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November 20, 2009

The following is the text of the Manhattan Declaration signed by 149 pro-life and Catholic and evangelical and Orthodox Christian leaders. LifeNews.com supports the pro-life aims of the resolution.

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Preamble

Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God's word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire's sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce's leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes - from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.

Declaration

We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image. We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person. We call upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right - and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation - to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us not to fail in that duty.

Life

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10

Although public sentiment has moved in a pro-life direction, we note with sadness that pro-abortion ideology prevails today in our government. The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense. Majorities in both houses of Congress hold pro-abortion views. The Supreme Court, whose infamous 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade stripped the unborn of legal protection, continues to treat elective abortion as a fundamental constitutional right, though it has upheld as constitutionally permissible some limited restrictions on abortion. The President says that he wants to reduce the "need" for abortion - a commendable goal. But he has also pledged to make abortion more easily and widely available by eliminating laws prohibiting government funding, requiring waiting periods for women seeking abortions, and parental notification for abortions performed on minors. The elimination of these important and effective pro-life laws cannot reasonably be expected to do other than significantly increase the number of elective abortions by which the lives of countless children are snuffed out prior to birth. Our commitment to the sanctity of life is not a matter of partisan loyalty, for we recognize that in the thirty-six years since Roe v. Wade, elected officials and appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in giving legal sanction to what Pope John Paul II described as "the culture of death." We call on all officials in our country, elected and appointed, to protect and serve every member of our society, including the most marginalized, voiceless, and vulnerable among us.

A culture of death inevitably cheapens life in all its stages and conditions by promoting the belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are discardable. As predicted by many prescient persons, the cheapening of life that began with abortion has now metastasized. For example, human embryo-destructive research and its public funding are promoted in the name of science and in the cause of developing treatments and cures for diseases and injuries. The President and many in Congress favor the expansion of embryo- research to include the taxpayer funding of so-called "therapeutic cloning." This would result in the industrial mass production of human embryos to be killed for the purpose of producing genetically customized stem cell lines and tissues. At the other end of life, an increasingly powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and "voluntary" euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons. Eugenic notions such as the doctrine of lebensunwertes Leben ("life unworthy of life") were first advanced in the 1920s by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe. Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-twentieth century, they have returned from the grave. The only difference is that now the doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of "liberty," "autonomy," and "choice."

We will be united and untiring in our efforts to roll back the license to kill that began with the abandonment of the unborn to abortion. We will work, as we have always worked, to bring assistance, comfort, and care to pregnant women in need and to those who have been victimized by abortion, even as we stand resolutely against the corrupt and degrading notion that it can somehow be in the best interests of women to submit to the deliberate killing of their unborn children. Our message is, and ever shall be, that the just, humane, and truly Christian answer to problem pregnancies is for all of us to love and care for mother and child alike.

A truly prophetic Christian witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination. The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak. And so we defend and speak for the unborn, the disabled, and the dependent. What the Bible and the light of reason make clear, we must make clear. We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition.

Our concern is not confined to our own nation. Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and "ethnic cleansing," the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS. We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research. And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.

Marriage

The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:23-24 This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:32-33 In Scripture, the creation of man and woman, and their one-flesh union as husband and wife, is the crowning achievement of God's creation. In the transmission of life and the nurturing of children, men and women joined as spouses are given the great honor of being partners with God Himself. Marriage then, is the first institution of human society - indeed it is the institution on which all other human institutions have their foundation. In the Christian tradition we refer to marriage as "holy matrimony" to signal the fact that it is an institution ordained by God, and blessed by Christ in his participation at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. In the Bible, God Himself blesses and holds marriage in the highest esteem.

