I mean, let’s face it: abortions do not always go as planned. The operation itself is extremely risky and dangerous. I myself am a first-responder here inVirginia. I and many of my fellow paramedics have been exposed to the horrors of our city’s abortion clinic at one time or another, either directly or indirectly. Our city’s Fire and Rescue departments receive multiple 911 emergency calls from that clinic every month. Despite the fact that this clinic must be shut down due to its health and safety issues, I am simply writing this to expose to you another side of abortion and its negative fallout, particularly on first-responders. Many people believe that, besides a women’s immediate family and friends, the only other people exposed to the procedure are the doctors and nurses at the clinic and hospital. Yet, has anyone ever wondered how the bleeding woman [following a botched abortion procedure] was transported to the hospital in the first place? EMS professionals such as myself and many of my friends are the ones who have to deal with the abortion before the doctors do. We are simply providing physical care for the women as we transport her to the hospital. That explains why she is usually in a more “stable” state when she arrives.

Can you imagine what it is like arriving onto the scene of a botched abortion? One of my fellow paramedics told me just the other day that he and his crew had to run a call for a woman who had just undergone an abortion. As he started to tell me the story, he grew very quiet and eventually trailed off into silence. I won’t give any details of the accounts like this but my observations have led me to believe that no one knows just exactly how to describe dealing with a post-abortion victim. The entire ordeal is very traumatic, especially for first-responders. We are often taken for granted and some of us eventually just lose any feeling of fear, disgust, or sympathy for the victims we deal with on a day-to-day basis. It is simply by nature of our line of work: we see horrific car accidents and burn victims all the time and at one point, you just don’t feel anything for them anymore. That is why people never hear from first-responders about, say, abortion clinic victims. It’s just simply something that doesn’t cross your mind because, as a paramedic, you’re used to it.

I myself still remember to this day my first fatality. I will never forget that call. It must have been about 3 AM and we were all racing towards the hospital, jostling around in the back of the ambulance. I was performing CPR and chest compressions on a man who had just suffered a heart attack. Performing CPR in the back of a moving ambulance at 3’oclock in the morning with very little sleep and a man’s life hanging in the balance, well, let’s just say it’s not exactly the easiest thing to cope with. I was still relatively new and inexperienced as a paramedic but what struck me the most about this particular incident was what the medic next to me said. I still remember looking at the monitor on the AED and seeing his heart rate beating in time to my compressions. The guy holding this man’s IV was next to me and he pointed at the monitor as I continued CPR. He said to me: “You see that, rookie? That’s you. That’s all you. You’re what’s keeping him alive.” I don’t think that medic’s words really sunk in until later that day, after we had gotten the victim to the hospital, when I learned that the man didn’t make it. You see, ladies and gentlemen, first-responders might try to push these kinds of memories out of their heads, but we all know that we will never forget them. It is truer in cases of abortions. I once heard it described as the most traumatic thing anyone can ever witness in their lifetime. I believe it.

Abortion is a terrible thing and even more terrible are the repercussions that it creates. First-responders are often times the only witnesses to the death of a botched-abortion victim, yet they always remain silent. Well not today. You have heard my story. You now know that we hold on to these things. Please, if you or anyone you know is in touch with a firefighter or paramedic, do not hesitate to ask them if they want to talk about their experiences. It is very similar to what a soldier goes through with post traumatic stress. Oftentimes, first-responders are still hurting from traumatic abortion-related calls; they just don’t want to think about it. Abortion hurts everyone and it’s about time that first responders started speaking out. If we could get more people to give their first-hand accounts, to really open up about their darkest memories, maybe, just maybe, we can end this curse of abortion once and for all. You see, my fellow Catholics, oftentimes it is those who are there for us who are also secretly in need themselves.  Please pray for me, my fellow first-responders, and all those who stand ready to serve and protect those who are in need.

Thomas Aveni is a Lieutenant first-responder (paramedic) with the Greater Manassas Volunteer Rescue Squad. He currently resides in Manassas,Virginia. 

The state’s interest in enacting such a law was clear: Since RU-486 was approved in 2000, thousands of women have faced complications, many life-threatening.  Both the FDA and the drug manufacturer have acknowledged the substantial risk of complications following use.  Fourteen women have died.  Eight of those women died of a severe bacterial infection that would not otherwise harm healthy women.  All eight of those women were instructed to use the drugs in a manner that directly contravened the approved FDA protocol.

On the other hand, no women have died from bacterial infection after using RU-486 in the manner approved by the FDA.

With that in mind, Oklahoma adopted a law aimed at ensuring that RU-486 and other abortion-inducing drugs are administered only in the way approved by the FDA.  Rather than allowing providers to hand out dangerous drugs and send women home to self-administer away from physician oversight and beyond the gestational limit approved by the FDA, the law required that physicians examine women before administering the drugs and instructed that the drugs be administered in a clinical setting within the gestational limit approved by the FDA.

Of course, the law was immediately challenged by abortion providers (backed by the Center for Reproductive Rights), whose main interest is not protecting women’s health but making a profit.  After all, sending women home with the drugs and providing them past the gestational limit allows abortion providers to sell more of the dangerous drugs each day.

