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Archive for February, 2011

Dr. Nathanson, Maafa, Gosnell, Shulman, and Grace

Posted in Abortion, Black History Month on February 28, 2011| 3 Comments »

Today is a big day in the pro-life community, and I invite all here at Coming Home to make it a day marked by prayers of rejoicing, intercession, and atonement. That’s a tall order for one day.

My day is beginning at Kermit Gosnell’s clinic in Philadelphia at the National Day of Mourning, hosted by the National Black Pro-Life Coalition. It is one of dozens of such gatherings happening all across America today, the last day of Black History Month. I’ve been asked to speak for a few moments in remembrance of Dr. Bernard Nathanson, whose Funeral Mass is being offered at 10 AM at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC. It is an interesting confluence of events on a very important day.

I’m humbled and honored to be able to stand in solidarity with the National Leadership today, and to speak words of prayerful tribute to a man whose conversion was as earth-shattering as that of Saint Paul the Apostle’s.

Later tonight, I shall address a large gathering on Long Island, New York, where I’ll address the issue of Abortion, Genocide, and Future Directions in the Pro-Life Movement. So, I’m off to a busy day, and will blog later or tomorrow.

For now, I invite all here to join in prayers of thanksgiving and intercession for Dr. Nathanson, who died sealed with the Sacraments and the assurance of God’s forgiveness. He spent the last half of his adulthood atoning for the great sin he helped unleash. When he was baptized, he remarked that he carries an enormous burden with him into the next life. Let’s pray that God has assuaged him of that burden, and that today, Dr. Nathanson intercedes for us before the Throne of God.

We also remember two men caught in the grip of the Evil One, Dr. Kermit Gosnell and Theodore Shulman. They are not beyond God’s loving care, and we pray in earnest for their conversion of heart and liberation from the oppressive torment that has wracked their lives.

So, here is a hymn–a prayer that epitomizes Dr. Nathanson’s newness in Jesus, my prayer for all of us in the pro-life movement, and one that I pray will fall from the lips of Gosnell and Shulman some day.

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Is Black Genocide Real?

Posted in Black History Month, tagged , on February 27, 2011| 3 Comments »

Is black genocide real or propaganda? I get asked that question a great deal.

I don’t answer that question anymore until the questioner has watched Maafa 21. This stunner of a documentary tells a horrifying story in eye-popping detail and clarity. It’s one of the most academically rigorous documentaries that I’ve ever seen. The movie is available for purchase, and also available in several parts on YouTube.

As Black History Month winds down, we’ll talk more here at Coming Home about this national tragedy. For now, here’s the trailer:

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Science, Demography, and Racism

Posted in Abortion, Breast Cancer, tagged , , , , , on February 27, 2011| 2 Comments »

In the uproar this past week over the Life Always billboard in New York City, carrying the message that the most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb, the most common denunciation was that the billboard was “racist.”

But was it?

In fairness, it’s understandable how the person on the street, looking at the billboard, could have come away with that understanding. The billboard presented a conclusion without first presenting the argument. Absent the staggering numbers that lead to the conclusion, the general public were left with a sign that could seem both racist and misogynistic to the uninformed. That’s a powerful lesson for our side.

Perhaps in the future, a billboard that states:

“With 60% of NYC African American pregnancies ending in abortion, our most unsafe place is in the womb.”

That presents the staggering statistics, the conclusion, and a voice that is black folk talking to black folk. It’s unambiguous.

However, that will never stop the race-baiters like Al Sharpton from coming out in opposition to the message, and still claiming racism—which leads to another can of worms.

It isn’t racist to point out the inequities between groups of people, such as the frightening rates of STD’s among blacks compared to all other groups. The same for abortion, poverty, single-parent households, etc. Indeed, how can society be expected to respond compassionately and effectively if the problem cannot be articulated for fear of being branded a racist? Pointing to glaring inequalities has always been the first, and necessary step in eradicating the forces that keep groups of people down.

Demography is a science that tells the unvarnished truth. There is no political correctness in accurate statistics. Indeed, when we need to modify an absolute term like “correct” with a modifier like “political”, the truth becomes the first casualty. Therefore, an accurate telling of the demographics is the first step in ascertaining what is wrong.

In the case of abortion and communities of color, a more enlightened political leadership might call for and fund a study of women seeking abortions and the reasons. From such a study, it might become evident that low-income women feel a need for abortion based on economic pressures, and that the Pregnancy Resource Center model may well have a good part of the answer. Government might actually work to reduce the frequency of abortion through the initiation of services that encourage and facilitate education, job skills and training, parenting classes, and other life skills. By standing up young women and men, encouraging parenthood, and facilitating mature behavior, society rescues them from a life of perpetual adolescence.

