Culturally speaking, the abortion question seems to have slipped under our guard. Society has grown aware of its ecological responsibilities. The recognition of endangered species calls forth prompt and effective protection. But here we are dealing with a danger rather closer to home. Up to a third of the next generation is being terminated. A 30% casualty rate would point to a particularly bloody military engagement. Ecologically speaking, it would be an unacceptable proportion, say, in regard to Black Cockatoos or Great White Sharks.

Still, a dramatic ethical development has occurred in many areas. The death penalty has been outlawed. Violence, rape, racial prejudice and the corruption of children cause moral revulsion and are met with the full force of the law. More positively, the principle of equal opportunity, extending especially to the handicapped and the underprivileged, is taken for granted, even at considerable economic cost. Further, any form of cruelty to animals provokes outrage. More positively, the generosity of the Australian public towards those who suffered recent natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts and floods in our region and beyond, has been inspiring.

We might expect that such instances of genuine moral sensitivity would create a climate of grave concern over the present scale of abortions. But our social conscience is strangely tongue-tied on this question. However the silence might be explained, public reflection on abortion is episodic and is usually “no-go zone” in political discourse.

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Does it worry you that there could be abuse? Patients could get the meds while they were lucid, but when they became a burden, someone else could administer them?
Theoretically there would be that possibility. For the most part, I’ve found when patients slip away in that way, the family becomes more concerned about their welfare and more likely to find help.

The only other states where patients can do this are Washington and Montana. Why hasn’t it spread further?
There’s tremendous opposition from the religious community, for reasons I accept. There’s built-in antagonism among the medical profession. “I think I’ve done all I can, and I’m not going to do any more” is not the sort of thing doctors say. And patients and their families have the hugest difficulty in accepting that they are beyond treatment in a curative sense.

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Due to the requirements that the HHS Mandate imposes on Catholic institutions, the Obama administration has been widely criticized over the question of religious freedom. “The real issue in political life,” explained [Professor William] Luckey, “is not contraception: it’s the First Amendment. That’s the real issue because the Constitution says that there’s not going to be a national religion. [”¦] But it also says, ‘Congress shall make no law restricting the freedom of religion.'”

The federal government’s attempt to involve itself in the religious beliefs of people, explains Professor [Bernard] Way, associate professor of political science, goes against the Constitution in a very fundamental way. “On the surface,” Way said, “the biggest issue has to do with First Amendment concerns, and freedom of religion. No religious institution should be forced by the government to do anything against their conscience or their beliefs. [”¦] People, and other associations in society, should be left free, especially on matters of conscience, which the founders always understood was a matter of religion.”

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“In a civil society, there must be better remedies for cases like these,” said C. Ben Mitchell, professor of moral philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn. “Rather than ‘wrongful birth’ suits, a robust social services infrastructure could relieve the burden families feel when they choose to bring disabled children into the world. There are many communities who would be willing to rally around these families if they knew the need.

“At the same time, we must repudiate abortion for disability,” said Mitchell, also a biomedical and life issues consultant for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “The diagnosis of a disability, including Down syndrome, should not be a death sentence for the unborn baby.”

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A majority of Americans say religiously affiliated organizations — such as hospitals and universities — should be exempt from the Obama administration’s abortion/contraceptive mandate, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll.

The survey found that by a 57-36 percent margin, U.S. adults believe religious organizations should be allowed to “opt out” of covering birth control for their female employees. The poll did not use the word “abortion,” although Christian leaders say the mandate would require them to cover contraceptives that can cause chemical abortions.

The poll also found that 51 percent of adults believe that any employer — and not just the ones with religious ties — should be able to opt out if they find such coverage objectionable based on religious or moral beliefs. Forty percent disagree.

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In a case that challenges Britain’s definition of murder, a judge has ruled that a severely disabled man who wants a doctor to kill him will be granted a hearing.
It is the first euthanasia case of its kind to be allowed a hearing in a British court.
Tony Nicklinson, 57, suffered a paralysing stroke in 2005 that left him unable to speak or move below his neck. The former rugby player and corporate manager requires constant care and communicates largely by blinking, although his mind has remained unaffected.

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The Catholic bishop leading the push against the White House’s contraception mandate says the bishops hope to restart contentious talks with the Obama administration, but cautioned that church leaders “have gotten mixed signals from the administration” and the situation “is very fluid.”

Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., who chairs the religious liberty committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told Religion News Service that Catholics have to stay united if the hierarchy is to have any chance of prevailing in negotiations with the White House.

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On the June 2007 day their daughter was born, Ariel and Deborah Levy were overcome with excitement, then shock when hospital staff told them their daughter looked like she had Down syndrome.

A doctor asked Deborah Levy if she’d had a prenatal test — a chorionic villus sampling, or CVS for short — and Levy said yes, the results showed they’d have a normal, healthy child.

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Mitt Romney won the delegates, but not necessarily the argument.

His quest to win the Republican presidential nomination has always resembled a detailed, methodical business plan. Mr. Romney, who spent much of his life fixing troubled corporations, must now decide whether steps are necessary to repair his lethargic candidacy.

Mr. Romney had hoped that a string of Super Tuesday victories in contests from Vermont to Alaska would effectively bring the Republican race to a close.

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Of course, as the… [Journal of Medical Ethics]’ editor notes, after-birth abortion isn’t really new: “The arguments presented, in fact, are largely not new and have been presented repeatedly in the academic literature and public fora by the most eminent philosophers and bioethicists in the world, including Peter Singer, Michael Tooley, and John Harris in defence of infanticide.” And let’s not forget that the ancient Greeks left their unwanted children on the mountainside to die, too, Mr. Editor.

This makes it even more noteworthy that the article concedes that a fetus is, in fact, a human being: “Both a foetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.” They go on to argue that “the interests of actual people override the interest of merely potential people. Since non-persons have no moral rights to life, there are no reasons for banning after-birth abortions.”

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The U.S. Senate voted by a narrow 51-48 margin to block the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act (S. 1467), sponsored by Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) and 37 other senators.
The proposed measure would have given employers and insurers the possibility to opt out of paying for contraceptives and sterilizations

“The need to defend citizens’ rights of conscience is the most critical issue before our country right now,” said Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Bishop Lori chairs the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

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Given church concerns about religious freedom, Cardinal Dolan wrote, “the President invited us to ”˜work out the wrinkles.’ We have accepted that invitation. Unfortunately, this seems to be stalled: the White House Press Secretary, for instance, informed the nation that the mandates are a fait accompli (and, embarrassingly for him, commented that we bishops have always opposed Health Care anyway, a charge that is scurrilous and insulting, not to mention flat out wrong.”)

Cardinal Dolan also said that “The White House already notified Congress that the dreaded mandates are now published in the Federal Registry ”˜without change.’ He added that “The Secretary of HHS is widely quoted as saying, ”˜Religious insurance companies don’t really design the plans they sell based on their own religious tenets.’ That doesn’t bode well for their getting a truly acceptable ‘accommodation.'”

Read it all and note the link to the full letter.

In an article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva argue that newborn babies do not have a “moral right to life” because they are not “actual persons” but rather “potential persons”.

“The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual….”

Nick Pollard, co-founder of The Damaris Trust, criticised the claim.

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There is no doubt that reproduction is an industry, and a very lucrative one, at that. The costs of IVF run in the tens of thousands of American dollars for a single attempt, and the woman must receive regular hormone injections and undergo invasive procedures to both retrieve eggs and transfer embryos into her uterus. Given the physical and financial toll exerted by IVF, prospective parents and medical professionals place a great deal of emphasis on achieving a successful birth with as few attempts as possible. Therefore, it is common to transfer more than one embryo at a time, in the hopes that at least one will survive. In the event of the survival of multiple embryos, or if the embryos further divide in a case of identical twinning, the parents are offered the option of a “selective reduction,” in which one or more of the fetuses is aborted.

The argument used to support this practice is that the fewer the number of babies, the better the projected outcome for the survivor(s). In other words, even if a mother would be happy to accept twins or triplets, she may be counseled to “reduce” the number of her children for fear that she might be more likely to miscarry and lose the entire pregnancy. Sadly, this barbaric practice is being increasingly recommended not only for higher-order multiples, but also for twins, including those which occur naturally

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A former medical director of the country’s largest abortion provider said it was “well known” that women were terminating pregnancies because of the gender of the child and that he had been asked by women to arrange the procedure for this reason.