During the course of litigation, the state of Oklahoma offered substantial evidence, demonstrating to the court that the misuse of abortion drugs is dangerous:

• The state established that the FDA approved the RU-486 drug regimen under a special code section (known as “Subpart H”) which allows the FDA to restrict the use of the drugs.  The FDA had serious concerns about the safety of RU-486, and wanted to ensure the safest use possible.
• The state established that thousands of women have faced complications following use of RU-486, including the 14 deaths.
• The state established that eight women have died from bacterial infections following the improper use of RU-486, and that no women have died from bacterial infection following FDA-approved use of the drug regimen.
• The state established that FDA documents cite the incorrect use of RU-486 as “unapproved.”
• The state established that surgical abortion is safer than drug-induced abortion.
• The state established that the law imposes no “undue burden” on women, because it is a commonsense regulation protecting women from harm.  The law does not ban abortion; it simply regulates the use of a drug proven to have dangerous—and deadly—consequences.
• And at the very least, the state established that the evidence provided by the plaintiff-abortion providers merely indicated that medical sources might differ on the dangers inherent in misuse of RU-486, and that in such a circumstance the Supreme Court has, under Gonzales v. Carhart, given state and federal legislatures “wide discretion” to regulate abortion for the safety of women.

But the trial court ignored it all.  Not once in the court’s decision does it mention the fact that women have died following use of RU-486.  Not once does the court cite FDA documents or scientific studies.  Instead, the court concludes, incorrectly and without any documentation, that off-label use of RU-486 has been “demonstrated by scientific research to be safer and more effective” than the FDA-approved protocol.

The judge has, therefore, decided he knows better than the FDA.

He has also decided he knows better than the Supreme Court.  He misinterprets Planned Parenthood v. Casey and ignores the fact that the Supreme Court has clearly proclaimed that states have an interest in the outset of pregnancy in protecting maternal health, and that regulations aimed at such impose no constitutional violations.

Moreover, he has decided he knows better than any other state court in Oklahoma, creating for the first time a “right” to abortion under the state constitution.

But that is really what this challenge is all about.  It is about promoting abortion-on-demand, without limits.  It is about creating abortion “rights” which really benefit abortion providers and their profit margins.  It is not about protecting women’s health.

One of the great scandals of today’s global village is the deaths of hundreds of thousands of mothers each year simply because they are carrying or giving birth to a child. The last reliable estimate, from 2008, indicated nearly 343,000 of these maternal deaths. The scandal lies in the fact that most of them are easily preventible with basic health care, as the West discovered more than a century ago.

The West, as we know from many statements from the World Health Organisation and reproductive health groups, is anxious to reduce this awful statistic, which is an important aim of the Millennium Development Goals. Unfortunately, this altogether worthy goal is entangled with another: the reduction of fertility in the developing countries, by the quickest means possible. This means that, often before other basic medical and social improvements are in place, there must be universal access to birth control technology — not only contraception but abortion.

Abortion, however, must be safe for the woman — that is, provided by medically qualified people or by medically certified means — and to be safe it must be legal. Where it is illegal it will happen anyway but it will be unsafe, and often lethal. States which persist in keeping abortion illegal or severely restricted (and not the agents who are pushing this form of birth control) are thus contributing to the dire maternal mortality statistics. And states which ban abortion after it has been legal are similarly putting women’s lives at risk. That, as they say, is the narrative.

There’s just one problem with the drift of this story: there is no proof that it is true. The only hard evidence that we have on the subject of restrictive abortion laws and maternal mortality rates (MMR) is very new and it points in the opposite direction.

Research from Chile published a few days ago shows that, when therapeutic abortion was banned in 1989 after a long period when it had been legal in that country, there was no increase in maternal mortality. None at all. On the contrary, maternal deaths continued to decline. Chile today has one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world (16 per 100,000 live births), outstripping the United States (18) and, within the Americas, second only to Canada (9). Rather than the rogue violator of women’s reproductive health that the UN makes it out to be, Chile is looking this week like a model for countries that really want to save the lives of mothers.

Figure 1. Trend for maternal mortality ratio, Chile 1957–2007.

It’s important to note here what the study, Women’s Education Level, Maternal Health Facilities, Abortion Legislation and Maternal Deaths: A Natural Experiment in Chile from 1957 to 2007, does not claim. It does not say that making abortion illegal caused a decline in maternal deaths. But it shows, importantly, that the 1989 law did not increase mortality. It continued to decline substantially, although other factors were at work in the decline — notably, the education of women and their ability to shape their own reproductive behaviour. (The latter does not mean quite what birth control fundamentalists mean, as we shall see.)

The study, published in the open access online journal PLoS One, is the work of Chilean and American researchers led by Dr Elard Koch, epidemiologist and a professor at the University of Chile and Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción (UCSC). The group, who formed the Chilean Maternal Mortality Research Initiative (CMMRI) for the purpose of the study, had access to exceptionally good data: 50 years of official records from Chile’s National Institute of Statistics, 1957 to 2007. These provide the basis of what the authors call a “natural experiment” in fertility and abortion policy.

What these records show is a dramatic decline in MMR from 1965, when abortions were numerous and abortion was the main cause of mortality, through to 1981; a continuing but slower reduction from 1981 to 2003; and a steady state from 2003 to 2007. To explain this pattern the researchers analysed social policies and trends likely to influence maternal mortality. Here are the key ones, especially for the first phase:

* Delivery by skilled birth attendants. For each 1 per cent increase in the number of deliveries performed by skilled attendants there was an estimated decrease of 4.58 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Clean water and other sanitary improvements also played a part.

