Human persons are not to be measured quantitatively: we have no right to assume that one particular person is of more value than any other particular person, or that ten persons must necessarily be of more value than one. Such calculations are on offense to authentic personhood. Each is irreplaceable, and therefore each must be treated as an end in his or her self, and never as a means to some further end.
The journal of Pro-Life Wisconsin
“Choose Life” Wisconsin License Plate Legislation Introduced
Beginning with Florida in 2000, twenty-nine states have established “Choose Life” license plates raising over $12 million for adoption assistance. Pro-Life Wisconsin would like to see Wisconsin be the 30th state to produce and sell a “Choose Life” license plate. To that end, Representative Andre Jacque (R-De Pere) and Senator Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) have introduced companion legislation (Assembly 206 / Senate Bill 176) to establish a “Choose Life” Wisconsin specialty license plate. The bills have been referred to the transportation committees in their respective houses.
Wisconsin Family Action and Pro-Life Wisconsin have set up the bylaws of Choose Life Wisconsin, Inc. a non-profit organization which will disburse the proceeds from the sale of the plates to pregnancy care centers for adoption assistance. In addition to the regular vehicle registration fee, those who purchase the plate are required to pay a $15 fee for issuance or reissuance of the special plates and a $25 annual fee that provides funds to Choose Life Wisconsin. Initial funds will cover Department of Transportation costs of plate production, and thereafter all funds will be distributed to pregnancy care centers throughout the state.
We thank Representative Jacque and Senator Mary Lazich for introducing this long anticipated legislation establishing a “Choose Life” Wisconsin license plate to facilitate and encourage adoption as a positive, life-affirming choice for women with unplanned pregnancies.
Pro-Lifers and the Death Penalty
Should heinous baby-killers like Kermit Gosnell receive the death penalty? Shortly after the guilty verdict was announced, an angry chorus of voices said yes, the demands of justice required it. Of course, we know that Kermit Gosnell did not receive the death penalty, but hundreds of years in prison instead. Still, it raises the question: Can you be pro-life and pro-death penalty at the same time?
Undoubtedly, the man is a monster. Even abortion advocates have been quick to condemn his brutality (just how sincere they are is questionable, however). But despite the grotesqueness of his crimes, a pro-life activist named Ashley McGuire argued in the Washington Post that, no, you cannot be pro-life and pro-death penalty at the same time. Her argument is essentially that you cannot fix violence with violence—it never solves anything. A culture that kills in response to killing will be an inherently violent culture.
On the other side of the issue, it could be argued that Gosnell’s victims were innocent while he is guilty of great evil. Therefore, a death sentence in his case could be justified. It would serve as a warning to others like him, and it would help bring justice to the victims, no matter how inadequate.
I don’t propose an answer. Instead, I would like to ask you what you think. Is it against pro-life principles to demand the death penalty for unquestionably evil individuals? Does the death penalty contribute to a culture of violence? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Pro-Life Wisconsin Responds to Gosnell Verdict
BROOKFIELD, WI – Today the infamous late term abortionist, Kermit Gosnell, was found guilty of three of four counts of first degree murder in a trial that has revealed the true horror of abortion. Pro-Life Wisconsin welcomes this verdict, but condemns the hypocrisy of legal abortion in all its forms. Pro-Life Wisconsin Director of Communications, Sam Guzman, offered the following comments:
“We recognize that a baby does not have to be born to have intrinsic worth, nor does a human life have to reach a specific stage of development to bear the dignity of a person worthy of protection under the law.
While Kermit Gosnell will now suffer the due punishment for his crimes, abortion remains legal in America, free to be practiced in all 50 states throughout all nine months of pregnancy. Through legal abortion, approximately 4,000 babies die each day in the most horrific fashion, and their deaths go unpunished.
Until all babies are protected—in the womb or outside of it—justice remains to be done. It is for this justice that we will continue to fight. Pro-Life Wisconsin calls on all Americans to recognize the personhood of the unborn and end abortion once and for all.”
Yes, Gosnell is the Norm
Yesterday, I wrote about how abortion is always a bloody and ugly reality. “Doctors” like Kermit Gosnell are the norm, not the exception. Here’s more confirmation of that fact.
Soon after, police received an anonymous tip that a baby had been born alive and quickly killed at the Hialeah clinic. Investigators searched the clinic three times before they found the baby, discovering unsanitary conditions in the process. They found blood smeared on the recliner in the recovery room where Williams had given birth.49 And Ralph Gracia, a homicide detective who helped hunt for the body, tells me that the clinic “had boxes with all the [aborted fetuses] in the recovery room sitting there, resting behind the chairs where the patients would sit after their abortion. In some of them, I actually saw some small flies just hovering around the boxes.” The smell was terrible, he adds. He had to sort through each of the biomedical bags, searching among the aborted fetuses for the body of the baby who had been born alive.
Read the rest here.
