What’s missing from this appeal to Catholic principles?
Tuesday, September 18, 2012, 2:14 PM
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September 18th, 2012 | 2:52 pm
Um, Catholic principles? My impression is that it is all about government projects by this video.
September 18th, 2012 | 3:01 pm
If I were forced to give name to Mr. Obama’s scientific taxonomy I would offer…
Platitudinous Broadbrushien.
Sigh…
September 18th, 2012 | 3:06 pm
Obviously, he leaves out the most basic protection of human life from conception to natural death.
September 18th, 2012 | 3:14 pm
One item that is missing in terms of Catholic principles is any mention of the greatest social justice issue of our time: state-sanctioned killing of innocent human beings by the millions, imposed upon us by Roe v. Wade in opposition to the clearly expressed will of the people as reflected in the state laws of most of the states at the time. Also missing is any mention of the idolatry inherent in tolerating this situation, which requires us to render unto Caesar authority over innocent human life that belongs only to God, Whose command, “Thou shalt not kill” was traditionally understood by Catholics and other Christians to prohibit the killing of the child in the womb as well as everyone else. Due to the idolatry inherent in tolerating it, unlike other social justice issues, murder authorized by a deified state is an assault on Christianity itself as well as an assault on the image of God in humanity.
Obama personifies the deification of the state, its godless social engineering and its intolerance of the practice of religion if it has an influence outside of the walls of church buildings. “Catholics for Obama” rings false, sounding to me like “Catholics for slavery,” “Catholics for eugenics” or “Catholics for idolatry.”
I must say though, that the ad was well done – Joseph Goebbels would have been impressed with its smooth and utter deceitfulness.
September 18th, 2012 | 3:24 pm
- subsidiarity
- religious freedom
(the “forward” slogan, by the way, that wouldn’t be the “great leap” kind, I’m hoping…)
September 18th, 2012 | 3:32 pm
Certainly what’s missing is the protection of life, as one commenter already said.
What’s also missing is a sense of the wildly ironic. One of the text overlays talks about Obama adding money for adoption programs. If that’s even true, it was done while happily stripping Catholic agencies of the right to foster adoptions in a morally-acceptable way.
He added money for other social services, so they say. While stripping the Catholic Church of its partnership in dealing with victims of human trafficking.
He talks about his faith journey, while sending his HHS to force Catholic people and institutions to violate their own faith journey by cooperation in the evil of contraceptives and abortifacients. Forcing cooperation in direct abortions is coming, if not already activated.
What’s really missing? What is missing from all Obama speeches. Truth. Sincerity. This man who spent 20 years with Rev Wright as his spiritual father, and now manifestly does not practice any Christian faith, claims to be a Christian believer. Pants on fire, again, still.
September 18th, 2012 | 4:06 pm
“What’s missing from this appeal to Catholic principles?”
Two words:
“Sincerity”
“Integrity”
September 18th, 2012 | 5:27 pm
Harry: Also missing is any mention of the idolatry inherent in tolerating this situation, which requires us to render unto Caesar authority over innocent human life that belongs only to God,
Well, yeah, in the Old Testament, there are multiple occasions where God commands the killing of innocent human lives or does it himself.
September 18th, 2012 | 5:35 pm
What’s missing is what’s never missing from an Obama foreign policy speech; an apology. An apology for taking away our constitutionally protected religious liberties.
September 18th, 2012 | 5:36 pm
One thing that’s missing is this: While serving in the Illinois state legislature, State Senator Obama voted against the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act” three times. This bill offered protection to babies born after attempted abortions — they would be classified under the law as persons and doctors would be required to attempt to save their lives. Any Catholic who thinks this President is a friend of the Church needs to think again….
September 18th, 2012 | 6:25 pm
What belongs to Caesar has Caesar’s image upon it, as did the coin Jesus asked to look at before He explained that we must render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar, and render unto God that which belongs to God. Human life belongs to God and has His image imprinted upon it: “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
God calls human life into being; God calls it back to Himself when He is good and ready to do so. And when He does this it is not murder. He is only taking what was always His. And if He does that by using humans as His instrument, that is His prerogative. Caesar has no such prerogatives. God’s command to us, and to Caesar who is only one of us, is “Thou shalt not kill.” When we take innocent human life we take what belongs to God alone in defiance of His clear command. On judgment day our claiming that Caesar authorized the murder will do us as much good as that defense did the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials. Good luck with that excuse, and good luck with telling God on judgment day that He killed innocent people too and commanded others to do so.
September 18th, 2012 | 7:09 pm
Mrs. Jackson: What’s missing is what’s never missing from an Obama foreign policy speech; an apology.
And what is missing from your reading list is a fact checker: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/mar/15/mitt-romney/obama-remarks-never-true-apology/ and http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2011/02/obamas_apology_tour.html
An apology would be in order for this statement.
Mrs. Jackson: An apology for taking away our constitutionally protected religious liberties.