* Access to maternal healthcare services. Nutrition programmes for mother and child, coupled with the distribution of fortified milk at primary care clinics created new opportunities for pregnancy and birth care for both mother and child. This strategy practically eradicated malnutrition, increased birth weight and contributed to the noteworthy reduction in infant mortality observed in Chile, 3.1/1000 live births for infants 28 days to 1 year of age.

* Women’s educational level. This, says Koch, is the most important factor, and the one which increased the effect of all other factors. Educating women enhances a woman’s ability to access existing health care resources and directly leads to a reduction in her risk of dying during pregnancy and childbirth. Data showed that for every additional year of maternal education in Chile there was a corresponding decrease in the MMR of 29.3/100,000 live births.

Boosting female education did something else: it brought down the fertility rate (currently the TFR is 1.87). To return to a point mentioned earlier, the authors point out that “education promotes higher autonomy in women, allowing them to take control of their own fertility” using the method they prefer. Interestingly, a majority of Chilean women do not prefer artificial contraceptives. The authors note:

“Although the primary care system currently provides universal access to a variety of contraceptives methods, actual use of hormonal contraceptives and intrauterine devices in Chile reaches approximately 36% of women of reproductive age. Therefore, as in developed nations, other factors not limited to the use of artificial contraceptives seem to be contributing to the reduction in TFR in Chile. One such factor could be women’s increasing level of education.”

And here the news stops being good. At this point Chilean woman meets North American and European and Antipodean woman in a pattern of delayed motherhood — and pathologies associated with that delay. Koch and colleagues describe this “fertility paradox” as follows:

Although a strong correlation did exist between the decline on the MMR and the reduction on total fertility rate (i.e. the average number of children that would have been born to a woman over her reproductive lifetime), the increase in the number of first pregnancies at advanced ages was directly associated with an increase on maternal deaths. For every 1% increment in primiparous women giving birth older than 30 years of age, an increase of 30 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births was estimated. Thus, when the total fertility decreases and produces a delayed motherhood it can also provoke a deleterious effect on maternal health via an increase of the obstetric risk associated with childbearing at advanced ages.

Before 1980 the causes of MMR in Chile were on the whole directly related to pregnancy and birth. From then on the underlying health problems of “aging pregnancy” began to take over in the mortality stakes: hypertension, diabetes and obesity among others. The problem now, there and here in the developed world, “is not a matter of how many children a mother has, but a matter of when.”

Did the reproductive health brigade get that? Delayed motherhood can be literally deadly. At a certain point, the gains of education and good health and social services are taken too far and recoil upon the modern woman. With the greater part of the world, including many developing countries, now below replacement TFR, maternal mortality from social progress is set to climb before deaths from deprivation have been thoroughly, and one could say properly, addressed.

Koch’s study shows that the custodians of reproductive health profoundly misunderstand the remedy for maternal mortality in developing countries. Will they do any better when they try to come to grips with the fertility paradox?

Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet.

Since I’m roughly 90 years old, getting a grasp on the Twitter and figuring out what to do with it has generally proved too much for me.  Right now, my basic philosophy is, “If you follow me, I’ll follow you back as long as your profile picture isn’t a. the default egg or b. featuring a mostly naked person.”  I don’t really seek out people to follow, since, again, I’m 90 years old and can’t figure out what the Twitter is supposed to do for me.

However, I have sought out a few people to follow.  There’s Jim Gaffigan, and Stephan Colbert, because I’m Catholic and I have a sense of humor, so that means I’m morally obligated to follow them.  Other than that, the only other people I’ve sought out to follow have been pro-life organizations and people.  Think: the usual suspects- Lila Rose, Jill Stanek, Live Action, Life Site News, etc. etc.

And they’re the Twitter feed people I need to rethink.

They’re good at using the Twitter.  They know how to lead stories to get you to click on their links.  They know how to rebroadcast tweets to get optimal attention.  They also, generally speaking, bring me the most horrifying and gut-wrenching chatter on my feed.  It’s so easy and tempting to read story after story of the most casual and illogical assaults on human life and end up banging your head on your desk, too miserable to even click over to Cakewrecks for a little uplifting diversion.

But every time I find myself hovering over the “unfollow” button, I force myself to remember what God was able to do to my stubborn heart in the course of a single run more than six years ago.

****

My parents, as all parents are responsible for doing, instilled certain values in me.  This is what conscientious parents do.

People who claim that passing along specific religious, political, moral and ethical viewpoints to children is “indoctrination” are either not parents, or else parents who aren’t thinking about the words they’re saying.  So I’ll say it here:  The world is not going to keep its religion, politics, morals or ethics from a child, so why should a parent?  By saying that parents should “let a child choose for himself” out of the gate, what you’re really saying is, “let the culture consume this child,” because that’s what’s going to happen.

The values of my youth included such things as: the efficacy and necessity of labor unions, a strong and honest work ethic, the artistic genius of British Comedy, and support for abortion.  In my house, a woman’s “right” to “control her body” was a non-issue.  In fact, unlike labor unions and the primacy of British comedy, the possibility that there was another option to a pro-abortion stance wasn’t even discussed.  I don’t think I was even aware that some people were anti-abortion until I was in high school.

Now, in addition to instilling values acceptable to the family unit, parents should teach their children to think critically.  At some point, the child is going to establish an identity of his own, and he needs to have the skills to be able to analyze new ideas and discern their worth.

I know.  This parenting gig is harder than Jim Gaffigan lets on.