It used to be called liberalism.

Revealing scientific truth with an eye toward ameliorating the underlying stressors that give rise to skewed incidences of pathology is not racist. It is the realization of scientific investigation’s noblest goal, which is the discovery of truth for the betterment of humanity. All humanity.

To be selective in the revelation and the application of that knowledge in a way that ignores the most disenfranchised is the most malignant form of racism:

Ice Cold Indifference.

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Comedy and Tragedy: New York’s 60% Factor

Posted in Abortion, Black History Month, tagged , , , , on February 26, 2011| 4 Comments »

It’s been quite a week here in NYC. We had a great pro-life billboard, calling attention to the fact that 60% of African American pregnancies end in abortion, come down 24 hours after it went up. Thanks to some great thuggery by our proabort lobby, waitresses were reportedly abused in the building hosting the three-story banner simply because…

…they were waitresses working in the same building hosting the banner.

But the fun has only started for the merchants of death in fair Gotham. This coming Wednesday, the City Council is poised to pass a law that will hobble our pregnancy resource centers. So for our modern-day Margaret Sangers (Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Councilwoman Jessica Lappin) it’s a heady week. Evidently 60% of black pregnancies ending in abortion is an acceptable number for them.

Less intellectually and morally bankrupt individuals might look at those numbers and look for ways to lower them by doing things like the PRC’s do. But not our little darlings on the Women’s Issues Committee. They simply cannot permit themselves to join forces with those in the pro-life community and work toward commonsense solutions for a community beset by destructive forces that beggar the imagination.

The word is on the street now about the numbers. It will only continue to make the rounds and continue to permeate the consciences of all New Yorkers. Eventually, the rising tide of blood will drown the pathetic arguments of Quinn and company. It will become harder and harder for Quinn to explain her actions, actions made with the full knowledge of the numbers.

In politics, comedy has a way of becoming tragedy for the careers of those given to such base behavior. New Yorkers have great good sense and have a long history of sending scoundrels packing when they enter the ballot booth. That’s the beauty of our tradition of peaceful transition of power. We vote the bums out.

Better days are coming for our most disenfranchised citizens. As soon as New Yorkers have had the time to marinate in the truth, they’ll elect servants with the wisdom and decency to do what is right and just, and not what is most expedient.

Truth and Goodness will have the last laugh.

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Planned Parenthood’s Bunnies

Posted in Abortion, Planned Parenthood, tagged , , , on February 26, 2011| 4 Comments »

Planned Parenthood receives a third of its BILLION dollar a year budget from the Federal Government. Aside from the fact that it’s illegal for Congress to fund 501(c)(3) organizations, it’s also illegal for Congress to fund abortion.

American Life League hits one out of the park with this most recent ad. Please share this.

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For Pro-Lifers: A Reprieve From Death Threats

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 26, 2011| 14 Comments »

Something I’ve kept hidden on the blog this past year.

News yesterday from Troy Newman of Operation Rescue and Jill Stanek that Theodore Shulman,49, who has sent many of us death threats over the past few years, has been arrested by the FBI and is being held without bond at the Metropolitan Correctional Facility. Listen to the link at Troy Newman to hear a telephone death threat. Jill has much of the backstory at her blog.

Shulman has made repeated threats against such individuals as Bryan Kemper, Jill Stanek, Troy Newman, Fr. Frank Pavone, Lila Rose, Ken Scott, Cheryl Sullenger, Robert George, myself and many others. I’ll dwell on this for a moment here before moving on. As Jill details at her blog:

Shulman’s history is telling. His mother is Alix Kates Shulman, a pro-abort feminist who achieved some level of fame in the 1960s and 70s, during Shulman’s formative years, since he was born in 1961. Here’s Alix’s website. She is most well known for writing the feminist novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen.

Alix has spoken of aborting 4 of Shulman’s siblings, “and not one was the result of carelessness.” Theodore has commented on these abortions, saying 2 came before him and 2 after. Shulman has one living sister, Polly, born in 1963.

This isn’t quite over, but at least Shulman is incarcerated.

