Of the many incongruities arising from last week’s savaging of the Susan G. Komen Foundation by Planned Parenthood and its minions, the greatest single seeming incongruity is the disproportionate attack on Komen in light of the paltry sum of money involved.

Planned Parenthood is a $1 Billion per year organization who stood to lose $600,000 in Komen grant money. Organizations routinely loose that much money, and more when grants are not renewed, and they are organizations for whom $600,000 is the difference between life and death for the organization.

For Planned Parenthood, the loss of Komen funding represented 6/10 of 1/1000 of their budget. So what’s going on here?

It wasn’t the money at issue, it’s what Komen’s support means for the organization. Planned Parenthood makes their money performing abortions, mostly on young people. Former Planned Parenthood clinic director, Abby Johnson, tells of how the corporate model at PP was built around abortions.

The charade of concern for women’s breast health is the only socially acceptable vestige left for the organization’s bruised and tatttered reputation. Planned Parenthood performed manual breast exams and referred women to mammogram centers. In some instances, it appears that they paid for the mammograms.

However, Planned Parenthood lied about performing mammograms, and Lila Rose caught them in that lie.

Subsequently, Komen decided that their money would be better spent on paying directly for mammograms, and that’s when all hell broke loose.

Planned Parenthood has an odd way of demonstrating its concern for women’s breast health. They target teenagers with low-dose birth control pills which will fail in their contraceptive effect if not taken precisely on schedule, setting up a lucrative abortion. What the oral contraceptives will not fail in doing is increasing the risk of the deadliest and most aggressive form of breast cancer, triple negative breast cancer.

How much risk?

According to Dr. Louise Brinton of the National Cancer Institute in a 2009 paper, women whose age of first use is below 18 years old have a 540% increased risk. Is that statistic in any of Planned Parenthood’s literature?

The link between oral contraceptives and breast cancer has been known for decades, yet Planned Parenthood dispenses these dangerous drugs to children with reckless abandon.

PP are the lepers of the medical community. They have been caught:

Lying about performing mammograms.

Repeatedly showing willingness to violate mandatory reporting laws for statutory rape.

Violating informed consent by giving women medically inaccurate and fabricated information to coerce them into having an abortion.

Enthusiastically accepting money earmarked for aborting Black babies.

This is an organization that makes no distinction between a ten year-old and a twenty-four year-old regarding sex, contraception, and education. In their own words from page 10 of their booklet, Stand and Deliver:

The World Health Organization defines young people as those from 10 to 24 years of age, including adolescents (10–19 years) and youth (15–24 years). IPPF uses the terms young people, youth and adolescents interchangeably to refer to people who are between 10 and 24 years.

This is an organization that tells children in their booklet, Healthy, Happy, and Hot, that disclosure of their HIV status to a sex partner is not mandatory and just another ‘choice’:

You have the right to decide if, when, and how to disclose your HIV status.

There are many reasons that people do not share their HIV status. They may not want people to know they are living with HIV because of stigma and discrimination within their community. They may worry that people will find out something else they have kept secret, like they are using injecting drugs, having sex outside of a marriage or having sex with people of the same gender. People in long-term relationships who find out they are living with HIV sometimes fear that their partner will react violently or end the relationship.

Were all of that not enough, Planned Parenthood has outdone themselves in their latest document, Exclaim!, calling for the abolition of parental consent laws and calling for the sexual rights of ALL persons under the age of 18.

This is the face of a social parasite, of the destroyer of children, of the enormous parasitic organism who preys upon our sons and daughters. All they have left is women’s breast health as the last vestige of credibility, and without Komen, they are sunk.

It wasn’t the 6/10 of 1/1000 of their annual budget that was the threat, it was the loss of the borrowed credibility from Komen that threatened them.

As symbiotic relationships go, this one between PP and Komen is a textbook definition of parasitism. Not only does Komen not need the relationship with PP, but the association is an occasion for PP to engage in a blood meal, feeding off of Komen’s enormous reserves of credibility and good will in the community.

Brinker needs to point out the ugly reality of PP and cut the ties. It would also help if she gave the link between abortion and breast cancer, and the link between the pill and breast cancer their proper recognition.

As the head of the world’s premeir breast cancer foundation, she has an obligation to report the whole truth. If she doesn’t, she isn’t acting in women’s best interests. Unlike PP and the abortion industry, Brinker should tell women the whole truth, and then trust them to make their choices.

Choices that are fully informed.

Planned Parenthood doesn’t trust women, or children. That’s why they savaged Brinker for attempting to withdraw the protective cover of Komen’s good name.

The first paper I ever wrote in graduate school was a review of the literature on Leprosy. It is a disease transmitted by contact that we now know to be caused by a close first cousin of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, and can be cured using the same antibiotics that we use against TB. This miracle of 20th Century medicine has emptied the leper colonies, arresting and eliminating the disease in its earliest stages before it maims and disfigures its victims.

Sunlight seems to be having the same salutary effect on the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and they have elected to leave the leper colony, as Planned Parenthood languishes with the increasing ravages of their disfigurement, unwilling to take the medicine that would end the insideous effects of their disease. It’s actually too late for Planned Parenthood, but for Komen, there is yet hope.

The sunlight began to pierce the darkness back in 2007, when Dorinda Bordlee, Vice President and Senior Counsel of the Bioethics Defense Fund met Eve Sanchez Silver who told her about her about the Komen-Planned Parenthood funding link. Silver, a breast cancer survivor and charter member of Komen’s Hispanic/Latina Advisory Council, resigned from Komen, stating,

As a Christian and life affirming citizen I can not reconcile the Foundation’s decision to affirm life with one hand and support its destruction with the other.

Bordlee began to research Komen’s grant database to confirm Silver’s claims. The most recent data available to her back then were the 2005 numbers which showed over $700,000 in grants made by certain Komen state affiliates to their local Planned Parenthood clinics. Subsequent grant totals can be read here at BDF’s site. BDF’s initial findings were picked up and pursued by a great many who then launched their own investigations.

It was discovered that Komen Founder, Nancy Brinker (Susan Komen’s sister), sat on the board of Planned Parenthood in North Texas. Jill Stanek wrote two great articles about the links between Komen and PP.

At the heart of the matter lies three essential issues regarding the deplorable decision by Komen to fund PP:

1. The causal link between breast cancer and abortion (ABC link).
2. The causal link between breast cancer and oral contraceptives.
3. The fact that Planned Parenthood does NOT do mammograms.

Yes the ABC link is hotly disputed, and only because radical proabort researchers have lied through their teeth about the literature. I’ve written 56 articles dealing with this link, which can be read here. Placing that contentious issue to the side, along with PP’s complicity in placing women at risk for breast cancer through their abortion services, we need to look at the role of PP in dispensing oral contraceptives, which have been well established causes of breast cancer.

In 2009, the same Dr. Louise Brinton who is Branch Chief in Epidemiology at the National Cancer Institute, and who chaired the sham 2003 workshop denying the ABC link, coauthored a 2009 paper in which she listed abortion and oral contraceptives under known or suspected risk factors for breast cancer. The reference for the paper follows at the end of the article.

In their paper, the authors list in Table 4. Multivariate adjusted case-control odds ratios for all breast cancer cases, triple-negative
and non-triple-negative cases, in relation to oral contraceptive risk factors, stratified by age at diagnosis under age 40 and
41-45 y, the following devastating information.

The risks for acquiring the deadliest, most aggressive and difficult to treat form of breast cancer, Triple Negative Breast Cancer based on age of first use of oral contraceptives is:

Age 22+: 250%
Age 18-22: 270%
Age Under 18: 540%

These numbers, from some of the finest minds in science, beg the question:

What would possess an organization such as Komen to ever fund an organization that dispenses birth control pills like candy? Could it be the claim that PP does life-saving breast screenings?

Certainly, Senator Barbara Boxer has been quite vocal about PP’s “mammograms”, as reported here.

In truth, PP does NOT perform mammograms. When one hears the term, “breast screening” or “breast cancer screening”, one tends to envision a mammogram. Instead, PP’s screening is a palpation of the breast, checking for detectable lumps. So, yes, if a lump is detected, and if the lump is cancerous, that could be lifesaving. But if no lump is detected? Is the woman given a referral for a mammogram?

It is the mammogram that is essential.

A woman’s best chances at beating her cancer are when the cancer is found through mammography before it is large enough to be palpated, or found through mammography in women whose breast density make it difficult to detect by palpation. By funding PP, Komen funded the abortions that lead to increased risk of breast cancer, the distribution of oral contraceptives which are well known to cause breast cancer, and the lie that women were receiving mammograms.

In an era where less than 10% of research grants are receiving federal money, there is no dearth of scientists in desperate need of funding for legitimate research purposes. One can barely walk the corridors of a university without bumping into them, so Komen should have no difficulty at all in finding and funding worthy Ph.D.’s and M.D.’s who simply cannot access the ever-dwindling supply of federal research dollars.

As far as funding prevention efforts, the neglect of the Dolle and Brinton study, or the many other papers showing oral contraception’s role in breast cancer is tantamount to a crime.

Komen is to be applauded for getting out of the leper colony and breaking its funding ties with one of the largest purveyors of death on the planet. The great work of antisepsis begun by Eve Silver and Dorinda Bordlee that was picked up and furthered by thousands will help Komen more fully achieve Nancy Brinker’s deathbed promise to her sister to do all she could to find a cure. Now that Komen is out of funding causality and lies, they may see a more robust financial future, which we all pray may help speed the end of this scourge which afflicts so many of our wives, mothers, sisters, friends, and other loved ones.

As for Planned Parenthood the mask has been ripped away, in no small measure by Lila Rose and her associates, revealing the true face of the leprosy lurking under the guise of women’s healthcare.

Reference:

Risk Factors for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer in Women
Under the Age of 45 Years

Jessica M. Dolle,1 Janet R. Daling,1 Emily White,1,3 Louise A. Brinton,4 David R. Doody,1
Peggy L. Porter,2 and Kathleen E. Malone1,3
Divisions of 1Public Health Sciences and 2Human Biology, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; 3Department of Epidemiology, University of
Washington, Seattle, Washington; and 4Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, Maryland

Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(4). April 2009

“Trust Women”

That was the admonishment of the deceased late-term abortionist, Dr. George Tiller. It’s also the admonishment of the rest of the pro-choice crowd. Too bad they really don’t mean it.

Trust women.

Pregnancy resource centers are filled with women who are being coerced to abort their babies, who are desperate for someone, anyone to throw them a lifeline. They’re the lucky ones who find the help and hope. The women entering abortion clinics are not so fortunate. I listened to quite a few of them at the Supreme Court steps this past Monday.

Most spoke of coercion from their boyfriends, other friends, family, and abortion clinic staff. Coercion manifests in a host of ways.

Trust women.

Boyfriends threaten an end to the relationship unless the woman aborts. They become petulant and emotionally distant. In the end, they move on anyway.

Trust women.

Parents use shame and guilt, again the threat of loss of love, of standing, of belonging.

Trust women.

Friends will do pretty much the same. Along with boyfriends and family, they will remind the woman of the education and/or career that she stands to lose by having the baby.

Trust women.

Abortion clinic staff will tell the woman that “It’s just a blob of tissue, just a clump of cells,” for babies at 4,6,8,12, 16 weeks of gestation. They lie about the link between abortion and breast cancer. They withhold vital data on the psychological and gynecological post-abortion sequelae.

Trust women.

