So when is a person a person?

When a friend and I went up to take part in the 40 Days for Life prayer vigil recently we ended up having a very interesting conversation with a pro-choice advocate in which we had a short debate about when precisely life began. It's a question that divides many but, from what I have experienced, no two people who maintain that life begins at any moment other than conception can agree on when precisely it starts. Some say it's when all the organs develop, some when there is a heartbeat, some say it's during the third trimester, some when the baby is actually born. And the thing is their understanding, their opinion will change depending upon the circumstances. To the woman considering aborting a child at, say, 20 weeks its "just a clump of cells", to the woman excitedly announcing she's 5 months pregnant its time for congratulations as she's carrying a baby. And now, alas, there is this from Planned Parenthood in the US.



I think the bit that highlights the utter hypocrisy, utter lunacy of this organisation's endorsement of post-birth abortion is when Ms. Snow (Planned Parenthood's representative) is asked;

Representative: "Along the same lines you stated that a baby born on a table as a result of a botched abortion that that decision should be left to the doctor and the family? Is that what you're saying?"

Ms Snow: "That decision should be between the patient and the health care provider."

Representative: "I think that at that point that the patient would be the child struggling on the table. Wouldn't you agree?"

Ms Snow: "That's a very good question, I really don't know how to answer that. ..."

Her response sums up the whole debate on abortion; when is a life a life? When is it 'acceptable' to take a life? At what point is a baby a baby? Under these circumstances a child is not even a child when born alive; his or her heart is beating, he or she is breathing, he or she is probably crying but it's not a baby and it's 'acceptable' for that life to be ended if the woman, the doctor and the family say so.

Life begins at the moment the egg is fertilised; that fertilised ovum will continue to divide and grow, it has human DNA and, all being well, it will continue to grow and thrive and be born. He or she is a person at the second they are born, he or she is a person five minutes before they were born, he or she is a person at every point in the pregnancy. All of us were created equal, all of us have equal dignity. One thing that really hits home writing this post today; Good Friday is that we are powerfully reminded that Christ came to restore this fundamental dignity as children of God. No one can strip us of that. It is never right to take a life.

40 Days for Death

This is chilling.  I read today, via John Smeaton's blog, about a Planned Parenthood initiative in California in which pro-choicers are being asked to make a forty-day prayer campaign in support of what the organising group calls the "sacred care" of abortions.  LifeSiteNews carries a report on it here.

The organisers, Six Rivers Planned Parenthood of Eureka, California, have entitled their prayer campaign "Supporting Women Everywhere".  They are backed up by Humboldt County "Clergy for Choice" (please God these do not include any Catholic priests!) who apparently "value all human life" (as long, presumably, as it's not inside anyone's womb).  They have produced a brochure with a prayer for each of the forty days and something struck me very forcibly as I read through it.  Look at these two prayers:

Day 2: Today we pray for compassionate religious voices to speak out for the dignity and autonomy of women.

Day 12: Today we pray that women know the power of their own stories. May they find their voices and tell their truths.

Each prayer, in fact the whole campaign, revolves around "the autonomy of women... the power of their own stories... their voices... their truths".  The unborn children in the womb, of whichever gender, apparently have no voice or truth, no story beginning, because they are never mentioned.  It's all about the women.  I can only suppose that this is because the organisers do not consider the "clump of cells" growing in the womb to be a person.  I struggle to understand the Humboldt County Clergy for Life, though, who have explicitly stated that they "value all human life", because as I remarked above they evidently can't be including what's growing in the womb.  Only... it's alive... and it's not anything other than human by species... so, um?!  Humboldt clergy, please explain your logic.

On Day 36 participants are invited to pray for "the families we've chosen" and yet Day 39 asks that "a contagious love... overflow from our spirits".  Well, let's qualify: only to those we choose to infect.  That does sound like a contagious "love" and not one I'd care to contract or be contaminated by.

It is a sad day when a prayer campaign is not only launched against a prior prayer campaign, Christian up against Christian, but is launched in support of violating the Fifth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill".  It is a sad day when a group of people claiming to have faith in God can absorb the individualistic, utilitarian ethics of the modern secular world so thoroughly, to the extent that they describe the dismembering of human foetuses not just as permissible but actually as "sacred care".  And perhaps the saddest thing of all is how misguided this all is.  Humboldt Clergy, this is not the way to support or value women.

A candle in the wind?

As you will no doubt be aware, a major US breast cancer charity, Susan G Komen for the Cure, recently withdrew funding for Planned Parenthood (PP) which operates hundreds of abortion-performing family clinics.  Whilst this was claimed as a victory by pro-life organisations and campaigners who for many years have been protesting against Komen's links with PP,  Komen's spokeswoman Lesley Au said that this was less to do with pro-life pressure than with the fact that Congress were investigating PP for irregularities.

Unfortunately CNN reports that - under pressure within its own organisation and affiliates as well as from lawmakers - Komen has now reversed this decision and released a statement stating, "We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives (why do we need to perform abortions to do this??). We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities."  You can read about the strength of the opposition to Komen's decision in the CNN report here.  The Guardian also carries a report here.

This is a tragedy from the pro-life point of view and a deeply disappointing decision.  Given Komen's original statement about the reason for its withdrawal of funding (Au:"the cutoff results from the charity’s newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities"), it also reflects the strength of the pressure applied to Komen from its affliates and from lawmakers, for nothing has changed with regard to the Congressional investigation.  The American Life League claimed that PP was "lashing out at Komen across the internet and throughout the media" and Austin Ruse, the President of C-Fam (a pro-life organisation that monitors developments at international organisations such as the UN) and publisher of Friday Fax, urged pro-lifers today to sign an e-petition pledging their support for Komen's decision to discontinue funding PP projects and urging its Chair and Founder Nancy Brinkman to stand firm against pressure.  Unfortunately the petition seems to have been too late from the moment it was launched...

This post was meant to be an encouraging one illustrating that there are signs of pro-life hope "out there" in America; what happens in America sets the scene on the world stage in so many ways.  Unfortunately one flicker of hope has just been extinguished by an ugly blast of political pressure (Komen denies that this is the case, but to my mind it is difficult to make sense of their actions in any other light).  Let us hope and pray that another hopeful sign reported on by LifeNews will not suffer the same fate.  It seems that Komen are to stop funding embryonic stem cell research centres.  Please God they are not pressured to change their minds on this too.