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CajunRick
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Posted: Tue May 20th, 2008 01:44 am |
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Denver, May 19, 2008 / 04:08 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver is calling on the group Roman Catholics for Obama ‘08 to convince Sen. Barack Obama to become pro-life, instead of overlooking his support for abortion in favor of other issues of concern to Catholics.
Recalling his own political involvement in the Bobby Kennedy’s campaign in 1968, his support for Jimmy Carter’s first presidential bid and then his subsequent re-election campaign, Archbishop Chaput explains how he came to his convictions about politics and abortion.
Archbishop Chaput writes in a column titled, “Thoughts on ‘Roman Catholics for Obama’,” he “eventually got involved with the 1980 Colorado campaign for Carter’s re-election.”
“Carter had one serious strike against him. The U.S. Supreme Court had legalized abortion on demand in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, and Carter the candidate waffled about restricting it. At the time, I knew Carter was wrong in his views about Roe v. Wade and soft toward permissive abortion. But even as a priest, I justified working for him because he wasn't aggressively ‘pro-choice’.”
Chaput acknowledges that Carter “held a bad position on a vital issue, but I believed he was right on so many more of the ‘Catholic’ issues than his opponent seemed to be. The moral calculus looked easy. I thought we could remedy the abortion problem after Carter was safely returned to office.”
Yet, Carter lost his re-election bid, and the archbishop notes that “even with an avowedly pro-life Ronald Reagan as president, the belligerence, dishonesty and inflexibility of the ‘pro-choice’ lobby has stymied almost every effort to protect unborn human life since.”
What changed Chaput’s mind about his earlier decision to support a “pro-choice” candidate was that he began to notice “that very few of the people, including Catholics, who claimed to be ‘personally opposed’ to abortion really did anything about it. Nor did they intend to. For most, their personal opposition was little more than pious hand wringing and a convenient excuse -- exactly as it is today.”
“In fact,” the archbishop says, “I can't name any ‘pro-choice’ Catholic politician who has been active, in a sustained public way, in trying to discourage abortion and to protect unborn human life -- not one.”
Instead, the situation has become one in which, “In the United States in 2008, abortion is an acceptable form of homicide,” Chaput says.
Archbishop Chaput writes that the situation will only change when “Catholics force their political parties and elected officials to act differently.”
At the beginning of 2008, Archbishop Chaput wrote a column which focused on the role of Catholics in the public square. The archbishop’s January 16 column explained how this type of interaction between Catholic voters and the political parties should take place.
Archbishop Chaput wrote:
"So can a Catholic in good conscience vote for a pro-choice candidate? The answer is: I can't, and I won't. But I do know some serious Catholics -- people whom I admire -- who may. I think their reasoning is mistaken, but at least they sincerely struggle with the abortion issue, and it causes them real pain. And most important: They don't keep quiet about it; they don't give up; they keep lobbying their party and their representatives to change their pro-abortion views and protect the unborn. Catholics can vote for pro-choice candidates if they vote for them despite -- not because of -- their pro-choice views."
“But [Catholics who support ‘pro-choice’ candidates] also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it. What is a ‘proportionate’ reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It’s the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life — which we most certainly will. If we’re confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed.”
However, the archbishop points out that Roman Catholics for Obama chose to use only the first paragraph of his explanation as justification for their support of Sen. Barack Obama, an unflinching supporter of abortion.
According to their website, the Obama supporters say that they have faithfully thought and prayed about who they should support and “have arrived at the conclusion that Senator Obama is the candidate whose views are most compatible with the Catholic outlook, and we will vote for him because of that -- and because of his other outstanding qualities -- despite our disagreements with him in specific areas.”
Noting in his column today that this kind of moral calculus sounds like the same reasoning he used 30 years ago, Archbishop Chaput says, “30 years later we still have about a million abortions a year.”
While holding out the possibility that “Roman Catholics for Obama will do a better job at influencing their candidate,” Chaput also highlights the February 2008, ‘100 percent pro-choice voting record both in the U.S. Senate and the Illinois Senate,’ that the senator received from the Planned Parenthood of Chicago.
The archbishop closes by saying, “Changing the views of ‘pro-choice’ candidates takes a lot more than verbal gymnastics, good alibis and pious talk about ‘personal opposition’ to killing unborn children. I’m sure Roman Catholics for Obama know that, and I wish them good luck. They’ll need it.”
The above article is reposted with permission from Catholic News Agency.
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Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
Luquette Lane
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JillD
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| First Name: | Jill | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | heathen, EvFree, Messianic, LC-MS, Catholic 2007 |
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Posted: Tue May 20th, 2008 03:06 am |
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The archbishop was far more equanimous toward that group, Roman Catholics for Obama, than I think I could have been.
I don't understand it at all: Their support for such a rabid supporter of abortion or his rather mild response.
