*The Lethal Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

“The Core Curriculum is really just another component of population control—it is used to help teach children the “facts” about climate change and problems of over-population. “

The Ambitions of Bill and Melinda Gates: Controlling Population and Public Education

by Anne Hendershott - March25, 2013

Continuing their commitment to controlling global population growth through artificial contraception, sterilization, and abortion initiatives, Microsoft founder and philanthropist, Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, a self-described “practicing” Catholic, are now attempting to control the curriculum of the nation’s public schools. Subsidizing the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $76 million to support teachers in implementing the Common Core—a standardized national curriculum.   This, on top of the tens of millions they have already awarded to the National Governor’s Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to develop the Common Core in the first place.

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In a column published in January, political commentator Michelle Malkin calls the Common Core a “stealthy federal takeover of school curriculum and standards across the country.” And, she maintains that the Common Core’s “dubious college and career read standards undermine local control of education, usurp state autonomy over curricular materials, and foist untested, mediocre and incoherent pedagogical theories on America’s schoolchildren.

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The Gates Foundation: Buying Control

For nearly two decades, the Gates Foundation has been generous in providing aid to more than 100 countries—often coupled with family planning opportunities.  Such aid is often framed as a way to foster economic growth.  In an article in American Thinker, Andressen Blom and James Bell wrote that Melinda Gates made that connection explicit in a speech at a population gathering that “government leaders are now beginning to understand that providing access to contraceptives is a cost effective way to foster economic growth.”

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Gates maintains that improvements in health care—including an expansion of the administration of vaccinations—will encourage families to reduce the number of children they desire to have.  And, in an ongoing attempt to expand the types of birth control, Gates has spent millions of dollars on research and development.  According to Christian Voice, a few years ago the Gates Foundation awarded a grant of $100,000 to researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to develop a new type of ultrasound described as a “non-invasive form of birth control for men” which would make a man infertile for up to six months.

Such strategies have been effective.   In fact, the Gates Foundation has been so successful in their family planning initiatives that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) awarded their annual Population Award in 2010 to the Foundation.  According to a June 15, 2010 article in Mercator.net, at the awards ceremony, UNFPA executive director Thoraya Obaid cited the Gates Foundation as a “leader in the fields of global health and global development, particularly in promoting excellence in population assistance, including through the design of innovative, integrated solutions in the areas of reproductive health, family planning, and maternal and neonatal health.”  The International Planned Parenthood Federation is a previous winner of the United Nations Population Fund’s Annual Award.

It is easy to understand why the United Nations Population Fund—a fund which Steven Mosher, the President of the Population Research Institute has exposed as being a direct participant in China’s coercive one-child policy—honored Gates with their prestigious Population Fund award since the Gates Foundation has donated more than one billion dollars to “family-planning” groups including the United Nations Population Fund itself; CARE International—an organization which is lobbying for legalized abortion in several African nations; Save the Children—a major promoter of the population control agenda, the World Health Organization—an organization that forcibly sterilized thousands of women in the 1990s under the pretence of providing tetanus vaccination services in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines; and of course, the major abortion provider, International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Bill and Melinda Gates truly believe that population control is key to the future.  Plans are already in place to track births and vaccinations through cell phone technology to register every birth on the planet.  Gates claims that the GPS technology would enable officials to track and “remind” parents who do not bring their children in for vaccines.   Maintaining that vaccination is key to reducing population growth, Gates predicts that if child mortality can be reduced, parents will have fewer children, following the example of the urbanized West where birth rates have dropped to below replacement levels: “The fact is that within a decade of improving health outcomes, parents decide to have fewer children.”   For Gates, “there is no such thing as a healthy, high population growth country.  If you’re healthy, you’re low-population growth… As the world grows from 6 billion to 9 billion, all of that population growth is in urban slums…It’s a very interesting problem.”

More than a decade ago, on May 17, 2002, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had purchased shares in nine of the largest pharmaceutical companies valued at nearly $205 million.  Acquiring shares in Merck, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson Wyeth, Abbott Labs, and others, the Gates Foundation continues a financial interest in common with the makers of AIDS drugs, diagnostic tools, vaccines, and contraceptives.  But, the commitment to global population control goes well beyond financial interests.  It is likely that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will continue its commitment to global population control, and now, curriculum creation in the nation’s schools because they truly believe that they know better than anyone else how we all should live.

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A Product of Poor Catholic Education

According to the National Catholic Register, Melinda Gates represents herself in the media as a practicing Catholic who has a great uncle who was a Jesuit priest and a great aunt who was an Ursuline nun who taught her to read.  She graduated from Ursuline Academy in Dallas, where she claims to have learned “incredible social justice.”  And, this may indeed be where the problem begins.  For so many Catholics, social justice has been so broadly defined that it now includes giving women access to reproductive rights—including the right to abortion—so that they can play an equal role in contributing to the workplace and the economy.  In an article entitled “Why Birth Control is Still a Big Idea” published in Foreign Policy in December, 2012, Melinda Gates writes:

Contraceptives unlock one of the most dormant but potentially powerful assets in development:  women as decision makers.  When women have the power to make choices about their families, they tend to decide precisely what demographers, economists, and development experts recommend.

Most recently, in a January 2, 2013 article published on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website entitled “Profiles in Courage: Philippines Passes Reproductive Health Bill,” the article congratulates all of those who helped bring expanded access to “reproductive health” through the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012—recently signed by President Aquino. This bill states that women and men—living in the most Catholic of Catholic countries—can now “decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children.”   What the Gates Foundation website omits is information about the provision within the bill involving “population management” through mandatory counseling of couples seeking marriage licenses.  In this case, social justice involves a demand that couples learn about the government’s views on an ideal family size of two children—coming one step closer to China in its government’s one-child policy.

This commitment to a distorted definition of social justice by Melinda and Bill Gates will likely continue because they have been lead to believe that such control is what is best for people.  The Core Curriculum is really just another component of population control—it is used to help teach children the “facts” about climate change and problems of over-population.  Indeed, the population agenda is a trap that many wealthy, highly intelligent people have fallen into in the past. From the wealthy eugenics supporters of Planned Parenthood’s Founder Margaret Sanger, to the Rockefeller family and their population control initiatives, this work continues today through their heirs—heirs like David Rockefeller—an ally of Bill and Melinda Gates.  And some influential Catholics have been complicit in this.  At one time, Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, President Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame served as a trustee, and later, Chairman of the Board of the Rockefeller Foundation, a funder of population causes counter to the teachings of the Church.