Ob/Gyn’s and genetic counselors will use the most base coercive pressures on women whose tests show even the possibility of genetic anomaly or defect. They offer up such sagacity as, “Why would you make your child suffer for the rest of its life?”

Trust women.

Gone in such practitioners is any trace of human compassion. Even for the mother who wishes to keep and love her less-than-perfect child, she is pressured to contract for the murder of that child. Whether or not she aborts, the message from such physicians and genetic counselors is clear and unambiguous:

You did this to your child. This is all your fault.

That’s a nice little burden to pile on the backs of parents.

The etiology matters little, if at all, compared to the opportunity for encountering and growing in love and integrity presented by the special needs of the most vulnerable among us.

Medicine is beset by a metastatic malignancy within its ranks. It’s a perverse and ironic timing for that malignancy, as medicine now has the means to heal, or at least attenuate the worst effects of many genetic conditions. Add to that the daily miracles being wrought by Speech, Physical, and Occupational Therapists, as well as Special Education teachers.

All of this begs the question:

Who are the people that authentically trust women?

The answer is simple:

Those who tell women the truth, offer hope and healing, and respect their autonomy.

Trust women.

I wish the other side would.

Late last Spring I became increasingly convinced that a major area not tackled by the pro-life movement in any coordinated fashion is the new eugenics movement in fetal medicine. Specifically, increasing numbers of physicians are advising, demanding, and even coercing women to abort babies diagnosed with what have become known collectively as “Poor Prenatal Diagnoses.” Such conditions as Down Syndrome, Trisomy 18, Trisomy 13, Anencephaly, Spina Bifida, etc… constitute this constellation.

Over the past two years, I have heard dozens of women tell me their personal horror stories, many of whom refusing to abort and then going on to have a perfectly normal child. We hear of countries in Europe who are boasting that they will have eradicated Down Syndrome in a few short years, not by eliminating the ongoing occurrence of trisomy 21, but by a 100% abortion rate as the diagnoses come in.

Why not tell women of all that can be done to help these babies?

I contacted Chris Gacek of the Family Research Council, who put me in touch with Jeanne Monahan, the Director of FRC’s Center for Human Dignity. Together with Jeanne, and with the advice of Peg Kolm of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, and my good friend Leticia Velasquez who co-founded KIDS (Keep Infants with Down Syndrome), a working group formed around the idea of having a full day medical conference for medical professionals and the public alike. What emerged from this group is the Council on Poor Prenatal Diagnoses and Therapeutic Interventions.

And here we are. A wonderful collaborative project with others including the Lejeunne Foundation on therapeutics from the womb and throughout the individual’s life.

The conference on Saturday will be live webcast from FRC Headquarters in Washington, and is free to sign up and watch. Just follow this link to register. (We’re pretty near our limit for in-person attendance)

Conference main speakers will address the tidal wave of therapeutic interventions available for these children. They include:

John Bruchalski, M.D.
Byron Calhoun, M.D.
Alberto Costa, M.D., Ph.D.
Jeanne Monahan, M.A.
Gerard Nadal, Ph.D.
David Prentice, Ph.D.
Laura Toso, M.D.

In addition, we’ll be hearing the witness of Samuel Armas, the little baby who had fetal surgery for Spina Bifida, and whose hand was photographed reaching out from the womb and holding the finger of his surgeon. He’ll be there with his mother, Julie.

We’re also going to have a panel discussion and presentations by people who have founded organizations to support these children and their parents:

Melinda Delahoyde, Care Net
Leticia Velasquez, Kids
Christopher Bell, Good Counsel Homes
Nancy Mayer Whittington, Isaiah’s Promise
Mary Kellett, Prenatal Partners for Life

Kristan Hawkins, Students for Life

Paper Presentations by medical students.

Documentary preview and discussion by In Altum Productions Filmmakers
Jordan Allott and Daniel Allott.

The conference begins at 8:30 A.M. and ends at 5:00 P.M.

The good news is that there is a group of physicians here in New York who have been thinking along the same lines, as well as pro-life medical professionals around the country who have all come up with the same concern and the same resolve to effect a change. It’s the leading of the Holy Spirit, and just in time. Many medical school professors encourage eugenic abortion and don’t teach the therapeutics. This conference will pierce the encroaching shroud of silence and shine the light on all that medicine has to offer its tiniest patients.

So, starting this coming Saturday, The Council on Poor Prenatal Diagnoses and Therapeutic Interventions is kicking off A Year of Hope and Healing, which will see more conferences and coordinated activity in bringing to the fore the many support and advocacy groups, more physicians, scientists, and ethicists.

Please join us this coming Saturday for the live webcast, and spread the good word!

Again, it’s free to attend on-line. Just register at this link.

http://www.frc.org/player.swf

Word today from LifeNews.com that the NAACP is opposed to the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011, which criminalizes abortion on the grounds of race or sex.

Incredible.

With Planned Parenthood operating 78% of their “clinics” in inner-city neighborhoods, and African Americans constituting 12% of the nation but having 37% of the abortions, this is not only racial suicide, but fratricide as well. When the NAACP objects to a bill that would not only outlaw sex-selective abortions, but race-based abortions as well, that’s fratricide. One may only speculate as to why.

Perhaps the NAACP believes that culling the excess of unplanned pregnancies among their daughters is the answer to poverty. That’s genuinely understandable (so long as one sets aside the ten commandments, human instinct, and human decency), and as with most evil and mental confusion, it does have its own internal logic. Vacuuming African American wombs frees girls to pursue their education and vocational advancement.

The problem with the argument is that by any measure, 19 million dead African Americans later, African American neighborhoods are more violent, more economically blighted, more beset by illiteracy, unemployment, incarcerations, drug and alcohol addictions, violent crimes and murder than at any time before. It says something when Juan Williams, a liberal black journalist at NPR, authors a book entitled:

Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About It.

