What Makes the Body Beautiful?

ChelseaLove, Theology of the BodyLeave a Comment

Emily Stimpson continues her look at the Theology of the Body in a slightly different way than it is traditionally presented:
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[W]hat makes a body beautiful is how well it loves.

That’s not pious claptrap. It’s the simple reason why people walked away from Mother Teresa fully convinced that they’d just met the most beautiful woman in the world.

Her love for God and man were written on her face. Her virtue—her compassion, her purity, her obedience, her respect for life—manifested itself in her every look and action. And that didn’t just make her soul beautiful. It made her body beautiful. It caused people to see her as lovely. They liked to look upon her.

The same holds true for us.

Read more. And don’t forget to check out her book These Beautiful Bones: An Everyday Theology of the Body

Previously:
JPII, Food, Sex, and God

The IVF Industry Degrades Women

ChelseaEgg Harvesting, IVF, Reproductive Technology, SurrogacyLeave a Comment

Jennifer Lahl writes:
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I’m just back from Charleston, South Carolina, where I attended the American Academy of Assisted Reproductive Technology Attorneys (AAARTA) professional conference. I listened in for three days on presentations addressing all things associated with third party reproduction from the perspective of lawyers, lobbyists, and advocates for LGBT rights and expanding global laws. I learned a lot.

Much of what I learned disturbed me. I hope to write more about the different sessions at the conference moving forward.

One thing that really bothered me, though, was how every presenter called women “carriers” and “donors”. It was especially bothersome against the background of the slave history of South Carolina. While I was there I toured the city, visited The Old Slave Mart Museum, and learned about the early history of the slave breeders.

It appears we have not learned from history.

Carriers, donors. The labels they use don’t even sound human. How about just…women?

The baby-making industry has absolutely no respect for the women it depends on to put their bodies on the line in order to obtain the “raw materials” needed for their experimentation.

Previously:
Enlightening Interview with Egg Donor Recruiter
Porn Not the Only Industry Commodifying Women

Support Real Life Radio

ChelseaPro LifeLeave a Comment

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Dear readers, this year I am grateful to have become a monthly guest on a wonderful local Catholic radio show. The Mike Allen Show airs Mon-Fri, 5-6pm EST on Real life Radio 1380AM & 94.9FM in Lexington, KY (and world-wide at realliferadio.com)

Below, please check out my past appearances on Mike’s show and be sure to listen live today at 5 pm EST.

On the bioethical complexities of transhumanism and performance enhancing drugs:

On end-of-life ethics in light of an old Star Trek TNG episode. Also, lessons about suffering from the Little Flower:

If you like what you hear, please click here and consider offering them whatever support you can afford.

Tune In Live — 5 pm EST!

ChelseaPro LifeLeave a Comment

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Today I will be on the air in Lexington, KY to discuss the bio-ethical issues surrounding pre-natal genetic testing, including both the benefits and dangers.

Click the image above to tune in to the Mike Allen Show live at 5pm EST. Click here to listen to some of my past appearances on the show.

Enlightening Interview With Egg Donor Recruiter

ChelseaEgg Harvesting, IVF, Reproductive TechnologyLeave a Comment

eggsploitation.pngAfter seeing their Eggsploitation documentary, a former egg donor recruiter came forward and agreed to talk to the Center for Bioethics and Culture about her experience working for 18 years with a leading fertility center in the United States. It’s an interesting look into the industry.

An excerpt:

The last few years was all about pleasing the recipients who were using egg donors. We stopped taking care of donors, but choosing donors based on their ‘select ability’. Our clinic didn’t want to waste time and resources on donors who weren’t going to be chosen, or wouldn’t produce a good quantity of eggs, but focused on girls who would be picked and produce many eggs. It weighed heavy on my mind that people wanted ‘designer babies’ — not that they just wanted a baby, but that they wanted a particular kind of baby. It wasn’t that we stopped ‘taking care’ of the donors, but in my opinion, they were viewed as employees who were contracted and paid to perform a service. It also weighed heavily on my mind that your so called ‘average’ woman wasn’t good enough anymore.

Read the whole thing and when you get some time, also check out An IVF Change of Heart.

While we’re praying for an end to abortion and the conversion of abortionists and abortion facility workers, let’s also remember to pray for an end to the commodification of men, women and children through IVF and for the conversion of those who manufacture and destroy life in IVF clinics and science labs all over the world.

TOB Tues: JPII, Food, Sex, and God

ChelseaTheology of the Body, TOB TuesdayLeave a Comment

Emily Stimson has a TOB must read over at CatholicVote about how discovering JP II’s vision of the human person helped her overcome anorexia and negative body image issues:
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The Theology of the Body taught me that my body was not some hunk of flesh encasing my soul; it was me. It expressed me. It made me present to the world, enabling me to love and be loved.

It also taught me that those curves I despised were gifts, reflecting my feminine heart and God himself, who nourishes and nurtures his people with more tender care than any mother who nourishes and nurtures her child.

And it helped me see food not as something to be feared, but as a perpetual witness to that nourishing love of God’s. It unlocked the power and beauty of the Eucharist and changed every meal into a natural foreshadowing of One, Holy, Sacrificial Meal.

Perhaps most impressively, it did all that in the first reading.

Read the rest: What the Pope Taught Me About Food, Sex, and God

In her new book These Beautiful Bones: An Everyday Theology of the Body, Emily seeks to have a different conversation about the TOB than we’ve seen in recent years.

