A pro-life betrayal and wake-up call

A reader recently asked me if I didn't think that emergency contraception is okay in the case of rape, if it is administered with due regard to the time of the woman's cycle, so as to not cause an abortion. Since the sexual act is not consented to, it constitutes an intrusion that the woman is justified in resisting. And I think that is true if the claim is correct. 

We have to be cautious in these matters, because unbeknownst to many, the definitions of certain key terms have been politicized. In order to get abortion past the pro-life watchdog, even scientists and medical practitioners have re-defined conception to mean implantation, contrary to reason -- an entity is what it is, regardless of its position. A dog is a dog even if you shoot it into space; a baby is a baby even if it is in the fallopian tube and not implanted in the uterus.

Even if we accept the shaky claim that the morning after pill can simply prevent ovulation if taken at the right point in the woman's cycle, we must admit the difficulty of imagining a scenario in which this distinction between a potential life not yet conceived and one in its earliest stages would be observed. We have to be realistic about how these things play out.

 If the woman is willing to observe her status and abstain from using the "morning after pill" to kill developing life within her (again, assuming that the claim is true, which I have not been convinced), then she can make that determination in her conscience. But for society to approve the chemical protocol being given to her as a policy would likely trample on any opportunity to examine conscience; it would simply become business as usual to resort to abortion in the case of rape. And that is wrong. 

Well, the matter has come to a point for the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops (LCCB). They have endorsed a new state law requiring hospitals to dispense emergency contraception to sexual assault victims. 

The Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops (LCCB) has come out in favor of emergency contraception for cases of rape, despite the abortifacient nature of the measure and the Vatican’s insistence that it is morally impermissible.

According to The Advocate, Costanza said the language of the law “was reviewed by the church” and found to conform with directives issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USSCB).

“A female who has been raped should be able to defend herself against a potential conception from the sexual assault,” Costanza said, adding that “after appropriate testing, she can be treated with appropriate medication to prevent ovulation.”

Emergency contraception is commonly believed to prevent pregnancy by stopping ovulation. But recent research has shown that it does little to prevent a woman from ovulating, though it can effectively kill an embryo by blocking it from implanting in the uterus.

The key, again, is to realize the subterfuge, specifically designed to pass abortion measures under the noses of those who oppose killing the unborn, of redefining what constitutes conception. I can't imagine the naïveté of a bishop going along with such a basic error of fact (and failing to offer teaching to help those under his care navigate the difficulties of modern life).

Stunningly, in a concession that calls into question the point of even having a pro-life group to vet political challenges, "Benjamin Clapper, the executive director of Louisiana Right to Life, also endorsed emergency contraception in a statement to The Advocate, suggesting that the destruction of an embryo before implantation doesn’t constitute an abortion."

I don't know if the good pro-life people of Louisiana realize that their donations and work on behalf of the unborn are not represented by this group, but everyone needs to wake up and check on who is minding the store. If bishops and pro-lifers are going to start endorsing bills that are clearly meant to provide abortions -- i.e. kill the unborn -- then we need a change in leadership. 

Here is a detailed article that explains the scientific error in claiming that life begins at implantation. 

The hidden reason Roe fell

This article by Suzan Sammons is exactly right! Covid Jabs Revealed Hidden Pro-life Heroes

There are so many heroes of the pro-life movement -- some we know well, some we do not know. My own dear husband, Phil Lawler, was arrested when we had five small children (I think it was five then... ) and became the object of a federal RICO suit. 

Phil even wrote a book about the largest civil rights movement ever in our country, the one you never heard of (both the movement and the book): Operation Rescue, a Challenge to the Nation's Conscience. 

Our friend Bill Cotter, Operation Rescue leader, spent 18 months in prison for a misdemeanor in his efforts for the unborn. That was so long ago that most pro-life activists today would hardly recognize his name. Joan Andrews spend that long in solitary confinement -- solitary confinement -- for her peaceful witness in saving the unborn. 

But Suzan is correct when she says:

As much gratitude as I have for the pro-life leaders—the big names—who inspired me and guided me in my pro-life work, I am proudest of you hidden heroes. You were only revealed by the diabolical process that brought us the Covid vaccines, and few of us know your names. But when the moment of truth came, your convictions withstood the intense pressures of the regime that surrounds us. You stood by those truly nameless little ones whose only voice is ours.