Vast human experience confirms that marriage is the original and most important institution for sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all persons in a society. Where marriage is honored, and where there is a flourishing marriage culture, everyone benefits - the spouses themselves, their children, the communities and societies in which they live. Where the marriage culture begins to erode, social pathologies of every sort quickly manifest themselves. Unfortunately, we have witnessed over the course of the past several decades a serious erosion of the marriage culture in our own country. Perhaps the most telling - and alarming - indicator is the out-of-wedlock birth rate. Less than fifty years ago, it was under 5 percent. Today it is over 40 percent. Our society - and particularly its poorest and most vulnerable sectors, where the out-of-wedlock birth rate is much higher even than the national average - is paying a huge price in delinquency, drug abuse, crime, incarceration, hopelessness, and despair. Other indicators are widespread non-marital sexual cohabitation and a devastatingly high rate of divorce.

We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage. Insofar as we have too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all Christians to do the same.

To strengthen families, we must stop glamorizing promiscuity and infidelity and restore among our people a sense of the profound beauty, mystery, and holiness of faithful marital love. We must reform ill-advised policies that contribute to the weakening of the institution of marriage, including the discredited idea of unilateral divorce. We must work in the legal, cultural, and religious domains to instill in young people a sound understanding of what marriage is, what it requires, and why it is worth the commitment and sacrifices that faithful spouses make.

The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture. It reflects a loss of understanding of the meaning of marriage as embodied in our civil and religious law and in the philosophical tradition that contributed to shaping the law. Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for yielding to it would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a sound understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a healthy marriage culture. It would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life. In spousal communion and the rearing of children (who, as gifts of God, are the fruit of their parents' marital love), we discover the profound reasons for and benefits of the marriage covenant.

We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct. We have compassion for those so disposed; we respect them as human beings possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity; and we pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward. We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God's intention for our lives. We, no less than they, are in constant need of God's patience, love and forgiveness. We call on the entire Christian community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it. Our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners. For every sinner, regardless of the sin, is loved by God, who seeks not our destruction but rather the conversion of our hearts. Jesus calls all who wander from the path of virtue to "a more excellent way." As his disciples we will reach out in love to assist all who hear the call and wish to answer it.

We further acknowledge that there are sincere people who disagree with us, and with the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition, on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage. Some who enter into same- sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital. They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife biologically as a reproductive unit. This is because the body is no mere extrinsic instrument of the human person, but truly part of the personal reality of the human being. Human beings are not merely centers of consciousness or emotion, or minds, or spirits, inhabiting non-personal bodies. The human person is a dynamic unity of body, mind, and spirit. Marriage is what one man and one woman establish when, forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment, they found a sharing of life at every level of being - the biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual - on a commitment that is sealed, completed and actualized by loving sexual intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh, not in some merely metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation. That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation.

We understand that many of our fellow citizens, including some Christians, believe that the historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a denial of equality or civil rights. They wonder what to say in reply to the argument that asserts that no harm would be done to them or to anyone if the law of the community were to confer upon two men or two women who are living together in a sexual partnership the status of being "married." It would not, after all, affect their own marriages, would it? On inspection, however, the argument that laws governing one kind of marriage will not affect another cannot stand. Were it to prove anything, it would prove far too much: the assumption that the legal status of one set of marriage relationships affects no other would not only argue for same sex partnerships; it could be asserted with equal validity for polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous relationships. Should these, as a matter of equality or civil rights, be recognized as lawful marriages, and would they have no effects on other relationships? No. The truth is that marriage is not something abstract or neutral that the law may legitimately define and re-define to please those who are powerful and influential.

No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage. Marriage is an objective reality - a covenantal union of husband and wife - that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of justice and the common good. If it fails to do so, genuine social harms follow. First, the religious liberty of those for whom this is a matter of conscience is jeopardized. Second, the rights of parents are abused as family life and sex education programs in schools are used to teach children that an enlightened understanding recognizes as "marriages" sexual partnerships that many parents believe are intrinsically non- marital and immoral. Third, the common good of civil society is damaged when the law itself, in its critical pedagogical function, becomes a tool for eroding a sound understanding of marriage on which the flourishing of the marriage culture in any society vitally depends. Sadly, we are today far from having a thriving marriage culture. But if we are to begin the critically important process of reforming our laws and mores to rebuild such a culture, the last thing we can afford to do is to re-define marriage in such a way as to embody in our laws a false proclamation about what marriage is.

