IVF – Part Two

(Part One here)

“Do not be afraid
of those who kill the body
but cannot kill the soul…“? (Matthew: 10, 26-33)

It was in driving my car one day when I heard from the radio for the first time the words “fetal reduction.”? Wait a minute, what was that, that new phrase?? What did that mean?? I learned that it was designed in order to present lethal consequences to excess human embryos cultivated in vitro (which means, literally, in glass).? The process of IVF frequently results in making one multiply pregnant.? This is one of the most egregiously bad (and anticipated) consequences of the process.

Enter the doctor.? He describes at length the dangers to the mother with all of those growing babies if she continues to carry them.? He then projects hazards to the baby.? The suggestion is made that she “reduce” the pregnancy.? ?Exactly how do you reduce a pregnancy? ?Referred to as “fetal reduction” or “pregnancy reduction, or “selective reduction” by the doctors, the words are deadly masks to the uninformed.?? They are euphemisms for what is a pitiless procedure, as “choice” has been universally substituted for the word abortion.? Such babies are called “waste” babies, or “excess” babies, or “surplus” babies.? Doctors do not refer to the IVF process as abortion, but rather routinely use the word “reduction”, which is now standard language in the U.S. ?This, in my view, provides a shield over what really is happening.

Even so, it seems obvious that the determination to march to pregnancy proceeds, regardless of the potentiality of such a quagmire the mother now finds herself in, in spite of the ugly probability of “reduction.” “The whole business should have been short-circuited at the outset.? After all, the embryos are all her children!?? Some practitioners have in fact expressed concern that the parents should/must be informed of all the difficulties involved, physical, financial, and, yes, “ethical.”? (They came to this, no doubt, because of witnessing the subsequent trauma of participants.)? But are the facts good for business??

Does the mother – does the father – want to know the IVF details?? Truth is edifying; it also compels respect.? The process requires psychological metamorphosis on the part of the mother:? from frantically desiring one’s own child to destroying one’s own child for the sake of efficiency.? The Wall Street Journal referred to the new embryo as a “potential child” and notes that the decision to dispatch one or more of their own sons and daughters can require “intense soul-searching.” [i] Do I need to remind the reader that both living and condemned to death embryos have immortal souls, unique and beloved by God, the Creator, the author of all human life; yes, they are still babies.

But, societal culture has gradually learned to live side by side with abortion-on-demand up to and including the ninth month of pregnancy.? (No-the ban on partial birth abortions will not save one baby. “Abortionists simply moved to another macabre method of killing close-to-birth children.)? I pause here to mention that when this whole “my body, myself” mess began in the 1970’s feminists accused pro-life defenders of paranoia when we talked about the future and the slippery slope to late term abortions.? They asserted with considerable indignation they would never do such a thing!? What do you think we are? etc. etc.

Reduce — from six to three; from four to two; even from two to one.? We are talking about the meltdown of one’s own sons and daughters!? Most of these reductions are of twins or triplets, who, if allowed to live will do fine.? The Wall Street Journal describes the process as follows:? By means of the sonogram, the doctor examines the babies carefully to determine if there are defects of any kind.? (Comment: It makes it ever so much easier for the parents when the baby is not “perfect.”)? When nothing is found to be wrong with any of the fetuses, it becomes a question of “which is easiest to get to.”? The doctor drives a needle with potassium chloride into the chest of the babies to be discarded. ?”The fetus flails its arms and legs, then stops.”[ii] The woman gets off the table and goes home, anticipating the birth of the lucky survivor(s).? A few wipe a tear from their eye.?? Some cry.? But they do it anyway.? After all, they have viewed the babies on the sonograms.

Clinics appear to have extensive regulations regarding clean clinics, personnel, records, procedures, but not regarding the numbers of embryos to be implanted.? In an OP Ed column in the Washington Post (7/7/06), Michael Kinsley wrote that “if embryos are human beings with full human rights, fertility clinics are death camps – with a side order of cold-blooded eugenics.” [iii] As Kinsley put it, the process selects the best and destroys the rest.

Suppose you kill some, implant others, and they all die?? Now what do you do?? By the way, fertility drugs also produce multiple pregnancies.? All of this, as Cardinal (now Pope) Ratzinger stated in 1987 is part of the “unforeseeable circumstances.”? The Roman Catholic Church is always on to and ahead of the evil.? One woman gave birth to triplets, reduced by 3, “because there was no way we were going to fit six babies into our car – the logistics of the thing hit me.” [iv]

So goes contemporary childbearing.? One wonders how reducing mothers intend to explain the circumstances of these births and deaths to their children later in life.? Another generation might be aghast at what we have become.? Pope John Paul II wrote that we are in “an extremely dangerous crisis of the moral sense, which is becoming more and more incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, even when the fundamental right to life is at stake.” [v] That same Pope stated emphatically that “The power to decide what is good and what is evil does not belong to man, but to God alone.” [vi] We certainly have one colossal mess on our hands, and we have made considerable progress on the slippery slope when you consider IVF and its consequences.