The book is a must-read. The problem for Williams, Bill Cosby, and any other black man or woman who dares to cross the NAACP is that they are accused of being sell-outs to whites. It seems that black folk are the only demographic not entitled to a plurality of opinions, political philosophy, and political affiliations. That’s self-imposed by the NAACP membership. It’s a philosophy and leadership that the subtitle to Williams’ book accurately describes.

The Bill in question will make it illegal to target babies for abortion based on gender or race, and admittedly raises a problem for Planned Parenthood. Under the Bill, abortionists can be imprisoned for not determining if the race or gender of the baby was a determinative factor in aborting.

In practical terms, it’s doubtful that at the individual level this would affect many African American abortions, as the mothers aren’t aborting because of their child’s race. It does, however, have implications at the macro-level when an organization such as Planned Parenthood operates 78% of their centers in inner-city neighborhoods.

That said, why would any civil rights organization (and there are 45 others opposed to this Bill, including the National Council of Jewish Women) object to the Bill’s language or intent? Supposedly, the opposition is to the names of the two great leaders on the Bill, and therein resides a hornets nest of gender and racial politics, of political correctness. So, let’s lance the boil.

The towering abolitionists of history do not belong exclusively to those groups whose oppression they fought, and whose rights they championed. They belong to all human beings of good will, of decency and honor. They belong to all of us precisely because they spoke to the universal human nature and human dignity, both of which were denied in the oppression of women and blacks. We have every right to lay claim to their names and legacies, regardless of our race or gender. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that women and blacks are a class apart from the rest of humanity. It is to suggest that Douglas and Anthony fought for something other than equality.

The truth of the matter is that Douglas and Anthony belong to all of us, including those of us who fight in the modern abolitionist movement. How women and blacks could oppose this Bill is galling. They better than anyone know the sting of a stigmatized history, and the acrid taste of its toxic residue. Females are being targeted for death, and the resultant gender imbalances in countries like China and India are fueling a booming sex slavery industry to satisfy the tens of millions of men with no prospects for marriage. But that doesn’t seem to move the elitist radicals who are also committed to population reduction, seemingly at any cost.

That the NAACP could be moved to outrage by the 3,446 black lynchings since the 1800′s, recorded by the Tuskegee Institute, and be so obtuse to the butchering of almost 20 million blacks since 1973 simply beggars the imagination.

During the Civil War, General McClellan wouldn’t take the Grand Army of the Potomac out to fight. An exasperated President Lincoln, relieving McClellan of command wrote to him:

“My dear McClellan: If you don’t want to use the Army I should like to borrow it for a while.”

The failure to lead, as McClellan learned, is ultimately a self-abdication of the leadership position.

NAACP’s opposition to a common-decency Bill such as this indicates that they have broken ranks with the core principles of the giants for whom it is named. Since they have broken faith with the honor those names have come to personify, we shall carry on the names of Douglas and Anthony, and their legacies of championing equal human rights for all persons.

That starts with the right to live one’s entire life unmolested by predatory members of the species.

One would think that women and blacks would retain some collective memory where that is concerned. If not, the abortion stats for blacks are pointing toward endgame.

The recent overruling of the FDA decision to sell Plan B over the counter (OTC) to children as young as eleven years of age has engendered no small amount of outrage by proponents of the FDA plan, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has come in for severe criticism from women’s health and advocacy groups. Setting aside for a moment the undercurrent of abortion and the distrust between warring parties over the issue, this decision by Secretary Sebelius is a victory for the very children the FDA purports to serve and protect.

According to FDA labeling on Plan B:

“Ectopic pregnancies account for approximately 2% of all reported pregnancies. Up to 10% of pregnancies reported in clinical studies of routine use of progestin-only contraceptives are ectopic.”

That represents a five-fold increase in the incidence of a potentially fatal side effect of the drug’s usage in those taking the drug. The very issue proponents of OTC Plan B sale cite for selling to young adolescents, their fear of parental knowledge and involvement in their sex lives, heightens the risk of fatality in the very young.

Aiding and abetting the young in skirting parental involvement fosters a do-it-yourself gynecology where side-effects such as cramping, nausea, vomiting, and bleeding can serve to reinforce and heighten the fear and distrust that led to the child’s self-medication in the first place. Plan B taken by a child with an existing and untreated endometriosis can lead the child into thinking that the lower abdominal pain and heavy bleeding of a resulting ectopic pregnancy may well be her monthly norm. Such a mistake can be fatal, but what is an already fearful and distrustful child to do? It is entirely unreasonable to expect children, who are notoriously ignorant of their changing physiology, to engage in self-differential diagnosis and admit their clandestine activities to the parents they fear and distrust.

In research conducted by Family Health International (FHI), January, 2003.

“… the sine qua non of an OTC-switch is that patients should be capable of self-medicating by reading the drug’s package insert. The above label comprehension tests for Plan B indicate that safe self-medication is not possible for a significant segment of the population. For example, only 75% of all respondents answered correctly that Plan B should not be taken in the presence of unexplained vaginal bleeding. Among the low-level literacy group that figure declined to 69%. Furthermore, only 67% of all respondents understood that Plan B is designed to serve as a backup for regular contraception methods, not a replacement. Among those of low-literacy this figure dropped to 46%; whereas for women of high literacy the figure was 78%. Obviously, many patients do not understand much of the drug’s package insert, which argues against FDA approval of EC OTC.”

If there are any doubts about the ability of children and teens to self-prescribe such medication and act responsibly, NPR published a story about the work of Harvard’s Dr. Frances Jensen that shows how the child and adolescent brain is underdeveloped in the areas responsible for critical and prudent decision making:

She learned that that it’s not so much what teens are thinking — it’s how.