True, it isn’t quite over. I first encountered Shulman’s wrath on January 25, 2010, when Coming Home was only a month old. Shulman, who claims to be a scientist (molecular biologist, like myself) has a website Operation Counterstrike. Shulman seems to have been deeply affected by the murder of Dr. George Tiller, with that event fueling his rampage. Here is the banner from his website

My writing on the abortion/breast cancer link seems to have angered Shulman who sent me the following two messages a few hours apart as comments on the blog:

2010/01/25 at 6:02 PM
God is sending a revenge-angel to kill Gerard Nadal. Soon. Count on it!

and…

2010/01/25 at 8:36 PM
Soon!

on May 30, this sinister message appeared:

2010/05/30 at 9:21 PM
Will there be PAYBACK for Dr. Tiller?
Will there be COUNTERTERROR against right-to-lifers?
WHO should the TARGETS be?
WHERE do they LIVE?
operationcounterstrike.blogspot.com

Coming from a guy who lives here in NYC, he was more than a little too close to home. I spoke with Regina about it all, about our family’s safety and various courses of action. She pointedly admonished that I not back down and trust in God’s protection and providence, for myself and for the family.

If his intent was terror, Shulman succeeded. I’d like to say that I didn’t let it bother me. It did. It angered me in ways I’ve never experienced anger before; but that subsided with time and prayers for this deranged man. I also received the least of Shulman’s wrath. He has written of Jill Stanek being shot in the face, and similar writings about Father Frank Pavone. Others have had telephone death threats. Click here to listen to an audio death threat at Troy Newman’s blog.

Jill, Robbie George, Troy, and others were very supportive, as was the Joint Terrorism Task Force (FBI & NYPD), as well as Jill’s staff. All have my gratitude and respect.

I ask that all pray for Theodore Shulman, as I have over the past year. Jesus didn’t suggest that. He commands it! Doing so keeps us from hating in return. I’ll be organizing a Divine Mercy Novena for Shulman soon. I thought that I would be happy when this day came, but truth be told, I feel no jubilation. I feel relief, for all who’ve been the targets of this profoundly disturbed man, and I feel an overwhelming sadness for him as he sits in federal jail. I cannot imagine what his life must have been like growing up with his mother (read the links for the horror story).

I hope and pray that in jail Ted Shulman gets the help he so desperately needs, and that the Holy Spirit raids his heart, as He did Dr. Bernard Nathanson. Pray for this man, please. And pray for the law enforcement personnel who risk their lives daily in chasing down terrorists, foreign and domestic, so that we all might live our lives in peace.

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The Three-Week Billboard: Gone in a New York Minute

Posted in Abortion, Black History Month, Planned Parenthood, tagged , , , , , , on February 25, 2011| 9 Comments »

The Billboard erected on Wednesday by Life Always, telling the message that the most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb, was taken down the very next day.

Gone in a New York Minute.

Al Sharpton crawled out of his sewer to provide the appropriate faux outrage. The company that erected the billboard claimed as their rationale for removing the sign that restaurant employees in the building hosting the sign were being harassed, and that they were concerned that violence might ensue.

That’s right. The people who proclaim CHOICE will harass waitresses just trying to scrape out a living, and threaten violence unless theirs is the only voice heard. These are the same people who are going to pass a bill on Wednesday of next week which will effectively shut down crisis pregnancy centers in New York City.

Abortion MUST be the ONLY act in town.

Obviously, the proabort crowd in NYC does not think that 60% of all African American pregnancies ending in abortion is too many. Their revulsion and disgust were saved for those who tried to bring this atrocity to light, So it begs the questions:

If 60% of all African Americans who come into existence never make it out of their mother’s wombs, what was so untruthful or offensive about that billboard?

If 60% doesn’t make the bile rise in the back of their throats, then 60% is an acceptable number to them, no?

Since 60% is not an objectionable number, what is?

70% ?
80% ?
90% ?
95% ?

So, at least we now have Council Speaker Christine Quinn on record as not objecting to such appalling numbers. The same for Public Advocate Bill De Blasio, and Al Sharpton.

These are not liberals. Liberalism has always looked at poverty and tried to ameliorate it. It has tried to do all that it could to keep families intact, to lift them up when poverty threatened them with death and dissolution. As a young man, I was proudly liberal, because liberalism was taken up with the corporal works of mercy. Many liberals back then detested abortion, and regarded it as extremist and monstrous.

Times have changed.

Today, liberalism sees death as the sole solution to life’s vexing problems. If killing 60% of African Americans in the womb were the necessary pre-condition for young women to advance economically, unencumbered by a child, then Harlem and East New York ought to resemble Scarsdale and Beverly Hills. Black neighborhoods ought to be awash with college degrees and economic prosperity.

In truth, they are more desperate and dismal than at any time before legalized abortion.

In Brooklyn, NY, we call that a clue.

Bitches and Ho’s are how young black women have been celebrated in rap music for decades.

That, too, is a clue.

