Editor:
Jerry Novotny OMI
Updated Daily:
November 20, 2009

Breaking News

Pope: Human Life Is A Gift, Not A Product
Benedict XVI is urging bishops to educate Christian consciences so that people can appreciate human life as a gift of God and not just a commercial product.

Marital Discord
The Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment of 2009 would legalize same-sex marriage in the District. It would not require any religious organizations to carry out such marriages. But the church worries that it would have to offer health benefits to same-sex spouses of employees and facilitate adoptions by same-sex couples, both of which it says would violate its religious beliefs.

My Near Death Panel Experienc
Comment: This article is a good example of setting up a straw man to make a point or win an argument. The section on Medicare was not the only point about "death panels." The cutting of Medicare funds, scheme to penalize the top 10% of top-spending Medicare doctors, establishment of government panels, admission of advocacy, the writings of ethicists like Dr. Emmanuel, etc., taken with the push for advance directives (now, ironically, for everyone in the new Pelosi bill), are cause for serious and valid concerns. -Nancy Valko, RN

Human Life International And Breast Cancer
Human Life International recently held a press conference at Hotel del Rio. There, Dr. Rene Josef Bullecer, who specializes in infectious diseases and a proponent of Human Life International in the Philippines, presented a finding by the World Health Organization that oral contraceptives can cause cancer to humans and that 599,000 deaths yearly are due to breast cancer.

Ohio Plans Execution Method Untried On Prisoners
Ohio waded into uncharted territory Friday when it announced plans to switch from the usual three-drug cocktail used to execute inmates to a one-drug method that death penalty opponents praised as a step forward — albeit one that has apparently never been tried on prisoners.

If The Embryo Is Human, It Is A Person: Vatican Doctrine Official
If an embryo is human, it is a person - this is the golden rule for bioethics if it wants to uphold the full dignity of the human person, said the secretary of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) on Tuesday.

Spanish Bishop Says Catholic Politicians Who Vote For Abortion Excommunicate Themselves
The secretary general of the Spanish bishops' conference, Auxiliary Bishop Juan Antonio Martinez Camino of Madrid, warned that Spanish Catholic legislators who vote in favor of a bill to liberalize abortion which is currently before parliament would publicly place themselves in an "objective state of sin" and therefore may not receive Communion.

Members Of Congress Claim Back Alley Abortions Will Happen Without Tax Funds
To hear pro-abortion members of Congress tell the story last weekend, women will head to the back alleys to have abortions unless they can get taxpayer funding for their abortions. Those were the unfounded claims presented during the House debate on the Stupak amendment.

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Ethical Perspectives

New! Admitting Sex is Procreative

Helen Alvare
Counterintuitive as it seems, a possible means of helping to curb our nonmarital pregnancy rates is to "put the baby back into sex." It is a means of helping men and women view each other as gifts - not instruments, not enemies, not subordinates - and a way of putting first things first - the well-being of children before our own selfish impulses.

New! Help parents and you help the whole family

Carolyn Moynihan
British family researchers seem to be working overtime to keep up with trends that have won the UK the label, Breakdown Britain. A new report from the relationship support organisation One Plus One reviews the evidence on the effects of marital or partnership breakdown on the wellbeing of both adults and children. It finds a definite negative impact and argues that better interventions to support parents could prevent some family ruptures.

New! Endangered species

Michael Cook
Current studies show that 92 percent of women who receive a definitive prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome choose to terminate their pregnancies. As a consequence Down Syndrome children are vanishing. In Ireland, where abortion is not an option, the sight of a DS person on the street is far more common.

European Abortion Novels:
Documenting a Fidelity to the Milieu

Jeff J. Koloze
If European fiction dwells on disastrous historical events which have shaped that continent's history, then American writers will someday have to face a similar disaster which hit their nation: the Roe v. Wade decision of 22 January 1973. Up to now, many anti-life American authors have viewed the Roe decision as a blessing. Baldwin says that "most Americans do not yet know what anguish is". What can generate anguish? An economic disaster? A catastrophic war? How unfortunate it would be if these were the only ways that American writers would come to realize how great a disaster the Roe decision was.

Getting the U.S. Out of Abortion

Steven Mosher
The week after pro-life Latin Americans achieved a major success in Colombia, another one has occurred in Peru, thanks to the efforts of PRI's Carlos Polo. He has been waiting 20 years for this breakthrough

The Vocation of Christian Marriage as an Approach to the Bioethics of Human Reproduction

Janet E. Smith
Marriage is an institution that has been around as long as mankind. One would think, then, that we would know a lot more about marriage than we do. If anything, current statistics on divorce and infidelity would seem to indicate that we are regressing rather than progressing in our understanding of marriage. Here is not the place to rehearse the misunderstandings of the nature of marriage that are rampant in contemporary society. The challenge here is to determine what truth or truths about the objective reality of marriage need to be heard by our contemporaries and to explore how we might get them to see and accept the objective reality of marriage. The intent here is to use this information to understand better the Vatican teaching that in vitro fertilization (IVF) and embryo transfer (ET) are morally impermissible even for spouses.

Situation Grave

Judie Brown
My impression from the various news reports that I read was that adults were not concerned about the driving force that would create a desire among more than 15 girls to get pregnant. Rather, it provoked discussion about whether or not it was time to start providing birth control pills on the school grounds! Now pardon me for being ignorant, but isn't there something more profoundly problematic in this situation than whether or not the pill is available? Has pregnancy become such a meaningless word that those who are older and should know better are not even concerned about the underlying causes of this crisis? What about the parents of these girls and their responsibilities?

Hiding the Truth
The Unspoken Pain of Abortion

Theresa Burke
In reality, abortion is a deeply private and complex experience. For most women, their feelings and memories about an abortion simply do not lend themselves to casual conversation. Women who will enthusiastically compare pregnancy and delivery stories over tea would never dream of talking about their feelings and memories related to past abortions.