So when the time came for me to begin examining the values of my childhood, there were a number of things in the way of an honest critique of abortion.

1. lack of opposing viewpoints.

Like I said, I don’t think I even personally encountered someone who identified as anti-abortion until high school, and then it was only one person.  There may have been more of my peers who were pro-life, but none that I could identify as such.  I more or less existed in an echo chamber, as far as life issues were concerned, and there was little to challenge my way of thinking.

2. image issues.

Anti-abortion activists were painted as religious crazies.  They were tools of the patriarchy.  They wanted to control every aspect of women’s private lives.  This was before the Internet, so this image was easy to maintain, when main stream media was King.  Now, with so many fantastic organizations able to circumvent traditional media outlets, they’re able to control their image and help people realize that anti-abortion doesn’t equal spittle flecked loonie trying to bomb the local Planned Parenthood.

3. contraceptive culture.

Like every other person brought up in a post-Pill world, the thought that sex wasn’t primarily for pleasure was a foreign one.  With seemingly endless birth control choices at our fingertips, if a human being would be so rude as to get conceived without the woman’s consent, abortion seemed like the obvious way to restore justice and sanity to a suddenly unjust and insane situation.

4. lack of personal experience/poor understanding of human development.

Again, before the advent of the Internet as we know it, images of fetal development were not as easy to come by as they are now.  Right this second, in the privacy of my own home, I can run a Google search and come up with hundreds of pictures of human life in all stages of development, learn that the heart begins beating at 21 days, and that from the moment of conception, a set of DNA, entirely distinct from either sperm cell or egg cell is present.  It’s a lot harder now to maintain the “fetus as a parasite/clump of cells/tumor/etc.” fiction than it used to be.

So for most of my life, my pro-abortion views were relatively unchallenged.  And then, two things happened.

The first was when a friend of mine told me about an abortion she had.  She certainly wasn’t my only friend who’d had one, but she was the first one who ever discussed it with me.  Over drinks at a restaurant, she told me about it, and couldn’t stop crying over something that she had chosen to do with her body to a clump of cells over 10 years ago.  I remember my heart breaking for her, not because she’d had an abortion, but because she was still so obviously shaken and sad about it.  I remember thinking that I could have just as easily been in her shoes.  I was sexually active outside of marriage, and had I gotten pregnant at that time, I don’t know if I would have viewed my options any differently than she had.

I don’t remember what I said to her.  I pray that even then, while I was still in a spiritual wilderness, the Holy Spirit worked through me to bring the light of Christ to her.  I don’t know, though.  But I do know that every time I hear someone condemning a post-abortive woman, and not the action, I remember the pain my friend still carries around, and I know that but by the grace of God I could be there in her shoes today.

The second thing that happened was I got pregnant with my first child.

For the first time in my entire life, I had a front row seat to the whole spectacle of human development.  I saw the grey shaped peanut floating in my uterus at 9 weeks.  I saw the little cursor light of a heart flick on and off.  And while that first ultrasound did not grant me the mystical bond with my child that I’d hoped for, it still made it shockingly clear that there was someone else in there.  Not a tumor.  Not a clump of cells.  There was another human life, and no longer was it just my body occupying that space.

This marked my departure from unexamined support for abortion, and the move to the lukewarm “personally opposed, but…” camp.  I knew I could now never have an abortion, but I certainly wasn’t going to tell someone else what to do.  It seemed like a safe compromise over a hot button topic.  I could condemn it silently, but not have to mark myself as an object for scorn by making a universal condemnation about it.

Fast forward three years, and I’m now a mother of two, and in the process of converting to the Catholic church.  Easter Vigil was six months away, and I knew there were some loose ends that needed to be tied up.

I knew, with every single cell in my body, that I could not join the Church, could not receive the Communion I was so longing for, unless I was in Communion with the Church.  I understood that the Eucharist was not a sign of working toward unity, like it had been in the Protestant theology of my past, but that the Eucharist was the fruit of a unity already established.  When I stood in front of the parish at the Vigil Mass, I would be professing to believe all that the Church taught, and then consuming my first Holy Communion would be the promise my body made.

There was no way I was going to stand in front of God and lie to Him with my body.  If I was going to enter His Church, I needed to be in Communion with what it taught, or else walk away and find a Protestant church whose teachings I could accept. Those were my choices.

For the most part, this wasn’t a problem. The logic and constancy I found in Church teachings were one of the things that drew me to it, even in areas many people find difficult, like an all-male priesthood and the prohibition on contraception.  Each time I questioned a Church teaching, as long as the questions were honest inquiries about the topic, and not defensive posturing, the answer I received was clear, rational, and ultimately pointed toward a respect for human dignity that was shocking.

The one thing though, the last obstacle between me and the Church, was abortion.  Why wasn’t “personally opposed but….” good enough?  Why did the Church ask that I make a universal stand against abortion?

This was what I was grappling with one beautifully sunny October morning as I laced up my shoes and got ready for a run.

I was training for the Disney marathon, which was three months away.  Ken and I were both planning on running it, and we had worked out a nice running schedule.  It was my morning to train, and I had a good eight miles ahead of me.  Eight miles at the slow pace I run meant I had a solid hour and a half to fill with the sort of thoughts you use to distract yourself from the insanity of eight mile runs.

