The Uniqueness of the Fetal Body: A Distinct Human Life
by Fr. Jim Hewes
Introduction
March 30 marks the 30th anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s The Gospel of Life. Just days earlier, on March 25, Catholics celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation—the moment Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb. This prompts a profound question: Was Jesus, at His conception, a mere part of Mary’s body, or was He a separate and distinct human person? This question is relevant not only for Jesus but for every pre-born child.
- Distinct DNA and Genetic Identity
From the moment of conception, a pre-born child possesses a unique, unrepeatable genetic identity, separate from the mother’s body. Each human has an individual DNA code. If the pre-born child were merely part of the mother’s body, their genetic code would match the mother’s—but it does not. In fact, in half of all female pregnancies, the child is male, carrying XY chromosomes, distinct from the mother’s XX chromosomes. One person cannot have two sets of different chromosomes.
- Independent Physical Characteristics and Systems
A pre-born child develops distinct physical features and biological systems independent of the mother. For instance, neither Mary nor any pregnant woman suddenly has four arms, four legs, 20 fingers, 20 toes, two hearts, two nervous systems, two sets of internal organs (livers, lungs, kidneys, etc.), two brains, four eyes, four ears, or two noses. The child develops their own organs, heartbeat, brain waves, and fingerprints—all unique and different from the mother’s.
Moreover, a child in the womb can exhibit behaviors independent of the mother, such as thumb-sucking or movement. The child can be kicking while the mother is not but rather stationary The child can be awake while the mother sleeps, or vice versa. Additionally, the child can experience illness independently of the mother’s health. For example, a mother may be ill while her child remains healthy, or the child may be ill while the mother is perfectly well.
- Separate Blood Supply and Life Processes
The blood type of the pre-born child is often different from the mother’s. Since a single body cannot function with two different blood types, this distinction further proves that the child has a separate circulatory system. The placenta acts as a mediator, not a merger, ensuring both mother and child maintain their own distinct biological processes.
- Impact of External Substances
A pamphlet from New York State’s Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services warns about the effects of alcohol on unborn babies, citing Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). The damage caused by alcohol to the pre-born child demonstrates that the child’s body processes substances separately from the mother’s body.
- Life and Death as Distinct Realities
There are documented cases where a fetus has survived briefly after the mother’s death or died while the mother continued to live. If the child were merely a part of the mother’s body, such a separation in life and death would be impossible.
- Legal and Ethical Recognition of Separate Lives
The law acknowledges the distinct humanity of the pre-born child. For instance, it is illegal to execute a pregnant woman on death row because the fetus is recognized as a separate life who should not be punished for the mother’s crimes.
- Emotional and Psychological Evidence
The grief experienced by many women following an abortion reflects the inherent value of the life that was lost. Women who undergo procedures such as tonsil or appendix removal (parts of their body) do not experience the same profound sorrow. Programs such as Project Rachel, Rachel’s Vineyard Retreats, Silent No More, After Abortion, Abortion Recovery International, and many others help women heal from the deep pain following an abortion, further highlighting that what was lost was more than a “part” of their body—it was a distinct life.
- A Right to One’s Own Body
The pro-abortion argument often emphasizes bodily autonomy for the mother but overlooks the autonomy of the developing child. A pre-born female child aborted is denied any future bodily autonomy for the rest of her life. The environment of the womb is not the child’s identity; it is their temporary home.
- A Sacred Space for Life
The womb is designed to nurture life—a space that, month after month, prepares to sustain a unique individual. Every human being once occupied this space. The monthly cycle is a reminder of the life with so much potential—a distinct, individual life separate from the mother.
- A Fitting Analogy: The House and Its Resident
An electric vehicle that is plugged into the house to receive its sustenance is still not part of the house, but only a car. The electric vehicle plugged in, symbolically like the umbilical cord connecting the child to the mother; a child growing within the womb is not a part of the mother’s body but a distinct individual living within her.
Conclusion
The evidence from biology, behavior, law, and human experience points to one conclusion: The pre-born child is a distinct and unique human being, not a mere part of the mother’s body. As Jesus was uniquely Himself within Mary’s womb, so is every child—a sacred life, an image-bearer, deserving recognition, protection, and love.
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For some more of our posts from Fr. Hewes, see:
Death Penalty and other Killing: The Destructive Effect on Us
Consistent Life History: Being Across the Board
Reflections from My Decades of Consistent Life Experience
Abortion and Other Issues of Life: Connecting the Dots
A Personal Reflection on a Just War
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Turning Back the Nuclear Threat: Some Practical Steps
by John Whitehead
The following is adapted from remarks given at the Vigil to End the Nuclear Danger, a peace witness outside the White House on March 8, 2025. The vigil was co-sponsored by the Consistent Life Network, as well as the American Solidarity Party of DC and Maryland, Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore, and Rehumanize International.
We’re here this morning to witness for peace and for the protection of human life. We’re here to witness for the protection of life against one of the greatest threats to life in the world today, nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons pose a threat to every human being on earth. If nuclear weapons were ever used on a large scale, or even on a relatively small scale, they would kill billions of people and probably wipe out human civilization as we know it.
Nuclear weapons have threatened humanity since their invention almost 80 years ago. Today, however, the nuclear threat is especially severe. The danger of nuclear war is probably greater today than at any time since the darkest days of the Cold War arms race in the 1980s.
Over the past three years, the war in Ukraine has pitted the nuclear-armed nations of NATO — the United States, Britain, and France — against the nuclear-armed nation of Russia. The Ukraine war has the potential to escalate to a nuclear conflict. Less severe but still significant is the danger from the ongoing rivalry and tensions between the United States and China, another nuclear-armed nation.
Amid these dangers, international limits on nuclear weapons have become all too frail. Important arms control agreements among nuclear nations have been cast aside in recent years.
Among the most significant remaining arms control agreements today is the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START. New START places limits on how many nuclear weapons Russia and the United States can possess. The New START Treaty is set to expire in a little less than a year, in February 2026.
If New START expires, then there will be no international agreement limiting the Russian and American nuclear arsenals. This situation could set off an arms race as Russia and the United States each tries to increase its nuclear weapons stockpiles as much as possible.
Other nuclear-armed nations might take such a Russian/American arms race as an incentive to increase their nuclear weapons stockpiles as well. Such a situation, in which nuclear-armed nations build up their arsenals in a futile effort to “get ahead” of each other, would only heighten the already extreme tensions among nuclear-armed nations.
The situation today is dire. However, efforts are underway to turn humanity away from its present course of ever more nuclear weapons and ever greater dangers. I will highlight two significant efforts.
A Call to Renew Arms Control Negotiations
A resolution introduced in the US Congress calls for renewing nuclear arms control agreements. This resolution, House Resolution 100/Senate Resolution 61, condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s accompanying nuclear threats. The resolution also calls for the United States to pursue new nuclear arms control negotiations with Russia so that limitations on nuclear weapons will continue past 2026. The resolution also calls for the United States to pursue nuclear arms control negotiations with China, which would be another crucial step in checking a nuclear arms race.
House Resolution 100 and Senate Resolution 61, by calling for new negotiations to prevent an arms race among nuclear-armed nations, is an important measure for reducing the nuclear danger today. We should support these resolutions.
Back from the Brink Measures
The second important effort to lessen the nuclear threat is the Back from the Brink Campaign. Back from the Brink calls for the United States to pursue the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons. As intermediate steps to this goal, Back from the Brink advocates crucial changes to the United States’ policies toward nuclear weapons that can decrease the dangers of nuclear war. The changes advocated by Back from the Brink include the following four measures:
The United States should officially adopt a policy of “no first use.” A “no first use” policy means the United States will pledge never to be the first nation to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. While such a policy falls short of pledging never to use nuclear weapons at all, it does at least dramatically restrict the possible situations in which the United States might use such weapons.
