tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81019793254282363602024-03-13T13:01:55.353-04:00In Our Age: Faith, Philosophy, and CultureIn Our Age, the great human questions suffer through encounters with shrill emotivism, feeble relativism, supercilious scientism, and gushing hedonism only to be shrugged off or rejected entirely. This blog aims to change course, to comment weekly on the defining issues, foster debate, and offer reasoned arguments from the Catholic tradition To sum up,In Our Age intends to provide resources to further probe important issues and formulate responsible analysis to the themes of enquiry.Timothy J.A. O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02560158651788662157noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8101979325428236360.post-57954686563618658982010-12-27T22:26:00.000-05:002010-12-27T22:26:58.002-05:00Liberalism opens another front in the battle over innocent human lives.Michelle Malkin identifies the growing threat of mandatory direct participation in the grisly child killing business called Abortion. <br />
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<a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/255945/aclu-s-unholy-war-catholic-hospitals-michelle-malkin">http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/255945/aclu-s-unholy-war-catholic-hospitals-michelle-malkin</a>Timothy J.A. O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02560158651788662157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8101979325428236360.post-13710871772118906472010-12-04T22:19:00.000-05:002010-12-04T22:19:54.217-05:00"The Culture of Evil" by Father Schall, SJInsightful article form a great Catholic resource: The Catholic Thing. <br />
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<a href="http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/culture-of-evil.html">http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/culture-of-evil.html</a>Timothy J.A. O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02560158651788662157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8101979325428236360.post-15863015986136811582010-09-11T20:14:00.000-04:002010-09-11T20:14:31.509-04:00"Dropping the Mask" by Timothy J.A. O'DonnellImagine performing an abortion while <em>you</em> are pregnant. Imagine <em>your</em> baby kicking inside <em>your</em> womb as you dismember the child in your patient's womb. Unthinkable? Or is it courageous?<br />
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Read this New York Times article for the grisly and shocking reality of two young female doctors that perform abortion.<br />
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/magazine/18abortion-t.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/magazine/18abortion-t.html</a><br />
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In what follows, you will read my letter to the editor of the NYT to this article. <br />
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Dear Editor:<br />
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Thank you for dropping the mask. <br />
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The New Abortion Providers gives ample evidence of how journalistic standards have been compromised. It is hardly surprising to find a NYT article careening portside, but the shallowness of thought and lack of balance is stunning. Lifting Terry Randall, a known crackpot, as the Pro-life figurehead and juxtaposing him with Tiller (considered by many as a killer and extremist) polarizes rather than clarifies the issues. Moral equivalency is on display; the number of abortionists killed without any reference to the millions of dead children – victims of abortion and a false choice - , the mothers who have severe spiritual, mental, and physical problems from abortion, or the violence against Pro-life supporters is a vacuous and misleading caricature of the facts and the principles involved. <br />
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Abortion is a ghastly industry that harms women, steals fatherhood, and kills children. In a recent change in strategy, exemplified in this article, the fact that the abortion industry is increasingly more explicit and direct about the aim of abortion: the killing of the child. Biology, embryology, philosophy, and theology all present strong reasonable arguments and evidence against abortion because it is a grave injustice to the children killed. <br />
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Ask the tough questions: What is the unborn? Is the unborn a member of the human family? <br />
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"If the unborn are not human, no justification for elective abortion in necessary. But if the unborn are human, no justification for elective abortion is adequate." (Koukl, Precious Unborn Human Persons, p. 7)<br />
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Note too that there is zero reference to the baby having intrinsic value, special dignity, an unrepeatable gift, and made in the image and likeness of God. <br />
