Pro life article in the NY times?

I knew that would get your attention. Well, I was rather shocked that the Times, the bastion of pro abortion views in the city where several times more babies are aborted than born, would print something which gives a more balanced view on abortion but it has happened. It's in a blog by Ross Douthat, not a mainstream article, but still, blogs do get crawled. As a person working in the diocese of Phoenix wrote "Maybe the truth keeps knocking until we are embarrassed not to answer!"

The blog talks about the new show on MTV about women facing decisions which seem (according to MTV anyway) best solved by abortion. I didn't watch the show because I knew right up front, it would totally annoy me.

Blogger ROSS DOUTHAT said although the view of MTV was, pro choice, the first show turned out to be "a heartbreaking spectacle, whatever your perspective."

He talks about shortage of babies available for adoption, partially because only a small percentage of single mothers are not keeping their babies. But Ross does add that "Since 1973, countless lives that might have been welcomed into families like Thernstrom’s — which looked into adoption, and gave it up as hopeless — have been cut short in utero instead."

Another thing, Ross brought up about the show was the euphemistic de-humanizing way the abortion industry talks about the baby. Expressions like "fetus" or "baby" are carefully avoided and the baby is referred to as "the pregnancy problem" which is just a "ball of cells".

However, apparently the pregnant woman on the show has realized it is a baby because she begins crying when her boyfriend calls her baby a "thing".

Sadly, she went ahead with the abortion because like many other women, she didn't see a way out. However, life is always the best way out and unfortunately, we often find out all too late that nothing is solved by the termination of a life - that only adds to the difficulty of a situation. One only has to listen to a small sampling of the thousands of women in the Silent no more awareness campaign to realize that abortion causes many more heartaches than going through with a pregnancy.

I did like Ross's conclusion though. It was:

"This is the paradox of America’s unborn. No life is so desperately sought after, so hungrily desired, so carefully nurtured. And yet no life is so legally unprotected, and so frequently destroyed."

Imagine that in a blog of the New York Times. As the old saying goes, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus". That is, this is not a bad way to start a new year, in which we hopefully will progress toward ending the mass execution of the unborn.

Details on the Bishop's decision about St Josephs Hospital

This video is the best I've seen for details - it should answer any questions:

News Conference at the Diocesan Pastoral Center, Dec. 21, 2010 from Diocese of Phoenix on Vimeo.

The Diocese of Phoenix held a news conference today announcing that St. Joseph's Hospital can no longer identify itself as Catholic.

The Bishop and the Hospital

In a controversial decision (at least according to the news services), Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted revoked his consent for St. Joseph’s Hospital to use the name Catholic because he cannot verify that the hospital will provide authentically Catholic health care in accord with the teachings of the Church.

Bishop launched a website to explain why.

His reasons are as follows:

• St. Joseph’s Hospital’s sanctioning and performing a direct abortion in late 2009,
and

• St. Joseph’s admitting to being in formal cooperation in abortions, sterilizations and contraceptive services administered through their Mercy Care Plan — a $2 billion endeavor covering about 368,000 of Arizona’s poor.

Let's talk about the first one because the second reason is a no brainer. NOTE: The Bishop never said that St Joseph's was not a good hospital or that you will not get good health care there. He merely wants to warn Catholics that it's no longer a Catholic hospital i.e. St Joseph's is not delivering care according to Catholic church teachings on life issues!

The concern of the doctors was not an immediate emergency with the lady with pulmonary hypertension (for whom the Sister approved an abortion) but rather that in a number of cases with this disorder, during childbirth, women have been observed going into respiratory shock leading to death a few days after delivery.

In other words, there was no medical emergency with the pregnancy but in the case of a high risk pregnancy, doctors will always suggest aborting the baby.

This is effectually saying that the mother's life is worth more than the baby's life. But the Catholic church disagrees. We do not rate one life as worth more than another, and we cannot sanction willful murder of one life to make life "less risky" for another human.

The bottom line may come from the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises which remind us that no immoral means justify any ends, even the best of ends.

As my Jesuit Spiritual advisor, Fr John Becker, would say in answer to ANY arguments in favor of abortion, "But it’s murder!"

It is interesting to note that when St Gianna Molla, a pediatrician was pregnant and developed a tumor, she was given the same advice by her doctors that the lady with pulmonary hypertension was given, to abort the child.

St Gianna told them whatever the case, save the baby. St Gianna developed septicemia after her delivery of a little girl (who is now, like her mother, a physician) and died about two weeks after delivery.

And now the church honors her AS St Gianna, a model for all of us. Her daughter whose life was saved by her mother's decision, was present when her mother was canonized by John Paul II.

Truly, as a mother, I would not want to buy my life with the life of my baby. If God wants me or the baby (or both) to live, He will allow it. If not, we, as Catholics do believe that His Divine Providence is a perfect plan.

That is why the Bishop decided what he did and I applaud his decision. He is courageous and standing up for Our Lord and what our church teaches.