Abortion – Jimmy Akin

Getting Science and Religion Wrong (Plus COVID Vaccines)

It isn’t often that I come across an editorial filled with as much factual inaccuracy and misunderstanding as the recent one by Dr. Amesh A. Adalja.

This is striking, because he’s a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, and his editorial is on health security.

The piece is titled, “No, the New COVID Vaccine Is Not ‘Morally Compromised.’”

What’s wrong with the piece? Let’s look . . .

Pope Francis vs. U.S. Bishops?

Dr. Adalja begins by discussing the new Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine and the concerns raised about it by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He writes:

Is this group concerned about lower numerical efficacy in clinical trials? No, it seems that they have deemed the J&J vaccine “morally compromised”. The group is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and if something is “morally compromised” it is surely not the vaccine. (Notably Pope Francis has not taken such a stance).

Apart from the nasty insinuation that the bishops conference is morally compromised, what’s wrong with this is that he states Pope Francis has not taken a stand like the U.S. bishops.

Adalja bases this assertion on a news story headlined “Vatican Says Covid Vaccines ‘Morally Acceptable.’”

Here’s a piece of advice for Dr. Adalja: Don’t trust what the press says about religious topics. Always look up the original sources.

Had Dr. Adalja bothered to read the primary sources, he would have come across this document from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was authorized by Pope Francis, meaning that he put his teaching authority behind it.

The document holds that—although circumstances may permit taking vaccines like the Johnson & Johnson one—those that used cell lines derived from aborted children are morally compromised, and so the document states:

Both pharmaceutical companies and governmental health agencies are therefore encouraged to produce, approve, distribute and offer ethically acceptable vaccines that do not create problems of conscience for either health care providers or the people to be vaccinated.

So, Pope Francis takes exactly the same position as the U.S. bishops. Or rather, they’re taking the same position he is.

The Issue at Hand

Adalja then begins his case for why the Johnson & Johnson vaccine should not be considered morally compromised, so he argues that cell lines from aborted children are widely used in biotechnology and that they are used to find treatments for diseases.

These facts are not in question, but raises them does not engage the moral issue from a Catholic perspective.

The Catholic Faith holds that unborn children are people, and therefore they must be treated as such.

You could not kill an innocent person and then harvest his body for medical consumables. That is immoral, and that is what is happening with the cell lines in question.

The problem is not the cell lines themselves. It is the way they were harvested, which was—in essence—scavenging the body of a homicide victim.

If biomedicine needs cell lines to develop treatments, fine! But get them in an ethical way!

This is not impossible. There are perfectly legitimate ways of doing it. It’s just a question of being willing.

What the bishops want to see is not a banishing of cell lines from medicine.

Instead, they want to see public agencies and private companies—like Johnson & Johnson—get enough pushback that their consciences are activated, and they stop making morally tainted cell lines and replace them with ones that have been developed ethically.

Adalja Disagrees

Dr. Adalja does not recognize an unborn child as a human being. He states:

An embryo or fetus in the earlier stages of development, while harboring the potential to grow into a human being, is not the moral equivalent of a person.

Scientifically, this is nonsense. (Notice that he invokes the nonscientific category of “the moral equivalent of a person.”)

Viewed from a scientific perspective (as opposed to a faith perspective), a human being is a living human organism.

An unborn child—from the single-cell, zygote stage onward—is a living human organism:

The unborn are living (because dead fetuses don’t grow).
They are human (because they have human genetic codes).
And they are organisms (because they are organic wholes that are not part of another organism—as illustrated by the fact their genetic codes are different than those of their mothers).

Unless you want to invoke nonempirical concepts, you have to put unborn children in the same biological category as born ones, which is the category of human beings.

And unless your system of morality allows you to kill innocent human beings, you cannot kill them.

Adalja may not agree, but if he wants Catholics to disregard this purely objective viewpoint that is based on reason—and which also happens to be the teaching of their Church—he needs to provide arguments against it, which he doesn’t.

Enter the Ad Hominems

Like many who can’t produce objective arguments for their position, Adalja turns to ad hominem attacks on the Church. His overall attitude is expressed when he says:

Appeals from clerics, devoid of any need to tether their principles to this world, should not have any bearing on one’s medical decision-making.

It’s true—and irrelevant—that the bishops are clerics (as if that were a bad thing!), but they are not “devoid of any need to tether their principles to this world.”

Without invoking any nonempirical concepts, they have recognized the truth—which is entirely accessible to reason—that unborn children are human beings.

But Adalja doesn’t stop there. He then produces a brief litany of assertions that are further ad hominems.

The Dark Ages?

