A Culture of Death Flowing Through Our Veins

Life Comes From God Alone

Humans Owe It Reverence

The problem is not abortion. Abortion is the symptom of the problem you and I have. We have lost God as maker.

Christopher Esget
The Federalist

[The following is a sermon given before Divine Service — the service of the Word and Sacrament — before the listeners participated in today’s March for Life in Washington, DC.]

“This man dealt treacherously with our people, and oppressed our forefathers, making them expose their babies, so that they might not live” (Acts 7:19). “So that they might not live.” That’s the first martyr, Stephen. Recounting the slaughter of Hebrew babies, Stephen uses an interesting expression. “So that they might not live.”

It’s the same expression used in today’s epistle: “I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things.” “Who gives life.” It’s all built on the word Zoē—like the girl’s name Zoe, or zoology. You go to a zoo to see living things.

When that word is used about humans, it means a decision about leaving someone alive. Pharaoh exposed the Hebrew babies, “So that they might not live.” He didn’t leave them alive.

But whenever it means to give life, God is the subject, the doer. “I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life.” Man cannot give life, we can only let live—or not let live, a.k.a. murder. Only God can give life. Only God has the power of life in himself.

St. Irenaeus said, “God makes, man is made.” Deus facit, homo fit.

That’s the problem: that we have forgotten we are made. Made by God. Yes, yes, you believe in creation. But don’t run so quickly past it. Psalm 100 hints at the implications: “Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.”

The godless philosophy of our age has cast aside God for the myth of mutation. And make no mistake, that’s not science, that’s philosophy masquerading as science. “It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves”—but we ourselves cast aside God with every act of covetousness. We rebel against our Father when we calculate how much money a child will cost, as though He who gives life will not give us our daily bread. We rebel against our Father when we look at evil images, as though a human body is an object to be used and discarded. We rebel against our Father when we worry about tomorrow, as though He does not order our days.

The Orcs Are Returning to Modor

Infanticide Is The Historical Hallmark Of A Pagan Culture

Judeo-Christian principles helped to form our culture, and Christianity is deeply pro-life. Until now, restraining evil as Christianity defines it bound Americans together with a common creed.

By Georgi Boorman

The Federalist

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, who just made deeply troubling comments on abortion, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who just signed the country’s most radical abortion law, have been the subject of intense ire in recent days. The outrage is coming not just coming from “radical” pro-lifers, but people from across the political spectrum.

Why? Because virtually no one but the far left believes it is morally acceptable to allow infants to be murdered seconds before birth, or to be left to die after delivery at the behest of the mother. Yet the nation has been shocked by the radical left’s boldness in their mission to define preborn human beings as disposable non-persons. Where is this evil coming from, and how do we stop it?

The Slaughter of the Young and the Elderly

Abortion and infanticide have historically been common practices. In the first century AD, infanticide was a common and culturally accepted practice across the world. The murder of infants was a regular occurrence in Europe into the Middle Ages and beyond, despite being condemned by both church and state.

The practice was not confined to the desperate, illiterate, impoverished masses, as if “enlightened” thinkers knew better. The Twelve Tables of Roman Law, admired by Cicero, contains the command that, “A dreadfully deformed child shall be quickly killed.”

Likewise, the wealthy first century Roman philosopher Seneca once wrote, “We doom scabby sheep to the knife, lest they should infect our flocks. We destroy monstrous births, and we also drown our children if they are born weakly or unnaturally formed; to separate what is useless from what is sound is an act, not of anger, but of reason.”

A Movie So Compelling Hollywood Had To Ignore It

“Gosnell” Movie Breaks Top 10 Nationally Despite Media Blackout

Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com

Despite a media blackout and virtually no coverage outside conservative media circles, the new movie “Gosnell” made the list of top 10 movies across the United States over the weekend. Coming in at the #10 spot, Gosnell came in ahead of other movies with much wider releases — as the film is appearing in just 673 theaters nationwide.

CDespite the more limited release, Gosnell outperformed A Simple Favor, The Nun,  and the blockbuster film Crazy Rich Asians. Every other movie except for one that appeared higher in the weekend top 10 list was shown to Americans in thousands of theaters. It was also the only movie to gain in audience on Sunday, with over $1.23 million in ticket sales though the weekend. Every other movie saw a Sunday dropoff.

Had Gosnell opened in 2,800 theaters like other movies in the top 10 list it would have finished in 7th place for the weekend — making it more popular per theater than The House With a Clock in Its Walls and Bad Times at the El Royale.

