The Year of Two Living Popes and One Unchanging Faith

March 15, 2013 By 15 Comments
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Popes Benedict XVI, John Paul II, and Francis

Does anybody remember that this is the Year of Faith?

It’s certainly been a historic year so far.

Our beloved Benedict, Pope Emeritus, handed the Church forward to his successor, Pope Francis. The Year of Faith has become the Year of Two Living Popes. 

It is one faith; one holy and apostolic Catholic faith. For those who will stop to think about it, that is a miracle in itself. Benjamin Disraeli, when asked what proof he could offer of God’s existence, replied, “The Jew, sir, the Jew.”  To that I would add that if anyone doubts the divinity of Jesus Christ, I would offer them the Catholic Church and its 2,000 year history of faithful teaching.

The Catholic Church has persisted through the fall and rise of more than one empire. It has survived the venality of some of its own popes. It has come through plagues, famines and times of great wealth. And it has, through all of it, kept the teachings of the Gospels intact and unblemished.

I don’t think there has been an day or an hour in all this great swath of history that the Church has not been under concerted and powerful pressure to re-write the Gospels to suit the passing moral fashions of the time. I think the reason for this is simple: The devil is real. There is a malicious personality out there who wants to destroy us through our own predilections to immorality.

We are not so much engaged in a war as we are the objects of a war. This malicious personality wars against us by aligning itself with our own fallen natures. It attempts to subvert us in our path to our ultimate calling as sons and daughters of the living God. We are the object of war making based in a hatred that is outside time.

But this evil, which seems so powerful and omnipresent to us who are in the soup of this life, is almost nothing in the halls of eternity. It is a vanquished foe whose only hold on us was broken at the cross. All we have to do is turn our faces away from the darkness and walk into the light.

The Catholic Church is the light, shining in the darkness of this world. Despite the undeniable fallenness of the people who govern it, the Church itself does not falter when it comes to providing the sacraments and teaching the teachings that show us the way to heaven.

This Year of Faith and two living popes — one reigning and one emeritus — is historic. But it is also part of the flow of the Church through history. Pope Benedict handed the Church forward and the Cardinals chose Pope Francis to take it up.

People who unwittingly are the mouthpieces for the devil yammer about how the Church must “change” its core teachings about life, love, sexuality and the common good or be found guilty of being “out of step with the world.”

Out of step with the world haters

Let’s think for a moment what they are demanding. What does it mean to be “in step” with the world?

“In step” with the world, as they define it, means that people are only human when those who have the power to do so define them to be human. It means that vast numbers of people may be killed at any time, for no reason at all.

Being “in step” with the world means that women and children are commodities to be bought and sold, raped and worked. It means that reducing women and children to objects and then using their rape, torture and murder as entertainment is a “right” that transcends any claims to their human dignity. Being “in step” with the world means that women’s bodies can be harvested for their eggs that are then sold online. It means that women’s wombs can be rented as surrogates.

Being “in step” with the world means “designing” babies that we will find good enough for our celestial selves to raise. It means discarding tens of other babies in this process to get the one perfect one we want.

Being “in step” with the world means destroying marriage, doing away with family as a unit that creates, nurtures and supports young human beings. It means that multinational corporations can pillage and destroy without restraint.

I could go on, but the point is that being “in step” with the world is being “in step” with decay, death and destruction. Being “in step” with the world is the exact opposite of what the Church is called to do.

The Catholic Church is not called to make the world comfortable in its sins. it is called to lead the world to redemption from its sins. 

The world may and does excoriate the Church for “being out of step” with its many killing machines. It may and does excoriate Catholics for following their Church. It may and does try to force us out of public life and silence our witness.

But the world will not prevail.

White crucifixion

Jesus said, “On this rock, I will build my Church. And the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” 

This is the Year of Faith. It is also the year of two living popes.