The United States should take nuclear weapons off the high level of alert that enables these weapons to be launched in just a few minutes. Hundreds of American nuclear weapons (and about 2,000 nuclear weapons worldwide) are currently on this high level of alert. Having nuclear weapons ready to be used at a moment’s notice greatly increases the danger that they will be used impulsively and without reflection, perhaps in response to a false alarm or incomplete information. Taking nuclear weapons off high alert lowers the danger of their use.
The United States should end the policy that allows nuclear weapons to be used on the authority of a single human being, the president of the United States. Currently the president has the awesome power to order the use of nuclear weapons and no one else in the executive branch or any other branch of government has the legal power to stop him. The use of nuclear weapons rests entirely on the president’s decision. This policy of sole presidential authority makes it more likely that a trigger-happy, or erratic, or cognitively impaired president might initiate a nuclear war. Changing this policy and introducing legal checks on the president’s power to use nuclear weapons would decrease this danger.
The United States should cancel plans to spend a staggering $1.7 trillion over 30 years to build a new generation of nuclear weapons and related technologies. Such spending on new nuclear weapons is completely unnecessary since, as Back from the Brink notes, “The U.S.’s current nuclear arsenal is more than sufficient to deter an attack (and indeed sufficient to destroy life on this planet as we know it many times over).” Spending over $1 trillion on nuclear weapons is a colossal waste of money. Any politician concerned with reducing government spending should make cancelling these plans for more nuclear weapons his or her top priority.
Take Action
These changes advocated by Back from the Brink will not eliminate the nuclear threat, but they will greatly reduce it. Another resolution in the US Congress, House Resolution 77, calls for making these four changes to US nuclear policy. We should support this resolution as well.
American citizens should contact their elected representatives in the House and Senate to urge them to support House Resolution 100/Senate Resolution 61. The Arms Control Association provides a form for easily sending this message to elected officials.
In addition to or as an alternative to using the form above, people can contact their representatives and senators directly by phone or email to urge them to support these resolutions
Americans should also contact their representatives in the House to urge them to support House Resolution 77. Back from the Brink provides resources for contacting representatives on this issue.
Back from the Brink also offers recommendations on a variety of other actions people can take to promote efforts against nuclear weapons.
The nuclear danger today is very grave. We need to protect human life and humanity’s future from this danger. Let’s raise our voices in favor of efforts that reduce this threat to all of us.
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For more of our posts on nuclear weapons, see:
The Persisting Threat of Nuclear Weapons: A Brief Primer
Nuclear Disarmament as a Social Justice Issue
A Global Effort to Protect Life: The UN Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons
Nukes and the Pro-Life Christian: A Conservative Takes a Second Look at the Morality of Nuclear Weapons
Not Panicked / Always Panicked
by Rachel MacNair
I was visiting a large Quaker Meeting for Worship in January 2025, just days into Donald Trump sending a lot of heads reeling with his initial set of executive orders and actions. We Quakers (Friends) are the type of folks especially inclined to be upset about many of those. This was expressed by some who spoke. They were worried. They were freaked out.
So here’s the message I gave:
Back in 1972, when I was 13 and 14 years old, I had a lot of angst over the American war in Vietnam. I worked hard for George McGovern for president, thinking that would help end the war. But Richard Nixon won by a landslide. The war would continue, and I was distraught.
If you had come to me the day after the election and said, “Here’s how we’re going to do it. In less than two years, he’ll resign from office in disgrace.” I would have said, “I enjoy the impishness of the idea. But let’s do be realistic.”
Friends laughed a bit at this point, knowing that’s exactly what happened. I went on to say that ever since then I haven’t worried about the trajectory of events. I’ve observed that things go off the trajectory so often. I intended to maintain my faith that over the course of time, kindness is stronger than cruelty.
I think the Trump administration is far more likely than most to come up with surprising events. It’s practically designed for it. “Being realistic” doesn’t preclude as much as it used to.
Biden
Part of why I wasn’t as freaked out as other Friends is that I had a lower opinion of the Obama-Biden-Harris set of actions. I was horrified about the re-imposition of money pushing abortion internationally. I knew several thousand babies would be killed because of that funding, along with a long list of other things those administrations did or would do to promote abortion.
But when many of my fellow Quakers understood Harris to be the “lesser evil” between the two, I think many were succumbing to our system’s fixation on discerning which of two candidates is less bad. That lends itself to minimizing what’s wrong with the one you decided on. In the case of Biden, I un-minimize a bit:
- Modernization of nuclear weapons continued, when instead eventual elimination should be the focus.
- Obama used weaponized drones in Afghanistan, bombing wedding parties, terrifying children, and giving the civilian population a constant sense of danger. See Pro-Life Means Anti-Drone in The American Conservative.
There was also ample corruption in the Afghan government that further eroded the population’s trust in it. By the time of the U.S. withdrawal, the situation had essentially been set up to be a disaster. Afghan soldiers abandoned their weapons and the Taliban re-took the country.
While the drones were striking, we pointed out that the strategy was not only astonishingly cruel but markedly stupid. The fairly predictable end result shows that. The Taliban and the corrupt officials are mainly to blame, but those were a given, and they weren’t dealt with well.
- We can blame Russia for the war in Ukraine; there would be no war if they stopped. But the Obama administration had a tepid response when Russia invaded Crimea back in 2014, at a time when non-military options for a stronger response were known to the administration. Biden’s belligerency at some times mixed with insufficient opposition at other times was a major bungling. Harris made clear she wouldn’t have changed how she approached it.
- We can blame Hamas for its horrific October 7 attack. We can blame the current Israeli government for its long-standing policies that hurt Palestinians and its response that killed thousands of children and others. But the U.S. sending weapons to Israel and otherwise tolerating the war has been dealing badly with a bad situation. Peace activists have spent the last year asserting our outrage at this.
In February 2020, Rachel adds a stone to the growing peace mosaic on the Gaza Strip wall, which can be seen at one spot by the people stuck inside, showing them support for their plight.
Most peace activists will agree with my bullet-point assessment above. But they tend to forget about all that when election time rolls around. We can’t contemplate evil so much when we’re trying to make the case that one candidate is lesser about it.
Trump
Trump is deliberately “flooding the zone” with highly objectionable policies in rapid-fire succession. As a consistent-lifer, with the criterion of which ones might get people killed, I’d currently give these ones the highest priority:
- The cut-off of humanitarian aid in U.S.A.I.D. will result in many dozen deaths at least even if the aid gets restored soon. For example, already paid-for medicines treating HIV – they can prevent pregnant women from giving the disease to their preborn children. But without it, a large portion of the children die before turning two. This is covered in The New York Times opinion piece: As Fellow Pro-Lifers, We Are Begging Marco Rubio to Save Foreign Aid.
- Immigration policy was especially cruel in the first Trump administration and bids fair to be again. Some of the cruelty will stick, and some will be inflicted and then walked back, perhaps to be inflicted again.
- Medicaid and SNAP (food assistance) are both essential services. Proposed massive cuts – especially when the purpose of the cuts is to fund more military, greater cruelty to immigrants, and tax cuts for the rich – can foreseeably be predicted to increase abortions. It will also lead to the deaths of unborn children and other people through inadequate medicine and food. See our post Social Programs to Help the Poor are Pro-life.
- There’s already been a lot of bungling on foreign policy which could be pernicious if wars result or are exacerbated. The February 28 Oval Office public shouting match between Trump, Vance, and Zelenskyy springs to mind, and that was just part of Trump using the talking points of an aggressor and war criminal. I also think of talk about clearing out Gaza for a real-estate deal, and of starting up fresh new belligerency with Panama and Greenland and Canada that weren’t even on our radar before. All these situations are volatile, so by giving specifics this paragraph will be the most quickly outdated one of this post. We can count on Trump to come up with new ones and don’t know how long he’ll stick with these.
The one area where Trump is the lesser evil is on abortion, and as I’ve explained before, I fear there will be all kinds of damage there, too. His heart isn’t really in it. He works on it for transactional reasons, and when the transactions change, so will he. This can be seen by abortion opposition being badly watered down in the Republican platform last year.
Consistent lifers who work with our fellow peace activists all the time know full well that he makes being persuasive harder.
graphic from our member group Rehumanize International
Conclusion
My feelings are that the Trump administration, while having some good points, is mainly stomach-churning. But also that the Harris administration would have been stomach-churning. We can’t get out of stomach-churning by looking at who gets elected in an only-two-options system.
But who knows what will happen? As I said before, Nixon resigning wasn’t on the table early on. Also, he did get some good things done – the Environmental Protection Agency, opening to China, etc.
Trump has said he’d like to cut the military budget in half. I don’t believe that’s a serious proposal, but I’ve never in all my life heard a U.S. President say that before. And he’d like to be the grand person who gets denuclearization talks going with Russia and China. Again, that may be part of a narcissistic delusion. But I’m not about to rain on his parade if he tries.
As I learned back in my teens, trying to predict the future by looking at current trajectories turns out to not be all that realistic.
Predicting that this president will do some admirably good things and some stunningly terrible things is a safe prediction, so long as we don’t specify which good and bad things. It’s been true of pretty much every president the U.S. has ever had.
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For more of our posts on voting and politics, see:
Trump Sabotaging the Pro-Life Movement
Political Homelessness is Better than a Wrong Political Home
Pro-Life Voting Strategy: A Problem without an Answer
How Consistent-life Advocacy Would Benefit from Ranked-Choice Voting
The Deserving and Undeserving Poor vs. the Worthy and Unworthy of Life: How Both Major Political Parties Pick and Choose Who They Help and Whom They Kill
Dorothy Day and the Consistent Life Ethic: Rejecting Conventional Political Paradigms
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For updated information on an aspect of elections we can get behind, see our project website:
Preborn Babies, Infants, and Government Programs
by Sarah Terzo
A recent study looked at food insecurity and government benefits among pregnant people in the United States. Researchers determined that 14% of their sample was “food insecure,” meaning they couldn’t afford enough to eat.
These were all people who weren’t receiving government assistance through SNAP or WIC, two programs that provide food for the poor.
Food insecurity was associated with:
- gestational diabetes,
- preeclampsia,
- preterm birth, and
- neonatal intensive care unit admission.
Gestational diabetes can threaten the lives of both mothers and babies. Prematurity can lead to infant death and disability.
Preeclampsia will kill the pregnant person if the pregnancy isn’t ended . Pro-life groups have pointed out that doctors don’t have to kill a baby directly in these cases but can induce labor rather than performing an abortion.
But if preeclampsia occurs before viability, as it often does, the baby gets a death sentence either way. Whether the child dies by dismemberment in an abortion procedure or is born and suffocates due to prematurity, she dies. And either way, it’s a horrible death.
The study didn’t directly address infant mortality, but prematurity is a risk factor both for infant death and long-term disability.
In cases where the mother was receiving SNAP or WIC, most of the effects of food insecurity were eliminated. Mothers receiving SNAP or WIC were less likely to have premature babies and less likely to develop gestational diabetes. Their babies were more likely to be healthy and not need to spend time in the NICU.
In fact, the babies of pregnant people receiving SNAP or WIC were just as healthy as those of wealthier women. Only the babies of poor women not receiving SNAP or WIC suffered higher rates of prematurity and complications.
Government assistance led to healthier children and less prematurity. Children born from mothers who have enough food to eat have a much better start in life.
This really isn’t a surprising finding.
But the U.S. House of Representatives is poised to pass a budget resolution package which includes drastically cutting SNAP. This will inevitably lead to more food insecurity, which will leave preborn babies at greater risk of prematurity and NICU stays after birth, as well as increase the prevalence of gestational diabetes. More food insecurity means more complications for pregnant people and babies.
If we are concerned about abortion, we should be concerned about this. A baby who dies in the NICU is just as dead as one killed by abortion.
All preborn babies are valuable. All babies have a right to life and a right to have the best start in life.
The children of poor mothers aren’t exempt. And the pregnant woman’s poverty is never the child’s fault.
What Will the Proposed Cuts to SNAP Mean?
Right now, Republican House members are working on a budget that seeks to cut $230 billion from SNAP.
- Lower Monthly Amounts
The average monthly SNAP benefit is already very low. It’s $129 per person per month. The proposed cuts to SNAP would make this amount even lower.
Think of the last time you went grocery shopping. Could you buy a month’s worth of groceries for yourself for $129? Could you afford to feed your family on that?
The $230 billion in cuts would make this amount even lower.
- Work Requirement
The other proposed change is a work requirement. A single mother would have to prove she is working in order to get SNAP. If she can’t, she can only collect SNAP for one month out of a year for a maximum of three years.
What single mother can afford to feed her children on $129 for an entire year?
And if she’s providing child care to her own child directly rather than paying someone else to, doesn’t that mean she’s already working, and working at something society should value greatly?
Lack of Affordable Childcare
While ideally, people should work, many single mothers can’t work because of a lack of childcare services. A mother with an infant can’t simply leave her baby home alone while she works.
As of 2018, some 51% of Americans lived in what is known as a “childcare desert.”
In childcare deserts, there is either no access to childcare facilities or the number of children is three times higher than the spaces in childcare facilities. These women can’t access childcare at all. If they aren’t lucky enough to have a friend or family member to watch their baby while they work, they cannot work.
Even in areas where childcare options are available, they are often unaffordable.
According to one government website, childcare is becoming less available and its cost is going up.
The National Database of Childcare Prices reported on childcare costs in 2,360 U.S. counties. Their report:
shows that childcare expenses are untenable for families throughout the country, and highlights the urgent need for greater federal investments, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
A full-time job at minimum wage pays roughly $15,080 a year. The average cost of childcare for an infant varies based on where one lives. But the median amount ranges from $7,461 to $15,417.
At the very least, a mother with an infant working for minimum wage would pay 49% of her income in childcare. And in some cases, the cost of childcare would exceed her yearly income, meaning that if she were to work, she would actually lose money.
Things are even more dire for a single mother who already has another child. The cost of daycare for a toddler is nearly as expensive as that for an infant. Among preschool-aged children, childcare prices per child ranged from $6,239 to $11,050.
If a woman has both an infant and a toddler, her childcare costs would range from $13,700 to $26,467 a year- impossible to pay on a minimum wage salary. Even many single mothers earning above minimum wage wouldn’t be able to afford it. Don’t forget that these mothers must also pay rent and utilities.
Difficulty Documenting Work
What if the single mother or pregnant person is working? She has to prove it through submitting paperwork.
The Office of Temporary Assistance, which administers SNAP, is very slow in processing paperwork. When I submitted my application for food stamps, it took six months for it to be processed. I survived with the help of friends and family and also contacted a food pantry. The food pantry wasn’t able to give me much help because they didn’t have enough donations to cover the needs of the community.
Sarah Terzo
At the time, I was working. I just wasn’t making enough money to afford food. SNAP administrators made it very, very difficult for me to document my income, which was a requirement to prove eligibility.
I provided my bank statements for an entire year and my tax return. They could easily have seen, from these documents, how much money I was making. But they refused to accept either of them as proof of income.
Instead, I had to contact Live Action and get them to write a letter verifying the amount of money they paid me going back six months. Whoever wrote the letter had to go to the bank, get it notarized, and mail it to me. The letter had to be on official letterhead.
This was a huge inconvenience for them, and I hated asking. They were willing to do it for me, however. They sent me the letter – and the Office of Temporary Assistance rejected it. Why? Because it wasn’t signed. They never told me it had to be signed.