Adalja writes:

In the Dark Ages, the Catholic Church opposed all forms of scientific inquiry

This is factually inaccurate in the extreme. Dr. Adalja is apparently not a historian of science, for no historian of science would make such a claim.

It was—in fact—the clerical caste in the Middle Ages that contained the principal drivers of scientific inquiry, or natural philosophy, as it was then known.

Dr. Adalja should learn more about this period before he makes further assertions about it.

Allow me to recommend a good, popular level course on the subject that he should consider taking. (And so should everybody else; it’s really good.)

Lust of the Eyes?

Dr. Adalja asserts that in the Middle Ages the Church was “even castigating science and curiosity as the ‘lust of the eyes.’”

The scientific revolution didn’t occur until after the Middle Ages, so science did not exist in its present form then. Adalja’s claim that the Church was “castigating science” in the Middle Ages is thus going to be in some degree anachronistic.

But if he wants to say that “the Catholic Church” was doing this, he’s going to need to quote some official source capable of speaking for the Church—like a pope or an ecumenical council.

Yet when we click the link he has provided, we find only a statement of a single theologian: St. Augustine.

And has Adalja even understood St. Augustine?

If you read the page (from Augustine’s Confessions), you discover that the kind of curiosity he’s rejecting as trivial is the kind people have for things in theaters and circuses, about astrology, and about magic and divination. He writes:

[T]he theatres do not now carry me away, nor care I to know the courses of the stars, nor did my soul ever consult ghosts departed . . . I go not now to the circus to see a dog coursing a hare.

Those are the kinds of things Augustine considers idle curiosities.

Adalja should really read and digest the pages he’s linking.

“Because It Is Absurd”?

Adalja continues:

One early Middle Ages church father reveled in his rejection of reality and evidence, proudly declaring, “I believe because it is absurd.”

This time, Adalja gives us a link to a Wikipedia page about a quotation attributed to Tertullian.

And we have numerous problems.

First, Tertullian did not live in the “early Middle Ages.” He lived in classical antiquity.

Second, he wasn’t a Church Father. He has been denied that title because of his problematic views.

Presenting Tertullian as a reliable representative of Catholicism is like presenting Immanuel Velikovsky as a reliable representative of mainstream science.

Third—as the Wikipedia page points out—the quotation attributed to him isn’t accurate. As Wikipedia notes:

The consensus of Tertullian scholars is that the reading “I believe because it is absurd” sharply diverges from Tertullian’s own thoughts, given his placed priority on reasoned argument and rationality in his writings.

Fourth, the sentiment that Adalja tries to attribute to the Catholic Church is, in fact, rejected by the Church. As Wikipedia also notes:

The phrase does not express the Catholic Faith, as explained by Pope Benedict XVI: “The Catholic Tradition, from the outset, rejected the so-called “fideism”, which is the desire to believe against reason. Credo quia absurdum (I believe because it is absurd) is not a formula that interprets the Catholic faith.”

Did I mention that Adalja really should read and digest the pages he links?

Finishing the Litany

Adalja finishes his litany of ad hominems by saying:

This organization, which tyrannized scientists such as Galileo and murdered the Italian cosmologist Bruno, today has shown itself to still harbor anti-science sentiments in its ranks.

The Galileo situation was much more complex that Adalja presents it—as acknowledged by Galileo scholars and historians of science. (Really, Dr. Adalja! Check out that history of science course I linked earlier!)

The case of Giordano Bruno is complicated by the fact that the needed part of the records of his trial has been lost. But his cosmological views were not the key issue. As the Wikipedia page Dr. Adalja links observes:

Starting in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges of denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno’s pantheism was not taken lightly by the church, nor was his teaching of the transmigration of the soul and reincarnation.

And, needless to say, the Catholic Church would not today support what happened to Bruno, as illustrated by its stance on the death penalty.

Back to the Future

All of this raises the issue of the extent to which any of this matters.

Rather than providing evidence that would undermine the Catholic Church’s position on unborn chidren, Dr. Adalja has been giving us a litany of historical ad hominems that don’t engage the issue.

His project at this point is simply to attack the Catholic Church rather than seeking to engage and interact with its views.

Yet—despite the problems with the historical examples he cites—let’s grant him all of them. Let’s suppose that things really were as bad as he says.

What does that have to do with today?

The Catholic Church clearly has a pro-science attitude in the present. Consider this quotation from the Catechism, which is just one among many:

The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers (CCC 283).

The Church runs its own astronomical observatory, as well as a special organization dedicated to the appreciation of science—the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Members of the academy include numerous distinguished scientists, including many Nobel laureates, and they are appointed to the academy based on their contributions to science, without respect to whether they are Catholic or whether they even believe in God.

