Another great pic I found on Pintrest.
More: Cute Baby Blogging: Pintrest Edition
No Such Thing as “Potential” or “Unwanted” Human Life
How often do we hear abortion/embryonic stem cell defenders refer to the embryo or the child in the womb as a “potential” human life? I’m stealing this quote from Rebecca Taylor:
No human embryologist has ever, nor would ever, use the word potential describing human life or even “life.” In fact, “potential” human life does not exist. All matter in the universe is classified as either living or non-living. One does not convert to the other. All that are living are either alive or dead. Those that are alive eventually become dead; once dead they cannot revert to living. There is no “potential” when referring to biological life! –Dr. C. Ward Kischer, emeritus professor of Human Embryology at the University of Arizona
There is no such this as a “potential” life!
Likewise, there is no such thing as “unwanted” life:
“Unwanted’ describes not a condition of a child but an attitude of adults” – Randy Alcorn
See: “Unwanted” a Story about Choice and Unwanted Children vs. Unwanting Adults
Don’t Be Too Long in Making Those Good Decisions
Oh geez. I don’t know if it’s just because it’s that time of the month for me to be a little overly emotional or the fact that I’m about to enter the last year of my twenties still single and childless – something I never thought I’d be “this far down the line” – but this article from Matt Archbold just had me in tears. Especially this line:
in life I maybe have made only two good decisions and one of them was marrying my wife and the other was having children. And it seems to me that if you make those two decisions right, a whole lot of the little decisions just seem to get worked out.
Read the rest and don’t be too long in making those good decisions. Obviously no one should rush into marriage, and I’m not suggesting that everyone should marry young, but do be aware of the fact that the window of opportunity for starting a family is not open indefinitely. When you find someone with whom you are comfortable who has many of the attributes you would like in a spouse do not hesitate to move forward, to make time to delve into the mystery of the other and love them…from this day forward until death do us part. If married life is your calling, don’t waste time making the perfect (or distance or finances or a “busy” schedule) the enemy of a good, suitable partner and opportunity for a solid Marriage than can make you and your spouse better people.
At the same time, don’t despair when things don’t seem to go as you hoped they would. In the mean time: pray. Pray to find the right spouse. Pray for your future spouse, and (most importantly) pray for union with God (our ultimate lover) in order to grow in virtue so that you become the kind of person that someone else wants to marry. As in all things, proceed in a spirit of openness to God’s will – not your own – while also never being afraid to take some chances.
If time were mere gold you could perhaps afford to squander it. But time is life, and you don’t know how much you have left. -St. Josemaria, Furrow #963
AZ Planned Parenthoods to Stop Providing “Abortion Care”
Aww. NARAL’s all upset because Planned Parenthood has to stop killing babies at some of it’s clinics in Arizona. From their blog:
In 2009, anti-choice Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer replaced pro-choice Gov. Janet Napolitano. Since then, it’s been a whole lot of ugly in the Grand Canyon State.
Gov. Napolitano had been a firewall against Arizona’s extreme, anti-choice legislature, vetoing a number of bad bills during her tenure. With anti-choice Gov. Brewer in her place, the legislature has had free rein to enact a whole package of laws interfering with a woman’s right to make personal, private medical decisions. In just two years, Arizona’s grade in our Who Decides? report has gone from a B- to a D.
Now, those anti-choice laws are taking their toll. Starting today, Planned Parenthood of Arizona will stop providing abortion care at seven of its ten locations in the state.
Planned Parenthood could not find enough trained doctors to provide abortion care in a state that has become so hostile to a woman’s right to choose.
VICTORY!! And, excuse me. “Abortion care”? I know you guys really believe that you are helping women but that’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever seen one. There’s absolutely nothing caring about abortion. Not for the mother and certainly not for the child.
Fr. Barron on Marriage and Relationships
Here’s another excellent video from Fr. Robert Barron on how a relationship will only endure when two people fall in love, not so much with each other, but together with a “transcendent third.” Relating that to Christian marriage he says
To get married in the Church, that is to say, before God, what you’re saying is, “we’ve discerned that together we are in love with God and we’ve discerned that God…has drawn us together. It’s not just, the two of us met…the two of us fell in love. It’s something…more mysterious than that. It’s that God for his purposes has drawn us together, that we might find our salvation in each other’s presence and that together we might fulfill a common mission.”
TOB Tuesday: Sexuality, Sacrifice and Love
Fr. Robert Barron:
Beautiful People
It is not fleeing from suffering that heals us, but our willingness to accept it, mature through it and find meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love (Spe Salvi, 37).