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Sadly, the article makes clear the gruesome reality of abortion as dismembering a little person alive and vulnerable in their mother’s womb, yet they are ok with that. <br />
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The mask if off.Timothy J.A. O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02560158651788662157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8101979325428236360.post-77593399556162014182010-04-29T18:20:00.000-04:002010-04-29T18:20:40.503-04:00The God Debate: Hitchens vs. D'Souza<a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Cobject%20width=%22560%22%20height=%22340%22%3E%3Cparam%20name=%22movie%22%20value=%22http://www.youtube.com/v/9V85OykSDT8&hl=en_US&fs=1&%22%3E%3C/param%3E%3Cparam%20name=%22allowFullScreen%22%20value=%22true%22%3E%3C/param%3E%3Cparam%20name=%22allowscriptaccess%22%20value=%22always%22%3E%3C/param%3E%3Cembed%20src=%22http://www.youtube.com/v/9V85OykSDT8&hl=en_US&fs=1&%22%20type=%22application/x-shockwave-flash%22%20allowscriptaccess=%22always%22%20allowfullscreen=%22true%22%20width=%22560%22%20height=%22340%22%3E%3C/embed%3E%3C/object%3E"><object height="340" width="560"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9V85OykSDT8&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9V85OykSDT8&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object></a>Timothy J.A. O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02560158651788662157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8101979325428236360.post-25074005603535464582009-10-18T15:27:00.001-04:002009-10-18T15:28:54.129-04:00Debate between Prof George and Prof Kmiec on the Sanctity of Human LifeAn exceellent debtae at Catholic University earlier in 2009 between two prominent Catholic professors Dr. Robert P. George of Princeton and Prof. Doug Kmiec. the topic is the sanctity of human life moderated by Prof. Mary Glendon. If you are interste...d in the central moral issue of our age - the sanctity of human life - or, if you are interested in the controversy over Notre Dame's choices of late, then this video is well worth the time. Both debators are Catholic, pro-life, lawyers, and professors but differ on the mens by which they promote pro-life policies affetcing life issues.Timothy J.A. O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02560158651788662157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8101979325428236360.post-38419792065595272322009-10-16T19:13:00.003-04:002009-10-16T19:18:02.265-04:00Real Choice: fear of Trust?The Bioethics Defense Fund (BDF) produced this beautiful video of one of the pivotal questions of our age: fear or Trust?<br /><br />"BDF's powerful 2-minute YouTube video will inspire and uplift you! With moving simplicity, it sets forth the real choice: Fear or Trust.This video is part of the BDF BioDebate project. It's not a debate if only one side gets a hearing. The mainstream media promotes a culture of death, and BioDebate gives YOU the opportunity to use the power of video to promote a culture of life."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39dK237zac8&feature=player_profilepage">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39dK237zac8&feature=player_profilepage</a>Timothy J.A. O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02560158651788662157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8101979325428236360.post-36401295972450876502009-10-03T09:20:00.001-04:002009-10-03T09:21:58.738-04:00Reflecting on praying before an abortion mill.Outside of the abortion processing machine, in the cool wind and cloudy skies, witnesses gathered together for a common cause: relief to the scourge of abortion. It was spiritually jarring and emotionally disturbing to stand in close proximity to such a thoroughly malevolent asylum. Beginning with recitation of the Holy Rosary one nevertheless finds a way to accept the graces offered to enter into a deep meditation.<br /><br />But then – <em>mirabile dictu</em> – through the hubbub of Georgetown Road, there was a tiny whisper of sanity: Nothing is more precious and sacred than the gift of human life. Emmanuel – God with us – is here. <br /><br />Noted Pro-life apologist Stephanie Gray remarks “There is something very important and beautiful about the nature of women: that they are to be mothers (whether in spiritual or physical form). A pregnant woman becomes a tabernacle enveloping a person made in the image of the Divine”. The supreme exemplar of this insight is the Incarnation of Our Savior in the most blessed womb of Mary the Great Mother of God.<br /><br />In its most profound reality, love is essentially a gift; love begins with the couple but does not end with them, because it makes them capable of the greatest possible gift, the gift by which they become cooperators with God for giving life to a new human person. Thus the couple, while giving themselves to one another, give not just themselves but also the reality of children, who are a living reflection of their love, a permanent sign of conjugal unity and a living and inseparable synthesis of their being a father and a mother (cf. <em>Familiaris Consortio</em>, 14).