But those who are watching the movie are giving in tremendously high ratings. It has a 67% rating at Rotten Tomatoes and 99% of those viewing it said they liked it. Here are some of the reviews:

“Well-acted and compelling. Even without going full-on graphic, the film achieves real power,” says Mike McGranaghan.

“Perhaps we should be glad that mainstream Hollywood, just like the mainstream media, had no interest in this story. It’s almost impossible to believe they would have told it so well,” adds Megan Basham.

And Christian Toto adds: “Gosnell delivers one of the most chilling portraits of evil we’ve seen in ages.”

Gosnell unmasks the shocking true story of the investigation and trial of Kermit Gosnell, a man who performed countless illegal, late-term abortions and murdered several born children as well.

He is the abortion practitioner who killed babies in live-birth abortions that were more akin to infanticide than abortion. The media virtually ignored Kermit Gosnell until the pro-life movement launched a concerned effort to call them out on their bias during the early stages of his trial for murder.

Another Step In the Long March

US House of Representatives Votes to Require Doctors to Help Babies That Survive Abortion

by Kimberly Leonard
Washington Examiner

The House passed legislation Friday that obligates healthcare workers to provide a specific level of care to babies who are born alive after an abortion attempt.  The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Act passed the same day that the annual March for Life rally was being held in Washington, D.C., which protests abortion on or around the anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal nationwide.  The bill passed 241-183, with help from just six Democrats.

The legislation would hold any healthcare provider at the scene criminally accountable if an abortion is botched and a baby is born, and the provider fails to help the infant. Actions they could take include bringing a baby to a hospital or using the same type of medical care that they would toward a baby that is born premature.

The bill, which passed by the House in 2015 but not the Senate, is an expansion on legislation passed in 2002 and signed by former President George W. Bush, which gave legal standing to infants born alive following a failed abortion. . . .

But Republicans said the legislation was necessary and told stories of babies who had been born alive after a failed abortion and were left to die on a clinic floor or in a garbage bag.

More On Charlie Gard

The Vatican’s Statement on the Charlie Gard Case Is a Disgrace

If the Church cannot stand for the family against the courts, who will?

By Michael Brendan Dougherty
National Review Online


Charlie Gard, an infant, is going to die without a treatment that his parents wish to deploy against his mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, a treatment that they can afford thanks to the generosity of others. The highest court in Europe has sided with the English hospital’s wishes that Charlie “die with dignity” over his parents’ wish that he be released into their custody to try an experimental treatment in America. Further, it is decided by the principalities and powers that Charlie is going to die in that hospital even though his parents would at least wish for him to come home with them.

Millions of people have been following this unfolding tragedy. And there is quite a lot of sensationalism in the press coverage. But not just in the press coverage. Gard’s parents, knowing that so many are rooting for them and praying for them, have released videos on YouTube, which I can barely bring myself to watch. They have a hostage-situation feel that is Kafkaesque.

Barbaric Self-Deification of the State

The Horror of Socialized Medicine

European Courts Sentence a Baby to Death

Matt Walsh
TheBlaze




There’s a horrific case over in the U.K. that hasn’t gotten a ton of attention here, but it should. If we look closely, we may see our future — and our present.

Charlie Gard is a 10-month-old baby who suffers from a rare genetic disorder called mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. It’s a horrendous condition that leads to organ malfunction, brain damage, and other symptoms. The hospital that had been treating the boy, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, made the determination that nothing more can be done for him and he must be taken off of life support. He should “die with dignity,” they said. The parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, disagreed.

This is the very crucial thing to understand: they are not insisting that GOSH be forced to keep Charlie on life support. Rather, they want to take him out of the hospital and to America to undergo a form of experimental therapy that a doctor here had already agreed to administer.

A Hapless Walking Contradiction

Post-Modern Hypocrites

In our pomo-age some professions and careers have ceased to have any meaningful existence.  "Ethicist" is one.  Why, in the post-modern world should we have any regard for ethicists?  It's like having the career of a handsome cab builder--quaint, but hardly relevant.

It was this challenge which immediately came top of mind when we read the following piece:

Killing Babies No Different From Abortion, "Experts" Say

Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued. [Our emphasis.]

By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent
The Telegraph

The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.

Aghast

Planned Parenthood Clinic Cut Through Dead Baby’s Face to Get His Intact Brain

[Sometimes we are confronted with an evil so horrific that we feel compelled to plead for the vials of God's just vengeance to be poured out. "Have regard for the covenant, for the dark places of the land are full of the habitation of violence. . . . Arise, O God.  Defend your cause; remember how the foolish scoff at you all the day."  (Psalm 74:20, 22) Ed.]

by Austin Ruse 

Breitbart News

In the latest video produced by the Center for Medical Progress, Holly O’Donnell describes a medical technician using scissors to cut through the face of a newly aborted but nearly fully developed baby boy at a Planned Parenthood facility so that his intact brain could be extracted.

