Most of the time, people debate abortion as they would debate other issues, like international politics or national policies or the motivations behind historical events. But abortion is something very different than these other issues because at one point, each of us was at the very centre of the debate. During the 9 months each of us spent in our mother's womb, only the goodwill of our mother and the force of law (depending on where we were living) protected us. Some countries have completely demolished that legal protection. In those places, it is up to the mother to make sure her child sees the light of day.
Bear in mind that YOUR mother made sure that your life was protected. Now that you are "on the outside", pass along the good favour your mother showed you: speak up for the little people by defending the unborn child's right to life. One good turn deserves another. No to abortion; yes to life.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
The Bible and Contraception
Friday's Times carried a fair piece about the Bible and contraception. A few clarifications are in order.
Both the IUD and the "morning after" pill are not contraceptives. Contraception means "against the beginning"; that is, contraceptives work to prevent the egg and sperm meeting and starting a new life. Once the egg and sperm join, a new human life has begun. To prevent the implantation of this new life is an abortion. Thus, the IUD and the "morning after" pills are abortifacients, not contraceptives.
The Times is to be commended for saying that one of the ways the birth control pill works is by preventing implantation. Sadly, couples using the birth control pill may be aborting their children without intending it. Using the birth control pill is like standing atop the Dlanubeka building with a rifle and firing a shot in the general direction of the bus rank. One does not know if the bullet will strike and kill anyone, but one cannot be sure.
Concerning the Onan incident, listen to a portion of the booklet Birth Control and Christian Discipleship by John F. Kippley: "Biblical scholar Manuel Miguens has pointed out that a close examination [of Genesis 38] shows that God condemned Onan for the specific action he performed, not his anti-Levirate intentions. The translation 'he spilled his seed on the ground' fails to do full justice to the Hebrew expression. The Hebrew verb shichet never means to spill or waste. Rather, it means to act perversely. The text also makes it clear that his perverse action was related towards the ground, not against his brother." Kippley quotes Miguens: "...His perversion or corruption consists in his action itself, not precisely in the result and goal of his act...In a strict interpretation the text says that what was evil in the sight of the Lord was what Onan actually did (asher asah); the emphasis in this sentence of verse 10 does not fall on what he intended to achieve, but on what he did."
Every Christian church, from 33 A.D. to 1930 A.D., condemned artificial birth control in any form as gravely sinful. In 1930 the Anglican church said artificial contraception for married couples with serious reasons was acceptable. The day after the Anglican church in America made this decision, the Washington Post newspaper wrote: "Carried to its logical conclusion, the committee's report, if carried into effect, would sound the death-knoll of marriage as a holy institution by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legalized contraceptives would be 'careful and restrained' is preposterous." The fact that it is easier to get free condoms in Mbabane than it is to find a free toilet gives credibility to the Post's prediction. Is anyone under the delusion that those condoms, or the other contraceptives promoted in various quarters, are intended only for married couples with serious cause to avoid pregnancy?
Happily, for those couples who do need to delay the birth of another child, there is a method called Natural Family Planning (NFP). NFP uses some easy-to-record physical signs of the wife to know when she is fertile and when she is not. As a husband and wife become knowledgeable about her fertility, and as they consider their readiness for another child, they can decide when marital relations are appropriate and when they are not. Natural Family Planning is not the unreliable "rhythm method"; NFP works as well as any modern contraceptive technology. This is documented in the British Medical Journal by an author who studied the use of Natural Family Planning among Hindu and Muslim couples in Calcutta, India. These couples were instructed in Natural Family Planning by Mother Teresa, the famous Albanian nun who spent decades among the poorest of the poor.