The population control initiatives promoted by the Gates Foundation will continue to grow nationally and internationally because they have convinced others and themselves that they are saving lives. On their website, they ask: “what is more life affirming than saving one third of mothers from dying in childbirth?”   What they do not seem to acknowledge is how many unborn children have died from their initiatives.

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*Heroes Do Die: John McCain (Leave abortion alone)

Christian News Network – November 25, 2012:

Former Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain: ‘Leave Abortion Alone’

Former Republican presidential candidate and current United States Senator John McCain told reporters this morning that politicians should stop pushing the issue of abortion.

McCain explained to Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday that he believes that there are more pressing matters in the nation.

“I can state my position on abortion, but other than that, leave the issue alone,” he said, “when we are in the kind of economic situation, and frankly, national security situation we’re in.”

When asked whether he would allow abortion to continue in America, after a slight laugh, McCain replied that he would.

“I would allow those opinions and respect those opinions,” he said. “I’m proud of my pro-life position and record, and if someone disagrees with me, I respect your views.”

McCain had also outlined during the interview that he believes Republicans need to be more positive in projecting their stance on national matters, instead of stating what they are against.

“I think we have to have a bigger tent,” he said. “It can’t be just being against the Democrats, and against Harry Reid and against Obama. You’ve got to be for things. And we have to give them something like the [1994] Contract with America that we gave them some years ago.”

“You’ve got to be for things.”

What exactly does McCain think being “pro” something means?

The comment below by Alan John de Bernardine, which he posted at LifesiteNews.com, pretty much expresses my viewpoint.

How many points can one contest in a single comment? I’ll try to limit myself to the first two or three assertions of Sen. McCain in the above article:

Well, what in the world are you in the Senate for, if matters of life and death aren’t worth fighting for? What exactly do you want to do for society? What kind of soldier, when the enemy is threatening to kill our POWs, would suggest “We should just state our position, but other than that, let’s just leave the issue alone.” Mr. McCain, what kind of hero talks like that?

In the face of the annual slaughter of roughly 1,000,000 unborn Americans, I find your preoccupation with the economy and national security a bit incredible. Do you think that the killing of almost 50,000,000 unborn Americans since the passing of Roe v. Wade has nothing to do with our present economic and national security problems? Apparently, you fail to understand the cause and effect relationship of moral behavior and social well being. That being so, I question your qualification as a leader of a civilized society. To not see the connection is a sign of great spiritual ignorance.

Sen. McCain, you are quoted as saying: “I’m proud of my pro-life position.” Mr. McCain, you don’t have a pro-life position. You have a pro-choice position that concedes the option to kill unborn children. That’s not pro-life, but rather, tolerance of a false conception of liberty—the liberty to kill an innocent human being. How you can be proud of that, I have no idea. I guess it’s kind of like gay “pride,” and the sophisticated liberal “intellectual” ideology that welcomes the corruption of morals as “progress.” Which is apparently what you also embrace, when you suggest that the GOP needs a bigger tent. Sir, you are not offering a meaningful alternative to the Democratic agenda, but a merger.

Mr. McCain, you’ve stated your position. You have said, “if someone disagrees with me, I respect your views,” implying, I suppose, that our views can somehow be compatible or reconciled. I disagree with you Mr. McCain. I respect your right to have an opinion, but I cannot accept that opinion that it is contrary to truth and justice. Such an opinion must be rejected, for the good of society. If you can be so tolerant as to accept my view, then, please just “leave the issue alone.” Otherwise, a “civil war” within the GOP is inevitable, and you will be just as much the cause of it, and worse–you will be warring on the wrong side.

Click here to continue reading Former Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain: ‘Leave Abortion Alone’

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*Conception to birth – visualized

Image-maker Alexander Tsiaras shares a powerful medical visualization, showing human development from conception to birth and beyond.

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*A Person From Conception – Pope Benedict XVI on the embryo in the womb

With regard to the embryo in the womb, science itself highlights its autonomy capable of interaction with the mother, the coordination of biological processes, the continuity of development, the growing complexity of the organism. This is not an accumulation of biological material, but a new living being, dynamic and wonderfully ordered, a new unique human being. So was Jesus in Mary’s womb, so it was for all of us in our mother’s womb. With the ancient Christian writer Tertullian we can say: ” he who will be a man is already one” (Apologeticum IX, 8), there is no reason not to consider him a person from conception. [Pope Benedict XVI]

Protect, Love and Serve Life! Pope’s Homily at Vigil of Prayer for All Nascent Human Life

by Deacon Keith Fournier (Catholic Online)

The Vigil of Advent 2010 began in St. Peter’s Basilica with Pope Benedict XVI leading what was called a “Vigil of Prayer for All Nascent Human Life”. Catholics throughout the world gathered in their local Churches, as well as in homes, monasteries and religious houses all over the world. The global Vigil was requested by Pope Benedict XVI. It underscores the unqualified and unequivocal committment of the Catholic Church to the defense of every human life, from conception, throughout every age and stage, up to and including a natural death.

In his homily, Pope Benedict called the faithful to defend all human life, including embryonic human life. In fact,a human embryo is a human being, in development as we all are. The Pope noted that “there are cultural tendencies that seek to anesthetize consciences with misleading motivations. With regard to the embryo in the womb, science itself highlights its autonomy capable of interaction with the mother, the coordination of biological processes, the continuity of development, the growing complexity of the organism. This is not an accumulation of biological material, but a new living being, dynamic and wonderfully ordered, a new unique human being”.

He cautioned against the growing “darkening of consciences” and proclaimed with clarity and conviction to the whole world that the child in the first home of the whole human race, his or her mothers womb, “has the right not to be treated as an object of possession or something to manipulate at will, not to be reduced to a mere instrument for the benefit of others and their interests. The human person is a good in and of himself and his integral development should always be sought”.