If what you say is indeed protected by the Constitution, then you won’t have a problem getting a Supreme Court with six Catholics to uphold it. I wonder why that won’t happen… because the Constitution protects no such thing. Even Scalia (Catholic and very conservative) won’t be on the side of the Catholic Church on this one, unless he goes against his own precedent of Employment Division v. Smith.
And of course, I hear no similar howl about Mitt Romney rightly forcing Catholic hospitals to give Plan B to victims of rape, much to the chagrin of the hierarchy.
September 18th, 2012 | 7:33 pm
This bill offered protection to babies born after attempted abortions — they would be classified under the law as persons and doctors would be required to attempt to save their lives.
publius,
Actually, under Illinois law, doctors were required to attempt to save viable babies born alive. What was at issue was the treatment of pre-viable (or non-viable) babies—that is, babies that by definition could not be saved. It would have made no sense for doctors to attempt to save the lives of pre-viable babies. The issue was their human treatment in the brief hours they might live if born alive. Obama said they could have compromised and crafted a bill that dealt with their treatment. Instead, they pro-life advocates wanted a bill that declared born-alive infants persons, and mandated no specific treatment. It is a fact that neither the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act nor the federal bill mandates any particular treatment for born-alive infants. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement to that effect and advised doctors to continue to treat born-alive infants on the cusp of viability as they had before the bill passed.
Everyone knows Obama is strongly pro-abortion. There is no reason to make up stories about the Born Alive Infant Protection Act to try to make him sound like a monster.
September 18th, 2012 | 8:30 pm
Divorce.
September 18th, 2012 | 8:55 pm
Max re: “unless he goes against his own precedent of Employment Division v. Smith”
You assume the law will survive Smith’s tests.
September 18th, 2012 | 10:30 pm
David Nickol,
Obfuscation. The point was conflict of interest. The same doctor seeking to kill the baby is then supposed to flip a switch and become an impartial judge of what constitutes humane treatment. The act soul have added a modicum of procedural decency to counteract the conflict of interest. Obama thought that the theoretical burden this might put on the decision to have an abortion outweighed the positives (if he acknowledged any). If that’s not an extreme position on abortion then what would be?
September 19th, 2012 | 1:12 am
publius, David Nickol,
You may find the articles at these links informative:
Fathering More Lies. Obama’s latest spin on Born-Alive.
Obama’s Abortion Trap
Obama and Infanticide. The media still insist on defending his votes in favor of infanticide.
And be sure to check this one out:
The Audacity of Death
September 19th, 2012 | 1:14 am
Oops. That was:
The Audacity of Death
September 19th, 2012 | 7:18 am
David,
Who described Obama as a “monster”?
And what is your definition of “viable” — that’s at the crux of your argument and Obama’s.
September 19th, 2012 | 8:58 am
@publius,
If we can’t be sure what is viable, on which you seem to agree, shouldn’t we err on the side of viability? We are talking about human beings here.
September 19th, 2012 | 9:18 am
Harry: God calls human life into being; God calls it back to Himself when He is good and ready to do so. And when He does this it is not murder. He is only taking what was always His. And if He does that by using humans as His instrument, that is His prerogative.
In that case, anyone believing to have a divine command to kill and to do wrong is in the right. I thought the attempted judicial murder of pastor Nadarkhani was wrong, but it turns out, it was right after all. Apostasy is a capital crime in Islam, it’s what orthodox Muslims think is the will of Allah. And He is merely exercising His prerogative He by using humans as His instrument to slaughter innocents, like Nadarkhani.
Harry: Good luck with that excuse, and good luck with telling God on judgment day that He killed innocent people too and commanded others to do so.
I’m glad you acknowledge it, but since I am an atheist, I would be tossed into Hell, were I the greatest and most noble saint that ever lived. Better that than worshiping and serving a being responsible for what you describe.
Also, I do not favor killing innocents, fetuses and embryos are not actual persons. So I am actually morally superior to a being that does favor killing innocents.
Charles: You assume the law will survive Smith’s tests.
If we are talking about the contraception mandate, and I was, I think it’s pretty definite that it will. It was not specifically directed against any religion, and there is a rational basis.
September 19th, 2012 | 9:31 am
And what is your definition of “viable” — that’s at the crux of your argument and Obama’s.
publius,
First of all, Obama didn’t invent the concept of viability. It is used throughout Illinois abortion law. It is the point at which a fetus can live (or be kept alive by current technology) outside the womb. You can’t blame Obama for using the legal terminology already in the laws that were being considered for amendment. Basically, the laws said that if an infant was born alive and was viable (could be saved), doctors were required to keep it alive. Consequently, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act was not a law that would have saved infants who would otherwise be left to die.
September 19th, 2012 | 9:47 am
If we can’t be sure what is viable, on which you seem to agree, shouldn’t we err on the side of viability? We are talking about human beings here.
