Category: Abortion

Last night I was e-mailed a press release from the family of Katelyn Sills, the plucky anti-murdrer student who was expelled from Loretto High School after her involvement in exposing a teacher who was assisting others in the act of committing murder. Here’s the text of the press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 15th, 2005

Submitted by Katelyn, Wynette, and Ed Sills

RE: Request for Public Retraction and Apology from Loretto Administration
for their defamatory statements about our family

Loretto High School is an outstanding college preparatory school for young women that we long desired our daughters to attend and from which our family has three alumnae.  We have generously and loyally supported Loretto High School both financially and through dedicated volunteer efforts, since our daughter’s enrollment in 2004.  We have also encouraged many other families to enroll.  Katelyn has enthusiastically dedicated her time in numerous school activities, including Student Council, Choir, and most recently the Recruitment Team, which visits area 8th graders to invite them to join the LHS community.  Sister Helen Timothy, President of LHS, is a very well respected administrator within whom we entrusted our daughter’s academic future.

However, with regards to this recent situation, Loretto High School administration has misrepresented the facts of this case, defaming our family’s reputation, culminating in punitively and vindictively expelling our daughter, with absolutely no prior warning.  This has been a very sad and distressing experience for EVERY member of the Loretto community.  We acknowledge the negative impact this situation has had, but we are not to blame.  For over eight weeks, we have simply desired that an incompatible hiring be handled in a discreet, compassionate manner, so that the integrity and reputation of LHS would be unblemished.  In contrast, LHS administration has provided false and defamatory information to staff, students, parents, and media, against our family. This in itself has brought unnecessary negative attention to the school.

On Friday, November 4th, our attorney, Eric Grant, represented us by respectfully asking the Loretto High School administration to publicly retract their statements and apologize for their vindictive actions.  Unfortunately, Loretto administration refused to do so.  It is now time to let the truth be known.  We have disclosed all information so that everyone can see exactly what we did and why we did it, along with all correspondence from President Sr. Helen Timothy. The documents are available to the public via Katelyn’s blog www.standupandspeakout.blogspot.com so that each of you can read for yourself and decide whether we have acted with utmost discretion and integrity.

Despite our polite and respectful requests for a meeting, phone calls were not returned for the last eight weeks.  Throughout our daughter’s enrollment at Loretto High School, our family has NEVER been able to meet with President Sister Helen Timothy, nor talk with her on the phone.  Instead, our entire communication with Sister Helen was done via email, and is now available to the public.  Other than one disappointing phone conversation with Principal Sister Barbara Nelson (contents of which will also be published), Mrs. Sills has not had any contact with any LHS staff member regarding this matter.  Even on the blog, our family has expressed nothing derogatory towards the staff of LHS, but in contrast, you will see several hundred comments from Loretto students, parents, and alumnae towards us, which are unkind and undeserved.

We do not seek re-admission to LHS, for clearly it is an unsuitable environment for this Catholic family who practices our faith and values the sanctity of human life.  Also, at this time we do not plan to sue for damages, though it would be appropriate to do so and highly likely to succeed due to the administration’s vindictive and untruthful statements.  Instead, we simply desire for the truth to be told, for Loretto administration to retract their defamatory statements and for them to offer us a public apology.  We have asked Loretto administration to join us in mediation and arbitration so that litigation can be avoided, but unfortunately, they have not agreed.

We continue to ask for prayers for the entire Loretto High School community and for our family during this difficult time.   Once the truth is told, followed by a retraction and apology by the Loretto administration, reconciliation can then take place, healing occur, and both parties can then move on.

Note in case it moves: THE POST ON KATELYN’S BLOG DEALING WITH THESE MATTERS IS HERE.
 

Given the reproductive preferences of many atheists, the atheist dating service I linked earlier is not likely to be a major threat to civilization.

I mean, it’s not like it’s going to produce a world awash in atheists or anything.

Mankind always has been and will remain a religious species.

Some atheists, though, have come to recognize at least part of the truth of the pro-child mentality that is more common in religious circles.

Some are even pro-life.