Jensen says scientists used to think human brain development was pretty complete by age 10. Or as she puts it, that “a teenage brain is just an adult brain with fewer miles on it.”

But it’s not. To begin with, she says, a crucial part of the brain — the frontal lobes — are not fully connected. Really.

“It’s the part of the brain that says: ‘Is this a good idea? What is the consequence of this action?’ ” Jensen says. “It’s not that they don’t have a frontal lobe. And they can use it. But they’re going to access it more slowly.”

Do-it-yourself gynecology is bad medicine for the young, and our daughters deserve better than such callous disregard for their lack of knowledge of their bodies, lack of impulse control, and lack of sufficient neurological development to enable them to make reasonable and informed decisions. For those who lack trust in the experience and wisdom of the adults who know them best, it is all the more imperative that we ensure they don’t fall victim to pharmaceutical merchants and their allies who would exploit the callowness of their youth.

For the women’s groups howling with rage at Sebelius, I remember a time when feminism demanded medicine’s best for women, not do-it-yourself gynecology for our teenage and pre-teen daughters.

This evening, I received the following communication from Newt Gingrich’s communications director, which I believe clears the air and provides Mr. Gingrich with a way forward:

Hi Gerard,

Joe DeSantis
Communications Director
Newt 2012

Last week, presidential candidate Newt Gingrich made the following statement in an interview with Jake Tapper:

“I think that if you take a position when a woman has fertilized egg and that’s been successfully implanted that now you’re dealing with life,” he added. “Because otherwise you’re going to open up an extraordinary range of very difficult questions.”

Which prompted this reply from me: Click Here.

The next day, I received the following reply from the Gingrich Campaign. The reply is presented in its entirety, with my analysis following.
.
.
.
Dr. Nadal,

Newt has stated many times throughout the course of his public life that he believes that human life begins at conception. Here is a statement Newt released today reaffirming that belief: http://bitly.com/tr7cP6 . (Full text pasted below)

In terms of new pro-life legislation, Newt said at The Family Leader Thanksgiving Family Forum on November 19 that he supports Congress enacting pro-life legislation under the 14th Amendment, including legislation that would define personhood as beginning at conception. Watch the video here: http://bitly.com/svuZAc .

During his 20 years in Congress, Newt held a consistently pro-life voting record. He received a 98.6% lifetime rating from the National Right to Life Committee, consistently voted for the Hyde amendment, and twice during his speakership passed legislation banning partial birth abortion. More details on his consistent pro-life voting record here: http://bitly.com/vzQkD4 .

For more info about the pro-life positions Newt will advocate as president, here is the Susan B. Anthony List’s 2012 Pro-life Presidential Leadership Pledge he signed in June: http://bitly.com/rAXj0E . And here is the candidate questionnaire Newt submitted to the National Right to Life Committee last month: http://bitly.com/u73oBP .

Thanks,
Dan

Gingrich Reaffirms His Belief in the Sanctity of all Human Life, Born and Unborn

“My convictions on human life are longstanding, deeply felt, and irrevocable matters of conscience. I will do all in my power – always – to foster reverence for life.”

All of this is very reassuring, on one level.

That said, I cannot fathom how Mr. Gingrich could have uttered the words he did with Tapper, unless he has bought into the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s politically corrected definition of conception beginning at implantation. That is the only way that we can square Gingrich’s comment to Tapper with his reply to the criticism of those comments.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have always been a big admirer of Mr. Gingrich, and fully support his candidacy. However, I have a very basic question for him to put this issue to bed:

Do you accept the definition of conception as the fertilization of egg and sperm, with the resultant single-celled embryo being a new human being, or do you equate conception with implantation?

UPDATE 12/5/11: The Gingrich Campaign responded. I’m not entirely sold on the response. Check it out.

That title isn’t a mistake. It’s the question that Newt Gingrich’s comments to Jake Tapper have brought into sharp relief.

When the Speaker said that we have life at implantation, he stepped on a land mine. I’m awaiting his clarification on his understanding of conception and life.

He has often said that life begins at conception. So do pro-choicers, as they are operating under the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s redefinition (four decades ago) of conception and pregnancy happening at implantation.

Thus, a pro-choicer could say with a straight face that life begins at conception, and with just as straight a face claim that Ella is not an abortifacient, because it prevents implantation. In this presidential season, we must make these two competing operational definitions of conception and pregnancy known, and we must call the other side out at every turn to clarify what they mean by conception and life.

It matters.

We await Mr. Gingrich’s clarification of his understanding of these terms, and the meaning of his comments to Jake Tapper.

We continue our study today of a little-known and little-studied 1974 document from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith entitled:

Declaration on Procured Abortion

Read Part I here.

Read Part II here.

Today we turn our attention to the prophetic voice of the document, with commentary to follow:

17. Scientific progress is opening to technology – and will open still more – the possibility of delicate interventions, the consequences of which can be very serious, for good as well as for evil. These are achievements of the human spirit which in themselves are admirable. But technology can never be independent of the criterion of morality, since technology exists for man and must respect his finality. Just as there is no right to use nuclear energy for every possible purpose, so there is no right to manipulate human life in every possible direction. Technology must be at the service of man, so as better to ensure the functioning of his normal abilities, to prevent or to cure his illnesses, and to contribute to his better human development. It is true that the evolution of technology makes early abortion more and more easy, but the moral evaluation is in no way modified because of this.

26. But this does not mean that one can remain indifferent to these sorrows and miseries. Every man and woman with feeling, and certainly every Christian, must be ready to do what he can to remedy them. This is the law of charity, of which the first preoccupation must always be the establishment of justice. One can never approve of abortion; but it is above all necessary to combat its causes. This includes political action, which will be in particular the task of the law. But it is necessary at the same time to influence morality and to do everything possible to help families, mothers and children. Considerable progress in the service of life has been accomplished by medicine. One can hope that such progress will continue, in accordance with the vocation of doctors, which is not to suppress life but to care for it and favor it as much as possible. It is equally desirable that, in suitable institutions, or, in their absence, in the outpouring of Christian generosity and charity every form of assistance should be developed.

