"It is...Our will that Catholics should abstain from certain appellations which have recently been brought into use to distinguish one group of Catholics from another. They are to be avoided not only as 'profane novelties of words,' out of harmony with both truth and justice, but also because they give rise to great trouble and confusion among Catholics. Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected: 'This is the Catholic faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly; he cannot be saved' (Athanasian Creed). There is no need of adding any qualifying terms to the profession of Catholicism: it is quite enough for each one to proclaim 'Christian is my name and Catholic my surname,' only let him endeavour to be in reality what he calls himself." -- Pope Benedict XV, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum 24 (1914)

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

The Appalling Logic of Legalized Infanticide

In 1973, the United States Supreme Court infamously decriminalized every state law banning the horrid practice of butchering babies in utero in the case of Roe v. Wade. What has followed in its wake may be described as a virtual war in the womb of the American woman: more than 53,000,000 babies have been exterminated by their mothers since the so-called legalization of abortion in 1973. (http://www.nrlc.org/news_and_views/Jan2011/nv012711.html). In what amounts to a single generation, fully one-sixth of the American population has been wiped out.
The cult of modernism, which provided the so-called moral basis for abortion, is in many ways the inversion of the moral reality: the identification of good as evil and evil as good. We now live in a uniquely debauched age of history: actions that have been long accepted as sin -- indeed nature itself testifies as much -- are trumpeted as social goods; and actions that have long been identified as virtuous are now condemned and punished as anti-social. From so-called same-sex “marriage” to the availability to the most vile and obscene pornography in virtually any hotel, what was once viewed as evil or unnatural is now liberating or open-minded. Above all others, abortion is the capital sacrament of the modern leftist: the one “right” that must be protected at all costs. One only has to remember that President Obama showed a great deal of flexibility in discussing cuts to various budgetary sacred cows of the Democratic Party in the recent congressional showdowns over the federal spend; but there was only one agenda item for which he was willing to shut the entire United States government down: funding for Planned Parenthood, our national abortuary. (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/264279/abortion-rights-activists-are-poised-shut-down-government-kathryn-jean-lopez)
Why abortion is the paramount “right” to left wing atheists should be no surprise: the traditional family and children are the cornerstone of any well ordered society. That they attack marriage through divorce, obscenity, homosexuality, and feminism is all part of a well coordinated strategy to destroy the divine order in a fit of spite. Children are the fruit of traditional marriage -- the very future of mankind. Scratch a leftist ideologue only a little and what you will find very close to the surface is a first rate misanthrope. It is no wonder that eliminating children is a prime goal of modernist thought: initially, by scaring us to not have children us with tales of the Malthusian population bomb; to then wooing us with the promise of unburdened sex with the aid of artificial contraception; and, finally, to convincing us -- against our very natures -- that destroying a child in utero is a blameless act of convenience that does not differ all that much from the extraction of a wisdom tooth.
While abortion advocates, at least in the United States, have maintained permissive abortion laws through resort to court opinions, as opposed to popular opinion, they have nonetheless been able to convince a significant minority of people that this objective evil is, at the very least, a necessary one. Their focus has been relentlessly dishonest -- both about what actually happens during an abortion and the reality of exactly who a fetus is (i.e., a baby not yet born). They have also appealed to the idea that a woman has a “right” to destroy the baby if that woman no longer chooses to have the burden of pregnancy; that being a mother is in and of itself a burden that one should be able to opt out of any time (just as one ought to be able to opt out of a marriage at any time). Former President Bill Clinton, a consummate politician, put his triangulated finger on the pulse of the generalized support and unease for abortion by declaring a national abortion policy of “safe, legal and rare.” “Safe” and “legal” stressed the “necessary” part of the equation while “rare” reflected the “evil” part. In the real world, however, abortionists advocates could care less about rarity: indeed, diabolic institutions like Planned Parenthood and other abortionist outfits earn blood money by killing babies -- they certainly do not want it “rare” by any measure.
The reality is that legalized abortion is a destructive lie. It is also a policy that is an intellectual morass in desperate need of a logic. The pro-life community quite sanely points out year-after-year that science and morality converge on the point that if “life” is to be protected, “life” is created at the moment of conception. It is an utterly well-ordered statement of both natural and divine law. For the abortion advocate, “life” is a slippery concept and it is a conversation that they urgently try to avoid. Is it when the baby’s heart begins to beat? (No, that fourth week milestone is far to early for abortion-on-demand). No, in fact, they do not want to discuss any aspect of fetal development as it relates to defining “life;” if forced, they will typically define it in relation to the mother -- of when the fetus no longer requires the mother in order to live (i.e., post-viability). But make no mistake, the post-viability concept is an abortion advocate’s cover story -- it is offered defensively to prevent their callousness from being on full display. Instead, to know one of these people is to know that they really believe a woman should be able to “terminate” a pregnancy until moments before -- or even after -- birth.
The slippery slope in any permissive abortion regime is, of course, that there is no principled line dividing “life” and “non-life” apart from conception. As such, the abortion debate, at least for the abortionist, has nothing philosophically to do with “life” as such. Beyond a fundamental misanthropy that has no mercy or regard for human babies, the abortion advocate’s position has everything to do with power and a radical individualism that posits forcefully that nothing may impose on “me” -- nothing.
So while there is predictable hand-wringing among otherwise pro-abortion advocates when an abortion doctor like Philadelphia’s Kermit Gosnell is exposed for killing not only post-viable babies -- but killing babies actually delivered with scissors (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/philadelphia-abortion-doctor-accused-killing-babies-scissors-charged/story?id=12649868), the fact is that what Dr. Gosnell did to warrant murder charges by infanticide immediately following a botched abortion is the same as the butchery that abortionists contend is a sacred “constitutional right.” The truth is that they condemn a Dr. Gosnell because they have to -- not because they genuinely see a distinction between abortion and infanticide. Indeed, the only difference between the two is the location of the killing: one being outside of the womb and other being inside. To be even more blunt, abortion is infanticide.
We are fast reaching the point that our collective consciences have become so seared by living in nations that permit this wholesale slaughter of innocents that the intelligentsia often loses sight of the charade that abortion and infanticide are not one in the same. Indeed, every now and then, an abortion advocate -- usually on one of the endless talking heads political programs -- will slip up and jeopardize the whole facade by impatiently insisting that a woman’s right to choose death for her child ought to extend for the entire pregnancy -- regardless of viability. More recently, this slip up occurred by a Canadian judge who honestly could not differentiate the rationale between post-birth infanticide and pre-birth abortion.
All such circumstances that lead to court cases of this kind are, in and of themselves, shocking and repugnant: this one is no different. On April 13, 2005, Katrina Effert, a Canadian nineteen year woman, gave birth to a newborn son. Instead of greeting this child as the gift from God that he was, this young woman instead strangled her defenseless newborn son with her thong panties during his first few hours of life in order to conceal his existence (as she had concealed her pregnancy from her parents during its duration). She tossed her newborn son’s lifeless body over her parent’s fence and sought to go on with her life. After her neighbors made the gruesome discovery, the young woman repeatedly lied about her role in her child’s death; she denied being pregnant and then blamed her boyfriend for the strangulation.
This one woman’s gruesome infanticidal act would not be international news per se given that infanticide itself is, unfortunately, a relatively common phenomenon. For example, a Tennessee mother recently smothered her newborn twins on September 12, 2011 in a story similar to Katrina Effert’s and currently faces double murder charges. (http://articles.cnn.com/2011-09-16/justice/justice_tennessee-twins-killed_1_newborn-twins-affidavit-sumner-county?_s=PM:JUSTICE) But what is remarkable about Katrina Effert’s infanticide is the Canadian criminal justice system’s treatment of it, and, more disturbing, its justification thereof.
Initially, Effert was found guilty of second degree murder by two separate juries and sentenced to life in prison only to have the sentence overturned by an appellate court. Following the appellate court’s decision to reduce the murder conviction to the lesser offense of “infanticide,” which under Canadian law is something akin to manslaughter of an infant due to the diminished capacity of the mother following labor. It carries a prison term not to exceed five years. During sentencing for Effert’s conviction of infanticide, Judge Joanne Veit, sentenced her to a three year suspended sentence, which is simply another way to say that there will be no jail time for Effert’s infanticidal act.
In justifying no jail time for the killing of an innocent Canadian citizen, Judge Veit quite correctly -- yet nonetheless appallingly -- connected the dots between abortion and infanticide; she writes: "while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support." (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2011/09/09/edmonton-effert-infanticide-suspended-sentence.html) Judge Veit continues, “Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant's death, especially at the hands of the infant's mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother." What is remarkable is that this liberal judge admits that the rationale for not punishing Efferts is that her act was so closely related to a legally permissible abortion. Stated differently, Judge Veit could not tell the difference between the two.