I had to ask Live Action to do it all over again. Write the letter, get it notarized, and put it in the mail – this time signed. For the whole time I was on food stamps, they had to do it every year.
I was very lucky they were willing to do that for me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have gotten SNAP. How many employers would go through all that inconvenience?
(I also had to reveal to them I was collecting SNAP. That was information I would’ve preferred to keep private.)
None of that was necessary. The office had my tax return and my bank statements, which clearly showed my income.
These are the kind of hoops a pregnant or parenting woman would have to jump through to prove she is eligible to receive SNAP. The application process is bad enough. She would have to go through another whole level of paperwork.
A Brief Overview of SNAP
Many people believe that those collecting SNAP are lazy people who refuse to work. Actually, 51% of people receiving SNAP work full-time. The elderly make up 18.3% of recipients. And 28% of adults under 60 who received SNAP in 2015 were disabled. In 2019-2020, 65% of households receiving SNAP contained children.
The tiny percentage of nondisabled, non-elderly adults receiving SNAP who aren’t working full-time include those employed part-time and mothers of young children who can’t afford childcare.
Nearly everyone on SNAP who can work does work. Work requirements will only hurt the people, like caretakers, who can’t work.
What You Can Do Right Now
For those of us living in the U.S., write to your legislators and tell them not to cut SNAP benefits. This letter will also encourage them not to cut Medicaid, which provides health insurance for many poor single mothers and their children. It will only take you a few clicks of the mouse to do this through this link. Writing to your U.S. Senators would also be timely now.
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For more of our posts on governmental social services, see:
Social Programs to Help the Poor are Pro-life
SNAP Cuts? More Poverty, More Abortion
Home of the Brave? A CLE Response to City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson
The Impact of Family Caps on Abortion
Why the Hyde Amendment Helps Low-Income Women
Seeking an End to a Catastrophic War: The Ukraine War after Three Years
by John Whitehead
The Ukraine-Russia war will soon enter its fourth year. The war has become, in one sense, a relatively static conflict, with neither the Ukrainian nor Russian forces advancing dramatically and battles being fought over very small pieces of territory. However, in another sense, the war has changed significantly over time by becoming ever more costly and dangerous as it continues to claim lives, cause suffering, and escalate to greater levels of violence. The need for a ceasefire is greater than ever today.
The State of the War
Following Ukraine’s 2023 counter-offensive, the initiative in the war shifted to the Russians. From late 2023 to the present, Russian forces in eastern Ukraine have been advancing very slowly. Russia also still occupies a small part of northern Ukraine, close to the city Kharkiv. In August 2024, the Ukrainians responded to Russian advances in the east with an incursion from northern Ukraine into Russia’s Kursk region. The Russians were subsequently able to regain some territory but have not pushed the Ukrainians out of Russia altogether.
While the situation on the ground may well change, at present the war is set in a pattern reminiscent of western Europe in World War I: the two sides face each other along an over 1,000-kilometer front that shifts only marginally over time.
The War’s Toll
Precisely how many people have been killed in the war to date is unknown. Both Russia and Ukraine likely exaggerate the other side’s losses while playing down their own. A rough sense of the scale of the war’s losses can be discerned, though.
In December, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the war began in February 2022. An estimate by the Russian media website Mediazona, based on open-source data such as obituaries, placed the number of Russian soldiers killed in 2024 alone as at least 31,481. The total number of Russian military personnel killed since the war began is presumably much higher.
In January, United Nations deputy human rights chief Nada Al-Nashif reported that more than 12,300 civilians, including 650 children, have been killed in Ukraine during the war—and these numbers are likely underestimates. Civilians have been killed both close to the frontlines and far from it, with Russian bombing being a significant cause of death. Almost 7 million Ukrainians have been forced by the war to flee their country.
Ukrainian civilians are also suffering from repeated Russian attacks on their country’s energy infrastructure. Russia has attacked Ukraine’s power grid over 1,000 times since the war began and these attacks escalated in 2024. A major attack in late November 2024, for example, left millions of Ukrainians without power. The attack left the city of Kherson without electricity and the city of Zhytomyr without power or water.
Because of the assaults on its energy infrastructure, Ukraine is in a precarious position. Since the war began, Ukraine has gone from a net exporter of electricity to Europe to a net importer, and it is currently struggling to pay for these imports. In the middle of winter, Ukraine is currently unable to supply the country’s full energy needs, with residential blackouts being frequent. Household electricity was out almost 40 percent of the time in December. Continued attacks on the energy infrastructure will likely only worsen this severe deprivation.
scene of wartime devastation in Ukraine
The war has also involved the use of weapons that are not only lethal in the current conflict but have longer-term consequences. Both sides have used cluster bombs and land mines. These weapons have already caused harm—over 1,000 people in Ukraine have been killed or injured by cluster bombs since the war began—and will continue to cause harm for years, even after the war ends.
Both cluster bombs and land mines can remain active and unexploded in the ground for years, posing a continuing threat to people’s lives long after the wars that originally put them in place have ended. Because of these weapons’ long-term dangers, much of Ukraine’s land has been effectively blighted. Almost a quarter of Ukrainian land may be contaminated with explosives, including perhaps 10 percent of arable land
This contamination of land seriously damages Ukrainian agriculture, one of the country’s most important economic activities. Further, the effects of the damage to agriculture go beyond Ukraine. The disruptions wrought by the war have strained global food supplies, as both Ukraine and Russia are major grain exporters. Prior to the current war, nearly 90 percent of Ukrainian wheat exports went to food-insecure countries in Africa and Asia. With so much Ukrainian farmland contaminated by explosives that it may take decades and tens of billions of dollars to clean up, global food supplies will likely be affected for a long time even if the war ends today.
The most dangerous weapons connected to the Ukraine war, though, are ones that have not yet been used, namely nuclear weapons. Because the war has pitted nuclear-armed Russia against the nuclear-armed United States and NATO, Ukraine’s leading supporters, the threat of possible nuclear war has hung over the Ukraine conflict from the beginning.
The nuclear threat moved closer to becoming reality this past November. That month, the United States and United Kingdom gave Ukraine authorization to use long-range American- and British-made missiles to strike targets within Russia, which the Ukrainians did.
Russia responded to the Ukrainian missile strikes by striking a Ukrainian city with a longer-range missile that, although it carried conventional explosives, could be armed with a nuclear warhead. The choice of weapon was clearly meant to be a demonstration of what the Russians could potentially do to retaliate.
Seeking a Ceasefire
These extraordinary costs and dangers make ending the war imperative. US President Donald Trump has expressed an interest in trying to negotiate an end to the war and apparently has already spoken by phone to Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Zelenskyy.
We shall have to see what becomes of future negotiations. At present, though, how to end the war diplomatically is far from clear. The Institute for Peace & Diplomacy recently sponsored a symposium in which various experts offered ideas on this topic. Informed partly by that symposium, I will offer a few tentative ideas of my own.
The central challenge to negotiating an end to the war is that, because Russia is currently in a stronger position than Ukraine, Putin’s government has little incentive to withdraw from the Ukrainian territory Russia has already occupied. Fighting has manifestly not gained back this land, and negotiations are not likely to either. Nevertheless, because of how costly the war has been to Russia, Putin at least has an incentive to stop the fighting.
Given this situation, a plausible ceasefire deal would involve Ukraine withdrawing its forces from Russia’s Kursk region in return for Russian withdrawal from around Kharkiv and freezing the conflict along its present lines. The ceasefire could be followed by a gradual reduction in both Ukrainian and Russian military forces along the current frontline and the two countries’ borders, with the frontline eventually becoming an internationally monitored demilitarized zone. To provide Russia an additional incentive, this demilitarization process could be accompanied by gradual relief of international sanctions.
If the demilitarization process is successful, the United States and NATO can then provide what Russia has been seeking throughout this conflict: a written guarantee that Ukraine will not be admitted to NATO.