Defeating Autism

ChelseaDisabledLeave a Comment

AutismAbout 1 in 88 children has been identified with an autism spectrum disorder, 1 in 54 boys. It is the fastest-growing serious developmental disability in the U.S. and I know that so many parents and relatives of young autistic children worry about how their children and loved ones will develop as they get older.

That’s why I am so grateful to my good cyber friend, Dr. Gerard Nadal, for this inspiring article that he recently wrote about the progress of his 14 year old son who has autism:

It’s been almost eleven years since we began this odyssey of delving into the inner workings of one of the most puzzling brain models on God’s showroom floor, one that now appears in 1:50 children. It’s been a great collaborative effort with several great educators and therapists. It has involved adapting our home life to accommodate Joseph’s needs, with no small amount of sacrifice all around. When Joseph took his first tenuous steps into a troop of 46 boys, I think my anxiety was worse than his. It has been the missing piece of his developmental puzzle.

Read more as he explains how Joseph has thrived, thanks, in large part, to his participation in the Boy Scouts. It is a story of love’s triumph and hope for any parent of a young autistic child.

[W]e live in dangerous times for those with so-called poor prenatal diagnoses. The autistic learning style, as it is known in our home, demands total devotion from the entire family. That’s quite a bit to ask in a hedonistic culture. These children will be found out in utero in short order, and when they are, the merchants of death will prey on parents’ well-founded fears. They are fears that nearly paralyzed me in those early years. Yet Joseph’s story is a story of hope in the depths of parental fear.

Thanks, again, Dr. Nadal for sharing and for all that you’re doing for your son and to raise Autism awareness.

When Is Medicine No Longer Medicine?

ChelseaAging, Science, TranshumanismLeave a Comment

elderly-patient.jpgRecently, Google launched a company that will be focused on finding the root cause of various diseases and conditions. But Calico has even greater ambitions than just treating human illnesses. The project also wants to address genetic causes of aging, and perhaps even “solve death.” CNN reports:

Calico — or the California Life Company — has been set up to research subjects related to aging and its associated diseases. Announcing Calico at a media briefing, Google said that the new and independent company will largely focus on age-attendant conditions such as Alzheimer’s, cancer and heart disease.

Larry Page, Google’s ever youthful CEO said: “Illness and aging affect all our families. With some longer term, moonshot thinking around healthcare and biotechnology, I believe we can improve millions of lives.”

Exactly what approach the company is going to take to try to do these things remains to be seen.

My friend and BioTalk partner in crime, Rebecca Taylor, makes a good point and asks a few poignant questions:

The more medicine progresses and cures disease, the longer the human life span will be. That is a natural by-product, but the main focus is curing disease, not living forever.

When the focus is living forever does that change things? If the end game is not curing cancer or Alzheimer’s, but achieving eternal life on earth, is that endeavor no longer in the realm of medicine? Is that instead transhumanism, a philosophy whose very nature rejects what it means to be human?

What do you think?

A Saint for the Infertile

ChelseaInfertilityLeave a Comment

This isn’t just another infertility story. This one includes a miracle from an obscure Medieval saint.
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Over at Catholic Lane, Amy Bonaccorso writes about living with Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome worries for years and then finally being told by her doctor that she had only a 5-10% chance of ever conceiving. Before going in to discuss possible treatment for her condition, she sent a prayer request to a priest who is a member of a community named in honor of St. Leopold. One month later, and a month before her appointment, she was pregnant!

St. Leopold is the patron saint of Austria and very little is written about him in the English language. He is patron of large families, death of children, and stepchildren. His family life explains his patronages. His first wife passed away at a young age and they had only one son together. His second wife, Agnes, lost her first husband after having 11 children. When the two widows married, they both became stepparents and formed a Medieval Brady Bunch. They had 18 children together, and tragically, lost seven.

A most virtuous ruler, Leopold was offered the role of Holy Roman Emperor and declined. This is perhaps the most impressive fact I have found about him. He was politically astute and ushered in an era of peace. A devout Catholic, he built monasteries and helped to resolve the Investiture Controversy.

It turns out this isn’t the first time St. Leopold has helped someone have a child. As Amy researched the saint further, she found out that, 16 years before his formal canonization, Albrecht, Habsburg duke of Austria, traveled to Leopold’s shrine to thank him for the birth of a son on November 15, 1339.

Amy concludes:

Since Leopold’s life was dedicated to raising such a huge brood of children, it is natural that he would take a special interest in baby requests. If you or anyone you know is praying for a child, Leopold’s intercession can’t hurt! Now is the time to mark your calendar for a novena. Start praying on November 7th to end on November 15th, his feast day.

Other patron saints for childless couples.
The Catholic Church is No Enemy of Science or the Infertile

Good News About Down Syndrome

ChelseaAbortion, Disabled, Prenatal Genetic TestingLeave a Comment

 

In recent years, modern academics have managed to recast “eugenics” as a positive term, distinguishing their vision from past government-mandated eugenics policies. The emphasis now is on “selective reproduction” and the parents’ “choice” to decide what kind of child they want to have.

The result has been a search and destroy mission to wipe people with Down syndrome off of the planet through eugenic abortion. And it has taken so much love and joy out of the world.

In the latest episode of BioTalk, Rebecca Taylor and I “raise awareness” about the good news about Down syndrome. Not only is life with Ds not as bleak as most parents are told when their child is prenatally diagnosed, but scientists are making significant advancements in the treatment some of the more serious side-effects of the disorder.

Links:
Extra Chromosome Silenced in Down Syndrome Cells
Mom: “Down Syndrome Research, Hope for My Daughter”

Be Not Afraid
Jérôme Lejeune Foundation USA

Awesome image via: Kerri Liles Photography