Author Archives: MzEllen

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Ethicists Argue in Favor of ‘After-Birth Abortions‘ as Newborns ’Are Not Persons’

Yup.

 

The two are quick to note that they prefer the term “after-birth abortion“ as opposed to ”infanticide.”

Why? Because it “[emphasizes] that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus (on which ‘abortions’ in the traditional sense are performed) rather than to that of a child.”

The authors also do not agree with the term euthanasia for this practice as the best interest of the person who would be killed is not necessarily the primary reason his or her life is being terminated.

In other words, it may be in the parents’ best interest to terminate the life, not the newborns.

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While anti-religious rights folks scream that "the mandate" hearings did not include women, or pro-mandate witnesses, the back story reveals a lot.

  1. there were women, just not at the first sitting
  2. The committee at the hearing involved advocating for religious rights.  Why do they consider women more (or less) capable of advocating for rights that affect us all?
  3. what goes around comes around.

If the hearings included no women (even "forgetting the claim is false) - the committee that wrote the thing...

According to the research from Human Life International (HLI), the panel behind Barack Obama's contraception, sterilization, and "morning-after" pill mandate was dominated by pro-abortion organizations.

According to HLA, the members of the panel leading to the Obama mandate included (among other):

Claire Brindis is a member of the Board of Directors of the NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, as well as a member of NARAL’s Pro-Choice California “1969 Society,” which has been called by NARAL “a group of our most steadfast and generous donors.”

Angela Diaz is a former board member of “Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health,” an advocacy group that “work[s] to improve access to comprehensive reproductive health care, including contraception and abortion.”

Paula A. Johnson is the Chairwoman of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts...

Magda G. Peck is associated with a host of organizations that advocate for abortion and free access to contraception, and was on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood of Nebraska and Council Bluffs and served as both vice chair and chair of the board.

Linda Rosenstock, committee chairwoman, has since October 2004 donated over $40,000 to pro-choice political candidates including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, and the Democratic National Committee.

Alina Salganicoff is the Vice President and Director of Women’s Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a major proponent of abortion and contraception on demand.

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A couple of years ago I started reading through the Bible "in a year" - I'm more than halfway through!  I get off on tangents, buy and read related books, etc.

I've learned that getting through the Book is not as important as getting INTO the Book.

Anyway...a few months ago I discovered cozi.  It's an app that keeps an entire family up to date.  I use the free version (I get ads.)  But one email address and one password lets the whole family use the program.  I can use the PC to add to a list, I can use an iPhone or iPad, so can Tom.  Tom can add to the grocery list while I'm on my way to the store and his list will be there.  The advantage is that if it's not on the list, he can't complain if I don't buy it.

See?  a tangent.

I use cozi for my Scripture reading list.  You can make as many "to do" lists as you want and I have one for my Scripture reading list.  As I read a passage, I check it off.  Every month or so I add about 30 from my page, and delete the ones I've read.  My list is with me all the time, and I have my Bible app, so it is also.

Cozi has made it very easy for me to keep track of my reading schedule and every bit of paper I don't need to carry around is a good thing.

 

 

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I've been "easing" toward different eating habits over the last few years, but mostly playing with it.  Eating "Primal" for breakfast doesn't do much good when you throw in a Snicker's bar for lunch.  A couple of years ago I gave up wheat for Lent and was surprised at the difference.  Now, I go for a few days, then slip.  (Today is "day one" after lunch yesterday.)

The "Primal Blueprint" is the plan that I like best.  The author's blog is "Mark's Daily Apple" and I've gleaned a lot (including recipes) from that site.

There's also "Paleo" - the biggest difference is that Primal is a lot more flexible.  A little dairy, a little rice, morning coffee...

Both emphasize "clean eating" - but their basis is not my basis.  I read "Cultured Mama" who wonders if "paleo/primal" is Biblical?   Granted, they base their eating plans on the assumption that humans evolved into eating whatever they eat.  I believe that God created humans fully evolved.

However...God gave us food.  And it does seem to indicate that (in the beginning) humans were vegetarians.

Genesis 1:29
And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.

Not until Noah, did humans have the "green light" to eat meat.

Where does that leave primal/paleo?

1 - in order to answer that, you need to separate the eating plan and science, from the philosophical reasons for creating the plan.  If you take away "evolution" reasons, what you are left with is a basic "grain/legume/frankenfood-free" eating plan that encourages you to choose foods that have been raised cleanly and without hormones, additives, artificial fertilizers.

Remember - NOBODY  EVER DIED FROM NOT EATING WHEAT.

On the wheat topic - what kind of wheat?  What we know as "wheat" today is very different than even the wheat that was grown 50 years ago.

Well for starters, the wheat we eat today is not the same wheat of 50 or even 100 years ago. Since the demand for wheat is so high (second biggest crop in the U.S., second only to corn), scientists have been genetically modifying the plant to make it grow faster and produce higher yields. This means that wheat is not rich with nutrients and health benefits like it once was.

Wheat now qualifies as a "frankenfood" - also, check out this article on "wheatbellyblog"

I guess this turned out to be about wheat - and that's okay.  Every time I eat wheat, I cough.  And cough.  Clue bus?

 

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Disciplined for gossiping.  I'm guessing that there's more to this than is covered.  Probably not politically correct, even in church politics, saying that the pastor has "narcissistic personality disorder."

