Some Good News on the Rights of Conscience (Temporary, but Good)

Some good news from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today.

HHS issued a regulation protecting the rights of conscience for prolife physicians and pharmacists who will not prescribe for, dispense for, refer for or perform aborion. You can read the details in my previous blog post here. You can read the HHS press release here. The entire regulation (127 pages) is here. This hits home. Close to home. This is an answer to prayer.

The Christian Medical and Dental Association (CMDA) and the American Association of Prolife Obstetricians and Gynecologist, both groups to which I belong, were instrumental in sounding the alarm and flooding Secretary Leavitt’s web site with the rights of conscience arguments when public comments were solicited.

You will here the usual whining and faux shock and concern from the proaborts stating this will deprive women everywhere of needed reproductive services. The proabortion lobby decries this ruling as it codifies what they describe as the “right of refusal” to provide health care, a right no one should be afforded.

The reason for the rule, as I’ve stated before, was the sneak attack by the American College of OB/GYN (ACOG) issuing an “ethics” statement that declared unethical any Fellow of ACOG who did not 1) perform abortions or 2) refer for abortion. That statement was followed closely by the American Board of OB/GYN (ABOG), the group that tests and decides if an OB/GYN is board-certified, stating that all diplomats of ABOG (board-certified OB/GYN’s) would be required to follow the ethics guidelines of ACOG. So by refusing to perform or refer for abortion, an OB/GYN doctor could lose their board certification which is necessary in some hospitals to obtain privileges to practice medicine.

But it will be temporary. Senator Obama has been urged to overturn the ruling as soon as he takes office. The rule takes effect January 19, 2009.  Barack Obama will be sworn in at the 44th president on January 20, 2009.

China Restricts Abortion…er, Sort of

In a news story in the UK Telegraph on 1-8-05 with the headline, Shortage of Girls Forces China to Criminalise Selective Abortion, the following is reported:

The Chinese government is to make the selective abortion of female foetuses a criminal offence and will ban parents from obtaining ultrasound scans to discover their unborn baby’s sex, in an attempt to tackle an unwanted side-effect of its “one-child” policy.
It has set up a commission to draft changes to the criminal law aimed at closing the widening gap between the number of boys and girls in the country. According to the most recent official figures, 119 boys are born in China for every 100 girls, largely because parents abort baby girls to try for a boy.

In 2001, the ratio of boys to girls in China was 117 to 100 as reported here.

Forced abortion…the brutality of it just chills the soul and leaves one cold. Imagine looking at your new baby and realizing that there would be no more, or even the hope for more. Imagine you and your wife with one child already, now forced to go underground if pregnant again, hiding in fear, hoping no one will notice the enlarging abdomen. Imagine the anguish of being turned in at 7 months with an illegal pregnancy and then being marched to the abortion clinic for a late term killing session of…your unborn child.

It’s hard for me to understand (as it is, I think, for many in the west) the chinese culture . Based on the value it places on boy babies and the worthlessness of a single girl baby, couples will act on an ultrasound finding of a girl and abort it quickly before it can be born, or even kill it quietly at the time of birth. Then, freed of this single girl burden around their neck, they are free to try again for a desired male child.

This is evil, pure and unvarnished. Satan must view abortion as one of his best lies.

It reminds me a bit of C.S. Lewis’ book, That Hideous Strength, in which the consumate evil of the day is promulgated not through warring barbarians, brutal slave masters or any number of traditional monsters or “bad guys” that we would traditionally visualize in our minds. But rather, the worst evils in society (and abortion is probably the best example) are debated in great halls of learning, legislated in impressive governmental buildings and enacted by nameless beaurocrats in sterile, tidy and efficient offices. And so it is with abortion, legal in these United States since 1973, when our own Supreme Court, from their oak and marble halls, rendered the decision legalizing abortion and leading to the deaths of–how many?–forty million now and counting? How prescient the writing of that great Christian!

But, I’m sure you already knew all that, dear friend. So, to my point which is this: the pro-abortion position leads to incomprehensible, schizophrenic, illogical, senseless laws and rules that define evil down, if that’s possible.

Why is it now soon to be illegal in China to abort a girl but not a boy? Why is it acceptable to abort boys and girls equally? How can abortion, free and legal, be fine at any time–unless you know the sex? Is sex a disease, a birth defect, a genetic abnormality, an inborn error of metabolism? And why choose just on sex? Why not height, weight, potential intelligence, political affiliation, hair color or religion? The possibilities are endless. Adolf H. would be proud.

So now, since China will soon restrict late term abortion of female “foetuses”, we will be, in these United States, in the enviable position of having a more liberal, less restrictive abortion policy than China.

Any one else feel nauseated?

Prolifers March On

I was reading the web site of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) and was struck by the two editorials by Dave Andrusko in the latest issue of National Right to Life News. The first, What the 2008 Election Taught Us and the second, “Thank You, President Bush”, inspire and teach both.

In his first article, if I may summarize, he makes several important points.

First, we are in this for the duration no matter who is president. God calls us to be faithful, not successful. Second, the prolife movement is both idealistic and practical. We want all human life respected and protected, but work hard in the real world. Third, the public will be told our movement is now dead, unneeded and irrelevant, but our movement will never die. We will always keep the moral lamp lit. Fourth, although there is pride in many circles because the US elected its first black president, he is still ardently proabortion and that is horrible blot on his record. Fifth, the election introduced us to Sarah Palin, a prolife woman of steel who gave birth, knowingly, to a baby with Down syndrome, an act totally repugnant to the proabortion crowd.

Well said, Dave.

Then he summarizes the prolife gains made under President Bush including no federal funds for embryonic stem cell research and the passage and Supreme Court affirmation of the ban on Partial Birth abortion. He thanks President Bush for his consistent stand for life, as do I.

So on we go. Know the arguments for life, folks. Speak out in the marketplace, workplace, facebook, blogs, church, sports events. Don’t let proabortion drivel go unchallenged. If need be, buy Randy Alcorn’s book, Prolife Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments. Be informed, be energized. Mostly, be faithful and bring glory to Him.

Are Catholic Hospitals in North America Prolife? One wonders…

As I posted earlier regarding the shame of the National Association of Evangelicals, I can now add a rousing “Here! Here!” from the Catholic Hospital Association. Their head came our with a statement applauding the selection of Tom Dashle for Secretary of HHS and of Mr. Dashle’s hand-picked Planned Parenthood deputy. Both are strongly pro-abortion.

The Catholic bishops are in a bit of a tizzy as pro-abortion people in power in government could lead to Catholic hospitals being forced to do abortions, which runs counter to the rest of the Catholic world and against the word of the pope on this topic. I doubt they expected this praise for the potential destroyer of all that makes a Catholic hospital Catholic!

How far down we’ve fallen!

I would look for the boards of these many Catholic hospitals to suddenly find a merger with a nearby health care system in their best interest, but, they will say, not because of this abortion thing. Oh, but a cost of merging, they will say, will involve some minor policy changes to be more inclusive and tolerant. They won’t come out and say they will start doing abortions. But they will.

I pray that conservative pro-life Catholics will make their voices heard loud and clear to their priests, bishops and Catholic hospital CEO’s! Voices that will sound the call for a pro-life stand!

ADDITIONAL NOTE: As they say on those annoying, late-night infomercials, “But wait! There’s more!” This article also appeared documenting that a Catholic hospital in Canada is already doing 2nd trimester abortions!