I knew as I trotted off down the street that my constant companion for the next eight miles would be this issue of personally pro-life vs. universally pro-life.  I had been round and round with myself on this topic for months, and I couldn’t see any new way of looking at it.  Then, as I rounded the first corner of my run, and started up the first hill, I managed this small, inelegant prayer, “God, you’ve brought me this far.  You know what I’m wrestling with here.  I trust that You’ve brought me this close to the Catholic Church for a reason.  I don’t understand why abortion is always wrong, in every case, so I can’t give you my understanding.  But I do give you my trust and my obedience.  Maybe it’s enough that You know it’s always wrong, and it’s enough that I trust that.”

And for a few moments, my soul was at peace.  My mind was at peace.  There was just the motion of my legs, and the rhythm of my breathing, and the giant flocks of blackbirds whirling overhead.

Then, softly, gently, I could feel a series of questions rising up in my mind, like the first rays of the sun coming over the horizon.  I can’t remember the precise questions, or the order they were asked (and I tried.  Trust me, I’ve spent the last 15 minutes staring at my monitor while two children nap and three more watch kung-fu cartoons downstairs, but I can’t remember these particular details), but as I answered each one, I found my reluctance to declare abortion a universally evil thing receding.  Each question my guardian angel (?)  the Holy Spirit (?) asked me not only revealed the flaws in a philosophy that recognized something as bad, but resisted speaking out against it, but also gave me the courage to act on this new understanding.

By the time those eight miles were done, God had helped me move from “personally opposed but…” to completely, unabashedly pro-life.    If I hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have believed it.  Once again, I was faced with absolute proof that God was a gentleman who valued our free will so much that He would never force us to do anything.  It wasn’t until I had given God my obedience in this area of Church teaching that He flooded my heart with the graces necessary to understand it.  Anything else would have been a violation of my free will.  But once I indicated with that act of will that I was open to His word, He moved me a million miles closer to Him in the course of a single run.

And so whenever I contemplate hitting “unfollow” on Twitter because I can’t take the awful news about abortion that keeps coming across my feed, I remember what God can do with a single act of will and an eight mile run.

And so I keep following, and I keep praying.

The Congresswoman’s appeal was specifically Catholic—“my Church, the Catholic Church, needs to speak out loud on this issue”—which involved an irony left wholly unexamined by CNS. For Rosa DeLauro’s voting record is in some tension, to put it gently, with Catholic understandings of justice.

The Catholic Church teaches the inalienable right to life of the unborn and insists that that obvious moral truth be acknowledged in law; Rep. DeLauro is a consistent pro-abortion vote in the House. The Catholic Church worked with the District of Columbia education authorities to provide “opportunity scholarships” to Catholic inner-city schools for poor children; Rep. DeLauro supported the Obama administration’s cruel refusal to fund that program. The bishops have declared that religious freedom is under serious assault in the United States today; the gentlewoman from Connecticut has been notably AWOL in defending the first of American liberties.

How, then does Congresswoman DeLauro imagine herself as someone who speaks for “my Church, the Catholic Church?”  My hunch is that she imagines herself a spokesperson for authentic Catholicism because she, like many other Catholics on the port side of both American politics and the Church, have long thought that they alone hold the high ground at the intersection of Catholic social teaching and public policy.

Memo to Congresswoman DeLauro and friends: Those days are over.

They’re over because four decades of intellectual and political work, coupled with extensive care for women in crisis pregnancies, have made the pro-life cause the cultural marker of serious Catholicism in America.

They’re over because much of the Catholic left has obstinately refused to promote religious freedom in full and the inalienable right to life as priority social justice issues.

And they’re over because contemporary history has vindicated Catholicism’s anti-statist social justice principle, subsidiarity.

The impending fiscal meltdown of European welfare states vindicates subsidiarity by making clear that providing necessary aid to those in genuine need means, among other measures, developing the associational and charitable instincts of civil society. The alternative is state bankruptcy and social chaos.

Then there is Obamacare, which flatly contradicts subsidiarity and its principled rejection of vast concentrations of state power—the dangers of which are amply demonstrated by the coercive HHS “contraceptive mandate.” The universal health care the Church rightly seeks must be accomplished by means other than handing over one-sixth of the economy (and critical medical decisions) to unregulated regulators.

These home truths are bad news for Rosa DeLauro and those of her persuasion. Now, to make matters worse, here is Paul Ryan, a congressman of uncommon intelligence who can ably argue the public policy implications of Catholic social doctrine and who understands that what the Church asks of a just society is the empowerment of the poor: breaking the cycle of welfare dependency and unleashing the creativity the Church believes God builds into every human soul.

Paul Ryan is the Catholic left’s worst nightmare and his demonization from that quarter has just begun. Ryan is a big boy, though, and he’ll fight his corner well. That argument might even lead to some consensus about empowerment-based anti-poverty strategies and fiscally responsible social welfare policies among serious Catholics of both political parties.

Rather than being a megaphone for dissenting Catholics posing as authentic representatives of the Church and hyperventilating about people being “eviscerated” by a budget, might CNS help provide a level playing field for the debate?

News reports on the trial of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who murdered 77 people on the island of Utøya, near Oslo, last year, are being filed from a different moral universe. In The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells imagined that Martian “intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic” were scrutinising and studying earthlings “as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water”.

That could be a description of Breivik. His cool detachment in the court as he recalled how he stalked and shot his helpless victims was terrifying. It is a great mercy that he failed to kill more innocent people.

