instead of offering them abortions.

As Feminists for Life have been saying for a while now: Women deserve better than abortion. And I would add: as do their babies.

[Source: MercatorNet.]

Serbian abortionist comes to terms with the truth

Strange that an atheist who did not even recognize the name 'Aquinas' received visions of the saintly scholar. Regardless of how it came about, thank God that this man eventually learned the truth.

"That same day a cousin came to the hospital with his four months-pregnant girlfriend, who wanted to get her ninth abortion - something quite frequent in the countries of the Soviet bloc. The doctor agreed. Instead of removing the fetus piece by piece, he decided to chop it up and remove it as a mass. However, the baby's heart came out still beating. Adasevic realized then that he had killed a human being,"

[Source: Lifesite News, CNA]

A logical extension to the principle behind abortion

.. appears to be a reasonable question as to who should be aborted? After all, if abortion is subject to no objective terms of morality, then there isn't really anything wrong with it. Hence, the mother may choose it, the mother's parents or boyfriend or husband may choose it over and above the mother's wishes (being a minor, for example), and perhaps even the government may choose it where it deems it advantageous to do so. And even if the government does not coerce the abortion, it can certainly make it more acceptable. It already does so from a socio-political standpoint, after all, when Victorian adherents in Parliament championed the Abortion Law Reform Bill in order to make the choice more comfortable for doctors and women to make. Why not economic then, such as this proposal to pay for the abortion of handicapped babies in order to save on welfare benefits?

The Australian Parliamentary Group on Population and Development has been slammed by Queensland Senator Ron Boswell for holding to Nazi-style eugenic ideology on the abortion of disabled children. ... The pro-abortion group had made a submission, signed by 41 Australian MPs, to the parliamentary committee that is examining the issue of abortion in Australia. The group said paying women a Medicare rebate for second-trimester abortions would save the government about $180,000 a year, due to the high costs of caring for handicapped babies who are allowed to be born.

Source: Lifesite news

Like a bridge crumbling when its supports are broken from underneath, one beam at a time: that's what happens to law and order when objective notions of right and wrong are discarded.

Karol: A Man Who Became Pope

This is a quick plug of five stars for the DVD. I loved it not simply because it was about a pope. It is simply an awesome story. This man lived through several tragedies, including Nazi as well as Soviet Socialist occupation of Poland. My wife commented later how incredible it was that anyone could possibly remain optimistic. But it isn't just optimism: it is hope. It is hope that comes through faith, and bears fruits of love, all three being gifts from God.

Should you get an opportunity to see it (it is out on DVD), you won't be disappointed.

Sign a Petition Opposing the Abortion Law Reform Bill of 2008

Many thanks to David at Sentire Cum Ecclesia for the link to this online petition that appears to be spearheaded by Dr. Jereth Kok, MBBS.

When Does Life Really Begin?

According to Associate Professor Maureen Condic: it begins at conception. Her white paper, "When Does Life Begin?", is online from the Westchester Institute. Here's an excerpt of an interview she gave Zenit.org (emphasis mine):

Q: You define the moment of conception as the second it takes for the sperm and egg to fuse and form a zygote. What were the scientific principles you used to arrive at this conclusion? Condic: The central question of "when does human life begin" can be stated in a somewhat different way: When do sperm and egg cease to be, and what kind of thing takes their place once they cease to be? To address this question scientifically, we need to rely on sound scientific argument and on the factual evidence. Scientists make distinctions between different cell types (for example, sperm, egg and the cell they produce at fertilization) based on two simple criteria: Cells are known to be different because they are made of different components and because they behave in distinct ways. These two criteria are used throughout the scientific enterprise to distinguish one cell type from another, and they are the basis of all scientific (as opposed to arbitrary, faith-based or political) distinctions. I have applied these two criteria to the scientific data concerning fertilization, and they are the basis for the conclusion that a new human organism comes into existence at the moment of sperm-egg fusion.

Post-election Analysis of the Catholic Church in North America?

It's a pretty good one. More importantly, given that the situation in Australia is not much different, if behind by a few years, here's the big question: What does the Church in Australia do about it? We've recently lost the battle over the Abortion Law Reform bill in the state of Victoria, with a number of self-named Catholic/Christian legislators voting the wrong way. Debate over the Assisted Reproduction Treatment Bill is ongoing, but votes from the same group are once more up in the air.

Witness and scandal

Exit polls in electorates where Obama won showed self-professed Catholics voting mostly Obama. But in electorates where their bishops came out publicly and explicitly against Obama, even where Obama won, Catholics were not as supportive of Obama.

Will the bishops who deliberately stayed silent or left their statements vague remember what the Lord said about scandals and the lukewarm?

Truly, a problem of clear and authoritative teaching.

Update:Like I said.. it's about teaching.

Adopting into single parent households is not a trivial matter

Not as trivial as what was reported by a single parent in The Age anyway ("Single parents eligible to adopt Filipino children", 5 Nov 08, The Age Online):

the evidence showed that children adopted by single people fared just as well as children in two-parent households.

Whereas there is considerable evidence otherwise:

Gunilla Ringbäck Weitoft from Sweden's National Board for Health and Welfare in Stockholm conducted the largest study ever performed on how children are affected by single-parenting. This study, released January 25, 2003 in The Lancet was conducted over the course of a decade (during the 1990s), involving 65,085 children living with a single parent, and 921,257 living with two parents. ...   children with single parents showed increased risks of psychiatric disease, suicide or suicide attempt, injury, and addiction. After adjustment for confounding factors such as socioeconomic status and parents' addiction or mental disease, children in single-parent households were twice as likely to have psychiatric disease compared with those in two-parent households; relative risks of suicide attempt and for alcohol-related disease were also doubled. The risk of childhood narcotic abuse was increased threefold among girls and fourfold among boys living in single-parent households.

I'm not saying that they should not be adopting. Having a loving single parent is much better than being a complete orphan. But having a loving father and a loving mother is still the ideal.