But this year is, as all years are, the year of the One and only Jesus, Who is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Join the Discussions of the Year of Faith

Click here throughout the Year of Faith, as the Catholic Channel at Patheos.com invites Catholics of every age and stripe to share what they are gleaning and carrying away from this gift of timely focus.

Filed Under: Catholic, Christianity, Conversion, Culture, Faith, Following Christ, Holy Father, Marriage, Misogyny, Pro Life, Same Sex Marriage, Uncategorized, Violence Against Women, Women's Rights, Year of Faith Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 15 Comments

More Than 100,000 March for Marriage in Puerto Rico

March 7, 2013 By 9 Comments

Supporters of traditional marriage are showing up to march all over the world.

Paris saw two enormous marches for marriage this past year. The last one drew close to a million people. Puerto Ricans joined in February 18 when more what media experts estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 people marched for marriage. This is an enormous showing on an island with a population of only 3.5 million.

Despite this, the news coverage outside the religious press was scanty to non-existent.

It’s time for Americans to join in and do our part. The March for Marriage will be March 26, in Washington DC. Be there, or be square.

A CNA article describing the march says in part:

The president of the United Ministry for the Family, Dr. Cesar Vasquez Muniz, said the demonstration came about “in response to threats against marriage and the family.”

The march “is an act to defend our rights and protect children,” he said.

Bishop Daniel Fernandez Torres of Arecibo, who took part in the pro-family march, said that when a society dismantles the traditional family, it is destined for ruin and destruction.

A parallel march organized by gay advocates attracted just hundreds of attendees, according to local media reports.

Puerto Rico’s Senate and House of Representatives are currently debating measures that would legalize gay unions, allow same-sex couples to adopt and change the curriculum relating to gender that is taught in schools.

Organizers of the march said the proposals constitute “a legislative attack against our freedom of conscience, freedom of expression and of religion.”

The passage of these measures would lay the foundation for legal discrimination against the Church and Christians, they said, and would lead to the marginalization of Christian values from the laws that govern the island.

It’s time for Americans to join in and do our part. The March for Marriage will be March 26, in Washington DC. For more information, go here. 

Be there, or be square.

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Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, Catholic, Christian Persecution, Family, Following Christ, Marriage, Politics, Same Sex Marriage, The War on Girls, Uncategorized, Violence Against Women, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , 9 Comments

Newly Professed Nuns and Brothers: Mature, Educated, Devout

March 6, 2013 By 11 Comments

Nuns and brothers who took their perpetual vows in 2012 are mature adults with work experience who come from Catholic families. 

That’s the basic result of a survey conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. 

The survey shows that today’s newly professed religious are well-educated, individuals who have had to overcome discouragement from others in seeking a vocation to religious life. 

One thing that interested me is that age appears to be no impediment for many of these people, since the oldest woman was 66 at the time she professed her perpetual vows and two of the men were over 60. I had always heard that no one who was over 40 could enter religious life. It appears I was wrong.

I think this is great news for people who have come to know Jesus later in life and who feel the call to live out their days as vowed members of a religious community. It is particularly important for women. 

NUN

In a world where the enslavement and trafficking of women and children is growing apace with rape as an instrument of war and the use of child soldiers, the voice of strong Christian women is badly needed.

The Church needs nuns.

There is a female viewpoint that must be present when dealing with crimes against women and children. Also, many times, women are the only ones who can gain the trust and cooperation of severely victimized people. 

I pray for women religious to step up to this challenge. They are so needed. 

Here are a few facts from the survey that stood out to me. You can read the entire survey here. 

The average age of newly professed women is 40, while the average of men is 39. Eighty-give percent of the respondents are cradle Catholics. Seventy-eight percent come from families in which both parents are Catholic. Ninety-six percent of them have at least one brother or sister; 45% have four or more siblings. 

This is a highly educated group of people. Twenty-two percent have a graduate level degree with 60% having a bachelor’s degree. Eight-two percent of them had worked before entering religious life. Eighty-eight percent had participated in ministry activities before entering and 95% had regularly participated in private prayer activity. Sixty-nine percent had participated in Eucharistic Adoration.

