Jimmy Akin

When In Ancient Rome . . .

. . . eat as the ancient Romans did!

HERE’ZA BUNCHA RECIPES TO GET YOU STARTED!

Sorry, But This Is A Non-Starter–For Now

Hillary is the likely Democratic nominee for 2008.

Condi is a plausible Republican who may run as well. She recently refused to rule out running.

The trouble is that, as things presently stand, Condi will either not get the Republican nomination or, if she does get it, she will lose.

Why?

Because she describes hereself as "mildly pro-choice" (see the linked article).

Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to see Condi run if she were pro-life. I’d love for us to have a Commander-In-Chief who is Drop Dead Gorgeous (certainly compared to other women who are political officeholders!). Who doesn’t want that?

But being pro-life is more important than all of that–to me, and to millions of other pro-lifers.

If Condi doesn’t flip on the subject of abortion then, even with hard-evil Hillary as the opposing candidate, too many pro-lifers will simply stay home on election day rather than vote for someone who is "moderaly pro-choice."

Even Bush barely won the first time because social conservatives were dissatisfied with his long-ago DUI. That’s mild compared to being "moderately pro-choice."

Fortunately, Condi has time to be educated on the issue of abortion and, as she hasn’t spoken on it much nor built a pro-abort voting record, she has fewer ties to abortion than many other politicians.

Let’s pray for her.

Oh yeah, and if she’s pro-abort then she also needs to get educated on the need for originalists on the Supreme Court.

Let’s pray for that, too.

Birth Spacing

A reader writes:

I was wondering if it is wrong to use nfp to space out pregnancies to be 3 years apart. I want to enjoy each child’s babyhood. On one hand having many children close together would not be good for my emotional state. I really admire women who are not fazed by the strain. I seem to not be able to handle much stress. But the biggest reason is wanting to give each child as much of my attention as I can offer so I know each baby. I’m not saying that mothers who have children close together do not know their babies. But they seem to be made of something I am not. Trust me on this! My mother had her kids one after the other and acted like she wished she hadn’t had all of us. She also said she regretted not "knowing" her youngest because she was too "busy," that she didn’t have the time.

When I read my reasons they sound stupid, like I am making lame excuses for myself. I just want the baby to be more independant before I get pregnant again. What do you say? Do I have "Just Reasons" to use NFP?

The Church does not have a list of what counts as acceptable reasons, so I can’t simply go to a Church doc and tell you what it says.

What the documents do is speak in more general terms about the kinds of reasons that can be sufficient, and they allude to physical, psychological, and economic reasons. Obviously, trivial factors falling into these classes would not suffice, but is some significant human good is being protected.

The reasons that you cite are of a psychological nature protecting the human good of yourself (by not being overstressed) and the children (by being able to better mother them due to not being overstressed). These are significant human goods.

Whether they are sufficient is a decision for you and your husband to make based on your own knowledge of yourselves and your family situation. The Church does not propose a cookie-cutter solution to such questions as it recognizes that different people are different and are able to handle different numbers of children at different times in their lives. If your conclusion is that y’all are not able to have children closer together without unduly burdensome strain, the Church respects the choice to use NFP to space them.

One factor that may be of use in making your decision: In prior ages when breastfeeding was universal, usually for the first few years of life, then (given the diets people had) many women would frequently (though not always) end up with kids two to four years apart anyway.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for not having the kids too far apart. If they are sufficiently far apart then (a) it’s like having a series of only children as they have fewer contemporaries to interact with and (b) it prolongs the amount of time that you have to take care of infants.

Three years apart is not enough to create the fullness of effect (a), but it will have effect (b). Regardless of how many children you have (2, 5, 10, 15), if they are spaced three years apart then you will be involved in the care of infants and toddlers for three times as long as if they are spaced one year apart. By contrast, if the kids are bunched up then it means more work initially but less work later on.

I don’t know whether you have children or not yet, but whether or not you do, the best thing to do may not be to try to keep to a strict schedule, which will be hard to implement anyway. (E.g., if you wait 2.25 years after baby #1 before trying to have baby #2 and then it takes a few months to have baby #2 and then baby #2 miscarries then it will be more than three years before baby #3 can be born.) The prudent thing to do is likely to re-evaluate the situation after each baby rather than trying to implement an ideal plan.

Switching From Contraception To NFP

A reader writes:

I am hoping you can help me on this matter. I am a cradle Catholic and my husband is a convert. While all my life I observed some sort of Lenten practice, this is the first year where I have truly felt both a belonging to my Catholicism and a need to be more Catholic.

Needless to say, we were the kind of Catholics who did practice contraception for many years. Well, I finally got the nerve to tell my husband that I wanted to switch to NFP. At first he thought I was out of my mind, and actually projected that this could end our marriage. Well, I didn’t give up on him and was able to project a very positive belief that this would not only work out, but actually improve our relationship. To shorten this story, one morning (after much anquish), he "saw the light" for lack of any better term and agreed that this could be an answer.

Now the question. The next NFP planning seminar in our area is not for over three weeks. When I called up the Diocese Respect Life Co-ordinator she kind of intimated that I might be alright to go on as we were until we go through the program.

