(Prolifer)ations 8-2-11
by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN, and Kelli
We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.
- Abortion State shares the eye-opening results of a study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, which reveal use of the Pill causes loss of bone density, leading to greater likelihood of fractures later in life. Females actively gain bone mass during their teens and early 20s, when usage of BCPs is typically highest.
- Americans United for Life shows ABC News and Slate relied on biased information from Ibis Reproductive Health, a pro-abortion group, when reporting the supposed safety of telemed abortions:On a separate area of the website, Ibis admits that its “projects focus on improving access to abortion.” In other words, the “study” cited by ABC is no “study” at all. Ibis was conducing “research” with the specific purpose of supporting “reproductive rights.” Its “study” was conducted to “accomplish its mission” and by “leveraging” research.
This is a far cry from an independent researcher publishing results from a scientific study in a peer-reviewed journal.
- Our newest blogroll addition, Down on the Pharm, discusses a NJ bill with the potential to prevent pharmacists from utilizing conscience protections when dispensing contraception (contrary to the Obama administration’s promises to uphold conscience protection laws).Pharmer also notes the World Health Organization considers hormonal contraception as a carcinogen, and mandates special packaging for it – yet our President and his HHS secretary want taxpayers to make sure all women can get this carcinogen for free.
- The Anti-Abortion Gang reports the apparent controversy surrounding pro-life “silly bandz,” bracelets marketed to adolescents. An Abortion Gang blogger calls the bracelets “outright propaganda” that goes “too far.” Planned Parenthood markets sex to children, which can lead to more abortions, but teaching children about human life is “indoctrinating” them?
I thought the bands were so cute, I ordered them for my grandchildren from Heritage House.
- Gerard Nadal at Coming Home shares his thoughts on the Catholic hospital in CO which refuses to disassociate itself from Dr. Richard Grossman, one of its physicians who moonlights as an abortionist for Planned Parenthood. Live Action did a telephone sting to his hospital office asking for an abortion, and office personnel referred the caller to PP, complete with phone number:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O24sserc6JU[/youtube]
- The Culture Vulture highlights an uplifting story about the Sisters of Life, who not only take traditional vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but also a fourth vow “to protect and enhance the sacredness of human life.” These 70 strong, educated women with real life experience offer counseling, adoption assistance, and maternity housing.
- Ethika Politika recommends Helen Alvaré’s recent Public Discourse article, which “contends that the greatest recent threat to women’s freedom came in last week’s recommendation by the Institute of Medicine that the new health care law should mandate ‘the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive methods [and] sterilization procedures’ as ‘preventive services.’”
- Lisa Graas, a new contributor to Live Action, gives a point-by-point answer to a commenter who feels abortion is justified.
- Euthanasia Prevention Coalition laments a UK judge’s decision to allow the death by dehydration of a 54-year-old woman who has been declared to be in a persistent vegetative state. A chilling statement from a 1984 speech by euthanasia proponent Helga Kuhse shows the mentality of the right-to-die movement:If we can get people to accept the removal of all treatment and care – especially the removal of food and fluids – they will see what a painful way this is to die, and then, in the patient’s best interests, they will accept the lethal injection.
It took me a while to figure out that the purple silly band says “PRO.” Otherwise, I like!
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This is a far cry from an independent researcher publishing results from a scientific study in a peer-reviewed journal.
The researchers may not have been “independent,” but the Ibis study was published in a peer-reviewed journal: Obstetrics and Gynecology. AUL provided no evidence challenging the study’s conclusion that women who had “telemed” medical abortions did not experience complications at a higher rate than women who had abortions with the physician physically present.
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I have talked to board certified OBs who are very concerned about the bone density loss especially of the injectable contraceptives like Depo-Provera or other B/C hormones. Mothers sometimes show up in OB’s offices demanding 12-13 year olds be put on these shots and drugs, just in case their daughters decide to become sexually active. When you start losing bone mineralization instead of gaining it during your teen and young adult years, what do you have to draw on as a peri and postmenopausal woman when hormonal levels drop?
Regarding the tele-med abortions, unless you have actually seen a D&C and it’s aftermath you have no idea how bloody this procedure is. The cramping, bleeding nausea, vomiting and severe pain that it takes to dislodge and evacuate a developing embryo embedded in the endometrium of a womans uterus, (especially if you are doing it with drugs alone) is a horrible feat, let me tell you. You love the “choice” to dislodge and destroy, I want to know how many pro-aborts have actually watched while it was done (for how ever long it takes).
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Another note about calcium, bone density, and birth control/abortion. Pregnancy/nursing does cause calcium loss, but when lactation ends women go through a rapid gaining of bone density that leaves them with stronger bones than before pregnancy. So the more pregnancies and longer/more times a woman lactates the stronger her bones become. But b/c and abortion delays and limits pregnancies and lactation, so not only is it causing direct bone loss, it’s short changing a woman’s natural peak time of bone strengthening.
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Unfortunately, a side effect of not using the pill is that women get pregnant and have abortions.
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Lisa Graas’s article is very good. I have never heard a compelling or scientifically accurate argument for abortion. Pro-aborts have only slogans and excuses. There is no scientific or logical integrity….and boy do they do a lot of screaming when presented with facts that prove their arguments false. It’s like they don’t WANT to know the truth, because they don’t want to be told that something that “benefits” them is wrong, they don’t want to feel “guilt.” Too bad, because abortion is the killing of one’s own little baby, and if that doesn’t make you feel guilty, then NOTHING WILL.
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Ex-GOP, getting pregnant is a result of intercourse, not of not taking hormonal contraceptives.
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SegaMon – okay, yes – so maybe we just make sex outside of marriage illegal – because the whole plan of simply telling people not to really isn’t working out that well.
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Ex-GOP, sex outside of marriage is illegal. Read the Seventh Commandment, which is quite relevant to you and me (and everybody, actually, except perhaps children).
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Unfortunately, a side effect of getting pregnant and having abortions (which is the worst birth control) is that women start to use the Pill.
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Unfortunately, a side effect of using the Pill is that women continue to get pregnant and have abortions. There’s something very wrong with their whole way of life. If they’re not married, they shouldn’t be having sex. If they are married, then children are desirable. What are the schools teaching children these days?
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Ex-GOP said that “the whole plan of simply telling people not to really isn’t working out that well.”
Oh, it isn’t? It worked pretty well for me. My parents did a good job. They also sacrificed greatly in order to send me to a private Christian school.
But let’s reflect a little more. What’s this “whole plan of simply telling people not to”? The message I mostly hear in the world is the opposite: “It’s natural. You can’t stop human nature. Abstinence isn’t healthy.” Look at television, advertising, and fashion. Listen to the music. Watch the “gay pride” parade (or just observe their success in institutionalizing their perversion). Wasn’t there a sexual revolution in the 1960s, after all?
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Re: the Sisters of Life:
One of my best friends, an exceptionally beautiful and loving young woman, joined the Sisters of Life a year ago. She truly has found her calling in life in working to protect the lives of others, and God has worked and continues to work great things through her.
For me personally, the simple fact that she joined them speaks volumes of good about the order.
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Ex-GOP, sex outside of marriage is illegal. Read the Seventh Commandment, which is quite relevant to you and me (and everybody, actually, except perhaps children).
Oh, this is funny. Last time I checked the Bible wasn’t law??? Separation of church and state and all that. Nice try though.
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Derrr, the Bible contains the Ten Commandments, which are indeed laws. They may not be the civil code of the United States, but they express the will of God and as such apply to you. Separation of church and state merely means that the state may not interfere in the church’s business–and vice versa. It especially means that the state may make no rule favoring one particular Christian denomination over another; I think it’s called DISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM.
Separation of church and state does not mean that the church is not an authority or that God has no laws.