A reader writes:

I found an interesting site devoted to the furtherance of the Pro-Life
movement. It’s run by Matthew Wallace, aka the Compleat Heretic. It’s the
official site for the Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League, or AAPL.

http://www.godlessprolifers.org/home.html

Here’s the list of members: http://www.godlessprolifers.org/members.html

It’s really interesting to read the "Nontheist postion" and then the
"Pro-Life position" of each member.

Indeed!

After putting up a world map of abortion law last week, some commenters expressed a desire for a map of abortions by percentage (i.e., which countries had the highest abortion rates rather than the most permissive laws).

One helpful commenter posted a link to such a map, so here it is!

One thing ot note about this map is that it doesn’t have abortion reporting from many countries, particularly in South America and Africa. This may be because the makers of the map did’t have statistics available to them or because these countries don’t keep good abortion statistics (perhaps because it’s illegal in many of these countries and many abortions/crimes go unreported).

Note that on this map the U.S. is broken down by state as well.

SOURCE MAPS.

MORE DATA.

Earlier I wanted to see where abortions are legal and illegal in the world, so I Googled up the following map:

What do these colors mean?

Key:
Green	Abortion never legal, or legal only when necessary to save the life of the mother or protect her physical health
Yellow	Abortion legal in "hard cases", such as rape, incest, and/or deformed child.
Red	Abortion legal for social reasons (e.g. mother says she can’t afford a child), or to protect the mother’s "mental health" (definitions and requirements vary).
Purple	Abortion legal at any time during pregnancy for any reason.

As you can see, some place in the world are really hurting, while others are suprisingly pro-life.

Much more info

AT THE SOURCE.

 

Katelyn Sills writes:

As of Saturday, October 29th, I was given official notice by express mail that I am expelled from Loretto High School.
This was given completely without forewarning, without a meeting, and
without a chance to say goodbye. My family is now seeking legal advice,
and more details will follow.

SOURCE.

BACKGROUND.

LEGAL ADVICE: Sue–if at all possible. Loads of pro-life lawyers would do this totally pro bono. Take recourse to the diocese as well.

CHT to the reader who e-mailed!

Okay, so there was this drama teacher at Loretto High School in Sacramento, California. Loretto is an all-girls Catholic high school, and it employs teachers from different faith backgrounds (i.e., Catholic and non-Catholic).

It turned out that it’s drama teacher (who happens to be non-Catholic, though that doesn’t make any difference) is an assistant murderess. In other words, she helps other people commit murder.

When this was discovered by one plucky, anti-murder student at Loretto, her family got involved, reported it to the bishop–with photos as proof–and the bishop ordered that the murder-assisting drama teacher be dismissed.

GO BISH!

Now, the Sacramento Bee (the local liberal newsrag) decided to do a piece on the story outing the anti-murder family publicly and using a variety of the standard journalistic tricks to portray the family’s and the bishop’s actions as hard and unfeeling toward the assistant murderess since there are a lot of people in Sacramento (and the school) who support murder.

Her family now having been outed, the plucky anti-murder student is now free to talk about all the details on her blog–including details left out by the Bee’s sting piece.

This has attracted a lot of ugly evil whacko murder-supporters to the student’s combox.

So may I suggest that you head over yonder and

GET THE STORY

and leave the plucky anti-murder student some positive reinforcement in her combox?

GO PLUCKY ANTI-MURDER STUDENT! BEST OF LUCK TO YOU IN ALL YOUR EFFORTS!

(Oh, and CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)

One of the great frustrations of pro-life advocates is that the mainstream media consistently shades the abortion debate in favor of those who advocate a "right" to abortion. As but one example of many, pro-lifers are "anti-abortion," even if opposition to abortion is only one of the fronts in the Right to Life battle; abortion advocates are, on the other hand, "pro-choice," even though the term gives no indication that the "choice" for which they lobby is for the choice to kill children.

One pro-life site has put together a helpful guide to the language issues, titled Coming to Terms: A Pro-Life Semantics Guide:

Those who govern the culture’s language govern the culture. Why so? Because words shape ideas and form the way people think. Put simply, words teach. Unfortunately, those who govern the language today are the mass media in America who are enemy #1 of vulnerable human life. Their semantics are why so many have come to think that killing itself is a human ‘right.’