A few thoughts…

Paragraph 17 especially hits home with the scientific and medical communities. We simply do not have the right to manipulate life in every direction simply because we have the means to do so. This factors into IVF and Embryonic Stem Cell experimentation, as well as developing prenatal diagnostic technologies whose sole purpose is eugenic in nature.

In 1983, the life expectancy of an individual with Down syndrome was 25 years. Today it is 60 years. It’s not a miracle, we just decided to treat them as we would any other human being. That leads to a consideration of one of the proabort’s greatest slurs:

We only care for the baby after it is born.

The paragraphs selected here highlight the great lie in that slur. In the document, the Church invokes the Law of Charity:

“But it is necessary at the same time to influence morality and to do everything possible to help families, mothers and children.”

“One can never approve of abortion; but it is above all necessary to combat its causes.”

Every human being is called upon in this document to do all that we can to assist families with those burdens that drive women to seek abortion as a desperate last measure. In that light, it would be a good idea to challenge the proabort, who utters the great slur against us, with a demand to know why they do not themselves join with us in supporting women’s most desperate needs, and why they only hold out death (along with a hefty fee for the abortion) as their sole contribution.

Finally, when the Bishops state in Paragraph 25, “To measure happiness by the absence of sorrow and misery in this world is to turn one’s back on the Gospel,” their statement deserves a long pause for consideration. In the Last Judgement scene of Matthew 25, Jesus admonishes that whatever we do for the least among us, we do for Him. To turn our backs on those who suffer, especially by murdering them, we commit spiritual suicide. The sufferings of others make demands on us, and in the America of the past 50 years, we have become an increasingly narcissistic and hedonistic society. We cannot stand imperfection in others, not because we are so compassionate, but because we are so bereft of Love.

Imperfection and need in others place demands on us. They draw from our time and material resources in proportion to the degree of imperfection and need. 53 million dead babies later, 93% of all Down syndrome babies aborted, and we see the extent to which American society has succumbed to mental illness and despair, we see the predatory nature of the abortion industry and how it has invaded and corrupted medicine, especially among the baby doctors, the Ob’s, who should be the greatest advocates of the unborn.

This document was a prophetic jewel, issued in 1974 when I was a freshman in high school. It has languished, relatively unknown to most Catholics for decades. Perhaps that’s not so bad. We now have the ability to guage the prophetic wisdom of the Magisterium through the perspective of hindsight.

More tomorrow…

We continue our study today of a little-known and little-studied 1974 document from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith entitled:

Declaration on Procured Abortion

Read Part I here.

Today we turn to the document’s treatment of the Church’s varied voices on when the body is infused with a soul. This is critical, because so many proaborts look selectively to voices from within the Church that have fixed a point some time after fertilization. What they do not do is point to the universal condemnation of abortion at every stage, going all the way back to our most ancient document of apostolic teaching, The Didache (pronounced DID-a-kay), subtitled, The Lord’s Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations.

Here are excerpts from the Declaration on Procured Abortion, followed by the footnotes from the text, and then a few words of analysis:

“6. The tradition of the Church has always held that human life must be protected and favored from the beginning, just as at the various stages of its development. Opposing the morals of the Greco-Roman world, the Church of the first centuries insisted on the difference that exists on this point between those morals and Christian morals. In the Didache it is clearly said: “You shall not kill by abortion the fruit of the womb and you shall not murder the infant already born.”[6] Athenagoras emphasizes that Christians consider as murderers those women who take medicines to procure an abortion; he condemns the killers of children, including those still living in their mother’s womb, “where they are already the object of the care of divine Providence.” Tertullian did not always perhaps use the same language; he nevertheless clearly affirms the essential principle: “To prevent birth is anticipated murder; it makes little difference whether one destroys a life already born or does away with it in its nascent stage. The one who will be a man is already one.”[8]

“7. In the course of history, the Fathers of the Church, her Pastors and her Doctors have taught the same doctrine – the various opinions on the infusion of the spiritual soul did not introduce any doubt about the illicitness of abortion. It is true that in the Middle Ages, when the opinion was generally held that the spiritual soul was not present until after the first few weeks, a distinction was made in the evaluation of the sin and the gravity of penal sanctions. Excellent authors allowed for this first period more lenient case solutions which they rejected for following periods. But it was never denied at that time that procured abortion, even during the first days, was objectively grave fault. This condemnation was in fact unanimous. Among the many documents it is sufficient to recall certain ones. The first Council of Mainz in 847 reconsidered the penalties against abortion which had been established by preceding Councils. It decided that the most rigorous penance would be imposed “on women who procure the elimination of the fruit conceived in their womb.”[9] The Decree of Gratian reported the following words of Pope Stephen V: “That person is a murderer who causes to perish by abortion what has been conceived.”[10] St. Thomas, the Common Doctor of the Church, teaches that abortion is a grave sin against the natural law.” At the time of the Renaissance Pope Sixtus V condemned abortion with the greatest severity.[12] A century later, Innocent XI rejected the propositions of certain lax canonists who sought to excuse an abortion procured before the moment accepted by some as the moment of the spiritual animation of the new being.[13] In our days the recent Roman Pontiffs have proclaimed the same doctrine with the greatest clarity. Pius XI explicitly answered the most serious objections.[14] Pius XII clearly excluded all direct abortion, that is, abortion which is either an end or a means.[15] John XXIII recalled the teaching of the Fathers on the sacred character of life “which from its beginning demands the action of God the Creator.”[16] Most recently, the Second Vatican Council, presided over by Paul VI, has most severely condemned abortion: “Life must be safeguarded with extreme care from conception; abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.”[17] The same Paul VI, speaking on this subject on many occasions, has not been afraid to declare that this teaching of the Church “has not changed and is unchangeable.”[18]

FOOTNOTES

6. “Didache Apostolorum,” edition Funk, “Patres Apostolici,” V, 2. “The Epistle of Barnabas,” IX, 5 uses the same expressions (cf. Funk, l.c., 91-93).