Seventy-four percent of the respondents said that they were discouraged from entering religious life by one of more persons. Women were more likely than men to report that they had encountered discouragement about considering a vocation. Men were more likely than the women to be encouraged by their parish priests to think of religious life as a life’s vocation.

The youngest sister or nun was 23 at the time of her profession, while the oldest was 66 years of age. Eight women professed perpetual vows at age 60 or older. The youngest brother was 25 and the oldest is 62. Two of the men are age 60 or older. 

Filed Under: Catholic, clergy, Faith, Following Christ, The War on Girls, Uncategorized, Violence Against Women, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 11 Comments

Archbishop Lori Issues Statement of Support for the Health Care Conscience Rights Act

March 5, 2013 By 13 Comments
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Archbishop William Lori

Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, who is chair of the USCCB’s Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, has voiced support for the Health Care Conscience Rights Act, authored by Representative Diane Black (R-TN).

Archbishop Lori issued the following statement:

“I am grateful to Congresswoman Black and other sponsors for their leadership today. I welcome the Health Care Conscience Rights Act and call for its swift passage into law. While federal laws are on the books protecting conscience rights in health care, this Act would make such protection truly effective. This overdue measure is especially needed in light of new challenges to conscience rights arising from the federal health care reform act.”

Representative Black’s legislation comes after she and 13 other members of Congress sent a letter to the House leadership requesting that the issue of freedom of conscience be included in the upcoming budget bill. This letter opened the doorway for the Republican leadership to make their stand-off with the President over budget concerns about something noble instead of using it to stop tax increases on the wealthiest Americans. 

Hopefully, they will see it that way and take the action that the signers of the letter asked of them. 

Meanwhile, Representative Black announced at a press conference today that she is authoring a separate statute to guarantee the right of conscience to health care workers. 

If you wish to contact your Congressional delegation to ask them to support both Representative Black’s bill and putting the issue of religious freedom into the budget bill, you can find their emails and phone numbers here. 

Filed Under: America, Catholic, Christian Persecution, Christianity, Faith, Following Christ, Health Care, HHS Mandate, Politics, Pro Life, Uncategorized, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , 13 Comments

Representative Diane Black Introduces the Health Care Conscience Protection Act

March 5, 2013 By 10 Comments
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Representative Diane Black (R-TN)

Representative Diane Black (R-TN), Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) and John Fleming, MD (R-LA) announced that they will introduce the Health Care Conscience Rights Act (HCCRA.)

It is bill number HR 940.

According to Rep Black’s website, HR 940, “offers reprieve from ongoing violations of our First Amendment, including full exemption from the Obama Administration’s Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate and conscience protection for individuals and health care entities that refuse to provide, pay for, or refer patients to abortion providers because of their deeply-held, reasoned beliefs. HCCRA has 50 original co-sponsors.”

Representative Black allowed individuals who have been harmed by the government’s attacks on freedom of religion to speak at the press conference announcing this bill. They were:

Cathy Cenzon-DeCarlo, RN – New York State nurse who filed suit after her freedom to serve patients according to her conscience was violated. For more information, click here.

·         Susan Elliott, PhD, Director and Professor at Biola University Nursing Department. For more information, click here.

·         Christine Ketterhagen, Co-Owner/Board Member of Hercules Industries, Inc.; Andy Newland, President of Hercules Industries; Bill Newland, Chairman of the Board of Hercules Industries. For more information, click here

·         Sister Jane Marie Klein, OSF, Chairperson of the Board of Franciscan Alliance, Inc. (in Mishawaka, IN). Franciscan Alliance is a co-plaintiff with the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend.

