Response to a letter from Senator Durbin

March 8, 2013

 

Dear Ms. Gisburne:

 

Thank you for contacting me about abortion (post - Effects of Abortion on Society, February 13, 2013). I appreciate hearing from you.

 

While abortion is an issue that has tended to divide Americans, I believe we can acknowledge women’s rights and still work together to reduce the number of abortions. I believe abortion should be safe and legal, consistent with Roe v. Wade. A decision this personal is best left to a woman, her family, her doctor, and her conscience. Late-term abortions, including so-called partial birth abortions, should be strictly limited to cases where the life of the mother is in danger or she faces a medically certified risk of grievous physical injury.

 

At the same time, we can do more to diminish the frequency of abortion. We must make family planning services and age-appropriate sex education more available. This will help couples avoid the unplanned pregnancies that often lead to abortion. I support the federal family planning program, which provides more than five million women with a wide range of services designed to improve maternal and infant health, lower the incidence of unintended pregnancy, and prevent abortions. This program has a proven record of success. I oppose gag rules that would prevent women from receiving full information about their pregnancy options.

 

In addition, we must go beyond contraception. We need to support pregnant women when they find themselves in a difficult situation by working to ensure that they have access to health care, before and after the baby is born. Providing programs that teach parenting skills, nutrition assistance, income support, and caring adoption alternatives is critical to family planning.

We should also address the underlying conditions that can affect a couple’s response to an unplanned pregnancy. Minimum wage increases, affordable health care, expanded child care options, and improved educational assistance can make it easier for a couple to welcome a child into the family.

I also favor tax breaks to help families afford adoptions, and I have cosponsored legislation, subsequently enacted into law, that extended and increased the tax credit for adoption expenses.

 

Thank you again for sharing your views with me. Please feel free to stay in touch.

Sincerely,

 

Richard J. Durbin

United States Senator

RJD/ab

 

Senator Durbin:

 

Abortion is wrong. Nothing can be said to ever make it right.

 

Abortion is wrong. Your position, as you continually state in your letters, is pap and sounds more ludicrous every time I read it. It shows a lack of a sense of right and wrong. It is as if you were taken to the dome of the Capitol and shown the power you could have if you subjugated your principles to the Democratic platform, no matter how it conflicted with morality.

 

Abortion is wrong. “While abortion is an issue that has tended to divide Americans, I believe we can acknowledge women’s rights and still work together to reduce the number of abortions.” Women’s rights is a misnomer. I am a woman. I have been one for 62 years. My rights end where they harm someone else. Abortion kills, therefore abortion cannot be a “right”. Nothing is being done, especially by the Democratic party to reduce the number of abortions. In fact, the position of the party today is to push for more abortions through increased access, funding, and decreased regulations, both on the federal and state levels.

 

Abortion is wrong. “I believe abortion should be safe and legal, consistent with Roe v. Wade.” Neither rulings of the Supreme Court, legislation of Congress, nor a position in the Democratic platform will ever make it right. Abortion laws were founded on lies and is continues to be protected not for the good of women but for the bottom line of the industry. The rights of a human being to life ought not be subject to the decisions of another, even the woman who is carrying that life in her womb.

 

Abortion is wrong. “A decision this personal is best left to a woman, her family, her doctor, and her conscience.” By regurgitating the lies of the abortion industry, as taken on by the Democratic party, you are harming women by letting them believe that abortion is “an acceptable method of birth control”. By regurgitating the lies of the abortion industry, as taken on by the Democratic party, you have helped condemn millions of human beings to brutal deaths. By regurgitating the lies of the abortion industry, as taken on by the Democratic party, you are ultimately violating the my rights since the standards of personhood in abortion ‘rights’ could be applied to anyone with just an alteration of parameters. Do not think that this has not already happened.

 

Abortion is wrong. “At the same time, we can do more to diminish the frequency of abortion.” ... “I oppose gag rules that would prevent women from receiving full information about their pregnancy options.” What world are you living in? Planned Parenthood continuously lobbies against any law which would force them to give any information which could dissuade a woman from going through with an abortion. Ultrasounds, information on fetal development, alternative options, etc. all could cause a woman to not abort, which in turn means loss of revenue for the abortion clinic. The new health mandate requires companies to pay for contraception and ‘abortion’ pills, against the conscience of the owner. I learned back in the 1960’s that the ‘pill’ could cause an abortion, by preventing the embryo from implanting. Where have you been?

 

Abortion is wrong. “We need to support pregnant women when they find themselves in a difficult situation by working to ensure that they have access to health care, before and after the baby is born.” In spite of the efforts, of mainly churches, to advertise services, women turn to Planned Parenthood when they are faced with a ‘difficult situation’. Why? Planned Parenthood’s visibility, guaranteed now by its connection to the White House. Even the federal family planning program is invisible. I tried a search for clinics in Chicago with no results. The only way to ensure that money for health care is truly used for health care is to separate all abortion services from health care. Planned Parenthood does not encourage alternatives to abortion, just look at the numbers. Women have stated that Planned Parenthood has told them that they are NOT a social service. No amount of social services can make abortion right. No amount of social services can aid someone who is already dead.

 

Abortion is wrong. “We should also address the underlying conditions that can affect a couple’s response to an unplanned pregnancy.” I agree.

 

Abortion is wrong. Nothing can be said to ever make it right.  You ought to be doing everything you are able to do to eliminate abortion.  In accepting abortion as a rightful law of the country, you are NOT doing everything you could in your position of power.  "It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped," Hubert H. Humphrey

 

Abortion is wrong.  You are a scandal to the Catholic Church.  'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.' Matthew 25:40.  In the end, those millions of humans whom you allowed to be brutally destroyed will stand as witnesses.