J
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"I praise you, for I am wondrously made. Wonderful are our works! My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret." Ps 139
"Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from violent men." Ps 140
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Steven Barrett
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| Joined: | Tue Nov 14th, 2006 |
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Posted: Tue May 20th, 2008 05:17 am |
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Jill, I hear what you're saying, and also Rick, who deserves thanks for posting the Archbishop's letter. And believe me, it hasn't been an easy thing to go Democratic this year or in years past.
Abp. Chaput and I share some of the same campaign experience since he mentioned his work for former Pres. Carter back in 1980. I worked for Carter's re-election primary campaign headquarters based in Orlando, and later in that same area for the fall campaign. And perhaps I'm also the only person in the forum to admit going out to dinner with no less than Sarah Weddington, Roe's attorney. (I wish that little guy pulling the bag over his head was a smaller icon, among a few other things I'd like to repair from my earlier political years.)
I'm particularly relieved that the Archbishop did not issue a blanket "thou shalt not" edict. Not that I feel it's necessary for myself to have that "wiggle room" for lack of a better term. I only need to look at the record of the Republicans and self-designated "conservative" religious right and compare their record of expensive hot-air for the past thirty years versus the Democrats' efforts to save what they could of the social safety net, which by and large, is a product of Catholic social teachings.
But most people aren't political junkies like myself and when they find a candidate they like, who happens to be a Democrat and unfortunately, pro -choice, with a backing from NARAL to grumble about, and a strong cleric from their diocese or local non-denominational church telling them in no uncertain terms are they to vote for any pro-choice candidate -- chances are more likely that they'll vote Democratic just to prove to themselves they won't be "bossed around."
We Catholics don't like being put in that kind of situation any more than many independent minded Protestants, Jews or Muslims. But I'll say this, at least in comparison to some powerfully charismatic Protestant church leaders of large and politically significant megachurches, our bishops are hardly the overbearing Torquemadas the press likes to make them out to be. Our bishops and priests don't and won't tell their flocks who to or not to vote. All they need to do in their homilies is to poi nt to the Catechism and other documents produced by the Magisterium.
Powerful Protestant ministers, particularly men like John Hagee, Rod Parsley and others like them, or equally powerful preaches in the large African American churches, have no qualms in playing ward bosses on steroids. Rod Parsley kept Bush in office by producing Ohio for him.
Oh, but they say they're prolife. Really? When conservative evangelicals who pair up with fiscal conservatives, thinking and preaching the notion that if only we can totally rely on the nuclear family, elect profamily pols, and get profamily laws put into place, why bother worrying about keeping the safety net up? Besides, if the rapture comes, who'll need such an expense of "taxpayers dollars that'd be going to those young welfarel moms."
I've heard this nonsensical boiler plate mantra so often I can repeat it in my sleep! Strange how what they feel is good for evangelical Protestants ought to be good for everyone else--even those who doesn't share their views on social spending, but just might have to rely on it if for no other reason than to avoid having babies suffer from malnutrition, avoiding eviction, and being able to afford the bare necessities of life in a dignified way. So, I was quite relieved to read Abp. Chaput's very well written letter, particularly these paragraphs:
"So can a Catholic in good conscience vote for a pro-choice candidate? The answer is: I can't, and I won't. But I do know some serious Catholics -- people whom I admire -- who may. I think their reasoning is mistaken, but at least they sincerely struggle with the abortion issue, and it causes them real pain. And most important: They don't keep quiet about it; they don't give up; they keep lobbying their party and their representatives to change their pro-abortion views and protect the unborn. Catholics can vote for pro-choice candidates if they vote for them despite -- not because of -- their pro-choice views."
“But [Catholics who support ‘pro-choice’ candidates] also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it. What is a ‘proportionate’ reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It’s the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life — which we most certainly will. If we’re confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed.”
When I think of the wasteful fleecing and manipulative games played by powerful pols within the so-called "religious right movement" based in Washington and other places it makes me want to retch for years and lives lost. And they were more than lost, they were frittered away and deliberately sacrificed on the altars of political ambition and expedience.
One of the reasons the Rev. Richard Land of the So. Baptist Convention didn't sign on to the Evangelical Manifesto was that it openly placed political power on the same plane as spiritual power, but that's exactly what's happened for the last 30 years and while abortions started dipping for the first time during the Clinton years, divorces remained the same. These aren't just Baptist or evangelical problems -- they hit across the spectrum!
Now, I'm just appealing to any people who find Obama or still Clinton more to their liking but also want to hold their nose thinking of NARAL's money and say in the campaign. (Yes, endorsements come with claws.) Let's stop wringing our hands, wishing things were otherwise and pinning our hopes on that "right supreme court justice that'll ride into DC on a gleaming white horse and smite Roe v. Wade for good. Sarcastic? No doubt, but let's look back and see the bill of goods we've been sold by "insiders" who knew instinctively and intuitively this was never in the the cards, never.
If you want to get rid of abortion you have to treat it like the major life and death issue it is and never forget this imperative. You've got to face facts that you're entering the mother of all trench warfare battles to win back the moral soul of the largest and oldest political party in the world. Abp. Chaput's saying no less than I am about what you have to face in your heart as well as your head. In our hearts we think we're up to the challenge. But that's only so long as we don't have to deal with the reality of the challenge and what it's going to take from within both our hearts and most importantly our souls, to stick with the job and turn the Democratic Party around. The power of the spirit must always supercede the political powers of the day. Wm. Wilberforce proved it when he abolished slavery in the British Empire; Martin Luther King, Jr. proved it when he broke up the Jim Crow empire of segregation and Cesar Chavez proved it when he broke the power of the grape growers in California who consistently oppressed the grape pickers. They didn't rely on prayer power alone: they had political talents, but by recognizing the need to place sp iritual power above material (money) and other practical power (political skills) they'd sooner or later succeed.
We're going to need to relearn how to build new and thoroughly loyal coalitions between Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus if need be. We find a common goal, pray in our own ways till we think we can't pray any longer, then pray some more, but only some, then GET TO WORK. No fancy fundraising scams and schemes. When people see how badly you're working and how badly you want it through your hard efforts, raising funds to keep moving will be the least of your worries.
Just how badly do we really want to kill abortion? Askl yourself again if this troubles you: Dammit all , just how really badly do I want abortion ended and how badly do I want to work at it to see that voters don't have to worry and most importantly, God has worked his glory through our efforts thanks to our prayers so that more good can bring more glory back to Him?
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For anybody interested in reading commentary from a Catholic's socially conservative/fiscally liberal viewpoint, go to my new blog at http://www.politicsramble.com/ .
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JillD
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| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
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Posted: Tue May 20th, 2008 02:35 pm |
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Steven Barrett wrote: If you want to get rid of abortion you have to treat it like the major life and death issue it is and never forget this imperative.
If anyone and everyone who claims to be pro-life would go stand in front of an abortion mill for one hour, no signs, no yelling, don't even pray. Just watch. Watch the moms go in. They all wear the same uniform: sweat pants, invariably. And they look miserable. Watch. Think. Imagine what is going on behind the walls. Picture it.
What are you going to do about it? Steven, you are right. Almost no one in this country responds to what's going on in these death camps, these high altars to Molech, with a properly fervent reaction.
But abortion is out of sight, and for most people, out of mind.
If it were any other way, we could stop abortion tomorrow. If every pro-life person would sit in front of an abortion mill and protect those babies ONE TIME, it would stop tomorrow.
I was fervently, actively involved in the pro-life movement at one time. I've written dozens of letters to the editor, I've been arrested 5 times, I had bumper stickers on my car. I truly believed that once people KNEW what goes on behind those walls, they would be righteously indignant and rise up and put a stop to it. How wrong I was.
"Roman Catholics for Obama." That tells it all. No wonder my efforts are meek, at best, any longer. I have nearly given up hope.
By the way, the Abp. was not telling them for whom to vote. I don't read "McCain" in the article. There are many other choices. I don't expect any white knight Supremes to come from anyone's administration. But neither will I support the black-robed grim reaper in office.
Last edited on Tue May 20th, 2008 02:36 pm by JillD
____________________
"I praise you, for I am wondrously made. Wonderful are our works! My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret." Ps 139
"Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from violent men." Ps 140
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Steven Barrett
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Posted: Tue May 20th, 2008 03:33 pm |
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Thanks Jill, and excellent points. I've been giving thought to what needs doing and perhaps it might come down to seeing a single-focused non-violent, but very, and I mean dedicat edly focused group of people who don't want to be distracted even by the siren temptations of sharing funds and gettig pulled down or aside or even apart by outsiders who'll always start messing around with your orig. stated goals and before you know it, poof. Nice goals, nice dreams all around--gone thanks to the manipulations of organizations that I really are more afraid that abortion or stem cell research will never go away. They've become like the proverbial K-Street lobbyists for the "military industrial complex."
They bellyache about the "inside the beltway" mentality, and while the rest of us, the great unwashed, have trusted them within the highway with our money, time, political savvy and experience, what the heck have they accomplished? Precious little. If we, our nation, ran the Normandy Invasion in much the same fashion and received the relatitve same amount of positive results for all the years spent fighting abortion; our troops would've been COMPLETELY mauled in an hour and we'd all be speaking German, at least east of the Miss. River.