<br /><br />Yet, contesting authentic giftedness stands the prevailing attitudes of the clique (this small, sectarian coterie of mainstream abortioneers). Abortion opposes love; the evil of abortion dissolves unity; the organized slaughter of innocents extends its weeping darkness to fill yet another vast cemetery. <br /><br />Perceiving hidden and secret things before us in the depths of Planned Parenthood’s building, fortified and guarded with arms as it was, the realization that prayer alone has the power to break through the steel, brick, and security glass happens. Watching Dr. Havoc drive off in his glamorous sports car after <em>his </em>laborious day at the office emptying tummy bumps was chilling.<br /><br />Pope Benedict XVI’s reflection reminds us all of the deepest meaning of authentic love.<br /><br />“Love is Suffering” <br /><br />We must think of love as suffering. Only if we are ready to endure it as suffering and thus ever again to accept each other and once again take the other to ourselves, only then can a lifelong relationship develop. If, on the contrary, we say when we get to the critical point, I want to avoid that, and we separate, then what we are really renouncing is the true opportunity that is to be found in man and woman being turned toward each other and in the reality of love (Pope Benedict, <em>God and the Word</em>). <br /><br /><br />Ad Jesum per Mariam,<br />Timothy J.A. O’DonnellTimothy J.A. O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02560158651788662157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8101979325428236360.post-87492281248157243302009-09-09T19:59:00.003-04:002009-09-09T20:08:12.111-04:00"Killing Girls is Bad, Killing Boys is OK" by Doug BandowIn this article from American Spectator, the incoherency of the pro-abortion position is on display.<br /><a href="http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/04/killing-girls-is-bad-killing-b">http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/04/killing-girls-is-bad-killing-b</a><br />Shining a bright light on yet another contradiction to be found in the abortioneer's position is indeed helpful. No other action destroys more human lives than abortion. We ought not be surprised when certain nefarious characters bend abortion to further evil ends. Once society accepts say slavery as an institution, it is not long before additional evils develop within the structure of the moral evil: cruelty, rape, deprivation.<br />The human person is created <em>Imagio Dei</em> - directly and inetionally - and every human person desrves to have their fundamental right to life preserved and protected from being unjustly taken.Timothy J.A. O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02560158651788662157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8101979325428236360.post-13382598781918965752009-07-05T16:06:00.002-04:002009-07-05T16:19:57.418-04:00What's in a Name?<div align="left">What’s in a name?<br /> The twaddle over Dr. Tiller’s nickname Tiller the Baby Killer has fermented into a brackish attack on conservatives who report in glaring detail on the issue of abortion. To be sure, Dr. Tiller’s curricular vitae, his alleged crimes and recent murder, have incited liberals to cry hate crime and domestic terrorism from their cul-de-sac. But was the moniker Tiller the Baby Killer in fact truthful?<br /> Every time abortioneers (i.e. abortion advocates) are confronted with the gruesome reality of abortion, its intrinsic evil, the irrefutable biological evidence that these are children – whole, distinct, living human beings – abortioneers dipsy doodle to avoid the gathered facts, softly whimpering <em>nolo contendere. <br /></em> Scampering away from the ugliness of an actual abortion, the NARAL crowd now boasts of a <a href="http://remembertiller.com/">website</a> to enshrine Dr. Tiller’s memory as the great champion of so-called <em>reproductive rights</em>. The president of NARAL Pro-Choice America Nancy Keenan issued a <a href="http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/news/press-releases/2009/pr06092009_whcsclose.html">statement</a> in reaction to Dr. Tiller’s murder: </div><div align="left"><br /><em><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">What happened to Dr. Tiller is part of an ongoing pattern of extreme anti-choice violence and intimidation that seeks, by any means necessary, to deny women access to the safe, legal abortion care they need. This use of inflammatory rhetoric and acts of violence must stop.