Dr Vincent Argent, who previously worked for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and is now a GP and consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, said he had “no doubt” that women were terminating pregnancies because of the sex of the baby and that he believed the practice was “fairly widespread”. This week The Daily Telegraph disclosed that women were being offered illegal abortions by doctors on the basis of the gender of the foetus.

Dr Argent said there were “an awful lot of covert abortions for sex selection going on” where women would have a scan or blood test to find out the sex, then ask for a termination without telling the doctor the real reason.

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Women are being granted illegal abortions by doctors based on the sex of their unborn baby, an undercover investigation by The Daily Telegraph reveals.

Doctors at British clinics have been secretly filmed agreeing to terminate foetuses purely because they are either male or female. Clinicians admitted they were prepared to falsify paperwork to arrange the abortions even though it is illegal to conduct such “sex-selection” procedures.

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said: “I’m extremely concerned to hear about these allegations. Sex selection is illegal and is morally wrong. I’ve asked my officials to investigate this as a matter of urgency.”

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Not directly related to ”“ but probably not completely independent from ”“ the raging debate over birth control coverage in Roman Catholic college health plans, the availability of the emergency contraceptive Plan B One Step, or the morning-after pill, has been making news on a number of campuses across the country, and not all of them are religious.

Some colleges have been criticized for not making Plan B easily available; others, for expanding access or accommodating it in unusual ways. But, playing out against the backdrop of the latest culture war, each case reinforces the considerable impact colleges can have in this area of student health.

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A crucial thing to remember, both about the mandate and the promised adjustments-to-come, is that it is deeply un-American in its hostility to diversity and pluralism in civil society. The mandate’s religious-employer exemption is limited only to inward-looking entities that hire and engage only their own. It embodies the view that religious institutions may be distinctive only insofar as they stay in their place ”” in the pews, in the pulpit, at the altar. It reflects a troubling tendency to impose ideological sameness and conformity in the public sphere, to insist that all groups and associations act like the government, in the service of the government’s goals.

The mandate prompted an impressively united reaction by those who cherish America’s tradition of religious freedom and accommodation. On the left and on the right, among Republicans and Democrats, there was an appreciation for the fact that this was an overreach. It was, and still is.

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A two-year-old boy with “three parents” – his lesbian mother, her partner and a gay father – is at the centre of an Appeal Court test case on the status of “alternative” families.

The mother says she made a pact with the father during a restaurant meeting before the boy was conceived that she and her lover would fill the role of “primary parents” within a “nuclear family” and that he would not stand on his paternal rights.

But now she and her partner say they feel “bitter and betrayed” after the father – a former close friend who attended the birth and held the new-born baby in his arms – demanded overnight and holiday contact with his biological son.

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Attorneys general from a dozen states say they intend to sue over the Obama administration’s contraception mandate that requires many religious employers to violate the teachings of their faith.

In a Feb. 10 letter, the attorneys general voiced their “strong opposition” to the mandate, which they called “an impermissible violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment virtually unparalleled in American history.”

They said that if the mandate is implemented, they are prepared to “vigorously oppose it in court.”

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The HHS regulations announced on January 20 are one domestic expression of defining-religious-freedom-down. The administration does not propose to, say, restore the 1970 ICEL translations of the prayer-texts of the Mass; that, even HHS might concede, is a violation of religious freedom. But the administration did not think it a violation of religious freedom for its Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to try and overturn the longstanding legal understanding which held that religious institutions have a secure First Amendment right to choose their ministers by their own criteria””until it was told that it had gone way over the line in January’s Hosanna-Tabor Supreme Court decision (a judicial smackdown in which the administration’s own Court nominees joined).

Now, with the HHS “contraceptive mandate” (which, as noted above, is also a sterilization and abortifacent “mandate”), the administration claims that it is not violating the First Amendment by requiring Catholic institutions to provide “services” that the Catholic Church believes are objectively evil. That bizarre claim may well be another constitutional bridge too far. But the very fact that the administration issued these regulations, and that the White House press secretary blithely dismissed any First Amendment concerns when asked whether there were religious freedom issues involved here, tell us something very important, and very disturbing, about the cast of mind in the Executive Branch.

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“We bishops are pastors, we’re not politicians, and you can’t compromise on principle,” said Cardinal-designate [Timothy] Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “And the goal posts haven’t moved and I don’t think there’s a 50-yard line compromise here,” he added.