But his conscience remains untroubled. He has constructed a moral system in which his actions were needed to counter the poisonous influence of Muslims and Marxists in Norway. He cites evidence and experts to back up his claims. “I know it is gruesome what I have done and I know that I have caused an incredible amount of pain to thousands of people,” he told the court. “But it was necessary. I would do it again.”

How can this extraterrestrial fit into life amongst earthlings, a being so bereft of emotion, fellowship, or compassion that he could spend years planning the decapitation of a former prime minister and the slaughter of hundreds of innocent teenagers?

There are no ready categories for man like Anders Behring Breivik. Perhaps that accounts for the endless palaver about whether he represents a first wave of violent Islamophobia in Europe. It is easier to cope with an evil ideology than with an evil man.

If he is not from Mars, he must be sane or insane. If he is sane, how could he act so inhumanly? If he is insane, how can he appear so normal? Psychiatrists may eventually find words to describe his mental state, but how this evil emerged in a tranquil society like Norway is almost inexplicable, unless perhaps you invoke supernatural powers beyond our ken.

And yet, having said all that, we mustn’t treat Breivik as an intruder from an alien world. In some respects the way he thinks is all too familiar. It represents an extreme — a hyper-extreme – corollary to a moral code based only upon autonomy and rational choice.

Breivik made a conscious choice. There is no question whatsoever that he acted freely. He was not angry. He even practiced meditation to control unruly passions. “First of all,” he testified, “if you are going to be capable of executing such a bloody and horrendous operation you need to work on your mind, your psyche, for years. We have seen from military traditions you cannot send an unprepared person into war.”

This has a familiar ring to it. Euthanasia and abortion are nearly always justified by invoking autonomy and choice, as well. In these cases, it is rationalised as a choice which hurts no one else. But harm to others is not the central issue for supporters. They argue that the act of making a fully-informed, voluntary choice determines the essential goodness of the action.

Breivik’s murderous day in July last year blows this approach to moral reasoning out of the water. Choices cannot be good or bad simply because they are made freely. Only if the action is good can the choice be good.

The second morality lesson relates to the “yuck factor”. For contemporary ethicists, a sense of moral repugnance is often regarded as an obstacle rather than as flashing red light that an act might be depraved. Objections to same-sex marriage, for example, are dismissed as the fruit of emotional bias.

A typical critique of the “yuck factor” comes from utilitarian bioethicist John Harris: “there is no necessary connection between phenomena, attitudes, or actions that make us uneasy, or even those that disgust us, and those phenomena, attitudes, and actions that there are good reasons for judging unethical”. From the other side of the Atlantic, philosopher Martha Nusssbaum argues in her book From Disgust to Humanity that repugnance is a justification for oppression and vilification.

But what happened on the island of Utoya suggests that we mute our instinctive reactions at our peril. As Breivik began the killing spree, he was swept by a wave of repugnance. “My whole body tried to revolt when I took the weapon in my hand,” he told the court. “There were a hundred voices in my head saying, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t do it.’” He did it.

Repugnance is an emotion, not a reason. But it can be, in the words of bioethicist Leon Kass, “the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power fully to articulate it”. Breivik ignored it. He was pumped full of reasons why the children of Norway’s left-wing intelligentsia had to be exterminated. He made a “rational choice” uncontaminated by emotion. And it was horrifically wrong.

If anything can be learned from this despicable man, it is the danger of creating one’s own moral law. Nature did a pretty good job the first time around. It is folly to think that we can improve on it.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

Cover Photo Credit: Lise Aserud/EPA

There are many Christians that consider themselves ‘pro-life’ but believe there can be justifications for abortion in cases of rape, incest, retardation, etc.  Missing in so much of this discussion is the incalculable loss to humanity’s betterment.

While the total number of abortions throughout history is impossible to calculate, it is sobering to think about what we can fairly estimate.

The termination of a fertilized embryo can be done early in the pregnancy and science has figured ways to kill new life before a surgical abortion is necessary.

Contragestion (the natural prevention of the implantation) is a normal occurrence in humans. Estimates of contragestion vary, but reliable testing showing a 36% rate. But artificially caused, contragestion can expel a living embryo. The Pill, Norplant, and Depo-Provera are common “contragestive” agents and most women are unaware they may be having breakthrough ovulation and that they’ve conceived children that are then killed (Norplant breakthrough 50-65%; Depo-Provera 40-60%; IUD 100%). How often and easily life is snuffed out using those three.

It is believed presently in the U.S. 7-12 million newly conceived children are killed by all chemical abortions each year. So, according to those figures, in twenty-four years, 168-288 million deaths in the U.S. have resulted from chemical abortions.  Add the 1.2 million surgical abortions, and one begins to see the enormity of lost lives.

Conservatively, even reducing yearly world numbers by 50%, about 2.5 billion lives have been eliminated from earthly existence by chemical abortion.

When the dust settles, and we add at least another 50 million surgically-aborted souls each year worldwide, one gets 1.2 trillion total deaths over the last twenty-four years. That’s over 1 TRILLION souls that had their mortal lives extinguished.

Credit God in His unlimited mercifulness after billions of abortions. When will God decide enough is enough?

Alan Sears of the Alliance Defense Fund makes the case that human prodigies are born maybe once or twice in a generation. Consider just a few names: Galileo, Bacon, Copernicus, Pascal, Avogadro, Coulomb, Michelangelo, Mozart, Pasteur, Einstein, John Paul II. A drop in the ocean compared to the others who lived, but were eliminated early by purposeful abortion.