In the Effert’s decision, which the American mainstream media has predictably ignored, we have now transcended merely apologizing for the mother who kills her baby in utero with the help of an abortionist; we are now apologizing for the mother who actually does the killing herself after the baby is born and long after the law (imperfect though it is) recognizes the child’s right to live -- a right that is not and should not be -- qualitatively different from yours or mine. Equally appalling is the fact that had Katrina Effert choked a puppy to death or killed an endangered Lake Erie Water Snake, there is little chance that Judge Veit would have been so forgiving. That modern Western nations value the lives of animals more than human beings is all you need to know to draw the necessary conclusions about our moral fabric as well as our immediate future. The Effert case is a revealing albeit revolting peek into the mind of the modern abortion supporter, which I have no doubt accurately characterizes Judge Veit. As aptly put by National Review writer Mark Steyn, we have now been introduced to the concept of a “Fourth-Trimester Abortion.” (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/277027/fourth-trimester-abortion-mark-steyn) The reality is that abortion advocates cannot distinguish between the abortion and infanticide, and, coincidentally, neither should we.
So as our advanced Western nations cross the Rubicon by working out the logical extension of the amoral theory underlying the legalized abortion industry, we can expect that future outrages are in the not-too-distant offering: further legal sanction to the killing of the young, the disabled, and the elderly, i.e., the weakest members of our community killed by the stronger for what amounts to no more than convenience. But we should not despair: we know, by the grace of God, that to be a parent is a divine gift beyond measure. Indeed, it is more than a gift; it is an opportunity to cooperate with this loving God -- to offer our wills in union with His in order to bring forth another soul who is made to spend eternity in heavenly bliss glorifying and worshiping the living God. For a married couple, children are a literal testament to the sacramental reality that “a man ... shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in on flesh.” (Book of Genesis; 2:24). For in their child, the husband and wife have literally become one flesh. We further know that “[t]he Lord is the keeper of little ones,” (Book of Psalms; 114:6) and that God’s justice and mercy will be demonstrated completely in the fullness of time. So the modernist would seem to have the upper-hand, it only seems that way.
Pray for Katrina Effert and Joanne Veit: their unlikely cooperation has exposed the gruesome logic connecting abortion and infanticide.
Mother most pure, pray for us.


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