Members have included famous scientists such as Niels Bohr, Alexander Fleming, Werner Heisenberg, Stephen Hawking, Max Planck, Ernest Rutherford, and Erwin Schrodinger.

Given all this evidence, it is clear that the charge that the Church is “against” science is sweeping and unjust hyperbole.

Conclusion

Dr. Adalja’s conclusion that the Church “has shown itself to still harbor anti-science sentiments in its ranks” is a bit underwhelming.

Every group of humans harbors “anti-science” sentiments in its ranks. Even scientists sometimes harbor “anti-science” views.

So what?

The question is whether a particular instance involves such views, and Adalja has done nothing to show that the Catholic Church’s assessment that unborn children are human beings is scientifically false.

Indeed, he cannot do so without invoking nonempirical—and thus nonscientific—criteria, because they objectively are living human organisms.

What Dr. Adalja does do is provide a compelling illustration of how to get science and religion wrong.

Instead of entering into the thought of the bishops he is criticizing, identifying the relevant, underlying premises, and then interacting with them:

He hasn’t done his research (the bishops are basing their position on Pope Francis’s)
He makes bare assertions about unborn children without providing evidence for them (i.e., that they only have the potential to grow into a human being, when they already are living human organisms)
He turns to a litany of historically oriented ad hominems that he (a) gets wrong and (b) do not reflect the Church’s stand on science

This is not how the dialogue between science and religion should proceed.

People of whatever perspective should seek to enter and understand the thought of the other before attempting to critique it. In other words, they should do their homework.

In particular, they should avoid ad hominem attacks on the other.

It’s both unfair and irrelevant to use ad hominems to attack and dismiss religious claims, just as it would be unfair and irrelevant to use ad hominems to attack and dismiss scientific claims (which could easily be done if that were desired).

Let’s hope that lessons can be learned from this unfortunate example.

VIDEO: Unborn babies struggle in womb!

jacobesau — Jacob and Esau struggled in the womb. Now new video shows what this looked like.

According to Genesis, Jacob and Esau struggled with each other while they were still in the womb.

Apparently, it was quite a struggle!

Many women pregnant with twins have experienced the same thing, but now we have motion video of unborn children doing just this.

Here’s the story . . . and the video.

Jacob and Esau

First, here’s the biblical story of Jacob and Esau:

Genesis 25

21 Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was childless. The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant.

22 The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, “Why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord.

23 The Lord said to her,

“Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples from within you will be separated;
one people will be stronger than the other,
and the older will serve the younger.”

24 When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb (NIV).

Other translations render Rebekah’s question a bit differently, and in ways that bring out the intensity of the struggle:

But the children jostled each other in the womb so much that she exclaimed, “If it is like this, why go on living!” (NAB:RE).

The children struggled together within her; and she said, “If it is thus, why do I live?” (RSV).

Why Do They Do This?

The particularly intense struggle between Jacob and Esau may have had prophetic overtones, as Rebekah learned upon consulting the Lord, but this is not a phenomenon unique to them.

Lots of twins appear to struggle in the womb.

Why?

KEEP READING.

Talking about rape: What pro-life politicians desperately need to know

Ethel_Waters_crop — Ethel Waters was conceived by rape. Should she have been killed by abortion?

Recently a couple of pro-life political candidates have made dramatic, embarrassing statements about rape.

The first was Todd Akin of Missouri (no relation, as far as I know), who referred to the odds that a woman will have a baby if she has been subjected to “legitimate rape.”

GAH!

More recently, Richard Mourdock of Indiana seemed to suggest that sometimes “God intended” rape.

GAH!

It’s clear that some pro-life politicians need to learn better how to talk about this subject. So let’s take a look at it and see what lessons there are . . .

“Legitimate Rape”???

Reportedly, when asked if women who became pregnant as the result of a rape, Todd Akin replied:

Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.

Akin’s first problem–or at least the first huge problem–is that he used the phrase “legitimate rape.” This appeared to suggest that there is such a thing as legitimate rape, which is morally repugnant.

Of course, a moment’s reflection would lead one to realize what he actually meant. By “legitimate rape” he presumably meant actual rape–forcing sex on an unwilling participant.

A contrast to this, presumably, would be cases that are sometimes classified as “statutory rape,” in which the statutes of the local criminal code classify an act as rape because one of the parties is not old enough to legally consent to the act. In fact, both of the parties may be willing participants (or one may not be), but in any event one party is deemed unable to legally consent by reason of age.

Akin may also have had in mind situations in which a woman is ambiguous about consent or where she later decides to repudiate her involvement in the act.