Mike Melendez,
When any patient—not just a premature baby or a born-alive infant, but victim in a car crash, a cancer patient, a heart attack victim, or whatever you can think of—is on the line between life and death, judgments have to be made. Doctors do not pull out all the stops to save every patient, nor would we want them to. This, by the way, is fully in accord with Catholic medical ethics that does not require extraordinary or unduly burdensome measures or futile care. The number of infants born alive from an abortion is no doubt extraordinarily small. The number of infants born prematurely or very prematurely is large, and decisions about their treatment have to be made every day. And the number of adults and the elderly who, on the one hand, might truly benefit from further aggressive medical care or, on the other, might have their suffering prolonged or intensified or might not even benefit at all (while huge bills mount for their insurance or their families to pay) is quite large. The same rules should apply to everyone. A judgment must be made if further medical treatment is in the best interest of the patient. It shouldn’t matter if it is a born-alive infant from a failed abortion or the richest and most important person in the world.
September 19th, 2012 | 10:02 am
The act soul have added a modicum of procedural decency to counteract the conflict of interest.
Joe Z,
The Born Alive Infant Protection Act did absolutely nothing other than declare that a born-alive infant be considered a person under the law. It did not suggest or mandate any specific treatment. It would have been possible to write such a bill, but the pro-life advocates chose not to. Consequently, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act did nothing. That is why the federal version sailed through the House and Senate. Pro-choice legislators at the federal level saw that the bill didn’t actually do anything that existing law didn’t already do.
The same doctor seeking to kill the baby is then supposed to flip a switch and become an impartial judge of what constitutes humane treatment.
There is no law regulating abortion that I can think of that doesn’t rely on the abortionist doing the right thing. This is how most laws work. Laws against picking pockets rely on potential pickpockets not to pick pockets.
As I keep saying, the Illinois legislature could have written a law saying doctors were required to provide comfort care to all pre-viable infants born alive. The law could have set standards for what comfort care was. Instead, the law defined the born-alive infant as a person.
I have been asking for years if anyone could provide information about this law actually coming into play. Was anyone ever prosecuted using BAIPA? Or even investigated? The law seems to have done nothing. It had no consequences. I am, of course, open to evidence that shows otherwise, but I don’t think there is any.
September 19th, 2012 | 10:11 am
David,
And who described President Obama as a “monster”?
It’s just laughable that those who favor the pro-life position without exception are called extremists, and yet the pro-abortion without exception position of President Obama is somehow indicative of his moderation. Utterly laughable, and typical of the double standard applied by the media.
September 19th, 2012 | 11:02 am
No. That is not the case. Believing one has a divine authorization is not the same as actually having a divine authorization. Anyway, we were discussing God’s dealings with humanity in the Old Testament. There is now a New Covenant. By the way, it is impossible for God to do wrong or to command others to do wrong.
You will be tossed into Hell or rewarded with Heaven depending on whether you lived according to the light you received. God knows what you understand to be true and whether you live according to that understanding, and whether you responded to His grace.
What is wrong with God bringing forth human life and calling it back to Himself when He is ready to do so? Human life belongs to Him, not us. That is why He commanded us, “Thou shalt not kill.”
Yours is not a very original sin, consisting as it does in doubting God’s goodness and deciding for yourself what is good and what is evil. You aren’t the first to be so presumptious as to judge God and then declare “I will not serve.”
Good luck with that.
September 19th, 2012 | 11:10 am
Oops. Make that “presumptuous.”
September 19th, 2012 | 11:20 am
Hey Maxy, first of all thank you. Your comments made me recall another thing Obama left out of his spot – he didn’t bow to us Catholics.
I am amused at your suggestion I owe Obama an apology? Now that’s ripe. Almost as ripe as David Nikol saying Obama is “strongly pro-choice”.
Obama isn’t strongly pro choice.
Where’s the choice in his HHS mandate? And please spare us the baked twaddle Sebelius is responsible for the mandate, not Obama. Hiding behind the skirts of women isn’t very presidential but with Obama we’ve come to expect. He’s hiding behind Hillary Clinton’s trousers right now with his apologetic middle east policy. Talk about the killing of innocents.
Drop Nikol’s distraction of Obama’s votes in Illinois : Obama is strongly pro-abortion and he insults the intelligence of Catholics with this more than lame commercial.
Back to Maxy, Maxy, while we all applaud you and heartily pat you on the back for your moral superiority – you need some work, nay a lot of work, on your understanding of the Constitution. It might help you to drop atheism because that is probably what is hindering your development of a proper understanding of the Constitution. Spare us all the childlike reasoning that God is not mentioned in the Constitution, therefore we are a secular country. Fundamentalism of any stripe is noxious.
I’ve got an idea, et’s all look to Sandra Fluke for guidance here. Randy Sandy believes -most fervently- and she stated this at the DNC (David Nikol -this is not word for word so you don’t need to google up her words to distract the thread) that those who do not use contraception should not be allowed to control it. Fine.
We’ll accept Randy Sandy’s terms here as they work quite nicely. Maxy, until you accept there is a God, you should refrain from giving us your severely handicapped opinion on what is religious liberty as well as what is constitutional basically because they are worth the air they are typed in.
I thank you in advance.