When we remove responsibility for the consequences of sexual behavior, the body becomes nothing more than a plaything. When Planned Parenthood operates 78% of their operation in inner-city neighborhoods and facilitates this understanding of the body, the predictable disaster of a 60% abortion rate necessarily follows.

This is big business, and the abortion industry has its hands firmly on the levers of power here in New York. Tragically, most of our leaders have so completely sold out that 60% of black pregnancies ending in abortion is to them, like water rolling off a duck’s back.

It was a great effort, Life Always. The targeting of your billboard by the abortion industry mirrors the targeting of the very black babies on whose blood they feed, and whom you are trying to save.

The babies, the billboard, all gone in a New York Minute.

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Dying Counties and Closing Catholic Schools: Reconsidering Humanae Vitae

Posted in Birth Control, Bishops, tagged , , , on February 24, 2011| 9 Comments »

My article in today’s Headline Bistro:

The Internet is abuzz this week with reports from the U.S. Census Bureau that one-fourth of all U.S. counties are dying. The reasons given are an aging population, an increase of only 9.7% in the U.S. population over the past ten years (the lowest decennial increase since the great depression), and migration to more affluent counties in the midst of a protracted economic slump. Demographers call this “natural decrease.” The etiology, in fact, may not be so natural at all.

In the same decade that “natural decrease” has taken place, Catholic bishops have been closing Catholic schools all over the nation, much to the consternation of the laity. So what’s behind the trend?

First and foremost, we are simply not reproducing as previous generations have done. A smaller population has led to increasing demands for higher salaries, as there is less competition in the domestic labor pool, leading companies to relocate manufacturing overseas where populations are large and the cost of living is low. This has a domino effect throughout the economy.

The fact that we have an aging population and are not producing enough workers to support them in their retirement years is an economic disaster. We are beginning to see this played out in state economies that cannot sustain current civil servant salary, retirement and benefits packages, which are far more generous and comprehensive than those in the private sector.

The Church is not immune from the chaos of what many in the pro-life movement call an impending demographic winter. Parishes and schools are closing at a steady and alarming rate, and it makes perfect sense.

I recall my very large parish, St. Michael’s, in 1960s Brooklyn when I was a child. Every Mass was packed on Sundays. Three priests were on hand to distribute communion. By the early 1970s, the church was half-filled. Today when I visit, it’s one-third filled, and with not so many Masses as we had when I was a child.

The schools and churches were built to accommodate the sizeable immigrant Catholic Church, with their sizeable families, including the Baby Boom generation. In my community, families of four and five children were the norm, and families of seven or more children were not at all uncommon. Logic then dictates that if many families no longer go to church or are active in their faith, and if those who do are only having two children, then we simply do not need the infrastructure built to accommodate an active Catholic populace 50-60% larger than we have today.

Sealing the fate of the Catholic schools and parishes has been the precipitous decline in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Churches cannot function without priests, and a lay staff of teachers has a higher cost of living than the previous communities of religious.

Underlying all of this has been the overwhelming rejection of the Magisterial teaching articulated in Humanae Vitae. Eighty percent of Catholics simply disregard the Church’s teaching about the use of birth control and the obligation to accept children willingly and lovingly from God. Many who decry the parish and school closings are those who also decry Humanae Vitae, and do not see the connection.

It isn’t rocket science.

If we do not produce a sizeable population of workers, there will be nobody to support us in our age and infirmity. If we do not produce sizeable Catholic families and encourage priesthood and religious life as vocations for our children, our institutional infrastructure will collapse. If we do not encourage our children to live marriage as a sacramental vocation, with all that is required of it, our Church will contract like our dying counties.

The “natural decrease” is largely the result of artificial contraception.

These contractions and the suffering and inconveniences they bring are signs to us that perhaps Humanae Vitae was indeed a relevant document. They also highlight for us some of the blessings that come from openness to large families. If we are wise, if we teach our children well, these contractions can be reversed.

The signs of spring are beginning to emerge in the Church. Vocations to more traditional religious orders are on the rise, along with an uptick in the numbers of seminarians. With a protracted downturn in the economy, many are reconsidering the treadmill of pursuit of material acquisitions and discovering the simpler joys of family life.

We certainly have a long way to go in reclaiming lost ground, but there is a sense that a newness is upon the Church. This includes a fresh look at Humanae Vitae through less rebellious and more sober eyes.

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New Yorkers Value Black Genocide: Speak for Yourself Public Advocate Bill De Blasio

Posted in Abortion, Black History Month, tagged , , on February 23, 2011| 9 Comments »

A new billboard, three stories high, has gone up in New York and has the proaborts sputtering. The billboard tells the simple truth:

“The most dangerous place for an African American is in the Womb.”