All of this leads to Akin’s second huge problem: Political opponents and people coming from a pro-abortion perspective will not go through the mental exercise of trying to figure all this out. They will simply attack.

If they do acknowledge that he wasn’t actually asserting that some forms of rape are morally legitimate then they will paint him as dismissing what happens to women in other situations (i.e., that statutory rape, ambiguous consent, or repudiated consent “don’t matter”)–or even just accusing rape victims of lying.

Then there is the matter that Akin was trying to assert, which is that a woman’s body has certain in-built defenses such that, if she is forcibly compelled to have sex, make it unlikely she will have a baby.

Although some pro-life leaders have asserted that this is true, others have challenged the claim.

This leads to Akin’s third huge problem: By citing a medically disputed claim he gets the issue off the need to protect children conceived of rape and onto the merits of the claim, with other pro-lifers taking a contrary position.

This allows the enemies of life to dismiss pro-lifers (including Akin) as scientific illiterates who are so driven by ideology that they make preposterous claims repudiated by others of their own camp.

KEEP READING.

Science Proves the Unborn Are Human Beings

unbornbabyat16weeks — An unborn child at 16 weeks. Is it just a "religious matter" whether you can kill this little guy?

Abortion is a controversial issue, and at the center of the controversy is the question of whether the unborn are human beings. If they are, then abortion kills a human being.

Many people think that this is somehow a religious issue and involves religious questions like when the soul arrives.

Some people deliberately try to frame the issue this way in order to shut down rational discussion of the subject.

So let’s set the question of religious aside entirely.

Instead, let’s look at something we should all be able to agree upon: science.

What does science say about whether the unborn are human beings?

CLICK HERE TO VIEW VIDEO ON YOUTUBE.

What Next?

Incidentally, if you’re interested in this type of information, I would invite you to check out my Secret Information Club.

If you’re not familiar with it, the Secret Information Club is a free service that I operate by email.

I send out information on a variety of fascinating topics connected with the Catholic faith.

The very first thing you’ll get if you sign up is an “interview” I did with Pope Benedict on the book of Revelation. What I did was compose questions about the book of Revelation and take the answers from his writings.

He has a lot of interesting things to say!

If you’d like to find out what they are, just sign up at www.SecretInfoClub.com or use this handy sign-up form:

Just email me at jimmy@secretinfoclub.com if you have any difficulty.

In the meantime, what do you think?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

40 Days for DEATH!

clergy4choicegroup — Members of the Clergy for Choice group

Lifesite News is reporting that a Planned Parenthood located in Humboldt County, California has begun a prayer campaign mocking the well-known 40 Days for Life campaign, which seeks to save children’s lives from abortion.

The Planned Parenthood effort–named “40 Days of Prayer: Supporting Women Everywhere”–involves the efforts of local clergy who belong to “Clergy for Choice,” which is “an official subcommittee of Six Rivers Planned Parenthood.”

One element in the campaign is a flyer offering prayer intentions for the 40 day campaign. These intentions were authored by another organization named FaithAloud, whose website (faithaloud.org) bills it as “The Religious and Ethical Voice for Reproductive Justice” and says it works toward “Overcoming the Religious Stigma of Abortion and Sexuality.” (Sexuality carries a stigma? Who knew?)

Among the intentions for the individual days are these:

Day 4: Today we give thanks for the doctors who
provide quality abortion care, and pray that they may
be kept safe.

Day 7: Today we pray for the 45 million American
women who have had safe, legal abortions. May they
stand tall and refuse shame.

Day 8: Today we pray for elected ofﬁcials, that they
may always support a woman’s right to make her own
medical decisions.

Day 14: Today we pray for Christians everywhere
to embrace the loving model of Jesus in the way he
refused to shame women.

Day 18: Today we pray for all the staff at abortion
clinics around the nation. May they be daily
conﬁrmed in the sacred care that they offer women.

Day 27: Today we give thanks for abortion providers
around the nation whose concern for women is the
driving force in their lives.

Day 34: Today we give thanks for abortion escorts
who guide women safely through the hostile gauntlets
of protesters.

Day 36: Today we pray for the families we’ve chosen.
May they know the blessing of choice.

Day 40: Today we give thanks and celebrate that
abortion is still safe and legal.

KEEP READING.

Don’t Be Deceived! Evil Obama Policy Now Even MORE Evil!

Attention, Catholics, Protestants, and everyone who cares about the causes of life, religious freedom, and freedom of conscience!

Do not be suckered by the “accommodation” announced today by President Obama and evil spokeswoman Kathleen Sebelius!