September 19th, 2012 | 11:30 am
And who described President Obama as a “monster”?
publius,
A great amount of effort is invested by some pro-life advocates to “prove” that Obama is in favor of not just abortion, but infanticide, and that he heartlessly voted to allow born-alive babies to be killed or mistreated. It is true that Obama is very supportive of legal abortion. It is false that he is in favor of infanticide and there is not a shred of evidence that he is indifferent to mistreatment of born-alive infants. I don’t recall anyone here using the word monster, but accusations that Obama favors infanticide are very serious, wouldn’t you agree?
. . . . yet the pro-abortion without exception position of President Obama is somehow indicative of his moderation.
I would not describe Obama as a moderate on the issue of abortion. But I wouldn’t say he is “pro-abortion without exception.” The law allows states to regulate abortion, particularly past the point of viability, and Obama has never tried to change that as president. He is a very strong supporter of abortion rights, but he certainly hasn’t attempted to expand the circumstances under which abortions can be permitted. You may not remember it, but he created a flap a few years ago by suggesting that the “mental health of the mother” should be defined more narrowly to include only genuine mental illness.
September 19th, 2012 | 11:51 am
Almost as ripe as David Nikol saying Obama is “strongly pro-choice”.
Mrs. Jackson,
There is nobody here by that name, but if you were referring to me, I did not say Obama was “strongly pro-choice.” I said [September 18th, 2012 | 7:33 pm]: “Everyone knows Obama is strongly pro-abortion.”
I don’t know whether you consistently misspell my name out of carelessness or pettiness, but feel free to continue. However, please do not put words in quotation marks, falsely claim they are mine, and then criticize me for saying things I didn’t say.
September 19th, 2012 | 12:26 pm
If the Born Alive law REALLY did nothing…why vote against it?
September 19th, 2012 | 12:39 pm
Exactly. Obama is not pro-choice at all. He is pro-abortion. He is a staunch advocate of taking the lives of innocent human beings who “don’t count” according to contemporary bigotry. He wants no restrictions on that whatsoever. He wants to force everyone to be involved in the killing (think HHS mandate, our taxes being used to pay for the killing), supposing that will somehow legitimize this practice. It won’t anymore than the laws forcing those opposed to slavery to be involved in catching and returning runaway slaves legitimized slavery. His desire to force those who with their deepest convictions are opposed to taking innocent human life to be involved in the killing speaks volumes about his being anti-choice as well as anti-life.
As was the case with slavery, the Democrats are on the wrong side of the gravest moral issue of the times. Obama and the Democrats seem to have completely forgotten that taking the life of the child in the womb used to be against the law. It was against the law because murder is wrong. No human authority can make murder right. Strictly speaking, taking the life of the innocent child in the womb is not currently legal. It never has been and can never be legal. Murder is always wrong and intrinsically illegal.
September 19th, 2012 | 12:46 pm
David,
You used the word “monster.”
September 19th, 2012 | 12:58 pm
Mrs. Jackson: I am amused at your suggestion I owe Obama an apology?
Yes, for making a claim repeatedly debunked by fact checkers. When I am wrong, I apologize. So should you.
Mrs. Jackson: Where’s the choice in his HHS mandate?
The exact same place where the choice was when Romney rightly forced Catholic hospitals to give Plan B to rape victims: with the individuals who are affected by it.
Mrs. Jackson: Spare us all the childlike reasoning that God is not mentioned in the Constitution, therefore we are a secular country. Fundamentalism of any stripe is noxious.
Then perhaps you should drop your David Barton-like interpretation of the Constitution. It is not a controversial suggestion that the US is a secular country, except among readers of David Barton.
Mrs. Jackson: Randy Sandy
Talking about childlike… it’s very interesting that you would render attacks on the person, and such childish ones at that, instead of responding to the arguments people make.
Mrs. Jackson: We’ll accept Randy Sandy’s terms here as they work quite nicely.
Then you support the contraception mandate and this whole argument is moot.
Mrs. Jackson: Maxy, until you accept there is a God, you should refrain from giving us your severely handicapped opinion on what is religious liberty as well as what is constitutional basically because they are worth the air they are typed in.
I can’t defend my claim that the contraception mandate is unconstitutional, so I am going to attack the person, like I did with Sandra Fluke. I already knew that you couldn’t establish that the contraceptive mandate is unconstitutional, notwithstanding your confident claim to the contrary, but I did not expect you to fold quite this easily.
September 19th, 2012 | 1:01 pm
Not to thread jack or anything, but should Catholic Organizations be forced to hire divorcees or be prevented from firing employees who get a divorce?
Just curious as to what sins religious organizations should swallow?
September 19th, 2012 | 1:15 pm
David,
You have written here and elsewhere that Obama wanted to compromise and offer a bill that would have provided comfort care for pre-viable babies that had survived abortion without going so far as to declare them persons. Where is your evidence for this? I have never read any speech given by Obama at the time that indicated this. Everything I have read concerning what he said at the time centers around his worry that such a bill could potentially undermine Roe–even though the same bill did not worry Barbara Boxer, and even though Obama himself voted to insert the neutrality clause that should have addressed his concerns. I would greatly appreciate such evidence that Obama had tried to craft a compromise.