[ii] Ibid

[iii] Life Site News: 7/21/06;? columnist Michael Kinsley on IVF clinics

[iv] Wall Street Journal, ibid

[v] Gospel of Life, encyclical, 1995

[vi] Veritatis Splendor, encyclical, 1993, #35

The post The Dry Wood – Hilda Nicolosi – Paring Down the Human Race: In Vitro Breeding – Part 2/3 first appeared on AirMaria.com.

IVF:? Part Three

(Part Two here)

“The Lord called me from birth:
from my mother’s womb
he gave me my name.”? (Isaiah 49: 1-6)

What’s the big deal? Have we not advanced to the point of making babies in lab dishes, so everyone can be a proud parent? I recall reading one woman’s indignation, demanding to know why the Pope did not want her to have a baby. You know some alert theologian could have jumped in at that time and presented the rock-bottom truth of our faith that, evil may not be done, even to secure some perceived good.

Some physicians have, as noted above, ethical concerns about all of this and have decided not to implant more than four embryos. This would supposedly reduce the risk of having to abort so many. “Four is the limit recommended by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine for women aged 35 to 40, although it will accept five for women older than that.”[i] Other doctors wonder if the woman has the right to expose babies in multiple pregnancies to future medical problems (and the studies continue to mount from all over the world about fetal abnormalities from IVF: birth defects, mental retardation, behavior disorders, etc.) What a high degree of “ethics” by the society above – don’t kill more than four! As opposed to “moral”, “ethical” is a nice semantic term you can take all over the place. Others express “distaste” about “reducing;” read that: uneasy.

How in the world did we get here? We got here because God’s authority continues to be completely rejected. There is societal indifference to what goes on, a disinterest in anything which does not directly affect me and my lifestyle. Is IVF more nuclear fall-out from abortion? That is one answer but incomplete; it is not the whole story. The key element was synthetic birth prevention. And, contrary to the ardent feminist denial of the facts, from the outset abortion became “backup contraception”. I remember the 60’s. I remember the triumph when the birth control pill was introduced to the world. The “women’s liberation” movement’s first plank then and now is equality is impossible without abortion. With the pill, they were jubilant. The pill would release forever a woman’s responsibility for the conception and nurturing of offspring.

Once procreation was separated from the conjugal act, the whole bowl of wax began to unfold. Pandora’s Box was shattered, freeing the evils that would bedevil mankind. Late-term pregnancy abortions gradually were accepted and are now de rigueur in certain clinics. With IVF we have arrived in contemporary America and the new world order at, to name a few: “make your own baby”, including “fetal reduction,” delayed motherhood, surrogate mothering, embryo transfer (moved embryo from one women to another), storage problems of half a million frozen embryos (90% of which do not survive their ice age,) “extra” embryos to be harvested as extra body parts; insurance coverage in many states; support groups for mothers who reduce; designer children; sex selection of children (banned in some countries;) “money-back” guarantees (frowned on by some meds); recruiters on college campuses for eggs/sperm donors (some provide photos of donors’ eyes, ears, etc., not to omit glowing intellectual and medical histories;) anonymous (drive-by) sperm donors; sperm banks; egg banks; egg donor ads, running regularly in daily newspapers, and on the Internet (“Apply on line to become an egg donor.”); the Yellow Pages; donor marketing agencies; serious medical complications from “hyper-stimulation” of ovaries to secure eggs; screening of embryos to avoid genetic hazards; cloning; cloning of human beings with other species, and on and on ad infinitum. By the by, “donors” are usually paid handsomely for selling their bodily wares. Some profess to do this for altruistic motives, to assist the childless. However, the very real probability that embryos will die or be eliminated makes that assertion of nobility something of an oxymoron.

Less I be accused of exaggeration, the above are facts gleaned from an enormous supply of material on the whole subject of IVF. At one library I pulled up relevant book lists; there were 39 under the heading of IVF. The internet is endless in its offerings of such material. Newspapers, journals are getting into this curious and controversial story, so fraught with extremes – sensationalism at its most provocative. A sub-plot showed up recently on the television series E.R., when several children gathered to meet their slightly abashed doctor “father”. Some of the “diaries,” books/journals describing a woman’s complete IVF experience, are often crude, discouraging the reader from pursuing the story line. To draw quotes from these would render their authors more attention.

