March 8, 2012 | MariaNews.com 

Killing babies no different from abortion, experts say:

The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.

Fr Paul Schenck on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and the Pro-Life Mission

Thursday, December 8, 2011 3:21 PM |  (Catholic Online)

I offer an analogy for the pro-life mission. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary did for the understanding of Christian doctrine what the pro-life movement does for the understanding of human dignity. The Immaculate Conception endows Mary with Redemption, salvation and holiness, her eternal worth, rights and personhood ” from the first moment of… conception.”

HARRISBURG, PA. (Catholic online) – The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains the Feast we celebrate on December 8th in this way:

“To become the mother of the Savior, Mary “was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.” The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as “full of grace”. In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God’s grace.

“Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:

“The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.”

“The “splendor of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son”. The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love”. (Eph. 1:3,4)

“The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the All-Holy” (Panagia), and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature”. By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long.” (CCC #490-493)

What comes to mind as I reflect on this beautiful Feast is a vital analogy I offer to the Pro-Life movement to help in the mission. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary did for the understanding of Christian doctrine what the pro-life movement does for the understanding of human dignity.

The Immaculate Conception endows Mary with Redemption, salvation and holiness, her eternal worth, rights and personhood ” from the first moment of conception.” Let me explain the analogy.

By withholding the recognition of personhood from the unborn child, the Supreme Court in Roe V Wade, made the human child in the womb a worthless blob waiting for value and meaning to be conferred upon her at some later time. That judgment would be made by others, all of whom would be less noble, certainly more sinful than she.

The personhood of the unborn child is the most compelling moral issue of our time. It is so precisely because it defines who is a human being – and who a human being is. We all know that we must treat each and every human being with the ultimate respect and never deem any person “disposable.” Genocide, homicide and murder must never be condoned, because it unjustifiably destroys a human being.

The reason the unborn child is at the very essence of the question of human dignity, human rights and protection is that, if it is unknown who is a human being, then how can human rights be defined and protected? If any human being can be deprived of the right to life, then all human beings can be deprived of life.

It is no longer possible to avoid the question of when a human begins – too much is at stake. We must end the debate and resolve that each and every human being is a person – and that person begins in their first moment of conception.

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception teaches that “the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her Conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.”

The Encyclopedia of the Blessed Virgin Mary lists three Scripture passages that imply the Immaculate Conception: Genesis 3:15, Luke 1:28 and Luke 1:42.

The Genesis passage points to Mary as the Mother of the Redeemer who bears and brings to birth the one who will reverse the curse of Adam and Eve. In this respect, she was the New Eve. The first Eve’s disobedience brought death, the Second Eve’s fiat brought life.

Luke tells us that Mary was full of Grace. For the Church throughout the ages this meant that she possesses every aspect of God’s Grace, all the moral and theological virtues, all the extraordinary gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit.

And Luke says that she was blessed among women. The Church embraces Mary as unique and unrepeatable. Among women she is singular. As daughter, virgin, wife and mother, she is the supreme example of woman and the fulfillment of every woman’s aspirations.

The Immaculate Conception teaches us that everything that Mary would become she already was in the first moment of her conception.” Mary was not less than Mary before her birth. She possessed, albeit in a hidden way, all the Grace and spiritual attributes granted her by the merits of Jesus Christ the Redeemer, from the first moment of her conception.

What does this teach us about ourselves? That we possess our full potential – our full personhood – from the first moment of our conception.

There is no one reading this article today who was not who you are now ever since the very first moment of your conception. Let me try that again: Everyone of you has always been who you are today.

You have grown in knowledge, experience and even faith – but you have never been anyone but yourself, you have never been anyone other than you, you have never, ever been anything less than a unique, unrepeatable, human person.

The Immaculate Conception demonstrates that God created each one of us with a unique purpose and plan for our lives, and that plan began the first moment of our conception.

+ Hail Mary, full of Grace.
—–
Fr. Paul Schenck, a Priest of the Diocese of Harrisburg, PA., is the founding Director of the National Pro-Life Center (NPLC) on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The Center gives the Justices of the Supreme Court, their high level staff, members of the federal judiciary, members of the US Senate and other public policy makers the information, education and inspiration they need to better form their consciences so they will make better decisions. He is a Champion of the Pro-Life movement.

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Wednesday, November 16, 2011 5:11 PM | By Catholic Online 

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) - “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.”

Our house is divided and may not stand much longer.  We’ve been bitterly divided once before, and just as the evil of slavery nearly tore our nation in two, so will the evil of abortion and the desecration of marriage.  We seem poised on the verge of a new Civil War.  (The difference now, of course, is that those who uphold the sanctity of human life will not wage war on fellow citizens. We cannot kill in the name of stopping the killing.)

The modern-day battle is for true marriage and the humanity of the child in the womb.

