Category Archives: Abortion

A Pro-Life Video?

November 14, 2018Abortionplanned parenthood, pro-life, Videotwowingstogod@gmail.com

For obvious reasons (all of which are bad), abortion advocates tend to play their intellectual hand close to the vest. Instead, they choose to hind behind emotivism and the smokescreen of the “right to choose.” Every once in a while, however, their sinister logic escapes and their unvarnished train of thought escapes. This is exactly what happened recently when a self-described “left-wing” advocacy group called the Agenda Project released a pro-abortion ad in support of Planned Parenthood. The ad, dubbed “The Chosen” opens with video of a cooing baby shortly followed by a caption “she deserves to be loved.” Flashing back to the baby, now smiling and laughing, a second caption follows, “she deserves to be wanted.” Then a third time, “she deserves to be a choice.” And there you have it, abortion logic untwisted and devoid of all verbal gymnastics.

Now, it is first worth noting that this particular video committed a capital sin when it comes to defending abortion. Never, ever, equate the “fetus” or “embryo” or even a “clump of cells” with a child. Usually their arguments are fatal, but not in this way. Inadvertently or not, they made a very Pro-life argument by featuring a little baby. That very same baby was at some point in her development an embryo or fetus just like she will be a toddler, a teenage girl and an adult. And the video makes this very clear. Perhaps that is the point. To drop all the ridiculous pretexts and simply finally admit what abortion really is. Perhaps abortion advocates are “coming out” and finally admitting what they are exactly defending. Maybe they are not actually talking about abortion but are now lobbying for infanticide.

Revealing the Logic

Maybe, but probably not. More likely is that they tried to make a “reasonable” argument and ended up revealing just how unreasonable their position really is. In an age where we often argue by meme, it is helpful to lay out the logic of an argument piece by piece and see where it leads us.

The first line of the argument is that “she deserves to be loved.” Some would say this is self-evident, but let’s state the reason why in order to connect the dots. Borrowing from St. John Paul II we can say “She deserves to be loved” because a person “is a good toward which the only adequate response is love.” In essence the first statement recognizes that persons have a unique value, not based upon anything they do, but solely because of what, or more to the point, who they are. I think we can all agree that this is true.

Adding the “why” to the first statement helps to see why the second declaration, “she deserves to be wanted,” logically follows from the first. Admittedly “want” is a rather vague word, especially when applied to a person. We usually “want” objects but as premise 1 of their argument states, we should love subjects. Nevertheless we can look at this as adding on to the first premise by saying that “because a person should be loved, then she should also be wanted.” This too logically follows.

The fact that a child deserves to be wanted is not actually saying anything other than children are by nature “wantable.” Unwanting adults are the real problem and this is because they see the subjects as objects that they can use to accessorize their life. It is beginning to a “planned” parenthood feel to it.

Finally we get to the third premise—“she deserves to be a choice.” This logically follows from the other two premises if all the caveats above are made. Love requires an act of the will and a child has a right to be brought into existence through an act of love between the parents.

The Pro-Life Argument

The problem of course is that they are leaving out a hidden premise along with the conclusion. Now if we trace out the line of argument we find a big problem

A child, because she is a person, deserves to be loved.
Because she is a person, they deserve to be wanted.
Because she deserves to be wanted, she deserves to be conceived as an act of the will (i.e. chosen).
(Hidden) But if she is not wanted, then the mother can choose to kill her.

But this is a contradiction with (1) since the right to be loved would include a right not to be deliberately torn apart in the womb and therefore by reductio ad absurdum we can conclude that the child has a right not to be killed.

And now we see why the pro-abortion people never resort to reason—it leads away from their position. They almost distracted us with the cute baby and the lullaby music, but reason prevailed. So perhaps rather than vilifying them, we should hire the Agenda Project.

Power Play

September 7, 2018Abortion, Bioethics, Contraception, Human Dignity, Magisterium, Theology of the BodyContraception, Humanae Vitae, Paul VI, The Pilltwowingstogod@gmail.com

As the Church marks the 50^th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, much has been said regarding the prophetic character of Blessed Paul VI’s controversial encyclical. In particular, the Pope predicted that four things would happen as contraceptive use spread throughout a society. There would be an increase in marital infidelity, a general lowering of moral standards, a loss of reverence for woman as she is reduced to an instrument for the satisfaction of a man’s desires and governments would use coercive power to implement “family planning” policies. In reading the signs of the times, the Pope saw the consequences clearly, but why he was so easily able to see this is just important. For these consequences were just symptoms of a deeper mindset that the Holy Father feared would ultimately conquer the hearts and minds of men, a mindset that was just as soul-killing as the contraceptive mentality to which it was linked. After uttering his prophecy of consequences, the Holy Father tells us the root cause is man’s unwillingness to “accept that there are certain limits, beyond which it is wrong to go” (HV , 17).

On the one hand this is nothing new. One can even say that Original Sin itself is the mark of man’s unwillingness to accept his creaturely limits. Man in his Edenic bliss can eat from every tree in the Garden, save one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (GN 2:16-17). Made in the likeness of God, he is confronted with the choice to be “like gods who know good and evil” (Gn 3:5). That is, he has a choice between conforming himself to the limits of reality, or shaping reality to his liking. He quickly finds out that his decision was never a real option. He passes his confusion on to his progeny along with a proclivity for choosing likewise.

Confusing Limits

Because man is now in a state of confusion, he must set out to discover reality as it really is. To enter into a relationship with reality he must also (re-)discover himself as he really is (including his limits) as well. At first, because of his confusion reality appears rock solid and he discovers many limitations in himself. But as the field of discovery expands, he finds that he has the power to manipulate reality more and more. His limitations become blurred except when he asks a simple question: does this new power over reality include power over myself? If so, then it is actually a power within reality, which is the only true power. Otherwise it is a grasping and remaking of reality.

In many ways chemical contraception represents a paramount example of this principle in play. In the past contraception usually involved changing the act, but with the Pill and the like came the power to alter the reality of a woman’s reproductive system. But this is no mere biological alteration, but an alteration to a person’s biology. Therefore it has to be viewed through a personalistic lens. Does the power the Pill gives over a woman’s cycle carry with it the power of the woman to master herself? And, because a woman’s reproductive system is a relational system, does the Pill give the man in whom she enters into a reproductive relationship with a power to master himself?

Power

The wisdom of Blessed Paul VI’s condemnation of contraception begins to emerge, especially when we add a second principle. With the emergence of new technology comes new power over reality. This power is given at the service of controlling men. The question is which men will be controlled. Will the new power be used to control man himself? Or will the power be used to control other men? Or as CS Lewis put it in The Abolition of Man “For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means…the power of some men to make other men what they please.”

Blessed Paul VI was so accurate in his predictions because he knew that the Pill wasn’t really a medicine to control births, but a poison to control other people. His forecasts are really about the power of one person over another. More to the point, the Pill is about men exercising their power over women. It tells women in order to gain her rightful share in society she must act like one of the big boys. But because woman is a “misbegotten male” she must take a pill to do this. But in truth it is a ploy in which man, who is fertile all the time, can find partners who are infertile all the time. It absolves him of all responsibility and creates an injustice in which women are treated as inferiors. What is so puzzling is that many of them, in the name of equality, swallow the pill anyway. Shouldn’t society have to change and adapt to the feminine genius and not woman herself? As then Cardinal Karol Wojtyla (the future St. John Paul II) said ,

“Contraception makes no contribution to the woman’s personal rights. Since it is a process that makes it possible to satisfy the ‘needs of the sexual instinct’ without taking on any of the responsibility for the consequences of sexual activity, it primarily benefits the man. This is why, once accepted contraception leads to sanctioning his erotic hedonist behavior. In this situation, inevitably, the man benefits at the expense of the woman. He ceases to regard the woman in the context of transmitting life. She becomes for him simply the occasion for enjoying pleasure. If one adds to this the fact that it is inscribed in the very structure of man to take initiative in the sexual realm and that the danger of being violated is a threat primarily to the woman, then one must admit that the more constitution of the woman appears grim indeed. Therefore, when contraception is used, the woman faces not only inequality but also sexual slavery.”

In his opening paragraph of Humanae Vitae, Blessed Paul VI recognized that technology, especially reproductive technologies, were a force that the Church was going to need to confront. Unfortunately she has not been up to the task and many women have suffered because of it. As the Church continues to celebrate this Golden Anniversary of Humane Vitae, let’s work towards a rediscovery of the golden wisdom contained within this prophetic document.

John Paul II and the Founding Fathers

January 17, 2018Abortion, Culture of LifeArt of the Possible, Constitution, Evangelium Vitae, Founding Fathers, Slaverytwowingstogod@gmail.com

In his great encyclical preaching the Gospel of Life, St. John Paul II recognized the important role that politics plays in building a culture of life. Civil laws are closely tied to an individual’s awareness of the moral law and therefore always act as a great moral teacher. Unfortunately, especially from within a democratic ethos, there can be great difficulty in overturning unjust laws without widespread support and a moral catch-22 often arises. This is the experience of many pro-life politicians who find themselves trapped and unable to avoid being complicit with evil. It was in this light that the saintly Pontiff articulated an important principle encouraging those politicians to exercise what he would later call the “art of the possible.”

A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. Such cases are not infrequent. It is a fact that while in some parts of the world there continue to be campaigns to introduce laws favoring abortion, often supported by powerful international organizations, in other nations-particularly those which have already experienced the bitter fruits of such permissive legislation-there are growing signs of a rethinking in this matter. In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects (Evangelium Vitae, 74).

In truth, John Paul II was not introducing anything novel but simply applying some long-held principles within the Church’s social doctrine to the scourge of abortion. It is well worth our time to examine these principles in depth because they have application in other arenas of social justice as well.

Morality and Legislation

There are those who contend that “you cannot legislate morality.” While this is quite obviously false, they do have a point, even if they do not realize it. While we can, should and do legislate morality, one cannot use civil law to create a utopia in which all moral evil is eliminated. This is one of the serious errors (although certainly not the only) that totalitarian regimes, especially those that are Marxist in their roots, readily make in thinking they can absolutely enforce a complete moral code from above. Even the best regimes, that is those that result in the most virtuous people, will have to exercise tolerance towards certain evils.

How do we know which ones should be tolerated and which ones should be legislated against? The logic is relatively simple—you tolerate those for which outlawing would do more harm to the common good than the evil itself does. This is why John Paul II doesn’t encourage those legislators to start a revolution and overthrow the existing government. The chaos that would ensue would do great harm to all members of society, including those most vulnerable, the very ones you are trying to protect. Relative peace and stability are part of the common good and thus cannot be tossed aside lightly.