The fathers of the Church referred to the Christian faith, and the sacraments of the church, as “the mysteries”. They are beyond words, inexhaustible in their depth of meaning, like a rich feast that never ends and a deep ocean of wonder into which we are invited to wade. We can never touch the bottom. The Incarnation is the very heart of the Mystery of the entire Christian Faith. The God, who made the whole universe and created man out of the dust of the earth, took on our humanity. He lived in the first home of every human person, His mothers womb.

Those first nine months of His life made every human pregnancy even more profoundly a “mystery”. There was a Redeemer in the womb of Mary! God was an embryonic human person, a “fetus”, and a child in the womb. In the light of this “mystery” every human pregnancy, every womb, every child in the womb, was forever elevated beyond the dignity it already possessed. Also, the extreme evil of abortion is made even more obvious and profane.This Redeemer in the womb, Jesus, began His saving work “in utero” and He identifies with every child in the womb.

We have a great theologian and man of deep faith in the Chair of Peter, Pope Benedict XVI. We offer his entire homily for our global readers as we begin the first full week of Advent, preparing for the Nativity of the Lord. It is well worth prayerfully reflecting upon so that we can enter more fully into the mission of the Church, the defender of every human life.

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Homily of Pope Benedict XVI on the Vigil of Prayer for Nascent Human Life, Advent 2010

Dear brothers and sisters,

With this evening’s celebration, the Lord gives us the grace and joy of opening the new liturgical year beginning with its first stage: Advent, the period that commemorates the coming of God among us. Every beginning brings a special grace, because it is blessed by the Lord. In this Advent period we will once again experience the closeness of the One who created the world, who guides history and cared for us to the point of becoming a man.

This great and fascinating mystery of God with us, moreover of God who becomes one of us, is what we celebrate in the coming weeks journeying towards holy Christmas. During the season of Advent we feel the Church that takes us by the hand and – in the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary – expresses her motherhood allowing us to experience the joyful expectation of the coming of the Lord, who embraces us all in his love that saves and consoles.

While our hearts reach out towards the annual celebration of the birth of Christ, the Church’s liturgy directs our gaze to the final goal: our encounter with the Lord in the splendour of glory. This is why we, in every Eucharist, “announce his death, proclaim his resurrection until he comes again” we hold vigil in prayer. The liturgy does not cease to encourage and support us, putting on our lips, in the days of Advent, the cry with which the whole Bible concludes, the last page of the Revelation of Saint John: “Come, Lord Jesus “(22:20).

Dear brothers and sisters, our coming together this evening to begin the Advent journey is enriched by another important reason: with the entire Church, we want to solemnly celebrate a prayer vigil for unborn life. I wish to express my thanks to all who have taken up this invitation and those who are specifically dedicated to welcoming and safeguarding human life in different situations of fragility, especially in its early days and in its early stages.

The beginning of the liturgical year helps us to relive the expectation of God made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, God who makes himself small, He becomes a child, it speaks to us of the coming of a God who is near, who wanted to experience the life of man, from the very beginning, to save it completely, fully. And so the mystery of the Incarnation of the Lord and the beginning of human life are intimately connected and in harmony with each other within the one saving plan of God, the Lord of life of each and every one of us. The Incarnation reveals to us, with intense light and in an amazing way, that every human life has an incomparable, a most elevated dignity.

Man has an unmistakable originality compared to all other living beings that inhabit the earth. He presents himself as a unique and singular entity, endowed with intelligence and free will, as well as being composed of a material reality. He lives simultaneously and inseparably in the spiritual dimension and the corporal dimension. This is also suggested in the text of the First letter to the Thessalonians which was just proclaimed: “May the God of peace himself – St. Paul writes – “make you perfectly holy and may you entirely, spirit, soul, and body, be preserved blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ “(5:23).

Therefore, we are spirit, soul and body. We are part of this world, tied to the possibilities and limits of our material condition, at the same time we are open to an infinite horizon, able to converse with God and to welcome Him in us. We operate in earthly realities and through them we can perceive the presence of God and seek Him, truth, goodness and absolute beauty. We savour fragments of life and happiness and we long for total fulfilment.

God loves us so deeply, totally, without distinction, He calls us to friendship with him, He makes us part of a reality beyond all imagination, thought and word; His own divine life. With emotion and gratitude we acknowledge the value of the incomparable dignity of every human person and the great responsibility we have toward all. ” Christ, the final Adam, – says the Second Vatican Council – by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear…. by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man. “(Gaudium et Spes, 22).

Believing in Jesus Christ also means having a new outlook on man, a look of trust and hope. Moreover, experience itself and reason show that the human being is a subject capable of discernment, self-conscious and free, unique and irreplaceable, the summit of all earthly things, that must be recognized in his innate value and always accepted with respect and love. He has the right not to be treated as an object of possession or something to manipulate at will, not to be reduced to a mere instrument for the benefit of others and their interests.

The human person is a good in and of himself and his integral development should always be sought. Love for all, if it is sincere, naturally tends to become a preferential attention to the weakest and poorest. In this vein we find the Church’s concern for the unborn, the most fragile, the most threatened by the selfishness of adults and the darkening of consciences. The Church continually reiterates what was declared by the Second Vatican Council against abortion and all violations of unborn life: “from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care ” (ibid., n. 51).

There are cultural tendencies that seek to anesthetize consciences with misleading motivations. With regard to the embryo in the womb, science itself highlights its autonomy capable of interaction with the mother, the coordination of biological processes, the continuity of development, the growing complexity of the organism. This is not an accumulation of biological material, but a new living being, dynamic and wonderfully ordered, a new unique human being. So was Jesus in Mary’s womb, so it was for all of us in our mother’s womb. With the ancient Christian writer Tertullian we can say: ” he who will be a man is already one” (Apologeticum IX, 8), there is no reason not to consider him a person from conception.

Unfortunately, even after birth, the lives of children continue to be exposed to abandonment, hunger, poverty, disease, abuse, violence or exploitation. The many violations of their rights that are committed in the world sorely hurt the conscience of every man of good will. Before the sad landscape of the injustices committed against human life, before and after birth, I make mine Pope John Paul II’s passionate appeal to the responsibility of each and every individual:

“respect, protect, love and serve life, every human life! Only in this direction will you find justice, development, true freedom, peace and happiness!”(Encyclical Evangelium vitae, 5). I urge the protagonists of politics, economic and social communications to do everything in their power to promote a culture which respects human life, to provide favorable conditions and support networks for the reception and development of life.

To the Virgin Mary, who welcomed the Son of God made man with faith, with her maternal womb, with loving care, with nurturing support and vibrant with love, we entrust our commitment and prayer in favour of unborn life . We do in the liturgy – which is the place where we live the truth and where truth lives with us – worshiping the divine Eucharist, we contemplate Christ’s body, that body who took flesh from Mary by the Holy Spirit, and from her was born in Bethlehem for our salvation. Ave, verum Corpus, natum de Maria Virgine!

RELATED: A human embryo is a human person

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*We’re responsible for our failure to protect unborn life

By Bishop Robert Vasa

A murder trial took place in Kansas. It was the kind of murder trial over which editors of newspapers salivate. It is the case of a man accused of shooting and killing a well-known late term abortionist. It is most important, at the outset, for me to strongly condemn the action of the man accused of taking the abortionist’s life. Such an action, despite the heinousness of late-term abortions, can never be approved or in any way condoned as a means to end the even more horrific crime against humanity — abortion. The action this lone gunman took, even if driven by the conviction that in killing this one man he might be saving the lives of innumerable innocent children, cannot be viewed in any way as justifiable homicide.

Now there’s a juxtaposition of words that confounds the imagination — justifiable homicide. There is, however, a precedent in our land for just such a juxtaposition. The use of the death penalty by the state is, in reality, the result of a determination that, in some rare instances, it is permissible to directly and intentionally kill another human being. There are certainly other essential considerations and these cannot be dismissed. First, the state has the right and duty to protect its citizens from harm. Second, the victim of the state’s terminal action has been determined in a court of law, beyond a reasonable doubt, to be not innocent but rather guilty of a serious, state-recognized crime. Third, the state must have arrived at the conclusion that there is no other sufficient means to keep its citizens safe. According to the Catechism, if “non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.” (CCC, 2267) Finally, again according to the Catechism, “the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically non-existent.” (CCC, 2267)

The first premise is clear, the state has the duty to protect its residents from harm. This duty extends, not only to officials of the state, but to every citizen, especially every Christian. It is a most serious obligation. The state especially has the duty to protect its residents from the ultimate harm of being killed. Note, I did not say that the state has the duty only to protect its innocent residents but rather all of its residents, whether perceived to be innocent by someone’s individual judgment or not. Thus the state had the duty to protect the life of the abortionist and has the duty to prosecute the man who took his life. But what does one do when he becomes convinced that the state is grievously failing in its primary duty, that of protecting its innocent residents from death? Further, what does one do when he becomes convinced that the very men and women elected to government positions are grievously failing in their primary duty, that of protecting its innocent residents from death? Further yet, what do we do when we become convinced that we have failed to do all we can or should do to help assure that innocent residents are protected from death? There may be some who would seek to justify the Kansas man’s action with the eye for an eye argument — death for death, murder for murder. This is not, however, the law of our land and all of us must be grateful that it is not.

There is no doubt that the Kansas man is singularly responsible for his actions and a jury determined, as prudently as possible, the extent of his guilt and culpability. But where does responsibility or true moral culpability rest? The Kansas man acted within the context of a specific American set of conditions and circumstances. He acted in the context of a culture that fails and even adamantly refuses to recognize something I read recently in a clinically oriented embryology textbook published in 2008. There I read; “Zygote: This cell results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm during fertilization. A zygote or embryo is the beginning of a new human being.” In truth, this is something we all know. This is something legislators and judges know. This is something doctors know. This is something the abortionists know extremely well. It is thus perfectly legitimate to avow that abortion destroys an innocent human being. What it may not be legally correct to assert, in our culture, is that abortion is murder. It is correct to assert this as a moral conviction and that is a conviction I definitively hold — abortion is murder.

The cultural landscape, however, is such that this act of destroying the scientifically recognized human being is not legally murder, in fact, it is no crime at all solely because legislators and judges are failing to do their God-given duty of protecting human beings under their jurisdiction. Their failure is “justified” by the claim that this particular class of human beings is not “legally” recognized as sufficiently human to merit state protections.

I have no doubt that any killing of black men and women in the early history of America was murder even though such an action would not technically have been murder since the man or woman killed was not, at that time, a legally recognized human being.

Nevertheless, I believe that those men and women were real and actual human beings even before they were afforded state recognition of their personhood. The failure of the legislators and judges of that period to recognize them as full human beings pales in comparison to the failure of legislators and judges in our day to recognize real and actual pre-born human beings. Given the ease of communication today, the ready availability of scientific knowledge and the absolute clarity of Church teaching, an entire nation must now be declared complicit with or, perhaps even worse, increasingly complacent to the enormous numbers of “justifiable homicides” being committed each day under the guise of health care.

A Kansas man will undoubtedly be held accountable for what he has done. Every man and woman in America will be held accountable for what we have failed to do — for the little ones whom we have failed to recognize and protect.

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*If the Embryo is Human, It is a Person

by Hilary White

ROME, November 13, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – If an embryo is human, it is a person – this is the golden rule for bioethics if it wants to uphold the full dignity of the human person, said the secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) on Tuesday.

The “concept of person” and its application to all human beings at every stage of their development is the key to understanding the Catholic teachings on the life issues Archbishop Luis Ladaria told a conference in Rome.

Archbishop Ladaria was speaking to an audience of students at a conference sponsored by the Lay Centre at Foyer Unitas, on the document, ”Dignitas Personae” (“The Dignity of the Person”), an instruction from the CDF published in 2008 on “certain bioethical questions.” These included developments in artificial reproductive technologies, such as genetic manipulation of embryos and cloning. Ladaria noted that when US President Barack Obama was visiting Rome, he was presented with a copy of the document by Pope Benedict XVI.

Pope Benedict, while Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Prefect of the CDF, was responsible for the 1987 publication of the landmark document Donum Vitae, upon which Dignitas Personae was based. The much-ignored “Donum Vitae” (“The Gift of Life”), laid down the Church’s teaching on the moral inadmissability of nearly all artificial reproductive technologies currently in use around the world.