Finally, after years and decades of some (but not all) pro-lifers trying to tell people that many vaccines use aborted fetal tissue in their development, testing, and production, the truth came out and people had the time -- were forced into having the time -- to read about it. 

As Suzan explains, the extreme Covid lockdowns and unjust pressure to take the jab are to thank for the awakening of a solid portion of our population to the ugly reality of our medical system's reliance on the death of countless unborn babies. 

Those who were awakened took a costly stand in many cases.

Everyone whose heart was truly with the unborn quickly realized the moral problem presented by the Covid vaccines. With their release coming at the same time as ever-increasing and horrifying revelations about the use of fetal tissue, many individuals had simply had enough. 

Sure, they’d prayed for an end to abortion, they’d gone to the March for Life for years, they were dedicated to supporting their local pregnancy care centers, they’d voted pro-life, boycotted the right companies, and stood up for life in debates with their friends or family. But now their beliefs were going to really cost them. They were going to lose their jobs—or in some cases their whole careers. They were not going to be able to go to their chosen college. They would not be able to visit their aging parents. The rubber met the road. 

And we passed the test. A pharmacist was fired because he refused to administer the vaccine…A hospital insurance processor took an entry level job in a new field to get out of the healthcare industry… A 30-year veteran teacher was forced out of her school system…A priest was willing to sign religious exemptions in spite of pressure not to do so…A breadwinner of a large family risked his job rather than comply with a vaccine mandate…A career military dad had to leave the Air Force without his benefits because of his refusal to take the jab…

And these real life examples? Multiply them by thousands. 

Finally, many did what is the only thing one can do, when moderate theological arguments fail and hope for gradual change runs out, when bishops refuse to witness (with a few exceptions) and people lose interest or succumb to what they see as the exigencies of normal life (school and sports participation, for instance). In the lockdown shakeup of everyday life, in the midst of fear, with all normality vanished, it was the ultimatum of all the so-called experts to submit that made enough people say, "I'm just not going to go along with this any more. There is no way I will take that shot. It's just wrong."

I do give credit to and must name one clergyman (and husband and father, as he is a Melkite), who spoke out in a compelling way before the lockdowns, when the political pressure for mandated vaccines was looming, and that is Fr. Michael Copenhagen. 

At a rally in 2019, in a brief but stirring speech, Fr. Copenhagen made the case that in conscience, one cannot go along with immorally derived medical products or the legalistic rationale for accepting them. I believe his clarifying words broke the ground for people to rise up against the Covid vaccines when they were pushed on us.

Fr. Copenhagen was able presciently and boldly to challenge* the prevailing line of acquiescence to immoral products comfortably offered by theologians and adopted by the hierarchy:

For those who argue that participation becomes licit if receiving the vaccine is looked at as a temporary solution to a significant public health danger, they should know that it is not temporary but expanding and that it will be forced regardless of whether it helps public health or not. Public authorities who support public murder cannot be taken seriously as guarantors of public health...

When [Tobit] was mocked by his kinsmen for adherence to these good works and told that his deeds were hopeless, he rebuked them: “Speak not so. For we are the children of saints, and look for that life which God will give to those that never changetheir faith from Him.”3 I remind all those who imitate Tobit’s naysayers and persecutors that the God of heaven and earth is very much alive and very much offended, that He loves each of these murdered and exploited children as His particular creatures, that He will restore life to their bodies in the Resurrection on the last day, rejoining body and soul in these innocents who were denied baptism and the chance to live based on the whim of tinkerers trying to extend our finite years, that He will restore this “biological material” to its rightful place and its rightful owner on that day, and we will all meet these children face to face. 

Suzan says:

In the profound working of God’s unfathomable providence, Roe was overturned on June 24, when the feast of the Sacred Heart of our dear Lord converged with the feast of St. John the Baptist. Overflowing love meets unshakeable moral conviction in these two feasts, and this is no coincidence. 

