God Bless America

So glad you have a blog here. You were one of my favorite writers at the NCR. I can’t tell you how many times I quoted you!

God bless,
Mary Ann Wenske

Obama is a master of deception, and will do anything necessary to force his agenda on the American people. May God protect us.
Let us pray and and offer sacrifices for LIFE.

MORALITY OF DIRECT ABORTION

ARGUMENT I:  FROM THE PRINCIPLE “EVERY AGENT ACTS FOR THE SAKE OF AN END”
A. In the sexual act, a man and a woman act for the sake of the Natural End which is a new live man. This end is not necessarily the intention THEY have in acting but is the end intended by nature (i.e., according to the nature of man psychologically, physically, and physiologically understood).
The end is the principle of action in practical matters, i.e., the principle whereby the act is moved and whereby the whole act is measured. cf. the act of taking a plane to L.A. is measured by this good: BE IN LOS ANGELES. Everything done in the act ought to be measured by the end: BE IN L.A.
B. But to use the means and reject the end is to act against the natural order (to reject a greater good—the end, for a lesser good - the means). For example, to employ all means of sexuality with its accompanying pleasures, which is an inducement to the act, while rejecting even the possibility of the end being achieved is to act against the natural order.
C. But order is the sign of intellect and to act against the natural order is to act against reason. Hence, to act against order is to act against the nature of man, and also to act against the human race.
D. Moreover, to act against the nature of man is to act against the domestic society, and also against the civil society.
E. To act against the nature of man is to act against the cause of the nature of man for human nature is modeled by the Cause, i.e., human nature participates in the Divine Idea, which is the blueprint of human nature and human action.
F. In short, to act against the nature of man is to act against the created universe and thus to act against the divine plan of the universe.
ARGUMENT II:  FROM THE KNOWLEDGE THAT THE OFFSPRING OF MAN IS HUMAN FROM CONCEPTION
The newly made organism is distinctly human inasmuch as it has the chromosome and genetic structure which is normal for man. As a consequence, the chemical or physiological structure is properly human.
The organic construction which takes place quickly attains the disposition of organs necessary to man, i.e., one which enables the vegetative and sensitive life to operate for the sake of man’s rational life
But this appropriate matter manifests the presence of a living form (soul) which is human. That is, the soul which directs this construction is properly human. For there is due proportion between matter and form, i.e., between body and soul inasmuch as the soul is the principle in an organism which determines that it is man, or tree, or dog, or silver. The organism is a composite of soul and matter. It is truer to say that the matter is in the soul than to say that the soul is in the matter (approximately termed the “body”) in other words the greater contains the lesser, the more perfect contains the less perfect. Yet it is more accurate to say that the two exist as one substance. For the soul is that which characterizes this organism as man, the matter being properly determined to be the matter appropriate to man and not a cat. This is necessarily so notwithstanding this, that the soul cannot yet exercise its faculties to the full, such as its rational life, any more than a man who is lacking a finger can fully exercise his grasp.
ARGUMENT III: FROM THE PRINCIPLE THAT A RISK CANNOT BE TAKEN WlTH THE RIGHT OF ANOTHER
This applies above all to his life for life lies at the basis of all other goods.
If there is a doubt about the humanity of the embryonic man (it cannot be admitted that there is such doubt!), then it would not be permitted to abort that organism on account of that doubt. For a doubt applies both ways, i.e. to doubt that it is human is to doubt also that it is non-human.  Similarly, one would not fire a rifle at some moving thing if one were to doubt that it is a man. Or, one would not fire a shotgun in a darkened room if one were in doubt if there is someone else in the room or where they might be in the room. Doubt is hardly a reasonable basis on which to act.
But it is never lawful to take a risk with the right of another and especially his right to life. Even though it might be claimed that what is in the womb is non-human and that a non-human organism does not have rights, nevertheless as long as the chance exists (and doubt does not remove this possibility), we would be taking a risk that someone is being killed. Such a risk is not permissible.
If it is insisted that the mother is acting with a grave doubt, and, therefore, is not willfully destroying a human person, then it must be said in reply that she is acting at least with indifference as to whether it is human or not. Now to act with indifference means that she would consent to the act of abortion whether it is human or not. Such consent is consent to the taking of innocent life. This inner act (consent of the will) denotes the moral species of the act and is a source of the blame which attaches to the act of abortion. Such inner consent is gravely unlawful (immoral) and renders her external act unlawful even if it was the killing of a non-human organism (which it is not).  She is subjectively guilty even if it was in reality not human.
THEREFORE, to kill an organism which has been generated within a woman by sexual intercourse is to kill a man.
It also follows from argument no. I above that even if the embryonic man was not human (which cannot be granted), it would be immoral to kill the organism. (This clearly follows the principles established in St. Thomas’ Summa Contra Gentiles, Book Ill, Chapter 122.) Moreover, we also conclude from Argument I that the following are contrary to the natural order and therefore immoral: CONTRACEPTION, MASTURBATION, ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION, INFANTICIDE, HOMOSEXUAL ACTS, SURROGATE MOTHERHOOD, COITUS INTERRUPTUS ETC.
CONCLUSION: Direct abortion is contrary to the natural moral law and therefore gravely immoral.
Raphael T. Waters, D.Ph, L.Ph, Ph.C, Director, Aquinas School of Philosophy, Lewiston, NY 14092       Rev .December, 2008
www.aquinasphilosophy.com       drrwaters@yahoo.com