Both documents emphasize that the fundamental moral objection to such practices as genetic manipulation, artificial insemination, cloning and in vitro fertilization is that they invariably result in the deaths of innumerable human beings at the embryonic stage and that they deny the fundamental right of the child to be conceived and nurtured naturally in the context of marriage.

Archbishop Ladaria spoke of the “new approach” the document presents for bioethicists based on the nature of the human person and the special relationship of man to God who was incarnate in Jesus Christ.

Human beings cooperate with God when they reproduce, he said.  “Procreation is a special cooperation. Only in human love, which is a reflection of divine love, in mutual donation, is found the context for cooperation with the love of God the creator.”

This teaching, Ladaria said, holds that human dignity is “not granted” by human agency, but “is recognized as a previous fact.”

The Church’s teaching is based on the now-scientifically proved fact that human life begins in its entirety at the moment of conception. The basic rule for ethicists, he said, is, “If it is a human, it is always a person.” This includes the zygote, the single-cell product of the union of ovum and sperm.

From the first moment, he said, the embryo “has a full anthropological qualification; there is a continuity; there are no leaps that have in them substantial mutations; the embryonic body develops. One can see the decisive reason to accept the very dignity of the person.”

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See Dignitas Personae helps Catholics form their consciences

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*Americans are confused about life

By Bishop Robert Vasa

I had the good fortune while listening to a Christian television station to hear a congressman from Georgia who was talking about the Sanctity of Human Life Act. This is a bill introduced in November, 2007, that defines human life as beginning at fertilization and would protect all human life even that life created by human cloning or in-vitro fertilization. This is not at all new news, but hearing the congressman speak gave me a renewed sense of just how complacent and confused we are in the United States about the worth and dignity of human life.

The language of the bill is both instructive and challenging: “The right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being, and is the paramount and most fundamental right of a person.” No one in these United States could take exception to this. The congressman talked about the relativistic and rather arbitrary method of determining just who is that person worthy of the protections guaranteed by the Constitution. Certainly that “person” is every human being whose birth process has been completed. There is nothing, however, in the birth process that changes anything of the nature of the one who is brought to birth. Thus the person who is fully delivered is the same “person” he or she was three or five minutes earlier. That which is essential to personhood, having the nature of a human being, is not changed by birth. What changes is what philosophers identify as the “accidents.” For instance, a doll possesses the “nature” of a doll. A doll is, for the sake of this discussion, a miniature human creation resembling a human being. You may put that doll in a box where no one sees it and it is still, by its own nature, a doll. That doll may be loved or completely neglected and it is still a doll. You may dress it in red, yellow, orange or blue and it is still a doll. You may even paint it a variety of colors and even disfigure it but it still remains a doll unless it is nearly destroyed. If you do not believe this try to take a beloved “doll,” which has long since lost its clear appearance as a doll, from its child owner. The doll’s location, relationship with persons, dress color or type, skin color, size and even general physical condition are all accidents, not essentials. None of these things change the “nature” of the doll. We know this now, though it was not always known or believed, in relation to the color of a person’s skin. That color or the national origin of a human being does not alter that which is essential to being a human being.

Unfortunately, by a kind of legal sleight of hand the Supreme Court has managed to overlook what is essential about a human being, his or her human nature, and make a distinction of personhood based on accidents of location, relationship, size, appearance, and degree of dependence. None of these things changes the nature of a human being and so none of these things should be used as ploys to grant or deny basic human rights. Yet, this is precisely what the Supreme Court has done.

The congressman’s bill seeks to correct this erroneous distinction by focusing precisely on that one thing which is essential. The only pertinent question should be: Is this a metabolizing biological entity of human origin with the genetic makeup of a human being? The bill incorporates this essential definition into law: “The life of each human being begins with fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent . . . at which time every human being shall have the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.”

In making his case to his fellow congressmen, the bill’s author said: “We have a moral and constitutional obligation to protect and defend every precious soul that comes into existence.” The use of the word “soul” in this context refers more to human being than a specific spiritual reality we in the Catholic Church would identify as one’s “immortal soul.” It would not be proper to try to put into civil law this spiritual understanding of the nature of man. Identifying the nature of a human being, however, is not an attempt to impose anyone’s religious belief on someone else. It is rather the acceptance of a biological and scientific fact. That which is essential to the definition of a human being is already present from the moment the human ovum is fertilized by human sperm. Everything else is accident.

In keeping with this proper understanding of that which is essential to the human being, the Sanctity of Human Life Act declares that: “the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being, and is the paramount and most fundamental right of a person; and the life of each human being begins with fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent, irrespective of sex, health, function or disability, defect, stage of biological development, or condition of dependency, at which time every human being shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.” This is not a statement of religious belief but rather the logically consistent application of sound philosophical and biological reasoning.

Some new human entity is created when the human sperm and human ovum unite. That new entity begins a whole new form of living from the moment of fertilization. That new entity does not evolve into something else over the period he or she develops. He or she does not evolve from plant matter to animal matter or to a human being after passing through the birth canal. He or she undergoes no essential changes from what he or she possesses at the beginning. That which is granted to the baby who has been fully born is based legally on a number of accidents when it ought to be based on that which is essential.

The Sanctity of Human Life Act does not seek to introduce some inane legal fiction, but rather seeks to overturn a faulty legal fiction. The fiction, in which we are presently living, inanely pretends that human beings are not really human beings unless the Supreme Court passes judgment on them and declares them to be so. African slaves were always human beings and the Supreme Court decisions said or did nothing to change that. It simply recognized the truth. The Sanctity of Human Life Act seeks legal recognition of the same truth.

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*Are Embryo Banks for Spare Parts Next?

by Deacon Keith Fournier 

We must oppose this new form of genetic slavery wherein an entire class of human persons is being labeled as property to be used.

Catholic Online 

A troubling story out of London reflects the continued downward spiral the West is on as turning human persons into commodities to be sold or experimented upon becomes increasingly acceptable. The article in the “Daily Mail” entitled “Storm over embryo ‘bank’ which could be used as a body repair kit” was written by Beezy Marsh and Jo Macfarlane and noted: 

“Couples could be allowed to store embryos in order to use them to create new body parts or cure diseases. Government legal and ethical experts are to discuss whether families can ‘bank’ embryos not just for procreation but also for use by doctors to create personalised treatments for parents and their children. Now, embryos – the first stage of life after an egg has been successfully fertilized – can be stored for up to five years but only for procreation. But a huge ethical debate is set to erupt as the Government’s fertility watchdog, the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA), moves closer to endorsing new developments in medical science.