O’Donnell says that the technician could also make the boy’s heart beat.

Planned Parenthood is working hard to counter the steady drip of damning videos produced by the Center for Medical Progress, but not even the highest priced Washington, D.C. flacks are likely to be able to erase the thought picture of someone cutting through a child’s face with scissors.

Holly O’Donnell and her Planned Parenthood colleague were harvesting organs that day at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, a mega-clinic in San Jose, California that has an annual budget of $100 million or 10 percent of the national organization.

O’Donnell, who turned whistleblower after leaving StemExpress, said the child was the most fully developed she had seen up to that point. She describes in great detail how the newly aborted boy was rinsed off and prepared for dissection.

Not so Fast

Tweaks to China's One-Child Monstrosity

The Chinese government announced some changes to their one-child policy and to labour camps.  Everyone in the West was excited--well, sort of.  Things might be looking up.  Firstly, the changes to the one-child policy.

Far from sweeping away all family planning rules, the party is now providing a new, limited exemption: It said families in which at least one parent was an only child would be allowed to have a second child. Previously, both parents had to be an only child to qualify for this exemption. Rural couples also are allowed two children if their first-born child is a girl, an exemption allowed in 1984 as part of the last substantive changes to the policy. [NZ Herald]

The Herald article is right on the nose.  This represents just a minor tweak to an horrendous policy.  Wendy Wright reports how the Chinese government itself quickly rushed to qualify and downplay the change.

More Infanticide

The Tip of the Iceberg?

We have profiled the case of Dr Kermit Gosnell, the doctor convicted of murdering babies of the poor.  The media pretty much ignored the story because it would have brought disrepute to the noble trade of abortion.  A "woman's right to choose" is not to be impugned by a few murdered babies.  In all struggles, collateral damage occurs.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.

But word did get out.  The alternative media did a stirling job.  Those who care about such things all know the name Kermit Gosnell now--what he did, and what he represents.

As expected, other cases are now coming to light.  This, from Justin Taylor:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Our Gosnell Gulag 

Culture and Politics - Sex and Culture
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, 20 April 2013


The Gosnell moment, for that is what it is, presents a clear opportunity for a real change of cultural heart. There are moments when some suppressed or ignored horror comes sharply into focus, and after that, it is not really possible to go back to the way it was before. This is what happened when Solzhenitsyn published his Gulag, for example. Something that had been successfully accommodated became impossible to accommodate any further. It was a conscience moment, which, given the nature of the case, most often come to us unsought. But they do come.

This is that kind of moment for us. This is an atrocity that has rocked even many "choice" advocates, and the media has been suppressing it for clear and obvious reasons.

Sanitized Language

From Dehumanizing Word Games to Gosnell 

By Andrew C. McCarthy
April 13, 2013
National Review Online

In Philadelphia, at a human abattoir on Lancaster Avenue, is where it ends, not where it starts. It starts with the perversion of language. It starts when the icons of a dissipated culture reduce a baby to a “fetus.” From there, Yeats’s blood-dimmed tide rolls rapidly in. Before long, a baby is not a person but a punishment, as President Barack Obama framed the matter in his familiar off-the-cuff iciness.

Of course, to describe newborn children in their boundless possibilities and wonder would be to acknowledge, foremost, their humanity. That is why, instead, abortion enthusiasts must grope for words when circumstances force them to speak publicly about their gruesome business.

Letter From America (About Dr Gosnell)

10 of the Most Shocking Allegations in the Gruesome ‘House of Horrors’ That Was Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s Abortion Clinic

Apr. 12, 2013 4:34pm Billy Hallowell
The Blaze

The details emerging from Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial are so gruesome that, based on the descriptions, one would assume they are fictional scenes from a horror movie. However, the reality is that the court case, which continues to expose the details of the alleged murders of at least seven babies, is, according to witness testimony, anything but a concocted tale.

TheBlaze first covered the case back in Jan. 2011, when we reported that Gosnell, 72, a Philadelphia-based abortion doctor, was charged with eight murders. Our coverage at the time, based on an AP report, provides just a brief overview of the horrific allegations:

Letter from the US (About Child Murder in the UK)

State Infanticide in Britain

We are all too familiar with the murder of helpless babies within the womb.  Now it is being extended.  New born babies are being murdered in the UK--all "legally" of course, under the loving embrace of the National Health Service. One UK doctor has become a whistleblower.