Representative Black’s website included the following provisions in the Health Care Conscience Act:

HHS Mandate:

Under the health care coverage mandate issued on August 3, 2011, widely known as the HHS mandate, organizations and their managers are now facing potentially ruinous financial penalties for exercising their First Amendment rights, as protected by law. Hobby Lobby, a family business that was denied injunctive relief from the mandate and faces fines of up to $1.3 million dollars a day, unless its owners agree to fund potentially abortion-inducing drugs. If Hobby Lobby is forced to close its doors, some 25,000 jobs nationwide may disappear. The Obama Administration’s HHS mandate exemption only includes houses of worship and does not account for the thousands of religious and non-religious affiliated employers that find it a moral hazard to cover sterilization, contraception and potentially abortion-inducing drugs on their employer-based health insurance. Ultimately, the so-called “accommodation” does not protect anyone’s religious rights, because all companies and organizations will still be forced to provide insurance coverage that includes services which conflict with their religious convictions. The HCCRA would address this violation of our First Amendment rights by providing a full exemption for all those whose religious beliefs run counter to the Administration’s HHS mandate.

Abortion Non-Discrimination:

The HCCRA also protects institutions and individuals from forced or coerced participation in abortion.  In recent years there have been several examples of nurses being told they must participate in abortions. There have also been efforts to require Catholic Hospitals to do abortions, and a Catholic social service provider was denied a grant to assist victims of human trafficking on the basis of their pro-life convictions.  The HCCRA codifies and clarifies the appropriations provision known as the Hyde‐Weldon conscience clause. This is accomplished by adding the protections for health care entities that refuse to provide, pay for, or refer for abortion to the section of the Public Health Service Act known as the Coats Amendment. It also adds the option of judicial recourse for victims whose rights have been violated under the HCCRA, Coats, or the conscience clauses known as the Church amendments.

You can call your Congresspeople at 202-224-3121. Or you can find their email addresses here. 

Filed Under: America, Catholic, Christian Persecution, Culture, Economics, Following Christ, Health Care, HHS Mandate, Politics, Pro Life, Religious Freedom, Uncategorized, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , , 10 Comments

Fourteen Members of Congress Sign Letter Asking that Conscience Rights Be Included in Budget Bill

March 5, 2013 By 13 Comments

Fourteen members of Congress sent a letter to the House leadership asking that conscience rights be included in the upcoming budget bill. They mentioned specific violations of the right to conscience, including the HHS Mandate. Thirteen of the 14 signers were women. This puts the lie to the claim that women support attacks on religious freedom and individual freedom of conscience such as the HHS Mandate.

This is an unprecedented move by these House members which could have far-reaching consequences for the future of religious freedom in this country. I don’t know if these Congresspeople wrote this letter in response to the call for Congress to make the HHS Mandate a bargaining chip in the sequester/fiscal cliff/budget negotiations. But I do know that this letter came shortly after grassroots lobbying efforts  for this kind of move began.

Fourteen signers out of 453 voting members of the US House may not sound like much, but I think it’s a great start. By putting their names on this letter, these Congresspeople have stepped out in front of the issue of religious freedom and used their clout as members of the majority party to urge their leadership to do the same.

I am going to contact members of my Congressional delegation and ask them to sign on to this letter, as well. Hopefully, we will get many more Republicans and a few Democrats to sign. I am also going to contact those who signed this letter and thank them.

You can contact your Congressman or woman by going here.

This is a copy of the letter in question:

Letter to boehner religious freedom

Letter to boehner religious freedom page 2

Letter to boehner religious freedom page 3

Signers of this letter are planning a press conference tomorrow. Frank Weathers has the story here.

Filed Under: America, Christian Persecution, Christianity, Culture, Following Christ, Health Care, HHS Mandate, Pro Life, Religious Freedom, Uncategorized, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , 13 Comments

Book Review: Joining the Present Day Abolitionists

March 4, 2013 By 3 Comments

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Join the discussion on Refuse To Do Nothing or find a link to buy a copy here. 

I serve on the board of directors of All Things New. All Things New is dedicated to helping women come out of sex slavery, which ranges from trafficking to prostitution.