For those of us who deal with Politics for a living, Professor Hoopes’s blog promises to be a must read.  His most recent contribution on what could be most accurately characterized as “the Stealthcare bill”demonstrates what a train wreck is possible with this monstrous piece of legislation.  There is an old saying that “if you have a weak stomach, there are two things you don’t want to see made, one is sausage and the other is law.”  This spectacle of vote buying, Daley’s Chicago style has been breathe taking. Whatever comes of the “Healthcare” legislation, the devil is in the details, all 2000 pages plus in each of the House and Senate iterations of this charade. 

Hoopes’s readers in the NCR are sophisticated enough to have noticed, but might have missed the detail that, in the House bill there were, according to the Heritage Foundation almost 1700 discretionary provisions which authorize Sec. of Health and Human Services Sebelius to set guidelines relative to how the law shall be applied.  As I often advise my students in the Presidency and in Constitutional Law, “it is not what the law says, but how it might be read and who is enforcing it.”  Too often the “rule of law” is substituted for the rule by administrators and lawyers on and off the courts.

For those of us who lived in Kansas during the Governorship tenure of Kathleen Sebelius, this legislation takes us beyond feelings of intestinal distress.  Nightmare might better describe the feelings.  As Governor she brazenly vetoed legislation regulating late term abortions even as her name was being put forward by the Obama administration for the the HHS job.  She seemed to be unconcerned by the fact that Congress had a restrictive law in place dealing with late term abortions and the Supreme Court in Carhart vs. the US had agreed such restrictions were permissible even under current court imposed standards.  She had earlier vetoed in 2003 and again in 2005 abortion industry accountability for lying to women about what they were aborting, and medical safety standard for the quality of care in such clinics.  Animals had more health protection to avoid unsterile surgical practices than women who were with child.  Hoopes’s blog piece suggests trenchantly, that the volume of pro-lifers needs to be amplified.  Pro-lifers and representative of churches across the nation need to get off of the sidelines fast.  In states like Massachusetts with the coming Coakley/Brown special US Senate election, and in Nebraska and Florida (where both Senators Nelson got sweetheart deals for their states to purchase their support for “Stealthcare”) voters must immediately let these legislators know they are opposed to Senators who live out what classic commentator-comic Will Rodgers saw in DC in the 1930s.  We don’t need “the best Congress money can buy.”

Having people like Tom Hoopes and Professor Susan Orr as new colleagues has been an answer to prayer here at Benedictine College.

Frank Kessler Ph.d., Poli. Sci. Benedictine College. emeritus Missouri Western St. University.