Debating point: "What about ... ? (rape, incest, deformities, economics, etc.)"

The question will arrise "What about ... ? (rape, incest, deformities, economics, etc.)"



Summary of the Pro-Life Response.
(1) Parallelism on rape: "Do you favor the death penalty for rape? No? Why, then, do you favor the death penalty for the innocent child?"
(2) Clarification on incest: "Abortion just helps cover up the crime so that the perpetrator can continue his molestation of the victim."
(3) Extrapolation on birth defects: "Do you support the elimination of handicapped adults and children? No? Then why do you support the killing of handicapped preborn babies? Are you saying that handicapped preborn babies are worth less than human beings already born? Yes? Doesn't this message transfer to born handicapped human beings?" [To the audience]: "Does anybody out there think this way?"

Background. The most effective way of refuting the "what about?" slogan is by parallelism. This consists of simply applying the pro-abort's logic to born human beings. Thus;
• We don't kill the guilty rapist, so why should we kill the innocent child resulting from the rape?
• We don't kill teenaged Down's Syndrome children — why should we kill them when they're unborn?
• You say you can't afford another child? Why don't you just kill the children you have now? That would really improve your financial situation!

Perfection: A Survival Trait. NARAL Pro-Choice America and other pro-abortionists sometimes produce photographs of hideously deformed and crippled preborn or even newborn children (their favorite is anencephalic babies) in order to buttress their argument that defective preborns should be exterminated.

However, when one group of people decides that another group of people is somehow inferior or is not worthy of life, they are falling into the trap of eugenicist thinking.

The terrible danger with the pro-eugenics argument is that, once we begin to loftily judge which children are fit to live and which are not, we have no way in the world of stopping the slaughter.

The most decisive and difficult step in this process is the very first one; when the first step has been taken, all subsequent steps are based on the logic "It's been done before, so it must be all right."

The Nazi doctors started by killing one little child — baby boy Knauer — and quickly progressed to the mass slaughter of entire classes of people. In the end, they were even killing children with slightly deformed ears and those children they deemed "difficult to train."

The Anti-Eugenics Argument. The main arguments against abortion for eugenics are these:
(1) The best way to derail the pro-abortion "eugenics" argument is to ask whether or not handicapped (P.C. term: "differently abled") individuals have less of a right to live than those people who are perfectly healthy. The answer to this question must be "no." The next step is to point out to the pro-abortionist that he is deciding which preborn babies will live or die based solely on whether or not they are handicapped. Conclude by stating that this is the core mentality supporting any kind of discrimination.
(2) Once it is judged acceptable to stop 'defective' persons from being born, it is a short step to ending the lives of 'defectives' that are already born. This is already occurring in this country. More than 2,000 'defective' newborns are being quietly put to death in the United States every year. Some 'doctors' have referred to this as "A second chance at abortion" or "fourth-trimester abortion," as described in Chapter 23 of The Facts of Life, "Euthanasia."
(3) What a dreadful message this eugenicist thinking conveys to surviving children, especially if they are handicapped! They will soon deduce that they would have been discarded (or still might be) if they did not measure up to their parent's standards of perfection. In other words, they are being judged as material goods, not as persons with intrinsic worth. For further information on eugenics programs and the philosophy of eugenics, see Chapter 24 of The Facts of Life, "Eugenics."

What About Rape?: "Mandatory Motherhood." Pro-abortionists often bring up the specter of what they call "authentic mandatory motherhood:" A woman being raped and then being 'forced' to bring her child to term.

One way to highlight the fallacy of this pro-abortion argument is to ask a person to imagine himself thoroughly examining two newborn babies lying side by side — one conceived within a loving marriage and one conceived as the result of a brutal rape — and then ask which would be considered more human. If these two babies were laid side by side, could anyone identify the one who was a conceived by rape?

Of course not!

Then why select one baby for extinction based solely upon the circumstances of his or her conception?