That position brings me face to face with the reality of what we are doing to our women and children in the name of “victimless crimes.” It has made me aware of how our culture glorifies pimps, excuses johns and victimizes the women and children these predators use and degrade.

Refuse To Do Nothing was written by two women, Shayne Moore and Kimberly McOwen Yim, who had heard similar stories and found that they had to “refuse to do nothing” about the suffering present-day slavery wreaks on both the victims and the victimizers.

I recommend this well-researched book. Instead of just telling us how horrible the problem of present-day slavery is, the book gives simple, do-able ideas for actions that ordinary people can take to help in the fight to end it. There is nothing over the top in any of the ideas these women provide. Each of them is simple, easy to do and, if enough of us do them, effective.

Slavery ended in Great Britain and America largely as a result of Christians, particularly Christian women, who understood the Gospel claim that every human being is beloved of God. They could not abide the contradiction of Christian people owning and using other human beings as chattel.

That understanding is just as true today as it was in the 18th and 19th centuries. Then as now, slavery was big business. Avarice and sloth fueled slavery just as avarice, sloth and lust fuel it today.

The idea that prostituted women and children are somehow less than fully human is the basic philosophical underpinning of sex trafficking and prostitution in our world today. The authors of this book rightly identify that sex slavery would go away if men stopped buying women and children. I think that most men would stop buying women and children if they saw what they were really doing.

It is so easy for any one of us to become someone else’s nightmare. All we need to do is subscribe to the world’s opinion that there are human beings who are less than human and we may do to them what we please with no moral harm to ourselves.

However, this idea of the disposable human is entirely opposed to the message of the Gospels. It refutes the meaning of Calvary, when Our Lord died for each one of us. There can be no worthless people to anyone who truly believes the Gospels of Christ.

We have an obligation to the God Who made us to treat one another as fully human. When we do less than this, we separate ourselves from Him in a profound and deeply sinful manner.

I recommend Refuse To Do Nothing to everyone who has a heart for the Gospel value of human life.

Filed Under: America, Book Review, Calling Evil Good, Christianity, Culture, Faith, Family, Following Christ, Slavery, The War on Girls, Uncategorized, Violence Against Women, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Obama Files Brief Asking Court to Overturn Proposition 8

March 1, 2013 By 18 Comments

Obama

Think back ten months ago to when President Obama announced that his position on gay marriage had “evolved.”

What his position had in fact evolved from was his prior position when he promised the American people that he was against gay marriage. That was in 2008 when he was working to get elected president. Ten months ago, he announced that his thinking had evolved past his earlier promise and he was now in favor of gay marriage.

At that distant, and now forgotten time of ten long months ago, he promised the American people that his newly-evolved support for gay marriage was just his “personal opinion” and that it would have no effect on the actual laws concerning marriage. After all, the laws in question were not federal laws, and as President of the United States he had no power to or intention of trying to influence state legislatures. 

That, as they say, was then. This is now. And right now it appears that our president has every intention of using the force of his office in whatever way he can to push gay marriage on the country. The fiscal cliff/sequester fight may have robbed him of the economic wherewithal to use his powers as Commander in Chief to send aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf, but evidently there is still plenty of money to buy ink for his office printers.

Yesterday, the president filed yet another of his briefs suggesting to the Supreme Court how they should rule on the question of gay marriage. In this particular brief, he asked them to overturn a vote of the people in California. I realize that President Obama is not one to care about things like consistency in his actions, but I still think it’s interesting that a man whose power of office comes entirely from a vote of the people would be so flip about overturning other votes of the people. 

The people spoke in California. But evidently, the president’s opinion on votes of the people is evolving right along with just about everything else he tells us he believes. So far as I can tell, the only promises this president can be trusted to keep are the ones he made to Planned Parenthood and the abortion on demand crowd. For them, he will do anything.

You can find the full text of the brief here. 

