I gave a talk last night to a group of Catholic high schoolers about Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, The Gospel of Life.   It was a pro-life talk, but I focused on all life issues, not just abortion, but euthanasia, assisted suicide, cloning, embryonic stem cell research, capital punishment, a discussion on what ‘rights’ are, and to top it off, a tangent into just war theory, terrorism and torture.  Obviously, this was a just broad intro, and I didn’t get into any topic with much detail - there simply wasn’t time.   They were a great bunch of kids, with a lot of questions.

The one however, that always comes up, and always irritates me (on a personal level), is what about the Pill?  So I gave them a few facts. The Public Health Department of Seattle and King County devotes large portions of its website to information on various types of birth control, most of which do nothing to prevent the spread of STDs (and might actually encourage the spread).

In promoting the use of emergency contraception (Plan B), the county website touts: “no prescription needed for people over age 18…and men can get Plan B for their wives, girlfriends, sisters and friends!”  (Ladies: If your man keeps a steady supply of Plan B to feed you after sex…that might be a “red flag”.)  Babies, it seems are a public health crisis in the eyes of King County, where 1 in 4 pregnancies end in abortion according to the Washington State Department of Health.

As women, why do we accept the status quo, considering it good and healthy to habitually alter the natural functioning of our hormones and our bodies?  Why do we allow others to medicate our fertility as if it were a disease and an affliction?

I don’t normally watch the Superbowl. I know I know. Please don’t hurt me, but I just don’t get football.  (Baseball however…..)

I did watch the game yesterday, and thought it was pretty good.  Of course, I watched the ads too, and waited with anticipation to see the Tebow ads. When the game came, and went, and I viewed the ads, I kept wondering…where’s the controversial ad? The one the pro abortionists got their panties in a wad over, with NOW president Terry O’Neill claimed that “The goal of the Focus on the Family ad is not to empower women. It’s to create a climate in which Roe v. Wade can be overturned.” Huh?

If you didn’t already know about the controversy surrounding these ads, would you have even known what the message was? You would have had to have been intrigued enough to go to the website to find out. I’m sure a lot of people did, but just as many probably did not. So all they saw was a funny ad with Timmy Tebow tackling his mom.

I thought both ads were very tasteful and understated and sweet. The pro-abortionists have egg all over their faces after this. Now everyone who was paying attention knows their true agenda.

Here’s the ad to see for yourself

Just remember that this was the commercial that infuriated feminists when you’re watching the GoDaddy commercials and skimpily-dressed women selling beer.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian (aka Dr. Death), is planning on running for Congress from Oakland County’s (Michigan) 9th District.

Kevorkian, who will be 80 years old in May, picked up petitions from the Oakland County Clerk’s Office on Tuesday to run as a candidate with no party affiliation.

“I plan to,” Kevorkian said Tuesday afternoon. “I wouldn’t do this otherwise. We need some honesty and sincerity instead of corrupt government in Washington.”

He served 8 years (of a 15 year sentence) in prison for a 2nd degree murder conviction, was released last June (his lawyer argued he was dying), and is currently serving two years’ parole. And he’s running on an honesty, sincerity, and anti-corruption platform? My irony meter just went off the scale.

I don’t know much about his agenda, but he’s probably got a great plan to cut medicare and health care costs. And that’s my key problem with ‘assisted’ suicide and those that promote it.

It’s not about the “right to die” or the “right to refuse medical treatment.” We already can refuse medical treatment; we can choose to commit suicide. Neither the law nor medical ethics requires that “everything be done” to keep a person alive. What we cannot do is kill another person. And let’s make no bones about it — that’s exactly what is going on. “Kill” means to cause the death of a living organism. If my actions result in the death of another human being, I killed him/her. And that’s what assisted suicide promotes — the killing of a human being. A human being already dealing with enormous pressures — emotional, financial and psychological. Oregon has already shown us that nearly three-quarters of those requesting a lethal prescription are doing so because they fear being a burden.

Those who advocate for the “right to die” — i.e. assisted suicide or euthanasia — are those who put a utilitarian value on human life. They believe that those who are disabled, infirm, elderly, or frail don’t have as much value as other people. In the words of Baroness Mary Warnock, one of Britain’s leading medical ethics expert, “I don’t see what is so horrible about the motive of not wanting to be an increasing nuisance.” Such a compassionate, caring, loving attitude. And hospitals, Medicare and HMos will never put any pressure on someone to die just so they can save costs. Riiiiiight.

