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News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
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Along with the news of Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s death on Friday, also released last week was a related story from Gallup, which reports that doctor-assisted suicide is the single most controversial issue in the U.S. today. (Not surprisingly, abortion is in the #2 spot.)
Since Kevorkian’s death, pro-choice writers like Slate’s William Saletan have been making comparisons between assisted suicide and abortion. And to be sure, there are some gobsmackingly obvious similarities between the two.
But as far as legality is concerned, it’s interesting to see those on the pro-choice side of the abortion debate make the comparison between abortion and assisted suicide, current U.S. law treats these two issues very differently. [Continue reading ...]
March 23, 2005—The League holds a protest at Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago over the court-ordered death by dehydration of Terri Schiavo, a disabled woman in Florida—one of many similar protests held throughout the country. Hundreds of leaflets denouncing Terri’s killing and the lies being spread about her condition are passed out. Terri’s feeding tube was removed on March 18, and she would die on March 31.
Cardinal Joseph Bernardin celebrates the burial Mass for thousands of aborted unborn babies in 1988.
On March 9, Illinois Governor Patrick Quinn signed legislation ending the use of the death penalty in the State of Illinois. Quinn cited statements by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, as well as his reading of the Bible, as “very helpful in reflecting on this issue.”
Quinn drew his inspiration for his position on the death penalty from Fr. Alphonse Spilly’s biography of Bernardin, The Gift of Peace, which focuses on the cardinal’s struggle with a false accusation and with cancer.
Although The Gift of Peace does not address the issue of the death penalty, it is a fact that Cardinal Bernardin spoke of the death penalty as an attack on the value of human life as part of his theory of the consistent ethic of life. He stated, speaking as the director of the U. S. Catholic Bishops’ Pro-Life Secretariat, “We have also opposed the death penalty because we do not think its use cultivates an attitude of respect for life in society.” [Continue reading ...]
Danielle and Robb Deaver tell their story to the Des Moines Register.
I don’t want to minimize the pain of Danielle and Robb Deaver at the loss of their baby Elizabeth.
But I do want to direct people to this story simply because I cannot wrap my head around the logic being used by the Deavers (and others) who are upset that they weren’t allowed to murder their 22-week old unborn baby.
According to her testimony in an online video, Danielle Deaver’s water broke when her baby was 22-weeks old in utero. She explains that her doctor stated the baby would not continue to develop properly inside the womb because she wouldn’t have enough room to grow. (They seem to be describing a condition known as Oligohydramnios, low amniotic fluid, or Anhydramnios, no fluid. A doctor describes those situations here.)
The doctor gave them a less than 2% chance that her baby could survive and have “any quality of life” (2:16), and “we just couldn’t do that” to the baby or to themselves. They asked the doctor to help them “put an end to this nightmare” and the doctor said he couldn’t, blaming the Nebraska law. He told them there was “nothing” he could do to help them. [Continue reading ...]
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is taking a survey. Do you think a quadriplegic who suffers from depression should be able to order the removal of the tube that helps him breathe, and therefore keeps him alive?
The story gives us a glimpse into Dan’s life:
Every day, Crews lies in bed for hours, staring at posters of cheerleaders, watching sports he will never play. When he wants to make a call or use the computer, he asks his nurses to bring him the telephone, which he pecks at with a stick he holds in his mouth. When he’s thirsty, he calls for a nurse, or for his mom, Cheryl Crews, who lives with him. They bring a drink and hold the straw up to his mouth for him as he sips.
As the election draws nearer, we need to continue to remind our friends and family that abortion must remain at the forefront of their minds. Abortion has a terrible impact on society and on individuals that cannot be ignored.
Nat Hentoff writes of his conversion to the prolife movement, which occurred while he was reporting on the “Babies Doe” cases (in which the parents of newborn babies with spina bifida and Down’s Syndrome were seeking the right to kill their children by starvation and dehydration) when he heard this procedure referred to as a “late abortion.” He began to see the connection between caring for the born and caring for the unborn. He says,
for the first time, I began to pay attention to the “slippery slope” warnings of pro-lifers… Because abortion had become legal and easily available, that argument ran—as you well know—infanticide would eventually become openly permissible, to be followed by euthanasia for infirm, expensive senior citizens. And then… I saw…Australian bio-ethicist Peter Singer assert that the slope was not slippery at all, but rather a logical throughway once you got to it.
I am very bothered when people make the argument that people are the problem with the world. Their argument is basically, “If there were no people on the planet, there would be no people to destroy the planet.”
When I was on the debate team in college, this argument would end with “So we should kill everyone on the planet to prevent its destruction and then the aliens can have it and do something better with it.”
I kid you not. (I even lost to this argument once because I couldn’t prove aliens don’t exist.)
In pro-abortion circles the end of the argument is usually “So women should have more abortions/abortion needs to be widely available, then we’ll have fewer people and won’t destroy the planet.” (Think of the Discovery Channel protester who wanted the channel to “stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants.”)
On Sunday evening my husband Joe and I attended the First Annual Life and Hope Concert benefiting the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation. The country music concert at the Murat Theatre in Indianapolis featured Collin Raye and Randy Travis. It was truly an upbeat celebration of life and many of the musical selections spoke to the value of life, especially in several of the songs performed by Collin Raye.
Prior to the concert, John Condit, one of the coordinators of the event, revealed to a few pro-life leaders gathered at a pre-concert reception, that Collin Raye’s granddaughter, who had suffered her whole life with a severe neurological disorder, had died at age 9 on Holy Saturday.
Because the whole issue of cognitive disorder is so close to Raye’s heart he chose to go ahead with the Life and Hope Concert in spite of the fact that he had just attended his granddaughter’s funeral on Wednesday. He mentioned the importance of the cause several times in the course of his performance.
On Saturday I attended the annual Respect Life Conference for Parish Committees, hosted by the Respect Life Office of the Archdiocese of Chicago (and co-sponsored by Couples for Christ Foundation for Family and Life).
The theme was Pope Benedict’s Encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth).
It was an excellent conference covering a variety of topics, including: Leadership, Resources the Respect Life Office offers, and Assisted Suicide. [Continue reading ...]
The death (murder) of Terri Schiavo still lingers in my mind as an act of horrible violence perpetrated by one human being against another; perhaps the memory of the pain she endured still strikes you as senseless, too. For Terri’s family, the fifth anniversary of her death could be a time of depression and despair.
But instead, those who loved Terri are planning the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Concert to celebrate the life she lived and the lives she touched.
The concert will be in Indianapolis at the Murat Theater on April 11, 2010 at 7pm. The featured artist will be Randy Travis! You can buy your ticket here. Randy Travis is an excellent entertainer and it will be such a blessing to know the crowd is filled with wonderful pro-lifers! I hope if you’re in the Midwest you will come support the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation.