Family & ProLife News BriefsJune 2020 (pandemic electronic issue)

Troubled Times for Human Life

Diversity Marks Pro-Life Movement It features prominent female leaders and blackactivists, and has far more support from non-religi-ous Americans than abortion supporters admit. Late last year, the Church of God in Christ, thelargest Pentecostal denomination and overwhel-mingly African-American and Democrat, unveiledits “Resolution on the Sanctity of Human Life.” The resolution stated: “Abortion is genocide. Abortion must end to protect the life of the unborn.This issue of personhood has haunted Americasince the Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson and Roev. Wade decisions. Just as slavery was over-turned in America, Jim Crow was defeated, andNazi Germany was overthrown, we pray that theheinous industry of abortion will become morallyreprehensible worldwide.” Pro-life leadersoften mention thedeep ties betweenthe earliest legal-abortion advocatesand the eugenicsmovement, notingthat PlannedParenthood’sfounder, MargaretSanger, wanted todecrease what shesaw as “unfit” populations including, in her view,blacks. She promoted birth control, though notabortion, to limit low-income & minority groups &proposed mandatory sterilization for those shedeemed “feeble-minded.” Such views were widelyshared among the earliest abortion advocates. Secular Pro-Life, found in 2009 by KelseyHazzard, represents non-religious pro-lifers. Sheis assisted by Terrisa Bukovinac, a member ofDemocrats for Life and founder of Pro-Life SanFrancisco, which aims to galvanize West Coastyoung people. After seeing videos of abortionprocedures, she became pro-life. “You can’tjustify abortion any more than you can justify thekilling of a born person. There is no consistent,objective distinction between an unborn personand a human being.” [Alexandra DeSanctis, ThePro-life Movement You’ve Never Heard Of, NationalReview, 4/6/20. Additional groups are highlighted inher article.]

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Pandemic Being Exploited to LoosenAbortion Restrictions Chemical abortion is a two-step processinvolving the ingestion of drugs, one to starve theunborn baby, the other to induce labor. U.S.government rules require the first drug to bedispensed in clinics or hospitals by doctors or othermedical providers. Women doing this are vulner-able to four times as many adverse events aswomen undergoing surgical abortions. Melanie Israel, a research associate at theDeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at theHeritage Foundation, said the abortion industry’spush to loosen restrictions on chemical abortionamid a pandemic is their move not to “let a goodcrisis go to waste.” She emphasized: “It’s unfor-tunate to see this pandemic being exploited toachieve lower restrictions, which for a long time has been on the wish list of abortion proponents,long before the coronavirus was on anyone’sradar.” “If you’re suffering from severe blood loss orperhaps an incomplete abortion and you need totake another round of drugs to resolve it, that’s allgoing to require additional follow-up during a pan-demic when people are needing to isolate, whenhospitals in certain areas are being overwhelmed. It’s sad that the abortion industry is focused onexpanding something that could actually com-pound those problems in the effort to fight thecoronavirus.” [Lauretta Brown, National CatholicRegister, 5/10/20]

Home-Schooling Challenges According to John Clark who was home schooledas a child and who has home-schooled his ownchildren: “For four decades, home-schooling hasalways had to prove itself by going over a bar thatwas higher than the one set for any other form ofeducation – and home schooling has soared overit.” So he was very upset over a recent article inHarvard Magazine. Home-school parents are called “extreme religi-ous ideologues” who “question science,” “promotefemale subservience” and encourage “whitesupremacy.” Nothing could be further from thetruth, based on the evidence of decades of home-schoolers throughout the nation. He asks why the writers didn’t do any meaningfulfield research such as visiting home-schoolingfamilies. These writers did not employ the basictool of science, observation, yet dare to offer allsorts of unfounded criticisms. [John Clark,Commentary, National Catholic Register, 5/10/20]

Family & ProLife News Briefspage 2 June 2020

Doing Evil to Obtain Worthy Ends? Some things are, in the words of the Church,“intrinsically evil” such as slavery, adultery, abuseof children, and the direct killing of the innocent,Therefore, they can never be used to justify anyother goal, no matter how worthy. Yet, many of uscan find justification for our behavior by appealingto a good end that we were hoping to achieve. Society often goes along with this faultyapproach, thinking that the righting of a generalwrong justifies morally irresponsible behavior inparticular cases. This is supremely dangerousbecause the moment we say that evil can be donefor the sake of the good, we have effectivelydenied that there are any intrinsic evil acts. So, as we legitimately fight the great evils of ourtime, we must remember St. Paul’s simpleprinciple: never do evil that good might come of it.[Bishop Robert Barron, Word on Fire Ministries.]