If pro-abortionists favor abortion for rape based solely upon the circumstances of the conception, then perhaps they should be consistent and advocate abortion for all preborn babies conceived out of wedlock. After all, there has always been a stigma attached to being what we used to call a 'bastard.'

If fact, unmarried mothers are committing the systematic extermination of illegitimate children right now, because more than 80 percent of all abortions are committed upon single women who became pregnant through fornication.

Since nearly half of all children born in the last twenty years have been conceived outside of marriage, the challenge to an abortophile to be consistent on this matter will strike a chord with many people under the age of twenty. The pro-abortionist will protest that the rape was a forced conception, while children born out of wedlock are the products of "lovemaking between two consenting individuals," but the point will have been made — that the preborn child conceived as a result of rape would be sentenced to death by the abortionists because of matters totally outside his or her control.

Related Arguments. It is interesting to ask a pro-abortionist if he or she favors the death penalty for rape. Oddly enough, pro-abortionists are usually anti-capital punishment and will almost certainly answer "No." Then ask them then why they favor the death penalty for the innocent unborn baby!

The pro-abortionists in this country and every other country where abortion is legal used the "hard cases" of rape and incest to drive the wedge that eventually opened the door wide to unlimited abortion. They promised that they only wanted abortion for the "hard cases," and then inevitably pushed for more and more exceptions to this rule until they achieved abortion on demand for any reason: Convenience, sex selection, covering up promiscuity, financial 'necessity,' and so on.

This is the basis of the anti-life strategy of gradualism or incrementalism.

The Numbers. If all of the "hard cases" for abortion — fetal deformity, rape, incest, mother's life, mother's health, and mother's age — are added up, they represent less than three percent of all abortions! In other words, more than 97 percent of all abortions are performed for social reasons — that is, abortions for convenience.

Chapter 19 of The Facts of Life, "United States Abortion Statistics," includes a summary of the average numbers of abortions performed for various reasons in the United States. Chapter 19 also includes the results of an Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) poll of the aborting women themselves regarding why they obtain abortions. Chapter 19 of The Facts of Life also shows the results of 27 surveys of women, asking why they had abortions, in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet entitled "WHYABORT.XLS." During a debate, it is very useful to note the incredibly small number of abortions performed for the so-called "hard cases."

U.S. bishops’ official: Stem cell guidelines ignore science and embryonic humanity

Washington D.C., May 25, 2009 / 12:04 pm (CNA).- The U.S. bishops’ conference has submitted comment concerning the National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines on embryonic stem cell research, saying the rules ignore science, ethics and the humanity of the embryo.Msgr. David Malloy, General Secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), authored the comments. He said the proposed guidelines miss an “enormous opportunity” to combine science and “responsible ethics.” He declared it a “central fact of science” that the embryo is a human being “at a very early stage of his or her development.” Federal advisory groups had acknowledged this fact, Msgr. Malloy said, citing the National Bioethics Advisory Commission appointed by President Clinton.
The monsignor insisted it was a human right not to be subjected to harmful experimentation and said laws which do not protect that right are of questionable moral legitimacy.
Noting alternative methods of stem cell research such as induced pluripotent stem cells, he decried President Obama’s executive order which lifted funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.
According to Msgr. Malloy, the order also lifted requirements that NIH “thoroughly explore new avenues for obtaining pluripotent stem cells without destroying human embryos.”
“Both science and ethics have been ignored in this decision,” he charged.
“Avenues of stem cell research which pose no moral problem are now showing great promise. In fact, human patients suffering from all the conditions cited by President Obama when he signed his executive order – cancer, juvenile diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injury, heart disease – have been shown in peer-reviewed studies to benefit from clinical trials using human stem cells,” he continued.
“And in every case, the benefit has come not from embryonic stem cells, but from the adult and cord blood stem cells that this organization and others have said should receive priority attention.”
Msgr. Malloy said the guidelines do not seek to fund research in which embryos are created for the purpose of research, but he said they were “broader or more permissive” than any previous research policy in key respects.
“As the President noted,” he said, “we must not make ‘a false choice between sound science and moral values.’ In fact, these sources of guidance both point in the same direction, away from destructive embryonic stem cell research. His executive order and these Guidelines nonetheless insist on a course of action that is both morally objectionable and, increasingly, scientifically obsolete.”
“This is not merely a political or ideological problem, or a problem of religious dogma, but a deeply human problem: We are testing the limits of our obligation to treat all fellow human beings, of every age and condition, with basic respect,” Msgr. Malloy said.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=16089