Evidently Planned Parenthood, which operates 78% of their abortion centers in inner-city neighborhoods is having a reaction akin to a vampire caught in the open at dawn. They are accusing Billboard sponsor, Life Always, of playing the race card:

“These billboards are offensive and disturbing. The creators are using divisive messaging around race to restrict access to medical care.”

New York Public Advocate Bill De Blasio is in danger of having a cerebral vascular accident, demanding that the billboard be taken down:

“This billboard simply doesn’t belong in our city. The ad violates the values of New Yorkers and is grossly offensive to women and communities of color.”

Actually, Mr. De Blasio, with 60% of Black pregnancies having ended in abortion in our fair city during 2009, the consciences of decent New Yorkers have been shocked, and people want to know why 1,500 black babies are aborted for every 1,000 born alive. How then, can this billboard be representative of anything but the genocidal truth? This ad does not violate the values of New Yorkers. We like our free speech, and we like it when racism and genocide are uncovered in our midst, and then eradicated.

“Grossly Offensive” describes a Public Advocate who doesn’t think that a 60% abortion rate in blacks deserves some advocacy in order to get a reduction.

Get the rest here.

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When Hospitals Become Gulags

Posted in Biomedical Ethics, tagged , , on February 23, 2011| 2 Comments »

If any human being understood state-sponsored violence and its effects on the human soul, it was Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Consider these two quotes in light of new developments today in the case of Baby Joseph in Canada:

“Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.”

and…

“Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn’t the will to do what is right”

and finally…

“I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.”

It isn’t enough that the parents of Baby Joseph have already lost a daughter, and now are losing a son to the same disease.

It isn’t enough that some doctors have refused a simple tracheotomy and challenged these parents’ desire to take their boy home where he can slip away in peace.

It isn’t enough that the courts ruled against decency and in favor of the physicians.

It isn’t enough that the hospital raised the parents hopes over the weekend by being agreeable to allowing Baby Joseph to be brought to a hospital in Michigan.

No, today the full malignancy has kicked in as the parents are now being told that the removal of Baby Joseph’s breathing tube is imminent, and the hospital now refuses to allow them private time with their baby boy who stands to be murdered at any moment. LifeSite News has the whole story.

Where is the will to do what is right in this case? The parents wish only to have an airway opened for their son in order to take him home to die in peace. Since when do the medical establishment and the state make these determinations of where, how, and when the terminally ill will die? Unlike the Sciavo case, there are no competing wishes between family members to adjudicate. This is simply the hospital and the courts standing against decency.

It is now clear that in Canada the human person has lost all moral autonomy, and is a possession of the state and the medical community (a wholly owned subsidiary of the state under socialized medicine) to be disposed of at will. It didn’t take long for the euthanasia sloganeering of “Death with Dignity” and “Choice” to evaporate under the totalitarian leanings of unchecked socialism. The state knows best, and once it controls the medical establishment, it has unfettered power over life and death.

So we see our hospitals becoming gulags, where the ill are at the mercy of government bureaucrats. Canada is not alone in this.

In the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, where the Court upheld, 8-1, compulsory sterilization laws for the developmentally callenged, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote his cynical recipe for advancing state-sponsored sterilizations:

“…the law does all that is needed when it does all that it can, indicates a policy, applies it to all within the lines, and seeks to bring within the lines all similarly situated so far and so fast as its means allow.”

We bought the lie of radicalized autonomy, that we can do with our bodies as we wish, and we accepted the violence of abortion as the expression of that autonomy. Are we really so surprised now to find that the state is infected with the same virus? If a child of the womb is of no moral worth, its life to be disposed of at will by the mother, why then do we seem shocked when the state coopts the noble field of medicine and does the same with its citizens at any other developmental stage.

The hospital as gulag.

Either personhood is intrinsic to being human, or it isn’t.

There is a cautionary tale coming out of Canada. If we do not dismantle Obamacare, this will become the new normal.

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Requiem for a Good Man

Posted in Abortion, tagged on February 23, 2011| 7 Comments »

Dr. Bernard Nathanson

Giants are interesting creatures, and Dr. Bernard Nathanson was a giant. He was also the smallest man in the world, depending on who was critiquing him, and what phase of his career the individual was examining. He certainly was a hero to the pro-abort camp early on, and the most misguided man in the world to pro-lifers. Then all of that changed when Dr. Nathanson had his epiphany.

