The Evolution of Abortion

(www.RemnantNewspaper.com) According to The Independent, UK (Nov. 5, 2006), doctors are urging British health regulators to consider allowing the "active euthanasia" of severely disabled newborn babies. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology has put forward the option of permitting mercy killings of the sickest infants to a review of medical ethics. Stating that "active euthanasia" should be considered for the overall benefit of families who would otherwise suffer years of emotional and financial suffering, the College also proposes the idea that deliberate action to end infants' lives may also reduce the number of late abortions, “as some parents would be more confident about continuing a pregnancy and taking a risk on outcome.”

"A very disabled child can mean a disabled family. If life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants were available, they might have an impact on obstetric decision-making," the College writes in a submission to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. They continue, “We would like the working party to think more radically about non-resuscitation, withdrawal of treatment decisions, the best interests test, and active euthanasia, as they are ways of widening the management options available to the sickest of newborns."

John Harris, a member of the official Human Genetics Commission and professor of bioethics at Manchester University, welcomed the Royal College's submission. "We can terminate for serious foetal abnormality up to term, but cannot kill a newborn," he told The Sunday Times. "What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it OK to kill the foetus at one end of the birth canal but not the other?"

But the Royal College’s paper also quoted John Wyatt, consultant neonatologist at University College Hospital, as saying: "Intentional killing is not part of medical care... once you introduce the possibility of intentional killing you change the fundamental nature of medicine. It becomes a subjective decision of whose life is worthwhile."

Simone Aspis of the British Council of Disabled People concurs with Wyatt: "Euthanasia for disabled newborns tells society that being born disabled is a bad thing. If we introduced euthanasia for certain conditions, it would tell adults with those conditions that they are worth less than other members of society."

Comment: You know the world has been turned on its head when the single most incisive comment on the madness of abortion comes from the mouth of someone who not only supports it, but would murder infants who have already been born. Read again the comment by bioethics professor John Harris: “What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it OK to kill the foetus at one end of the birth canal but not the other?"

The in-utero “fetus” ... that same “fetus” when it is five minutes old ... that same “fetus” when it is ten years old ... that same “fetus” when it is fifty years old ... They are the same being.  Harris’ logic is backed-up by his own terminology. He laments outright the fact that doctors cannot “kill a newborn.” In fact, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology talks about “life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants.” No vague terminology, just the fact of abortion as infanticide. You almost have to respect their honesty.

The document, Response of the Ethics Committee of the Royal College of Obstetricians and  Gynaecologist to Nuffield Council on Bioethics Consultation Document: The Ethics of Prolonging Life in Fetuses and the Newborn ventures into territory which is outside the authoritative scope of the medical profession – namely, the “moral status” of the unborn. Section 2 of the document states:

Even if the fetus has full moral status (which is not averred), the RCOG Ethics Committee believes that this makes no difference to laws regarding the freedom of pregnant women. Although there may be few developmental differences we see a real difference between being inside and outside, between the ‘almost-born’ and ‘just-born’.  Although there may be a political impetus to treat the fetus as a child, as referred in our joint discussion, this should be resisted.

The unique spiritual bond between mother and unborn child is supplanted here by an unspecified and unknowable “legal moral status.”

In 1989 the film, My Left Foot, was released. It chronicled the life of Irish author, Christy Brown, who was born with cerebral palsy, and could not control either speech or movement except for his left foot. He was considered mentally disabled (and a hopeless case by the current medical establishment) until the day he snatched a piece of chalk from his sister with his left foot and began making marks on the floor with it. From that point on, his mother taught him the alphabet and, using only his left foot, Christy went on to win a children’s painting competition at age 12 and became an internationally best-selling novelist and poet.

When the doctors told Christy’s mother that her son’s situation was hopeless, she replied, "It is his body that is shattered and not his mind."  Had today’s technology been available back then, and Mrs. Brown succumbed to the “hopeless” diagnosis of the medical experts, perhaps the world might never have heard of Christy Brown. Surely, there is a crucial lesson to be learned here should anyone be tempted to cast aside common sense in favor of abstract legal discussions while discussing the “value” of life.

Germans & Dutch Bailing Out?

German author Henryk M. Broder recently told the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant (Oct. 12, 2006) that young Europeans who love freedom had better emigrate to Australia or New Zealand, because Europe as we know it will no longer exist 20 years from now. While sitting on a terrace in Berlin, Broder pointed to the other customers and the passersby and said melancholically: “We are watching the world of yesterday.” The reason? Europe is turning Muslim, which will “turn the old continent uninhabitable.”

