Dr. Phil regretted his vasectomy

I'm totally late on this, as the article is dated in December, but still very interesting!

This is why doctors are so reluctant to give young men vasectomies:

Catholics can be really cheap

Fr. Eusebio Tubale in a 1998 homily given at St. John the Baptist Church, Estevan, Saskatchewan:

"You go out Saturday night and spend 20 dollars on a movie and 30 dollars on dinner, then come to Mass the next morning and put two dollars into the collection plate".

Source

Of course, it would help if the priests gave better homilies, but anyhoo...

Moving away from the "choice" mantra

Many feminists are moving away from the "choice" mantra for many reasons, including the idea that sometimes an abortion isn't truly a woman's choice.

But choice was the concept that led to the legalization of abortion.

Pro-lifers warned that women would be coereced or reduced into having abortions.

But we were dismissed.

And now abortioneers talk about "not doing abortions for boyfriends" and teary-eyed women talk about having been forced to have an abortion by parents.

And you can see the same thing coming with euthanasia.

How voluntary is “voluntary”?:

However, in the latest issue of the JLM a criminologist at the University of Tasmania has made a vigorous response. Jeremy Prichard doubts that many people in the community will be able to give full and voluntary consent to ending their lives. He contends that the growing prevalence of elder abuse suggests that aged people could easily be manipulated.

“Such procedures may be safe for socially connected, financially independent individuals with high autonomy and self-efficacy,” he writes, but “circumstances may be entirely different for isolated patients with low self-efficacy who represent an unwanted burden to their carers, some of whom may benefit financially from the death of the patient (even just in a reduction of financial pressure).”

Remember the therapeutic abortion committees? They were supposed to be the abortion gatekeepers, making sure that every abortion was truly needed and that all the criteria were met before a woman had one.

We now know what a farce that was.

You can be sure death panels-- or whatever they choose to call it-- will essentially be the same thing. People will say they want to die but they don't really want to. And the panel will rubber stamp it.

Eventually pro-lifers will be proven right yet again. And right-to-die people will move away from the choice mantra and come up with some Orwellian phrase to re-frame their cause.

Autonomy as an absolute is a false god.

From Pro-Life to Pro-Open-to-Life

Twenty years ago, when pro-lifers spoke about the abortion issue, they treated the contraception issue as separate.

Big mistake.

More and more we are coming to the realization that both are linked.

And that there needs to be a discussion about “contraception”.

I put “contraception” in quotation marks, because contraception is just the symbol of the issue, it’s not the issue itself.

Contraception is the symbol of being closed to life.

From a moral standpoint, the use of contraception is intrinsically disordered. But one could use NFP, which is not intrinsically disordered, and achieve the same end, and it would still be a sin.

And on a collective scale, it would still result in abortions.

For this reason, we have to have a discussion about openness to life.

There are lots of people in favour of fetal rights who contracept. They don’t see the connection between sexuality and openness to life. They wouldn’t dream of killing their unborn child, but their lifestyles and their thinking are built on the idea of having children only when they want and under the desired circumstances.

If people who support our cause can’t see the problem with that, how do we expect to change the culture?

Because we’re going to have to design some means of communicating the truth of openness to life.

I don’t know how that’s going to happen. Our modern lives are all about autonomy and control. We perceive our personal dignity as wrapped up in the ability to make any decisions we want about any aspect of our lives. It’s easy enough to convince people if all they have to do is change their thought patterns. But once you are convinced that you need to be open to life, you have to radically change your lifestyle. You can’t just take a pill and pretend you will never get pregnant without planning it. That’s an illusion in any event, but a heck of a lot of people believe it and plan their lives around it. When you look into the future and think Gee, I might get pregnant in the next five, ten, or fifteen years-- the future looks a lot murkier and uncertain than if you think your IUD will get you through it.

This is something we have to tackle as a pro-life movement. Not only the morality part of it-- but the lifestyle part-- how do you convince people to change their lives so that being open to life isn’t some kind of moralistic burden, but actually a source of fulfillment and happiness?

If we don’t answer that question, we might be able to get fetal rights laws passed, but the Culture of Life necessary to enforce those laws will not take, and I guarantee that our victories will be short-lived because people will want to go back to being able to control everything about their lives. This is exactly what is going on right now in the Third World. As contraception is pushed more and more, as people become less and less open to life, abortions are becoming a perceived necessity, even though the Third World’s openness to life has been its strength. We have to find a way to turn the tide on this particular aspect of the Culture of Death.

Important legal victory for Bill Whatcott

I tell you, Bill Whatcott will go down in pro-life history as an important figure, like him or hate him.

Judge upholds anti-gay protester’s right to hand out pamphlets at U of C

[Judge]Bascom had concluded in his decision that “preventing the peaceful distribution of leaflets that an individual attendee finds offensive does not relate to an objective that is pressing and substantial.”

“It is therefore not of sufficient importance to override a constitutionally protected right,” said Bascom, adding he found that banning Whatcott was arbitrary and unfair.

Bascom had determined the means used by campus security halted Whatcott’s distribution of the flyers and violated his right of free expression.