Natural Family Planning, in addition to being effective, encourages couples to grow in communication, understanding, and cooperation-and surely every marriage can use more communication, understanding, and cooperation. It is acceptable to every Christian denomination, and it builds the kind of love God wants for married couples.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
Both the IUD and the "morning after" pill are not contraceptives. Contraception means "against the beginning"; that is, contraceptives work to prevent the egg and sperm meeting and starting a new life. Once the egg and sperm join, a new human life has begun. To prevent the implantation of this new life is an abortion. Thus, the IUD and the "morning after" pills are abortifacients, not contraceptives.
The Times is to be commended for saying that one of the ways the birth control pill works is by preventing implantation. Sadly, couples using the birth control pill may be aborting their children without intending it. Using the birth control pill is like standing atop the Dlanubeka building with a rifle and firing a shot in the general direction of the bus rank. One does not know if the bullet will strike and kill anyone, but one cannot be sure.
Concerning the Onan incident, listen to a portion of the booklet Birth Control and Christian Discipleship by John F. Kippley: "Biblical scholar Manuel Miguens has pointed out that a close examination [of Genesis 38] shows that God condemned Onan for the specific action he performed, not his anti-Levirate intentions. The translation 'he spilled his seed on the ground' fails to do full justice to the Hebrew expression. The Hebrew verb shichet never means to spill or waste. Rather, it means to act perversely. The text also makes it clear that his perverse action was related towards the ground, not against his brother." Kippley quotes Miguens: "...His perversion or corruption consists in his action itself, not precisely in the result and goal of his act...In a strict interpretation the text says that what was evil in the sight of the Lord was what Onan actually did (asher asah); the emphasis in this sentence of verse 10 does not fall on what he intended to achieve, but on what he did."
Every Christian church, from 33 A.D. to 1930 A.D., condemned artificial birth control in any form as gravely sinful. In 1930 the Anglican church said artificial contraception for married couples with serious reasons was acceptable. The day after the Anglican church in America made this decision, the Washington Post newspaper wrote: "Carried to its logical conclusion, the committee's report, if carried into effect, would sound the death-knoll of marriage as a holy institution by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legalized contraceptives would be 'careful and restrained' is preposterous." The fact that it is easier to get free condoms in Mbabane than it is to find a free toilet gives credibility to the Post's prediction. Is anyone under the delusion that those condoms, or the other contraceptives promoted in various quarters, are intended only for married couples with serious cause to avoid pregnancy?
Happily, for those couples who do need to delay the birth of another child, there is a method called Natural Family Planning (NFP). NFP uses some easy-to-record physical signs of the wife to know when she is fertile and when she is not. As a husband and wife become knowledgeable about her fertility, and as they consider their readiness for another child, they can decide when marital relations are appropriate and when they are not. Natural Family Planning is not the unreliable "rhythm method"; NFP works as well as any modern contraceptive technology. This is documented in the British Medical Journal by an author who studied the use of Natural Family Planning among Hindu and Muslim couples in Calcutta, India. These couples were instructed in Natural Family Planning by Mother Teresa, the famous Albanian nun who spent decades among the poorest of the poor.
Natural Family Planning, in addition to being effective, encourages couples to grow in communication, understanding, and cooperation-and surely every marriage can use more communication, understanding, and cooperation. It is acceptable to every Christian denomination, and it builds the kind of love God wants for married couples.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
Abortion and the Golden Rule
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" says the Golden Rule. This applies well to abortion. Were any of us unexpectedly pregnant, we would want others to help calm us down and find a life-affirming way forward. Given the documented damage abortion does to the women who undergo them, that way would include bringing the child to birth-and supporting the mom all along the way, and beyond. Putting ourselves in the position of an unborn child-which each of us was, once-we would certainly want others to respect us enough to protect our lives. The Golden Rule directs us to support the lives of women and their children in crisis pregnancies. No to abortion; yes to life.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
Friday, September 3, 2010
Where There is Life There is Hope
An old proverb says, "Where there is life there is hope". A football team may trail by a goal late in a match; but if time remains on the clock and determination lives in the heart of the players, there is hope for a victory. Someone may suffer life-threatening injuries in a car collision; but as long as their heart beats and they possess the will to live, there is hope for recovery. Firefighters enter burning buildings to rescue the trapped and injured. Why do they do this? Because they are convinced that life is valuable, and as long as there is hope that someone's life can be saved, they will run into those burning buildings.