But maybe that's what the prolife movement needs; the kind of professionalism found within the halls of the Pentagon for example, not the politicized think-tanks with their ever unsatiated needs for press coverage to lull and bull the public with. (Believe me, notwithstanding the media reports, our military bureaucracy is a lot more efficient than 99 pct of what you'll find in the private sector. Small wonder retired officers and non-coms are eagerly sought by major private and educational head-hunters.) But, if the prolife movement needs a Patton, and I'm convinced it does to a point, it ought to be balanced by a Bradley. (No Ikes, or MacArthurs--God help us from any of those two. One was a complete lazy dud, Ike; the other was an egotist who belonged in an insane asylum or prison for what he left behind in the Phillippines and Korea.)
Most importantly, whoever cleans house and gets this moribund movement back in business, it has to be one with the spirit-driven force of a William Wilberforce, Dr. King, Cesar Chavez, Dorothy Day, Charles Colson or Mother Teresa. And it's time to clean house of the media hounds, the Robertsons, Parsleys, Dobsons, e/a.
Makes you wonder: how is it that the other side can replace its perennial losers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton with a Barak Obama. Is the prolife movement that bereft of leaders in the wings? I don't agree with Obama on the prolife issue but I do admire his ability to cooly reach out to all sides and not get so touchy and blindsided by a selfish streak in his ego. I'll hand it to the guy, he's not where he is because he's just a new and exciting face.
What's stopping the prolifers from finding somebody equally as competent yet driven and unafraid of taking on a long gruueling, perhaps lifetime, comi ttment in much the same maner Wilberforce did with ending slavery?
Don't fret Jill, this battle's not over by a long shot. As Churchill said, we've only hit the end of the beginning. And, we will win because we'll eventually find the right people and leaders to help us win because they're more concerned with results than getting one's nest feathered or ego scratched.
It looks rough now, but remember the personal example FDR set during the darkest days of the Great Depression, and his 100-days honeymoon wore off. And even though he had established his comeback from polio by giving the "Happy Warrior" speech on behalf of Al Smith in 28, it was FDR who was the nation's "Happy Warrior" who, in tandem with using the song, "Happy Days are Here Again" lifted and managed to keep an entire nation's spirits lifted even when things looked as if all would be reversed. If we could just replace the word "fear" with "defeatism" in Roosevelt's first inaugural to get the public supporting us to understand what the real picture for the prolife movement is lately, that might be a start.
Our selfish generation really dropped the ball regarding abortion, divorce, expediency in medical research. We fell far short of the stellar examples of moral, and civic sacrifices bequeathed to us by our parents and grandparents greater generations. We have a debt to repay, and I believe we can repay it; if only we're patient, cool and super focused far beyond anything we've expected from ourselves before. It's the only way. Only.
We have to study the enemy's methods from top to bottom, left to right. If that means memorizing Jesus (of course) Saul Alinsky or Sun Tzu, we'll have to do it.
Well, I've got other work to do lest people think I've lost my focus. And, oh do i need some more coffee!
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For anybody interested in reading commentary from a Catholic's socially conservative/fiscally liberal viewpoint, go to my new blog at http://www.politicsramble.com/ .
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Ali
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Posted: Tue May 20th, 2008 03:58 pm |
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JillD wrote: Steven Barrett wrote: If you want to get rid of abortion you have to treat it like the major life and death issue it is and never forget this imperative.
If anyone and everyone who claims to be pro-life would go stand in front of an abortion mill for one hour, no signs, no yelling, don't even pray. Just watch. Watch the moms go in. They all wear the same uniform: sweat pants, invariably. And they look miserable. Watch. Think. Imagine what is going on behind the walls. Picture it.
What are you going to do about it? Steven, you are right. Almost no one in this country responds to what's going on in these death camps, these high altars to Molech, with a properly fervent reaction.
But abortion is out of sight, and for most people, out of mind.
If it were any other way, we could stop abortion tomorrow. If every pro-life person would sit in front of an abortion mill and protect those babies ONE TIME, it would stop tomorrow.
I was fervently, actively involved in the pro-life movement at one time. I've written dozens of letters to the editor, I've been arrested 5 times, I had bumper stickers on my car. I truly believed that once people KNEW what goes on behind those walls, they would be righteously indignant and rise up and put a stop to it. How wrong I was.
"Roman Catholics for Obama." That tells it all. No wonder my efforts are meek, at best, any longer. I have nearly given up hope.
By the way, the Abp. was not telling them for whom to vote. I don't read "McCain" in the article. There are many other choices. I don't expect any white knight Supremes to come from anyone's administration. But neither will I support the black-robed grim reaper in office.
I say this in every abortion thread -- We need to address the issues that make abortion such an easy choice. The root of this evil is not the abortion, it is an off shoot of a greater evil in our society. We need to love those mom's and offer our support to them. Not just during the fun newborn stage with all it's cute little pinks and blues, but during the hard sleepless nights of teething clear through teenagerhood.