"At least five different terms exist in the media’s lexicon for killing, such as abortion ‘rights,’ ‘right’ to the body, ‘right’ to choose, women’s ‘rights,’ privacy ‘rights,’ and reproductive ‘rights.’ At the same time, the most fundamental right of all, to life itself is censored by them, erasing it from public thought. Pope John Paul, spoke on this grave moral evil in his encyclical The Gospel of Life [Evangelium Vitae].

"’The moral conscience, both individual and social, is today subjected, also as a result of the penetrating influence of the media, to an extremely serious and mortal danger: that of confusion between good and evil precisely in relation to the fundamental right to life…’ #24."

"Friend, the culture war is largely a war of words and no one fights it better than the media elite. Better than anyone they know that if you want to change the way people think, just change the words. Yet verbal engineering applies to us as well. Using honest vocabulary is vital to restore protection for life. Terminology that devalues it is explained in this guide. Honest phrasing is given to restore its dignity."

The guide goes on to compile a list of words commonly used in the abortion debate and then offers alternative word choices to clarify what the euphemisms hide (e.g., abortion "clinic" v. abortion "site"). We could quibble with some of the suggestions (e.g., using "abortionist" as a replacement for "doctor"; like it or not, many doctors are abortionists and abortion is only a subset of their medical practice), and with the advisability of using some of the suggestions in all circumstances (such as when attempting to engage abortion advocates in discussion of the issues).

Despite certain deficiencies, though, the guide is useful in demonstrating the scope of the problem of how language whitewashes the abomination that is abortion.

A reader writes:

Does it matter if the writers of the Constitution/Amendment define or understood the word "life" in "…right to life…" to mean from the moment of conception? That seems pretty likely to me, though I haven’t done any research. In such a case a Catholic (or merely "good") judge would be required to protect life from the moment of conception. I don’t think we *have* to play by their rules.

Perhaps in a generation we may have judges who will interpret the constitution in that way?

Perhaps, but it’s not a given that originalist judges would read the Constitution in this way.

While it’s true that the Fifth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution provides that no one shall "be
deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of
law," it is not a slam dunk that the framers or ratifiers of the amendment would have understood life as beginning at conception.

There was still a lot of overhang from the time when bad embryology thought that children were not alive until "quickening" (lit, "making alive" but interpreted as when the mother first feels the baby kick) or Aristotle’s 40/80 day business.

As a result, when the amendment was passed (1791) abortion was generally legal in the United States.

It wasn’t until the mid-1800s when better embryology revealed that children were definitively alive from conception, and American physicians began lobbying their state legislatures to make abortion illegal. That happened in every state of the union and stayed that way until the late 20th century, when certain legislatures began to loosen the requirements, just before The Evil Decision (1973) swept away all regulations and inaugurated an age of triumphal babykilling.

Since abortion was generally legal at the time of the Fifth Amendment’s passage and remained so–uncontested–for many years thereafter, an originalist justice might well look at it and say, "Well, that shows that the framers/ratifiers did not undrstand this amendment to prohibit abortion. Therefore it doesn’t. On the other hand, neither does the Constitution provide a right to abortion. It’s a matter for the legislatures, as it was at all times before Roe v. Wade, so you need a legislative solution if you want abortion banned."

Which is the most likely scenario for how abortion will be ended in this country: A judicial overturning of Roe on originalist grounds, followed by a long, bloody legislative fight to end abortion state-by-state, hopefully (a long way down the road, after the battle is mostly won) eventually resulting in a constitutional amendment protecting life from conception to patch up what the Fifth Amendment doesn’t do on an originalist reading.

That being said, it’s possible that an originalist with a sufficiently strong natural law orientation might look at the Fifth Amendment and say, "Okay. They didn’t understand it as prohibiting abortion, but that was because of the defective understanding of science they had in their day. They meant to protect the life of every human being under U.S. jurisdiction, and now we have a clearer undrstanding of the fact that the unborn are human beings. Therefore, the Fifth Amendment protects them."

That’s possible, but such five such justices aren’t likely to concurrently sit on the Court any time soon. The former reading is more likely to get Roe overturned in the short term.