Under the guise of making room for religious conscience, the President has actually made the policy worse—far worse.

Here’s how . . .

The new policy mandates that insurance companies offer free sterilization, contraception, and abortion-causing drugs as part of their policies. According to President Obama himself:

Under the rule, women will still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive services — no matter where they work. So that core principle remains. But if a woman’s employer is a charity or a hospital that has a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan, the insurance company — not the hospital, not the charity — will be required to reach out and offer the woman contraceptive care free of charge, without co-pays and without hassles.

Got that?

That’s worse than before.

Under the previous evil policy if you worked for an exempt organization—say, a church—then your employer could offer you an insurance plan that did not include sterilization, contraception, and abortion drugs.

Now there will be no such plans.

Remember that “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it” promise? It was a lie then, but it’s even more of a lie now. Whether you like it or not, your healthcare plan must be modified to include sterilization, contraception, and abortion drugs.

So the policy is actually worse than before. It’s expanding evil services under the guise of accommodating religious freedom.

That’s why abortion groups are cheering it.

It’s also deceptive, and here’s why . . .

The idea that it will be insurance companies that pay for such services is just a shell game. Where are insurance companies going to get the money to pay for these services? They aren’t the Federal Reserve. They aren’t empowered to create money out of nothing the way the Federal Reserve is.

If they’re going to pay doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to provide these things then they are going to pay for them with money they got from someone else.

Who else?

Why! The very same churches, church-related organizations, and individuals who are otherwise paying.

That’s right. That means that now the churches are being asked to pay for the very same services that they were not paying for under the previous policy, because previously they could offer their employees insurance plans that did not include these services. Now the plans will include these services, and the churches are paying for the policies with the legal fiction that the insurance company rather than they are paying for the evil services—unless the insurance company offers the organization a lower rate on the policy, in which case the burden of paying for the abortion drugs and other services is just sloshed around through different parts of their internal spreadsheets but is ultimately still borne by those paying for the policies.

It’s just a shell game.

And this is why this should be of concern not just to Catholics but to our Protestant brethren and our non-Christian friends who share a concern about the cause of life.

What this means is that we all will be forced to pay for these services, but with the payment trail hidden.

In effect President Obama is insisting that the entire American people must pay for abortion drugs, sterilizations, and contraception, only he is having the insurance companies “launder” the money so that we don’t feel like we’re being forced to pay for them.

So, even if you’re not a Catholic, even if you don’t oppose contraception, but if you do care about not funding abortion—or even if you just care about religious liberty and freedom of conscience—then you need to oppose this plan.

Do not be a sucker.

Don’t fall for this.

And don’t let it die over the weekend (notice it was part of the Friday news dump, so come Monday the Obama administration can try to dismiss it as “old news”).

TAKE ACTION HERE!

So what do you think? Will Obama be able to sucker enough people on this one?

Spokeswoman of Evil Speaks!

Recently we peered into The Mind Of Evil in an attempt to understand what the Obama administration was thinking when it imposed its draconian contraception requirement.

Now we get a little more insight into the Mind of Evil from evil spokeswoman herself, Kathleen Sebelius, who writes an editorial in USA Today with the preposterous title “Contraception rule respects religion.”

Let’s see what she has to say . . .

One of the key benefits of the 2010 health care law is that many preventive services are now free for most Americans with insurance. Vaccinations for children, cancer screenings for adults and wellness visits for seniors are all now covered in most plans with no expensive co-pays or deductibles. So is the full range of preventive health services recommended for women by the highly respected Institute of Medicine, including contraception.

I don’t know who the generically-named Institute of Medicine is. Perhaps their offices are located next door to the Superfriends’ generically-named Hall of Justice. However, the Institute of Medicine ain’t so highly respected by me if they’re recommending contraception for women as a preventive health service.

Children are not a disease, and they do not need to be prevented the way cancer or pneumonia do. While some women might have medical conditions that contraindicate pregnancy, that does not justify contraception as a means of avoiding it, and certainly the idea of recommending contraception to women in general is reflective of agenda rather than medicine.

Today, virtually all American women use contraception at some point in their lives.

This is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Virtually all women—and men—do stupid and immoral things at some point in their lives. That does not mean these things aren’t stupid and immoral.

And we have a large body of medical evidence showing it has significant benefits for their health, as well as the health of their children.

HUH?

What kind of Orwellian doublethink is this?

