Roundup: Would You Like Your Abortion Regular, or Decaf? A “He Said What?” Roundup
People say really amazing things when it comes to reproductive rights. Here are just a few recent statements that are making news.
As rhetoric gets more and more heated around the debate for reproductive rights, more and more outrageous things are coming out of people’s mouths. And in this case, the proverbial mouth is that of high-level representatives of the Catholic church, who recently compared the “habit” of abortion to “having a cup of coffee.”
From the California Catholic Daily:
There is another aspect “that must be considered among these pathologies that for us is also very dangerous,” [The new president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Archbishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula] said. “It is spoken of very little and is of less concern to the public, and even to the scientific community, and that is the grave phenomenon of the habit of abortion.”
The problem, he said, “was made manifest in all of its gravity when 20 years ago, after the devastating earthquake in Armenia (1989), a team of doctors from the Sacred Heart Catholic University traveled to the region to provide medical assistance and discovered that many women had undergone as many as 20 abortions or more. For them, having an abortion had become something like having a cup of coffee [emphasis added]. Thus they talked about the dramatic phenomenon of completely erasing any moral sensitivity to the issue of abortion.”
But the Archbishop isn’t the only one saying some pretty outrageous things recently. A parish priest in El Paso reminds readers in a guest column in the El Paso Times that you cannot be a Catholic without opposing abortion, as well as gay marriage, and that it is a mortal sin not to actively fight against them.
I sincerely hope and pray that all El Paso Catholics will take to heart the precious and infallible teachings of Holy Mother Church in the moral sphere, particularly those most relevant to our city at this critical juncture.
Remember: Every single Catholic, out of fidelity to charity and truth, has the absolute duty to oppose (1) the murder of unborn babies, and (2) any and all government attempts to legalize homosexual unions.
…
Abortion and homosexual acts are unequivocally intrinsic moral evils. And friends, this objective truth doesn’t depend on the opinion of the majority. Frighteningly, if the majority chooses to deny the objective moral order, then we will all suffer the pestiferous consequences.
It is perhaps most interesting that part of Rev. Rodriguez’s argument relies on the idea that just because the majority believes something doesn’t make it right, when anti-choice activists have been pushing the idea that a majority of Americans now identify as pro-life as a reason to end abortion all together, despite the legality of the procedure.
But apparently there is one thing more offensive to conservatives than abortion, and that’s the threat of more immigrants in the country. Or, as leaders in the anti-immigrant community are calling it, an “invasion by birth canal.” Via Jezabel:
“It’s invasion by birth canal,” the leader of a California anti-immigrant ballot initiative told the Los Angeles Times. The head of an anti-immigrant group in Virginia called for an investigation into “whether or not illegal aliens have a preferred breeding season.” According to Texas Republican Representative Ron Paul, “awarding automatic citizenship to children born here minutes after their mothers illegally cross the border” is “a matter of national security.”
Strange as it may be, in some cases you find wisdom and reason in the most unexpected of places. And this time, it’s from Playboy mansion owner Hugh Hefner, speaking out on his history of involvement with reproductive rights with Fox News:
While Hugh Hefner is best known as the founder of men’s magazine Playboy, over the last six decades, the 84-year-old has also played a particularly prominent role as a political and social activist – a side of him that has been illuminated in Brigitte Berman’s new documentary “Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel.”
…
In conjunction with his support of women’s rights, Hef’s Playboy Foundation (a non-profit organization he established in1965) also worked to advocate abortion rights across America. In particular, Hefner said he sent his legal team to Florida in 1971 after receiving a letter from a woman who was given a 15-year jail term and accused of manslaughter for having an abortion. The case was then re-opened and the woman was re-sentenced to house arrest for a minimal amount of time, and state abortion laws were later amended.
“We fought for birth control rights and the change in birth control laws, the change in abortion laws, we fought cases to give women the right to choose,” Hefner explained. “For me it was part and parcel of same thing, I fought the same way for gay rights and black rights. I believe in the notion of democracy and the notion of being free. That’s what I believe America should be all about.”
Mini Roundup: 12th and Delaware premired last night. Some loved it, some thought the portrayal may not have been very accurate. Did you get a chance to see it? Tell us what you thought in the comments!
Note: Due to a problem with feeds, we do not have the usual compilation of links today. We hope to have things up and running again tomorrow. Thank you for your patience.