19. This declaration expressly leaves aside the question of the moment when the spiritual soul is infused. There is not a unanimous tradition on this point and authors are as yet in disagreement. For some it dates from the first instant; for others it could not at least precede nidation. It is not within the competence of science to decide between these views, because the existence of an immortal soul is not a question in its field. It is a philosophical problem from which our moral affirmation remains independent for two reasons: (1) supposing a belated animation, there is still nothing less than a human life, preparing for and calling for a soul in which the nature received from parents is completed, (2) on the other hand, it suffices that this presence of the soul be probable (and one can never prove the contrary) in order that the taking of life involve accepting the risk of killing a man, not only waiting for, but already in possession of his soul.

There are a few lines in all of that which jump out at the reader, and ought to be deployed as tactical weapons in our pro-life argumentation. Firstly, the last few lines of Paragraph 7:

“Most recently, the Second Vatican Council, presided over by Paul VI, has most severely condemned abortion: ‘Life must be safeguarded with extreme care from conception; abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.’[17] The same Paul VI, speaking on this subject on many occasions, has not been afraid to declare that this teaching of the Church ‘has not changed and is unchangeable.’[18]“

The quote about safeguarding from the moment of conception comes from the Vatican II document “Guadium et spes,” which, as a conciliar document is considered INFALLIBLE teaching. As such, it can never, ever change, which gives rise to the following quote from Pope Paul VI.

Next, it is worth considering footnote #19:

“on the other hand, it suffices that this presence of the soul be probable (and one can never prove the contrary) in order that the taking of life involve accepting the risk of killing a man, not only waiting for, but already in possession of his soul.”

Thus speaks the Church. While there have been, and remain, different voices within the Church, the human organism from the moment of conception is presumed to be in possession of a soul. This cannot be overstated. In her wisdom, the Church grants the presumption of a soul from the moment of conception.

And therein lies a rhetorical dilemma when words such as conception and pregnant come into play.

The plain meaning of the words in their traditional usage are that a child is conceived at the moment the sperm penetrates the egg. When that conception occurs, the mother is said to be pregnant. Simple, right?

Wrong.

The rabidly pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, (ACOG)which is the official society of Ob/Gyn’s adopted an official change of lexicon thirty years ago that defines conception and pregnancy as both being synonymous with IMPLANTATION of the embryo in the uterus, an event that occurs several days after fertilization. Thus, proaborts will argue that even the Catholic Church doesn’t recognize that life begins at fertilization, because we state that the presumption of humanity begins at conception, an event that has been redefined by the proabort crowd.

It should be noted that the Declaration on Procured Abortion was written years before ACOG engaged in their verbal engineering.

More on this tomorrow…

Update: See Part III Here.

There is a little-known and little-studied document from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith entitled:

Declaration on Procured Abortion

In my reading of proabort arguments and pre-life rejoinders, it has become evident that most Catholics are not armed with the truths and rejoinders in this document. We’ll spend a few posts looking at key portions of the document and considering it’s prescience. The Declaration on Procured Abortion was issued in 1974 with the approval of Pope Paul VI who, like this document, remains underappreciated. Paul VI was a giant, squeezed between John XXIII and John Paul II, his Encyclical, Humanae Vitae, along with the Congregation’s Declaration on Procured Abortion laid the groundwork for John Paul II’s Papacy. From the document:

“14. Divine law and natural reason, therefore, exclude all right to the direct killing of an innocent man. However, if the reasons given to justify an abortion were always manifestly evil and valueless the problem would not be so dramatic. The gravity of the problem comes from the fact that in certain cases, perhaps in quite a considerable number of cases, by denying abortion one endangers important values to which it is normal to attach great value, and which may sometimes even seem to have priority. We do not deny these very great difficulties. It may be a serious question of health, sometimes of life or death, for the mother; it may be the burden represented by an additional child, especially if there are good reasons to fear that the child will be abnormal or retarded; it may be the importance attributed in different classes of society to considerations of honor or dishonor, of loss of social standing, and so forth. We proclaim only that none of these reasons can ever objectively confer the right to dispose of another’s life, even when that life is only beginning. With regard to the future unhappiness of the child, no one, not even the father or mother, can act as its substitute- even if it is still in the embryonic stage- to choose in the child’s name, life or death. The child itself, when grown up, will never have the right to choose suicide; no more may his parents choose death for the child while it is not of an age to decide for itself. Life is too fundamental a value to be weighed against even very serious disadvantages.”

As we battle the rising tide of eugenic selective abortions, this paragraph slams the door on the argument over the future happiness of the child and what it is the parent may, or may not, do to act in the child’s name. Then, addressing the legitimate claims of feminism, and its distortions, the Congregation has the following to say:

“15. The movement for the emancipation of women, insofar as it seeks essentially to free them from all unjust discrimination, is on perfectly sound ground.[22] In the different forms of cultural background there is a great deal to be done in this regard. But one cannot change nature. Nor can one exempt women, any more than men, from what nature demands of them. Furthermore, all publicly recognized freedom is always limited by the certain rights of others.