Yes stopping abortion is a wonderful goal. But you will not be able to stop it until you stop the pervasive treatment of women and young girls. Our society needs to change. A supreme court ruling, IMO, won't lessen abortions. No, I'm not gonna argue a safe abortion is better than a coat hanger {shudder} But I am smart enough to know herbal abortifacients are available, and safer abortions will always be there for those with a means to obtain them.
What can we do to stop the steps that lead to scared young girls, families, moms who feel hopelessly overwhelmed, and governments to quit choosing an easy out? That is what I want to see addressed.
Ali
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Steven Barrett
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Posted: Tue May 20th, 2008 05:27 pm |
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Excellent points! There has to be a lot of "mind c hanging" on this before we'll really succeed. What galls me is this "fiscal conservatism/social liberalism" streak I see in so many affluent and up and coming young people, or (should I betray me fifty-ish age and add newly created middle-agers) who just want more money in their wallets than pay any attention to the larger picture.
Hate to put it this way, and it seems so crass, but we may have to resort to appealing to many peoples' greedy side by reminding them that there'll be fewer people paying into their social security when they get older, or if prolife legislation isn't passed in time to prevent euthanasia, they could one day get a visit from the nursing home staff ... and well, it'll be their last visit if their "kids" all of a sudden get nervous about losing more money out of the family inheritance piggy bank.
Sometimes I get that feeling to start singing out like the late Marvin Gaye, "What's goin' on"
Abortion, that's only a part of the "social solutions" our green-shade opponents have in mind. But when we have to start preparing briefs and answers to a generation that's been brainwashed into thinking the bottom line is all that counts in the end and we have to be "accountable" for the time and space we're taking up--especially if our judges are so gung-ho on making sure every last gasp of availabe oxygen is accounted for and readily available--that's when I'll be on the first train to NYC to get my visa from the Vatican embassy to the UN. I know my kids won't do that, but how do I know somebody else's kids in places of power won't?
Sounds crazy, but so did the notion of picking up retarded kids in pre-war Nazi Germany and sending them to what appeared to be schools or hospitals, then gassing them in specially built vans and cremating them in the basement boilers.
Crazy but true.
____________________
For anybody interested in reading commentary from a Catholic's socially conservative/fiscally liberal viewpoint, go to my new blog at http://www.politicsramble.com/ .
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Dave Armstrong
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Posted: Tue May 20th, 2008 10:15 pm |
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I have some related papers on my blog, on my Life Issues page:
How on Earth Can Christians Vote for Pro-Abortion Candidates?
Fr. Paul Ward: Catholics May NOT Vote For Pro-Abortion Politicians
Hey Jill,
Were you involved with Operation Rescue? I participated in 25 or so rescues and was arrested five times, too (wound up with one easy night in a country club-type jail that was supposed to be a week), and that experience is a major reason why I am a Catholic, because I met very committed Catholics: one of whom challenged me on contraception. I eventually changed my mind on that as a Protestant and it was the first thing on the road to conversion. Randall Terry, the leader of it, recently converted.
Hi Ali,
I say this in every abortion thread -- We need to address the issues that make abortion such an easy choice.
I think one such factor is clearly contraception: both legally and philosophically / ethically. It was a legal precedent in Griswold V. Connecticut (1965, I think). I remember learning about that during the circus Senate hearings for Robert Bork.
I wrote in my conversion story in Surprised by Truth:
At this time I became seriously troubled by the Protestant (and my own) free and easy acceptance of contraception. I came to believe, in agreement with the Church, that once one regards sexual pleasure as an end in itself, then the so-called "right to abortion" is logically not far away. My Evangelical pro-life friends might easily draw the line, but the less spiritually-minded have not in fact done so, as has been borne out by the sexual revolution in full force since the widespread use of the Pill began around 1960.
Once a couple thinks that they can thwart even God's will in the matter of a possible conception, then the notion of terminating a pregnancy follows by a certain diabolical logic devoid of the spiritual guidance of the Church. In this, as in other areas such as divorce, the Church is ineffably wise and truly progressive. G.K. Chesterton and Ronald Knox, the great apologists, could see the writing on the wall already by the 1930s.
I was utterly shocked by the facts that no Christian body had accepted contraception until the Anglicans in 1930, and the inevitable progression in nations of contraception to abortion, . . .
There is an internal logic to this: if a person thinks that it is okay to prevent a conception that may indeed be God's will at the time, then what is to stop them from thinking that they can "terminate" a pregnancy that they didn't want? The obvious reply is that now a human being is present and it is a new ballgame, so to speak, but as we all know, they will simply deny that this is the case, in the face of all logic and biological fact.