 

Mary Ann Gisburne

 

"We are not some casual or meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary." Pope Benedict XVI, April 24, 2003

 

 

After-birth abortion - a.k.a. infanticide

"...all the individuals who are not in the condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons. Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life."   from After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?

Abortion, euthanasia, and now after-birth abortion a.k.a. infanticide.  And so it continues, the journey to have only perfect people in the world.  Who is next?  Where does it end?  Why does this one article matter?  An article leads to discussion.  The discussion leads to people thinking the argument is reasonable.  Thinking that it is reasonable leads to acceptance.  Think not?  Look at the road to the acceptance of abortion and, in many places, euthanasia.  What will become the qualification that determines anyone of us is a non-person and ought not continue to live?

Infanticide is currently legal in the Netherlands, and practiced in many countries like China, India and North Korea.

"We are not some casual or meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary." Pope Benedict XVI 

http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/03/01/medethics-2011-100411.full

Our Bodies, Our Consciences, By Kathryn Jean Lopez

February 4, 2013 12:00 A.M.

We are not alone. We can’t afford to pretend we are.

 

 

On the morning of the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s infamous Roe v. Wade ruling, I felt a chill. And it wasn’t brought on by the appropriate bitterly cold weather that particular January morning. After Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, some 500 or so New Yorkers walked through the streets of midtown Manhattan, in front of God, man, and Grand Central Station, praying the Rosary. Our prayers were for life and love and mercy. Our prayers were not in judgment of others but that we may do better, that women and men may see better options than abortion, that the hurt may be healed, that God may forgive us for letting anyone think she is alone and has no choice but the death of her child.

 

The chill was brought on by the knowledge that some of the commuters streaming into Grand Central knew the pain of abortion all too well. By the certainty that someone, on her morning commute, was thinking that was her only option. By the sharing in a community’s pain and guilt and sorrow.

We tend to live our lives masked in a veil of the imperial self. We pretend that we live alone. But as alone as we might sometimes feel, we make decisions that affect others. We need one another.
We do realize this, on some level. We’re decades into a welfare state premised on the idea that the government is our safety net. But the government cannot be a brother. The government cannot be a mother and a father. Where love thrives is in a flourishing civil society. That is where we flourish. Where our dreams are. Where we get the support that allows us to believe they can be fulfilled.

Our problems today run so deep. Now is the time to take a few steps back. Not to turn back the clock. But to reflect. To talk about some of the most contentious issues now that we are past the frenzy of a presidential election campaign.

Our problems won’t all be solved through legislative action. And legislative action, while it may sometimes be crucial, can’t be maximized without a fuller context. Congress may vote to defund Planned Parenthood, but we can’t assume that the political message that vote sends will cause the culture to change — that people will suddenly remember the poisonous eugenics upon which that organization was founded, that we will celebrate and protect human dignity, live chastely, and see adoption as a brilliant and generous option. A congressional vote is not a magic wand. There are so many steps that need to precede and follow it.

In a new book, Fill These Hearts, author Christopher West works on helping us with the backstory of our lives, a starting point for changing the terms of our debates and untangling our confusions. “Consider,” he writes, “the idea that our bodies tell a story that reveals, as we learn how to read it, the very meaning of existence and the path to the ultimate satisfaction of our deepest desire.”

“To call God ‘Father’ with a sincere heart is to recognize him as the ultimate origin of every good gift and to rest in his benevolent providence, trusting unflinchingly — despite life’s many sorrows and sufferings — that God does indeed have a perfect plan for our satisfaction. To call God ‘Father’ is to believe wholeheartedly that, in due time, he will provide precisely that for which we ache.” West quotes Psalm 145: “You give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.”

West makes the point that our bodies and our souls are not separate things, and that our very physical design speaks to our creation and destination. “In the biblical understanding, there exists a profound unity between that which is physical and that which is spiritual. This means that our bodies are not mere shells in which our true ‘spiritual selves’ live. We are a profound unity of body and soul, matter and spirit. In a very real way, we are our bodies.”
West writes as a Christian, but perceiving a person as an integrated whole does not depend on being a Christian, or a believer of any sort. Nor does understanding that men and women are different and complementary, and that that is a good thing. However, we can no longer take for granted that everyone understands that, let alone accepts, embraces, even celebrates it. Not when our federal health-care policy treats a woman’s fertility as a disease, a condition that she is expected to medicate away in order to achieve freedom and equality. Not when we are sending women into combat.

The world-famous former mayor of New York Ed Koch, who died just last week, was good friends with John Cardinal O’Connor. In 1989 they collaborated on a book, His Eminence and Hizzoner, in which Mayor Koch wrote: “The future of our nation depends on our ability to inculcate a strong sense of morality in our young people. That moral sense should be based on philosophical, ethical and religious teachings, which are the underpinnings of conscience. The way to oppose abortion is by challenging the conscience of those who advocate it. If the battle cannot be won at the level of conscience, it cannot be won.”

But what is conscience? What is right and wrong, and who are we and why are we? If we do not agree that there are answers to these questions — even if we don’t agree on what those answers are — we will never have a constructive debate about abortion, whether in terms of policy or of culture. That is the foundational work we need to return to. No election campaign is ever going to be better without it. Our culture is never going to be renewed without it. No lives are going to be truly redeemed without it. We won’t start making sense again without it. The dark bitter cold of winter will be warmed by the renewal that comes with embracing life, living life lovingly, supporting life, letting someone know she is not alone.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online. This column is available exclusively through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association. She is a director of Catholic Voices USA.