Roy Ortland on "the legitimacy of a church plant" (or any church, I'd guess)

 

President Obama's "God Factor" interview.

On Gingrich on Obama and gas prices.

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Two lesbians charged with a "hate crime" for beating up a gay guy.

PETA kills more than 95% of the pets in its care.

 

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"We've laid down our blood to have a free exercise of religion in this country and will continue to do so."

Working from a variety of sources, I really don't wonder very much what the motive is.

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent.” Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis

The claim:

Just as the spectacle of an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee’s stern questioning of her in the 1990s drew women voters to the polls, these lawmakers and women’s groups say Thursday’s House hearing on the Obama administration’s contraception rule — with an all-male panel testifying before a largely male committee — could provoke the same kind of response

 

First thing:  There were two panels, the second panel included two women.

Second thing:  it's not about contraception, it's about religious freedom and it's fitting that religious leaders were on the panel.

"The real issue here, it's not birth control; it's religious liberty, it's freedom of conscience, [and] it's the freedom of individuals and their churches to determine their own positions and their own policies about contraception and abortion,"

From the Catholic News Agency (quoting Pamela Haag):

“The phrase 'women’s health' in the birth control dispute is the latest nimble euphemism,” author and blogger Pamela Haag wrote in a Feb. 17 essay published on the “Marriage 3.0” blog.

Access to contraception, she said, “isn’t really about my 'health.' It’s not principally about the management of ovarian cysts or the regulation of periods.”

“Birth control isn’t about my health unless by 'health' you mean, my capacity to get it on, to have a happy, joyous sex life that involves an actual male partner,” wrote Haag, criticizing White House supporters for discussing contraceptives mainly as “preventive services” for women's health.

Even the folks who support the mandate (who are not following the administrations party line) know that it's not about health, it's about the ability of women to have sex without responsibility or consequences.

From Timothy George and Chuck Colson , via Christianity Today:

But Catholic institutions aren't the only ones affected by this mandate. Prison Fellowship, for example, which employs 180 people, could not purchase insurance for its employees that covers abortifacients. Nor could the world's largest Christian outreach to prisoners and their families afford the fines we would incur.

Three years ago, when we co-authored the Manhattan Declaration, we predicted that the time would come when Christians would have to face the very real prospect of civil disobedience—that we would have to choose sides: God or Caesar.

Certainly for the Catholics and for many of us evangelicals, that time is already upon us.

Rev. Matthew Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod:

Harrison's goal Thursday, he said, was to tell Congress to "get the federal government out of matters of conscience for religious people, particularly in life issues where there's long-standing moral and ethical church precedent."

But he also wanted to drive home the intense feeling of alienation that, he said, conservative people of faith feel under the Obama administration. He said he would rather go to jail than comply with even the modified mandate, and that he would "give up my sons to fight" for the First Amendment.

On Friday, he explained those comments: "We've laid down our blood to have a free exercise of religion in this country and will continue to do so."

Harrison told the committee of the charitable work of the Missouri Synod and its members, calling the church "a machine which produces good citizens for this country, and at tremendous personal cost."

The members of his church "work, pay taxes, are charitable and responsible, take care of their children, participate in their communities and government, and serve in military," Harrison said. "The state should be interested in religion for this purpose: We produce good citizens. So stop attacking us. We are in every way a blessing for this country. We feel attacked for our fundamental convictions as if we're a detriment to our country. And that is a lie."

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we sang this in church this morning.  I'm still fairly new to the liturgical calendar and it resonates with me.

Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days

1 Lord! Who throughout these forty days,
For us didst fast and pray,
Teach us with Thee to mourn our sins,
And close by Thee to stay.

2 As Thou with Satan didst contend,
And didst the victory win,
Oh, give us strength in Thee to fight,
In Thee to conquer sin.

3 As Thou didst hunger bear and thirst,
So teach us, gracious Lord,
To die to self, and chiefly live
By Thy most holy Word.

4 And through these days of penitence,
And through Thy Passion-tide,
Yea, evermore, in life and death,
Jesu! with us abide.

5 Abide with us, that so, this life
Of suffering overpast,
An Easter of unending joy
We may attain at last!

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By Dinesh D'Souza:

Here in the West, there are lots of liberal Christians. Some of them have assumed a kind of reverse mission: instead of being the church's missionaries to the world, they have become the world's missionaries to the church. They devote their moral energies to trying to make the church more democratic, to assure equal rights for women, to legitimize homosexual marriage, and so on. A small but influential segment of liberal Christianity rejects all the central doctrines of Christianity. H. Richard Hiebuhr famously summed up their credo: "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgement through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."

I have met liberal Christians who are good and sincere people. But their version of Christianity is retreating, in two senses. Liberal Christians are distinguished by how much intellectual and moral ground they concede to the adversaries of Christianity: "Granted, no rational person today can believe in miracles, but..." "True, the Old Testament God seems a mighty vengeful fellow, but..." "Admittedly religion is responsible for most of the conflict and oppression in history, but..."

This yes-but Christianity in full intellectual withdrawal, and it is also becoming less relevant. * * *

Unfortunately, the central themes of some of the liberal churches have become indistinguishable from those of the American Civil Liberties Union, the national Organization for Women, and the homosexual rights movement. Why listen to Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong drone on when you can get the same message and much more interesting visuals at San Francisco's gay pride parade?

This is quote I try to keep on hand.

What really struck me was the "Christ's missionary to the world" vs. "the world's missionary to the church."