“We’re in the business of reconciliation, so it’s not that we hold fast, that we’re stubborn ideologues, no. But we don’t see much sign of any compromise,” he said.

“What (Obama) offered was next to nothing. There’s no change, for instance, in these terribly restrictive mandates and this grossly restrictive definition of what constitutes a religious entity,” he said. “The principle wasn’t touched at all.”

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Politicized culture wars are debilitating because they almost always require partisans to denigrate the moral legitimacy of their opponents, and sometimes to deny their very humanity. It’s often not enough to defeat a foe. Satisfaction only comes from an adversary’s humiliation.

One other thing about culture wars: One side typically has absolutely no understanding of what the other is trying to say.

That is why the battle over whether religious institutions should be required to cover contraception under the new health care law was so painful — and why it was so hard to comprehend why President Obama, who has been a critic of culture wars for so long, did not try to defuse this explosive question from the beginning.

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Together, the leaders of these Christian, Jewish and Muslim national organizations affirmed:

“We stand with President Obama and Secretary Sebelius in their decision to reaffirm the importance of contraceptive services as essential preventive care for women under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and to assure access under the law to American women, regardless of religious affiliation. We respect individuals’ moral agency to make decisions about their sexuality and reproductive health without governmental interference or legal restrictions. We do not believe that specific religious doctrine belongs in health care reform ”“ as we value our nation’s commitment to church-state separation. We believe that women and men have the right to decide whether or not to apply the principles of their faith to family planning decisions, and to do so they must have access to services. The Administration was correct in requiring institutions that do not have purely sectarian goals to offer comprehensive preventive health care. Our leaders have the responsibility to safeguard individual religious liberty and to help improve the health of women, their children, and families. Hospitals and universities across are respected and that their students and employees have access to this basic health care service. We invite other religious leaders to speak out with us for universal coverage of contraception.

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The United Methodist General Board of Church and Society, along with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, which includes the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA) and United Church of Christ, have stunningly endorsed Obamacare’s mandate that all religious hospitals and charities must provide insurance coverage for contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization, despite religious objections.

In contrast, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, National Association of Evangelicals, Southern Baptist and Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod leaders and others have condemned the mandate as an assault on religious liberty. Megachurch pastor Rick Warren has declared: “I’d go to jail rather than cave in to a government mandate that violates what God commands us to do.”

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The controversy over President Obama’s order on contraception and religious institutions is not going away as a political issue.

The two sides seem to be hardening their positions. The divide between many American Catholics and their bishops remains. And it’s raising questions over who benefits most in the run-up to the presidential election….

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This year over 50,000 people in San Francisco gathered to Walk for Life, expressing a love for life and concern for the women affected by abortion. Two days later on Jan. 23 more than 250,000 people attended the March for Life in Washington, D.C. Both events included thousands of young participants.

As president of Anglicans for Life and cofounder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, I attended the events and hosted gatherings on both coasts. People involved with the Silent No More Awareness Campaign who have experienced abortion carry signs that say I Regret My Abortion or I Regret Lost Fatherhood. After the walk and march, 60 women and six men described how abortion affected their lives and the help they found in Christian-based healing programs.

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Some Catholics expressed relief but others were unmoved after President Barack Obama on Friday loosened a requirement that religious employers cover contraception in health plans, an issue that had turned into a political firestorm in recent weeks.

Under the new policy, religious employers opposed to most forms of birth control wouldn’t be required to directly pay for such coverage in their workers’ insurance policies. Instead, insurance companies would be required to offer contraception without explicitly charging either the religious employer or worker. That shift means the cost of providing the coverage to religious employers is likely to be spread across all policyholders by insurers.

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From here:

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) sees initial opportunities in preserving the principle of religious freedom after President Obama’s announcement today. But the Conference continues to express concerns. “While there may be an openness to respond to some of our concerns, we reserve judgment on the details until we have them,” said Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of USCCB.

“The past three weeks have witnessed a remarkable unity of Americans from all religions or none at all worried about the erosion of religious freedom and governmental intrusion into issues of faith and morals,” he said.

“Today’s decision to revise how individuals obtain services that are morally objectionable to religious entities and people of faith is a first step in the right direction,” Cardinal-designate Dolan said. “We hope to work with the Administration to guarantee that Americans’ consciences and our religious freedom are not harmed by these regulations.”