<br /></span><br /></em> Since when has defending life by way of philosophical arguments, massive scientific data, and (dare I say) <a href="http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/JP2EVANG.HTM">Christian theological principles</a> for affirming the sanctity of human life, its intrinsic worth and dignity, constitute inflammatory rhetoric? It doesn’t. Nonetheless, abortioneers will not answer the fundamental question: What are the unborn? For Scott Klusendorf president of Life Training Institute, in his new book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Case-Life-Equipping-Christians-Culture/dp/1433503204/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245550072&sr=8-1">The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture</a>, it is the one question that trumps all others. That is the crux of the debate. When President Obama was asked when life begins during the primary, he gave his infamous <em>manqué</em>: “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOTfnz11kBk">answering that question with specificity is above my pay grade</a>.” Orders from Planned Parenthood headquarters have insisted toe the line. </div><div align="left"><br /> By design, the revelries of liberalism croon the primacy of women’s reproductive healthcare and reproductive rights, yet elective abortion has absolutely nothing in common with healthcare or human rights. Abortion stands for, if words are to signify real concepts or anything at all, damaging <a href="http://www.nrlc.org/Factsheets/MaternalMortality/MaternalMortbrochurefinal.pdf">mothers</a> both physically and emotionally, forever traumatizing our <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMC_70oYV8U">teens</a>, and abortion is always an act of brutal violence that destroys innocent human persons. <br /> </div><div align="left"> True to form, abortioneers spurt that it’s the name-calling that is the problem, not the millions of dead children or wounded lives damaged by the abortion aftermath. What is consequential is the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/opinion/12krugman.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=hate&st=cse">Big Hate</a> , writes Paul Krugman. In his briny opinion, the real danger is not institutionalized abortion <em>en masse</em>, but rather the “Politicians and media organizations wind up such people at their, and our, peril.” A concierge for leftist dogma, Krugman smears <em>drek</em> on an assembly of conservatives including Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Jon Voight for their downright meanness. It’s positively <em>gauche </em>to speak about the particulars of such a thing. </div><div align="left"><br /> To be sure, liberals customarily wag their fingers at those conservative scoundrels who have the impudence to tell it like it is. Ann Coulter sets the record straight – <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32140&keywords=tiller">49 million to five</a> - over the past 36 years since <em>Roe v. Wade</em>. Speaking tongue-in-cheek, Coulter offers her version of<em> lex taliones</em>: </div><div align="left"><br /><em>I wouldn't kill an abortionist myself, but I wouldn't want to impose my moral values on others. No one is for shooting abortionists. But how will criminalizing men making difficult, often tragic, decisions be an effective means of achieving the goal of reducing the shootings of abortionists? </em></div><div align="left"><em> <br /></em>What is made plain is the moral baby-talk of abortioneers.<br /> Going further, was Dr. George Tiller a killer of babies? Did he have blood on his hands?<br /> Let us establish the truth or falsity of two claims: first, abortion kills the child in the womb ipso facto or the procedure would not be an abortion. It is the only so-called medical procedure in which a living baby means the procedure was botched. I wonder if Dr. Tiller had a refund policy? Dead baby in a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMC_70oYV8U">toilet</a>, pay five grand; your child lives, you keep your money. <br /> Under <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/health_care/">Obamacare</a>, this place of darkness, anguish, and death will only extend itself into yet another vast cemetery in disturbing tribute to humanity’s cruelty to the most vulnerable.<br /> Second, it is no stretch at all, when one considers the scientific evidence, that human life is intrinsically valuable, a gift to be welcomed and loved. From a logically coherent argument, Professor Patrick Lee, McAleer Professor of Bioethics, Director of the Institute of Bioethics, Franciscan University of Steubenville sums up in his work <a href="http://www2.franciscan.edu/plee/pro.htm">Pro Life Arguments from Substantial Identity</a>:<br />What is intrinsically valuable is what we are.<br />1. You and I are intrinsically valuable.<br />2. You and I are intrinsically valuable (in the sense of being subjects of rights) in virtue of what we are.<br />3. What we are are human physical organisms. (That is: you and I are essentially human physical organisms.) <br />4. But human physical organisms come to be at conception.<br />5. So, what we are comes to be at conception. (from 3 and 4) (You and I came to be at conception.