Categories
Abortion Artificial Wombs and the Right to Life Human embryos Philosophy Politics UFL's Newsletter Uncategorized

a pro-life foundational argument well explained (with links to more)

Paul Stark has brilliantly woven in a new analogy (pizza making) to make clear the fundamental distinction between the construction of things and the development of life. (The German Constitutional Court in 1975 and 1993 supported this distinction. That support can be found via one of the articles linked in Stark’s piece.) Unborn children aren’t […]

Categories
Uncategorized

Overcoming the Imaginative Barrier to Embryonic Personhood

Our immediate intuitions sometimes favor the pro-life position and sometimes oppose it. An ultrasound video of an unborn child sucking its thumb makes a case against abortion that reason hardly need supplement. But a zygote photographed just after an in vitro conception is not so easily recognizable as a human being or person. Pro-lifers often […]

Categories
Uncategorized

In Response to Belgium’s Legalization of Euthanasia for Children: the iron logic of euthanasia

Once each person is no longer taken as an unquestionable given, eventually everyone will have to show that he/she has a life of net positive value (is justified in living) in order for it to be thought reasonable for him/her to go on living. And there is no reason to think that his/her net value […]

Categories
Uncategorized

Decline in abortion rate is great pro-life educational opportunity

We must pick up and use the fact that the abortion rate is declining, rather than get sidetracked into a fight about its immediate causes and consequences. Even if it were true (which I doubt) that the greater availability of contraceptives (rather than pro-life educational and law reform efforts) is the primary cause of this […]

Categories
Uncategorized

More thoughts in response to Albuquerque

I’ve noticed in general that there are no activists working against late-term abortion among all the folks who claim they think life begins sometime after conception. In other words, even after they recognize the existence of life, they don’t much care about protecting it. Many say they will put up with a little protection, as […]

Categories
Abortion Fetal anomolies and disabilities Fetal pain Late-term abortion Politics

That Albuquerque vote

As far as I know, this is the only time in the modern world that there has been a popular vote precisely to let kids of this age (20+ weeks) be killed on request. (America made a judicial decision to this effect. China & North Korea are the only two bodies to have made a […]

Categories
Uncategorized

Papal effect on Life Chain?

Yesterday in Valparaiso, IN, we held our annual peaceful, prayerful Life Chain protest against abortion. A  Mennonite protester asked a Catholic, “What do you think of your Pope coming out pro-abortion?” This is how media-spun papal talk may be perceived at the grassroots level.   Interestingly, our numbers here were way down this year (though […]

Categories
Uncategorized

that Pope Francis interview in the Jesuit journal

Note that the same day the interview was released, Pope Francis uttered these awe-inspiring words: ” Every unborn child, though condemned to be aborted, has the face of Jesus Christ, has the face of the Lord . . .” Isn’t it perhaps relevant that the Pope in that America magazine interview was  using words appropriate […]

Categories
Abortion Politics

Reaching out to Hispanic voters

Encouraging Hispanic immigration is a double-edged sword for the GOP: It may increase GOP votes in the short run, but it may increase Democratic voters in the long run. And, frankly, it is hard to imagine any bid the GOP could make on immigration or almost any other Latino issue that the Dems could not […]

Categories
Uncategorized

Pope Asks Catholic Bishops to Mobilize Against New Attacks

Meeting with U.S. bishops in Rome on January 19, 2012, Pope Benedict urged them to mobilize “every level of ecclesial life” against cultural and political trends that threaten “humanity itself.” He called on all Catholics “to offer public witness to their faith, especially with regard to the great moral issues of our time: respect for […]