I realize that you might not be a Christian, but I am–and you should be. Religion does affect one’s understanding of life, after all. (That’s an understatement.)
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Jon — why should the 10 commandments apply to Christians, and not the other 603? Why would ANY of the Sinaitic Covenant’s laws — the legal code of the Jewish nation — apply to new covenant Christians who, according to the New Testament, are under no obligation to enter into Jewish covenants with God?
Can you give a good reason why 10 apply, and the other 603 don’t?
Yet the Noahic covenant (Noahide law) seems applicable to all humanity, not just Jews. So I’d be obliged to avoid eating anything that was torn from a living animal. But the command not to murder is not binding on me, nor is the command to not covet my neighbor’s things, nor to delay burial overnight, nor to build the altar with stones hewn by metal, and so forth.
Does this mean I’m free to murder? No, of course not. It’s just saying that the laws (all 613, not just 10) given to the Jewish nation are not the laws that have jurisdiction over me as a Christian. If as a U.S. citizen I refuse to murder, does that mean I’m obeying British law about murder? No, of course not. I guess I’m obeying American law. Likewise I’m not obeying law given to Jews when I don’t murder — I’m obeying the law of Christ to love my neighbor.
No?
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Rasqual, I’m not sure what your point is. Sure, there are other laws in the Bible which apply to Christians, such as those of the Noahic covenant (e.g. I don’t eat blood), in which the cultural mandate is restated with additional conditions made because of human violence. As a system, “the law” has no jurisdiction over Christian, seeing as the Christ has fulfilled it and His people are not under law but under grace. The ceremonial law was only a picture, and the Messiah, who is its fulfilment and reality, has already arrived and done away with it. The Ten Commandments, however, clearly express the moral nature of God and His will for people. God’s character hasn’t changed, His law is still summarized by love to God and love to one’s neighbour, and abortion is clearly “illegal” (out of bounds, not allowed).
My point with Ex-GOP is that if the Maker and Upholder of the universe has already clearly told people how to live with each other but they don’t listen, then who are we to think that we will ever achieve complete success (as Ex-GOP seems to imply). I’ve told Ex-GOP before that I don’t like what I see as his great faith in the civil government (and so, also, in human nature) and his apparent disparaging of the Word of God (especially as it is preached by His Church, telling people how they are to live, also with regard to sexual abstinence). America is not his eternal habitation, secular humanists will never create utopia, and the kingdom of heaven will not be fully realized until Judgement Day. This world is not his home; he is in the world but not of the world.
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Oh I’m with ya on all that. I just don’t get how only 10 of 613 commandments apply to Derrr unless s/he’s Jewish. “They express the will of God and as such apply to [us]?” My problem would be with the “as such.” All 613 expressed the will of God to the nation of Israel. Yet “as such” few Christians would say that all 613 apply to us. Same logic — inconsistently applied.
I’ve been among the Dutch Reformed for many years now. Fine people, and among evangelicals the conservative Reformed traditions are pretty solid. But — argh — they, too, are hung up on the 10 commandments. I’ve never understood it.
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I guess I didn’t express myself well, Rasqual. I don’t know how many commandments are given in the Bible (613, you say), nor am I exactly sure of what constitutes a commandment (e.g. is Gal. 5:19 a commandment). What I do know is that some commandments were intended to govern Israel as a theocratic nation, and we are on this blog talking about a different nation, the United States of America. So those laws do not apply to us, at least not directly. (They do apply indirectly because they do contain principles of justice that were also incorporated into laws for the United States.)
I also know that many laws were ceremonial and pictured the Christ and the Atonement. They’re now as obsolete as the temple, Passover, circumcision, and Levitical priesthood.