Crudity is so common in our country we barely notice the daily bombardment and degradation. Subjects unmentionable are discussed casually on television at any hour. Disrobing has become an art form. In a doctor’s office recently, I saw the image of a full-term, pregnant, nude woman displayed on the cover of Newsweek (12/10/07). It was so blatantly bad–this image, casually available on the clinic coffee table. Such presentations utterly deprive women of any dignity whatsoever, pregnancy a public exposure of the most prurient type. There will be no reaction from our jaded culture. (Some maternity stores this season were displaying scanty bathing suits for advanced pregnancy.) To the more morally alert, it is just one more outrage, an execrable example of depraved media. It reminds you of the judge in the parable who “respected neither God nor man.” The result: We are all stricken with some kind of mental paralysis as we try to go about living in trendy America. We are numb. This is a kind of protective shield. How many shocks a day can an individual stand? We can’t – we don’t — ask anymore, what is next? There is no refuge to escape the panoply.

After spending several weeks on this essay, and reading more about IVF and affiliated horrors than I imagined at the beginning, I have come to the conclusion expressed well by Judy Brown of American Life League, the entire process must be outlawed, by legislatures, and if there is any dignity, integrity left in our courts, there too. We have created a monster, fulfilling what Pope Benedict anticipated and feared when he wrote Donum Vitae. Thank God, the church is always ahead of the movement of societal cultures – The gift to us Roman Catholics as well as to the world. On February 1, 2008, Pope Benedict said the following: “When human beings in the weakest and most defenseless state of their existence are selected, aborted, killed or used as pure ?biological material,’ how can it be denied that they are no longer… ?someone but something.'”[ii] This is food for thought in our over-hurried world – a world according to John Paul II with an over emphasis on “efficiency.”

[iii] reported an internet site which

Donor Sibling Registry Logo

Where are we going? What is next? The Fort Worth Star Telegram “connects children born from the same eggs or sperm.” In other words, the searcher endeavors to learn how many half-brothers and sisters he has out there somewhere – and their common sperm donor. A “Donor Sibling Registry” was established in 2000; about 19,000 people posted personal details; About 4,700 matches were found. People, the article tells us, are startled by the looks of strange children at the park sand lot, who look so much like their own child. In one search it was discovered that a single donor had sired more than 100 kids. I leave it to the imagination of the reader to follow this news into the future… Obviously there is a yawning distance between adopting a newborn infant, and utilizing an anonymous egg/sperm. As Abraham responded to the rich man seeking help from the poor Lazarus, between us there is a great chasm, so that we cannot cross over to your side.

In the last few months I have been removing stones from one of the flower gardens here in New England – stones tossed there by the builder, which prevent any flowers from taking real root. There are also roots to detach. It is hard work, though satisfying, but not complete because new dirt has to be inserted in the gaping holes. It reminds me of the indescribable lies, distortions and omissions thrown at our whole culture, the evils now so pronounced as to make it impossible for most to accept the truth about God and life. The garden is full of rocks, with long-running roots. It has been made infertile and must be cleansed and then replanted. Christ warned us that once evil is dismissed, care must be taken lest new and worse devils enter in. What is next?

The paucity of truth! What is it? “I AM the way, the truth and the life” says the Lord. American Heritage defines truth as “conformity to knowledge, fact or actuality; veracity.” The media appears to define truth through interviews (e.g., opinion); varied reports from random sources and those which are politically correct. Thus the opportunity for truth has been circumscribed. As evidenced by the prominence of IVF acceptance, the anti-Christ forces are masters of distortion. Dr. Leon Kass describes present day scientism as “soul-less”, which he says is an effort to reduce all questions of human life to the “purely material.”[iv]

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us, now and at the hour of our death!

[ii] Life Site News: from Catholic Online International News

[iii] Fort Worth Star Telegram, 3/23/08

[iv] Life Site News; 11/7/07, from a Manhattan Institute lecture

The post The Dry Wood – Hilda Nicolosi – Paring Down the Human Race: In Vitro Breeding – Part 3/3 first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Face of Pro-Life #90 – Bill O’Brien of CT Right to life with Corinn Dahm ( 30min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

Bill O’Brien, President of Connecticut Right to Life talks about the very busy upcoming legislative session in Hartford. Mentions some pro-life legislation that they are trying to start. This includes a parental notification law for abortion for minors which CT is only one of six states that do not have one. It is easier to get an abortion in CT Schools without parental consent than it is to get Tylenol. This is very important even for the safety of the child in regard to prompt response to medical and emotional complications due to the abortion. And also important in regard to child sexual abuse being exposed. Ironically, this all points out that the Pro-abortion movement ends up being oppressive to women rather than Pro-choice.

On the defensive side he hopes to stop an education standards bill that will require all students to have comprehensive sex education (under the cover of “Health Education”) with no ability to opt out. He points out the very high rate of teen pregnancy and this after many years of sex education.

Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

+++

The post Video – Face of Pro-Life #90: Bill O’Brien Legislative Issues CT first appeared on AirMaria.com.