They look at it in terms of rights and "their body" and utilitarian ethics: as if they own another human being (reminiscent of slavery). The Supreme Court permitted it; no one can prevent them, and so they think it is right and good. And the contraceptive, anti-child mentality played a key and crucial role in bringing this outrageous state of affairs about: essentially within the last 50 years (with Kinsey, Playboy, et al playing their role in the 50s, to undermine Christian moral teachings).
Many Christians accepted the whole thing uncritically. I know I did myself. It never occurred to me when we got married, that contraception was wrong. What little I knew about the Catholic objections seemed to me weird and extremist and retrograde.
I've always said, too, that abortion is oftentimes a result of women giving into men's self-serving choices of wanting sex without consequence. They want to please the man and so (many times) they do it, even partially or fully against their own will. That doesn't sound very "feminist" to me: it's exploitation by sex-crazed men (same old same old), so that the woman can be exploited some more sexually. The woman bears all the consequences: medically, emotionally, guilt: sometimes ending up not able to have children at all.
Men lose little except the parental responsibility they would and should have had. In the old days, the men would marry the pregnant woman, to protect her honor and reputation. Now they can split and tell them to go jump in the lake, or else take out the child and continue on as always.
Thus I place primary blame on men for the whole genocidal abortion phenomenon. It was feminism that (ironically) gave into being like men (the very ones they often despise), that led to abortion, but it is definitely male-driven.
The pro-life circles I moved in were always very good at emphasizing that the woman needed a great deal of love and was the second victim. I remember that there was a talk on this very topic from a woman that we later became good friends with (Sally Kresta: wife of talk show host Al Kresta) at the first conference I went to, where I instantly became a committed pro-lifer.
All I saw in my time of overt activism was love and concern, and friends (Al and Sally, again) setting up crisis pregnancy centers, etc. I saw nothing of the stereotype of being anti-woman or unconcerned with their welfare. The pro-life movement is other-directed by nature. People aren't in it for themselves, but for the rights of other human beings (similar to white abolitionists in the 1800s), so it stands to reason that the pro-life activist would be concerned about the woman as well as the potentially aborted child. And they certainly are. I've never seen otherwise. There is a great deal of compassion and love and understanding of the emotional aspects of difficult situations.
Lastly, I always feel duty-bound to report that most birth control pills today are abortifacients themselves. They're not always merely preventing conception.
There is also increasing scientific evidence of a link between oral contraceptives and breast cancer.
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JillD
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Posted: Wed May 21st, 2008 12:56 am |
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Laws do not change bad behavior - - - obviously, but laws reflect the moral nature of a nation. How many times have I heard, "Abortion must be OK since it's legal"??
A law protecting the unborn from surgical abortion is clear and defined. What you are suggesting, Ali, is admirable, but I cannot fathom how government can pass a law protecting women in the ways you have described. Government can pass laws. Only families, churches, and neighborhoods can change society.
I think we're talking apples and oranges here.
____________________
"I praise you, for I am wondrously made. Wonderful are our works! My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret." Ps 139
"Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from violent men." Ps 140
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Steven Barrett
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Posted: Wed May 21st, 2008 01:55 am |
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You still need those laws on the books. Just look at what's happening out in California with the gay marriage thing. Somehow, there was a hole in the law and only needed to convince one justice there was enough room to ram an Abrams tank (with Ah-nold as driver) ramming right through it. Just one justice.
I understand what you're saying Jill and where you're coming from, but both goals of changing a mindset and laws can be accomplished. True, we won't get the laws we want passed without the mindset being changed. But we just can't lose hope either. Take a look sometime when you get a chance at what Wilberforce went through to change the B.Empire's mindset. It didn't happen overnight but when it did, the British were ahead of us, including the Russians, no less, when it came to making slavery illicit in their respective empires. In fact, Wilberforce admitted as such; he and his small group, the Chatam (or was it the Clapham) Group, a small bunch of evangelical Christians worked tirelessly on trying to change Britains morals for years. London then was Tiberias' Rome on the Thames during the Hanoverian era.
Take heart, my friend, take heart. 
Last edited on Wed May 21st, 2008 01:56 am by Steven Barrett
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JillD
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Posted: Wed May 21st, 2008 03:54 am |
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Dave, Yep, it was Operation Rescue. I hear that Randall Terry is now a Catholic?
And, Steven, I know I should not become discouraged. I've read about Wm. Wilberforce and his perseverance. I sometimes wonder, though, if our world's sensitivity to sin isn't at its lowest ebb at this point in history. We seem to be numb to moral issues, unless it's making the most incorrect decisions possible, a la homosexual "marriage" here in the land of fruits and nuts....