And so it is out of love (not "animus") and prudent concern for the common good (not "prejudice"), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture. How could we, as Christians, do otherwise? The Bible teaches us that marriage is a central part of God's creation covenant. Indeed, the union of husband and wife mirrors the bond between Christ and his church. And so just as Christ was willing, out of love, to give Himself up for the church in a complete sacrifice, we are willing, lovingly, to make whatever sacrifices are required of us for the sake of the inestimable treasure that is marriage.

Religious Liberty

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61:1

Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. Matthew 22:21

The struggle for religious liberty across the centuries has been long and arduous, but it is not a novel idea or recent development. The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Determined to follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the early Christians appealed to the manner in which the Incarnation had taken place: "Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing fear and terror? Not so, but in gentleness and meekness..., for compulsion is no attribute of God" (Epistle to Diognetus 7.3-4). Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human person created in the image of God - a dignity, as our founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the exercise of right reason.

Christians confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience. Immunity from religious coercion is the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience. No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions. What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.

It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law - such persons claiming these "rights" are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.

We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro- life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and pro-life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business. After the judicial imposition of "same-sex marriage" in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same-sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi-marital "civil unions" scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New hate-crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.

In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded. Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to hire people of one's own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of.1 Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.

As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority. We believe in law and in the rule of law. We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust - and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust - undermine the common good, rather than serve it.

Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching. Their answer was, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required. There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King's willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's.

Dr. Daniel Akin President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (Wake Forest, NC)

Most Rev. Peter J. Akinola Primate, Anglican Church of Nigeria (Abika, Nigeria)

Randy Alcorn Founder and Director, Eternal Perspective Ministries (EPM) (Sandy, OR)

Rt. Rev. David Anderson President and CEO, American Anglican Council (Atlanta, GA)

Leith Anderson President of National Association of Evangelicals (Washington, DC)

Charlotte K. Ardizzone TV Show Host and Speaker, INSP Television (Charlotte, NC)

Kay Arthur CEO and Co-founder, Precept Ministries International (Chattanooga, TN)

Dr. Mark L. Bailey President, Dallas Theological Seminary (Dallas, TX)

His Grace, The Right Reverend Bishop Basil Essey The Right Reverend Bishop of the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America (Wichita, KS)

Joel Belz Founder, World Magazine (Asheville, NC)

Rev. Michael L. Beresford Managing Director of Church Relations, Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn. (Charlotte, NC)

Ken Boa President, Reflections Ministries (Atlanta, GA)

Joseph Bottum Editor of First Things (New York, NY)

Pastor Randy & Sarah Brannon Senior Pastor, Grace Community Church (Madera, CA)

Steve Brown National radio broadcaster, Key Life (Maitland, FL)

Dr. Robert C. Cannada, Jr. Chancellor and CEO of Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando, FL)

Galen Carey Director of Government Affairs, National Association of Evangelicals (Washington, DC)

Dr. Bryan Chapell President, Covenant Theological Seminary (St. Louis, MO)

Scott Chapman Senior Pastor, The Chapel (Libertyville, IL)

Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput Archbishop, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver, CO

Timothy Clinton President, American Association of Christian Counselors (Forest, VA)

Chuck Colson Founder, the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview (Lansdowne, VA)

Most Rev. Salvatore Joseph Cordileone Bishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland, CA

Dr. Gary Culpepper Associate Professor, Providence College (Providence, RI)

Jim Daly President and CEO, Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs, CO)

Mar ]]> http://www.prolifeamerica.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=7895 2009-11-20T10:40:50 -06.00 juliee 2
Washington, DC -- During an interview with Fox News, President Barack Obama again condemned the Stupak amendment added to the House health care bill to stop abortion funding. Meanwhile, the Obama administration says the president supports the new Senate health care bill that contains massive abortion subsidies.