( 30min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

Ginny Baudinet and Ellen Cavallo gives us a view of Carolyn’s Place a pregnancy care center in Waterbury which started in 1992 after a baby was left on doorsteps of their parish. Since 2007 they have there own place which provides many services:

• Pregnancy tests.
• Finding homes for babies
• 24-7 Hotline
• Support for pregnant mothers and children, pre-natal, labor, delivery, infancy,
• Parenting skills
• Support for Dads
• Education including:

• Education on chastity and abstinence.
• In School Programs
• Sexually transmitted disease.
• Angel in the Waters, Unborn Babies are Humans too
• Limits of Gardasil only takes care of one form of HPV (there are seven)
• Condom failure rates

Audio (MP3)

+++

The post Video – Face of Pro-Life #99: Carolyn’s Place first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Face of Pro-Life #118 – Corinn Dahm and Jill Sackidovitch ( 60min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

This episode was  a live show  on local television with guest Jill Sackidovitch director of the Westbrook, CT branch of Birthright, the premier nation-wide (even international) emergency pregnancy assistance centers for women. She relates to hostess Corinn Dahm how she got involved in Birthright when she wasn’t even looking to do so as well as all the challenges of talking to young mothers in distressed pregnancies. They discuss:

• pro-choice nature of the agency in that it gives women a chance to choose life when, in this pro-abortion world, pregnant women are often heavily pressured to abort their child
• demoralizing and even traumatic nature of abortion that scars many women for life.
• lack of safety for abortion procedure
• lack of education about the emotional and medical dangers of abortion.
• difficulties and joys of adoption for women with unwanted pregnancies
• how they reach out to distressed mothers
• procedure for giving assistance once they come to their facilities
• how friendship is the greatest thing needed for these women even if they do make the wrong decision
• what additional services are needed for mothers in the future
• type of people needed for volunteers
• how people can donate
• how many women are helped

Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

+++

The post Video – Face of Pro-Life #118: Jill Sackidovitch – Birthright, Westbrook, CT first appeared on AirMaria.com.

( 60min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

Roderick Murphy comes to Face of Pro-life to discuss with Corinn Dahm the Problem Pregnancy Center of which he is director and his new book, Stopping Abortion at Death’s Door. He describes how he makes sure that he keeps his crisis center near the local abortion mill and even moves when they move. He often has prayer services and Masses held in the on-premise chapel. He talks about the advertising that includes, Newspaper and TV ads as well as bus ads. He provides services to poor mothers like counseling, free diapers, and more. To help women decide not to have abortions he addresses the many economic needs that women have that bring them to this act of desperation. Working with sidewalk counselors to provide services that women need right as they are walking into death’s door, helping them improve their situation both in regard to moving away from abusive partners and training for better jobs.

His book is meant to be a one stop resource to start a crisis pregnancy center near an abortion clinic.  It includes:

• Fundraising,
• Getting a place,
• How to work with many different people of different faiths to get a community effort going,
• List of all abortion Clinics in the country so that people know where to put their crisis center.

He intends it to be a legacy for all that he has learned in his long pro-life experience.

http://www.stoppingabortions.info/

Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

+++

The post Video – Face of Pro-Life #125: On Death’s Door first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Face of Pro-Life #140 – Dave O’Connell on the Mother of Life Center ( 68min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

Dave O’Connell of the Mother of Life Center talks about what they do for pregnant women. Including:

• What motivated him
• The history of the pro-life movement in RI
• How he got involved with this movement
• The evils of abortion with tens of millions of casualties
• Best defense of American way is to fight against this
• How the Mother of Life center got started
• Alternative to Abortion across the street from abortion center
• Volunteers, Diocesan help
• What they provide.
• Chapel of Adoration leads to closing of abortion clinic
• Counseling by trained staff
• Why women have abortions and how most are forced one way or another
• Alternatives to abortion
• Bad Health effects of abortion, sterilization
• How many women change their minds away from abortion.
• Changing Morals
• Support for Mother and child after birth

Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

+++

The post Video – Face of Pro-Life #140: Mother of Life Center first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Face of Pro-Life #177 – Friar Roderic on viability ( 30min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

Viability is often used to determine when an abortion is ‘allowable’ and ‘justifiable’ that because a baby in the early stages of pregnancy is viable only in the womb that somehow it is okay to take it out of the womb. Even ignoring the absurdity of this argumentation, one has to ask, who is really viable? Friar Roderic discusses with Corinn Dahm how in the bigger picture even those who think they are most viable are really only viable in a very few places on earth and even fewer places when looking at the whole solar system or … beyond. At one point the example of the Titanic is used which was considered the ‘unsinkable ship’ and those on board were boasting of their greatness (i.e their viability.) Yet, only a moment later they found themselves in small lifeboats or in the drink where they were not so viable.

Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

+++

The post Video – Face of Pro-Life #177: Unviable Viability first appeared on AirMaria.com.