____________________
"I praise you, for I am wondrously made. Wonderful are our works! My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret." Ps 139
"Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from violent men." Ps 140
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Ali
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Posted: Wed May 21st, 2008 01:50 pm |
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JillD wrote:
A law protecting the unborn from surgical abortion is clear and defined. What you are suggesting, Ali, is admirable, but I cannot fathom how government can pass a law protecting women in the ways you have described. Government can pass laws. Only families, churches, and neighborhoods can change society.
I am not looking to the government help. We need to do in our every day lives. From the choices in our TV/movie viewing, to the places I shop with my dd for clothes, to how *I* present myself, and how I treat people and my expectations of others. I am trying to make changes from the inside, so to speak. It will takes years, I know, and I may get discouraged several times along the way, but I really believe we can each make a difference. And that all those little differences add up until we can beat back the tide of immorality we have today. {steps off soapbox} 
OMGoodness, lol, do I sound {I don't even know} naive?? hopeful?? idealistic?? Oh, well, make fun of me. But we'll see who's laughing last  
Ali
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Dave Armstrong
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Posted: Wed May 21st, 2008 05:54 pm |
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OMGoodness, lol, do I sound {I don't even know} naive?? hopeful?? idealistic??
You sound like a wonderful Catholic Christian to me! Congratulations!
Oh, well, make fun of me.
Many people will, believe me. Not I. I think you're great!
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Steven Barrett
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Posted: Thu May 22nd, 2008 04:46 am |
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Well, hello to all from the land of nuts and fruits, California's twin state separated from birth, much alike Arnold and Danny DeVito. (There's more similarities in that opening line than I think any of us would care to admit.)
I checked with Wikipedia, and indeed, Terry converted. And while we should pray for him, I also can't help thinking of his immediate family and all it paid for his incessant campaigning in Operation Rescue, Terry Shiavo's miscarriage of justice, etc. Let's say, I hope the man's found more peace.
While it's not hard to admire his core convictions, I have to confess to a longstanding apprehension that in the long run his methods might not have saved as many lives as he claimed to have saved. But I'm willing to admit error here and apologize to you Dave and any others who braved arrest and all that was bound to bring in return.
But I'd rather see a whole a whole mass of "unruly" and "unwashed proles" marching under an Operation Rescue banner to shut down a local 'bortion mill than a travesty of wholly misplaced convictions in a guest column written by a blue-blood here in western Mass. who felt so put out when he saw one of "those" people--our kind--protesting outside the local Planned Parenthood office in Springfield. The column was published in the Springfield Sunday Republican a few months back and demonstrated the whole mental and moral bankruptcy of the old WASP elite at work. (I'm not trying to create a sweeping blanket judgment of the old boy/girl network and all WASPs or their mainstream churchs. It's the upper elite that time after time demonstrated their calloused indifference (read: caste hatred) to the plight of the poor and minorities and foolishly believed poverty could somehow could be eliminated faster even if it meant conducting a genteel genocide of African American and Hispanic unborn children.)
Though I'd like to see an end to the one-sided enforcement of censorship rules against the prolife forces, I can understand a need to maintain some minimal degree of crowd control, only out of respect for the 'bortion mill's closest neighbors, be they residents of a single family home, apartment, or businesses with nothing to do with providing and procuring abortions. But just imagine the kind of misplaced upside croc tear'd nonsense filling the head of that local apologist for the baby killing industry to have written such a sad-sack appeal. Needless to say, most of his replies weren't all that sympathetic. He got his just desserts.
My goals weren't really to get the gov't in the business of establishing the norms of behavior (pleeeeeeeze, no more Mickey Mouse rules for establishing political correctness) but we can and must take the lead when it comes to framing the issues and controlling the debates especially when they involve protecting the weakest among us. But for this to happen, and the eventual subsequent victory that'll result from changed hearts and minds, a thorough house-cleaning is needed from a new prolife movement.
We'll need people who are only interested in establishing a prolife leglative agenda and not get entangled into ideological networks of power-hungry politicos. No more Ralph Reeds. Whoever wants that guy and others like him, well he's all yours. Reed and his kind are takers, and when they get public comments like this from no less than one off American political history's biggest takers, Jack Abramoff, it's time all of us stood up and took notice. (source, Wikipedia.)
"[Reed] is a bad version of us! No more money for him." - Jack Abramoff to Michael Scanlon in an email message dated January 4, 2002, questioning whether Reed had properly accounted for funds spent on Indian gambling projects. (Washington Post, June 22, 2005)
Also from Wikipedia
E-mails show that in August 2002, Abramoff flew Reed, David Safavian, Bob Ney, and Neil Volz, on a private jet for a golfing trip in Scotland. Abramoff used his nonprofit charity, the Capital Athletic Foundation, to pay for the trip. Safavian was convicted for lying about that trip. [24]
Take a look a look at the rest of that page at your leisure, especially what his own mother had to say. (Ouch!) But shed no tears.
