LifeNet

LA Times: "How the Democratic Platform Betrays Millions of the Party Faithful"

Kristen Day is the head of Democrats for Life; Camosy teaches at Fordham U. Excerpts below the link -

... the platform calls for the repeal of the Hyde and Helms amendments, which prevent taxpayer funds from being used to pay for abortions. This would force those who object to abortion to contribute to what we believe would be government-funded killing, and it would eradicate policies that have already saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

The 2016 Democratic platform is a flat-out betrayal of millions of Democrats, undoing policies that have kept us in the party working toward common progressive goals on a host of other issues.

Here are three other ways the 2016 platform betrays Democrats like us:

• It calls for repeal of all “federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman’s access to abortion.” Support for abortion rights in this platform is deemed “unequivocal.”
• The platform asserts that “reproductive health” — which includes access to “safe and legal abortion” — is “core to women’s, men’s, and young people’s health and wellbeing.”
• A commitment to religious liberty in the context of abortion, which was included in the 2012 platform, has been removed.

U.S. abortion law (which permits abortion for any reason until viability, about 22 to 23 weeks) already makes many progressive countries in Europe (which set their threshold for abortion at 12 to 13 weeks) look like pro-life radicals. Now the Democratic platform pushes the party to roll back even the very modest abortion regulations currently on the books.

And removing even a nod toward “religious liberty” from the platform puts Democrats at fundamental odds with the many religious organizations whose mission is nonviolence and protection of the most vulnerable.

In the 2008 presidential primary campaign, candidate Hillary Clinton said abortion should be safe, legal and rare. “And by rare,” Clinton emphasized, “I mean rare.” Yet her 2016 platform team has approved provisions that make access to abortion crucial to the well-being of every single person on the planet.

The Democratic Party's abortion stances have already caused many to leave the party, and many more will drop out because of the platform wording. The percentage of extreme abortion rights advocates is increasing in the party, but only because the total number of Democrats has shrunk to its lowest level since the Hoover administration.

Wesley Smith: "Euphemisms for Killing"

A good, short summary. As the late Msgr. William Smith said "Before social engineering comes verbal engineering."

The current favorite of the culture of death: "Aid in Dying."

Excerpts below; the entire article is nine paragraphs.

Words matter. The terminology we employ not only reflects our values but helps to define them. Language is particularly important in bioethical debates, in which dehumanizing verbiage can distance us from our fellow human beings.

Words also have the power to degrade the human dignity of born and grown people. A classic example is the pejorative term “vegetable,” referring to those with severe cognitive disabilities and impairments. Even the diagnostic term used to describe the condition of permanently unconscious patients—“persistent vegetative state”—is pejorative, perhaps the only explicitly demeaning medical term. (Why not use the perfectly accurate “persistent unconscious state”?) The V-word has the effect—and in some cases, indeed, the purpose—of excluding these human beings from the moral community and exposing them to oft-proposed forms of oppression and exploitation—such as allowing them to be used for live-organ harvesting and as subjects in medical experimentation.

We see the same phenomenon in our debates around end-of-life care and assisted suicide. The Dutch euthanasia practitioner Dr. M.A.M. Wachter, ethicist/director for the Institute of Health in the Netherlands, made this point explicitly when he appeared at a 1990 international euthanasia society convention. “The definitions build the road to euthanasia,” he stated, explaining that even the word “euthanasia” (“good death”) could harm the cause, because people naturally recoil from the killing act.

Thus, Wachter urged his audience to prevaricate and obfuscate: “Definitions are not neutral. They are not just the innocent tools that allow us to describe reality. Rather, they shape our perceptions of reality. They select. They emphasize. They embody a bias. Therefore, definitions constantly need redefinition.” This is precisely why the Hemlock Society, an assisted-suicide advocacy organization, changed its name to Compassion and Choices and now deploys the euphemism “aid in dying” in its media and advocacy materials.

5th PP video: intact fetusus "a matter of line items"

Further truth. Sad truth.

"My department contributes so much to the bottom line of our organizatin here."

"40 to 50 per month ... like 16 to 22 weeks."

"Heaven starts on earth. And so does Hell."

                        Archbishop Fulton Sheen

4th PP video - it just gets worse

It's important to watch these videos, but the last three minutes are tough.

Heaven starts on Earth, and so does Hell

                    Archbishop Fulton Sheen