This report is republished from The Blaze:

UK Doctor’s Horrifying Admission Reveals How Sick & Disabled Babies Are Put on ‘Death Pathways’, Deprived of Food & Fluid for 10 Days 

Sick children and even disabled newborn babies, are reportedly being discharged from NHS hospitals in England only to die  slowly at home or in hospices in an unfathomable manner. The innocent children are being put on controversial “death pathways,” once only thought to have involved elderly and terminally ill adult patients.

Behold Our Future

Rampant Infanticide in China

The following piece has been posted on The Blaze:

Accuracy in Media‘s investigative video team put together a fascinating video discussion with Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers (WRWF). The non-partisan, international coalition works to prevent forced abortion and human trafficking in China.

During her sit-down interview, Littlejohn discussed China’s infamous one-child policy, sterilizations, forced abortion and infanticide. While these elements are troubling, they are a part of daily life for Chinese men and women forced to live under sometimes brutal circumstances. . . .
Read the complete article, here.

When human beings turn away from the Living God, ceasing to believe He is the author and sustainer of every human life, and that He has created every human being in His image, belief in something fills the vacuum.  Nine times out to ten that "something" is the state.  See where it has led in China--to brutish, ignorant, barbaric tyranny.  Remember, however, the West is separated from China by degree, not kind.

Empty Vessels Making Dull Noises

Lazy Reasoning

We have been writing and publishing pieces on the "ethicists" who have advocating the killing of unwanted infants.  Self-proclaimed liberal, David Farrar has waded in to the debate, which is most revealing.  Farrar, of course, has repeatedly advocated abortion as a woman's "right". 

But Farrar objects to the ethicists' position.  We wonder why?  He has no grounds whatsoever to sustain an objection.  Just prejudice.  Just sentimental question-begging.  Here is his argument against the "ethicists":

Dougla Wilson's Letter From America

Our Ruling Class

Sex and Culture
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, 01 March 2012

I wanted to make sure that I made at least a couple points about this particular travesty from The Journal of Medical Ethics, HA! (JMEH!).

The first point to make is that when men have lost their soul, they have not yet necessarily lost their capacity to reason. They can still say B, and do so because they said A earlier. They are exactly right that there is no moral difference between killing a child here and killing a child there. But there are two ways to remove the inconsistency -- you can say B, and then C, so on down the line until you get to H for Holocaust, or Hell, take your pick. The other way to remove the inconsistency is by repenting of having said A. God is in Heaven, and He remains just. It would serve us well to remember that God is angry at America's ruling class, with us for tolerating them.

Inevitable Expansions

The Killing Fields Extend

Two Australian ethicists have argued in the Journal of Medical Ethics that infanticide is perfectly acceptable if the newborn is not wanted.  If you happen to be a pro-abortion believer, it's hard to fault their logic.  In fact, impossible.

Now, no doubt there will be plenty of effete liberals who (at least initially) would recoil in horror at the suggestions of their ethicists.  But they will not be able to refute their arguments.  If you are prepared to "terminate" or kill a baby in the womb you will have little reason to object ten minutes after the baby emerges from the womb.  There will be those who wriggle around trying to find another sky-hook on which to hang some counter-ethical principle to justify in-uterus homicide and reject it ex-uterus--but it will all be without foundation, just a wish, a preference, a prejudice or a bias.

It's a Girl, Part II

Gendercide

Ram Mashru

Gendercide in South Asia takes many forms: baby girls are killed or abandoned if not aborted as foetuses. Girls that are not killed often suffer malnutrition and medical neglect as sons are favoured when shelter, medicine and food are scarce. Trafficking, dowry deaths, honour killings and deaths resulting from domestic violence are all further evils perpetrated against women. This femicide has led the Geneva Centre for Democratic Control of Armed Forces to report in ‘Women in an Insecure World’ that a secret genocide is being carried out against women at a time when deaths resulting from armed conflicts have decreased.

The brutal irony of femicide is that it is an evil perpetrated against girls by women.

It's a Girl!

The Three Most Deadly Words in the Language

Justin Taylor has posted the following:

A new documentary, It’s a Girl! The Three Deadliest Words in the World, explores the systematic gendercide taking place in India, China, and other areas of South Asia.

Ram Mushru, reviewing the film the Independent, writes:  “The trailer’s most chilling scene is one with an Indian woman who, unable to contain her laughter, confesses to having killed eight infant daughters.” That line makes me think of Romans 1:32: “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things [like heartless, ruthless murder---see vv. 29-31] deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”

You can watch it here:



We are thankful for the expose, the disgust, and the opposition. May it grow to an unstoppable crescendo. But don't expect much support from feminists and liberals. How can they oppose in India and China and South Asia what they promote in their own back yards as a human right?