Such a resolution would hardly be satisfactory since it means responding to Russia’s invasion with concessions. Nevertheless, I don’t see a realistic alternative. This resolution would at least stop the killing and suffering and offer an opportunity for the Ukrainians to begin to rebuild their country.
Those of us who wish to support the Ukrainian people can consider donating to humanitarian groups working in Ukraine, such as Catholic Relief Services and Mennonite Central Committee. People can also donate to the Halo Trust, which works to clear explosives from Ukrainian land.
We should also all mourn the tremendous suffering and loss of life caused by three years of this catastrophic war.
Ukraine countryside
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For more of our posts on the war in Ukraine, see:
A Catastrophe Decades in the Making: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine
A Hidden Cost of the Ukraine War: How Russia’s Invasion Encourages the Spread of Nuclear Weapons
Looking Beyond Anti-Imperialism: A Response to Some Arguments about the Ukraine War
Not Your Pawns: A CLE Examination of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
For more of our posts on war in general, see:
The Preferential Option for Nonviolence in Just War Theory
Gaza War: Outrageous and Foolish
A Personal Reflection on a Just War
The Civil War Conundrum, 150 Years Later
The Preferential Option for Nonviolence in Just War Theory: Opportunities for Just War & Pacifist Collaboration
by Thad Crouch
The Disagreements
At the 25th anniversary conference of the Consistent Life Network in 2012, the new, young, rising star, Aimee Murphy — of the then one-year-old Life Matters Journal — gave a speech. When it ended, a seasoned CLE activist aggressively laid into Murphy’s opposition to “aggressive war” rather than taking a pacifist position against all war.
A decade earlier, a year after the 9-11 terrorist attack and mere months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the youngest member of Pax Christi Austin (a chapter of an international Catholic non-violence organization) urged fellow members to support a presentation using Just War Ethic arguments against the invasion at an interfaith peace event. The membership adamantly opposed him, despite his arguing that it would be faster, easier, and more practical than attempting to convert pro-war Austinites into nonviolence advocates within the available time frame to mobilize them against an impending war.
Among life-long committed leaders of the CLE, debates over active nonviolence or pacifist positions vs ones allowing for wars described as just, defensive, or non-aggressive can become intensely heated. But there’s at least one important criterion of just war theory that, when applied as rigorously as intended, points to significant common ground on which pacifists and just war theorists can work together to promote nonviolence in practice.
Just War Doctrine
The Christian version of Just War doctrine began with Augustine of Hippo, a philosopher who converted to Christianity shortly after it became the Roman Empire’s official religion. Augustine saw war as a tragedy that occurred in a sinful world that, under certain circumstances, could be needed to protect life and restore order. As he pondered circumstances in which Christians might morally participate in war, he found criteria from Marcus Tullius Cicero, a first- century Roman senator and philosopher – though Augustine disagreed with Cicero’s idea that impugned honor could justify war for Christians.
The most important criterion of Just War for this discussion is:
Last Resort: To justify engaging in war, all other bloodless means to resolve the conflict must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.
The Opportunity: Just War’s Preferential Option for Nonviolence
The requirement that bloodless means must be found to be ineffective before “just war” can apply means a preferential option for nonviolence.
That means that those who don’t know about active nonviolence are unqualified to declare just war.
In order to apply and implement just war doctrine, one must understand the power of nonviolence. To effectively apply the just war theory, persons, religious bodies, and governments must have acuity with understanding, applying, and implementing the power, the effectiveness, and the limits of nonviolence. Those who equate nonviolence with being passive are unqualified to discuss just war theory.
They must also understand the limits of violence as a problem-solver.
New Knowledge of Nonviolence
Eons of history are filled with examples of nonviolence that have proven effective. For example, there’s the overthrow of British rule in India/Pakistan; the Solidarity Movement in Poland; and the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt.
Gene Sharp’s three volume set, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, 1973, lists 198 nonviolent tactics. In his 1992 book, Engaging the Powers, Walter Wink lists over ninety examples of effective nonviolent actions spanning from Before the Common Era to 1991. Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall go into great detail about around 40 cases in A Force More Powerful.
Yet something both newer and more convincing has happened than a list of nonviolent tactics that can work with a list of successful historic nonviolent examples: a study.
In the award-winning Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, Erica Chenoweth & Maria J. Stephan go beyond listing nonviolent victories and tactics. They apply statistical analysis to 323 conflicts involving more than a thousand active participants that attempted both violent and nonviolent means to either overthrow an illegitimate dictator or oust a foreign military occupation between the years 1900 and 2006. Here are just a few of their findings:
Nonviolent campaigns were twice as effective as violent ones, with violent campaigns victorious 25% of the time and nonviolent ones 50% of the time.
- Nonviolent campaigns were eight times more likely to result in democracies five years after conflicts than armed insurrections.
- Violent campaigns are significantly more likely to relapse into civil war within 10 years than nonviolent campaigns.
Erica Chenoweth explains this in a one hour and twenty minute video.
The 21st Century New Opportunities to Apply the Old
If we marry the centuries-old Preferential Option for Nonviolence with these new statistics, then new possibilities arise:
Consider that it becomes much more difficult to show that 198 bloodless options to resolve conflicts have been exhausted or shown to be impractical or ineffective when in at least the two examples of ousting dictators or occupying armies are more likely to succeed by organized strategic campaigns of adaptable nonviolent tactics than by warfare.
Consider that any person or committee with legitimate authority to decide that nonviolent means are impractical or ineffective must now be educated in the application of effective organized strategic, adaptable, campaigns making the use of 198 nonviolent tactics before choosing violent tactics.
Consider that any persons that are entrusted with authority to possibly decide that nonviolent means have been found impractical or ineffective are now unqualified to do so if they do not possess a proven acuity to apply effective organized strategic, adaptable, nonviolent campaigns to real world conflicts.
Consider that nonviolent peace activists have new 21st Century opportunities within the Just War Preferential Option for Nonviolence to teach these tactics and strategies to Just War adherents and legitimate government authorities.
Consider that now those who want to advocate for rigorous adherence to Just War principles can learn and apply these proven nonviolent tactics and strategies to resolve more conflicts nonviolently without renouncing their option to Just War, and thus, make war rarer and rarer over time.
Consider all the conversations possible between Just War advocates and nonviolence-only advocates that can be mutually beneficial.
Consider with whom you can engage in that conversion this year.
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For more of our posts on applying nonviolence, see:
Making a Nonviolent Revolution: Review of Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know
Culture of Conscience: Would You Pay Taxes that Fund Abortions if Hyde and Helms were Repealed?
Applying Pacifist Insights to Abortion
Confronting MAID: Misleading Language
This is a companion piece to Confronting MAID: Is it Autonomy?
by Ms. Boomer-ang
Project Censored observes that on some issues, the most commonly-heard voices “distract our attention from what we really need to know” and “keep us focused on minor or misleading parts of the story,” while “the important things…continue moving forward largely free from journalistic scrutiny and public debate.” This frames crucial public issues in ways that “marginalize critical and grass roots perspectives, shield the powerful from scrutiny, and discourage the public from understanding the deeper forces that are shaping their lives.”1 Whether the writers realize it or not, this applies to much discourse related to Medical Aid in Dying (MAID). Unfortunately, the misleading language is so pervasive that even some people speaking against MAID use it without realizing it can weaken their argument. Could confronting the language help keep the idea of living until one’s body dies naturally thinkable?
- We hear that “Laws against MAID force people to go to another jurisdiction to get killed.” But what about people going to another state or country to avoid death-hastening? The most-accessible media leaves the impression that that never happens. But in 2023, when a surgeon told a Canadian woman with abdominal cancer to consider MAID, she got treatment in Baltimore. Would this have been possible if Maryland had already had MAID by then? I don’t know what the woman will do if her cancer recurs. But this story shows what people now have to do to stay alive.