Well, I think my husband is ok with her answer or explanation, but I have not been able to go to communion and feel after all these years that now I am sinning egrigiously.

Could you please help or explain this situation for me. Thank you and God Bless You.

Contraception is intrinsically evil, meaning that it is never permitted to perform an act that has a contraceptive effect as its end or as its means of achieving its end. Consequently, I could not recommend that you wait until the next class that the diocese is sponsoring.

I would strongly recommend that you switch to NFP immediately (for the sake of marital peace; later as a couple you should re-evaluate whether you should use NFP at all). Here’s how:

First, READ THE INFORMATION HERE AND THE LINKS TO OTHER RESOURCES IT INCLUDES.

This will give you a basic start.

Second, CONSIDER ORDERING THIS HOME STUDY COURSE IN NFP.

You may be able to get it overnighted to you.

Then, go to the class when it is held.

If you husband isn’t amenable to this, please write back and let me know.

God bless you and your husband for your willingness to respond to God’s grace in leading you in this matter!

More On The "Gay Gene" Bill

Thanks to a kindly reader down yonder, I now have had a chance to look at the text of Maine’s proposed "gay gene" bill, which would prohibit abortions based on the findings of a genetic test pertaining to the projected sexual orientation of the child.

If I’m reading things correctly, here’s what Maine’s law would be amended to read:

§1597-B.__Prohibited basis for abortion

An abortion may not be performed when the basis for the procedure is the projected sexual orientation of the fetus after birth, based on analysis of genetic materials of the fetus in which sexual orientation is identified through the presence or absence of a so-called "homosexual gene."

Now, I’ve highlighted the words "or absence" because it points up something I mentioned in the combox on the above-linked post: This bill does not only seek to protect babies who are foreseen to have homosexual temptations. It equally protects babies who are foreseen to have a heterosexual orientation.The law wouldn’t let you kill a kid because he’s foreseen to be straight or gay.

(The title of the bill may mention protecting homosexuals, but this is an obiter dictum. What counts is what the text of the law would be amended to read, and that protects both proto-straight and proto-gay babies.)

Would this survive the equal protection clause of the Constitution? Here’s the part of the amendment containing that clause:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Since both proto-straight and proto-gay babies are protected by the law, a textual reading would not indicate that either is being denied equal protection.

One could say that, well, the proto-gay babies are the ones who would by far benefit from such a law as most parents would not want to kill a proto-straight baby. True enough. But does the fact that one class of people benefit from a law more than another mean that the law is unconstitutional because of a violation of the equal protection clause? It would seem hard to argue this reasonably.

First, virtually every law advantages one group more than another:

If you have a law against murder, that advantages the people who don’t want to be murdered over those that would like to murder them.
If you have a law giving a government subsidy to wheat farmers (much against the advice of the Supergenius Thomas Sowell) then that advantages them over people not getting a subsidy in their line of work.

Laws against murder and in favor of wheat subsidies are certainly constitutional (regardless of the economic demerits of the latter), so whatever the equal protection clause means, it does not seem to mean that a law which on its face treats everyone equally could not work to the advantage of one group more than another. As long as both the would-be murder victim and the would-be murderer both have their lives protected from being murdered, equal protection is maintained. As long as anybody can become a wheat farmer and gain a share of taxpayer loot, equal protection is maintained.

The equal protection clause was originally introduced to keep states from having "Black Codes" that applied a different set of laws to blacks than to whites (e.g., with more severe punishment and less access to legal redress of grievances). Both classes had to have a common set of laws applying to them.

That is what we have here with proto-straight and proto-gay babies: Both get protexted.

Further, for the equal protection clause to be rationally applied to the unborn the courts would need to find that unborn babies are persons because the equal protection clause expressly applies to "any person within its [a state’s] jurisdiction." I would be most happy with such a finding.

That being said, do I think the proposed law is ideal?

No.

For a start, it speaks only of a "homosexual gene" (singular), but scientists might find that several genes or a combination of genes rather than a single gene may have an impact on sexual orientation.

Further, it ignores completely the possible role that hormones rather than genes may play in shaping future sexual orientation.

Finally, the such a law would have negligible effect since it only prohibits abortions "when the basis for the procedure is the projected sexual orientation of the fetus after birth." What the basis of an abortion may be is too hard to discover. A couple could get a gay gene test on the baby, find out the answer, go home, think it over, and come back with a completely different excuse for why they want to kill the kid. This bill does nothing to prevent that from happening.

Do I expect the law to pass?

Probably not, though I don’t know enough about Maine politics to know.

Do I think the law would survive court challenges?

No, that would be an extreme longshot given the proclivities of Darth Kennedy and Our Robed Masters.

Do I think the law or its attempted passage would start a productive national debate on abortion?

Heck, yeah! I suspect it’s already causing some rethinking in the gay community in a pro-life direction.

Oh, and for those who missed our earlier discussion: Do I believe that there is a "gay gene" that determines sexual orientation?

No. I think humans are too cognitive a species for that. Our sexuality is quite sensitive to cognitive conditioning, though I can’t rule out (given present science) that genes or prenatal hormones may play some kind of role in laying the groundwork for later homosexual temptations.

More On The “Gay Gene” Bill