St. John the Baptist [on whose feast and that of the Sacred Heart Roe was overturned] refused to wink at the sin of Herod, and he publicly called him to repentance. He gave his life to uphold the moral law. You who were willing to sacrifice rather than accept a jab tainted by abortion did likewise. Perhaps you felt your stance was small in the grand scheme of things. I would say that our Lord has shown us otherwise. Your choice was rooted in sacrificial love like that of His own Sacred Heart. He honored that gift—those thousands of gifts from the lifeblood of American pro-lifers. 

Do read Suzan Sammons' whole article -- it's outstanding. 

It's never a waste to follow one's conscience. In fact, it's required of us. In this case, we were given the grace to see the outcome in a big way: the final toppling of the most deadly court case our nation has ever known. 

Is Elijah too harsh? Bishop Barron thinks so

Simply because he reaches many people as a trusted, putatively orthodox guide, Bishop Robert Barron gets pushback from little old me. I don't like to see people misled. So I have to say something.

In 2020 I had stumbled upon Bishop Barron's commentary on the Prophet Elijah*. In this podcast: The Best and Worst of Religion (in the category "Sermons" -- evidently meant to provide material for homilists), he returns to a theme he had already covered quite a while before. Basically, the title sums it up: in Barron's view, Elijah represents the worst of religion in his harsh response to the prophets of Baal, dramatically killing 450 of them for their false worship (see 1 Kings chapter 9). For Barron, only the Spirit speaking in a whisper is "good religion"; all else is "the worst."

Previously, Barron had given the title "Elijah, You're Fired!" to his first podcast on the subject. Ignoring the teaching of the Church Fathers on the question and apparently unaware of Elijah's status as Pillar of the Prophets**, place of high honor (especially in the East), harbinger of Christ's Second Coming, and appearance in the New Testament at the Transfiguration along with the great Patriarch Moses, Barron trivializes the account in the Book of Kings, representing it as a sort of cardboard show in which God, exasperated with Elijah's exhibition of Worst-ness in Religion, "fires" him and replaces him with Elisha. 

Passing over further comment on the superficiality of this analysis, hardly worthy of a man of Barron's education and erudition, not to mention ecclesiastical position as guardian of the faith, I want to put on the record the response given to me by Fr. Mankowski, when I emailed him about my astonishment at the sheer arrogance of the man, doubling down after many years on his truly bad take.

Fr. Mankowski replied:

Painfully ironic, in view of the fact that Baal worship (in Palestine and in Canaanite colonies) included infant sacrifice in which babies were burned alive, as ancient authors attested and modern archaeology confirms***. 

One site alone turns up the remains of 20,000 sacrificed infants. Elijah might have been somewhat old-fashioned in his notions of ecumenical dialogue, but in terms of "the worst of religion" his putting the Baalites out of business is an odd choice."

Yesterday, Micah Meadowcroft over at The American Conservative posted a good, heartfelt piece connecting the impending Supreme Court decision on Dobbs, if it goes as we expect in overturning Roe and subsequent rulings on abortion, and the striving of Elijah over the prophets of Baal: Dobbs as a Little Cloud.

He rightly observes:

And it came to pass after many days…” So starts the triumph of Elijah over the priests of Baal, and the return of rain to a desert land. Many days here is a matter of years, and the kingdom of Israel has suffered under a famine. 

In the nearly 50 years since Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973, more than 62 million human babies, each made in the image of God, have been slaughtered on the altar of convenience. 

“I have not troubled Israel; but you, and your father’s house, in that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and have followed Baalim.” So answered Elijah when the king, Ahab husband of Jezebel, blamed the prophet of God for the dryness of the land. And he challenged Ahab, and the Baalimites, and the people of Israel, to come to Mount Carmel and see there what the Lord might do. 

But even Mr. Meadowcroft does not quite make the connection. Yes, the immediate point of contention was the immolation of a bull on the altar. However, the followers of Baal, when not being challenged by Elijah, worshipped their idol, as Fr. Mankowski pointed out, precisely in sacrificing their infants. It was that abomination that provoked the prophet to his response, so shocking to our modern sensibilities. So Meadowcroft is closer than even he knows in drawing the parallel. And closer than Bishop Barron, that's for sure.

 

Scandal

What is the scandal here? 

On Facebook, Fr. William Kuchinsky posted an article from the Washington Post* about his, Fr. Kuchinsky's, actions in obtaining, offering a requiem Mass for, and personally burying more than 100 "human fetuses" i.e. babies.