<br />6. So, what is intrinsically valuable (as a subject of rights) comes to be at conception. (from 2 and 5) </div><div align="left"><br /><em>Summa contra</em> Tiller: he killed 60,000 human beings in their earliest stages of development, i.e. babies. <br /> But did he have blood on his hands? Keeping in mind that Dr. Tiller the Child Killer <em>specialite de la maison</em> were late-term abortions, Congressman Henry Hyde (D-IL) captured the heart of the discussion when pleading with Congress in 1996 to overturn Clinton’s veto. He <a href="http://www.nrlc.org/news/2003/NRL01/hyde.html">exhorted</a>: </div><div align="left"><br /><em>That we are even debating this issue, that we have to argue about the legality of an abortionist plunging a pair of scissors into the back of the tiny neck of a little child whose trunk, arms and legs have already been delivered, and then suctioning out his brains only confirms Dostoyevsky's harsh truth (Man can get used to anything the beast). </em></div><em><div align="left"><br /></em>Congresses’ response was less than enthusiastic. It would be seven more years before a ban on partial-birth abortion became <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-108publ105/content-detail.html">law</a> under President Bush.<br /> </div><div align="left"> In his <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-830.ZD2.html">dissent</a> written for the Stenberg v. Carhart dealing with partial-birth abortions illegal without providing exceptions to the mother, Justice Kennedy describes with vivid clarity the gruesome late abortion procedures:</div><div align="left"><br /><em>The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: <strong>It bleeds to death as it is torn from limb from limb </strong>(reproductive healthcare). ... The <strong>fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment</strong> process and <strong>can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off </strong>(reproductive rights). Dr. Carhart agreed that “[w]hen you pull out a piece of the fetus, let’s say, an arm or a leg and remove that, at the time just prior to removal of the portion of the fetus, … the fetus [is] alive.” …. Dr. Carhart has observed fetal heartbeat via ultrasound with “extensive parts of the fetus removed,” id., at 64, and testified that mere dismemberment of a limb does not always cause death because he knows of a physician who removed the arm of a fetus only to have the fetus go on to be born “as a living child with one arm.” …. At the conclusion of a D&E abortion no intact fetus remains (reproductive choice). In Dr. Carhart’s words, the abortionist is left with “<strong>a tray full of pieces</strong>.” </em></div><div align="left"><br />Where is the left’s gibberish about<em> hate speech</em>? Where are the accusations that Justice Kennedy is whipping up violence for abortionists? There aren’t any because it’s an illogical and unjust connection to make; description is not by necessity prescriptive. </div><div align="left"><br /> Picture introducing forceps to grab the extremities of each child - hands and arms, feet and legs, upper body and backbone, skull and face – that is, being torn limb from limb (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyKc6nPw6C4">Dilation and Evacuation Procedure</a>) and filling tray after tray, year after year with pieces from his fresh kills. </div><div align="left"><br /> Short of a Zen-like <em>satori </em>perhaps nothing will awaken abortioneers to the merciless, inhumane destruction of innocent children. In the end, Dr. Tiller was a paid thug with blood on his hands; he spilled gallons of it. <br /></div>Timothy J.A. O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02560158651788662157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8101979325428236360.post-70068398668781112792009-06-12T21:46:00.002-04:002009-06-12T21:49:24.776-04:00Letter to Joan Walsh, editor of Salon.comOn June 12, 2009 Joan Walsh appeared on the Foxnews program the o'Reilly Factor to discuss the killing of Dr. Tiller and abortion in general.<br /><br />I posted the following letter to her on Salon.com<br /><br /><em>One Irish Catholic to Another<br /></em>Violence against innocent human life is a moral evil. The gunning down of Dr. Tiller is lamentable in the extreme even without withdrawing his background of destroying viable preborn children. A vigilante nevertheless cannot deliver justice.<br />Yet the persistent question echoes in the hearts of many: What is justice then for the tens of millions of children killed by abortion and the women and men deeply wounded by abortion now living post-abortive lives? Ms. Walsh sung from the liberal hymnal that abortion is legal; legal abortion makes a flimsy retort because it is an unjust law; it violates the basic principle that laws are predicated on the nature of the beings it regulates. Abortion always destroys the most vulnerable members of the human family and can never be just regardless of Roe v. Wade.<br />Moreover, her examples to buttress abortion are fallacious. Dr. Tiller specialized in aborting babies that were viable, i.e. most likely to continue living outside the womb. Hospitals routinely save the lives of babies at 21 weeks or more. Moreover, mothers face far more medical risks aborting rather than delivering their babies in the third trimester. The ban on partial-birth abortion has never been challenged successfully because there are no medical reasons to perform this ghastly procedures. Ms. Walsh simply fails to confront the facts honestly.