Texthttp://www.lifenews.com/nat5691.html ]]> http://www.prolifeamerica.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=7894 2009-11-19T20:31:23 -06.00 B0zo 4

http://wonderwall.msn.com/tv/o...526923.story?GT1=28135 ]]> http://www.prolifeamerica.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=7893 2009-11-19T18:15:43 -06.00 Augustine 3 ALAN KEYES

Alan Keyes in his vigorous attempt to find Obama's real birth certificate, the one that Keyes wishes existed, looks foolish and unelectable.

Remember that the birth certificate movement was created by pro-abortion, Hillary Clinton supporter, Philip K Berg, a known 9-/11 truther. ]]> http://www.prolifeamerica.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=7892 2009-11-19T18:00:06 -06.00 Augustine 3
Sarah Palin has stated, "I don't think that (the morning after pill) should necessarily be illegal." This statement given in a hostile interview with CBS Obama shill Katie Couric I don't believe properly explains Palins thoughts on the issue. At face value troubling? Yes. But Couric quickly changed the topic and I for one am willing to give Palin the benefit of the doubt. Having been asked how that statement could be taken out of context, I would point out that most of the interview was an attempt at "gotcha" journalism. Couric is as liberal and as pro-choice as any abortion rights group could ever wish for. The media is a virtual abortion rights mouthpiece who attempts to destroy any strong pro-life conservative woman.

Sarah Palin says, "I am one to believe that life starts at the moment of conception." How could that statement be any clearer given in the same interview with Couric? Only with additional positioning did Couric look for ways to make Palin appear in support of abortifacents, then quickly changed the subject to something else.

Sarah Palin says, "(Prohibiting abortion) would not be up to the governor... (Prohibiting abortion) would be up to the people of Alaska to discuss and decide..." And what is wrong with allowing the people of states to decide the matter of abortion in America? If a governor can prohibit abortion than a subsequent governor could just as easily permit legalized abortion. This in no way suggests that Palin believes that rights eminate from the state and not from God. Such broad analysis is creative supposition at best. Allowing citizens to prohibit abortion allows democracy to work and shows that people are indeed the subject God given rights and that rights do not in fact eminate from the state. Governors are not and should not be theocrats.

Sarah Palin has not endorsed "personhood" movements as such, either state or federal. My own feeling is that regarding "personhood" people are dealing in semantics. When does a human being conceived or otherwise become a person? You're virtually dealing in metaphysics. A human being is what we know a person is and that all persons are human beings. Life and being a human being are concrete realities validated by science. Palin has stated that human life begins at human conception. That's clear enough to my mind. To suggest that Palin has not publically endorsed a particular pro-life movement, in no way inversely constitutes being supportive of abortion. Regardless of scientific and medical facts, pro-aborts have always know that abortion ends a human life and yet that has never stopped them from supporting and advocating abortion.

At to the claim that she appointed a pro-abortion judge in Alaska, Sarah Palin appointed one of two pro-abortion judges to a state court. Palin was not able to constitutionally able to make those selections which blonged to other state boards. As to Palin stating that she believed that the judge could do the job competently I would remind people that judges deal with matters that rarely have anything to do with abortion. If an elected official does not respect state and federal constitutions, how will they one day expect others to respect those same constitutions when the unborn are one day protected? Elected officials cannot become dictators, otherwise none would have rights while states would retain the power strip people of their rights, born and unborn. Sarah Palin simply did not have the option to choose a pro-life judge. Governors who do not want to participate with the constitutions of their states can soon enough be replaced with pro-abortion governors.

Allegedly Sarah Palin is not pro-life because she used a phrase like "cradle to grave". Again the war of semantics. Dare I ever say the word "fundamentalist", but some people become rather unrealistic when they have formed an opinion about an individual and begin hearing statements which were never made by the person.

Sarah Palin allegedly "whitewashed" John McCain's pro-choice record. Was John McCain the perfect pro-life candidate? Certainly not. Was John McCain pro-life in relations to Barack Obama? Certainly yes! It's interesting to note that John McCain received a "zero" rating from groups like NARAL based upon his voting record when it came to so-called "abortion rights". (Listen to NARAL and Planned Parenthood wail during the election season and you would have thought that McCain had vowed to return America to the pre-Roe days of back alley abortions and rusty coathangers.) Sarah Palin was supporting a political running mate for the presidency who certainly would never have been as malicious as Barack Obama has been in his time in office towards the unborn. Was Sarah Palin to refuse the nomination for vice-president, an office and position where she might have done great good for the cause of the unborn?