There’s no way to satisfy the demand of full “equality” for homosexuals in marriage and still protect religious liberty.  Any exception written into same-sex “marriage” laws to protect those people or institutions who define marriage as between a man and a woman will always be rejected by homosexual marriage equivalency groups.

The two views of marriage are irreconcilable; there’s no way to accomplish so-called “equity” in marriage and still allow individuals or institutions the freedom to reject that so-called “equity” based on their faith teachings.  The stage is set for a bitter clash that has no solution.  The writing on the political wall right now clearly says that the Constitutional right of religious freedom will be sacrificed on the altar of homosexual equivalency.

This is the divided state of America.

It is the same with abortion.  It comes down to a stark and unyielding difference:  one side says the unborn are human beings from the moment of conception; the other side says it’s just tissue, just cells, an insentient thing that has no right to anything.  Both cannot be true.  Both cannot be even partially true.  One is entirely true and the other is entirely false.

Science tells us that at the moment of conception, a genetically unique human being is created and exists.  The size of the human being is not the issue, nor is that human being’s independence or awareness or intelligence.  There exists, in point of fact, a human being that did not exist before. With science against them, those who demand abortion now switch their argument to whether or not this human being is a person.  Personhood, under their rules, requires physical separation from the mother, as well as the ability to survive apart from her.  Many go even further and insist that personhood requires a certain degree of intelligence, self-awareness, and function.  By their standards, a newborn, a 2 month-old infant, even a toddler is not a person.

Mostly though, their demand for abortion revolves only around the woman and her “rights” to do whatever she pleases with her body. Do not bother them with the logic that it is not the woman’s body being destroyed in an abortion, nor with the logic that the woman’s actions (her choices) are the reason the baby is now residing in her womb.  They insist that the baby is nothing more than a parasite and no woman is obligated to play host to such an unwanted intruder.

So which is it?  Will we decide once and for all that a newly conceived child in the womb is a meaningless, parasitic clump of tissue or a human being?  We cannot continue to have it both ways.  A choice — a real choice — must be made.  We can dispassionately look at reality and science and acknowledge the truth, or we can continue to write our laws based on sophistry and willfully blind, self-interested, and unjust emotional demands.

No longer can we continue to hide behind euphemistic rhetoric.  We take cover under the deceiving phrase “terminating a pregnancy”.  Childbirth terminates a pregnancy, but it doesn’t kill the child.  A pregnancy does not happen apart from a baby.  We’re terminating babies, not pregnancies.

We spit out the word “fetus” with a pejorative tone and use it as a shield, as though the term magically empties the child of all human value — because that’s exactly what we want the term to do for us that we might more comfortably live with our “choice.”

When we scream for “choice”, we have to summon the guts to admit what choice we’re talking about.  We want the right to kill our babies.  We want the right to kill our babies.  That’s what we’re talking about.  Is that who America is?  Is that who America wants to be? We want the right to take a chemical poison and cause a 9, 10, or 11-week fetus to die and be expelled from the womb as though he or she were nothing more than a large blood clot.  We want the right to suction a baby out of the womb as though we were vacuuming out our cars of junk and stray french fries. We want the right to reach into the womb and dismember a 23-week fetus.  We want that right so badly that we delude ourselves into thinking it’s moral and just and even compassionate.

Which of us would find it compassionate to dismember a 2 month-old infant?  Why is it any different simply because the dismembering is done on a smaller baby who is still in the womb?  Does that make the dismembering kinder?  Does it make the dismembering less grotesque?  Does it make the act itself respectable?  Of course not.

We can’t delicately operate on a 23 week-old fetus in one room and stab the heart and crush the skull of a 23 week-old fetus in the room next door.  We call the first an example of life-saving, miraculous medical advancement and the other a sacred “right” and protected “freedom.”  One child is considered a patient and the other child is not considered anything at all.

How long can we perpetuate this absurd in-congruency?  This intellectual dishonesty is leading us toward national schizophrenia.  We simply cannot insist that to kill one child is moral, right and respectable while to kill another child is abhorrent and criminal.  Either it is moral, right and respectable to kill a child at any age and stage of development or it is abhorrent and criminal and the height of evil.  It must be one or the other.  Either we will protect our defenseless children from harm, or we’ll inflict the harm ourselves and call it our right.

It’s time for honesty.  Those who demand abortion must come clean and say out loud, “We want the right to kill our babies.”  Those who legislate for abortion on demand must come clean and say, “We will make sure it’s legal to kill our babies and pay for it with our taxes.”

Those who want to sit on the fence rather than “tell someone else what to do” must come clean and say, “I’m content to let it be legal to kill our babies.  That’s okay with me.”  The issue is not “reproductive rights” but the humanity of the child in the womb.  The question is not one of “equality” in marriage, but of defending the foundation of the family, and the unchangeable meaning of marriage.