I was a boy back then, nine years old in 1969 when he founded NARAL, twelve on the day that Roe v Wade was handed down. At this moment, I’m not particularly interested in Dr. Bernard Nathanson as the pro-life giant, or trophy, or mentor and guide after his conversion. I’m more interested in Dr. Nathanson as a doctor, as a fellow scientist, and how he could have lost his way, and how he found his way.

We can be so smug, scientists and physicians—so in love with our technology. So superior. So proud.

Having a love of history, and an appreciation for its treacherous cross-currents was my salvation when I was in graduate school. Yes, I loved the state-of-the-art in molecular biology, and how that grew every couple of years. But I was also keen to know from my professors what the state of the art was when they were graduate students, how they came to understand science and the tools through which they developed their understanding of life and its mechanisms.

It filled me with awe and respect for them, how they worked with such comparatively primitive tools and discovered the most fundamental realities. It showed me how much we younger scientists take for granted, and how we rarely step outside of our own technological frame of reference to appreciate the manner in which our predecessors blazed the trail for us.

So Dr. Nathanson’s has been an interesting story for me. In the late 1960’s, there were many in the field of embryology who taught that a new human organism came into being at fertilization. This was, in a sense, a no-brainer. But physicians and scientists don’t always see things the same way. What jumps out at me was Dr. Nathanson’s flawed understanding of human embryology that justified for him his pro-abortion orientation.

Ernst Haeckel's Fudged Drawings

Though many maintained that the human embryo was human, there was a fraud that was perpetuated for over 100 years, as seen here in the fraudulent drawings of Dr. Ernst Haeckel, that led many into honestly believing that the embryo was not fully human.

Haeckel was an early proponent of Darwinian evolution who maintained that organisms go through the various evolutionary stages (phylogeny) as they develop into mature form (ontogeny), recapitulating their evolutionary heritage. Even I was educated in high school and college in the famous mantra, “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”

The big problem was that Haeckel fudged his drawings to make the organisms appear to look more similar than they actually are; all to make the appearance of recapitulation look more valid.

Haeckel lied, and that lie evolved into the cornerstone of justifying abortion because the embryo was still in its fish stage, or amphibian stage. Read a good treatment here.

So, Haeckel lied, and babies died. His deception, meant to advance what he believed to be a greater truth, has led to the slaughter of millions.

It wasn’t until the advent of fetoscopy and sonograms that Dr. Nathanson could move beyond Haeckel’s static (and fraudulent) illustrations. Technology allowed him to see what his ill-formed scientific imagination could not fathom.

A baby sucking its thumb.
A beating heart.
Playful movements.

A silent scream.

I think of the Gospel on Easter Sunday with Peter and John in the tomb. John saw and believed. Peter was befuddled, slower to catch on.

I think of Paul on the road to Damascus. He saw and believed.

Dr. Nathanson saw and believed. Like Paul, his turnaround was as powerful for good as his previous state was for ill.

It wasn’t religion that did it for Dr. Nathanson. It was technology revealing undeniable truth.

Dr. Nathanson was first and foremost a man of science. He was guided by reason, and when reason told him that he was mistaken, he followed the truth. He did so knowing that he would be reviled, but that didn’t stop him.

It was a crushing blow to the other side to have Dr. Nathanson defect. Their argument was that pro-lifers were motivated by religious extremism, and then Dr. Nathanson produced The Silent Scream. Religious conversion would be some years yet to come. He was reviled. Knowing how Dr. Nathanson’s intellect was formed, the fraudulent data that went into it, helps me to see how he could have been pro-abortion. He honestly didn’t believe he was killing a human.

I’m sorry that I never had the opportunity to meet him, to share a meal with him, to see more of the world of the 1960’s through his eyes. In some ways, we came to pro-life education and activism by the same route: it was the technology and data that did it for me too. I always accepted the humanity of the embryo, but the mountains of scientific literature on STD’s and post-abortive sequelae cry out for scientists and physicians to give them a voice in the public square.

I would have liked to have shared experiences with this elder scientist and learned from him. Now I’ll need to wait a bit longer before that meeting. Until then, a man who helped unleash one of the greatest calamities to befall humanity, and lived to repent of it, equipping the pro-life movement to fight for its destruction, has passed from among us and into eternity. For all that he did to stop this evil, for his road from atheistic Jew to faith-filled Catholic, Dr. Nathanson was a giant.

But he also seemed more to be a good and decent man.

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Planned Parenthood: The Next Joe Camel

Posted in Planned Parenthood, tagged , , , , , , on February 22, 2011| 1 Comment »

Remember Joe Camel? Remember the furor over Camel brand cigarettes and their cartoon icon being used to market something dangerous and deadly to children? We were concerned that something children were doing in the present moment might well come back to bite them three or four decades later in the form of cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Rightfully so.