Kuchinsky, a West Virginia priest well known for his antiabortion activism, had been called to the apartment on March 28 by other antiabortion activists who said they had gotten the remains from the driver of a medical waste disposal truck in D.C. — an account the waste company denied. Lauren Handy, who rented the apartment, and Terrisa Bukovinac, another activist, had asked Kuchinsky to come, and he celebrated a funeral Mass.

Kuchinsky said he also agreed to take nearly all the fetuses, which the priest knew some would see as stolen and deeply disrespected, while others would call them rescued and honored.

***

Police last week would say only that the case remained “under active investigation.” Earlier this month, they said they were investigating the actions of activists as well as whether proper procedures were followed in disposal of the remains.

Everyone knows that if the remains of these little human beings had been incinerated in what our society considers, without much examination, to be the approved manner, not a murmur would be raised -- certainly no Washington Post articles are ever written about that subject.

This Post article isn't quite sure what to make of Fr. Kuchinsky and the activists who took the dead babies for burial (and as evidence of law breaking). Other pro-lifers have criticized Father for showing pictures of what he discovered in the containers. Recently I saw images of animals in nets on the sidewalk, presumably in Shanghai -- and the comments were full of anguish at the very thought of the inhumanity of it all, even though the same story also told of (but did not picture) infants torn from their mothers. 

The Post article's authors seem not to know what to make of the priest taking the remains to his kitchen so that he could prepare a service for them, nor are they sure what that service consists of. It seems clear to me that these reporters have come to a place -- the apartment where the activists took care of the remains, in fact -- where their preconceptions about "women's access to reproductive rights" don't stretch to cover or even cast a shadow over the facts; and the facts, which include 100 dead babies prayed over and buried, won't arrange themselves in a way that allows them to dismiss the priest as a wrong-doer, though they are evidently disposed to do so.

At first I thought this article expressed scandal over the activists' actions; on re-reading it, I find that there is something else there. I think of it as a sense of being completely surprised that anyone would take any of the steps the activists have taken, much less all of them. That surprise doesn't translate into a serious journalistic commitment to uncover the crimes of the abortion industry, but it is something different from what we usually see. Fr. Kuchinsky, Lauren Handy, and Terrisa Bukovinac have achieved something in bringing them to that point. 

And they have done the right thing in burying these poor dead. 

Is there a power of personal coercion in the Constitution?

I was, frankly, shocked at the line of questioning in Dobbs from Justice Amy Coney Barrett. I am aware that she previously declined to hear a medical freedom case brought before the Court and has ruled against such cases in her previous appointments. These actions suggest to me a faulty understanding of the powers reserved to the Federal government under the Constitution. There is a wrong way to decide to overturn Roe, a way that inserts dangerous language into our jurisprudence, and that is to concede that natural processes such as pregnancy or natural states such as one's health can be "burdened" by the government -- that protecting the unborn from assault is an infringement on the bodily integrity of the woman.

As Hadley Arkes argued in First Things (I link in my article), our conservative judges need to be more confident in their moral reasoning. 

I lay out my thoughts here: 

Can the Constitution Mandate Pregnancy and Vaccines?

The arguments for abortion are the same as for divorce

 So says Leila Miller: 

7 Pro-Abortion Arguments that Work for Divorce, Too: The justifications for abortion and divorce are eerily similar

Why is it important to understand that the arguments for abortion and divorce are essentially identical? Because Catholics—and everyone else, really—need a wake-up call. I often say Catholics are against divorce in theory but not in practice, and that is not acceptable. We must be all in for God’s moral law and fight for truth at every turn. My hope is that when we find ourselves or others using these seductive, dangerous arguments to justify divorce, we will wake up, take note of the lie, and reverse course. In fact, let’s find new phrases and words to counter the false narratives above.

I totally agree with Leila!

And I would ask people to consider that no-fault, widespread divorce harms marriage, creating a situation where fornication is also widespread. And abortion on demand is, simply put, a result of fornication. Where it occurs in a marriage, it is the result of society giving up on that marriage; giving up on being willing to help a couple in trouble.

Let's resolve to oppose divorce. God hates divorce!