- We hear that MAID adds end of life options, but doesn’t it also take options away? For example, doesn’t it allow care facilities, doctors, and insurance companies to drop alternatives to death-hastening for people in certain conditions?
Some “heroic” efforts to prolong life put so much strain on the body that an individual could live at least as long without them. But what about letting nature take its course, supplemented when needed by help keeping clean, eating, dressing, doing enjoyable activities, and sometimes breathing? Are these tossed out with the “heroic” efforts?
Additionally, doesn’t the availability of MAID change people’s conception of what is appropriate and possible?
- We hear that MAID allows doctors, family members, and friends to stay with a patient until the end. But this implies that the availability of MAID allows the above people, many of whom would have stayed with the patient until the end before, to abandon or threaten to abandon the patient, if they stay alive beyond a certain point.
- The observation that, at least initially, a disproportionate number of people submitting to MAID have been white and not poor has been used to assure us that MAID won’t threaten people for being minority and poor. Actually, it tells us more about pressures within upper-class and upwardly mobile families, communities, and identity groups. Are these groups less likely to tolerate a member in certain physical conditions staying alive? Identity group and family can be at least as important as finances in determining life/death decisions.
- The observation that most people who “choose” MAID have insurance is used to assure us that MAID does not threaten people for lacking insurance. Actually, it says more about insurance policies. Having insurance doesn’t mean having all necessary insurance coverage.
- We hear assurances that in jurisdictions allowing MAID, under 5% of deaths occur that way. But what about boasts that death-hastening policies are “incredibly successful” and “popular”? Could the 5% refer to only the deaths following a strict Voluntary MAID protocol and the actual percent of deaths that are medically hastened be noticeably higher? Even a report written to assure euthanasia was rare acknowledged that in 1990 only about 23% of intentional medical killings were by voluntary euthanasia or “assisted suicide.” The others were by involuntary euthanasia or intentional overdoses of pain-control drugs.2
- Will the idea of a doctor who will not kill become, in most people’s minds, as ridiculous as a soldier who is unwilling to kill? How will the number of people that a typical doctor kills in a year compare with the number of people that a typical soldier kills in a lifetime of combat?
- Calling any religious or secular group that opposes MAID “oppressive” and “reactionary” doesn’t acknowledge groups that have become even more strictly uncompromising in favor of MAID.
- MAID advocates claim there is “no abuse” in places that allow it. But what about pressure to submit to death-hastening on people considered unworthy of staying alive? In fact, the word “abuse” is in danger of being flipped. Will helping a death-eligible person stay alive, even at that person’s request, be classified as abuse of that person? Is staying alive in certain conditions considered abuse of one’s loved ones?
- Though debates about whether depression alone makes a person MAID-eligible shouldn’t be ignored, they can detract attention from the quiet building of a consensus that death hastening is the only response to certain other conditions.
- Examples of people submitting to MAID because of economic desperation don’t necessarily turn people against death-hastening. Such examples can cheer some euthanasia supporters that their laws are working. Therefore, in addition, we need to publicize cases of people risking homelessness, bankruptcy, exile, and/or family disownment for continuing to reject MAID.
- Calling MAID an individual’s personal choice diverts attention from when it is blatantly not. Once euthanasia is legal, doctors can kill patients against their unambiguous requests. One woman reportedly was afraid to go to a hospital because of the danger of euthanasia, but her doctor assured her he would guard her. The woman went to the hospital, and when her doctor went home for a rest, another doctor walked into her room and killed her.3 Some victims fight or try to escape their killers. They’re subdued by sedatives. When someone calls MAID the individual’s choice, why do we not bring up cases like this?
- We hear that in a MAID jurisdiction, if you don’t agree with the doctor’s, care facility’s, or insurer’s policy toward death, you can switch. But are doctors and facilities that participate in death-hastening required to give patients on request a list of doctors who do not? Are insurance companies required to reimburse a person who goes out of state to find a non-MAID doctor?
When abortion was imposed, organizations of pro-life gynecologists sprang up. Are equivalent organizations being created for medical specialists who will not participate in MAID? Crisis pregnancy centers sprang up to help people carry pregnancies to term, even against their families’ wishes. Are there shelter homes for people who wish to stay alive comfortably, even against their families’ wishes?
For such shelters, hospice is no longer an appropriate name. Cancer patient Charlotte Allen has observed, “The hospice movement has historically opposed anything that smacked of euthanasia,” but that was before February 2007, when the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) came out for death-hastening, or at least “studied neutrality” on it. Neutrality implies there is room for hospices that let people live until their body dies naturally. But Ms. Allen pointed out that there are hospices that, when they cannot directly kill somebody, terminally sedate them. Like abortion clinics, many hospices are in the business of ending lives.
Before my state imposes MAID (probably soon), I want to line up non-participating doctors (whether in or out if state) to go to. I asked two pro-life organizations if they had a list of such doctors, and they did not. I asked a clergyman of a denomination known to oppose euthanasia, and he did not. Nor does he know anybody with my concerns. Now I don’t know where to turn.
In fighting against MAID, should not one try to steer distracting or misleading discourse back to a path that helps the public understand important aspects of the topic?
NOTES
- John C Collins, Nicole Eigbrett, Jana Morgan, and Steve Peraza, “The Magic Trick of Establishment Media: News Abuse in 2027-18.),” Censored 2019,(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018), pp. 119-120.
- Wesley J. Smith, Forced Exit, Times Books (Random House), 1997, pp. 98, 99″
- Ibid., p. 101
=========================================================
For more of our posts on euthanasia, see:
Figuring out Euthanasia: What Does it Really Mean?
Confronting MAID: Is it Autonomy?
Euthanasia by Poverty: Stories from Canada
How Euthanasia and Poverty Threaten the Disabled
What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill
Assisted Suicide as the Next Roe v. Wade: Time to Pay Attention
Assisted Suicide is Inequality, Just Like All Legal Violence
Aftermath of State Ballot Initiatives
by Tom Taylor
The Maryland ballot this past November, similar to ballots in several other states, included a referendum in which Maryland residents voted on a proposed amendment to enshrine abortion in the Maryland state constitution. As a Maryland resident and Consistent Life Ethic advocate, I was extremely disappointed that voters approved the amendment. Similar amendments passed in six other states. Voters in three states, thankfully, offered a ray of hope by defeating referendums on the issue.
Going forward, my hope is that voters will come to regret passage of these ballot initiatives, and thereby encourage momentum for change. Adoption of these amendments severely limits the ability of lawmakers to respond to evolving medical knowledge and changing circumstances related to maternal health and fetal development. Legislators need flexibility in drafting laws that best serve the needs of their states’ residents and reflect up-to-date medical knowledge and advancements.
Restricting Legislators
These amendments place a significant constitutional restraint on elected representatives’ flexibility to enact such laws in response to medical advances and also on their ability to add new standards, including health and safety protections for women or other safeguards, related to changing developments.
The restraint arises because an amendment to the constitution becomes part of the fundamental framework of state law, takes precedence over other laws due to its higher legal status, and is very difficult to repeal. As part of the state’s fundamental law, it submits all future legislation to a standard of “strict scrutiny” based on the constitutional provision.
When courts adjudicate a statute passed by the legislature, they typically give deference to the legislature as long as the statute passes a “rational basis” test, meaning that it is considered a reasonable law. Further, the statute can be amended, replaced, or repealed through subsequent legislative action as facts, circumstances, or public opinion change.
With a constitutional amendment in place, courts give priority consideration to the foundational document over any rational basis test applied to the statute passed. The practical result is to put a chilling effect on legislatures’ willingness to enact new laws. Any legislation that is passed is likely to be subjected to legal challenge, unlikely to pass the “strict scrutiny” standard that courts apply to constitutional provisions, and therefore unlikely to survive court review.