“It will debate whether embryos could be stored to harvest important stem cells that have the ability to turn into any tissue type in the body. Research on using the cells is still in its infancy, but it is thought that within ten years it could lead to cures for degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and some forms of cancer. The embryos could also be used to grow new organs and bodily ‘spare parts’.” 

The HFEA is set to debate the proposal to allow these “Embryo Banks”. Most observers expect they will do just that. A Pro-Life leader named Paul Tully of the ‘Society for the Protection of Unborn Children’ noted in that same piece: “These proposals widen the scope for abuse of embryos. Commercial companies will inevitably seek to exploit people’s fears about degenerative diseases. This is about the commercialization of human embryos, which is dehumanizing.” These “Banks” will allow the long term storage of human embryonic persons who could then be used for spare parts by others. 

On Monday, March 9, 2009, President Barrack Obama promoted this commodification of human persons in the United States by signing an Executive Order which “directed NIH to formulate the best method for moving forward with stem cell research, both ethically and scientifically”. This led to the promulgation of new NIH Guidelines which support the notion of human embryos as property, capable of being “manufactured” and available to be used as spare parts in experimentation which has produced no discernible scientific results, such as research using embryonic stem cells. Make no mistake; every so called “extraction” of embryonic stem cells kills a living human embryonic person. 

In 1987, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued its important direction entitled “Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation”. Among the many questions it answered with absolute clarity was: “What Respect is due to the human embryo, taking into account his nature and identity?” The answer given by the Magisterium: “The human being must be respected – as a person – from the very first instant of his (her) existence.” 

The news out of London concerning “Embryo Banks” should come as no surprise to those who see what is happening under this U.S. Administration. Perhaps the saddest thing for me to witness is the complicity of some who once championed the dignity of every human life, including the dignity of human embryonic life. One example is Constitutional Law Professor Doug Kmiec who recently wrote an article for the Catholic News Service entitled “New ethically sensitive stem-cell guidance from the Obama administration” which actually defended these guidelines. Fortunately, this article was immediately answered by none other than Justin Cardinal Rigali in the very same forum, the Catholic News Service, in a piece entitled “New stem cell guidelines not ‘ethically sensitive’”. 

Cardinal Rigali began his scolding response with these words “On April 17 the National Institutes of Health released new draft guidelines for federally funded embryonic stem-cell research. Federal tax dollars will now be used, for the first time, to encourage the destruction of innocent human beings for their stem cells. Law professor Douglas Kmiec states in an opinion piece distributed by Catholic News Service that the new policy is “ethically sensitive” and in important respects “more strict” than President George W. Bush’s policy that preceded it. The truth is the opposite.” 

The kind of courage, clarity and unwillingness to compromise demonstrated by Cardinal Rigali is desperately needed in the United States. Cardinal Rigali in the same response to Doug Kmiec wrote: “Parents will be invited to consider donating their embryonic sons or daughters for research at the same time that they are considering whether to save them for their own later reproduction or donate them so another couple can have a baby. The new guidelines will encourage destruction of some embryonic human beings who could otherwise have lived and grown up to adulthood.” 

In the “Dignity of the Person” issued last year by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith we were reminded that science must always be placed at the service of the human person, the family and the common good. Any use of new technologies must respect that the human body is never an “it” – but an “I” – some-one who must never be treated as an object, “The body of a human being, from the very first stages of its existence, can never be reduced merely to a group of cells. The embryonic human body develops progressively according to a well defined program with its proper finality, as is apparent in the birth of every baby.” 

We must speak for human embryonic Life as we speak for all human life. We must oppose this new form of genetic slavery wherein an entire class of human persons is being labeled as property to be used by those who are more powerful. Are Embryo Banks for spare parts the Next Innovation in the Expansion of the Culture of death?

More from Deacon Fournier here. 

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*We Must Speak Up for Human Embryonic Life!

[...this interview is one more invitation to all who are Pro-life, that we must speak up for human embryonic Life if we ever hope to stop the spread of the Culture of Death.] 

Apply the Clinton Test Before Using an Embryo for Spare Parts

by Deacon Keith Fournier

Catholic Online

[I think these committees need to make it clear that they’re not going to fool with any embryos where there’s any possibility, even if it’s somewhat remote, that they could be fertilized and become human beings.]

Here is the Clinton Test, before any human embryo can ever be used to extract stem cells for research, it must be proven scientifically to have not yet been fertilized.That is, of course, impossible.

 If there is a “Senior Democratic Statesman” these days it is former President Bill Clinton. He has clearly become the “Ex-President in Chief” He can be found pontificating regularly on almost every public policy issue. He presents himself well, dresses impeccably and is usually a poised, articulate and interesting interview, even when I disagree with him. So, it was only natural that when Dr. Sanjay Gupta, himself a talented communicator, was scheduled to interview the former President on CNN’s “Larry King Live”, I wanted to be a part of the large viewing audience. After all, Gupta’s capacity as a communicator was certainly part of the reason that the current administration sought his assistance as Surgeon General, a position which he declined.      

There was one part of the interview which deserves an overused word as a descriptor, it was simply “astounding”, in the negative sense of that word. Perhaps better, it was simply dumbfounding! I present it in full for my readers, with some emphasis added by me to make the point of this piece: 

Gupta: Let’s talk about something you talked a lot about in the early part of your presidency, stem cells. There was an order today providing federal money for embryonic stem cell research. First of all, let me just ask you, as someone who studied this, is this going to always be as divisive an issue as it is now? Is this going to be the abortion of the next generation? Or are people going to come around? 

Clinton: I think – the answer is I think that we’ll work it through. If – particularly if it’s done right. If it’s obvious that we’re not taking embryos that can – that under any conceivable scenario would be used for a process that would allow them to be fertilized and become little babies, and I think if it’s obvious that we’re not talking about some science fiction cloning of human beings, then I think the American people will support this…. 

Gupta: Any reservations? 