The Eternal Feminine
This is just lovely. From this month’s Magnificat magazine:
Founder of the Nabis movement, then of the Studios of Sacred Art with Georges Desvallières, and a member of the Third Order Dominicans, Maurice Denis knew how to combine the cutting edge of modernity with the highest Christian inspiration. His Madonna in the Blooming Garden reflects his meditation on the mystery of the grace of paradise. At first sight, such grace seems irretrievable, but not to the eyes of an artist persuaded that it has been brought within reach again by Christ’s resurrection. In this sense, in the background of this painting, Denis depicts a marvelous garden, certainly not paradise lost with its wild and primitive beauty, but an earthly paradise that man has tilled and tended “by the sweat of his brow.” In this new Eden, where all the fresh possibilities of masculine endeavor coincide with constant labor, Denis places “woman” as the one who has received the power to re-enchant the world simply by being faithful to the grace of her femininity. Here, all that is feminine reflects original innocence – the very innocence that will merit the glory of the Assumption. In the simplicity of her purity and the splendor of her maternity, the Madonna is just a young maiden; she is surrounded by angels who are little girls and by little girls who are angels. The fruit of her womb is still a babe in arms, yet paradoxically he is the only one whose eyes are wide open to the reality of the exterior world. His gaze of goodness is cast beyond the borders of the paradisiacal scene and into this valley of tears, which will carry on in travail until the end of time. And so it must be, since we continue to live as if we have not been saved.
■ Pierre-Marie Varennes
Artwork: Madonna in the Blooming Garden (detail, 1907), Maurice Denis (1870-1943), private collection. © Adagp, Paris 2011.
It makes me think of this quote from Abp. Fulton Sheen on woman:
To a great extent the level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood. When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.
Vote Now!
Ok, forget the 2012 election for a second (is it bad that I’m actually not really paying much attention to it at all right now? I opted for football last night instead of the GOP debate!). That vote’s not for another year anyway. But, voting is now open for the Catholic New Media Awards. So, go vote for your favorite Catholic blogs and podcasts. Reflections of a Paralytic is actually nominated in one category. That was a lovely surprise this morning! Thanks to whoever nominated me!
“The pregnancy was all so consumerish to begin with”
Even some of those who use the technology will admit that IVF makes human life a commodity. From yesterday’s NYTimes piece about a woman who was chose to kill one of the healthy unborn twins she conceived via IVF:
“Things would have been different if we were 15 years younger or if we hadn’t had children already or if we were more financially secure,” (Jenny) said later. “If I had conceived these twins naturally, I wouldn’t have reduced this pregnancy, because you feel like if there’s a natural order, then you don’t want to disturb it. But we created this child in such an artificial manner — in a test tube, choosing an egg donor, having the embryo placed in me — and somehow, making a decision about how many to carry seemed to be just another choice. The pregnancy was all so consumerish to begin with, and this became yet another thing we could control.”
Awful. You know it’s bad when it doesn’t even sit well with a writer for RH Reality Check:
it doesn’t bother me per se to read an article about a woman who is choosing to abort one twin, despite both fetuses being healthy and the result of round after round of fertility treatments.
That is, until I read this section
…
If she had gotten pregnant on her own, she would have been willing to keep both twins, but since it was already “so consumerish” she didn’t feel like the same “rules” applied? I find it hard to wrap my head around the idea that someone would abort a twin just because of the way the pregnancy was conceived. If you feel that it was somehow part of the “natural order” for twins without intervention, why would medical assistance change that mindset?
Believe it or not, I’ve seen a similar kind of rationalization for destroying human life before in regards to human cloning for embryonic stem cell research. A few years ago I met with former Missouri Governor Matt Blunt to discuss his opposition to a ban on human cloning in our State. Blunt is opposed to killing innocent human life when it comes to abortion and even ESCR with IVF embryos, but not when it comes to somatic cell nuclear transfer, the process by which, when using a human egg and somatic cell, a human being is cloned. In our meeting he explained that he believed that God’s plan for the creation of human life involved the union of a sperm and egg. While he agreed with me that a new “life” would be created through SCNT, he disagreed that that life would be human since no sperm would be involved in the creation process. When I asked him to explain, then, what kind of organism was actually created he said more or less, “we don’t know what it is, but it’s not human and therefore harvesting it for stem cells is not unethical and should not be banned.”
As if we needed more proof that taking the creation of life out of the womb and moving it into the science lab is morally problematic, these examples show how changing it from a gift of God to a gift of science seriously alters how many view the wonder and mystery of new life and how that new life should be treated – even those who do not normally accept the destruction of innocent human life.
Going back to the IVF story: it’s one of those articles that leaves a different impression on everyone who reads it. This is my take-away. Other reactions: National Right to Life’s Dave Andrusko notes the Erosion of an Ethical Demarcation when it comes to “selective reduction” – Steve Ertelt comments on how the New York Times Touts “Selective Reduction” as a “Half Abortion” – and Sister Toldjah just takes apart the whole thing. What did you come away from it with?
Related:
THIRTY Embryos Created for Every ONE Baby Born by IVF