<br />Although the act of rape is brutal and hideous, it does not follow that the negative, painful thoughts, feelings, or memories of that episode, however traumatic, justify the intentional killing of another person. Heroic love, not the destruction of another person, is the charitable and responsible action.<br />Strictly speaking, Ms. Walsh asserting her “catholic” identity and pro-abortion is bats in the belfry self-deception. After all, the Catholic teaching on abortion remains unchanging and clear: killing innocent human beings is always wrong. On what grounds does she hold to be “catholic” and dissent against the most fundamental teaching of the Catholic faith (e.g. Evangelium Vitae)? Ms. Walsh position is irreconcilable. Ironically, she doesn’t care much. In the end, as long as she and her aunts can love one another despite their differences, then who cares about the babies?Timothy J.A. O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02560158651788662157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8101979325428236360.post-37111379123021315882009-06-07T15:34:00.004-04:002009-06-07T15:58:43.982-04:00The Nuremberg GambitNuremberg Gambit<br />By Timothy J.A. O’Donnell<br /><br />Violence against innocent human life is a moral evil. The gunning down of Dr. Tiller is lamentable in the extreme even without withdrawing his background of destroying viable preborn children. A vigilante nevertheless cannot deliver justice.<br /><br />Yet the persistent question echoes in the hearts of many: What is justice then for the tens of millions of children killed by abortion and the women and men deeply wounded by abortion now living post-abortive lives? The comparison between the Nuremberg Trials and the radical abortion advocates might prove interesting.<br /><br />The claim that the major protagonists of the modern ethical morass of abortion offer a rhetoric, which serves to conceal behind their masks of civility, and moral togetherness, what are in fact their preference for a Common Plan of killing is not unheard of. An acute observer of the program of abortion sees that abortion - presented in its essential institutionalized structure, catalogue of distortion, and pageant of supporters – is killing en masse.<br /><br />And it follows, that the scheme of abortion on-demand is arguably a crime against humanity. In that context, the Pro-Life movement ought to mull over its aims beyond purely ending abortion by also considering the next step: What if prosecuting pro-abortion instigators, organizers, and policymakers - not through violence, but through the courts, became possible?<br /><br />The blueprint for success might be found in the appropriation of two key principles used in the post World War II Nuremberg Trials: the primacy of conscience and crimes against humanity. The moral arguments found in these trails of renown signal one of the epitomes of justice in Western history in part, because it was secured on the moral high ground of conscience.<br /><br />Is now the time to initiate another goal for the Pro-Life movement? After all, pro-lifers already struggle mightily against the seemingly implacable Roe v. Wade decision and the glut of new bio-ethical issues. Clamorous division across the country and significant moral confusion among the faithful does not bode well for yet another task. Even so, the long view Pro-life community needs begins in dialogue, sharing ideas and perspectives, in a vigorous contest to shape our shared destiny.<br /><br />A set of questions have to be asked and answered: Are the moral truths, arguments, and principles employed throughout the Nuremberg Trials germane to the abortion debate? If so, is there a narrative that necessarily emerges of prosecuting the principal advocates, foremost architects, and fundamental institutions responsible for executing a plan resulting in the destruction of over 50 million human beings?<br /><br />At the Nuremberg Trials following World War II you may recall the Allies sought to bring to justice the leading Nazi conspirators; Justice Robert Jackson, an American jurist if impeccable credentials, introduced the world to the legal concept of crimes against humanity to prosecute the Nazis for their wholesale killing and warfare. His strategy was straightforward:<br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The strength of the case against these defendants under the conspiracy Count, which it is the duty of the United States to argue, is in its simplicity. It involves but three ultimate inquiries: First, have the acts defined by the Charter as crimes been committed; second, were they committed pursuant to a Common Plan or Conspiracy; third, are these defendants among those who are criminally responsible?<br /></span>(Summation for the Prosecution by Justice Robert Jackson <a href="http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/Jacksonclose.htm">http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/Jacksonclose.htm</a>)<br /><br />First, have crimes been committed? The certain logic is as follows:<br />Intentionally killing an innocent human being is morally wrong.