This is not to suggest however that you must sit idly by and allow the evil to continue. Instead you should seek ways in which to limit the evil and its effects on the common good. All too often tolerance turns into acceptance which then turns into promotion and even provision. The just politician must seek solutions to limit the evil and keep it from spreading. This takes a fair amount of prudence because it always requires some accommodation with those who are bent on its continuation. Prudence should not be confused with expediency. The means of bringing about the reduction of evil should not create further evils.

Abortion is not the only application of the “art of the possible.” In fact, there is a historical example from the founding of the United States that still gets much airplay today—slavery.

The “Art of the Possible” and Slavery

Slavery, like abortion, is gravely evil and something that no society should ever have to tolerate. Nevertheless, our country had to confront this great evil during its Founding. A grave distortion, animated by political correctness, revisionist history and chronological myopia, has occurred and left blinded us to the true dilemma that the Founders faced, casting a dark cloud over what could rightly be judged as a glorious achievement.

Like the pro-life politicians of today, the Founders were in no position to outlaw slavery outright. It had become an institution upon which a number of the states had become so dependent that they would rather form their own country than to give it up. The truth is that the Union of the Thirteen Colonies was extremely fragile with very little to bind them together. In order to “form a more perfect union” they gathered in 1789 in order to re-constitute this Union with stronger ties among the states. In order for the experiment in liberty to work, they would need to band together.

As the Constitutional Congress met it became very obvious that many of the southern delegates would not bend on their support of slavery. Most of the Constitution’s framers condemned slavery, but there were powerful interests who still supported it, making those delegates demand concessions. So divisive was this issue that James Madison himself said, “the real difference of interests, lay, not between the large and small but between the Northern and Southern states. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed the line of discrimination.”

Faced with the prospect of no union at all and a union where slavery was tolerated, the Framers chose the latter. Many have asked “why didn’t the North just form their own country and leave the South to its own devices?” There is a sort of intellectual dishonesty in the question itself, because the South then would have never eliminated slavery. Even the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass recognized this saying, “[M]y argument against the dissolution of the American Union is this: It would place the slave system more exclusively under the control of the slaveholding states, and withdraw it from the power of the Northern states, which is opposed to slavery…I am therefore, for drawing the bond of the union more closely, and bringing the Slave States more completely under the power of the free states.” Even so, the North was not strong enough to stand on its own, especially without Virginia. The greatest problem facing the new Nation was its collapse under its own weight.

The Framers decided to exercise the “art of the possible” so that the founding principle “that all men are created equal” could eventually shine forth. They did this by instituting three measures. First, they agreed that Congress could make no laws forbidding slave importation until 1808 (at which point they outlawed it). Second, they instituted the 3/5 compromise by which each slave only counted as 3/5 of a person when determining congressional representation and electoral votes. Finally, it outlawed the spread of slavery to new states and the Western territories (although not the Southern), and gave Congress regulation power over inter-state commerce, including in the commerce of slaves. In short, the framers thought that, while not eliminating it completely, they were choking it out.

Chronological myopia also creates another blind spot—what would it actually look like to free the slaves? There is the assumption that one day they would simply say, you are “free to go” and off the slaves went to live free. Most were not educated and would not have been able to take care of themselves. You could help to train them and give them the means to get started, but where was the funding to come from for this from a country that was begging other countries for loans? Most of the slaves, once freed would end up worse off than they were currently.

There was also the historical problem that no two races had ever lived together peacefully. This was foremost on the mind of Jefferson himself who said, “many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.” This is exactly what happened in Haiti from 1791-1804 when every white person on the island was killed. This is why many favored colonization (a solution also supported by Lincoln) rather than citizenship.

As we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. this week, the great Civil Rights reformer, it is important that we set the record straight. The Framers may not have been prudent in their accommodations, but accusations of racism go too far, creating an atmosphere of suspicion and division. When Jefferson penned the phrase “all men are created equal,” he and his compatriots believed this included slaves as well. His further writings and those of the other founders support this. In his book Vindicating the Founders, Thomas West furnishes primary sources—writings from the Founders themselves—to, well, vindicate the founders against the accusation of racism. He thoroughly treats the subject, but five quotes in particular are noteworthy:

Washington—“There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.”
John Adams—“Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for he eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States…I have through my whole life, held the practice of slavery in…abhorrence.”
Franklin—“Slavery is…an atrocious debasement of human nature.”
Madison—“We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.”
Jefferson–“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

In short, to use the language of Evangelium Vitae, their “personal opposition was well known.” There may have been some personal weakness in resolve, but their condemnation of it was clear. They knew that a change in the law would strengthen their personal resolve. In any regard, West’s book should be required reading for any American, especially American Catholics, if for no other reason than its clear presentation of John Paul II’s “art of the possible” in action.

St. Gianna Molla and the Principle of Double Effect

March 11, 2017Abortion, Moraliltyabortion, double effect, St. Giannatwowingstogod@gmail.com

Since her canonization by Pope St. John Paul II on May 16, 2004, St. Gianna Beretta Molla has become the Patroness of the Unborn Child. Faced with serious complications during the pregnancy of her fourth child, St. Gianna bravely put the needs of her child ahead of her own. Pro-lifers often point to her heroic witness as a model to be followed. They are right in doing so, but maybe not for the reason they often cite. Most portray her situation as an all or nothing—they say she was faced with having life-saving treatment and an abortion or no treatment at all. The problem is that this is not actually what happens. The details of St. Gianna’s dilemma matter greatly in the retelling of her story, especially because it helps illustrate a moral solution for mothers who are faced with serious medical problems during pregnancy.

St. Gianna’s Story

While pregnant with her fourth child, St. Gianna developed a large fibroid; a benign tumor of the uterus. In the normal course of events when these tumors are found during pregnancy they are unobtrusive enough that they may be left be. In St. Gianna’s case, the tumor was large enough that it was likely to cause serious complications during the pregnancy that ultimately could threaten the development of the child and put her in considerable pain and risk for a serious infection. There are additional medical details of her situation (detailed here) but for the sake of our discussion this should suffice.

When St. Gianna learned of the fibroid tumor, she was, according to her husband, presented with three options by her doctors.

Terminate the pregnancy via direct abortion and remove the fibroid
Have a hysterectomy that removed her uterus. This would also result in the death of the 2 month old preborn child. For her personally this was a low-risk approach and was also the standard of care at the time given the lack of medical technologies (such as ultrasound machines) that we have today.
Remove the fibroid and continue her pregnancy. This option could result in the spontaneous miscarriage of the child because of the irritation to the uterus. It also carried with it serious risks for herself. The blood loss from a pregnant uterus can be excessive and difficult to control. It might also be that the wound could re-open during any point in the pregnancy.

Notice that not receiving any treatment was not one of the options as the story is often portrayed. This was not a real option as to not do anything would have placed the child at great risk.

Examining the Moral Principles

Before examining her decision, it is helpful to make some distinctions and define some moral principles. This is what makes knowing the details of her case very instructive. It is a real-life, concrete example of what someone did and it contradicts the abortion or nothing approach that many people often assume.

The first point to look at is why (1) is morally problematic and (2) is morally permissible. Looked at superficially, the two acts look to be the same—in both scenarios the child ends up dead and the mother lives. But how we end up there matters, even if we end up in the same place. Despite Machiavellian protestations to the contrary, one may never do evil so that good may come about. The end does not justify the means. Abortion, that is the direct killing of an innocent human being is always wrong regardless of whether the mother’s life is in jeopardy or not.

In scenario (2), the death of the child, although foreseen, is not directly willed even if it is permitted. What is willed is the preservation of St. Gianna’s life. Notice too that the preservation of her life does not come about as a result of the child’s death, but as a result of the removal of the uterus. That same removal of the uterus also has the “side-effect” of killing the baby, even though it was not chosen for that reason. Finally, there is a certain proportionality involved in the moral calculation in that both mother and child’s life are of equal value and by not acting you are placing one or both of their lives in jeopardy.

Option (2) demonstrates an important moral principle called The Principle of Double Effect. This principle recognizes that none of our acts occur in a moral vacuum. Each of our actions are complex with a mixture of goods and evil attached to them. Thus, even if the will chooses some good, there can often be an evil associated with it. This is why when we make our moral calculation, we must look not just to the external act but to the underlying choice of the will. With this in mind, there has classically been the need for the distinction between two types of will—the direct will and the permitting will. We may never, morally speaking, directly will an evil. However, we may permit it.

The Principle of Double Effect

The Principle of Double Effect says that it is morally allowable to perform an act that has at least two effects provided all four of the following conditions are met.

the object to be done must be good in itself
the intent of the agent must be to achieve the good effect and to avoid the evil effect as much as possible. The evil effect must not be directly willed but only permitted. This is the case even if the evil effect is foreseen.
the good effect is proportional to the bad effect and there is no other way to achieve the effect.
the good effect must follow directly from the action and not as a result of the harmful effect.

St. Gianna would have been morally justified in choosing option (2), but instead she chose option (3). Although under no moral obligation to do so, this decision flowed from her desire to put the life of her child first. She was a mother and a holy one at that, so this decision came somewhat second nature. It is not the reason she is saint, but she made this decision because she was on her way to sainthood.

Most of us know that she eventually lost her life after delivering a healthy baby. But there is not direct evidence that she died because of her decision. The cause of her death was an infection in her abdomen that was brought about as a result of the Caesarian section that was performed. Why this detail matters again speaks to how we present her as a witness. She knew that her health was in jeopardy by choosing (3) but there was no reason for her (she was a doctor) to think it may end up leading to her death. She made a courageous decision, but also one based on prudence. It is her courage and prudence that made her a saint and makes her a great Pro-life witness. It wasn’t her unwillingness to do something evil, but her willingness to love her children at great personal cost. Saints are praised not because they didn’t choose evil, but because of their witness of heroic virtue. Knowing the details enables us to let her witness speak clearly to a very confused age.

Memic Sophistry

February 1, 2017Abortion, Catholic Social Teaching, Church and StateMemes, Sophistry, Straw Mantwowingstogod@gmail.com

A picture, the saying goes, is worth a thousand words. Now, whether those discounted thousand words are worth anything or not is a different question. The irony is not lost that the most literate society in the history of the world has become an image culture. Rather than long, well thought out arguments, we argue via the Meme; a medium whose sole criteria is not truth, but cleverness.

But it is not just cleverness that makes them so popular but their convenience. With artistic flair, they can “yada, yada, yada” the important details away. With only 1000 words to spare, most of the energy must be devoted to toppling the Straw Men they have constructed. Straw men may easily fall, but they have an uncanny ability to destroy any healthy debate.

Take a recent example posted to The People for Bernie Sanders Facebook page. It has two panels, one with a child in the womb with the caption “Every Life is Precious” and the second has the washed up body of an immigrant child featuring the caption “Not my problem.” The statement is obvious: Pro-life people only care about life in the womb. Life outside the womb, not so much.

Of course this is a common accusation leveled at Pro-lifers. But truth be told, no actual Pro-Lifer actually thinks this way. Step one, complete, Straw Man constructed.

They also fall victim to the hidden logic of their Meme. They are essentially saying that Pro-lifers are really pro-life if and only if they care equally for those outside the womb as they do inside. It doesn’t take a professional logician to realize that this goes both ways. In other words, why do The People for Bernie Sanders and their ilk assume that this logic does not apply to themselves? They have compartmentalized the two issues and then attempt to call the Pro-lifers out on (allegedly) doing the same. Either they should be separate issues or not. But if you choose to separate them then you can’t call someone out for doing the same.

As I mentioned this is a variation on a common accusation—Pro-lifers cannot speak out against abortion unless they are willing to take care of the babies once they are born. Straw Men are notoriously limp and can’t really hold newborns. This argument ignores the actual work that does go on to help single moms, adoption and adoption services, etc. by many Pro-lifers. But, and this is important, even if they aren’t willing to lift a finger to help, this doesn’t justify the act of abortion. Abortion is wrong because it takes an innocent person’s life, not because somebody wanted the child. No sane person would say to a single Mom who is struggling to make ends meet with two kids and can’t find any help that she should kill one of those kids. Yet, that is what Bernie Sanders and his friends are saying.

This is what I like to call the either/or fallacy. It is assumed that just because you work hard to stop one injustice that you don’t care about other injustices going on. What if both abortion and the death of child immigrants are great tragedies? What if both represent a failure of the human family to protect their most vulnerable members? What if a person is moved to action by the plight of one suffering group more than another? Is this a denial of the misery of the second group or is it an admission that I am not superman and can’t help everyone? There may be more emphasis by Pro-lifers on abortion because you must first help your own before helping others. Our obligations to our fellow American citizens are much clearer than our obligations to citizens of other nations–not because they are worth any less but because we can only help so many people. Charity begins at home. What would you think of a man who ignored his family and only helped other people’s families?

I think this is why this is usually more a liberal tendency than a conservative one. The liberal tends to think that big government can help everyone. But even our huge government is limited in the amount of help it can offer overseas. Sometimes there are battles that are worth fighting, but they may not be our particular fights. While we should do all that we can to help immigrants, there is nothing wrong with it taking a back seat to some issues here at home. The common good of the homeland takes precedence.

It is a gigantic leap from panel 1 to panel 2 in the Meme. In fact it may be an uncrossable chasm. The truth that abortion is wrong has nothing to do with immigration. It is a red herring that attempts to undermine the credibility of those with whom they disagree. It may be clever, but it bears no relation to an actual argument.

Just because you can draw does not absolve you from doing some actual thinking through of what you draw. The truth is more subtle than the artist is willing to admit or sort through. An analogy will help. I know of no one who does not have a lock on the door of their house to keep themselves and family safe. No one I know has an open door policy where a doorbell unlocks the door automatically. We all have an obligation to vet each person that comes into our homes. In other words, we have a policy in which we discriminate who should enter and who should not. Dad may not let any teenage girl visit his son Elroy until he vets them, but this does not make him sexist. Elroy may protest, but until he convinces his dad that this is not the most prudent way to handle the situation, his protests will look more like hissy fits especially if he accuses him of misogyny.

The government too has an obligation to vet who visits the country. An open door policy is not possible. Prudence dictates how this would best be accomplished. It may be that an entire class of people is turned away until a proper vetting process is put in place. Perhaps this is not the most prudent measure, but the debate should center on that and not calling people Islamaphobes.

Memes and their twin sisters, the protest sign, have become the new Sophistry because of this glossing over of significant facts. The bad elements of Islam are a threat. Islam itself is extremely divided and it is very hard to separate the threats from the non-threats. It is reasonable then to make sure you are able to do so. Any alternative to the recent Executive Order has to deal with these facts. One could decide to be like Elroy’s dad and keep all the Muslims from troubled regions out. That may not be the most prudent measure, but even if someone chooses this approach that does not make them Islamaphobes.

The problem is not the memes per se, but the fact that we now have adopted memic thinking patterns. I will admit to being one of those annoying people who actually asks someone to explain their meme to me. Usually I find that the person posting is either non-responsive or can’t really explain them because the ever-present intellectual gap.

To all but the oblivious, it is obvious that we are more divided as a country than ever. There are many reasons why this is the case, but in truth they all boil down to one thing—we have lost the ability to sustain an argument.

One who is familiar with the details of our founding cannot help but be struck by the peacefulness with which George Washington and then his successor John Adams took power. This is not because all the Founding Fathers were on the same page, but because they were men who could sustain an argument without resorting to violence. This fostering of arguments in many ways in written into the relatively short Constitution. In this way they were much like the Medieval philosophers like St Thomas who saw the great practical value in intellectual argument.

A good debater is one who can repeat back to the person their argument and understands it. Many of St. Thomas’ contemporaries were struck by the profundity of the Objections to the questions in the Summa. He was able to succinctly and often more convincingly put forth his opponents’ arguments than they could themselves. The point is that a good debater can find the specific place in their opponents’ argument where they went off the rails and put them back on track. We call this “common ground” but it is really common sense—if you want to argue with someone, you must start at the place where you agree. When debate occurs through memes like The People for Bernie Sanders’ post that obviously does not happen. If we have any hope to survive as a country this part of the American heritage must be restored. There are only two ways to win men over to your side, by appeals to reason through argument or by force. I am afraid that only one of those paths is open to us right now.

St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!

What is the Pro-Life Movement?

January 27, 2017Abortionanti-abortion, march for life, pro-lifetwowingstogod@gmail.com

When thousands gather today in Washington to march to the steps of the Supreme Court, the Pro-lifers will be confirming what has in many people’s minds become a stereotype. Pro-life has become synonymous with “anti-abortion.” There are those who are trying to rebrand the Pro-life movement by imaginatively calling it the New Pro Life Movement by providing a more “consistent-life ethic” to other issues, especially those related to abortion. Whether or not the rebranding of the movement will be better only time will tell, but they may not be addressing the larger issue.

Pro-life might be the only positive word (the Pro part) that has a negative definition. The Pro-life Movement is more like a protest group defined by what it is against. The problem is that when you define yourself solely as against something, the enemy of your enemy becomes your friend. As we are learning with the new administration it can make for interesting bedfellows.

The anti-X label follows Pro-lifers wherever they go and they self-identify with those labels. They might like the sound of Pro-life better than “anti-abortion” from a public relations standpoint, but can they define themselves positively?

Pro-lifers could say “we are for life.” But their work doesn’t necessarily set them apart from any other group that is concerned with the just treatment of society’s most vulnerable, including those in the womb and approaching death. Pro-lifers define themselves as against abortion, euthanasia, abject poverty, and the like. Anyone who is Pro-life should oppose those things. But you don’t need to be Pro-life to oppose them so much as pro-justice. A just society may eliminate all those things and yet still not be Pro-life. Pro-life must mean more than just obtaining justice for the weak, even if it most definitely includes those things.

Catholic Pro-lifers often speak more generally in terms of the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death. Pro-lifers favor the former over the latter. Over the past few weeks leading up to the March for Life I have heard these terms, Culture of Death and Culture of Life, invoked any number of times in Catholic circles. But I have yet to hear them described in the manner that John Paul II did—namely as a battle between a culture that is designed to encourage spiritual death and one in which earthly life is “a penultimate reality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a sense of responsibility and brought to perfection in love and in the gift of ourselves to God and to our brothers and sisters” (Evangelium Vitae, 2).

Being Pro-life means first and foremost about caring about the spiritual welfare of each person in society. They are not only concerned about the welfare of the child in the womb, but the spiritual well-being of the mother. They are not only concerned with the life of the elderly, but that they are given an opportunity to die in a manner that increases their dignity. They are concerned not just with the plight of the destitute, but the spiritual dangers faced by the rich. In other words, Pro-life means caring about the eternal welfare of all those involved—both victim and perpetrator.

In a society that is marked by its materialism, Pro-lifers often forget this and only focus on the material well-being of the person without any reference to their spiritual health. Without making this distinction, the Pro-life movement could ultimately get burned. For example, how many people identify themselves as Pro-life and still support contraception? Whether or not availability of contraception reduces the number of abortions is an ancillary consideration. They are both fruits plucked from the tree of the Culture of Death. This is not to say that they carry the same moral gravity—only that they equally have the ability to kill the soul.

“Kill the soul?” I mean this not so much in the sense of judgment and heaven and hell (although that may be part of it) but in their innate capacity to kill men and women interiorly by wounding their ability to give and receive love (i.e. in JPII’s words above, “brought to perfection in love”).

This is also why Pro-lifers must be slower to hail President Trump as some sort of long awaited Messiah. This is where the distinction between pro-justice and Pro-life is important. We can applaud his working for justice for the unborn, but that does not make him Pro-life. He will have to show himself to be concerned with promoting an atmosphere in which he makes being the “pursuit of happiness” (happiness in the classical sense that that Jefferson meant—namely a life of virtue) easier. The best measure of a good leader of men is always how morally good the people are that he leads.

All of this is not to reduce the work of things like the March for Life. They are a vital part of what it means to be Pro-life. You cannot change laws or change hearts, but change hearts to change laws and change laws to change hearts. Think of how the Civil Rights Act of 1965 was a vital piece of the Civil Rights Movement. The law is a great moral teacher and it forms the minds and hearts of the citizenry. Good laws make it easier to take things like the value of human life for granted and then form your opinions based on that. Roe v Wade did not invoke the Culture of Death, but was a sign of its presence already among us. Removing it would not mean that the Culture of Death was in its final throes. Overturning Roe v Wade would be victory but only of a battle and not the war. If Pro-lifers are to be active participants in that war, then we must make sure we have our marching orders correct—“to build a culture that is designed to encourage the pursuit of eternal life.”

Tearing at the Seamless Garment

November 7, 2016Abortion, Catholic Social Teaching, Church and Statetwowingstogod@gmail.com

In the 1980’s Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago used image of the seamless garment of Jesus for which the soldiers drew lots to portray a “consistent ethic of life” that “argues for a continuum of life which must be sustained in the face of diverse and distinct threats.” This “seamless garment” implied opposition to abortion and to capital punishment; opposition to the threat of using nuclear arms and the support of a vast social welfare state as means to a preferential option for the poor. This approach was to be tempered by the fact that a “consistent ethic does not say everyone in the Church must do all things, but it does say that as individuals and groups pursue one issue, whether it is opposing abortion or capital punishment, the way we oppose one threat should be related to support for a systemic vision of life.”

Unfortunately, this seamless garment approach to social issues has become a tool in the hands of those who wish to rationalize their support for legislation and office holders that support intrinsic evils. This election season has been no different. It is high time that we pull at one of those threads and unravel the seamless garment once and for all.

When those garbed in the seamless garment refer to a “consistent ethic of life,” they equivocate on the term “life.” When someone who is Pro-Life uses the term life, they are not referring to life in the merely temporal and corporal sense. Instead they mean something more, which Pope St. John Paul II aptly captures in the opening paragraphs of Evangelium Vitae. The Holy Father emphasizes that when we use the term life we are referring to that

“which far exceeds the dimensions of man’s earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase. Life in time, in fact, is the fundamental condition, the initial stage and an integral part of the entire unified process of human existence. It is a process which, unexpectedly and undeservedly, is enlightened by the promise and renewed by the gift of divine life, which will reach its full realization in eternity (cf. 1 Jn 3:1-2). At the same time, it is precisely this supernatural calling which highlights the relative character of each individual’s earthly life. After all, life on earth is not an “ultimate” but a “penultimate” reality; even so, it remains a sacred reality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a sense of responsibility and brought to perfection in love and in the gift of ourselves to God and to our brothers and sisters.” (EV, 2)

Practically speaking what this means is that when we seek to protect and promote the sacredness of life in opposing something such as abortion, we not only care about the child in the womb, but also the eternal destiny of his mother, the abortionist, and even the annoying “escorts” whose sole job it appears is to mock those praying outside the abortion clinic. On the other hand, life, according to the seamless garment approach, merely refers to not being dead and to have some sufficient means to “eat, drink and be merry.”

Cardinal Bernardin and his friends might object to this characterization, but their conclusion follows directly from this premise. On the temporal plane it could be argued that things like abortion, capital punishment, poverty and denying harbor to refugees equally put earthly lives at risk. But once we move to the plane of the eternal, some of those things are more likely to put eternal souls as risk. We as Christians do not ignore the temporal welfare of our neighbors, but we must always put their spiritual well-being first. The life of the body may be a seamless garment, but the soul is naked before God.

Because they are only concerned with the temporal, the supporters of the seamless garment approach are unable to make the necessary distinctions between evils. There are certain acts that are intrinsically evil and cannot be ordered to the good no matter what the intention of the person. Our Lord told us that we will always have the poor with us, not as justification to avoid helping the poor, but because like St. Paul found in Thessaloniki, some people refuse to work. Poverty will never be completely eradicated and is not always an intrinsic social evil. To aid us in discerning how these evils present themselves in social life, the Church for her part has listed the so-called five non-negotiables. The first four are related to the protection of life at its most vulnerable stages including abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research and human cloning and the fifth is support for so called “same-sex marriage.” These are non-negotiable not because we are stubborn but because they are aligned so closely to the true human goods that they can never be ordered to the good.

Those who call themselves Pro-Life bear some of the blame in this. They too tend to focus only on the temporal. They may oppose abortion, but then support making contraception more readily available so as to limit the number of abortions. Setting aside that contraception and abortion are, as St. John Paul II said, “fruits of the same tree. …The life which could result from a sexual encounter thus becomes an enemy to be avoided at all costs, and abortion becomes the only possible decisive response to failed contraception” (EV, 13), contraception has the potential to kill the soul just as much as abortion does. The tree they are both fruits of is the culture of death, a culture that is designed to lead to spiritual death.

Those who are Pro-Life must also avoid defining themselves as being in opposition to abortion, or euthanasia, etc. Following the lead of St John Paul II they must define themselves in a positive manner as having “respect for nature and protection of God’s work of creation. In a special way, it means respect for human life from the first moment of conception until its natural end” (St John Paul II, Closing Address World Youth Day 1993). The semantical gymnastics of the Pro-Choice movement to label Pro-Lifers as “Anti-Abortion” is sometimes more accurate because of the negative way in which they tend to define themselves.

In closing a word about what I would call the statistical argument, namely that under a regime that actively promotes abortion, that somehow the number of abortions decreased because of its emphasis on helping the poor and making contraception more readily available. As a statistician, I can readily see this flaw as one that wannabe statisticians often make—confusing correlation with causation. Just because two things seem to be related does not mean that one causes the other. There could be a third (or fourth) variable that is actually the cause of both. In logic we call this the Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (“after this, therefore because of this”). It may be that more readily available contraception is the reason why abortions decreased, but you cannot do something that is evil to bring about a good.

A Right to Privacy?

July 1, 2016Abortion, Church and State, Church Authoritytwowingstogod@gmail.com

During an interview on Meet the Press this past Sunday, Democratic Senator and possible Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Kaine, admitted to being a “Traditional Catholic” who “personally opposes Abortion.” Despite his personal opposition however he has “taken the position, which is quite common among Catholics — I have got a personal feeling about abortion, but the right rule for government is to let women make their own decisions.”

The Senator is right that his is a position that is “quite common among Catholics,” especially politicians. But what never gets said is why they are “personally opposed.” That would seem to be the next logical question that gets asked anytime a seemingly reasonable person says they are opposed to something that other people accept. Part of the reason why it never gets asked is because the answer is implied when they identify themselves as Catholic. They are opposed because that is what the Church teaches. In other words, it is a matter of dogma that Catholics should oppose abortion. As a “traditional Catholic,” Senator Kaine knows that the Church (and American constitutional law) says that religious dogma should not legitimately be enforced by the coercive power of the state. It is also politically convenient because by suggesting that abortion belongs only in the confessional realm, Senator Kaine is able to play both sides of the field. He can be personally opposed (and thus satisfying those who are also opposed) while appearing to be very tolerant of other people’s beliefs.

Surely as a “traditional Catholic” who is personally opposed to abortion he would know that the Church does not teach that abortion and contraception are matters of revealed faith. Just as surely a Catholic who is involved in public life would have read St. John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae. If he had he would have known that “[T]his doctrine is based upon the natural law” ( EV, 62) and like all the precepts of the natural law, binding on Catholics and non-Catholics. In other words, being Catholic has nothing to do per se with whether you think abortion and contraception are wrong. Pro-life Catholic politicians are just as guilty in this regard of allowing the debate to center around their Catholicism and would do a great service to the movement if they avoided making that connection.

While the “personally opposed, but…” defense has been worn out, it is the second half of the Senator’s response that bears a closer look because it betrays a profound philosophical difference from what the Church has taught us:

“I deeply believe — and not just as a matter of politics, but even as a matter of morality, that matters about reproduction and intimacy and relationships and contraception are in the personal realm. They’re moral decisions for individuals to make for themselves. And the last thing we need is government intruding into those personal decisions.”

Again as a Catholic, the Senator could again turn to Evangelium Vitae and find that the Holy Father anticipated his response when he said:

“Finally, the more radical views go so far as to maintain that in a modern and pluralistic society people should be allowed complete freedom to dispose of their own lives as well as of the lives of the unborn: it is asserted that it is not the task of the law to choose between different moral opinions, and still less can the law claim to impose one particular opinion to the detriment of others.” (EV, 68)

If it is not from the Church that the Senator gets his “radical view” then where does it come from? It comes from a distorted view of the human person that permeates the modern American landscape. It has even found its way into our laws through the so-called “right to privacy.”

Man by nature is a social being. He depends upon others for his fulfillment. Operating under this paradigm, the role of government is to aid in the development of the total person. A good government is one that helps to create morally good people. Laws not only protect freedom from the outside but also from the inside by promoting virtuous behavior. Certainly it is always preferable to foster virtue by non-legislative means since virtue requires voluntary rather than coerced actions, nevertheless law cannot remain indifferent to moral actions because of its pedagogical power.

Operating under this view, there is an emphasis on the freedom to fulfill one’s obligations. The obligation to protect innocent human life leads to the outlawing of all offenses against human life. Each man sees himself as his brother’s keeper to a limited extent.

This understanding of man as social by nature is rejected in modern-day America. Instead man is an individual with absolute autonomy. He only enters into social relationships by an agreement or contract. Each man enters civil society and gives up only so much of his personal liberty as to facilitate comfortable self-preservation. Under this view, the role of government becomes protective—protecting freedom from outside interference and from infringement by others. Anything is legal provided it doesn’t limit the freedom of others. The emphasis now shifts towards rights rather than obligations. When two rights claims such as the right to choose and the right to life clash, the government must step in with positive law. It is always the louder (or stronger) asserter of rights that wins.

Within this atmosphere of radical individualism enters the right to privacy. This becomes a fundamental right because one must be able to do what one pleases without any outside interference. This right has been elevated within the annals of the Supreme Court to an unalienable right. Although it remains rather elusive as to what exactly it means, the Court ruled that the right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman’s decision to have an abortion.

It is “deeply held belief” in the right to privacy that trumps anything else that the Senator might “feel about abortion.” Accordingly while he thinks that an individual’s private choices regarding intimate and personal matters (like whether or not to bear a child) must have no government interference, this cannot be done without reference to the moral law. In no other aspect of life do we treat the right to privacy as an absolute right except in contraception, abortion, and homosexual activity. This suggests that it is merely a smokescreen for judicial (and in the case at hand Senatorial) fiat.

Can the Senator explain why the private use of recreational drugs is a problem? What about prostitution? The “right to privacy” remains unprincipled. This is why the right to non-interference for abortion (Roe v Wade) quickly turned into a right to abortion (PP vs Casey). The government now interferes by supplying the abortion. This is why a “personally opposed but” stance does nothing except reveal a lack of personal integrity. The Senator is far from the neutral observer that he pretends to be.

We need only look to Monday’s Supreme Court ruling as proof of its arbitrary nature and its impossibility to overturn. Abortion may be a personal decision, but it is certainly not private and no amount of judicial gymnastics can make it so.

Moving the Grounds

January 22, 2016Abortiontwowingstogod@gmail.com

When asked about her stance on abortion during the 2008 election, candidate Hillary Clinton said she believes

“that the potential for life begins at conception. I am a Methodist, as you know. My church has struggled with this issue. In fact, you can look at the Methodist Book of Discipline and see the contradiction and the challenge of trying to sort that very profound question out.

But for me, it is also not only about a potential life; it is about the other lives involved. And, therefore, I have concluded, after great concern and searching my own mind and heart over many years, that our task should be in this pluralistic, diverse life of ours in this nation that individuals must be entrusted to make this profound decision, because the alternative would be such an intrusion of government authority that it would be very difficult to sustain in our kind of open society. And as some of you’ve heard me discuss before, I think abortion should remain legal, but it needs to be safe and rare.”

One could easily multiply the examples of similar responses among Secretary Clinton’s political friends. There is a certain modus operandi to addressing moral issues that begins with a verbal sleight of hand. Very subtly, the former Secretary of State moved the grounds of argument against abortion. By mentioning her Methodist upbringing, she is suggesting that abortion is tied to one’s faith. She further cements her position by mentioning a “pluralistic” society. The unspoken assumption is that knowledge derived from faith is entirely subjective and therefore should not be forced upon someone else. This approach is the genesis of the “I am personally opposed, but…” defense.

As people of faith who see abortion for the true horror that it is, we need to demand that the issue no longer be discussed in terms of faith. Instead we must move the grounds on which the intellectual battle for life is fought—grounds based on human reason alone. In truth, the only religious part of the argument is that we believe that man is intrinsically valuable because he is made in the image and likeness of God. Although it might be for a different reason, even the Constitution in the 14th Amendment recognizes that man has equal protection under the law. Unfortunately, I think the majority of pro-lifers fail to recognize this and cannot defend their position using anything other than religious reasoning.

The argument can be put forward in a very simple manner and we can gain some traction in this sound-bite culture by being able to make it succinctly. It has three simple premises. The first is a scientific premise and it is that human life begins at conception. This is a scientific premise and you would be hard pressed to find a single biologist or doctor that would say otherwise. In fact when Congress investigated this scientific premise in 1981 they found that “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 writing” (Human Life Bill 1981). Most Pro-Abortionists will concede the same point. Long before his conversion, the founder of NARAL, Bernard Nathanson said, “Modern technologies have convinced us that beyond question the unborn child is simply another human being, another member of the human community, indistinguishable in every way from any of us.” This coming from a man who admitted to having a hand in some 60,000 abortions.

Despite the use of the term “Fertilized Egg”, the newly conceived child is biologically distinct from his or her parents and has his or her own DNA. Now the only thing necessary for growth and development is the same thing we need—water, food, oxygen and a healthy interaction with its natural environment.

The second premise is the Moral Premise. All humans have the right to life because they are humans. Steven Schwarz developed the SLED acronym to defend the moral premise. He looks at the four main ways that a pre-born child differs from a full grown adult and sees if they carry any moral weight. The four things are Size, Level of Development, Environment, and Degree of Dependency

Does the size of the person affect their status as persons? At 7”3, Hasheem Thabeet is the tallest player in the NBA. Is he more of a person than me because I am only 5”8? The answer obviously is no. Does the level of development affect the moral status of the person? Is a 6 year old less of a person than a 20 year old? Again, no reasonable person would say that. Does it matter where someone is as to whether they are a person or not? Is a person in the Amazon less of a person than a person in the U.S.? Quite obviously the answer is no. Finally, does the fact that one is dependent on others for survival determine their personhood? Is a 14 year old on dialysis less of a person than a healthy 12 year old? No. So in each of the four physical differences there is no moral difference. So then then neither the size, nor the level of development, nor the environment nor the dependency should have any moral bearing on the personhood of the preborn child.

I mentioned the third premise earlier and that is the legal premise based on the 14^th Amendment. Justice Harry Blackmum mentioned the same thing in the Court’s opinion in Roe v Wade when he said, “(If the) suggestion of personhood [of the preborn] is established, the [abortion rights] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment.”

Keep in mind that to refute this argument, one must reject one of the three premises. The legal premise is the one that virtually everyone agrees upon. It used to be that the scientific premise was the one that was rejected, but given our culture’s obsession with science it is attacked less and less. Now the second premise is the one that is attacked by saying that a human being must perform an arbitrary set of functions to gain personhood. Not surprisingly, it is those in power who ultimately decide what those functions should be. That is why the question of abortion is ultimately related to Euthanasia as well. All they have done is apply the logic that allows abortion and extended it beyond life in the womb.

It is worth addressing as well Mrs. Clinton’s comment regarding the child being “potential life.” This is another common verbal sleight of hand that should be exposed. For anything to be a potential “X” it must be an actual “Y.” The question is, if it is not a child, what is it currently? Now we get into uncharted waters because no one who is in favor of abortion can actually tell you what it currently is. They can’t rely on science—no reputable embryologist refers to it as a clump of cells and science already tells us it is a human organism. So they usually just keep the label “potential.”

In the end, abortion becomes a huge issue, and not just for the women who have one and the children who are killed. It sets up a mindset in which the practice of arbitrarily drawing lines defining personhood becomes the norm. People are often scandalized when someone like Princeton Professor Peter Singer advocates for a 28-day waiting period in which it would be morally permissible to kill your newborn. But he is nothing if not logically consistent. Why must we draw the line at birth? In truth the only clear dividing line is at conception and we must do all within our power to show why this is the case.

An Allowable Exception?

December 4, 2015Abortiontwowingstogod@gmail.com

In addition to the exceptions of rape and incest, those who support abortion often claim that abortion is permissible when the mother’s life is in jeopardy. I am asked this question a lot and I find that most people don’t understand the principles underlying the Church’s teaching. For that reason, I think it would be instructive to discuss those principles.

That being said, there are two principles in Catholic moral theology that come into play here. The first is that you may never willingly do evil so that good may come about. The second is the principle of double effect. I’ll try to explain these in light of the issue.

Let’s start with a definition of abortion. In Evangelium Vitae (58) St John Paul II defined abortion as the “deliberate and intentional killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth.” Abortion defined as such is “always constitutes a grave moral disorder.” (EV 62)

The key to this is the phrase “deliberate and intentional killing” or what is called “direct abortion” which means we are speaking of an abortion that is willed as an end or as a means. So with this idea in mind, direct abortion is always wrong.

That being said, it is morally licit in the case of extrauterine pregnancy to intervene when both the Mother and Child’s life are in danger because of the pregnancy itself. However, you still cannot perform a direct abortion in this case. There is some question from a medical standpoint as to which specific procedures constitute a direct abortion, but the guidelines are as follows

In extrauterine pregnancy the affected part of the mother (e.g., cervix, ovary, or fallopian tube) may be removed, even though fetal death is foreseen, provided that (a) the affected part is presumed already to be so damaged and dangerously affected as to warrant its removal, and that (b) the operation is not just a separation of the embryo or fetus from its site within the part (which would be a direct abortion from a uterine appendage) and that (c) the operation cannot be postponed without notably increasing the danger to the mother. USCCB, Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Facilities

The moral principle at play here is what’s called the principle of Double Effect. To begin, it is important to note that a careful moral analysis of any given human act requires that we look not just to the external act but to the underlying choice of the will. If we must look at the underlying will then it is necessary to make a distinction in two different types of will. Classically the distinction is made between a direct will and a permitting will. Because most human acts are complex acts, even if the will directs some good, there can often be an evil associated with it. Man may never, morally speaking, directly will an evil. However, they may permit it.

This serves as the foundation of a very important principle in Catholic moral teaching called the principle of double effect. Simply stated this principle says it is morally allowable to perform an act that has at least two effects provided all four of the following conditions are met. First, the objective act to be done must be good in itself or at least morally indifferent. Secondly, the intent of the agent must be to achieve the good effect and to avoid the evil effect as much as possible. The evil effect must not be directly willed but only permitted. This is the case even if the evil effect is foreseen. Thirdly, the good effect is proportional to the bad effect. Finally, the good effect must follow directly from the action and not as a result of the harmful effect.

It is important to make a further distinction related to this principle that aids in distinguishing it from the notion of a “pre-moral” act that often accompanies the moral teaching of many dissenting theologians. Morality is always concerned with voluntary human acts. The evil effect assuming that it is only permitted is the physical effect of a moral decision. It is not a moral effect or a “pre-moral” effect. In and of itself it is neither moral nor immoral because it was not directly willed.

It has been suggested by some that it is only the first condition that is really essential and the remaining three are simply prudential checks to make sure this condition is actually being fulfilled. In this way the third condition checks that the proposed intrinsically good action is not invalidated by circumstances that produce greater evils than the good that is directly intended. This serves as a guard against those who subscribe to a proportionalist view of morality by using the third condition to support their methodology. Likewise the second and fourth conditions serve to ensure the person intends only the intrinsically good effect.

Even if the death of the child is a foreseen but unintended side effect of a medical procedure designed to preserve the mother’s life (assuming the procedure is not morally illicit) then there is nothing morally wrong with having the procedure.

With this in mind then what about the question as to whether or not it is morally licit to have an abortion in the case where a mother has something like uterine cancer? This is a perfect example of applying both the principles mentioned above. One may not perform a direct abortion even if the good of saving the mother’s life is intended. However if the mother does decide to have treatment and the treatment ends up killing the child (even if she knew this intervention was highly likely to do so) then this is morally licit. The death of the child would fall under the principle of double effect.

I think in the coming years this issue is going to come up more and more. One of the reasons is that Chlamydia is the most common STD today with about 3 million cases a year. The reason why this is relevant is because one of the things that can happen is that the bacteria can attack the fallopian tubes which could to inflammation and scarring. What this means is that the incidence of Ectopic pregnancies is rising and will continue to rise making the Church’s teaching important to understand.

Abortion in the Hard Cases

December 1, 2015Abortion, Politicstwowingstogod@gmail.com

Over the last few years, there has been a flurry of activity at the individual state level to declare personhood at conception. In every case, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence, the measures have been voted down. One of the reasons why voters turned it down was that it would force women to carry to term unwanted pregnancies including those that became pregnant as a result of rape or incest. This exception is often brought up as a reason for keeping abortion legal. In fact many who consider themselves Pro-Life will often argue for provisions in laws that keep abortion legal in these cases. Because this argument is put forth so often, it is instructive to evaluate the merit of the argument to determine whether abortion should be allowable in these, rare, but real cases when pregnancy occurs.

It is important to mention at the outset that those women who become pregnant as a result of rape or incest are victims of the morally reprehensible actions of others. There is no question as to whether they have suffered a great evil. Our response must always be one of compassion. Still, the question is whether as a result of the evil they have suffered, it gives moral justification to commit further evil by taking the life of the unborn child. Furthermore, as was mentioned above, it is rare that someone becomes pregnant as a result of rape or incest. Some studies have shown that it occurs in as few as one in a thousand cases and accounts for approximately 2 percent of all abortions. This is not to minimize the suffering and trauma associated with these cases but to put the frequency in context. One case of rape or incest is too many.

One further clarification is necessary. These so-called hard cases should not be relevant to the case for abortion on demand despite the fact that they are often invoked to defend that position. Supporters of abortion on demand state that a woman has a right to have an abortion for any reason she prefers during the entire nine months of pregnancy and not just rape and incest. Therefore to argue for abortion on demand from the hard cases is analogous to arguing for the elimination of all traffic laws from the fact that in rare emergencies one might need to violate them. This is important because laws are not made based upon exception. Laws are meant to conform to normal behavior and nearly every law admits to exceptions. Nevertheless as it shall be shown, these situations do not constitute valid exceptions to the absolute norm that abortion is always a grave evil.

Finally, it is important to mention as well that because a sexual assault like rape or incest is an act of aggression and cannot be ordered to the unitive and procreative meanings of the sexual act, “a woman who has been raped should be able to defend herself against a potential conception from the sexual assault” (USCCB, Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, 36). This means that she can have recourse to any contraceptive measure provided it is not abortifacient in nature.

With these necessary clarifications in place we can begin to look at the justification that is often offered to defend abortion in these so-called hard cases. There are a number of arguments put forth why abortion is morally justifiable which are summarized succinctly by Bioethicist Andrew Varga.

It is argued that in these tragic cases the great value of the mental health of a woman who becomes pregnant as a result of rape or incest can best be safe-guarded by abortion. It is also said that a pregnancy caused by rape or incest is the result of a grave injustice and that the victim should not be obliged to carry the fetus to viability. This would keep reminding her for nine months of the violence committed against her and would just increase her mental anguish. It is reasoned that the value of the woman’s mental health is greater than the value of the fetus. In addition, it is maintained that the fetus is an aggressor against the woman’s integrity and personal life; it is only just and morally defensible to repel an aggressor even by killing him if that is the only way to defend personal and human values. It is concluded, then, that abortion is justified in these cases (The Main Issues in Bioethics, pp. 67-68).

The underlying principle at play here is that evil may never be done so that good may come about. Any argument related to these hard cases would amount to a utilitarian ethic. Certainly the trauma that is associated with being a victim of rape or incest may cause great mental and emotional distress. The child in the womb may serve as a reminder to the mother of the trauma in which she has undergone. Nevertheless this cannot justify the taking of the life of the child in the womb.

Each of these arguments begs the question that the child in the womb in fact is a person with an inherent dignity from the moment of conception. Therefore it has a right to life that ought to be protected from the moment of conception. The manner in which the child has been brought into being ought not to have any effect on its moral status. The child may have been conceived as a result of a sexual assault or as a result of a loving union of husband and wife. The result of each of these methods is the same. A new and complete human person has been brought into being with the full dignity of any human person. Therefore because the children are the same regardless of the manner in which they were brought into being, the moral status ought to be identical.

Despite the fact that the child is the result of an act of aggression, the child himself is not the aggressor. It is the perpetrator of the assault who is the aggressor. The unborn entity is just as much an innocent victim as its mother. Therefore, abortion cannot be justified on the basis that the unborn is an aggressor.

In arguing that abortion is justified because of the emotional and mental anguish that the child’s presence places on the mother also presents us with a slippery slope. From this, one might extend the right to take the life of another person any time that they cause emotional and mental anguish upon the same principle. For example, suppose a husband were to become disabled later in life and the disability would cause great emotional and mental stress on his wife as his caregiver. Applying the same principle, the wife would be morally justified in taking the life of her husband. Although this may seem absurd, it is simply an application of the same principle that a mother uses in justifying the killing of her child that was conceived as a result of a sexual assault.

In conclusion, it should go without saying that the pro-life advocate should not simply stop at protecting the life of the child in the womb. Much help also needs to be given to the victim of the assault. Stephen Krason in his book Abortion: Politics, Morality, and the Constitution reminds us that we all have an obligation “to make it as easy as possible for her to give up her baby for adoption, if she desires. Dealing with the woman pregnant from rape, then, can be an opportunity for us—both as individuals and society—to develop true understanding and charity. Is it not better to try to develop these virtues than to countenance an ethic of destruction as the solution?”

What Is it?

August 17, 2015Abortion, Culture of Lifetwowingstogod@gmail.com

In the landmark Supreme Court decision of Roe versus Wade, the majority opinion stated that we “need not answer the difficult question of when life begins.” It seems however that this in fact is the fundamental question upon which the abortion debate hinges. As proof that the inmates are running the asylum, the same decision concedes that “(If the) suggestion of personhood [of the preborn] is established, the [abortion rights] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment.” For those who are in favor of abortion, they often will answer the question of when life begins by making a distinction between a human being and a person. This distinction usually rests upon the presence of the soul in the person. Rarely however is this premise attacked. By using simple philosophy and modern embryology we can find where this assumption is flawed.

To begin it is important to mention that the question of the morality of abortion does not rest upon the question of when the human body is infused with a soul. The Church has always taught that abortion is morally wrong. She has affirmed that “the reality of the human being for the entire span of life, both before and after birth, does not allow us to posit either a change in nature or a gradation in moral value, since it possesses full anthropological and ethical status. The human embryo has, therefore, from the very beginning, the dignity proper to a person” (Dignitatis Personae, 5)

Secondly, from a philosophical point of view there is no such thing as a living being that does not have a soul. The soul is the animating principle of all living things. The Church has baptized Aristotle’s notion of the three types of souls that exist in a nested hierarchy: vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual. Each of these has specific functions. The vegetative soul is concerned with growth, nutrition and reproduction, the sensitive soul is concerned with locomotion and perception and the intellectual soul is concerned with rational thought. These are nested in the sense that anything that has a higher degree of soul also has all of the lower degrees. All living things grow, nourish themselves, and reproduce. Animals not only do that, but also move and perceive. Finally, man does all of the above in addition to reasoning (Aristotle, De Anima¸413, a.23).

With this foundation in place, we can begin to look at the different theories of ensoulment that have been adopted throughout the course of history. These theories fall into two broad categories. The first is usually referred to as “delayed hominization” (or “serial ensoulment theory”) while the second is called “immediate ensoulment theory.” As the name suggests, “immediate ensoulment” refers to the infusion of the soul at conception.

The argument for “Serial ensoulment” is summarized as follows: First, because the soul is the form of the body (i.e. makes the body human), the rational soul cannot be present until there is a body present that is significantly complex and organized to receive the soul. A mere “clump of cells” would not constitute a human body and thus could not receive a human soul. Third, the claim is that there is no human body in the zygote. Therefore the conclusion is that until the soul is present there is no human being. It was Aristotle who first proposed this theory and called it “delayed hominization.”

He speculated that the human soul was received only after the body was properly prepared for it. He thought that the embryo was formed from homogenous menstrual blood of the mother by the action of the semen that remained in the womb for at least forty days. Since this matter was not sufficient enough for the infusion of a human soul, it formed a “pre-person” that had only vegetative functions with a vegetative soul. Once it developed a heart and brain it then became an animal with an animal soul and eventually progressed into a true human being with an intellectual soul. This is similar to what many people argue today when they call the child a “potential person.”

One could also find support based on this idea of delayed hominization for the position of someone like Peter Singer who says that a child may be killed up to 18 months old because they are not yet a person. If we must wait until some (it would have to be arbitrary) milestone of growth is reached before the infusion of a soul then that could happen at any point during development, even outside the womb.

St. Thomas Aquinas agreed with Aristotle and many Catholic thinkers followed his thought. Because Aquinas also had inadequate biological knowledge he thought that the body that was first formed was vegetative in nature and later underwent a substantial change with a new body in which it was animated by an animal soul. A substantial change is one in which a whole new entity comes into existence. It is not mere growth, but the bringing about of a new substance. Finally there was another substantial change that occurred and the now human body was infused with an intellectual soul. It is important to note however that for St. Thomas the infusion of the soul happens at the origin of the human body.

If we apply the principles of modern embryology we can then show where the theory of serial ensoulment is lacking. To say that the body is not “significantly complex and organized to receive the soul” is to grossly misrepresent the nature of the being that results from syngamy. From the moment of fertilization, the new entity carries out precise, self-directed processes. From then on, the only thing necessary for growth and development is the same thing we need—water, food, oxygen and a healthy interaction with its natural environment.

Secondly, to say that “a formal cause is present only in a finished product,” is rather vague. There is no such thing as a “finished product” in the truest sense. Everything is journeying toward perfection. However what does remain to be done in the embryo in order to reach perfection is the successive carrying out of inherent potentialities that are already present in the newly conceived person. Because it has its own unique DNA that is different from either parent and possesses a full genetic program, from this point forward no new genetic info needed to make it into an individual human being. It already is a human being, just at a particular stage of development. Also, because the human body has all of the necessary genetic information and internally directed activity to lead to full development then the human soul must be present.

Although the Church has not definitively rejected the theory of delayed hominization, she teaches with relative confidence that theories of delayed hominization are in fact scientifically obsolete. As the Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin says, “Certainly no experimental datum can be in itself sufficient to bring us to the recognition of a spiritual soul; nevertheless, the conclusions of science regarding the human embryo provide a valuable indication for discerning by the use of reason a personal presence at the moment of this first appearance of a human life: how could a human individual not be a human person?”

There are some today that have speculated ensoulment does not occur until implantation because of the possibility of twinning that occurs between the time of fertilization and implantation. However this viewpoint is implausible because the early embryos develop continuously as individuals during that time. There is not an active potentiality to develop into twins and all of the scientific data points to the possibility of twinning as a passive potentiality. What this means is that there is nothing in the DNA of the child itself to suggest that it will twin. Instead it is acted upon from the outside and performs as a mode of asexual reproduction, akin to cloning.

In conclusion, with the increase in biological knowledge (and St. Thomas would have likely agreed) most Catholic thinkers abandoned the delayed ensoulment theory because they recognized that the body that is formed at conception is a human body. This seems the most reasonable because if the newly conceived child really has a human nature and does not undergo a substantial change then he must have an intellectual soul. Arming ourselves with both philosophy and modern scientific knowledge we can attack this hidden premise and protect human life at its most hidden and vulnerable stage.