In both cases, the conflict demands a final and morally coherent answer.  Government does not have that answer.  The Catholic Church does.  But we’re not really “one nation under God” anymore, are we?  Soon we may not be one nation anymore either.

—–

Jennifer Hartline is a grateful Catholic, a proud Army wife and homeschooling mother of three children.  She is a contributing writer for Catholic Online.  Visit her online at Wake Up, Deborah! and MCH.

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November 9, 2011 | Personhood USA

(Published at PersonhoodUSA by Jonathan, on 6/10/11)  -

PERSONHOOD PROCLAMATION

January 14, 1988

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

America has given a great gift to the world, a gift that drew upon the accumulated wisdom derived from centuries of experiments in self-government, a gift that has irrevocably changed humanity’s future. Our gift is twofold: the declaration, as a cardinal principle of all just law, of the God-given, unalienable rights possessed by every human being; and the example of our determination to secure those rights and to defend them against every challenge through the generations. Our declaration and defense of our rights have made us and kept us free and have sent a tide of hope and inspiration around the globe.

One of those unalienable rights, as the Declaration of Independence affirms so eloquently, is the right to life. In the 15 years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, however, America’s unborn have been denied their right to life. Among the tragic and unspeakable results in the past decade and a half have been the loss of life of 22 million infants before birth; the pressure and anguish of countless women and girls who are driven to abortion; and a cheapening of our respect for the human person and the sanctity of human life.

We are told that we may not interfere with abortion. We are told that we may not “impose our morality” on those who wish to allow or participate in the taking of the life of infants before birth; yet no one calls it “imposing morality” to prohibit the taking of life after people are born. We are told as well that there exists a “right” to end the lives of unborn children; yet no one can explain how such a right can exist in stark contradiction of each person’s fundamental right to life.

That right to life belongs equally to babies in the womb, babies born handicapped, and the elderly or infirm. That we have killed the unborn for 15 years does not nullify this right, nor could any number of killings ever do so. The unalienable right to life is found not only in the Declaration of Independence but also in the Constitution that every President is sworn to preserve, protect, and defend. Both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.

All medical and scientific evidence increasingly affirms that children before birth share all the basic attributes of human personality — that they in fact are persons. Modern medicine treats unborn children as patients. Yet, as the Supreme Court itself has noted, the decision in Roe v. Wade rested upon an earlier state of medical technology. The law of the land in 1988 should recognize all of the medical evidence.

Our nation cannot continue down the path of abortion, so radically at odds with our history, our heritage, and our concepts of justice. This sacred legacy, and the well-being and the future of our country, demand that protection of the innocents must be guaranteed and that the personhood of the unborn be declared and defended throughout our land. In legislation introduced at my request in the First Session of the 100th Congress, I have asked the Legislative branch to declare the “humanity of the unborn child and the compelling interest of the several states to protect the life of each person before birth.” This duty to declare on so fundamental a matter falls to the Executive as well. By this Proclamation I hereby do so.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim and declare the unalienable personhood of every American, from the moment of conception until natural death, and I do proclaim, ordain, and declare that I will take care that the Constitution and laws of the United States are faithfully executed for the protection of America’s unborn children. Upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God. I also proclaim Sunday, January 17, 1988, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon the citizens of this blessed land to gather on that day in their homes and places of worship to give thanks for the gift of life they enjoy and to reaffirm their commitment to the dignity of every human being and the sanctity of every human life.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twelfth.

Ronald Reagan

Get involved in the Personhood Movement.  Visit www.PersonhoodUSA.com 

October 28, 2011  | LifeSiteNews.com 

(Jackson) - A constitutional referendum in Mississippi to declare all unborn children persons, which has the potential to permanently impact the national abortion debate, is on its way to become the first successful referendum of its kind in America, according to pro-life leaders.

Proposition 26, which will appear on this year’s November 8 ballot, would declare as persons “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the equivalent thereof.” Although similar measures have failed in other states such as Colorado, leaders supporting the Mississippi measure say that the climate in their state is far more favorable towards personhood.

Read More: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/mississippi-personhood-amendment-has-excellent-chance-of-passing-say-pro-li

(9/12/11 FoxNews.com)

Fresh off a win at the Mississippi Supreme Court, backers of a so-called “Personhood Amendment” are looking forward to making their case to voters.

On Nov. 8, voters across the state will decide whether or not to amend the Mississippi constitution so that in the words of the proposed amendment, “The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization.”

A number of pro-choice groups, including the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, sued to keep the initiative off the November ballot. In ruling to allow it, the Mississippi Supreme Court held, “Just as this Court cannot prohibit legislators from offering proposals in the House or Senate, this Court cannot impede voters from submitting proposals through the voter initiative process.” The Court did not address the content of the ballot initiative.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/12/supporters-personhood-amendment-make-case-to-mississippi-voters/#ixzz1Xqd3XHOv