Two Must-Reads Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons has authored Habits fora Healthy Marriage: A Handbook for CatholicCouples. It presents key habits that foster healingand growth in a marriage, helping couples identifyand resolve major emotional conflicts that weakenrelationships and hurt their marriages. A bookdesigned to help those newly engaged, recentlymarried, or married for many years. Described as required reading for anyoneinterested in the 20th century history of feminismand its manipulation by powerful men, Sex and theCatholic Feminist: New Choices for a NewGeneration by former Cosmopolitan writer SueEllen Browder challenges the notion you can’t bea feminist and believe in God. She uncovers whythe pro-life thread of feminism in America hasbeen ignored by the media and left out of publicconversation for fifty years. [Ignatius Press, Ft.Collins, CO, www.ignatius.com]

Is the SAT Really the Problem? The Univ. of California announced it will stopusing the SAT and ACT for admissions. “Requiring SAT scores, the argument goes,discriminates against low-income, black andLatino children who perform poorly on the testsbecause they lack advantages such as prepcourses.” But seldom is any recognition given towhat research indicates is the most importantfactor in test performance: living with one’sbiological parents under the same roof. “Family structure is about as important as familyincome in predicting who graduates from collegetoday,” says W. Bradford Wilcox, sociologyprofessor at the Univ. of Virginia. The data arepretty conclusive. The more intact the family, thebetter the education outcomes. [William McGurn,Wall Street Journal, 5/25/20]

NY Times Magazine Pandemic Issue The May 24, 2020, issue in-cluded this painting titled“Beneath an Unforgiving Sun.” The painter intended to showthat the “trauma that thesewomen are conveying is onethat can exist in the context ofthe 1960s or in the context ofCovid-19.” But the painting could alsodrama tize the loss of minoritychildren through abortion.Catherine Davis of the NationalBlack Pro-Life Coalition saysthat 20 million black lives havealready been lost to abortionsince 1973, more than the entire black population in1960s America.

Is Faith-Based Foster Care Legitimate? The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, thePennsylvania Catholic Conference and CatholicCharities agencies have joined more than 30 otherreligious groups, states and a group of Congressmembers urging the Supreme Court to protect Phila-delphia’s faith-based foster care. Becket, a religiousliberty law firm, represents the foster womendefending the Catholic Social Services policy. The groups filed friend-of-the court briefs in earlyJune in Fulton v. Philadelphia, which the court willhear next term to determine if Philadelphia canexclude a Catholic social services agency from thecity’s foster care program because the agency doesnot accept same-sex couples as foster parents. Instead, it refers those couples to other agencies. The briefs argued that the court should allow thecity’s Catholic social service agency to continue itsfoster care role and protect faith-based ministriesnationwide to ensure they maintain their FirstAmendment religious exercise rights. A brief by the Catholic Association Foundation, agroup which defends the church and religious liberty,said severing ties with Catholic-run foster care andadoption programs, “under the guise of enforcing‘neutral’ anti-discrimination laws, is the equivalent ofhanging a ‘Catholics Need Not Apply’ sign outside ofevery state and local health and human servicesdepartment. Such a precedent is odious to theConstitution’s guarantees of free speech and thefree exercise of religion, and should not stand.” [CarolZimmermann, Our Sunday Visitor, 6/9/10]Prayer Petitions for Father’s Day May expectant fathers lovingly support the mothersof their children in welcoming new life; For married couples longing for a child: May Godgrant them the grace and strength to place their faithin His loving plan.