Responding to New Medical Discoveries
Medical research and technology continually reveal new knowledge about pregnancy and fetal development. Already, fetal surgery can occur as early as 16 weeks, and a web search of articles and studies about pregnancy discloses the rapid and complex fetal development that occurs from the very beginning of gestation. The human body undergoes more change before birth than at any other stage of development.
To cite an example, recent research shows that sensory development begins in utero, well before birth. Babies’ development in the womb includes sensing the world around them as well as the necessary physical changes that will enable them to function following birth.
This sensory development plays an important role in infant attachment to the mother. It also initiates the process of learning about the postnatal world the new-born will inhabit after birth. The research indicates that the fetus is responding to the external world long before birth. Further research and medical technology development are likely to reveal even more knowledge that will call for appropriate responses.
There also is an urgent need to improve maternal health during pregnancy, especially for women in vulnerable groups. Ongoing study is likely to reveal new knowledge that will improve maternal health outcomes as well.
Approval of the Maryland amendment and similar amendments will severely restrict the ability of legislators to enact fitting measures in response to such new developments in fetal and maternal healthcare. However, Consistent Life supporters can continue to serve an advocacy role within this legislative landscape by engaging legislators and the public about emerging evidence in fetal and pregnancy research.
Responsibility to Entire Living World
From a consistent life point of view, these advocacy arguments also can be approached (and strengthened) through an ecological perspective that links protection for the preborn with protection of nature. Damage to nature also is at odds with consistent life principles, and environmental protection is an issue that resonates with many citizens and legislators.
Humanity enjoys a reciprocal relationship with the entire living world and is called to responsibility and good stewardship of this relationship. In Maryland, legislators have honored this reciprocity by enacting significant legislation for environmental protection and stewardship.
It behooves society to also think of preborn, developing lives as part of the living world and this reciprocal relationship. Respect for our natural heritage calls us to be good stewards of the human birth process as well. Just as the seeds of food crops and garden plants go through stages of development underground before emerging, developing human life experiences myriad stages of complex development before birth.
It is our duty as human beings with responsibility for the entire living world to exercise good stewardship in the process of human development leading to birth. And let us emphasize that every currently living person once existed at these early stages.
Future Steps
Moving forward in response to the Maryland amendment and similar measures, let us stay engaged in advocacy with our legislative representatives to honor this wisdom of reciprocity and responsibility within the natural human development process.
Let us look for opportunities to plant seeds and create momentum for change in the legislative process. Let us work to foster a sentiment of good stewardship of developing life in its earliest stages within our legislative bodies. Let us highlight the need for flexibility to address new developments and knowledge about pregnancy, maternal health, and fetal development. Let us lobby for appropriate measures along these lines. Voices in advocacy can change the narrative.
Pointing to the connection between nature and ecology and the natural progression of human conception, development, and birth offers a different perspective and channel for dialogue on the abortion issue. It raises issues of consistency between care for the environment and care for the vulnerable, preborn members of the natural world. In this way of thinking, protecting the preborn is consistent with protecting the natural world and its land, water, air, forests, habitat, and biodiversity. We can call on citizens and their elected representatives to seek full protection for both the preborn members of the natural world and all of its ecological resources.
In the wake of ballot initiatives, the advocacy group AAPLOG (American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists) suggests supportive actions such as:
- Defending existing regulations still in place that may face legislative or judicial challenges arising from passage of ballot initiatives.
- Pushing for better data reporting on abortion numbers and associated complications as a common-sense public health measure that provides full and accurate health statistics. Data collection can reveal issues and deficiencies of care that will need to be addressed and demonstrate the need for regulations and safeguards. AAPLOG states that, in the United States, such reporting is generally not adequate to provide meaningful conclusions. The state of Maryland does not publicly report this information at all.
- Advocating for and supporting local pregnancy resource centers to make life-serving options widely known in communities and reduce the factors that contribute to abortion decisions.
- Advocating on legislation at the federal level.
Authentic witness can still change hearts and minds and lead to eventual changes in the law. Consistent Life principles can continue to shine a light and offer a guideway that leads society toward a life-affirming path that honors the natural world in its fullest sense.
“Become Nonviolent Towards All Life”
For signposts along this route, we can point to two notable champions of consistent life principles who also exemplify humanity’s reciprocal relationship with nature – environmental activist Wangari Maathai and farmworker leader Cesar Chavez.
Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, opposed abortion and founded the Green Belt Movement in Kenya with the dual purpose of empowering women and girls and reforesting land. Chavez, who embedded nonviolence principles in the farmworker movement, asserted: “Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well with others.” During his leadership, United Farmworker health clinics did not allow abortions, and Chavez adopted a vegetarian diet out of concern for animals.
We also can look to the words of Albert Schweitzer, noted for his Reverence for Life philosophy: “Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.”
Legislative action can align with these sentiments as well.
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For ongoing coverage of upcoming referendums, see our website: Peace and Life Referendums
For more of our posts, see:
Presidential Election 2024: Consistent Life Perspectives
Summary of Results: Peace & Life Referendums 2024
What History Shows: The Consistent Life Ethic Works for Pro-life Referendums
Stewardship and the Consistent Life Ethic
Confronting MAID: Is it Autonomy?
by Ms. Boomer-ang
Referring to Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) as an individual’s autonomous action can divert discussions to when autonomy is desirable and away from whether MAID really gives the patient/victim autonomy.
MAID requires the cooperation of other people. Autonomy implies self-initiation. But how many fatal prescriptions are first suggested or initiated by the patient/victim’s family, friends, medical staff, social workers, caregivers, insurance companies, or Artificial Intelligence? How often are people who have not requested or agreed to MAID presented with a fatal prescription, with at least some of the necessary signatures, possibly including one made electronically on their behalf? Euthanasia policy scholar Wesley J. Smith has noted, “Studies show families rather than patients generally decide when the time has come for euthanasia.”1 When must an individual take active steps to avoid MAID?
Many terms that are used to degrade staying alive in certain conditions relate to the effect on other people. Concepts like “undignified” (implying shameful and disgraceful), “irresponsible, “selfish,” “immature,” “burdensome,” “occupying organs that could benefit someone else,” and “squandering heirs’ money” can pertain to responsibility. Is not submitting to death-hastening out of a sense of responsibility or duty the opposite of autonomy?
Unassisted suicide is an autonomous action. So is foregoing medical attention for months or years until one dies naturally. But actively speeding death is as interventionist as extraordinary efforts to prolong life. If the majority of non-sudden deaths are hastened, it will be living until one’s body dies naturally that will be the autonomous action.
Claims that laws against MAID laws are examples of government intrusion into personal lives can divert the discussion into the appropriateness of any government intrusion. Actually, the discussion should be about what intrusion by the government or equivalent is appropriate for.
Are not most of the people whom anti-MAID laws interfere with those who want an individual dead? Such laws protect the individual from these people, as well as from care facilities and insurers who find it more profitable and efficient to have them dead.
Don’t laws allowing MAID give free rein to these people to pressure, bully, and shame the individual into accepting death-hastening? Don’t they allow care facilities, caregivers, and insurers to set policies of killing, expelling, and/or overcharging anybody with certain conditions in certain circumstances? That these are private entities doesn’t make their policies any less intrusive or any less strict than government laws.
And in places where medical facilities are part of government services or heavily supported by the government, the facility’s deciding to kill a person is government intrusion to cause death.
Don’t pro-MAID laws give justification to claim that to live until one’s body dies naturally, or to stay alive in certain conditions, is unpatriotic, sinful, obscene, cowardly, the equivalent of not paying taxes, or “just not done”? That to want to stay alive in certain conditions is a clinical sign of “irrationality”?
Will many people, from policymakers to caregivers to the general public, think the only alternates to quick MAID are “slow” death-hastening, like terminal sedation and medication mini-overdoses? Will even many who reject quick MAID feel anything that smells of life-maintenance is “wrong” or “looks bad”?