How would the debate have played out if children suffered these diseases within days or weeks of their first cigarette? How might we have responded under those circumstances? More vociferously, for certain. And if these diseases struck our children in their prime, maiming them for life, or even killing them, what sort of legislation would we demand regarding those who sell to minors?

Now let’s consider Planned Parenthood and how they have managed to strong arm our legislatures into doing their bidding, in being able to dispense contraceptives to children twelve and older without parental knowledge or consent, how they have fought against parental notification and consent laws regarding surgical and medical abortions on children, and how they circumvent these laws where they do exist with judicial bypasses.

Let’s consider how Planned Parenthood has their own cartoon character, Superhero for Choice, who kills Christian protesters in a promotional video targeting children. See the sick video here.

Planned Parenthood Superhero for Choice

We need to consider some Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data that shows the plight of our children, the staggering rates of their affliction with STD’s, how CDC says condoms don’t work very well at all in preventing disease transmission, and then we need to discuss the timing for some class action suits.

Consider:

Here are the CDC data that show what a horrifically effective job Planned Parenthood and their fellow travelers have done in destroying the lives of our young people, corrupting them in their innocence and fertility.

The data are from the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Surveillance, 2008. These data are presented as a follow-up to an earlier post on Planned Parenthood In New Initiative Targets 10 Year-Old Children With Condoms That Don’t Work. This is the new initiative by PP to finish off our children, pushing all-out for comprehensive sex education down to age ten.

A glance at the data tells the story. Children 10-14 have the lowest rates of STD’s as well as pregnancies. Recall how former PP center Director Abby Johnson t reported how PP is pushing hard for abortions, as they are the principle source of income.

Now link to the post linked above, and look at the data on STD’s and condom efficacy. Condoms don’t work. Even CDC and Planned Parenthood’s own contraceptive bible state as much.

Now consider how much higher condom failure rates and early teen pregnancies would rise after PP gets done completing the corruption of our youth.

As we say in the lab, the data don’t lie. The age groups are in the center of the graphs with the incidence per 100,000 for men and women going to the left and right respectively. The disease being reported is at the bottom of each graph.

Chlamydia — Age- and sex-specific rates: United States, 2008


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Gonorrhea — Age- and sex-specific rates: United States, 2008


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Primary and secondary syphilis — Age- and sex-specific rates: United States, 2008


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Human papillomavirus (HPV) — Prevalence of high-risk and low-risk types among females 14 to 59 years of age from a national survey, 2003–2004


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Genital herpes — Herpes simplex virus, type 2, seroprevalence in non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks by age group from national surveys, 1976–1980, 1988–1994, 1999–2004


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Ectopic pregnancy — Hospitalizations of women 15 to 44 years of age: United States, 1997–2006


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Finally, the abortion data. These data are from Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2006, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, November 27, 2009 / 58(SS08);1-35

White Bars=Number of abortions per 1,000 live births.
Blue Bars=Number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years.
Black Bars=percentage of total abortions, by age group of women who obtained an abortion — selected states, United States, 2006§

§Data from 48 reporting areas; excludes California, Florida, Louisiana, and New Hampshire.

The age groups may not be so visible along the bottom of the graph. They are, from left to right:

Under 15
15-19
20-24
25-29
30-34
35-39
Over 40

These numbers fail to describe the numbers of cases of cervical cancer that will result from HPV, the numbers of ectopic pregnancies from PID, the numbers of future miscarriages from damaged cervixes in abortion, the horror of children contracting lifetime herpes infections.

Why do we not demand warning labels on condoms? Why do we not demand more stringent laws to protect our children when it comes to sex, especially when the consequences are so much more dire, so much more immediate, so much more life-altering at such earlier ages, than cigarette smoking?

The time has come for the adults to get serious about the savagery of our children by Planned Parenthood. It’s time to defund and dismantle this criminal enterprise once and for all.

We did it to Joe Camel.

We can do it again.

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The Court-Ordered Murder of Baby Joseph

Posted in Euthanasia, tagged , , on February 22, 2011| 5 Comments »

When the pro-life community rose in opposition to the court-ordered murder of Terry Sciavo, a severely brain damaged, but not terminally ill woman, we warned that this was the slippery slope. We warned that more such killings would follow. We were ridiculed as hysterical alarmists.

Now in Canada, a one year old boy with a rare neurological disease who is slowly dying is being threatened with one of the most gruesome deaths imaginable: drowning. Read the story here.