According to Paul Belien of The Brussels Journal (Oct. 25, 2006), many Germans and Dutch are not waiting to act upon Broder’s advice. The number of emigrants leaving the Netherlands and Germany has already surpassed by the number of immigrants moving in. In 2005, 110,235 people (mostly Dutch natives) left the Netherlands, compared to 94,019 people (many of them Muslims) moving in. In the first half of this year, 53,808 people moved out, compared to 40,842 moving in. The emigrants are leaving for Western countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Scandinavia and the United States. To lose 100,000 natives a year is a serious matter for a country of 16 million, one million of whom already are Muslim immigrants.

Last April was the first month since the Second World War in which the Netherlands saw its population decline. At one time, the Dutch ranked among the most fertile populations in the world. Then, the Netherlands was considered a Christian nation. Now, its religious people are still the most fertile among its population, but these religious people are chiefly Muslims.

Germany has another demographic problem. In 2004, for the first time in recent history, the number of Germans leaving their country was greater than the number of immigrants moving in. There were 145,000 German emigrants and 128,000 immigrants. Most emigrants leave for the United States. One couple who moved to Florida told Die Welt: “Here our children have a future in which they will not have to fear unemployment and social decline.”

Henryk M. Broder is convinced that Europeans are not willing to oppose Islamization. “The dominant ethos,” he told De Volkskrant, “is perfectly voiced by the stupid blonde woman author with whom I recently debated. She said that it is sometimes better to let yourself be raped than to risk serious injuries while resisting. She said it is sometimes better to avoid fighting than run the risk of death.”

Comment: In an article titled “Education By Murder” by Daniel Pipes of The New York Sun (Nov. 16, 2004), the author examines “the slow and painful way people wake up to the problem of radical Islam.” Pipes observes the following:

It took 3,000 deaths to wake up Americans .... it took hundreds of deaths in the Bali explosion to semi-wake up Australians .... it took the Madrid assault for Spaniards, and the Beslan atrocity for Russians .... twelve workers murdered in Iraq awoke the Nepalese.

Pipes goes on to state that “one gruesome killing may have done more to arouse the Netherlands than September 11, 2001, did for Americans.” This was the murder of Theo van Gogh. Theo van Gogh, 47, a relative of Dutch painter, Vincent van Gogh, was a well-known filmmaker, television producer, talk show host, newspaper columnist and libertarian, who garnered attention by critiquing Islam in his 2003 book, Allah Knows Best, and in a 2004 film, Submission, which featured four women in long, dark transparent veils, with whip marks on their bodies, upon which were written texts describing the physical punishments sanctioned by the Koran for disobedient women.

Van Gogh was murdered on November 2, 2004 in his hometown of Amsterdam while bicycling down a busy street to work. He was shot repeatedly, stabbed in the chest and had his throat slit nearly to the point of decapitation. Police investigators realized that the assassin was an Islamist whom they knew well and had been following until just two weeks earlier, Mohammed Bouyeri, 26, a Dutch-born dual Moroccan-Dutch citizen. Bouyeri, who was reported to have connections to the Takfir wa'l-Hijra and Al Qaeda terrorist groups, was charged (along with six associates) of "conspiracy with a terrorist intent."

Mohammed Bouyeri left a five-page note, in both Arabic and Dutch, attached to Van Gogh’s body. The note, a declaration of jihad against the West, was addressed to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an ex-Muslim and Dutch parliamentarian who had received death threats for her criticism of Islam  and for having written the screenplay for Van Gogh’s Submission. The note ends with these declarations:

I surely know that you, O America, will be destroyed. I surely know that you, O Europe, will be destroyed. I surely know that you, O Holland, will be destroyed. I surely know that you, O Hirshi Ali, will be destroyed. I surely know that you, O unbelieving fundamentalists, will be destroyed.

“That a non-Muslim critic of Islam was ritually murdered for artistically expressing his views was something without precedent, not just in Holland but anywhere in the West,” observed Daniel Pipes. And the deed definitely opened some eyes. Dutch immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, one of five persons threatened, stated, "For too long we have said we had a multicultural society and everyone would simply find each other. We were too naïve in thinking people would exist in society together."

One day after Van Gogh’s murder, 20,000 demonstrators gathered to denounce the killing, while a poll found that 80% endorsed more stringent policies toward immigrants. Will the rest of Europe get the message in time?