September 19th, 2012 | 1:25 pm
Dude,
The issue is that they are being compelled (despite the First Amendment) by government edict to provide coverage for their employees to pay for abortions. They are not being compelled to provide attorney fees for employees who get a divorce. Your analogy is completely off the mark.
September 19th, 2012 | 2:27 pm
If the Born Alive law REALLY did nothing…why vote against it?
Steven M,
I am not arguing that Obama voted against BAIPA because he thought it did nothing. What he said in the Illinois Senate debate is that he thought it would be found unconstitutional and struck down. (So, if we take him at his word, he believed the law would never go into effect, rather than thinking it would go into effect and do nothing.) My argument is that the bill actually did do nothing, and has done nothing, and it makes little sense to keep bringing up what was an inconsequential vote. Also, the first two times Obama did not vote for the bill (2001, 2002), it actually passed the Illinois Senate and died in the House. So his votes of No and Present had no effect on the fate of the bill. (As a committee chairman in 2003, he did kill the bill. A version passed in 2005 after he was gone.)
My own personal opinion is that Obama at the time (quite reasonably and correctly) did not see any of these votes as particularly significant. Illinois already had very stringent abortion laws, and what was going on from Obama’s point of view (I speculate) was the same old game of pro-life advocates trying to get passed any new anti-abortion legislation they could think up, and pro-choice advocates trying to block it.
September 19th, 2012 | 2:46 pm
But the Church has a pretty “orthodox” view concerning the sin of divorce. I have relatives, who were not allowed to be re-married in the Church, until they could pass through some hoops. (Although not Catholic myself, I agree with this strict standard) Most decided the hoops were demining and went the non-denominational route.
Either way, why should Catholic organizations ignore the sin of divorce?
September 19th, 2012 | 2:54 pm
I would greatly appreciate such evidence that Obama had tried to craft a compromise.
Tim,
From the Illinois State Senate transcript of March 30, 2001:
Note, by the way, that the reference is always to a previable fetus or child. This makes it clear that the focus was born-alive infants who could not, by very definition, survive. So there was no question of BAIPA saving the lives of infants who had a chance of surviving. They were already covered by Illinois law. The matter at hand was the treatment of born-alive infants who had no chance of survival.
The part I have left out of the Obama quote, which you can read for yourself, deals with his reasons for why he thought the bill was unconstitutional. I am omitting that part because it is irrelevant to my point and also, to be candid, because I don’t think Obama made a very clear case. However I do think he honestly believed the bill would be found unconstitutional, even if his reasoning was muddled.
Also note that despite Obama’s “Present” vote, the bill passed—36 Aye, 6 Nay, and 12 Present.
September 19th, 2012 | 3:02 pm
That should read:
Most decided the hoops were demeaning and went the non-denominational route.
September 19th, 2012 | 3:21 pm
@ Someotherdude
Religious institutions fire people for not presenting a good solid example to the young all the time. You can be fired from Baylor University for being intoxicated in the presence of students or giving students alchohol, if I understand the faculty handbook properly.
Although I personally do not support all of Baylor University’s religious ideals, I fully support their right to fire a faculty member they feel is not representing their ideals.
So yes, if a Catholic school or university wanted to fire someone for “living in sin” with a second wife because of the bad example he set, it should be free to do so. It is a free country!
September 19th, 2012 | 3:55 pm
@David Nickol,
My question still stands. It is not one of degrees which is what your answer is about. It was about absolutes. Whether or not to use a heart-lung machine to keep the baby alive is such a prudential decision as you note. Whether or not to treat the baby as being alive is another thing altogether.
But that boils down to the details of the law.
September 19th, 2012 | 4:08 pm
But, as far as I know, Catholic institutions have not used the sin of divorce as the basis for hiring and firing. I attended a Catholic university, and my professors, most of which were Catholic, either were divorced or in the process of getting divorces. Two couples worked together in the same departments (theology and philosophy, ironically enough).
I guess my point is, why has divorce fallen off the radar in Catholic institutions.
September 19th, 2012 | 4:39 pm
Whether or not to treat the baby as being alive is another thing altogether.
Mike Melendez,
I am not sure I understand your question, but of course you treat any born-alive infant as alive. You assess its condition, give it lifesaving care if it can be saved, and comfort care if it cannot. This is an everyday matter in hospitals across the nation due not to abortion, but to our shamefully high rate of premature births.
In the case of both the Illinois and the federal born-alive acts, there was no solid evidence that anything other than that was being done. There was uncorroborated testimony from two nurses at one Chicago hospital that some born-alive infants had been neglected. Those allegations were investigated and they could not be corroborated. If they had been corroborated, the hospital would have been found to be in violation of the law. The born-alive act was an unnecessary non-solution to a problem that had not been shown to exist.
Gerrold Nadler, who is my (very pro-abortion rights) congressman, said the following in the House regarding the federal BAIPA:
September 19th, 2012 | 6:27 pm
Back to the original question, and on further reflection, one more thing is missing–a ringing call by Catholic bishops and other leaders to reject this charlatan this November in the voting booth.