Catholic pro-life groups have stated that Sarah Palin's views in embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) are essentially the same as that of the Catholic Church. Sarah Palin does not support embryonic stem cell research and her candidacy as vice-president to John McCain does not equate to condoning embryonic stem cell research. Palin was never unclear that she and McCain had differing views on some issues and clearly embryonic stem cell research may well have been one of those views in mind that they differed on.

Regarding Creation, the point of view of science vs that of a universe created by God does not dictate what ones views on abortion are. Abortion is a human rights issue. One may be pro-life without being Christian or even religious at all. The facts surrouding the life of the unborn child are those founded on reason and observable science. One doesn't have to have read the Bible or hold a theological degree to understand that abortion kills a living human being in the womb.

As regarding "emergency contraception; the morning after pill", Sarah Palin is on record that even were a daughter of her own raped, she would choose life and would want her daughter to choose life. I think that this suggests that Sarah Palin opposes anything that remotely smacks of killing the unborn child in the womb. (Abortion advocates such as the Huffinfton Post were quick to say that Palin would "force" her raped daughters to carry the baby and again, beware the Couric interview on this issue.) Abortion advocates seem to think that anything other than a planned pregnancy is a immense human tragedy, a punishment even.

To simply refuse to participate in the electoral process because moral perfection does not exist within the system is not humanly realistic. The system is flawed and the only way to change that system is to become a part of that system to the greatest degree that one can to affect the greatest amount of positive change in that system. To simply refuse to participate on pricipal guarantees absolute failure! Spectators who stand aside in definace merely allow the worst possible outcomes to happen unchallenged. Good people must do what they can. We can be radically pro-life without being radical or anarchists or bystanders.

Sarah Palin says, "I oppose the use of public funds for elective abortions." Don't pro-life people oppose the funding of elective abortion? Are not the clinical abortions that we oppose elective? Is there such a thing after all as a non-elective abortion? I contend that the cause the greatest amount of pro-life change, a person cannot run for office as a flaming pro-life advocate. Advocates can make broad proclamations, because they do not have to worry about votes and political retribution. But public servants however, who wish to do good, must play a careful steady game. ]]> http://www.prolifeamerica.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=7891 2009-11-19T17:17:35 -06.00 Spinwubby 4
This is the magic time of year when we at the horsepital see a freak holiday injury: fried dog feet due to excited beasts or children pulling the deep-fat turkey frier over.

Those friers are top-heavy, have a trailing cord, and the injuries the searing oil inflicts are extremely painful. (Not to pention painfully expensive...)

Please share this ugly warning with your friends, family and coworkers, and we'll all have a MERRY FESTIVUS!

(There! I've done my good deed for 2009 - a month and half before the deadline!) ]]> http://www.prolifeamerica.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=7890 2009-11-19T16:13:13 -06.00 nancyu 3 http://bobmccarty.com/2009/11/...lams-catholic-bishops/ ]]> http://www.prolifeamerica.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=7889 2009-11-19T14:49:28 -06.00 juliee 1
Story, votes and action alert at Texthttp://www.lifenews.com/nat5689.html ]]> http://www.prolifeamerica.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=7888 2009-11-19T10:50:49 -06.00 juliee 1
Washington, DC -- Two leading pro-life organizations that have analyzed the new 2,000-page government-run health care bill released by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid late yesterday say the legislation contains massive abortion funding and a fake amendment that does not truly ban it.

Texthttp://www.LifeNews.com/nat5682.html ]]> http://www.prolifeamerica.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=7887 2009-11-19T07:41:01 -06.00 leftsnemesis 14
This, as well as other arguments, address only the corporal aspects of this issue.

My question is, what long term consequences might we have to deal with as a society when we permit abortion within it? Is there an unseen danger to the devaluation of human life at any stage?

Please help me to examine this issue. No cussing.. damn it! ]]>