You may think that you have an open and honest relationship with your children. You may think that of course they’d know that they could always tell you anything, no matter how bad. And you may even be right. But, in this day and age, they may be out arranging for an abortion behind your back.

"In 1985, the summer after my freshman year in high school, my 16-year-old sister told me she was pregnant. Andrea, a National Merit Scholar, knew two things: She wanted an abortion and she didn’t want to tell mom and dad.

"’I’ll help you,’ I said, honored that she’d turned to me.

"Andrea wasn’t worried that my parents would throw her out or beat her. She, like many minors who become pregnant, was more concerned about preserving her relationship with her family.

"’I remember feeling like I can’t add this to the official roster of things I’ve done,’ Andrea told me recently. ‘I was too young emotionally to have sex, but physically I wasn’t. Any conversation I would have had with mom and dad would have ended with them telling me not to do it.’ She didn’t want them to know anything about what felt to her like ‘a big mistake.’"

From the point of view of a teenager, it might seem reasonable to help your sister hide an embarrassing "mistake" from your parents, but surely the adults to whom this duo turned would encourage them to tell Mom and Dad anyway, particularly since the pregnant girl knew her parents would not hurt her and even more particularly since there was a parental notification law in place requiring that both parents consent to this young woman’s abortion.

If you were naive enough to think that, you thought wrong.

"Andrea had $60 saved from her job at Burger King. I helped her raise the additional $200 she needed by borrowing it from an acquaintance at school. Although North Dakota had had an abortion clinic since 1980, there was also a law, in place since 1981, stipulating that both parents consent to a minor’s abortion. Andrea went through the process of getting a judicial bypass. The clinic steered her though an interview with an amenable judge, I got her the money just in time and Andrea got her abortion. Although the experience was difficult for her, we were rather proud that we’d gone through it alone."

GET THE STORY.

Two young girls, one sixteen and the other probably fourteen or fifteen, managed to go to court and obtain a "judicial bypass" around their state’s parental consent laws, all without their parents ever being the wiser… at the time. Once Mom and Dad found out, they were rightly "heartsick and frustrated." The author of this essay professes "understanding" for their pain, yet still piously pronounces that parents should only know that their minor daughter is undergoing a major medical procedure — setting aside the fact that the major medical procedure in question also kills their grandchild — if their daughter "willingly" wants to tell them.

Words fail to capture just how mind-bogglingly stupid our society has become. But then, as Mark Shea has so pithily put it, sin makes you stupid.

In the pro-life movement, we’ve heard the figures that some 45 million children have been murdered by abortion in the United States since Roe v. Wade was legalized in 1973. But what about children murdered by the various embryonic manipulation that has occurred since test-tube tinkering started in the late-1970s? (Trivia side note: Did you know that the first test-tube baby was born on the tenth anniversary of the promulgation of Humanae Vitae?  Humanae Vitae was released on July 25, 1968; the first test-tube child was born on July 25, 1978.)

A study by researchers at Yale University found that some 85 percent of cultured embryos do not survive to birth. In-vitro fertilization specialists recently boasted that over a million children have been born due to IVF technology. If both the Yale study and the IVF specialists figures are correct, this means that as many as 6.7 million children have been murdered through embryonic research:

"A new study has confirmed that beyond all the loss of life that happens when in vitro fertilization embryos are frozen for storage and unfrozen for use, there is massive loss of life even after embryos are transferred into their mother’s wombs.

"Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have found that 85 percent of embryos transferred during IVF fail to live till birth.

"IVF specialists boasted last year that over a million children have been born due to IVF (see here: http://www.ivf.com/overview.html). However, with the results of the Yale study indicating that 85% of embryos transferred do not survive till birth, one can calculate that for a million children to have been born using IVF over 6.7 other children died in the process.

"Published in the August issue of Fertility and Sterility, the Yale study reviewed seven years of U.S. statistics from all the fertility clinics that report data on reproductive techniques. Director of the Yale Fertility Center, Pasquale Patrizio, M.D., professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences led the project.

"Said Patrizio, ‘Something in nature has decided that these implanted embryos are not viable.’"

GET THE STORY.

Six million children and counting means that the embryonic manipulation of modern science has placed the death toll in the abortion holocaust at over fifty million. God, have pity on us.