How does contraception—indiscriminately considered—improve the health of women or their children? The Pill, Norplant, IUD’s, condoms, etc. all work by different mechanisms and have different effects on the bodies of the people using them. The only effect they share in common is that they prevent pregnancy. If the claim is that avoiding pregnancy itself is a health benefit then it’s hard to see how that could benefit a woman’s children—since without pregnancy they wouldn’t exist. And as to health benefits to the mother, even if we set aside the idea that we’re dealing with junk science filtered through an anti-child, pro-loose-sex ideology, the same supposed benefits from not-being-pregnant can be achieved without contraception.

But birth control can also be quite expensive, costing an average of $600 a year, which puts it out of reach for many women whose health plans don’t cover it.

Well, the cost is going to depend entirely on what kind of contraception you are using. I haven’t checked the price of condoms, but unless nymphomania or satyriasis is involved, I imagine their use would not cost $600 a year.

Further, abstinence and NFP are free.

And nothing that the evil spokeswoman has said has established that contraception is a good thing or that it should be used.

The public health case for making sure insurance covers contraception is clear.

No. This is nonsense.

There is no “public health case” for making sure that insurance covers contraception because we haven’t even shown that widespread use of contraception is good or that it benefits public health. All we have are assertions without supporting evidence, and with no attention given to the moral character of the question.

Proceeding from the purely secular level, there is this fact: If people have easy access to avoiding pregnancy then a host of ills follow, including promiscuous, irresponsible sex, the treating of women as sex-objects, the juvenilizing of men, marital breakup, increased infertility, and the demographic winter caused by people having fewer children.

Even pagan Roman emperors like Augustus recognized that if you want a population to maintain itself, you can’t let it slide into declining birth rates. When this is a danger, people need to be incentivized to have more children (which Augustus did in a variety of ways). They should not be disincentivized by passing out free contraceptives!

And then there’s this: By passing out free contraceptives you create a false sense of security regarding pregnancy and thus encourage more promiscuous sex, but the very same attitude of irresponsibility leads to greater contraceptive failure (because the irresponsible don’t use the conception consistently and correctly), leading to more accidental pregnancies, leading to a greater number of abortions.

Since abortion kills a child, there is actually a negative impact on “public health” just due to the accidental-pregnancy-leading-to-abortion effect of contraception right there.

But we also recognize that many religious organizations have deeply held beliefs opposing the use of birth control.

At least your ideology has not so blinded you that you fail to recognize this.

That’s why in the rule we put forward, we specifically carved out from the policy religious organizations that primarily employ people of their own faith. This exemption includes churches and other houses of worship, and could also include other church-affiliated organizations.

Here we have half-truth and deception.

The preceding sentence noted that “many religious organizations” have “deeply held religious beliefs opposing the use of birth control.” Fine.

But the new sentence says that the policy exempts *not* those religious organizations that have such beliefs but rather “religious organizations that primarily employ people of their own faith.”

There is a difference between the two. If you really wanted to protect religious freedom you would exempt religious organizations on the basis of their belief, not what proportion of their employees share their faith.

And this is not the only restriction Sebelius fails to mention. The exemption also requires that the institutions primarily serve people who share their faith, which leaves out a huge number of schools, hospitals, charities, etc. It doesn’t matter how deeply held the beliefs of the organization are. If they reach out to more than a certain proportion of people who do not share their faith then they are required to violate their deeply held beliefs.

And the situation is worse than that! But let this suffice to show the game that Evil Spokeswoman is playing through her selective presentation of information.

In choosing this exemption, we looked first at state laws already in place across the country.

So what? States can make law for good or ill. That doesn’t say anything about what policies the executive branch of the federal government should implement. If a bunch of states have a particular law, that’s no reason to impose it by executive branch policy on a national basis. If a bunch of states required people to jump off bridges, should the executive branch impose that nationally?

Of the 28 states that currently require contraception to be covered by insurance, eight have no religious exemption at all.

So . . . barely more than half of the states require contraception to be covered by insurance . . . and of those who do less than a third have a policy that is worse than yours . . . and all told less than 20% of states employ this even worse policy . . . and this justifies your policy how?

The religious exemption in the administration’s rule is the same as the exemption in Oregon, New York and California.

Assuming this is true (do these states all, really, use identical wording in their laws?), the fact that you’ve got 6% of the states agreeing with you is not really a particularly strong argument for your case. Not if you’re basing it on a nose-count of what state policy is.

It’s important to note that our rule has no effect on the longstanding conscience clause protections for providers, which allow a Catholic doctor, for example, to refuse to write a prescription for contraception.

So Catholic doctors aren’t required to violate their conscience. Why, then, are Catholic hospital administrators and board members?

Nor does it affect an individual woman’s freedom to decide not to use birth control.