Baby Joseph Maraachli is on a respirator. His parents want to bring him home to die in their arms, surrounded by his loving family. They’ve been down this road before with their daughter.

Currently, Joseph is on a ventillator, with a plastic airway holding his trachea (windpipe) open and clear. In order for Joseph to go home, he would need a tracheotomy, which is a small incision made in the trachea with a trach tube inserted to hold it open. Without this simple procedure, Joseph will literally choke to death, or drown in his own secretions. The hospital wants to simply remove the ventilator and let nature take its brutal course. They refuse to do the tracheotomy, claiming it is too risky, because Joseph could….. die!

There is no rational basis for such decision making, and the courts have sided with the hospital.

If the cost of care is the issue, then dragging this battle out has been the least cost-effective avenue for the hospital to pursue. In such brutal calculus this baby could have had his tracheotomy performed weeks ago, and either have died on the table, or been home by now. So clearly, this is not about saving the hospital money.

This is about the intolerance of imperfection and the exercise of radicalized autonomy.

Baby Joseph

It’s human evil in all of its institutionalized malignancy. The request of the family is one that would have saved the hospital time, money, and effort. It would have freed the courts for other cases. It would allow baby Joseph to slip quietly and peacefully into eternity at home, rather than drowning in spasms of anxiety and despair.

When the medical establishment seeks such an ending to any life, but especially the life of a child, then the cancer has gone to civilization’s bone.

We are in the cataclysmic struggle for our very lives and for the survival of Western civilization, and we must prevail.

O Canada!

UPDATE: Read Here for Update

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Credo

Posted in Dignity, tagged , on February 20, 2011| 1 Comment »

Getting back to what binds us all together, John Michael Talbot’s spectacular rendition of the Apostle’s Creed.

This is best with either really good speakers or the use of headphones.

The artwork is beautiful.

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Lila Rose: The Last Word

Posted in Abortion, Biomedical Ethics, tagged , , , on February 20, 2011| 9 Comments »

Well, it’s been quite an interesting week. Response to the posts here at Coming Home have ranged from polite discourse to me being a heretic, promoting heresy, covering and promoting mortal sin, the sinking of the Bismarck and the Titanic, and the explosion of the Challenger.

Those caught up in this have been unrepentant heretics such as your humble host (if we are to believe some who have suggested as much), sincere philosophers and theologians who have weighed in on both sides (Meaning this will only be resolved in Heaven), as well as garden variety victims of the psychological affliction of scrupulosity.

I’d first like to address the scrupulous. Scrupulosity is a psychological/emotional affliction that dresses itself up in vestments and passes itself off as moral theology (on steroids). It’s a serious matter that is quite debilitating. But it’s the individual’s affliction, and not my sin.

As for those great thinkers such as Chris Tollefsen and Mark Shea, per usual, their writing keeps me up at nights when the house is quiet. These are giants at whose intellectual table I have been well-fed. Perhaps they are correct, and perhaps it is my life experiences that have colored my vision, cracked the prism through which I perceive and respond to the world, but on this one, we’ll have to agree to disagree for now. Make no mistake; these men are priceless gifts from God to the Church, and one issue does not an adversary make (not even a hundred with them!)

I simply see no mortal sin here, as so many have suggested. I see no venial sin here as many have suggested. I do not think that murderous, brutal people are entitled to the truth and ought to be exposed through covert operations. Perhaps this makes me a consequentialist, perhaps not. But I can’t forget so very many experiences that I wish I could forget, so many children who were pimped and pumped full of drugs, many who have since died of AIDS.

I wonder how many who take issue with Lila Rose would argue that her videos are poison fruit and ought never be used against Planned Parenthood?

I wonder how many would, after the Lila debates, now call for the immediate dismantling of the CIA, the national Security Agency (NSA), the abolition of undercover and plainclothes operations by the police, covert ops by the military, etc.

I find the entire magnitude of this eruption, along with its timing, quite disturbing, coming as they do after four years of undercover work and when LA has yielded its greatest fruit, when Planned Parenthood is critically wounded. Individual motives, though they be good, this has had the effect of straining gnats while babies and teens are butchered wholesale by this organization.

Certainly there is a time and place for such discussions, as that is how ethics and moral theology are done. But given the consequences in real blood, I believe this discussion to have been woefully ill-timed. And there is another aspect of this that has not been discussed, and that is the mortal sin of detraction.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

“Detraction is the unjust damaging of another’s good name by the revelation of some fault or crime of which that other is really guilty or at any rate is seriously believed to be guilty by the defamer.”

That’s something to think about, and my last word on this debate.

I’m moving on.

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