Life Links 3/5/09

The Catholic Key blog has Archbishop Josehph’s Naumann column addressing Kathleen Sebelius’ appointment to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Kansas has one of the most restrictive laws regarding late-term abortions. Yet, it has become, in large part because of Dr. Tiller, the late-term abortion capital of the Midwest. How is this possible? It is possible because our current laws have not been enforced. Each time the Kansas Legislature has passed statutes in an effort to improve enforcement of late-term abortion restrictions, Governor Sebelius has vetoed these laws.....

The appointment of Governor Sebelius as the Secretary of HHS concerns me on many levels. With her history of support for legalized abortion and embryonic stem cell research, it is troubling the important influence that she will have on shaping health care policies for our nation.

Senator Bob Casey, Jr. (or at least his staff) is attempting to defend his vote on legislation to prevent the overturning of the Mexico City policy. Casey voted against an amendment which would have prevented international family planning funds from going to organizations which provide and promote abortions overseas. Casey spokesman Larry Smar had this to say to CNS News:

“In accordance with his pro-life views, Senator Casey voted recently to rescind Mexico City Policy, thus allowing U.S. funding of family planning services to international aid organizations,” Smar told CNSNews.com.

Except that the U.S. was already providing family planning funds to international aid organizations, just not ones who provide abortions. Smar also claimed,

“With the Helms Amendment prohibitions firmly in place, Senator Casey voted to support U.S. funding for overseas family planning precisely because it reduces the number of abortions.”

Except the only family planning he’s supporting with his vote is family planning provided by abortion promoters and I doubt Casey or Smar has any evidence that giving family planning funds to abortion providers reduces abortions more than giving funds to organizations which don’t provide and promote abortion.


A nine-year-old in Brazil who was carrying twins has had an abortion .


Jeff Jacoby compares influential philosopher Peter Singer’s view on helping the poor with his views on infanticide.

Intelligence alone will not make the world a better place, and if anyone's career proves the point, it is Singer's. Over the years, he has turned his skill to rationalizing bestiality, proposing a 28-day period during which newborns could be killed, and concluding that breeding children for spare parts is "not ... something really wrong in itself."

And why not? Once you've jettisoned the "old morality," good and evil are just a matter of opinion. "Man without God is a beast," wrote Whittaker Chambers, "never more beastly than when he is most intelligent about his beastliness."

At the Weekly Standard blog, John McCormack points out how the Washington Post and a couple of liberal bloggers incorrectly reported on Senator David Vitter’s amendment to prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving Title X funding.

The Washington Post's Mary Ann Akers writes that Vitter's amendment would "drastically cut funding for family planning programs." This is untrue. Vitter's amendment wouldn't cut contraceptive funding provided under Title X by one cent. It would merely keep money from going to Planned Parenthood, an organization that performs more than 250,000 abortions annually. Vitter simply doesn't want taxpayer dollars lining the pockets of abortionists who also prescribe birth control. If, say, some liberal senator wanted to prohibit funding for Blackwater, it wouldn't be correct to say he was "slashing" the defense budget if those funds could be spent on the same services provided by a different company.

Bernadine Healy, M.D. has a piece in U.S. News and World Report entitled, “Why Embryonic Stem Cells are Obsolete.” She mistakenly writes that embryonic stem cells caused tumors in a boy when they were actually fetal stem cells. She calls the expanding of federal funding for research on frozen embryos an “easy lift” but cautions Obama on lifting the funding ban on the creation of human embryos for research.