I am so relieved to hear that the Obama administration does not favor forcing contraceptive pills down women’s throats. Even China doesn’t do that (normally). It’s perfectly happy as long as you don’t get pregnant more than once. Abstinence and NFP are okay with them. They don’t actually force you to take the Pill if you’ve already had a child. It’s so wonderful that the Obama administration isn’t proposing a policy that would force women to use contraceptives. Adding this line to her editorial sure makes Sebelius’s case more convincing.

And the president and this administration continue to support existing conscience protections.

In some minimal, Orwellian, politically convenient sense, I’m sure this is true.

This is not an easy issue.

To the contrary: This is an extremely easy issue: DON’T MANDATE CONTRACEPTION COVERAGE AT ALL, AND IF YOU DO, DON’T REQUIRE RELIGIOUS ENTITIES LIKE SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS AND CHARITIES TO VIOLATE THEIR CONSCIENCES ON THIS POINT.

Only blind, inflexible ideology could make a simple issue like this appear hard.

But by carving out an exemption for religious organizations based on policies already in place, we are working to strike the right balance between respecting religious beliefs and increasing women’s access to critical preventive health services.

Well, you failed to “strike the balance” this time.

Next time, try not to be so nakedly totalitarian in your approach. Try actually respecting the consciences of people in general instead of the most-narrowly-construed-class-you-think-you-can’t-politically-afford-to-subject-to-the-policy.

And don’t have the evil spokeswoman talk to us like we’re idiots, either.

Those are my thoughts.

What do you think?

How to Solve Moral Dilemmas (Plus: How to Recognize Hypocrisy)

There are many times in life where we're confronted with moral dilemmas. It seems like all of our options are bad–even sinful. But are they really? What are we supposed to do in these situations? How can we solve the dilemma?

For example, suppose your child is desperately sick and the only cure is one that was derived from unborn babies who were killed for medical research. Can you use the vaccine to save your child's life? Does doing so mean you're cooperating with the culture of death?

And if you use the cure, does that make you a moral hypocrite? How can we assess charges of hypocrisy?

These are among the questions we explore in this week's episode of the Jimmy Akin Podcast!

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SHOW NOTES:

JIMMY AKIN PODCAST EPISODE 021 (11/20/11)

* DARRIN ASKS ABOUT MORAL DILEMMAS, EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH, & HYPOCRISY

1 Cor. 10:13: "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it."

Instruction Dignitas Personae (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), section 35.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20081208_dignitas-personae_en.html

"Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, those attempts which he neglects himself" (Samuel Johnson, The Rambler No. 14).

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Joh1Ram.html

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“Darn Tootin’!” Obama Brags on His Thuggish Contraception Policy

You know that thuggish contraception policy that President Obama’s administration recently proposed as part of their implementation of ObamaCare?

The one whose public comment period ended last Friday?

The one that the U.S. bishops were frantically trying to get Catholics to contact Health and Human Services and oppose?

The one that the bishops’ attorneys said “represents an unprecedented attack on religious liberty”?

The one that they also said involves a mandate that is “unprecedented in federal law and more radical than any state contraceptive mandate enacted to date”?

The one that would require many Catholic agencies to stop offering insurance to their employees because it would require their insurance policies to cover contraception?

The one that would force countless Catholics to buy insurance plans that fund contraception?

Yeah, that’s the one.

You know what?

President Obama is really proud of it

Here’s an exchange that took place at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in St. Louis on Tuesday, according to the official White House transcript:

We repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell” so that every single American can serve their country, regardless of who they love. (Applause.) And, yes, we passed health care reform because no one in America should go bankrupt because somebody in their family gets sick. (Applause.)

Insurance companies can’t drop your coverage for no good reason. They won’t be able to deny your coverage because of preexisting conditions. Think about what that means for families all across America. Think about what it means for women.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Birth control—

THE PRESIDENT: Absolutely. You’re stealing my line. (Applause.) Breast cancer, cervical cancer are no longer preexisting conditions. No longer can insurance companies discriminate against women just because you guys are the ones who have to give birth. (Laughter.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Darn right!

THE PRESIDENT: Darn tooting. (Laughter.) They have to cover things like mammograms and contraception as preventive care, no more out-of-pocket costs.

To put this in perspective, here’s some perspective from CNSnews:

The proposed regulation, designed to implement part of Obamacare, will require all private health plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives—including those that cause abortions—without charging any fees or co-pay. These regulations were drawn to implement a provision in Obama’s health-care law that calls for all health-care plans to cover “preventive services.”

Combined with Obamacare’s mandate that all individuals must buy health insurance, the “preventive services” regulation would require all American Catholics to buy health care plans that pay for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortions—all of which violate Catholic moral teaching.

