Tragic Law and The Tragic Truth

[this has been revised from my previous post, after further consideration]

I recently watched a video of an actual abortion taking place. It came about because I happened upon this picture and description, and was horrified (tire-tete means "head crusher" in French).

Tire-tete
This abortion intrument's purpose was to hold the baby's head with
the spiked ends. Once the head was held, a long thin probe was
pushed deep into the skull like a sword. The instrument held the baby's head, so once it was cut off, it would not float around in the uterus.

I found myself wondering if this was a "modern instrument" of if things were "more developed" in our day. So I did a search and decided to learn more. What I found was a video of actual abortion taking place. Besides the graphic images and the heart breaking experience of watching murder, I found my senses struggling with the previous understanding I had of what abortion was. I have always been against it, but it has been legal since before I was born. Therefore, I never knew a world where this was not legal. And now, I cannot believe that it is. It is barbarism, in every sense. It is the most uncivilized, uncultured, gruesome thing I have ever seen.

We constantly read in the news about very sad and disturbing murders of innocent people, and yet this country allows by law a worse form of violent killing to take place every day. All of the arguments about "privacy" and "personal choice" are nothing but little cotton balls being thrown against the bulwark of the premeditated violence done. There is no world that should allow this to remain hidden in the dark, shrouded in mystery.

I do not pretend to know much about law making or politics, but I can be sure that there is at least one law that is not a just law: St. Thomas Aquinas said that just human or civil laws are those that participate in God's law, that work within the natural law, which is established by God. The acceptance of infanticide, the murder of children, is not just, nor natural, nor abiding by the law of God.

This is the link to that video: it truly is disturbing, but the more I have thought about it, the more I have felt convinced that I am thankful that I know the full truth. Let us be clear - the works of evil prefer to stay hidden. Christ is the light that shines in the darkness, and for Christ, even darkness is not dark. The truth is that we must face evil head on, and see all of its ugliness, if we are truly going to reject it and fight against it. It is often said, "know your enemy" - moreso when the enemy is in many ways hidden and hard to pin down.

Furthermore, besides the fact that no media feels like child-murder is a topic of humor of common conversation, very few people talk about alternatives. No one seems to mention that the high rates of infertility among women mean that there are more than ever families looking to adopt children. Adoption is the best option for the many young women who feel that they are ill prepared to handle the motherhood that they have undertaken. And for anyone who in any circumstance is unready, unwilling, afraid or unsure of giving birth to a child, and the life after, there will be an adult, a couple, a parent or family, who will want that child and will take care of him or her. Murder is never the option. It should not be. It must not be.

Here are a few links (I cannot vouch for them but I believe they are trustworthy):
National Adoption Agency

Catholic Adoption

Catholic Charities Adoption (for the Archdiocese of Washington)  (there are other Catholic Charities Adoption agencies in different areas, just search for your local diocese or city)

Adoption: For Your Marriage (from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)

There are also some various organizations that offer to help women with pregnancies, including medications, counseling, diapers, etc... Some links:
Gabriel Project (this is in the Diocese of Arlington)

Life Matters: Responding to Unplanned Pregnancies (from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)

Catholic Medical Center Pregnancy Care

Catholic Charities Pregnancy Care (Archdiocese of Chicago)

And there are also websites, programs and retreats to help for healing of mothers and families after abortions:

Project Rachel

Rachel's Vineyard

National Office of Post-Abortion Reconciliation and Healing (NOPARH)


Infant Jesus of Prague, have mercy on us and give us your peace!

Who Defines "Person"

I will admit, it has been a while since I have been so sickened by the absolute audacity of "scientific progress" that I want to spit nails...

I will now attempt to do so, where "nails" are the figurative representation for the words I write.

First off, here is the article in question, titled "Killing babies no different than abortion, experts say". Secondly, this is not "new" as far as eugenics is concerned.

In the Netherlands, it is legal to euthanize in certain situations, and those "certain situations" map out a surprisingly broad horizon. Newborns have a place in that map. Does this shock you? Had you often thought of euthanasia as an issue only for the elderly and those in hospice?

Here's a nice little quote from the article to get your blood pumping:
They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”

Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.

The funny thing is, they have it right...and then so wrong. The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus, because from the moment of conception, from the moment that the egg cell and sperm cell fuse into the zygote (baby) and the soul of that person is infused (sorry scientists, can't ignore that God is part of this), that person is a baby/baby is a person/cell is a person/etc... However you want to spell that out, the point is that I was me when my DNA was formed at the fusion of the oocyte and spermocyte of my parents. So they are correct there, but so sadly, they reverse the truth they just proclaimed and state that instead of the person existing from the moment of conception, the person isn't even a person until.. when? They have "reasonable cognitive functions"?

Now, if you haven't heard of Descartes (and you have, even if you don't know that you have), let me introduce you to him: "I think, therefore I am" (Part VI of Discourse on Method). Now, let's be clear about this statement - Descartes does not spend pages discussing that he exists simply by brain power, as if he was sure electricity was keeping his heart going. His philosophy is one that has been taken up by modern thought (along with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and others) to undermine natural law with a concept of general distrust of the material. However, the distrust of the material lead to a distrust of the spiritual as well, for the two cannot be without one another. In the end, the Cartesian separation is a dichotomy between body and soul that leads to a rejection of the reality of the state of being that we find ourselves in. There is far too much to be said on this topic for a paragraph, so it can be left to say that science (at least, as reflected in the article in reference here) has been influenced in a negative way by this philosophy.

Taken to the extreme, this understanding of what makes a human, "human", reduces man to something that excludes the natural facts of life. There are, sadly, a number of persons who have very low or non-existent brain functions, or at least are not able to present any rational thought, and yet they are people. However, this redefining of what is a person creates an unrealistic sieve where any of the "unwanted" can be safely "dropped through the cracks."

At the end of the day, we cannot stand for those trained in biology and science to claim that eugenics and infanticide are morally permissible, and almost worse, reasonable. To murder in a nonchalant and callous way is nothing short of irrational. And it is also sickeningly wrong.

Chew on that for a bit...