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Compiled by Steve Jalsevac
Notable Pro Choice Activist Counsels Strategic Retreat – Wesley J. Smith
Polls have shown that the country is becoming generally more “pro life.” (Let’s not quibble about how that is defined.) Frances Kissling, a notable abortion rights activist, writes in the Washington Post that pro choicers need to change their tune if they don’t want their movement to “lose ground entirely.” And she makes some rather startling admissions:
“We can no longer pretend the fetus is invisible. The fetus is more visible than ever before, and the abortion-rights movement needs to accept its existence and its value. It may not have a right to life, and its value may not be equal to that of the pregnant woman, but ending the life of a fetus is not a morally insignificant event.” Kissling is willing, apparently, to outlaw late term abortion. She goes on, “We need to firmly and clearly reject post-viability abortions except in extreme cases.”
Why Live Action did right and why we all should know that by Peter Kreeft
When I talk about abortion, I often surprise most of my audience, even some prolifers, by saying that not only is abortion always evil but that it is not a “complex issue,” that deep down we all know that it is evil; that Mother Teresa is very clearly right when she says “If abortion isn’t wrong, nothing is wrong.”
I want to say a similar thing about Live Action: not only (1) that its actions were right but (2) that they were very clearly right.
An immediate objection arises to my second point. If it was very clearly right, why do some sincere and intelligent pro-lifers insist that it was wrong?…most (though not all) pro-lifers instinctively side with Live Action even if they cannot answer the arguments of its critics. (Is it an accident that its critics are more Kantian than Aristotelian?)
The closest analogy I can think of to Live Action’s expose of Planned Parenthood is spying. If Live Action is wrong, then so is all spying, including spying out the Nazis’ atomic bomb projects and saving the world from a nuclear holocaust.
Last Comments on Lying for Jesus by Mark Shea – National Catholic Register
…isn’t it interesting how things that appear to be “elementary” moral teaching (“Don’t lie”) suddenly get complex when it’s Us and not Them who are pondering the problem.
Remember this discussion that next time you are tempted to harshly judge some Muslim who thinks you can lie in a good cause. We’re not so very different after all.
…comparisons of Lila Rose’s sting to war or police work break down because, well, this is not war or police work. …comparisons with the cops don’t fly. The state had a right to arrest, detain, try and even execute Lee Harvey Oswald. That doesn’t mean that Jack Ruby does.
If I seek you out for the express purpose of telling you a falsehood, that’s a different thing than leading you to think something that you are already set on thinking (as, for example with the use of phony tanks to feed Nazi photographers misleading info, etc.) This is part of what bothers me about the tactics deployed against PP. Lila Rose went to them and, well, lied. They didn’t come to her demanding information to which they were not entitled.
Prison shouldn’t be a deep freeze for Linda Gibbons by Ian Hunter, National Post
Ihave never met Linda Gibbons. I’m not sure I’d want to. After all, this 63-year-old grandmother must be a very dangerous person: She has spent almost all of the last 20 years locked up in jail.
Gibbons is an exceptional criminal in several ways. Often she goes to court without a lawyer. She says nothing in her own defence. She refuses to acknowledge the jurisdiction of a court to prevent her from praying. She accepts without recrimination what, by any standard of natural law, are unjust verdicts. She makes few criticisms of her treatment in jail. She seeks no early release.
Now I do not go so far as to suggest that she is a model prisoner. Admittedly, Gibbons was a pain when she asked to have a Bible in her cell. And she sometimes leads her cellmates in prayer. In the past, prison guards have noted how jailhouse language markedly improves in Linda’s presence. Such, I suppose, is the nefarious control that one criminal mind is capable of exerting over other inmates.
Pro-life Christians and Muslims against pro-abortion law – Asia News
In Manila, more than 5 thousand people of all faiths manifest their will to live. Criticism of President Aquino accused of maintaining an ambiguous position, despite a steady dialogue with the Church and pro-life associations.
Time for mercy killing debate
A GP who admitted giving lethal doses of painkillers to his patients has called for a national debate on euthanasia, saying it is already common practice in hospitals.
NHS shamed over callous treatment of elderly – Telegraph
The National Health Service is today condemned over its inhumane treatment of elderly patients in an official report that finds hospitals are failing to meet “even the most basic standards of care” for the over-65s. A study of pensioners who suffered appalling treatment at the hands of doctors and nurses says that half were not given enough to eat or drink. One family member said the maltreatment amounted to “euthanasia”. Some were left unwashed or in soiled clothes, while others were forgotten after being sent home or given the wrong medication. In several cases considered by the Health Service Ombudsman, patients died without loved ones by their sides because of the “casual indifference” of staff and their “bewildering disregard” for people’s needs.
Social Conservatives in the Age of Red Ink By Nicole Russell – American Spectator
Though a 2009 Gallup poll found 51% of Americans consider themselves pro-life, over and over, polls report the economy, healthcare, and government ethics trump voters’ concerns over the decline of marriage or rise in the number of abortions. A Rasmussen poll this week found 83% of those surveyed said the economy was (still) the most important issue to them.
…today’s social conservatives similarly use popular concern about red ink to defund the social liberals who threaten the sanctity of marriage and innocent human life. Wilberforce’s partner in passing the Foreign Slave Trade Bill, Thomas Clarkson, said: “We need to tuck this bill away somewhere and disguise it.” Social conservatives in a Tea Party era may need to be similarly shrewd.
Daniels at CPAC calls for broad, civil, conservative coalition
Daniels has offered an unapologetic prescription for the GOP, which has caused him some grief with his own party. He has called for a moratorium on pursuit of social-issue legislation, a top concern for the Republican’s evangelical wing. And Daniels did not touch any of the “hot-button social issues such as abortion, as former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum emphasized in his speech to the conference Thursday.
Doctors fail empathy test in 90% of cases – Sharon Kirkey, Postmedia News
Doctors are routinely missing or ignoring moments that beg for empathy and need more training in responding to human emotions, an article in Canada’s leading medical journal says.
Researchers from the University of Toronto and Duke University in Durham, N.C., say studies suggest doctors fail up to 90% of the time to respond to emotional cues from their patients….when doctors respond with empathy, patients have less anxiety and depression. They’re more likely to comply with treatment and less likely to lodge malpractice complaints. Doctors fear that empathy “is something you’re born with—either you are empathetic, or not,” Dr. Buckman says. “That is rubbish. Empathetic communication is something you can learn,” in as little as a half-day workshop, he says.”