A “religious exemption” in the regulation is so narrowly drawn that it does not include any lay Catholics, or any Catholic hospitals, charitable organizations, or colleges or universities. Thus, many major Catholic institutions in the United States would be forced to choose between dropping health insurance coverage for their employees and students or violating the moral teachings of their own church.

And here’s more on how it would impact Catholic organizations.

So let’s think about this for a moment.

Obama wants no out-of-pocket costs for contraception as “preventative care.” What exactly is being prevented? The conception (or at least the successful delivery) of babies.

Now the thing about babies is, they cost money up front, but then they also generate jobs as a result.

What does President Obama say he wants to create?

Jobs.

Okay, and then once the babies grow up they go out on their own and work, becoming people who contribute to the economy, which means . . . more jobs.

They also pay taxes.

What else does President Obama want?

More tax revenue.

And some of the taxes that the now-grown-up-babies would pay would be Social Security taxes used to care for the elderly. Social Security is currently broken and to be fixed must have an increase of revenue or a reduction of benefits or both. The taxes paid by the now-grown-up-babies would represent an increase of revenue for Social Security.

What else does President Obama want?

A way to increase revenue for Social Security.

So by his policy of making contraception easier to obtain (no out-of-pocket costs) as “preventative care,” President Obama seems to want to prevent the very things he says he desires.

This is one of those classic “sin makes you stupid” situations, isn’t it.

What do you think?

How Does Vice President Biden Really Feel About China’s One-Child Policy?

So Joe Biden has caused an uproar, and forced a White House correction/retraction, by his remarks on China’s draconian one-child policy while touring China.

Is anyone surprised by this?

Our vice president regularly produces gaffes that cause uproars and force White House correction/retractions. This is just par for the course.

So what did he say this time?

According to this news story, he began commenting on China’s one-child policy in response to a question when the vice president said:

“You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family,” Biden said, according to the official transcript of the event. “The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.”

If all you heard was a press report saying that Biden had defended or refused to second-guess the policy then quite a bit of outrage would be warranted. You might well react by saying something like,

“Really, Mr. Vice President? You’re not second-guessing a policy that has resulted in untold numbers of forced abortions, forced sterilizations, outrageous fines or even jail time for families that dare to defy the law, and a gender imbalance crisis?” the Susan B. Anthony List said on its blog.

Yet it is clear if you read the actual vice presidential quotation that there is more going on here than a simple defense or endorsement. Biden is actually, in his own, clumsy, gaffe-tastic way, criticizing the policy.

Look at the core of his statement:

“You have no safety net. Your policy has been one … of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.

That’s clearly criticism. And criticism that is rather blunt, impolitic, and undiplomatic at that!

In other words, the criticism is not the kind of thing a high government official says in public when touring a foreign country, especially a touchy, totalitarian one where this will be perceived as an insult of the highest order and possibly even an incitement to rebellion.

Here in low-key America, wouldn’t have anything like the reaction that the Chinese government would to such a statement, but imagine how ticked off people here would be if the Chinese vice president (or whatever the equivalent office is) came to America and then said things like:

“You have no environmental concern. Your policy has been one … of allowing indiscriminate breeding in each family. The result being that you’re in a position where you are consuming an unacceptable share of the earth’s resources. Not sustainable.

There would be a lot of irate responses to such a comment, as there certainly would be to Vice President Biden’s criticism of China’s one-child policy.

And so ‘long about the time that he was finishing the statement “You have no safety net,” several million neurons in the vice presidential prefrontal cortex (or wherever) began firing vigorously, desperately trying to signal the brain system as a whole that a serious gaffe was in progress.

This time the little guys managed to carry it off and get other neurological modules out of their usual torpor so that they began flailing about for some way to prevent, or at least blunt, the effect of what the vice president was saying to the Chinese.

And so, after a valiant struggle, the following words were inserted into the second vice presidential sentence:

. . . which I fully understand—I’m not second-guessing—

Does he mean those words?

Of course not! He clearly is second guessing the policy. He is in the very act of audibly, publicly second guessing the policy.

He’s just blabbering some backtracking politeness to soften the blow of what he is otherwise committed to saying because he can’t think of a better way out of the situation.

And everybody knows that.

Including the Chinese.

So, I find it hard to get mad at the vice president over this. In fact, I actually like the fact that he put the Chinese government on the hotseat regarding its one-child policy in the overly blunt, gaffe-omatic way that he did.

Now if only he and his political allies would wake up to the dangers of lowered birth rates here in America.

What do you think?

BTW, here’s Wikipedia’s entry on the Chinese one-child policy.