Doesn’t the availability of MAID change people’s conception of what is appropriate and possible?
NOTES
1Wesley J. Smith, Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder. Times Books (Random House), 1997, p. 103
===============
For more of our posts on euthanasia, see:
Figuring out Euthanasia: What Does it Really Mean?
Euthanasia by Poverty: Stories from Canada
How Euthanasia and Poverty Threaten the Disabled
What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill
Assisted Suicide as the Next Roe v. Wade: Time to Pay Attention
Assisted Suicide is Inequality, Just Like All Legal Violence
Claims About Third-Trimester Abortions
by Sarah Terzo
Abortion supporters often say that abortionists only do third-trimester abortions when there’s a serious risk to the pregnant person’s life or health.
One example is from pro-abortion politician Pete Buttigieg. In an interview, he was asked, “Just to be clear, you’re saying that you would be okay with a woman well into the third trimester deciding to abort her pregnancy?”
At first, Buttigieg tried to evade the question, saying, “Look, these hypotheticals are usually set up in order to provoke a strong emotional response —”
The interviewer cut him off with the claim that 6,000 abortions a year happen in the third trimester. I’ve seen this statistic before, but I haven’t been able to find its source.
Buttigieg responded by pointing out that this makes up just 1% of all abortions, and the crowd applauded.
He then said that these cases involve wanted babies whose mothers have already named and bought cribs for them. Third-trimester abortions, he claimed, are only done for families that:
get the most devastating medical news of their lifetime, something about the health or the life of the mother that forces them to make an impossible, unthinkable choice.
And the bottom line is, as horrible as that choice is . . . that decision is not going to be made any better, medically or morally, because the government is dictating how that decision should be made.
Again, this led to applause from the crowd.
However, this is not true.
Why Third-Trimester Abortions Aren’t Done to Save the Mother’s Life
In this video, a former abortionist explains how third-trimester abortions are done.
The abortionist injects poison into the preborn baby to kill him or her before inducing labor or otherwise removing the child intact. To get a live birth, the steps would be exactly the same, except the injection wouldn’t be done. The doctor could dilate the cervix and remove the baby or induce labor. This would result in a living child rather than a dead one.
To turn a third-trimester abortion into a delivery, all the doctor has to do is not give the injection. The direct act of killing the baby in the womb is what separates a third-trimester abortion from a birth.
In a third-trimester abortion, the abortionist slowly dilates the cervix over the course of three days. A woman whose life is in danger would have to endure three extra days of being pregnant. In contrast, a doctor could end the pregnancy immediately with a cesarean section, resulting in a living child. Or he or she could induce labor.
A quote from a 1998 article in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association referring to pregnancies in the third trimester states:
Except in extraordinary circumstances, maternal health factors which demand termination of the pregnancy can be accommodated without sacrifice of the fetus, and the near certainty of the independent viability of the fetus argues for ending a pregnancy by appropriate delivery.1 (emphasis added)
Studies Reveal the Reasons Third-Trimester Abortions Are Done
Two studies reveal why late-term abortions are done.
The first study was done by pro-abortion researchers Diana Greene Foster (who later worked on the infamous Turnaway Study) and Katrina Kimport. The study concerned the reasons people seek abortions after 20 weeks and included women who aborted in the third trimester of pregnancy.
The authors state:
[D]ata suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment . . .
They gave a breakdown of the following reasons (some women chose more than one):
- 45% didn’t know they were pregnant.
- 40% had trouble deciding whether to have an abortion.
- 20% disagreed with the father of the baby about whether to have the abortion.
- 38% didn’t know where to go for the abortion.
- 27% had difficulty getting to the abortion facility.
- 65% had difficulty raising money for the abortion and related costs.
- 41% had difficulty getting insurance coverage to pay for the abortion.
One example was a woman who had an abortion at 28 weeks while her boyfriend was in jail. She waited until he was incarcerated because she wanted to keep the abortion a secret from him.
A more recent study (2022) focused just on third-trimester abortions. It found that the reasons given for third-trimester abortions were the same as those given for earlier abortions.
Again, there was no pro-life bias. The pro-abortion group ANSIRH (Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health) funded the study. ANSIRH describes itself as “Providing the evidence you need to advance reproductive well-being.”
It says of the study’s results:
The reasons people need third-trimester abortions are not so different from why people need abortions before the third trimester.
The study gives no detailed breakdown of women’s reasons or any concrete numbers. It found that people have abortions in the third trimester for one or more of the following reasons:
- They didn’t know they were pregnant earlier.
- They had difficulty arranging an abortion.
- The baby had a health problem or disability.
None of the women in the study aborted for any reason related to their own health. They were all physically healthy and in no danger from pregnancy.
The study mentioned four cases where the baby had a disability. This was 14.3% of the total. However, the study wasn’t clear whether these were the only cases.
One woman was homeless. The abortion facility took her money, killed her baby, and sent her back to the streets with no intervention or help. She was still homeless, and now has a late-term abortion on her conscience.
Another woman discovered her pregnancy early but “took no immediate action toward obtaining an abortion.”
This woman had been sexually assaulted in the past, though that wasn’t the cause of her pregnancy. Kimport claims the emotional trauma of the past assault was the reason she didn’t arrange an abortion until the third trimester.
One woman couldn’t afford an abortion and started prenatal care. Then, her (now) ex-boyfriend got a work bonus, and she had an abortion in her third trimester.
All the women in the study aborted because they didn’t feel they could cope with a baby or simply didn’t want the child. While their reasons may have seemed serious to them, they weren’t any different from the reasons people seek earlier abortions.
Statements from Doctors who Specialize in Third-Trimester Abortions
Further evidence comes from third-trimester abortionists themselves.
Abortionist Warren Hern, who specializes in third-trimester abortions, gave the following interview:
Interviewer: Do you ever get any women in their second half of the second trimester or in the third trimester that say they have no medical problems, they just don’t want the baby? They change their mind? Would you do it?
Hern: Well, of course, if a woman doesn’t want to be pregnant, there’s no justification for forcing her to continue the pregnancy.
Interviewer: Okay, has that happened?
Hern: That happens all the time.
Hern has repeatedly said that because women can die from pregnancy complications, every pregnancy threatens their lives and, therefore, abortion is always medically justified.
Shelley Sella is another abortionist who does third-trimester abortions. In an article in the Irish Times, a reporter who interviewed her says:
The women Sella treats fall into two categories: those who discover foetal abnormalities; and those with healthy, viable babies whose maternal circumstances mean they could not cope with the baby.
She gives the example of one mother of three whose husband was killed in a car accident while she was in her third trimester. She didn’t feel she could raise her children and the new baby alone, so she had an abortion. Now, besides grieving for her husband, she has to deal with the loss of his nearly full-term baby.
A healthy, 16-year-old girl, also in the third trimester, chose abortion even though her parents, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s parents wanted her to have the baby. Sella killed the healthy, viable child.
When asked about whether adoption would’ve been appropriate in this case, Sella stated that adoption “causes lifelong trauma and psychological problems.”
Another third-trimester abortionist, Susan Robinson, said of her patients:
Women whose fetuses have terrible abnormalities are a lot easier for people to understand. The husband and wife want to spare their baby whatever suffering that baby would have.
Then there’s the group of women who didn’t know they were pregnant. They were told they were not pregnant for one reason or another and they are just as desperate.
Some people really don’t discover their pregnancies until the third trimester. In a previous article, I quoted abortionist Susan Poppema, who described a woman who came to her abortion facility nine months pregnant and in active labor. The woman had come for a routine exam and didn’t know she was pregnant.
Advertising Third-Trimester Abortions
Some abortion facilities openly advertise third-trimester abortions on their websites. These facilities welcome pregnant people from all around the United States who want to abort in the third trimester.
Here are some examples:
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For more of our posts on the reality of abortion, see: