Pro-Life: January 2004 Archives

On one hand, this ruling means that more "leftover" embryos in in-vitro cases will be snuffed. On the other hand, if it could help people recognize that IVF is a bad thing in the first place, it isn't a total loss.

Donum Vitae says:

The transmission of human life is entrusted by nature to a personal and conscious act and as such is subject to the all-holy laws of God: immutable and inviolable laws which must be recognized and observed. For this reason one cannot use means and follow methods which could be licit in the transmission of the life of plants and animals."

So, buddy, as long as you don't put any embryos on deposit at the IVF bank, you can be sure your ex-wife isn't going to surprise you by taking 'em out.

Maybe somebody -- like Father Poumade, who knows about this stuff -- can explain how it's ethical for Georgetown University to use aborted babies for medical experiments? I realize the babies were not aborted for medical explotation, but still...isn't there something a little creepy about it? Would you want to use the contents of Saddam's mass graves for experimentation?

By voting unanimously for the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in July '03, they affirmed an important pro-life principle, that, in the words of Prof. Hadley Arkes,

the child marked for an abortion, but born alive, has a claim to the protection of the law, and that claim cannot pivot on the question of whether anyone wanted her.

Read Prof. Arkes' NR comment explaining the Act and the bizarre Federal court decision it overturned: one which denied a 20-day-old born child the right to life.

Bishop Raymond Burke of La Crosse, WI -- soon to be the archbishop of St. Louis -- has decreed that pro-abortion politicians are not to be given Holy Communion.

Thank you, Bishop Burke, for "speaking truth to power": advocating legalized abortion is indeed a "manifestly grave sin".

I'll ask canonist Pete Vere to comment on legal aspects of this action.

Thanks to buddy John Griffin for sending the article.

Before Brian Finkel was convicted of 22 counts of molesting patients, he was a "pro-choice hero" who did 20,000 abortions and was proud of it:

Brian Finkel, a Phoenix, Arizona abortionist, told the Phoenix New Times in 1999: "This is my abortion machine, where I do the Lord’s work. I heal the sick with it.... Got a Tech 9 [machine pistol]. Every gynecologist needs a Tech 9, so I could have more rounds, ’cause they’re bringing me more Christians. There’s a Smith and Wesson .40 and a few rifles, for crowd control, down at the [abortuary]." He and his wife Diane aborted their first child, whom they later referred to as "Ernie the Embryo." Bruce Miller of Arizona Right to Choose has nevertheless extolled Finkel as "an unrecognized hero in our community" who hasn’t "gotten the accolades I think he should get."

I wonder what his fellow prisoners will think of him for the next 34 years.