A New Yorker article describing the brief says in part:

Thursday night, just hours before a filing deadline, President Obama’s Justice Department submitted an amicus curiae brief asking the Supreme Court to strike down Proposition 8—California’s gay-marriage ban. Even more importantly, it did so by asserting a bold claim to full equality for gay and lesbian Americans, which is a significant development in the nation’s rapidly moving consideration of the issue.

 

The brief—which President Obama, according to a report on SCOTUSblog, personally helped craft—did not directly ask the Supreme Court to declare marriage equality a constitutional right. Even so, its legal reasoning points squarely in that direction. If the Court accepts the full weight and reasoning of the President’s arguments, any state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage would fail the test of constitutionality. Twenty-nine states, in addition to California, have such amendments now.

 

Theodore Boutrous, one of the lead attorneys in the small group of legal heavyweights representing the Proposition 8 plaintiffs (a team including David Boies and Ted Olson), said on a conference call for reporters which was quickly arranged after the brief was filed, that they were “extremely pleased” that the government had taken a strong stand for marriage. He added, with respect to other anti-gay marriage bans, “I don’t see any way these laws could survive” under the legal test urged by the Justice Department in its brief.

 

It would have been close to impossible to imagine these developments less than a year ago.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/03/socarides-on-prop-8.html#ixzz2MJ1WdW7a

Filed Under: Calling Evil Good, Christian Persecution, Politics, Pro Life, The War on Girls, Uncategorized, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , 18 Comments

Does the Pro Abortion Media Really Care About Women’s Health?

February 23, 2013 By 7 Comments

Mollie, who blogs at Get Religion, wrote a post a couple of days ago that fits right in with a discussion we’ve been having here at Public Catholic.

I published two posts yesterday which revolved around the question of how much genuine concern for women the pro choice movement truly has. They have spun the whole issue of abortion as being one of women’s health care. But what do they do when abortionists ignore what is best for the health of an individual woman, sometimes to the woman’s great peril?

In addition to lobbying for and passing laws which make it possible for “medical personnel” (including midwives) who are not doctors to perform surgical abortions on women, how do they react when an abortionist actually kills a woman?

Mollie’s post takes on several pillars of the mainstream media for their reporting of the abortion death of a woman. This reporting appears to be biased to the point of deliberate inaccuracy.

If these abortion advocates (and it seems quite clear that these publications are abortion advocates) truly cared about “women’s health care” one would think that they’d be all over this story. Instead, they do their best to sweep the whole thing — along with the life of the woman — under the journalistic rug.

You can read my first post on this issue, Woman Sues Planned Parenthood for Forced Abortion and Medical Malpractice which was about Planned Parenthood forcing an abortion on a woman and then dumping her when she experienced complications here.

My second post, California Governor Signed Law Allowing Non-Physicians to Do Abortions, which describes state laws that allow medical personnel who are not doctors to perform abortions on women can be found here.

Mollie’s fine article, Mainstream media defense of abortion never rests says in part:

I once served on a jury that convicted a man of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. We all thought he did it, but we weren’t sure the government had made its case. The evidence was strong but his defense attorney had done such a good job of explaining it away or striking various aspects from the record that we almost let him off.
It didn’t work, but it almost did. His attorney did such a fantastic job that I remember thinking, “If I ever am accused of a crime, I want this man to represent me.”
And that’s how I feel about this Washington Post write-up we’ll look at shortly. My thought is, “If I ever kill someone, I sure hope the Washington Post covers for me.” Only problem with this plan (other than my fervent hope I never commit such an act) is that I think they may only provide this exculpatory service for abortionists.
Let’s first look at the story as written up by the Journal News, a Gannett publication most recently known for publishing the home addresses of legal gun owners. The piece, “Coroner: Jennifer Morbelli bled to death following abortio n,” begins:
A New Rochelle woman died of complications from a late-term abortion at a Maryland clinic, the Montgomery County, Md., coroner confirmed Wednesday.
Jennifer Morbelli, 29, a schoolteacher in White Plains, bled to death after amniotic fluid in her womb spilled into her bloodstream, said Bruce Goldfarb, a spokesman for the Montgomery County Medical Examiner’s Office.
That newspaper also has a feature about how the doctor who performed the abortion was profiled in a documentary film praising late-term abortionists .
Now, Newsday‘s piece is headlined, lengthily, “Jennifer Morbelli, New Rochelle teacher, died of complications after abortion, medical examiner says .”
The Washington Post piece, which took surprisingly long to go online (I had previously been writing about how there was no story there even many hours after it was appearing at other sites) went up late last night.
See, it takes time — and, I guess, many phone calls with abortion rights groups to get it just right — to write the story this way. Headline, of course, is “Md. medical examiner cites rare complication in death of woman after abortion .” Then we get many, many words about how this was just a freak accident and that legalized abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy had absolutely nothing meaningful to do with the death of this young woman (never mind the dead child, of course):
A 29-year-old woman died of natural causes after visiting an abortion clinic in Montgomery County and suffering a rare complication related to childbirth, according to an initial finding by the Maryland medical examiner’s office.
Are you freaking kidding me, Washington Post? Are you freaking kidding me? CHILDBIRTH? CHILDBIRTH?
(Read more here.)

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, Culture, Health Care, Politics, Pro Life, The War on Girls, Uncategorized, Violence Against Women, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

California Governor Signed Law Allowing Non-Physicians to Do Abortions

February 22, 2013 By 24 Comments

I wrote a post earlier today, Woman Sues Planned Parenthood for Forced Abortion and Medical Malpractice in which I made the following statement:

“Based on my experience with this issue, any attempts to impose regulations on abortion clinics will be met with cries of “anti-choice” and “pushing women into the back alleys again.” Even the most common-sense reforms such as requiring doctors who perform abortions to have hospital privileges at a nearby hospital, or requiring that those who perform abortions be licensed physicians, are characterized as “attacks on women’s health care” and “driving women into the back alleys.”

Abortion proponents do not want women to be given accurate information about the child they are carrying. They do not want parents of minor children to be told that their daughters are going to undergo surgery. They do not want requirements that licensed physicians perform abortions, or in the case of abortion drugs, that licensed physicians administer the drugs. They do not want the abortionists to be required to have hospital privileges. I could go on and on. Abortion proponents appear to want a caveat emptor situation so far as abortion is concerned. I do not believe that this attitude reflects concern for “health care for women” or for women’s well-being.”

One of Public Catholic’s readers asked in the comments section if I could name a state where abortions can be performed by people who are not licensed doctors.

The answer is, yes, I can.

California’s Governor Jerry Brown just recently signed a law that will allow midwives, nurses and other non-physicians to perform surgical abortions. One abortion technique that was specifically mentioned in the articles I’ve read is vacuum aspiration. According to news reports, Planned Parenthood, that self-proclaimed bastion of women’s health care, along with the California ACLU, lobbied for this legislation.

In my time as a legislator, I have had discussions with Planned Parenthood representatives who either wanted similar legislation in Oklahoma, or who were opposed to legislation that would require that doctors who run abortion clinics have hospital privileges at the hospitals in the communities where they do the abortions. I do not believe that doctors who run abortion clinics in Oklahoma are required to have hospital privileges as of now.

Also, the Reproductive Health Act which is being pushed by New York Governor Cuomo would allow abortions to be performed by “any licensed medical practitioner.” According to New York Right to Life, this would mean that medical personnel other than physicians would be allowed perform abortions. The bill is supported by Planned Parenthood, NARAL and the New York ACLU.

All these organizations claim that their motive in working to pass legislation that will allow non-doctors to perform surgery on women is to make sure that abortion is “available.” None of them mention that licensed physicians are probably more costly to employ than midwives and other non-physicians, even though one of the firms pushing for this “reform” is the largest abortion provider in America.

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, Health Care, Politics, Pro Life, Uncategorized, Violence Against Women, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , 24 Comments