Clinton: I don’t know that I have any reservations, but I was – he has apparently decided to leave to the relevant professional committees the definition of which frozen embryos are basically going to be discarded, because they’re not going to be fertilized. I believe the American people believe it’s a pro-life decision to use an embryo that’s frozen and never going to be fertilized for embryonic stem cell research…. But those committees need to be really careful to make sure if they don’t want a big storm to be stirred up here, that any of the embryos that are used clearly have been placed beyond the pale of being fertilized before their use. There are a large number of embryos that we know are never going to be fertilized, where the people who are in control of them have made that clear. The research ought to be confined to those…. 

But there are values involved that we all ought to feel free to discuss in all scientific research. And that is the one thing that I think these committees need to make it clear that they’re not going to fool with any embryos where there’s any possibility, even if it’s somewhat remote, that they could be fertilized and become human beings. 

Now, after reading this, you see why it merits the words “astounding” and why I was “dumbfounded”. Jill Stanek, the Pro-Life Champion Nurse who exposed the evil practice of intentionally killing babies who survived abortion, and then connected our current President and his then Church and denomination with the practice, first called attention to this interview. She is a modern day Joan of Arc, leading the resistance against the jaws of the Culture of death in an age filled with emasculated men and sadly deluded people; I say “Thank you Jill”. In my dream administration of the future, she would hold a position of great importance helping to oversee health care. 

Now, beside the fact that the Doctor’s failure to correct the former President’s error in the interview concerning the most mundane FACT of embryology, namely that to be an embryo the human ovum must be fertilized, the Doctor’s performance in the interview made me doubly glad he withdrew his name from consideration to be the top Doc of the United States. This man is a brain surgeon. He certainly knows this fact.Every single embryo has already been fertilized. Why did he not correct the former President? 

Now, there are only two explanations for this blatant error in the former President’s response to Dr. Gupta’s questions. Either he was not aware of the SCIENTIFIC, BIOLOGICAL FACT that human embryos are all fertilized and are all slated for full development if they are not killed through the extraction of their stem cells. Or,and this is the only other option, that he was intentionally lying in order to further the propaganda effort surrounding the current Administrations brutal assault on human life in its earliest days. However, this interview is one more invitation to all who are Pro-life, that we must speak up for human embryonic Life if we ever hope to stop the spread of the Culture of Death. 

In 1987, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Holy See issued its “Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation”. Among the many questions it answered was: “What Respect is due to the human embryo, taking into account his nature and identity?” The answer: “The human being must be respected – as a person – from the very first instant of his (her) existence.” At the time this Congregation was headed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. On September 8, 2008, the same Vatican Congregation released “The Dignity of the Person”. As is the custom with “magisterial” documents, the title of this instruction was taken from the first line, “The dignity of a person must be recognized in every human being from conception to natural death”. The document noted, “This fundamental principle expresses a great “yes” to human life and must be at the center of ethical reflection on biomedical research, which has an ever greater importance in today’s world.” 

In the Instruction, the Congregation made this extraordinarily important observation: “Just as a century ago it was the working classes which were oppressed in their fundamental rights, and the Church courageously came to their defense by proclaiming the sacrosanct rights of the worker as person, so now, when another category of persons is being oppressed in the fundamental right to life, the Church feels in duty bound to speak out with the same courage on behalf of those who have no voice. Hers is always the evangelical cry in defense of the world’s poor, those who are threatened and despised and whose human rights are violated”. 

The former President seems to have laid out in this interview the verbal strategy which will be used as this Administration seeks to defend the indefensible, the use of embryonic human beings for spare parts. This is a part of pursuing embryonic stem cell research, a discredited approach to the otherwise wonderful science of stem cell research. This kind of “research” always kills the human embryo and has never been demonstrated to bring any real results. Other forms of stem cell research have produced wonders, such as adult stem cell research and the use of stem cells derived from fetal cord blood. However, embryonic stem cell research will be apparently now be spun by the former President and all who follow his lead, as not involving the use of fertilized eggs, when bioligally an embryo IS a fertilized egg. In fact, a human embryo is a human being, in development as we all are. 

For those who believe that this deception will be quickly exposed by the Medical community who know the truth, please remember how many Doctors for centuries pledged the Hippocratic oath which contained this paragraph: “I WILL FOLLOW that method of treatment which according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patient and abstain from whatever is harmful or mischievous. I will neither prescribe nor administer a lethal dose of medicine to any patient even if asked nor counsel any such thing nor perform the utmost respect for every human life from fertilization to natural death and reject abortion that deliberately takes a unique human life.” 

Perhaps we should simply ask that the Executive Order signed by the President which opened up this deadly form of research on human embryonic life now contain what should be called the “Clinton Test”. Here is the “Clinton Test”: Before any human embryo can ever be used to extract stem cells for research, it must be proven scientifically to have not yet been fertilized. Hmmm……..the result would be terrific. No Embryo’s would ever be killed for this deadly research because they are all fertilized. Now, as I conclude, I hope my readers will get the point of this opinion piece. Let me state it clearly. President Clinton is either not aware of the truth that every embryo is already fertilized or he is participating in obscuring the truth and encouraging a deadly result in the process.

More from Deacon Fournier here.

More on the Human Embryo on this site here.

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*Save the Embryonic Humans!

by Deacon Keith Fournier

With the stroke of a Presidential pen human embryos will become property, capable of being “manufactured” like a commodity and available to be used as spare parts.

 

Catholic Online

  

We must speak for human embryonic Life as we speak for all human life. We must expose and oppose this new form of genetic slavery wherein an entire class of human persons is being labeled as property to be used by those who are more powerful.

Two years before he would give his “Yes” to the invitation of the Holy Spirit to become the successor of Peter, Karol Cardinal Wotyla, spoke to the U.S. Bishops. His ominous observation was republished in the Wall Street Journal on November 9, 1978:

  

“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel and the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine providence. It is a trial which the whole Church… must take up.”      And take it up we must. The task is huge and the implications beyond what we can begin to expect. The challenges we face in undertaking this task include the insults, accusations and calumny of even our fellow citizens. We will, for example, be accused of being against progress and even “anti-science”, when nothing could be further from the truth. We are simply Pro-life and believe that science exists to serve the person, the family and the common good. Science, after all, can become a force for evil and our common history has shown how that can occur when the human heart and capacity for making the right choice has been so clearly corrupted.   