Sears asks: “What heroic explorations and athletic accomplishments have never transpired because the unique imaginations and wills and endurances that would have achieved them were vacuumed from a woman’s womb?’”

What advances have been delayed or lost forever? “Free” energy (fusion) seems just beyond our grasp. Are we any closer to finding a cure for AIDS/HIV, brokering world peace, or the ability to approach the speed of light? What about discovering the multidimensions posited by String Theory? Will we find the Spirit World in one of them? Will we find heaven itself? Was the future discoverer aborted already?

Maybe an abortion done in an early pregnancy through the use of an abortifacient is God-forgiven because there might be lack of knowledge about what is really happening. But many don’t believe a human actually exists “yet” in an early fertilized embryo or are “undecided” about the possibility. The oath most hunters in the woods always follow: never shoot until you know it’s a deer would be wise to follow.  But wisdom is not something most of the human population seeks.  What a loss for us all.

It is high time to reconsider: how far does the obligation of a politician to further his moral commitments extend?  It is generally recognized in democratic countries now that strictly private immorality is out of the boundaries of public control.  Former laws in various states of the U.S. prohibiting contraceptive use and sodomy have fallen by the wayside.  Some less private matters are also considered immune to legislation: no one is claiming that if a Mormon or Muslim, with strong views about abstinence from alcohol, were elected to public office, he or she would need to pursue ways of outlawing alcohol.  We learned that lesson from the 1920s experiment with Prohibition.  And if the mayor of one of the counties in Nevada permitting prostitution had strong moral objections against prostitution, would he be obligated to work to change the laws permitting prostitution?

On the other hand, moral positions are incorporated in some of our most important laws – laws against murder, theft, defamation of character, perjury, parental negligence, and – in the armed services and a few states – laws against adultery.  Aside from non-legislation regarding adultery, it seems that last seven of the Ten Commandments were a major inspiration for our criminal code.

Confusion results, however, in areas where there is an intertwining of morality, legality, politics, and/or religion – for example, with regard to abortion, gay marriage and assisted suicide.  The question of whether a politician of a certain religious persuasion needs to take a strong and public position regarding legislation, or the enforcement of legislation in such areas, requires some distinctions.  Separate consideration of the distinct spheres can help to clarify the responsibilities.

The Legal Sphere

Many things are desirable for an orderly and productive social atmosphere, but laws are made only when they are required, in order to assure public order and safety.  Criminal laws are concerned with the avoidance of harm – physical harm, harm to reputation, even mental and psychological harm (for example, when parents or guardians block children’s education or normal social interaction, or provide prison-like environments).  The laws can tolerate prima facie immorality in some cases.  If there is such a thing as purely private immorality, this would have to do with actions for which obvious, publicly observable repercussions are lacking.  An example would be suicide, which is widely condemned from both a moral and a religious standpoint, but is a paradigmatic case impervious to legal prohibition because it is so private.  Contraception and sodomy are now generally considered private, although they may have hidden social ramifications – for example, the use of contraception or sterilization in contradiction to a spousal agreement regarding openness to offspring, or gay liaisons involving infidelity to one’s heterosexual marriage partner.

But politicians may also tolerate more public types of immorality that they consider to be socially harmful, out of consideration of enforceability-criteria. Imaginable scenarios include a Seventh Day Adventist, staunchly pacifist, being elected to the presidency; or a Muslim, devoutly committed tosharia regulations regarding women; or a fundamentalist Mormon, convinced that the restoration of polygamy and patriarchy is necessary for the final emergence of the celestial kingdom in America.  In a relatively homogeneous social framework, any of these presidents would be able to work for implementation of their vision, with some possibility of success.  But in a de facto pluralistic society, under constitutional democratic structures, and without broad consensus, there would be not the slightest possibility of achievement of such goals.  The acceptance of the office of the presidency, by the Adventist, or the Muslim, or the Mormon, would implicitly, if not explicitly, imply a willingness to forfeit any efforts to implement their particular religiously-inspired visions.

Thus as a general principle, it would be meaningless to try to enact legislation that would be clearly unenforceable because of lack of public support.  And with regard to practices which are widely considered socially harmful as well as immoral – for example, prostitution or the production of pornography – laws may compromise, establishing rules and procedures for regulating the practices and minimizing perceived harm, but also refraining from outright prohibition.

Politics

Politics has been defined as the “science/art of the possible.”  We don’t expect politicians to be able to transform societies overnight; and a democratic politician, keeping an eye and an ear focused on public opinion, must in a very real sense follow the public as well as lead them.  As regards legislation, political astuteness implies a talent for being able to distinguish clearly unenforceable areas from “gray areas.”  But leadership is not demonstrated just by following the opinion polls.  A strong leader will often be able to take steps to change things in the “gray areas.”  For example, under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln, Congress in 1862 was able by legislation to reverse the Dred Scottdecision by the Supreme Court, which had legalized slavery.  More recent examples might include the legislative initiative taken by the Clinton administration to implement welfare reform, at a time when there was barely enough sentiment supporting the changes; or the cautious regulation by the Bush administration of stem cell research and “partial birth” abortion, bringing about as much change as was possible, although changes falling short of the goals of outlawing abortion and the destruction of human embryos.