It's guys like him and the whole bunch of the leeches in Washington who bled the prolife movement and tied it to partisan politics. It has to be fiercely independent to be successful, and more pure than its opposition, particularly in a city that's seen so many of our so-called "leaders" in past years just use us for their selfish step ladders. Otherwise, it's like that old saying, you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. Only these fleas are as big as cockroaches and they bring other parasites along for the ride as well.
Hope I'm not naive, but if I am, so what? I'd rather be "naive" enough to believe we can pull this off, much as FDR and his New Dealers (who admitted they made things up as they went along, following the lead of their president who learned from his polio-caused limitations that if you flop, you simply try something else, but above all, you never, ever give in. You just keep fighting that good fight as the Happy Warrior. I've come to believe this as much as I can believe in anything. In the end, it's not ideology, but heart and the victory of decent public policy over just outright plain-as-hell evil-at-the-tip-of-our-noses.
Isn't this also the spirit Archbishop Chaput's looking from all of us?
Last edited on Thu May 22nd, 2008 04:48 am by Steven Barrett
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Dave Armstrong
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Posted: Thu May 22nd, 2008 08:06 pm |
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While it's not hard to admire his core convictions, I have to confess to a longstanding apprehension that in the long run his methods might not have saved as many lives as he claimed to have saved.
Isn't even one life saved more than worth it? I'm delighted to have spent merely one night in jail after three trials or pre-trials, so that human beings are alive now who wouldn't have been. That's what Operation Rescue was all about. This particular child was going to be killed, and was not, directly as a result of people sitting out in front of the abortuary, out of biblical obedience, rather than (technically) civil disobedience.
People who think that OR was primarily a movement designed to change people's opinions, are wrong (many people automatically dissed it as an extremist movement, as fully expected). It was a group of Christians who wanted to save the lives of babies and assist women considering abortion. And it succeeded in doing so. Randall Terry and those in OR cannot change people's hearts. There are plenty of pro-lifers out there who are using persuasive techniques to cause people to reconsider the pro-death position. More power to them. May they multiply exponentially. But that is not what OR was primarily about. It wasn't a mere "tactic" or "strategy." It was felt obedience to biblical commands. And it could have easily succeeded in shutting down abortion (and the legal system) if millions had entered into the movement.
Meanwhile, millions upon millions of Christians, including Catholics, continue to vote for child-killers (mostly in the Democratic Party), so that the holocaust continues. Abortion could be over in a month if only Christians would be consistent in this, and not give sanction to evil (we wouldn't even have to disobey human laws; it would all be perfectly legal). If Christians would simply continue having children at the rate we used to, and raised good Christian disciples, legal abortion in America would be over in 20 years at the most. Once the Baby Boomer generation (my own illustrious folks) that brought in most of the rotgut "liberated" sexual practices dies out in 20-30 years, then maybe we can see some real societal progress and revival (as when the generation of the Exodus had to die out before God could make any forward progress with His people).
Stopping legal abortion, though, is an absurdly simple procedure: stop voting for those who allow the evil to continue, and have lots of kids and raise them as pro-life Christians. All we gotta do is be consistent Christians. How unnecessary, then, that the murder continues. What a sad commentary on the state of Christianity in America . . . we either have the scores of Protestant denominations who expressly uphold abortion rights as a matter of policy, or we have those in pro-life denominations and the Catholic Church who vote for those who see nothing wrong with maintaining legal child-killing. God help us.
Last edited on Thu May 22nd, 2008 08:34 pm by Dave Armstrong
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JillD
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Posted: Fri May 23rd, 2008 12:09 am |
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Dave Armstrong wrote: Stopping legal abortion, though, is an absurdly simple procedure: .... have lots of kids and raise them as pro-life Christians.
Long ago, and long before I was a Catholic, back when I wondered if Catholics were Christians, the fact that they acted on their rhetoric far more consistently than my evangelical friends did impress me. And I will never forget the Catholic woman I was chatting with in front of an abortion mill in the Bay Area. She had 8 children while I was pregnant with my first. (Our older daughter was arrested twice in utero.) My jaw dropped on hearing this and she sagely commented, "If you can't beat 'em, outbreed 'em."
AMEN to that!
And thank you for your clear explanation of the purpose of OR. It was not to change anyone's mind; it was to save the lives of the babies that were scheduled to be killed in that place on that day. So it was only a handful. So what? I always think of that starfish story, the girl who threw a starfish back in the ocean that had washed up on the shore along with thousands of others. Her friend asked her why she bothered. With so many dying, what did it matter? She replied, "It mattered to THAT one."
And to the handful of children alive today because we would not let them be killed, our presence MATTERED.
____________________
"I praise you, for I am wondrously made. Wonderful are our works! My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret." Ps 139
"Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from violent men." Ps 140
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Steven Barrett
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