September 19th, 2012 | 7:14 pm
I’d hate to think that the conservative Catholic activists are more concerned with political alliances in the face of overwhelming sin. Divorce and the destruction of families has become so common place among the politicians, on the right, it is ignored for purely cynical political reasons.
I’ve noticed this among Roman Catholics who revere Randian philosophies. Roman Catholics who embrace Marxism are rightly derided; however postmodern hybrids on the right are politely tolerated.
The militarization of the Right has also forced many Roman Catholics to “redefine” innocent life, in the hopes of maintaining right-wing solidarity, or they sincerely believe life in the womb is valued, but lives (fetuses are killed in war, as well as children, mothers, sisters, grandparents, etc) in faraway lands, just are not as “innocent.”
It’s as if postmodernism is OK on the right, but sinful on the left.
September 19th, 2012 | 11:07 pm
David,
I appreciate you providing me with that information. I think you’re right in that Obama’s reasoning is muddled with respect to his fear that the bill would be found unconstitutional. And while that muddled thinking may provide some context that makes this particular 2001 present vote look defensible (somewhat), he would later vote against the 2003 version of that bill that had almost exactly the same neutrality clause that passed muster at the federal level. He chaired the committee that inserted the neutrality clause. His doubts about the constitutionality of the bill should have been addressed, and yet he still could not bring himself to support the bill. Why not?
I also don’t see how the alleged compromise that failed to materialize would be a compromise at all. Providing comfort care would seem to flow from the legal recognition that a pre-viable infant is a person with certain rights–even if they are obviously not long for this world. He was consistent in his stance that any legal recognition of a infant at any stage of development could impose a potential burden on Roe. Which is to say, that such was his commitment to legal abortion, that he was willing to deny any legal protection to pre-viable infants even after he should have been satisfied that such legal recognition posed no potential threat to legalized abortion. It certainly seemed like a matter of principle to him.
“There was uncorroborated testimony from two nurses at one Chicago hospital that some born-alive infants had been neglected. Those allegations were investigated and they could not be corroborated. If they had been corroborated, the hospital would have been found to be in violation of the law. The born-alive act was an unnecessary non-solution to a problem that had not been shown to exist.”
We’ve been through this before. As Jill Stanek noted in her exchange with Eric Zorn, the investigation seemed awfully shoddy in that the two nurses bringing forth the accusations were never interviewed. And I think you are just plain wrong about whether what they had alleged would have been covered by the 1975 law. That law was very narrow–it applied to infants that had survived abortions that doctors had decided beforehand would have survived for lengthy periods of time. In other words, it applied to viable infants. Not the ones described by Stanek and Baker. Futhermore, a consent decree pronounced in 1993 weakened the already narrow 1975 law even further. That, according to pro-lifers, is the reason why the office of AG Ryan said that they could not prosecute what was happening at Christ Hospital. Furthermore, the Congressional committee that hosted the two nurses found their testimony credible, and noted that there were other reasons for the necessity of BAIPA.
September 19th, 2012 | 11:36 pm
And, of course, Nadler said that before voting for BAIPA both in committee and on the House floor, because even the most extreme pro-choicer like Nadler realized that an allegedly redundant law against infanticide is still a *law against infanticide*. Obama didn’t. That’s the problem and no amount of amateur legal analysis can get around it.
September 20th, 2012 | 1:04 am
“Charles: You assume the law will survive Smith’s tests.
If we are talking about the contraception mandate, and I was, I think it’s pretty definite that it will. It was not specifically directed against any religion, and there is a rational basis.”
Can you call it rational basis when it already exempts others for economic and moral reasons? A rational basis that distribution of contraceptives is best served through individual insurance and not the existing Title X grants? And can it really be called neutral despite two decades of contentious and antagonism by Obama’s allies in applying state-level mandates and the significant fundraising impact for Democrats from the pandering?
September 20th, 2012 | 1:15 am
someotherdude,
Is divorce completely forbidden in the Catholic faith? I recall there being some allowances for abuse or for unbelievers. Likewise, almost all heterosexual marriages, even when contraceptive or remarriages, aren’t entirely irreconcilable to the Catholic faith. The whole ‘if X, then why not Y?’ not only isn’t a sound argument (it’s just as a distraction not like the Pharisees who disparaged both the fasting John and the feasting Jesus), the X isn’t even as you claim.
September 20th, 2012 | 4:40 am
Hello, David Nickol,
Obama’s commitment to “legal” child killing extends so far as to write off survivors of abortion if that might endanger the right to “legal” abortion. Why do you continually attempt to spin Obama’s radical extremism in support of child killing such that it appears to be reasonable? You fail miserably at that.
You wrote:
The following are excerpts from the transcript of the first hearing of the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on the original federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) on July 20, 2000, including the testimony of the nurse eyewitnesses. Subsequently, the bill was approved by the committee 22-1, and by the full House of Representatives 380-15.
They will last only hours if uncared for. I know from personal experience, having spent much time in neonatal care units because my own children were patients in them, that babies 23 or 24 weeks old are routinely cared for in them. And that was years ago. Today, considering the advances in modern medicine and technology, the age of the youngest patients in neonatal care units, I would assume, is often much less than that.