Conceiving, bearing, and raising children is a profound act of hope: hope that their future will be better than our own, and hope that they themselves will craft a better world. Abortion extinguishes the hope that is a child, and frequently ravages the mothers who undergo the procedure. Abortion crushes hope.
Litsemba alibulali runs the venerable SiSwati saying. May Swaziland keep hope alive by protecting and nurturing mothers and children. No to abortion; yes to life and hope.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
Conceiving, bearing, and raising children is a profound act of hope: hope that their future will be better than our own, and hope that they themselves will craft a better world. Abortion extinguishes the hope that is a child, and frequently ravages the mothers who undergo the procedure. Abortion crushes hope.
Litsemba alibulali runs the venerable SiSwati saying. May Swaziland keep hope alive by protecting and nurturing mothers and children. No to abortion; yes to life and hope.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
Pain is Temporary, Pride is Forever
A mother with an unplanned pregnancy may face tremendous challenges: Will my husband/boyfriend support this child? What might her friends or parents think? If she has a career, she might worry that being pregnant and then having a child will disrupt her work life. If she has no job and the father is not helping, how will she pay the baby expenses?
These and other obstacles can bring strong pressure to choose abortion. It would seem that the abortion will solve all those problems, and that life for that mother will return to normal. The statistics on physical, emotional, and mental health on post-aborted women indicate otherwise.
Women who have an unplanned baby may indeed face a difficult road. Yet the pain of carrying and birthing an unexpected baby can be overwhelmed by the pride of protecting and nurturing that new human person. Some women who have conceived children under the worst circumstance-being raped-have reported that carrying the child to birth helped them rebuild their self respect after that horrible experience.
It is always best to wait until marriage for having sex, so that children enjoy the stability and support of both parents. But should a woman get pregnant without having a husband, let us support her and her child through the hardships. In the end she-and the rest of us-will enjoy the lasting pride of helping others through temporary difficulties. No to abortion; yes to love and life.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
These and other obstacles can bring strong pressure to choose abortion. It would seem that the abortion will solve all those problems, and that life for that mother will return to normal. The statistics on physical, emotional, and mental health on post-aborted women indicate otherwise.
Women who have an unplanned baby may indeed face a difficult road. Yet the pain of carrying and birthing an unexpected baby can be overwhelmed by the pride of protecting and nurturing that new human person. Some women who have conceived children under the worst circumstance-being raped-have reported that carrying the child to birth helped them rebuild their self respect after that horrible experience.
It is always best to wait until marriage for having sex, so that children enjoy the stability and support of both parents. But should a woman get pregnant without having a husband, let us support her and her child through the hardships. In the end she-and the rest of us-will enjoy the lasting pride of helping others through temporary difficulties. No to abortion; yes to love and life.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Abortion Threatens All of Us
Though abortion takes life at its earliest stages, it inevitably threatens human life at all stages. If a society permits the taking of innocent human life before birth, there is no logical reason for not taking human life at any time after birth. This dynamic is already at work in places like the Netherlands, where (for instance) a doctor visited an elderly patient's home and found the patient had a cough. The doctor then gave the patient an injection, which killed him in an hour. The wife of the man called their regular doctor and told him through her tears “Doctor, Doctor, why did he kill John? John didn’t want to die.” Such activity is not prosecuted in the Netherlands; incredibly, what this doctor did was legal, and he suffered no legal consequences.