The “Color” of the Cross?

When a black man tells you he's the son of God, it freaks people out, says Jean-Claude La Marre, 38, director and star of the film, Color of the Cross, in the San Francisco Chronicle (Nov. 7, 2006). La Marre cast himself in the lead role of the film, which opened in late October in 19 markets nationwide, in order to challenge a view of Jesus that has dominated since the Middle Ages and add to a growing body of Hollywood films with Christian themes.

"I thought dealing with Christ's crucifixion would be a good story," said La Marre. "But the one problem I had, as most black Christians have, has been the historical Hollywood depictions of Christ." La Marre said he encountered skeptical studio chiefs when he originally tried to pitch the movie, with some saying the project had no chance unless it featured an actor like Denzel Washington in the lead role. Some suggested turning the film into a modern-day hip-hop opera starring a rapper like 50 Cent.

La Marre ultimately financed the movie's $2.5 million production cost by mortgaging two houses he owned, one in Beverly Hills and the other in Miami's South Beach. "Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is, and I really believed in this picture," he said. "When you see him on the cross, it really brings you back to the Southern days when black men were hung (from trees).” La Marre then sold the film to Fox Home Entertainment, which released "The Passion of the Christ" on video.

The Rev. Cecil Murray, a black minister in Los Angeles and a professor of religion at the University of Southern California, is credited as a producer for his work as a consultant on Color of the Cross. "When they get ready to hide Jesus as a baby,” he said, “his mother and his father take him to Egypt. You can hide chocolate in the midst of chocolate. You can't hide vanilla in the midst of chocolate.”

Murray dismisses the argument that what is important is the New Testament Savior's message and not his skin color. "If they want to make him olive-skinned, fine. If they want to make him pecan-skinned, fine. But to make him white?" said Murray. "If our icon of religion – the founder of the Christian faith – looked like us, then we can't be as bad as we've been depicted."

Comment: Where do you even begin with such self-serving drivel? Do you tell the learned “reverend” that the point of the Holy Family’s exile was not to “hide chocolate in the midst of chocolate?” Do you tell him that tradition reports that Jesus, Mary and Joseph, far from spending their exile years pretending to be Egyptians, instead lived in a large and flourishing Jewish community in Heliopolis? Would it matter to someone who has such a problem with “vanilla?”

Jason B. Johnson, author of the Chronicle article, makes reference to “passages in the Book of Revelation referring to Jesus with woolly hair and bronze-colored skin.” Yet another example of talking through one’s hat. Johnson is referring to St. John’s vision of Jesus in a lame attempt to add weight to the “Jesus is Black” argument:

And in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, one like to the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the feet, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and His hairs were white, as white wool, and as snow, and His eyes were as a flame of fire, and His feet like unto fine brass, as in a burning furnace. And His voice as the sound of many waters.

St. John’s vision does not represent a “passport” photo of Jesus Christ. It is a mystical vision, replete with layers of meaning. The hair, “as white as wool,” speaks of the eternal nature of Christ, of Jesus as the Ancient of Days, as per Daniel’s vision of the Four Great Beasts:

I beheld till thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days sat: His garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like clean wool: His throne like flames of fire: the wheels of it like a burning fire. (Dan. 7:9)

As for the “feet like unto fine brass,” Fr. Haydock says that this image represents the “purity and steadfastness of His steps and actions.” A quote from the “Reverend” Paul Gawlowski of San Francisco’s St. Paul of the Shipwreck Church says it all: 

[Jesus] picked the Hebrew people, who had a history of oppression and slavery, so it's entirely likely that if Christ came back today, at least in America, he'd be African American, perhaps someone of Latino heritage.

Ah, yes, the “Mr. Potato-Head Christ.” Dress him up any way you want, kids! Such people do not believe in the true Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Who was forever united to His humanity in the womb of the Virgin Mary. They want some bodiless “Jesus” who can reincarnate again and again into any number of forms. Such is the philosophy behind Color of the Cross. It’s not about Christ. It’s not about Truth. It’s about  me .... Me .... ME!

The most amusing line in Johnson’s article comes when he says that the color of Jesus’ skin is “a long-simmering debate in churches and universities across the country.” Sure. Regular saloon brawls over that one. It’s all so simple, really. St. Paul tells us that Jesus Christ was made “of the seed of David, according to the flesh.” Figure it out.

Medieval Abbey Found Under Popular Market

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