List a few cases where nurses and doctors were charged with criminal negligence for leaving a viable baby to die in a closet instead of taking the child to a neonatal care unit. If you say you can’t because that never happens, then you are asking everyone to believe that nurses are falsely accusing their own employers of serious crimes. Can you find us a case of such nurses being taken to court for slander? It seems the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in regard to the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) took such nurses seriously as did the House of Representatives. BAIPA was approved by the committee 22-1, and by the full House of Representatives 380-15. Or are you claiming the nurses presented utterly false testimony to the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives and they bought it? Get real.
Obama’s tolerance of infanticide, if that is what it takes to protect abortion rights, is way over the top. You do your best to put lipstick on the ugly pig of his radical extremism. It isn’t working.
September 20th, 2012 | 6:46 am
Nadler realized that an allegedly redundant law against infanticide is still a *law against infanticide*
Sigh,
I am quite sure that what Nadler and other pro-choice politicians in the House and Senate realized was that if they voted against the federal BAIPA, which—if it did anything at all—was redundant, their votes would be used in a campaign of lies against them alleging that they supported infanticide. Perhaps one might accuse Obama of political naiveté or ineptitude, but certainly one can’t accuse him of being responsible for any harm, or even of being indifferent, in declining to vote against something that was already illegal—that is, if a vote for BAIPA was a vote against anything at all, which arguably it was not.
Do we really want our legislatures to spend their time passing new laws against which there are already existing laws? Is the theory you are relying on that if one law against an evil is good, then two laws against it are better? How about three, or five, or ten?
And recall that there had been no allegations of infanticide in Illinois, in any case, so infanticide was not an issue in Obama’s vote. The issue was negligent care of pre-viable born-alive infants, an issue which Obama expressed a willingness to address directly.
And to make one final point, Obama’s stated reason for voting against BAIPA was that he believed it to be unconstitutional. He was mistaken, but it seems clear to me that that was his true reason. Are legislators supposed to vote in favor of bills that they believe to be unconstitutional and destined to be struck down by the courts?
September 20th, 2012 | 9:51 am
Just so I have this straight: President Obama the much vaunted Constitutional scholar (we hear it all the time: “He taught Constitutional Law!”) voted against the BAIPA because he was concerned about constitutionality?
On the other hand, when it comes to First Amendment rights he’s and his administration have proved themselves somewhat less, shall we say, “committed”.
To summarize: Protect a questionable “constitutional right” to the hilt, protect the most elemental rights in our Constitution, ….cautiously.
Got it.
September 20th, 2012 | 9:57 am
Charles: Can you call it rational basis when it already exempts others for economic and moral reasons?
Only churches are exempt from the contraception mandate (there is a long history of excluding churches from such regulations), and no one is exempted from the contraception mandate for economic reasons.
Charles: A rational basis that distribution of contraceptives is best served through individual insurance and not the existing Title X grants?
It does seem rational to me, but in any case, ‘rational basis’ does not mean that this is a law that you would enact, or that it is a law that best serves its stated purpose. Rational basis is satisfied when there is even a theoretical good reason (it need not even have been explicitly stated in the legislative history) for the law (in this case regulation) that has been enacted. It may be that the contraception mandate is illegal under the so called Relgious Freedom Restoration Act, but it definitely is not illegal under the Constitution.
Charles: And can it really be called neutral despite two decades of contentious and antagonism by Obama’s allies in applying state-level mandates and the significant fundraising impact for Democrats from the pandering?
Neutral means that it is was not specifically enacted to target one particular group. And I doubt very much that even opponents would claim that the contraception mandate was specifically instituted to poke Catholics in the eye. Even if they did believe that, they would have to prove it in court, which would be rather difficult.
September 20th, 2012 | 11:12 am
Testimony of CATHERINA HURLBURT
Testimony of KAREN HAYES AND WENDY WRIGHT
harry,
Your message is misleading in that there was no testimony by Hurlburt, Hayes, or Wright. What you quote comes from material submitted for the record and included in an appendix to the hearing. And who are they relying on? Jill Stanek, who did testify, and whose allegations were investigated by the Illinois Department of Health and were unsubstantiated.
They will last only hours if uncared for.
No, you are adding something that was not in the submitted document. It says: “The babies are between 16 and 24 weeks old. With undeveloped lungs, they will last from a few minutes to 6 or 7 hours.” You are adding if uncared for. What is under discussion is babies with underdeveloped lungs that will die whether or not they are cared for.
Note this exchange between Representatives Canady (who introduced the bill under discussion) and Nadler:
Or are you claiming the nurses presented utterly false testimony to the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives and they bought it? Get real.
I am stating the fact that the allegations made by the nurse who testified, Jill Stanek, were referred to the Illinois State Attorney General’s Office, were investigated by the Illinois Department of Public Health, and no evidence was found that the events she reported were true. I do not pretend to know whether she was right and the hospital was wrong, whether she was wrong and the hospital was right, or something in between. But I do know that once the authorities have investigated allegations and are unable to corroborate them, they are not a sufficient motivation for passing a law, particularly a redundant law.
