Another Catholic Voice in the Public Square - October edition

I found the October edition of Voice of Truth - The Catholic Voice in the Public Square when I found the September edition which I commented on earlier today. This issue was about protesting funding of Planned Parenthood and other abortionists, an issue I had previously addressed. Federal Medicaid funds do not cover abortion except for rape, incest and when the life of the mother is in danger. The funding of such abortions is so remote from any individual taxpayer that they are not justified in withholding their taxes as a response (so say Catholic ethics textbooks).

Maryland opts to use its own Medicaid funds to cover abortions. It is one of few states who do. If a Human Life Amendment were ever submitted, Maryland would not ratify. Indeed, if Roe were repealed, there is already a permissive abortion law on the books. Even here in Maryland, the funding is too remote for any single taxpayer to object.

As for what Catholics hold as the Truth, all your reminders are false. While the Declaration relied on Divine Providence (on a Deist/Masonic model), the Constitution relies on We the People, the unanimity of the states in submitting the Constitution and those who ratified it, not by God, either implicitly or explicitly and if it had, it would been more Masonic than Catholic. We were created by mothers and fathers before Adam and Eve, who are mythical.

Science has proven that blastocysts are made up of the future placenta/bag of waters and individually independent stem cells who do not operate as an organic whole until gastrulation, which is why doctors and researchers do not believe they harm individuals when doing research or prescribing birth control prior to gastrulation but treat post-gastrulation embryos (an technically, no one is an embryo until then) with respect unless the pregnancy endangers the mother (including the prospect of self-termination).

Moses did not ban abortion and the author of Numbers mandated it when adultery was expected (Num 6). Indeed, that was the part of the Law that is referred to when Joseph is said to have been a righteous man not willing to subject Mary to the Law, which would have had her drink bitter herbs, thus aborting the Christ.

Catholic Doctrine only recognized abortion as starting at conception under Bl Pius IX (who was wrong about most things he touched as well. All of the things he called errors are now called modern theology and scripture study. As for the Declaration of Independence (which, by the way, was ruled not to be used as legal precedent when someone claimed it contained a right of revolution under the Constitution), the government has no right to force abortion. That is also true in the Fifth Amendment. Not mandating it and allowing it are two different rights.

Understanding the right to life is important. There are positive and negative rights. Negative rights protect women from state abortion laws until the child is viable. They also protect the unborn and the born from being killed by the government through forced abortion or maternal execution. In other words, they have the same negative right to life anyone else does. Positive rights are created by the government, such as a child tax credit and the right not to be murdered, whether it be by a mobster, a mugger or your mother as an infant. That positive law has not been extended to the unborn, who the Common Law states are only recognized as legal persons vis-a-vis their mothers at viability.

Under the 14th Amendment, congressional enforcement powers could move that to any point that they deem the fetus should be considered a person. Equal protection would demand that all such fetuses and/or embryos have the same rights, which in the first trimester includes embryos which have miscarried, those rights being post-mortem investigation and Tort relief for malpractice. Aborted fetuses would also have the equal protection right to have their killers punished, including the person who ordered their death. Indeed, the equal protection rights of contract killers would be violated if mothers were exempt. The right to life movement, in an attempt not to look anti-feminist, has painted itself into a corner by taking maternal punishment off the table. No one is person if their murder is not as fully punished as any other person. Until you come up with a number of weeks where the abortion is so onerous that it must be punished, then that abortion is none of your business.

Once you agree on a number, take it to Congress while you still have Republicans controlling both chambers and modify by law when unborn children are legal people. I would say 25 weeks, but you might get away with 20, provided there are health exceptions of course. No fetus as the right to insist its mother carry him if it is doomed to die before birth. That is too much of a health risk. Labor should be induced immediately to end the pregnancy, baptize the child and let it die. The bishops may not like it, but moral cowardice is a true feature of natural law ethics.

In most cases, abortion is paid by cash. In those states, you are more likely to fund an abortion by eating out than by paying your taxes, because abortions are one of those things that low wage workers buy, because they have to so they can feed their other children. They are part of the 72% of abortions due to economic factors. Banning abortion will not stop them from seeking one. The best way to stop these abortions, and the ones in Maryland, is to Fight for $15. This has already passed in Montgomery County.

A decent child tax credit is necessary. The one insisted upon by Marco Rubio is about $10,600 short. Another reason that killing the Tax and Job Cuts Act should be scored as required for a 100% pro-life rating. All we get from Republican pro-lifers on such a request is the sound of crickets.

Mentioning the Affordable Care Act is highly partisan, although there are relevant measures. Some Obamacare policies do allow abortion because they are replacing insurance coverage provided by employers who received the health insurance exclusion (which is still in the GOP tax bill) which does not have a Hyde Amendment. Most tax law supported abortion comes through such tax law. As for the canard that we can all keep our own doctors, it was a mistake to say because policies that were insurance in name only because if you used them you exhausted them became illegal, as well they should have. Insurance premiums went up because they always go up because there is no cost regulation of either drug prices or hospital fees. Single-payer would do that. It is the only Catholic option (and it could exclude abortion funding but would likely include a line of credit account to guarantee access). Regardless, 3100 of your 5100 Adult Lay Catholics in St. Mary’s support Obamacare. Don’t commit calumny about it in our names. I’ve seen you do it twice. Do it again and I complain to Monsignor.

On clinic funding, funds are not fungible. OMB Circulars on keeping funds separate are serious business. PPUSA knows not to violate them. Don’t lie in our names. If you do not like PPUSA providing women’s health services (which do include contraception), then have Holy Cross (and other Catholic hospitals provide all but contraceptive care is as convenient and subsidized a manner as PPUSA. Poor and not-poor African American women are at much greater risk of breast cancer. BEFORE you defund PPUSA for mammograms, make sure something else is in place for them, although I can’t see the bishops letting them provide birth control, as they are unwilling to look at the science on blastocysts v. embryos. Neither do the Little Sisters of the Poor, who have avoided fines if only they make a deal on notification with their insurance provider, as the Supreme Court directed. Their religious liberty stands protected, their religious power over their workforce is not and should not be.

Please study closely what I have submitted today about the nature of rights and abortion. Until you understand it, you will continue to wander in the wilderness. But do not wander too long. The Congress will change hands in a bit more than a year from now. You have until then to decide at what point in the pregnancy abortion must be considered infanticide, with parental punishment, with that point being where you can protect the unborn under law (while recognizing that earlier cases are none of society’s business except to give money to the family once the child is born.

I won’t be joining your group, although you should consider my arguments prayerfully, and I don’t being praying not to be misled, you already are. Try to find a less partisan tone.