Removing the Liberal/Conservative Filter

August 12, 2015Abortion, Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Culture of Life, Politicstwowingstogod@gmail.com

When he called the Second Vatican Council, Blessed John XXIII hoped that one of the fruits of the Council would be “to throw open the windows of the Church so that we can see out and the people can see in.” While he envisioned a gentle, refreshing breeze, what resulted instead was a hurricane. When the dust finally settled, the storm which became known as the “Spirit of Vatican II,” left in its wake the world’s debris obscuring much of the Church’s divine deposit. Catchphrases emerged which acted as substitutes for actual understanding of the sacred treasury and have served as great threats to the unity of the Church. “Ecumenism” became synonymous with religious syncretism, “full, active participation” opened the door to liturgical innovation, and the “primacy of conscience” was invoked to justify a “right to dissent.” One in particular bears specific mention and investigation: what George Weigel calls the “liberal/conservative filter.” There are innumerable ways in which this filter creates division, but one common theme is the divide between the so-called “Social Justice Catholics” and the “Pro-life Catholics.” Rather than creating straw men that demonize one side or the other, it will be shown that both are animated by the same fundamental errors.

The Liberal/Conservative Filter

After 200 years living under western liberalism, we are all liberals. The question only becomes whether one is a liberal liberal or a conservative liberal. Thoroughly swimming in liberal democracy, we tend to view everything through that lens. We all believe that individual freedoms trump the interests of the community. When confronted moral questions, we believe that they cannot be settled objectively but instead are left up to individual choice.

It is perhaps easy to see how a so-called liberal Catholic might believe this, but is this really a fair criticism of a “conservative” Catholic who is faithful to the Magisterium? Those who label themselves as conservative tend to believe that they must surrender their freedom and simply obey. This leads to a moral minimalism which asks “how far can I go until this is considered sinful?” Freedom and genuine authority ought to go hand in hand so that what is proposed by that authority is not done so by external fiat but as a means of man finding those internal values which are true to his nature. This is why the Church views her role not as law-maker but instead as being at “the service of conscience, helping it to avoid being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine proposed by human deceit, and helping it not to swerve from the truth about the good of man, but rather, especially in more difficult questions, to attain the truth with certainty and to abide in it”(Veritatis Splendor, 64). She does not impose from the outside the truths regarding the proper use of our nature, but instead proposes those truths to man’s reason so that he may make recognize them as true internal values.

The point is that freedom is first and foremost a theological issue and only secondarily a political one. This is the point that the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council made when they said that “[A]uthentic freedom is an exceptional sign of the divine image within man.” (Gaudium et Spes, 17). Therefore the distinction between liberal and conservative Catholics has no place in the Church. If a distinction needs to be made it should be the classical distinction between orthodox and heterodox. One either believes that the Church is truly an “expert in humanity” because of her divine origins and proposes authentically true human goods or she does not.

Pulling the Thread of the Seamless Garment

In the 1980’s Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago used image of the seamless garment of Jesus for which the soldiers drew lots to portray a “consistent ethic of life” that “argues for a continuum of life which must be sustained in the face of diverse and distinct threats.” This “seamless garment” implied opposition to abortion and to capital punishment; opposition to the threat of using nuclear arms and the support of a vast social welfare state as means to a preferential option for the poor. This approach was to be tempered by the fact that a “consistent ethic does not say everyone in the Church must do all things, but it does say that as individuals and groups pursue one issue, whether it is opposing abortion or capital punishment, the way we oppose one threat should be related to support for a systemic vision of life.”

This approach to social issues has done profound damage and it is time that we deconstruct the seamless garment. This “consistent ethic of life” equivocates on the term “life.” When a Christian uses the term life he does not refer to life merely as the corporal existence prior to death. But the seamless garment approach does. Instead the Christian means something more, something that Blessed John Paul II captures well at the opening of Evangelium Vitae. The Holy Father emphasizes that when we use the term life we are referring to that

“which far exceeds the dimensions of man’s earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase. Life in time, in fact, is the fundamental condition, the initial stage and an integral part of the entire unified process of human existence. It is a process which, unexpectedly and undeservedly, is enlightened by the promise and renewed by the gift of divine life, which will reach its full realization in eternity (cf. 1 Jn 3:1-2). At the same time, it is precisely this supernatural calling which highlights the relative character of each individual’s earthly life. After all, life on earth is not an “ultimate” but a “penultimate” reality; even so, it remains a sacred reality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a sense of responsibility and brought to perfection in love and in the gift of ourselves to God and to our brothers and sisters.”

Practically speaking what this means is that when we seek to protect and promote the sacredness of life in opposing something such as abortion, we not only care about the child in the womb, but also the eternal destiny of his mother, the abortionist, and even the annoying “escorts” whose sole job it appears is to mock those praying outside the abortion clinic. It is an acknowledgement that the child is not the only one who “dies” by abortion and in fact might be the one who is in the least danger of dying an eternal death.

On the other hand, the culture of death is often defined by its fruits in society such as abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, and genocide. But even if these things were outlawed tomorrow the culture of death would still go on. That is because at the heart of the culture of death is the fact that it is designed to lead to spiritual death.

Those who are Pro-Life must also avoid defining themselves as being in opposition to abortion, or euthanasia, etc. Following the lead of John Paul II they must define themselves in a positive manner as having “respect for nature and protection of God’s work of creation. In a special way, it means respect for human life from the first moment of conception until its natural end” (Closing Address World Youth Day 1993).

The “seamless garment” does not make the necessary distinction between evils as well. There are certain acts that are intrinsically evil and cannot be ordered to the good no matter what the intention of the person. Our Lord told us that we will always have the poor with us (Mt 26:11), not as justification to avoid helping the poor, but because like St. Paul found in Thessaloniki, some people refuse to work. Poverty will never be completely eradicated and is not always an intrinsic social evil. To aid us in discerning how these evils present themselves in social life, the Church for her part has listed the so-called five non-negotiables. The first four are related to the protection of life at its most vulnerable stages including abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research and human cloning and the fifth is support for so called “same-sex marriage.” These are non-negotiable not because we are stubborn but because they are aligned so closely to the true human goods that they can never be ordered to the good.

The Preferential Option for the Poor

Both Pro-Life and Social Justice Catholics also show a profound misunderstanding regarding the Church’s social doctrine. Both view it primarily through economic lenses. The social doctrine of the Church is first and foremost concerned with the dignity of the human person and economic issues only insofar as they affect this dignity.

Evidence of this is found when the Church’s teaching on the “preferential option for the poor” is invoked in defense of actions against life. This misunderstanding is based once again upon the view of man only in his temporal existence. One can read that the “love of preference for the poor, and the decisions which it inspires in us, cannot but embrace the immense multitudes of the hungry, the needy, the homeless, those without medical care and, above all, those without hope of a better future,” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 42) through an economic paradigm and miss the fact that the unborn and those who are dying are crying out the loudest for preferential treatment, especially because they have no voice of their own. It calls for special preference especially in those places where the attacks against their dignity enjoy legal sanction (EV, 11).

If this is true then Pro-Life Catholics cannot treat the preferential option for the poor as a secondary issue as they tend to do. A true consistent ethic of life is one in which the dignity of the human person is protected and promoted. Certainly the defenseless and need special attention, but this does not absolve us from responsibility from advocating for those that live in abject poverty (both physical and spiritual) because there may be some personal culpability on their part.

What exactly is the Magisterium’s role in the misunderstanding? One problem is that Catholic Social Teaching very rarely presents abortion and euthanasia as social justice considerations. Instead they are nearly always presented as bioethical issues. To be clear, what is being said is that abortion and euthanasia do not appear as part of the social Magisterium of the Church, but this does not mean that the Church has been silent on these issues.

In Loss and Gain, Blessed John Henry Newman’s fictional account of the conversion of a man from Anglicanism to the Roman Catholic Church, the protagonist Redding was drawn to the Church by its consistency. He could ask ten Anglican Priests to explain a particular dogma and would get ten different answers. If he posed the same question to ten different Catholic priests he would get the same answer from all of them. Redding would be hard pressed to find this same ecclesial consistency today thanks to the liberal/conservative filter that was carried in by the Spirit of Vatican II. It is time we remove this filter.

On the Real King of the Jungle

July 31, 2015Abortiontwowingstogod@gmail.com

For the better part of a week now, there has been a great deal of chatter connecting what would normally be two unrelated news events. The first is the “revelation” that Planned Parenthood has been selling parts of aborted children. The second is the slaying of a beloved Lion named Cecil in Africa by a hunter from Minnesota. There seems to be a great deal more moral outrage over the latter than the former. Rather than add more fuel to that particular fire, I would like to ask a simple question, namely, why?

First off, I am willing to concede that the hunter violated some ethical code of conduct when he paid $50,000 to have a lion lured from its protected habitat merely for the sake of the kill. If nothing else he is at least guilty of bad taste. This ought to leave all of us at least shaking our heads even if our outrage never reaches Peta-like proportions. But the question at issue is how we have become so focused on what ought to be a relatively minor issue while ignoring a major one like abortion. Chesterton too puzzled over this in his essay “On Lying in Bed” saying, “[I]f there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals. Thus it is considered more withering to accuse a man of bad taste than of bad ethics.” Specifically, what is the mindset that is willing to overlook the death and dismemberment of innocent children while becoming absolutely indignant at the death of a lion?

There are three reasons why minor morals prevail in this case. The first has to do with our conscience. The Catechism speaks of our conscience as having the role of accuser in judging acts that we have already done (CCC1778). While we can dull our conscience by lying and rationalizing, ultimately it cannot be entirely deadened and will actually “avenge” itself through seemingly unexplained guilt. We see this when someone who has keeps hidden something they have done finds self-destructive ways to punish themselves. Built into our conscience in its role as an avenger is the need for remorse. I think that is precisely what is at play here.

We constantly want throw our consciences moral bones in hopes that it will still our otherwise restless hearts. That is why we strive to make abortions safe, legal and rare. Why do we need to make them rare if there is nothing wrong with them? The only explanation is that we know they are wrong and that we hope by striving to make them rare we will quiet our consciences. In this case, by reminding everyone just how gruesome abortion is, these Planned Parenthood videos are awakening our collective consciences. And this is precisely why we were all so outraged when we found out what this dentist has done with the lion. If we are outraged and speak out against this “atrocity”, it might still our hearts so that we can ignore the other moral atrocities that we condone as a society. In essence it is an attempt to throw our conscience a bone to chew on.