<br />Elective abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human being.<br />Hence, elective abortion is a serious moral wrong.<br /><br />In fact, most intellectually honest abortion advocates have conceded the entire argument of whether or not the preborn children in the womb are human beings. The scientific evidence is too overwhelming and the rational arguments too compelling for any reasonable person to successfully argue against them.<br /><br />Second, is there now or has there been a Common Plan to commit these crimes on a vast, unprecedented scale? It is, I take it, to be the case. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, convert to Catholicism and author of Hand of God describing his leadership in the movement to legalize abortion in the U.S. and his subsequent rejection of the pro-abortion movement, declares that he formed NARAL in the late 1960s to “promote the pro-abortion mentality across the land. One of our strategies in order to mislead the American public was to deny what we knew to be true, that an abortion kills an existing human being. This was the greatest mistake in my life and the greatest mistake in American history” (Emphasis added).<br /><br />The central plan or plot has been and continues to be the destruction of innocent, defenseless human beings. The plot is simple – categorize the preborn children as dispensable, inconvenient, disruptive to one’s lifestyle, or relegate them as non-persons because of their size, dependency, and stage of development. The attack ensues in the silent intimacy of the womb utilizing a variety of deadly, methodical, persistent medical procedures to bring about the death of their intended victim, the child in the womb. Thus, the woman is restored to her radical autonomy liberated from the problem of a baby (and so the story goes). The institution receives payment, sanitizes the instruments, disposes of the “biological waste”, and campaigns for more customers.<br /><br />For the moment, let me remark that reading the disturbing account of the abortion movement from Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) through the contemporary debates, what becomes eminently plausible and plainly visible is the machinery of the Culture of Death: abortion, euthanasia, destructive embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, etc. The progressive march toward the legalization of abortion, its proliferation throughout the nation and export to developing nations, the business activity it birthed (est. at over $1 billion per year), and the political power and adulation abortion factions garnish have fortified the liberal ideology.<br /><br />Third, consider the certain beliefs shared by all the contributors to their project: the act of abortion is a reproductive right for the mother, and she alone is the final arbiter of the disposition of the life of her child in the womb. Therefore, the State must protect and secure the mother’s reproductive rights by enabling her to procure an abortion, murdering her own child when that child is most defenseless incapable of exerting their fundamental right to life.<br /><br />The entitlement to kill, enshrined in the law with Roe vs. Wade, supersedes the right to live, grow, and exist of another human person, the child. Up to the present in everyday America, four thousand defenseless, innocent children a day are being killed programmatically through the abortion industry apparatus and political machine of liberal ideology.<br /><br />When Jackson summarized his case, he established the reason the upper echelon of the Nazi Regime were guilty of the crimes carried out in bloody fashion by the SS Einsatzgruppen death squads and other sinister collaborators:<br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />In conspiracy, we do not punish one man for another man's crime. We seek to punish each for his own crime of joining a common criminal plan in which others also participated. The measure of the criminality of the plan and therefore of the guilt of each participant is, of course, the sum total of crimes committed by all in executing the plan. But the gist of the offense is participation in the formulation or execution of the plan. These are rules which every society has found necessary in order to reach men, like these defendants, who never get blood on their own hands but who lay plans that result in the shedding of blood.</span><br />(Summation for the Prosecution by Justice Robert Jackson <a href="http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/Jacksonclose.htm">http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/Jacksonclose.htm</a>)<br /><br />Any account of human action, which recognizes the role of morality, compels the accounting of choices and consequences such that those persons responsible for the devices of the lethal Nazi mechanisms, instruments, and policies of destruction are as culpable as those in the camps committing genocide. The pro-abortion advocates leading, operating, condoning, and executing the Common Plan of abortion is no less guilty by virtue of their actions. That explicit charge against the ACLU, NARAL, NOW, Planned Parenthood, and the influential members of our state and federal government to the extent they have lived out the Culture of Death might one day face a thoroughgoing legal examination and tribunal for their misdeeds.