However, the Ten Commandments are clearly moral. Except for the Fourth Commandment, they’re all repeated in the New Testament, but the Fourth Commandment is a creation ordinance so that it is still in effect (except that the day of rest is now the first instead of the seventh). Even Paul’s letter to the Galatians, which is so concerned to emphasize that believers are free of the law, repeats some of the moral law. See Gal. 5:18-21. How can it be otherwise? God hasn’t changed, believers are now free to do His will, and the moral law (Ten Commandments) is the expression of His revealed will. Christians keep the law out of thankfulness, not out of compulsion (in a futile attempt to earn salvation).
The Christ summarized the first table of the Ten Commandments, the first four, as love to God, the greatest commandment. He summarized the second table, the last six, as love to one’s neighbour.
The Ten Commandments apply to everyone. We are all sinners. How do we know our sin? from the law of God. We can’t keep it perfectly. The legalistic Pharisees thought they did, but the Christ explained to them in the Sermon on the Mount that fulfillment meant the spirit of the law, not merely its letter. Christians are free from the curse of the law because of the perfect law-keeping of the Christ. Unbelievers are still under the curse of the law, however, and unless they get representation from the Mediator, they will die eternally.
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Jon – this has nothing to do with faith in civil government or a disparaging the word of God – and it is unfortunate that you take one statement, make about 12 assumptions, and run down the road with it.
My point is only this –
Let’s say there are 100 people who aren’t Christians, aren’t married, and in relationships. You want to tell them not to have sex, contraception is bad and shouldn’t be used – and then you’re shocked as the abortion rates stay high. I’m saying that you can’t mind control the population into a certain type of behavior – so maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to outlaw contraception (as I feel you would do if you had the choice).
This has nothing to do with anything else – don’t try to make it that way. We all know we’re not going to institute Old Testament law in the US.
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Jespren: Another note about calcium, bone density, and birth control/abortion. Pregnancy/nursing does cause calcium loss, but when lactation ends women go through a rapid gaining of bone density that leaves them with stronger bones than before pregnancy.
Concern about bone density and calcium are well taken, in general. My grandmother had osteoporosis, undiagnosed for years until one of her daughters – my aunt – realized what was going on. People, doctors, included, are much more up on it now.
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So the more pregnancies and longer/more times a woman lactates the stronger her bones become.
Well, good – if I was going to be carrying around a crillion kids, I’d want stronger bones too.
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Ex-GOP said, “I’m saying that you can’t mind control the population into a certain type of behavior.”
Maybe I can’t, but God does. That’s what we believe. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away; behold, all things are become new. We want to take every thought captive to Christ. Our fight is not with flesh and blood but with the spiritual forces of darkness. We use the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. God doesn’t do mind-control as with a steam-roller, to crush and obliterate. Rather, He makes a spirit alive again; He makes it free not to sin.
If the Bible has made clear that contraception is always wrong–and after an article that I recently read I’m not sure that it has–then I’m still not in favour of making true non-abortifacient contraception illegal (in American law). I believe that using contraception, like drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco, is a matter of individual (and parental) responsibility and doesn’t impact my neighbour (which is the grounds on which the civil government can get involved). (Admittedly, the insurance system makes matters much more complicated.) I disagree with what I see as your social engineering approach, where outlawing contraception is a valid option to be considered. And that’s not how God deals with people, either: ultimately He lets those who want to go to hell have their hellish reality (unless He renews them with His spirit). And He actively sends them there too, at least in the sense that He withdraws all His goodness from them. To live apart from God is death.
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Ex-GOP said, “We all know we’re not going to institute Old Testament law in the US.”
I don’t think I was ever advocating that. It depends what you mean by “instituting Old Testament law.” Read what I wrote to Rasqual.
And, to some extent (maybe small), Old Testament law has already been instituted in the US. According to an article of October 20, 2009, by Cathy Lynn Grossman in USA TODAY, historian Bruce Feiler just says it flat-out: “Moses is bigger than Jesus.” In U.S. political and cultural history, he says, the Bible’s reluctant prophet, who leads his people out of Egyptian slavery to the promised land, outranks even Jesus. The comparison is stupid or even slanderous, but I think that Bruce Feiler meant to say that the Pentateuch was more influential than the four Gospels in the making of America.