In another case in the Netherlands, a doctor escorted his patient, who had cancer, to the hospital on a Friday. He told his patient that on Monday, they would talk about what treatment plan to pursue. When he returned on Monday, he did not find his patient in her bed. “Where did you move Mrs. VanderHoff?” asked the doctor. “Oh, we euthanised [killed] her yesterday”, replied the doctor on duty over the weekend. “You what?” said the astonished doctor. “Well," explained the weekend MD, "we euthanised her yesterday. Look, Doctor, she wasn’t going to make it anyway, she had metastatic cancer.” “Well, yes I know, but she wasn’t in pain. She hadn’t even been treated yet”, said the regular doctor. “Well, that may be, but in any case, we needed the bed” was the final word from the guy on duty on the weekend.
Drawing on the work of Dr. Karl Gunning, founder and president of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Life, Dr. John Willke reports that "A little more than 130,000 people die in the Netherlands every year. Twenty-five thousand is the number that he [Gunning] says are killed by doctors. Worse yet, half of these are killed without the patient’s knowledge or consent." Willke explains that "If you are admitted to a hospital in Holland and you happen to have gray hair, it will not be long before a person will call on you and for a modest fee, they will watch your case to insure that your doctor does not kill you. Many senior citizens in Holland carry a card in their wallet, protesting that they do not want to be killed and that they do want care."
Pro-life speaker Alan Keyes once explained that "You cannot destroy respect for life in principle, and expect to sustain that respect in fact." Abortion spells death for the unborn; once it is socially accepted, it threatens untimely death for the rest of us. May this nation respect life in the womb; for if it does not, human life outside the womb will fall under attack too. No to abortion; yes to life.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
In another case in the Netherlands, a doctor escorted his patient, who had cancer, to the hospital on a Friday. He told his patient that on Monday, they would talk about what treatment plan to pursue. When he returned on Monday, he did not find his patient in her bed. “Where did you move Mrs. VanderHoff?” asked the doctor. “Oh, we euthanised [killed] her yesterday”, replied the doctor on duty over the weekend. “You what?” said the astonished doctor. “Well," explained the weekend MD, "we euthanised her yesterday. Look, Doctor, she wasn’t going to make it anyway, she had metastatic cancer.” “Well, yes I know, but she wasn’t in pain. She hadn’t even been treated yet”, said the regular doctor. “Well, that may be, but in any case, we needed the bed” was the final word from the guy on duty on the weekend.
Drawing on the work of Dr. Karl Gunning, founder and president of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Life, Dr. John Willke reports that "A little more than 130,000 people die in the Netherlands every year. Twenty-five thousand is the number that he [Gunning] says are killed by doctors. Worse yet, half of these are killed without the patient’s knowledge or consent." Willke explains that "If you are admitted to a hospital in Holland and you happen to have gray hair, it will not be long before a person will call on you and for a modest fee, they will watch your case to insure that your doctor does not kill you. Many senior citizens in Holland carry a card in their wallet, protesting that they do not want to be killed and that they do want care."
Pro-life speaker Alan Keyes once explained that "You cannot destroy respect for life in principle, and expect to sustain that respect in fact." Abortion spells death for the unborn; once it is socially accepted, it threatens untimely death for the rest of us. May this nation respect life in the womb; for if it does not, human life outside the womb will fall under attack too. No to abortion; yes to life.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Pro-Woman, Pro-Life
To be pro-life is to be pro-woman. Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, puts it this way: "We do not say, 'Love the baby and forget about the mother.' Rather, we say 'Why can't we love them both?' We can and we must. To harm one is to harm the other; to love and serve one is to love and serve the other." Priests for Life takes this approach based on the leadership of a remarkable Christian leader who died about 5 years ago, Pope John Paul II. In his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, the Pope said "in firmly rejecting 'pro-choice', it is necessary to become courageously 'pro woman,' promoting a choice that is truly in favor of women...The only honest stance...is that of radical solidarity with the woman."
Let all people of good will work for the genuine welfare of both women and children. No to abortion; yes to life.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
Let all people of good will work for the genuine welfare of both women and children. No to abortion; yes to life.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
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