The Humanae vitae Prophecies

Pope Paul VI has been called a prophet for his intuitions expressed in the 1968 encyclical, Humanae vitae, about what would happen to society if contraception ever became widely used. But a “prophecy” is much more than just a prediction: it is really a view of reality and an assessment of what happens when the right order of things is snubbed. All the Old Testament prophets told the people of Israel, in unambiguous terms, that they had turned their backs on the Lord’s covenant (God’s view of reality) and that the consequences would be dire if they persevered in that apostasy. Succeeding generations of scholars, who saw the fulfillment of the prophets’ words, then scrupulously wrote their prophecies down for posterity—lest anyone forget them!
Brother priests, faithful to the Magisterium, in a certain sense, we are the true prophets of our modern times when we teach God’s view of reality to our world. Or rather, we are the scribes who echo the teachings of our great papal prophets for the benefit of our flocks. Let us make sure our people know what the Prophet, Paul VI, said in Humanae vitae forty years ago so that their marriages, and their souls, will not perish.
The four prophecies of Humanae vitae are clear, but also stubborn, views of reality. They are unequivocally countercultural. Paul VI said that if a society accepted contraception as a way of life (like all economically developed societies have), then several consequences would inevitably result:
First, contraception would lead to “conjugal infidelity and a general lowering of morality.” Well, when you separate babies from the marital act there is nothing binding that act to, well, marriage. Fornication (pre-marital) and adultery (extra-marital) have thus skyrocketed with the massive practice of contraception. And as for morality, “normal” youthful entertainments today are that despicable MTV channel, hooking up, salacious reality TV shows, heavy metal music, wicca and the New Age, drugs and ubiquitous internet porn. In Janet Smith’s famous words: has anyone noticed a “general lowering of morality” lately?
Second, Paul VI said that contraception would lead men to cease respecting women in their totality and would cause them to treat women as “mere instruments of selfish enjoyment” rather than as cherished partners. Clearly, this prophecy has been vindicated many times over by pornography alone, the most lucrative business in the modern world. That entire industry is singularly dedicated to the “selfish enjoyment” of men.
Third, the Holy Father said that massive acceptance of contraception by couples would lead to a massive imposition of contraception by unscrupulous governments. He predicted, in other words, that contraception would pass from a “lifestyle choice” to a weapon of mass destruction, and how dreadfully his prophecy has been vindicated by population control and coercive sterilization programs, fertility reduction quotas and the promotion of abortion literally everywhere in the world.
Finally, he said that contraception would lead man to feel that he can exercise a limitless “domination over his own body and its functions.” This hubris is perfectly expressed in such modern bio-tech horrors as in vitro fertilization, cloning, the creation of hybrid organisms, embryonic stem cell research, and the like.
Should the blame for all these terrible evils of our modern times be laid at the feet of contraception? Well, yes—at least largely so. That’s the truth that we, as priests, must absolutely get clear so that we can hand this on to our people. Contraception’s destruction of the integrity of the marital act—as unitive and procreative—has dire consequences for society and for souls. Contraception is a rejection of God’s view of reality. It is a wedge driven into the most intimate sphere of communion known to man outside of the Holy Mass. It is a degrading poison that withers life and love both in marriage and in society. No wonder everything goes wrong when contraception shows up.
The Prophet has warned us. Now it’s our turn to warn our people. Brothers, their very souls are at stake!
By Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer

Cardinal Rouco warns that 'crime of abortion casts shadow over history'

Madrid, Spain, Apr 21, 2009 / 08:18 pm (CNA).- The Archbishop of Madrid and President of the Bishops’ Conference of Spain, Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, said Monday during the opening of the bishops’ 93rd Plenary Assembly that the “crime of abortion casts a shadow over the history of humanity,” in a reference to a measure the government intends to put forth this summer that would change the country’s law on abortion. The cardinal said the new law “attempts to reduce democracy to an empirical mechanism” through which the approval of laws represents “simply a sort of common denominator of diverse opinions and interests present in society, even when what is in question is the fundamental right to life.” “Without an objective moral foundation,” he continued, “not even democracy can ensure a stable peace, and the more peace is not founded upon the values human dignity and solidarity between all mankind, it is often an illusory peace.” Cardinal Rouco said Spain has been immersed in recent decades “in a process of deterioration of moral awareness with respect to the sacred value of human life.” “Since the 1983 law decriminalizing abortion, the situation has worsened both in practice and in law,” he added. The cardinal noted that the concern over abortion “has always been at the center of the bishops’ interests during recent decades.”
This article can be found at: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=15745

Condoms haven’t stopped AIDS epidemics:

Third World countries that have made condom use their primary AIDS prevention strategy, HIV infection rates have continued to rise or, at best, have not dropped significantly. In 2004, the journal Studies in Family Planning concluded, “No clear examples have emerged yet of a country that has turned back a generalized epidemic primarily by means of condom promotion.” Yet the United Nations, the European Union and its member countries, some U.S. agencies, and international organizations continue to promote condom use as the primary method of combating the spread of HIV and other STDs. Not only do condoms fail regularly even when used consistently and properly, people do not like them. According to the March 2004 “Bulletin of the World Health Organization,” 44% of married couples who start using condoms for birth control stop using them within a year. Despite this, and despite its own admission that the failure rate of condoms for pregnancyprevention is 50% higher than that of the Pill, the bulletin recommended that birth control promoters attempt to convince married couples to switch to condoms from the Pill. The bulletin did not cite the many health problems caused by the Pill, including increased risk of STDs, as reasons for switching, but HIV prevention.

On the Road: Mundelein

On my trip to Chicago I was able to stop by and speak to the men at Mundelein Seminary. It was during lunch, so it was open to whomever was able to come. Although most of the men had to run off to class after the meeting, a few were able to stay and chat.

They had some very good questions ranging from things they could do now to the idea of life issues just being about social justice and nothing more. Certainly the life issues are about social justice, but they also go well beyond the social justice paradigm. If we allow babies to be killed in the womb all the other social justice issues crumble. If the child is dead, what other injustices will she suffer?

A society that will kill an innocent child will never have peace and will never find justice. Life issues concern, well, every aspect of life: morality, economy, mental and physical health, and the health of our culture. Life issues affect every single person in a society, and will surely affect where people will spend all of eternity. It is not just a social justice issue but one of eternal salvation.

Double talk

A short guest commentary from HLI's Tim Ratigan:

Think about this for a moment. Time and time again you hear from Pro-abort people that what they really want is “fewer abortions”. Last year that is all we heard from politicians. And yet these people who claim to want fewer abortions consistently oppose legislation from being passed that will do precisely that. Legislation such as informed consent and mandatory ultrasounds and waiting periods. You will also find that these same people that claim to want fewer abortions will also support laws that will increase tax dollars to abortions and in the end increase the number of abortions, such as tax payer money going to pay for abortions, and blocking parental consent and notification laws. So the question remains, what is their game? Either they want to reduce the number abortions or they are simply using words to get our votes and in actuality they do not want the number to go down.