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In U.S. political and cultural history, he says, the Bible’s reluctant prophet, who leads his people out of Egyptian slavery to the promised land, outranks even Jesus.
Well, you’ll certainly never see a Bible-thumping politician demand that we post the Beatitudes instead of the Ten Commandments in classrooms or courthouses.
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Jon: “However, the Ten Commandments are clearly moral. Except for the Fourth Commandment, they’re all repeated in the New Testament”
None of them expressed, in the NT, as binding on non-Jewish believers.
“the Fourth Commandment is a creation ordinance so that it is still in effect (except that the day of rest is now the first instead of the seventh)”
Not so fast. I suggest this text for your edification: http://goo.gl/fs7NY Haven’t read it myself — but that’s ’cause it’d be preaching to the choir in my case. ;-)
The distinctions between “moral” and “ceremonial” are rationalizations, not something we see in the text itself. As Christians concerned with integrity, we ought not engage in eisegesis.
As for Gal. 5:18-21, I might as well say it “repeats” some of the code of Hammurabi. In the text Paul says these are “obvious” moral issues. He clearly cites behaviors outside the 10 commandments, which could mean that by “obvious” he’s referring to natural law. From the text, we can’t assert that but neither can we assert that his list is a “repetition” of any of the 613 commandments.
Paul frequently seems to invoke natural law. This locus is not obviously an exception, and at any rate has no internal support for your characterization. Mere concurrence with some moral principles from Mosaic law isn’t really demonstrative, since in Paul’s writings we see overlap between what he seems to consider “obvious” natural law and Mosaic law.
It’s not entirely surprising that Paul would invoke natural law when talking with Gentiles, avoiding any hint of obliging them to obey Jewish law — especially in this text, which is dealing with Judaizers loathed by Paul. It’s especially inept to believe that Paul is citing the law to Gentiles, here, when his entire point is to the contrary. Yet two millennia later, we make a mockery of his concern not to confuse the Mosaic and New covenants:
“and the moral law (Ten Commandments) is the expression of His revealed will. Christians keep the law out of thankfulness, not out of compulsion (in a futile attempt to earn salvation).”
That’s not in the New Testament, and your distinction of moral and ceremonial law is one you impose on the Bible (both old and new testaments), not something you derive from it. It simplifies things into nice packages, but it doesn’t represent scripture as it is.
“The Ten Commandments apply to everyone. We are all sinners. How do we know our sin? from the law of God. We can’t keep it perfectly.”
You’re right, but none of the 613 commands ever applied in any way to gentiles, nor ever to us as Christians. They were like a mirror to Israel, sure enough — but we’re looking over their shoulder. We look at their law and their subsequent history of failure — both nationally and individually. As we examine this, we’re challenged to acknowledge that we are no better and also stand in need of an ultimate solution. We find this especially true when Christ’s summary of the law forces us to face our utter failure as moral creatures, and flee for refuge to his atoning grace.
Now sure enough, Mosiac laws are often universal enough that in our own civil societies they are almost exactly represented. And Mosaic law bears great resemblence to Hammurabi (though it’s more just, such as not visiting punishments for parents onto the children). This universal character of God’s law should not be surprising on several grounds, but one effect is that we can vicariously experience the sense of failure, without going out and repeating Israel’s theocratic experiment. We align with the narrative by dint of “being there” even though we’re outside that jurisdiction — our experience is like theirs. What we lacked was a narrative that pinned our failure to divine grace both in ancient Israel and ultimately in Christ. Absent such a narrative to embrace, we’d have been left not only sinners but hopeless cynics.
“The Ten Commandments apply to everyone.”
Then the other 603 do as well. You cannot assert otherwise from scripture alone. You have to rationalize and impose an external view on the text in order to do that.
What I’m arguing doesn’t compromise Christian faith in any way. I’m not sure what you’re worried about.
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