The Horror of Abortion
Kermit Gosnell’s trial has shined a bright light on the horror that is the abortion industry. And that is exactly why the mainstream media is intent on ignoring it. They don’t want people to know that abortion involves stabbing and dismembering babies for profit. They don’t want people to know that abortion is a bloody and horrid thing that destroys lives. If the public at large realized what abortion really is, they might just rise up and end it once and for all.
So the media peddles the lie that Gosnell is the extreme fringe of the abortion industry and not the norm (what he did wrong, they have failed to say). They would have us believe that most abortion doctors are clean, safe, professional, and compassionate. After all, if you are in the business of “abortion care,” you must have a tender heart for women and babies. Yeah, right.
The truth is quite the opposite of this absurd fairy tale. The reality is ugly and gruesome. The reality is this.
Abortion involves tearing helpless children limb from limb, cutting spinal cords, strangling newborns, flushing babies down toilets, and leaving precious human lives to die in trash bags. It involves turning your back on those very lives that should enter the world to be loved and cherished. It means discarding them with the most callous indifference like so much garbage.
Is all this rare or uncommon? Hardly. It is all business-as-usual in the gruesome abortion industry. If you don’t believe me, check out the new Inhuman videos from Live Action. They demonstrate clearly the casual indifference toward baby killing that pervades the abortion industry.
Those involved in the abortion industry know quite well that they are killing babies. They know very well that it is not a “fetus” (What is that anyway? Like an alien?). They know it is a tiny, helpless human being. They just don’t care.
The real question is, do you?
Caring for Life
“Pro-lifers only care about babies until they are born.”
That’s a common accusation of the pro-abortion crowd toward those who defend life. On the surface, this accusation seems to make sense. There aren’t a lot of pro-life activists who work with the homeless, mentally disabled, or have prison ministries in addition to praying outside abortion clinics. But is this because pro-life activists don’t care? Hardly!
Let’s examine some of the flaws of this accusation.
First, it confuses pro-life beliefs with pro-life activism. Pro-life activists are those who dedicate the vast majority of their time and energy to ending abortion and defending the dignity of life at all stages. They feel that defending life is their calling from God, and it is the issue about which they are most passionate.
Likewise, there are many who believe in the sanctity of life but are not pro-life activists. While firmly convinced of the dignity of the unborn, these people feel called to help the homeless, feed the hungry, educate the next generation, be excellent musicians, or any number of other things. The fact that they aren’t sidewalk counseling doesn’t make them less pro-life, it just means they have a different calling.
The activist isn’t wrong for focusing solely on abortion any more than the teacher is for focusing on education. Pursuing your God-given passion is the best way to be effective. Fighting for a hundred other causes at the same time would only weaken impact. If you are called to pro-life activism, you would be foolish to fight for everything else.
Second, this accusation completely ignores the fact that some of the leading organizations and charities caring for the poor are those who embrace the Culture of Life found in the pro-life movement. The most obvious example is the Catholic church. The Catholic church is one of the chief defenders of unborn life. And yet the Catholic church is also one of the largest promoters of charity to the poor in the world.
Throughout the Church’s history, saints like Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, St. Vincent de Paul, and St. Francis of Assisi (not to mention Pope Francis) have taken a special interest in serving the poor—not in a condescending way, but in a way that acknowledges their dignity and worth as human beings made in God’s image. In other words, recognizing the humanity of the unborn logically translates into action on behalf of the poor. Caring for the unborn and caring for the poor is not an either or proposition. To say otherwise is to create a false dichotomy that is not based in reality.
Finally, this accusation is often a distraction from the inconsistency of the pro-abortion position. Abortion advocates use this argument as a red-herring, hoping to put pro-lifers on the defensive and to make them feel guilty for sidewalk counseling instead of volunteering at the local soup kitchen. But it is really those who support abortion who should be on the defensive. They are the ones who must justify how they can claim to care about human life while simultaneously destroying it en masse in the womb. Feeding thousands in Africa is meaningless if you are simultaneously promoting the the wholesale slaughter of millions of babies per year. In fact, it is the height of hypocrisy.
The Culture of Life is consistent. It says that every human life has dignity and worth, and that fighting for the unborn and feeding the poor are really two fronts in the very same battle. It is the culture of death that is inconsistent, feeding the poor while killing babies in the name of compassion.
The next time someone claims pro-lifers only care about babies, don’t be distracted or feel ashamed. Instead, kindly challenge your accuser to justify why they think only born lives are valuable. It could make for an interesting discussion.
Walter Hoye II Speaks at 2013 Spring Awards Dinner
Our keynote speaker for our 2013 Spring Awards Dinner was pro-life hero Walter Hoye II (who has been unjustly imprisoned for his pro-life work). In case you didn’t get to attend, here is his talk. Make sure your volume is up, the audio is rather soft.
“Nothing we do to defend the human person, no matter how small, is ever unfruitful or forgotten. Our actions touch other lives and move other hearts in ways we can never fully understand in this world. Don’t ever underestimate the beauty and power of the witness you give in your pro-life work.”