September 20th, 2012 | 12:23 pm
Hello, David Nickol,
It is absurd to assume, as you do, that Hurlburt, Hayes, and Wright just made that up and submitted complete fabrications as testimony.
You need to get the big picture. Since Roe there have been over 750,000 abortions that took the lives of late second and third trimester babies. Babies at that stage of development are routinely cared for in newborn intensive care units — if they are wanted by their mothers. Do you really expect anybody to believe that these physicians-turned-executioners really work to make sure babies who survive the initial attempt on their lives get the same care wanted babies at the same stage of development get? Babies surviving abortions would be very bad for business and these licensed hit men know that.
This situation, along with laws that allow for a double-murder charge to be enforced in cases of homicide in which a pregnant woman is murdered, thereby killing her unborn baby, make clear the inconsistency and irrationality of “legal” abortion. Currently, the child in the womb, in some instances, has a value that warrants a charge of homicide against the one who took its life — in other instances the child is only a mass of “fetal tissue.” That is ridiculous. Our right to life is intrinsic and is not derived from our being wanted by another, nor is it derived from our existing somewhere outside the dark, shadow of contemporary bigotry.
Bigotry is real. It was lethal to the Jews under Hitler and brought unimaginable suffering and injustice to the Blacks of the Old South. Contemporary bigotry towards the child in the womb will eventually be dispelled and looked upon by future generations with all the disgust and horror with which we now view slavery and lethal, racist eugenics.
Why are you so committed to perpetuating and legitimizing contemporary bigotry? It won’t last. It can’t. The instinct to care for and protect the young of our own kind is built into humanity. It can be suppressed temporarily by vicious, intimidating, media-manufactured bigotry, but that effort is never complete because each new generation has to be re-propagandized. This is indicated by the annual March for Life in Washington still gathering hundreds of thousands of people each year, most of which are young people, and by the aging abortion rights movement.
The young people of America are beginning to understand they are the survivors of an unprecedented, lethal assault on humanity. Thank God for the rebelliousness of youth against the establishment. It will be the abortion rights movement’s undoing.
September 20th, 2012 | 1:11 pm
David,
“Are legislators supposed to vote in favor of bills that they believe to be unconstitutional and destined to be struck down by the courts?”
The problem with this question is that you are asking it as if his votes in 2003 don’t exist. The House of Representatives had added a neutrality clause to their already-passed version of BAIPA, and to my knowledge, no one thought that the bill with the amendment clause attached posed a threat to Roe. Obama himself stated that he would have voted for such a bill had he been in the U.S. Senate at the time. He said as much in 2004 when the issue first arose in his run for the Senate. But the fact remains that he chose to vote against the bill in 2003 even after he chaired the committee that inserted the neutrality clause that had passed muster at the federal level. Why did he make this “no” vote? Suggesting that he did so because he was worried that it would be found unconstitutional is no longer plausible given his later remarks trying to defend his vote.
Furthermore, it is simply untrue that the Illinois version of the BAIPA was redundant. The 1975 law did not protect the sort of infants that were discussed in Baker and Stanek’s allegations, which is why the office of the AG in Illinois declined to bring charges. That law was intended for viable infants, not the pre-viable ones at issue in BAIPA.
September 20th, 2012 | 2:12 pm
You need to get the big picture.
harry,
No, you need to know a little more about Illinois abortion law at the time Obama was a state senator. I am not arguing abortion in general. I am arguing about the unimportance of Obama’s vote on BAIPA and the worthlessness of the law itself. Illinois law protected viable born-alive infants. In the case of abortions after viability, doctors were required to (a) use the abortion technique least likely to harm the baby and (b) have a second doctor present to take care of the baby should it be born alive.
No one alleged that babies who could have survived were being left to die. No one alleged that babies who should have been taken to the neonatal intensive care unit were neglected.
I am not arguing in favor of late-term abortions or allowing born-alive infants to die. I am not even arguing that abortion should be legal. I am arguing a narrow point her, which is that Obama’s refusal to support BAIPA had no consequences other than political ones. No babies were lost that would have been saved had he voted for the bill, and after the bill passed, no babies were saved that would otherwise have died.
September 20th, 2012 | 5:09 pm
“In the case of abortions after viability, doctors were required to (a) use the abortion technique least likely to harm the baby…”
What is this technique? I thought the goal was to kill the baby.
September 20th, 2012 | 6:39 pm
He refused to support it because he thought its enactment would have consequences. In his own words, arguing against BAIPA because of the consequences he assumed it would have:
An important consequence BAIPA had was to reveal what a flaming extremist Obama is on abortion rights, and how utterly calloused he is towards babies who survived the initial attempt to take their lives. He is willing to write them off if caring for them might threaten abortion rights. Anybody that cold-hearted towards helpless babies cannot really have any genuine compassion for the downtrodden.
September 21st, 2012 | 12:30 am
What is this technique? I thought the goal was to kill the baby.
peg,
Here is the pertinent section of the Illinois law:
Also, a second physician must be present to try to save the child should it be born alive.
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