“16. The same must be said of the claim to sexual freedom. If by this expression one is to understand the mastery progressively acquired by reason and by authentic love over instinctive impulse, without diminishing pleasure but keeping it in its proper place – and in this sphere this is the only authentic freedom – then there is nothing to object to. But this kind of freedom will always be careful not to violate justice. It; on the contrary, one is to understand that men and women are “free” to seek sexual pleasure to the point of satiety, without taking into account any law or the essential orientation of sexual life to its fruits of fertility,[23] then this idea has nothing Christian in it. It is even unworthy of man. In any case it does not confer any right to dispose of human life – even if embryonic- or to suppress it on the pretext that it is burdensome.”

Pretty much speaks for itself.

Update: See Part II Here.
Update: See Part III Here.

Dr. Grossman is at his hospital office one day per week. When he’s not there, he spends 1-2 days per week working at the local Planned Parenthood as their abortionist. If that isn’t enough, the Planned Parenthood in Durango is the only one providing surgical abortions within a 200 mile radius.

Worse still, Live Action did a telephone sting of Grossman’s office in the hospital and actually solicited an abortion referral from within Mercy with absolute ease. See the video:

“Personally, I believe in the strength, intellect and fortitude of women. When a woman says a fetus is a person, I think it is one. I believe the woman empowers the fetus,” Grossman is quoted as saying in a Durango Herald article on last year’s protest.

Also from the article:

Grossman, 67, was approved by the hospital’s board of directors to practice medicine at the hospital in 1976. Today, he is the hospital’s longest-serving physician.

He was at work in the hospital during the protest.

In a statement, Mercy spokesman Nathan Schmidt said abortions are not performed at the hospital and that it neither employs nor compensates Grossman.

“Dr. Richard Grossman is a member of the medical staff at Mercy Regional Medical Center. Being a member of the hospital’s staff does not constitute employment,” Schmidt said.

Mercy’s physician-credentialing and privileging practices are consistent with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, Schmidt said.

Mercy is part of Catholic Health Initiatives, the nation’s third-largest Roman Catholic health-care system, headquartered in Denver. It was founded by the Sisters of Mercy in 1882.

There is a reason why physicians gain “privileges” to practice medicine at a given hospital, and not mere “permission.” Having an MD, or DO does not constitute an automatic prerogative. The character of the physician, as written in the history of how they practice medicine, factors into whether or not a physician is deemed worthy of practicing at the hospital in question.

In that light, it is rather disingenuous of the hospital to assert that Grossman is not an employee. The fact of the matter is that the man who spends as much, if not more time aborting babies at Planned Parenthood as he does delivering babies at Mercy (by his secretary’s own admission in the above video), has been granted the PRIVILEGE of practicing medicine at a Catholic Hospital. Moreover, he is being given a level of social/professional recognition by elements within the Church that he does not deserve, and which no official arm of the institutional Church has a right to give-especially when abortion referrals are coming from his office within the hospital.

Simply put, his privileges at Mercy are tantamount to approving his murder of children at Planned Parenthood, as they are not seen as a moral or ethical impediment to gaining privileges at Mercy.

Next Thursday there will be another protest at the Hospital. It must be made perfectly clear to the officials at Mercy and the Diocese of Pueblo that Grossman’s continued presence is intolerable. He must be confronted and forced to choose. We do him no service in charity by allowing him to live in both worlds.

Folks should contact protest organizer, Daniel Anguis, President of LifeGuard at 970-385-8451.

We should also call the following folks and demand some positive action:

Mercy Regional Medical Center 970-247-4311

Catholic Health Initiatives 303-298-9100

Catholic Diocese of Pueblo 719-544-9861

Catholic Archdiocese of Denver 303-715-3129

More to come on this…

Union Major Sullivan Ballou

We are now in the 150th Anniversary of the events of the United States Civil War, of which I have been a devoted student for many years. Many have drawn striking parallels between the abolitionist movement and the pro-life movement, myself among them. From time to time over the coming months, I’ll be revisiting some of those men who fought that fight, and from whose sterling example I draw strength and inspiration for our abolitionist fight, and pray that ours, unlike theirs, may always remain a bloodless war–fought in the arena of moral and scientific erudition.

On July 14, 1861 on the eve of the Battle of Bull Run, Major Sullivan Ballou of Rhode Island wrote a letter to his wife, Sarah. It is perhaps the greatest expression of love I’ve ever read, on many levels. Here is an excerpted reading of the letter in Ken and Rick Burns’ towering documentary of the Civil War. The far-richer full text of the letter follows.

July the 14th, 1861
Washington DC

Sullivan

32 year-old Major Sullivan Ballou died at the Battle of Bull Run 150 years ago today, July 28, 1861.

May God rest the souls of all who fought that tragic fratricidal war, and bring our modern day abolitionist movement to a fruitful and peaceful conclusion.

When Regina was pregnant with our three children, people would ask if it was a boy or a girl. When I responded with, “We don’t know,” I was met with the ubiquitous, iniquitous, mindless, and moronic refrain:

“As long as it’s healthy.”

I would challenge this well-intentioned, ill-thought well-wish with:

“If it isn’t, we’ll love the child all the same, and even more.”

That shook people out of their torpor and made them realize exactly what they were saying. It usually left most pretty angry with me.

“Can’t you just accept a good wish and leave it at that?” was the reply of one associate.

It’s a valid point, but one that fails to own up to what was being said. “As long as it’s healthy,” is a world apart from, “I wish your child health and happiness.” Even in the absence of health, one can have happiness, fulfillment and contentment. In an age of increasing reliance on pre-natal technology to murder the pre-born for the crimes of being female, male, having cleft palate, clubbed foot, spina bifida, Down syndrome, trisomy 18, etc…, “As long as it’s healthy,” rings deadly ominous. It needs to be confronted.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the antidote to our eugenic mentality in a letter to his daughter, Patsy. It stands for all time as the most eloquent reproach to the intolerance of imperfection:

Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for; for none of us, no, not one, is perfect; and were we to love none who had imperfections, this world would be a desert for our love.