Jivin J’s Life Links 2-17-11
by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat
- In Slate, Dave Weigel discusses the pro-choice movement’s strategy:
1) Wait for the pro-life movement, now at an apex of political power, to do something stupid.
2) Pounce on the stupid thing that it just did.
3) Repeat.
- In CA, a man named Steven Smith was found guilty of attempted voluntary manslaughter but not guilty of attempted murder and attempted murder of a fetus after he shot his pregnant girlfriend:Smith was accused of shooting Gina Stanko, 35, in the head and hand with a .22-caliber pistol Nov. 6, 2009, in her Paso Robles home. During the trial, Smith was described as a narcissistic womanizer by prosecutors and characterized by his defense as a man emotionally driven to violence by the woman he feared.
- In Canada, the speech police have again gone after another pro-life club – this time at Victoria University, where the Students’ Society has ruled the pro-life group Youth Protecting Youth (pictured left) violated the university’s harassment policy by comparing abortion to the Holocaust:
“Because many students on campus are capable of having abortions and/or are students of Jewish decent, YPY should have reasonably thought to have known that using marketing materials for their presentation, which compares the Holocaust to abortion, could reasonably create a hostile, intimidating, threatening or humiliating environment on campus for individuals of the student body,” said UVic Students’ Society chair James Coccola. “In this case, we felt that the harassment policy was broken by YPY.”
The censure is little more than a public disapproval, Coccola said, confirming that YPY’s club status, reinstated last spring in B.C. Supreme Court, is not in question.
[Photo via tasteandsee2.blogspot.com]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
You couldn’t pay me to live in Canada. It seems like their standard of free speech boils down to “you can’t say it if liberals might get their feelings hurt.”
It’s more like “you can’t say it if it’s true”.
The Abortion Holocaust has killed far, far more people then the Nazi Holocaust or, for that matter, the Armenian Holocaust, the Cambodian Holocaust or any other holocaust you can name.
As I keep saying – American Jews are overwhelmingly pro-choice and find abortion/holocaust comparisons very offensive. Abe Foxman from the ADL made a statement some years back. Their religous teachings, regarding abortion, are different from Christian teachings. But everytime I say this, I’m met with comments about how these Jews aren’t real Jews because they’re not following scriptures. As I’ve said, many of the Jews, in my community, are on the Board of Planned Parenthood. Face it. Jews don’t have the same opinion about abortion as do certain Christians. That’s reality. But if you call them “baby killers,” they’ve already been called “Christ killers.” (And forgiven by Vatican II, right,Laurie?)
Most Jews are still awaiting the Messiah. I am guessing those who still are will vehemently be against abortion. In fact I am pretty sure I read that some Rabbis in Jerusalem were starting to speak out against abortion because of the Messiah and how they are still awaiting the arrival.
And there’s also at least ONE Rabbi who speaks at the March for Life in DC.
CC siad: American Jews are overwhelmingly pro-choice and find abortion/holocaust comparisons very offensive
Holocaust is defined as: an act of mass destruction and loss of life (especially in war or in fire), so, wheather some people find it offensive or not, the abortion epidemic is, by definition, a holocaust. Unless you don’t consider 42 million fetuses killed a year, which is far more than the 9,508,340 lost in the entire Nazi holocaust, an “act of mass destruction and loss of life” in which case it is almost impossible for me to take anything you say seriously.
It is a violation of Christian and Jewish teaching to support unlimited killing of human beings, whether born or unborn. Support for this evil is NOT consistent with any philosophy or theology.
The killing of over a billion human beings around the world is a holocaust.
CC, it’s unfortunate that many Jews base their pro-abortion beliefs on an ancient Biblical passage (Exodus 21:22-25) about how the punishment for causing a woman to miscarry a pregnancy is less severe than the punishment for killing a born person. It is in fact the practicers of the Jewish faith who are basing their views on abortion on RELIGION; Christians do not do the same.
Christians oppose abortion because science informs them that life begins at the point of fertilization. Christians did not argue that ALL abortion was homicide UNTIL it was scientifically proven that life begins at fertilization. The only reason that Christians are more strongly pro-life than members of other faiths is that Christians present the strongest opposition to the taking of innocent lives.
So the question must be asked – why are our abortion laws based on Exodus 21:22-25 instead of scientific fact? And why are pro-aborts allowed to get away with claiming that they are on the side of science, when they are actually defending the barbaric laws of ancient Hebrew society?
By the way, 3 million Polish Catholics were murdered by Hitler as well. I have no qualms about comparing the unborn to my Polish Catholic brothers who were crushed by the Nazi abomination.
Not trying to take issue with you, John, but in the Hebrew, Exodus 21:22-25 actually does not refer to a woman giving birth to a DEAD child (miscarriage) but to a premature birth. It also specifies that if there is serious injury, “you shall take life for life….” Therefore, for a pro-abort use these verses as a defense for abortion in any way is to completely misunderstand and/or twist what the verses are actually saying. They make it very clear that if a woman gives birth prematurely and either she or her child dies, the offender shall give his life in payment for that life.
http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Exd&c=21&v=22&t=NIV#conc/22
Kel, interesting. So our pro-abortion Jewish friends are actually basing American law on one interpretation of Exodus 21:22-25 which appears to be faulty.
Too bad our laws can’t be based on science. CC, why are you pro-aborts so anti-science?
Kel, interesting. So our pro-abortion Jewish friends are actually basing American law on one interpretation of Exodus 21:22-25 which appears to be faulty.
Correct.
“Christians did not argue that ALL abortion was homicide UNTIL it was scientifically proven that life begins at fertilization.”
That is completely false. Where did you learn church history, John? The Eastern Orthodox church has condemned abortion as murder throughout its 2000 year history, well before science managed to prove anything about the unborn. Sorry the memo didn’t reach Western theologians who taught delayed ensoulment for centuries, but it’s wrong to equate those false beliefs with ecumenical Christian teaching.
Jewish law prohibits prenatal homicide under all circumstances, except when the mother’s life is in danger. The idea that Judaism supports unlimited prenatal homicide is ludicrous and obscene.
Let me be as clear as I can be: those who support unlimited or nearly unlimited prenatal homicide are NOT Christians and are NOT Jews. They CANNOT be. They have adopted, for psychological reasons, a totally anti-human “position” which is contrary to all religious faith and all reason. Supporting the killing of every member of the human species through this hideous violence is NOT morally defensible and NOT philosophically coherent.
Clarice:
What has happened to the Orthodox Churches and their support for unborn human rights? The Catholic Church has done little to stop abortion violence. The Orthodox Churches even less. Where is the pro-life, pro-human voice of these churches now, as endless killing of unborn children rages on in Eastern Europe?
you’re kidding, right? the catholic church has been the main witness for life. the catholic church is the main witness for life.
the communists, raging over most of a century, killed 96% of the orthodox religious people. Do you think they started with the weak, unpersuasive and doubting? Or the strong, the holy and the good? The tortures that the few survived broke their bodies, and some of their minds. 96%. Plus, let’s see, killing the faithful, entire towns that have been Christian for as long as recorded history has been around.
It’s sort of like when someone asks “What’s wrong with England?” and the answer is – the brave men were all killed in two wars, so they aren’t available to raise heroic sons.
I feel so very, very lucky to be in a safe, majority Christian country. I hope that my services will be acceptable, helping the tender and weak in the rest of the world, the ones who have suffered martyrdom. I don’t know that I would be blessed to be certain in my faith in the face of evil.
What has happened to the Orthodox Churches and their support for unborn human rights? The Catholic Church has done little to stop abortion violence. The Orthodox Churches even less. Where is the pro-life, pro-human voice of these churches now, as endless killing of unborn children rages on in Eastern Europe?
Well, Joe, an Orthodox priest and 25-year veteran of the March for Life gave this year’s opening prayer, and Metropolitan Jonah, one of the leaders of Orthodox in America, has spoken every year since his election.
As for witness in Eastern Europe, Ari is right. I don’t know what kind of history you learned in school, but the brutal persecutions of communism killed millions of people, the death toll far exceeding Hitler’s holocaust. By the time its atheist regime fell, only 22 Orthodox priests were left alive in the entire country of Albania. The death toll is similarly staggering for other countries.
Those who survived were kept under a constant threat of arrest and/or execution. Afterwards, the economic ruin left behind by communism left scars of misery and corruption all over these lands, alcoholism and sex trafficking being epidemics, and the residual effects of communist propaganda in schools ensured that the Church would be the last place respectable people would be seen turning to for guidance.
It is a miracle that the Orthodox Church has survived there, and not only survived, but offered millions of martyrs to God, outlasted the communist regimes, and is rebuilding the faith of the nations to which it was first brought over a thousand years ago.
If that’s not enough of a pro-life witness for you, I’d like to see you do better.
Clarice, I’m surprised you didn’t call me a schismatic while you were at it. Sorry, I didn’t learn much about the history of the Eastern Orthodox in CCD class. Holster your guns for a sec and realize that for a thousand years, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church were the same entity. The “ensoulment” beliefs of Aristotle and Augustine were not finally smashed until the discovery of the sperm and egg cells by scientists, about 150 years ago. Prior to the scientific discovery of sperm, egg, and for that matter, the zygote, the exact mechanics of reproduction were unknown. While I applaud the Eastern theologians for ignoring Augustine’s ideas about when life begins, the reality is that they couldn’t have truly understood what they were doing. The Church Fathers, who are the same between our two churches, could not possibly have argued that the destruction of the zygote was murder because they didn’t know that the zygote existed.
John, you admit there’s a common history, and apparently they didn’t tell you anything about early church history in CCD, so why in the world would you make such a presumptuous statement? The Eastern church fathers may not have been able to articulate the exact nature of spermatozoa and ova, but they knew life began at conception. St. Basil the Great said, “She who has intentionally destroyed [the fetus] is subject to the penalty corresponding to a homicide. For us, there is no scrutinizing between the formed and unformed [fetus]…” And it should be enormously telling that for every Nativity that is celebrated (whether of the Lord, the Theotokos, or the Forerunner), there is a corresponding feast for that person’s Conception.
Compare that to this from the Council of Vienne, an exclusively Western council well after the schism: “In order that all may know the truth of the faith in its purity and all error may be excluded, we define that anyone who presumes henceforth to assert defend or hold stubbornly that the rational or intellectual soul is not the form of the human body of itself and essentially, is to be considered a heretic.” Ah, good old Aristotle. I wonder how many people have been murdered in the womb because of his ancient delusion.
Why is the soul not the form of the body, Clarice? What is it that animates the body?
Just because people misinterpret or misapply the doctrine of teh soul being the form of teh body, it does not follow that the doctrine is to be blamed. Nothing in teh Council of Vienne quote implies that it is therefore morally permissible to kill a fetus.