The taking of a life is a matter for the courts. One “right” I don’t want from the government is the right to kill my husband.

Stories like this one, of a brain-dead women who awoke from coma, make me want to give thanks for the amazing goodness of God. 

As Raleane (Rae) Kupferschmidt lay motionless in her hospital bed, family and friends said their final goodbyes and the funeral home was called.

But just as the grieving began in her Lake Elmo home, Kupferschmidt woke up from her coma. 
(snip)
Since then, her mother has steadily progressed. Sturm said her mother’s take on it is this: “I’m a lucky lady. I owe it to the grace of God.”

Rae should be discharged from the hospital today. The funeral home has been taken off notice.

“I had come to grips that she had died,” Sturm said. “And now I get my mother back. That doesn’t happen very often. It’s an amazing gift.”

Two thoughts crossed my mind when reading this.  The first was to give thanks.  Which made me realize that this is one of the many reasons that atheism will never be a big seller.  It denies the very real human impulse to give thanks.  Christianity isn’t about fear – the average prayer isn’t about pleading with God to spare the believer, but about thanking God for this and that blessing.  

That’s why the central act of the Christian faith is the Eucharist (Greek for “thanksgiving”).  Or what my protestant brothers and sisters call Communion.  We come together as a community to give praise and thanks to God, to celebrate the Risen Christ. 

The second thought was that stories like this one are why we need to be so very careful when we decide someone is in a vegetative state.   No physician ultimately knows conclusively what is happening with a person and so we must always err on the side of preservation and caution —  this is, by the way, someone’s life.

Yesterday was my father’s 88th birthday.  He is frail, not just from age, but from an advancing peripheral neuropathy that has taken his balance, his mobility, his fine motor skills, leaving him totally depending on my mother, who is 14 years his junior.  Many people would argue that he has little “quality of life.”  To which I retort, “and just who are you to judge?” before going through a completely reasonable and rational defense of the inherent dignity and value of human life.  I’ve gotten pretty good at it over the last few years.

Also yesterday, here in Washington State (which at times could be more accurately described as “the Greater Soviet of Seattle” as I heard someone once call it — I’d attribute it, if I knew who it was) a so-called “Death with Dignity Act” initiative has been filed.  If the initiative’s backers succeed in collecting 225,000 signatures, we, the oh-so-compassionate citizens get to vote on whether we will become the second state in the nation to legalize physician-assisted suicide.  (Yes, I believe in calling a spade a spade.)

There’s an editorial in today’s Seattle Times, “Judging the Dying: Oregon’s Experience”

Assisted suicide for the terminally ill is humane and, as Oregon has demonstrated, can be administered in a civilized way.

Judging.  Yup, I’d say, for once, the editorial pages of the Seattle Times got it exactly right.

On Dec. 30, there was a massive pro-family demonstration in Madrid in response to new Spanish laws recognizing homosexual unions and making divorce more readily available.   (The number of participants varies greatly depending on the news source — the organizers say 1.5 million;  the New York Times says hundreds of thousands and the AP says tens of thousands.)  Participants spoke in favor of the right to life, the defense of marriage as an indissoluble union between a man and a woman, and the right of parents to educate their children in accordance with their consciences. 

Now, Spanish government leaders have asked the country’s Catholic bishops to apologize, claiming that the Church intervened in partisan political affairs with the rally.  (Elections are to be held in early March, and the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has a 2% lead over the conservative Popular Party.)  The government has asked the bishops’ conference for an apology. 

Whine, whine, whine.  (Note to Prime Minister Zapatero — nobody likes whiners.)  I’m not even sure what they want the bishops to apologize for.  Whatever happened to freedom of speech, assembly, religion and lawful protest? Don’t socialists believe in fundamental human rights?  Besides, the bishops could only apologize on behalf of the clergy and direct employees of the Church in Spain. Obviously the majority of those 1.5 million citizens were laity.

The government, it appears, wants the bishops to apologize for being Catholic and for teaching what the Catholic Church has taught for 2,000 years.  That takes more chutzpah than I would have believed possible.