<br /><br />The Freedom of Choice Act presents a clear and present danger to the Catholic healthcare system – a system providing care to millions of poor, uninsured, and under-insured Americans – because it could force hundreds of Catholic hospitals across the nation to either permit abortions within their facilities or forgo government funding. The “choice” for Catholics and others who believe that abortion is a moral evil is to either participate in evil to protect their livelihoods or face fines, loss of accreditation, and job loss.<br /><br />President Obama offered a nod at protecting the conscience of healthcare workers without providing any detail at the notorious Notre Dame commencement.<br /><br />For Catholics and society as a whole, one’s conscience is of utmost importance, its formation and dictates are anything but optional. Vatican II gives a traditional account of the role of conscience:<br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">In the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose upon himself, but which holds him to obedience. Always summoning him to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience when necessary speaks to his heart: do this, shun that. For man has in his heart a law written by God; to obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged. Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths. In a wonderful manner conscience reveals that law which is fulfilled by love of God and neighbor</span>. (Gaudiem et Spes, 16)<br /><br />And the prosecutorial team and judges at Nuremberg were acutely aware of the primacy of conscience because their entire case depended on it; the Nazis were not arrested and prosecuted because they had violated German law, but rather they violated a more fundamental law: the moral law written in their conscience and on their hearts. There is no escaping the truths of conscience - deliberately killing innocent human beings is always wrong, prevalent ideologies are irrelevant, and conscience cannot be repudiated or negated by feelings or structures of power.<br /><br />Nearing the conclusion of his summation, Jackson appealed to the sense of right and wrong of the justices as he points out:<br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Nor did any one answer the question of Humanity as to why these oceans of blood and this burning of a continent. Reason, with its partner Conscience, had been lost long ago in the jungle of Nazi greed and arrogance, and so Madness ruled, Hate marched, the sky reddened with the flames of destruction and the world wept -- and still weeps.... </span><br /><br />Crimes against humanity touch on the sacred truth that all men ought to do good and avoid evil.<br /><br />President Obama’s public statements on abortion, destructive embryonic stem cell research, FOCA, and the denial of medical care to infants who slip past the knife in an abortion displays a tilt-a-whirl ethical system devoid of objective moral principles above his capricious preferences for political munificence.<br /><br />The logical incompatibility of President Obama’s absolutist position and his policies to spread abortion is not difficult to identify in this statement at Notre Dame commencement: “So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions.” Why? President Obama fails to state the range, scope, and principles of his remarks other than loosely proposing dialogue with pleasantries and moral baby-talk. Stages of human activity and enquiry demand a far more serious and coherent response from the pro-abortion agitators.<br /><br />Failing to protect the current conscience protections places the President squarely in the dock. Elevating mere human laws, i.e. legalized abortion, above the Natural Law and Eternal Law is precisely the defense the Nazis argued in their defense -I was just following orders with no reference to the truth of conscience.<br /><br />This week, President Obama traveled to Europe and the Middle East. On the 65th anniversary of D-Day, he took an account of the exceptional role American blood and treasure sacrificed to end World War II liberating millions from tyranny and terror? As a former law professor, will he acquaint himself with that shining moment in the history when the rule of law and justice quelled the cries of angry vengeance for the innocents murdered?<br /><br />We ask you, Mr. President, will the protections safeguarding the primacy of conscience remain intact -, how do you respond? Are you going to further imperil the sanctity of human life by trampling underfoot the consciences of healthcare professionals by pressuring them to participate or be complicit with evil?<br /><br />The bulwark of our nation’s liberty and moral compass awaits your reply.Timothy J.A. O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02560158651788662157noreply@blogger.com0