On Monday, March 9, 2009, President Barrack Obama, whose election offered the promise of “hope and change”, will hold a signing ceremony where he will sign one more Executive Order against life. This one is expected to remove all restraints from the use of the always deadly process of extracting stem cells from human embryonic life for experimentation. It will also open up the funding of such lethal efforts with Federal tax dollars. This is so even though research has clearly demonstrated that other types of stem cell research, for example the use of adult stem cells which can be extracted with the consent of the donor and which do not kill, have produced even greater promise and results. In addition, cells derived from fetal chord blood have shown significant promise but have received little or no attention or research support. 

Recent reports have heralded the discovery of what may be an alternative to the deadly process of extracting embryonic stem cells and killing the embryonic human person in the process. They have led to hopes of using what are being called “induced pluripotent stem cells”, or iPS cells. These can now be produced by activating genes in adult cells which “reprogram” them and do not require the use of dangerous viruses or involve the taking of a human life. However, the signing of this Executive Order is expected to open the door not to the promotion of these life friendly alternatives but rather to the unlimited production of human embryonic life which could then be killed and used. 

With the stroke of a Presidential pen human embryos will become property, capable of being “manufactured” like a commodity and available to be used as spare parts in experimentation which has produced no discernible scientific results. Make no mistake, every so called “extraction” of embryonic stem cells kills a living human embryo. 

In 1987, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Holy See issued its important teaching entitled “Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation”. Among the many questions it answered with absolute clarity was: “What Respect is due to the human embryo, taking into account his nature and identity?” The answer given by the Magisterium: “The human being must be respected – as a person – from the very first instant of his (her) existence.” 

Unfortunately, the prevailing view of human rights entrenched in American judicial precedent and legislation denies the equal protection of the law to the human embryonic person. American law refuses to recognize that human embryos have a right to life and a right to a future. There are a number of differing philosophical arguments offered to promote the lie that these fundamental rights are conferred by positive civil law rather than by the Natural Law. Most of these arguments reserve the use of the concept of “person” to those humans who are deemed to somehow be “independent” and/or “autonomous”. They are also promoted by people who now call themselves “medical ethicists”. These folks have substantial academic degrees and professional pedigree and sit on Advisory Councils. 

Some of these new “ethicists” try to make a distinction between “potential” and “actual” human persons and relegate the child in the womb to the category of being only a “potential” human person. Others view interdependency as a negative and insist on independence and “autonomy” as a criterion for any human rights to ever attach. Some equate the human embryo’s  dependency on the mother as a form of “non-personhood”. Still others propose a progressive notion of consciousness as indicative of a growing presence of “personhood”. A few concede that human embryos are human beings but deny they are persons. We find all of these ideas in the field sadly referred to these days as “Bio-Ethics” even though such positions are anything but ethical. We find them in textbooks being used to teach the subject to future medical practitioners. (See, e.g., Singer and Kuhse, “Bioethics”) 

One of these “ethicists”, Michael Tooley denies the child in the womb should have any rights at all. His rationale evolved over time. In each version, as scientific research cast serious doubt on his claims, he conveniently shifted his ground to reach the same conclusion. Yet, human embryology and developmental biology affirm that a human embryo is not distinct in kind from a human being, but a human being at an early stage of development. Even prior to implantation, a human embryo is a unique living human being with the genetic constitution and epigenetic primordial that continues to develop throughout his or her life. However, the right not to be killed in the womb, the right to be born and the right to participate in human relationships are rejected for these little persons. Human embryonic lives are reduced to what one astute Catholic philosopher and lawyer, Robert George, called a “pre-personal way of being human”.      The idea that people can be less than persons is now being applied to other stages of human development outside of the womb. The disabled (physically and mentally), the aged and the infirmed are increasingly denied the protection of the law. There is an emphasis on individual rights over relation and autonomy over solidarity. The late Servant of God John Paul wrote in “The Gospel of Life” concerning what he called this “remarkable contradiction”. He further elaborated: “…the roots of the contradiction between the solemn affirmation of human rights and their tragic denial in practice lies in a notion of freedom which exalts the isolated individual in an absolute way, and gives no place to solidarity, to openness to others and service of them.”(Par. 19) This counterfeit notion of freedom also views comatose human beings as no longer worthy of being called “persons”. Their caregivers are encouraged to stop giving them food and water. Seriously ill children are viewed as interlopers who should not continue to use medical and social resources. Whether the criteria for being recognized as a human person is a satisfactory level of brain function, an agreed upon notion of self awareness, non-dependency, individual autonomy, or some similar “acceptable” level of physical or mental capacity, this reduces the human being to a human doing, valuable not simply because they are members of our human family and gifts to be received but based upon their functionality and subject to deadly treatment once they are no longer of economic value.   

There can be no debate that we were all once human embryos. We all lived in the first home of the whole human race, our mothers womb. For the Christian, we further profess that the Son of God, the Incarnate Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, was a human being, who, in the embryonic stage, lived in his mother’s womb. At every age and stage of our “human-being- ness”, be it in the womb, as an infant, as a child, an adolescent, an adult, in our times of illness, in our old age, we have always been dependent on others and vulnerable. This is what it means to be a human being. The emphasis of the proponents of the culture of death on independence and autonomy informs a worldview that Pope John Paul II taught threatens the “…entire structure of human rights.” (Gospel of Life, Par. 19) 

So, we must rise and suffer the indignities of being verbally pilloried, accused of being anti-science” or “impeding progress”. We must speak for human embryonic Life as we speak for all human life. We must expose and oppose this new form of genetic slavery wherein an entire class of human persons is being labeled as property to be used by those who are more powerful. In conclusion, I speak specifically to my fellow Catholics; we will be at the front line. Why? Because our Church has been absolutely clear in her unbroken teaching on the dignity of every human person, including what the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith recently called “embryonic persons”. Be ready to be called, as happened recently in response to our opposition to the appointment of dissident Catholic Kathleen Sebelius to the HHS, “Catholic Extremists”. The late beloved Servant of God John Paul II called it and he was indeed prophetic: “We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel and the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine providence. It is a trial which the whole Church… must take up.” 

More on the Human Embryo on this site here.

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