Morality

Morality has to do with right and wrong – determinations that cannot, and should not, be made by popular consensus.  Slavery was approved by popular consensus in America a few centuries ago, but is now subject to universal moral disapproval. Considerable consensus exists in various cultures now for practices we consider immoral – the stoning of adulteresses in Iran and northern Nigeria, slavery and “ethnic cleansing” in Sudan, female circumcision in Egypt and various segments of Africa, mandatory abortion in China, ongoing discrimination against the “untouchables” in India.  But we should not conclude that the present state of morality globally is dismal.  Moral ideals, in spite of setbacks, have a way of progressing and finally achieving consensus.  For example, significant changes have taken place since the 70s, when Roe v. Wade met with widespread approval.  In the 2011 Gallup poll 61% of Americans maintain either that abortion should be illegal, or illegal with certain exceptions.  Cases of rape, incest, and threats to the life of the mother are frequently cited exceptions.

Religious Factors

If a religion is not merely a moral system, it will be distinguished by ideals and rulings that go beyond morality.  In Christianity, the most outstanding example of this is the Gospel injunction to “love your enemies,” which transcends principles even remotely contemplated by any moral theory.  Other examples of specifically religious ideals include admonitions such as “sell all you have and give it to the poor,” “make yourselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God,” “forgive those who have offended you seven times seventy times.”  In Buddhism, the ideal of universal compassion, and in Hinduism the Yogic ideal of voluntary poverty, likewise illustrate a characteristic transcending of morality out of religious motivations.

A Christian mother may very likely go beyond what morality usually requires, in cases of rape, incest, or a threat to her life from a pregnancy.  The recent canonization of Blessed Gianna Molia, who sacrificed her life to give birth to her child, is merely one of the more public examples, since many Christians have made such choices.  But the situation of a girl or a woman who does not make this choice under such stressful circumstances should certainly not be put into the same category as the common case of a woman who has an abortion of convenience.  In other words, it is important to make the obvious distinction between religiously inspired heroic virtue, and what is morally required in response to forced or life-threatening pregnancies.

The Abortion Issue

President Obama does not agree with the majority who either oppose abortion, or would restrict abortion to the three chief exceptions.  Aside from the idea of inflicting suffering and death on a human being in the earliest stages, the principle of reproductive responsibility – that is, the sense of responsibility to your own offspring – leads any reflective person to see the wrongness of abortion as an alternative form of “contraception.”  The advances of ultrasound and other medical technologies have further increased our factual awareness of what regrettable things take place in an actual abortion.

The exceptions that people make in polls regarding rape, incest, and threats to the mother’s life, also have some intuitive credibility.  For if “reproductive rights” (in the literal sense, not as a euphemism for abortion) has any meaning, it implies that a woman has a natural right, a human right, to bear offspring voluntarily.  In cases of rape and parent-child incest, voluntariness is infamously absent, and cannot be presupposed.  In cases where the life of the mother is seriously and certainly at stake, the time-honored “principle of double effect,” may allow actions to be taken which indirectly terminate a pregnancy. Unlike elective abortion, these cases do not amount to abortion purely as a means of contraception, in the aftermath of a voluntary choice of sexual intercourse.

Political Consequences

Politicians such as Ted Kennedy, Geraldine Ferraro, Mario Cuomo, Rudy Giuliani, John Kerry, and Joe Biden have stated that they are “personally opposed” to abortion, but do not wish to impose their view on others.  Ron Paul is personally opposed to same-sex marriage, but would not interfere with states legalizing it. Rick Santorum is personally opposed to contraception, but would not impose prohibitions.

The phrase, “personally opposed,” is fraught with ambiguity and moral slackness.  It seems to say, and mean, “what is wrong for me may not be wrong for others.”  This is of course complete relativism in morals.  If a person has any moral principles, the principles apply in general, not just for him or her, but for all; if there are extenuating circumstances or exceptions, these would also apply in general.  With regard to a case like abortion, a politician would be quasi-schizophrenic, and forfeit credibility, if he were actually and literally to condone “for others” what he himself considers immoral.

If a politician has moral objections to something, his obligations can best be put in the negative: he must refrain from condoning or encouraging it.  For example, if a congressman is able to vote yes or no on a law promoting the type of immorality he is opposed to, he must in conscience vote against it.

But activism to positively change laws, in consistency with one’s beliefs, without inaugurating a police state, requires discretion.  Because judicial decisions, such as Roe v. Wade have been functioning as a virtual “law of the land,” and the chances of a Constitutional amendment still seem dim, legislative initiatives on the state level seem to bode the best degree of success. A politician with foresight could capitalize on the current changes in opinion, and show leadership in moving away from elective abortion.  It should also be kept in mind that legislative changes can have a gradual effect on public perceptions of morality.  Isn’t this what happened with regard to slavery after Dred Scott?

At the very least, politicians should stop using phrases like “I’m personally opposed, but….” as an excuse for support of elective abortion.  In Gospel terminology, this is being “neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm.”  It connotes unprincipled “waffling,” lack of conviction, and unseemly fear of peer-disapproval (especially among political liberals, for whom a pro-life position, because of some bizarre rationale, mounts to betrayal of liberal principles).  A firm and consistent pro-life or pro-abortion position would be more credible and respectable.

Howard Kainz is professor emeritus at Marquette University. He is the author of several books, including Natural Law: an Introduction and Reexamination(2004), The Philosophy of Human Nature (2008), and The Existence of God and the Faith-Instinct (2010). Professor Kainz is a regular contributor To Crisis Magazine.