The second has to do with our cultural attitude towards children. Children are essentially a luxury. Whereas previously children may have been treated as a commodity, needed to help with the division of labor in the household and as a safety net for old age, this is no longer the case. The economic center for the family has moved outside the household and there is Social Security and 401Ks to provide security in old age. Now they are seen as only an un-recoupable cost and parenthood becomes an act of consumption so that people have babies because they want one. A child becomes something for the man who has everything and women “choose” whether they really want to purchase a baby right now or not.

To be clear I am not saying treating children as either a luxury or a commodity is a good thing, but this is the prevailing mindset that dominates the culture. But the fact of the matter is that we tend to view everything through economic lenses and it motivates our decisions more than most would like to admit.

Closely related to this is the third reason, overpopulation. Quite frankly there are far fewer lions than there are people. In fact the African Lion could be extinct by 2050 according to Scientific American. Because there are less lions than people we should value them more than we do people, or so goes the lie.

That being said, do we really have an overpopulation problem? Let’s be clear what the real driving force behind this is first of all. In his book called What Americans Really Want…Really, Dr. Frank Luntz reports on how politicians were losing ground in the “green revolution”. What he found was that it was mostly a matter of language. They were preaching conservation. If however, they preach making things more energy efficient then people were overwhelmingly in support. Why? Because when you ask me to conserve I might have to make some personal sacrifices, but if you promote efficiency then I won’t have to change my habits at all and might actually pay less for using the same amount. Quite frankly saving the African lion requires far less of a change in my habits (no more $50,000 hunting trips for me!) than the necessary sacrifice of parenting.

In the end the overpopulation agenda has very little to do with the environment itself, but truly comes down to the other green—money. It is all about economics. If you don’t believe me then all you need to do is look at how the whole thing started. Benjamin Franklin gave a talk in England in which he mentioned in passing that the population of the US was growing by 3% per year. In the audience was a preacher named Thomas Malthus, who is the Father of the Overpopulation myth. Based on Franklin’s comment, Malthus realized that the population was doubling every 23 years. When he contrasted with the fact that he saw the food supply growing arithmetically and population exponentially he realized people soon would outgrow the food supply. Not only did Malthus’ prediction never come true, but the opposite thing happened. Today we actually have a food surplus despite the fact the earth’s population is now six times what it was in 1850. The fact that there are starving people is not caused by there being too many of them but by corruption and bad economic policies. Despite evidence to the contrary, anti-population forces still hold fast to Malthusian predictions and continue to see people solely as consumers inhibiting economic growth. People are more than consumers however, they are also producers that innovate and create wealth.

The bad economics is often based on what is called the “zero-sum-game fallacy”. This is the idea that the economy is a pie with only so much to go around. But the economy is not a pie — economies can grow, and population growth can actually help development. A growing population means more labor, which along with land and capital are the main factors of production.

Benedict XVI says pretty much the same thing in Caritas in Veritate.

“The notion of rights and duties in development must also take account of the problems associated with population growth. This is a very important aspect of authentic development, since it concerns the inalienable values of life and the family. To consider population increase as the primary cause of underdevelopment is mistaken, even from an economic point of view…Suffice it to consider, on the one hand, the significant reduction in infant mortality and the rise in average life expectancy found in economically developed countries, and on the other hand, the signs of crisis observable in societies that are registering an alarming decline in their birth rate” (CV, 44)

The Holy Father’s point is that the rise in the population is not the result of a rising birth rate, but a reduction in infant mortality and death rates overall. From 1960 to 2000 the population doubled—from 3 billion to 6 billion. This is not because we were breeding like rabbits, but stopped dropping like flies. In fact fertility was dropping throughout the period from 6 children per woman in 1960 to 2.6 by 2002. The UN Population projection (low variant) predicts that population will increase to 7.6 billion 2040 and then back to the current 6.5 billion by 2082. From there it drops off steadily.

The total fertility rate in Europe is 1.4 children per woman (keep in mind that replacement level is 2.1 children per woman). The current population of 728 million will drop to 557 million by 2050. This is a drop of similar magnitude to the Black Death in the fourteenth century. By the end of the 21^st Century with a population of 207 million plus the average age of 60 means that the decline is pretty much irreversible.

In the US it is not as dire (yet) because we still have a favorable tax and immigration system. Families with more than two children are given generous tax breaks so they pay virtually no income tax. These breaks will be removed by necessity in short order however. Still we are below replacement level (1.88 in 2012). Middle-class American women are reproducing far below replacement rate (1.6), which is very close to the fertility rate for China (1.54). In other words, we are essentially moving towards a self-inflicted one child policy. Any way you look at the numbers the trend is clearly dropping below replacement levels.

I close with a great quote from the master of one-liners, GK Chesterton. “The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him, whether he is part of the surplus population; or if not, how he knows he is not.”

History is Bunk

July 8, 2015Abortion, Church and State, Contraceptiontwowingstogod@gmail.com

Henry Ford once said, “History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present. The only history that’s worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.” Apparently, former Secretary of State and now Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, believes exactly the same thing as Henry Ford did nearly 100 years ago. Back in 2009, then-Secretary Clinton received the “highest honor” from Planned Parenthood of America, the Margaret Sanger Award.

In her acceptance speech, Mrs. Clinton said the following:

Now, I have to tell you that it was a great privilege when I was told that I would receive this award. I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision. Another of my great friends, Ellen Chesler, is here, who wrote a magnificent biography of Margaret Sanger called Woman of Valor. And when I think about what she did all those years ago in Brooklyn, taking on archetypes, taking on attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am really in awe of her.

And there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from her life and from the cause she launched and fought for and sacrificed so bravely. One in particular, though, has always stood out for me almost a hundred years later. It’s the lesson that women’s empowerment is always, always about more than bettering the lives of individual women. It is part of a movement. It’s about economic and political progress for all women and girls. It’s about making sure that every woman and girl everywhere has the opportunities that she deserves to fulfill her potential, a potential as a mother, as a worker, as a human being.

“I admire Margaret Sanger enormously … her vision.” Wait. Did she say she admired Margaret Sanger’s vision? I wonder which part of her vision she admired specifically. Because what most people know of her vision is quite scary.

One of her visions was to create a new religion. The religion would be based on eugenics. Sanger thought that eugenics was the most adequate avenue to the solution of racial, political, and social problems. She said, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members… Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”

Sanger thought that she had solved the problem that vexed most eugenicists from Charles Darwin and Francis Galton on down. In her eyes, natural selection was no longer able to remove the unfit because civilization had softened much of the severity of nature by its misguided compassion and medical advances. She also said the problem was compounded by the high fecundity of the “feeble minded”.

Although this is probably obvious given that they have named an award for her, but Planned Parenthood has never disavowed her or apologized for her comments. In fact they continue her mission today. They build many of their facilities in poorer, African-American neighborhoods to help in primarily targeting African-Americans. In fact, according to the CDC in the year 2000, (the last year for which they have reported these statistics), over 50% (503 per 1000) of pregnancies in the African American community end in abortion. The CDC also reports that 35% of all abortions are performed on African-Americans. Given that they only comprise a little over 10% of the American population that is a startling statistic. It doesn’t take much to connect the dots on this. If you want to know more of the specifics on this, check out blackgenocide.com. That is why I was never sure whether the signs of our first African American president standing in front of t of the Planned Parenthood sign promising FOCA were photo-shopped. How this completely flies under the radar in our racially oversensitive culture can only be diabolically explained. Either way, it’s sad that a leader in the African American community can be promoting this and certainly Sanger’s vision is not one we should admire.

Given that Mrs. Clinton’s “great friend” wrote a magnificent biography, none of this can be news to Mrs. Clinton. It is easy to confront attitudes and accusations when they are true and you are completely unapologetic for them. Certainly, this is nothing that we should be “in awe” of. I think what she meant to say is that it is truly “awe-full” what she did.

What about how Sanger was “making sure that every woman and girl everywhere has the opportunities that she deserves to fulfill her potential, a potential as a mother, as a worker, as a human being.”? Of course I assume that is not including the nearly 635,000 women who will die in the womb this year because of abortion in our country. What about the fact that in places like China, abortion is used to selectively kill women in the womb? Hard to make the argument based on this alone that it is “making sure that every woman and girl everywhere has the opportunities that she deserves”. To say later, as she does, that it has changed the lives of tens of millions of women is an understatement to say the very least. I think that she means that it has changed them for the better, but anyone who actually lives (or dies) with the reality of abortion would totally disagree. Have the 65% of post-abortive women who suffer symptoms of trauma had all the opportunities they deserve? What about the women who battle suicidal thoughts and tendencies because of abortion?

Let me be absolutely clear on this. These are horrible things that happen to women because they have bought the lies about abortion. But abortion itself is morally wrong primarily because it takes the life of an innocent person. That being said, the fact of the matter is that anyone who says they are pro-women cannot at the same time be pro-abortion.

There is another section of her speech that I think bears commenting upon. Secretary Clinton said that

It has changed attitudes and perceptions about women and our roles in society. It ushered in demographic and social changes that have brought us closer to gender equality than at any time.

I can’t believe that I am actually saying this, but I agree with her about the attitudes and perceptions about women. This is the god of equality rearing its head again. And of course this means first like any false god, it must have its sacrificial victims in the millions of unborn children who have been killed in the name of equality. Rather than actually meeting the needs of women, Mrs. Clinton and those of her ilk want to make it possible for them to act like men through chemical alteration of their fertility and abortion. What if we really treated a woman’s fertility as something sacred and helped them to participate more fully in society?

This is why we need to study history accurately. We can learn from the wisdom of our predecessors. If we did then we would find that Alice Paul, who was the author of the Equal Rights Amendment, said that, “abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.” What abortion does is give society an easy way out of meeting the real needs of women. In making women as close to men, they do not need to do anything that meets the needs unique to women. Society no longer has to take pregnancy seriously. The early feminists such as Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton recognized this and fought against abortion by seeking legal protection from abortion for women and children.

For all the uproar that Humanae Vitae caused both inside the Church and out, Pope Paul VI’s prophetic warning about men easily forgetting the reverence due to woman and reducing her to a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires appears to have been dead spot on. What he couldn’t have seen though is how powerful women like Mrs. Clinton would also forget the reverence due to women. “Gender equality” created in this fashion does not mean equality in dignity. Gender equality as a goal only serves to lessen the dignity of women. That is what women and men should be fighting for.

Two Wings to God

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth"Pope St. John Paul II