Comment are off

Spring 2016

FINAL COVER frontSPRING 2016

T H E H U M A N L I F E R E V I E W F E A T U R E D I N T H I S I S S U E VOL XLII No 2 Spring 2016 THE HUMAN LIFE FOUNDATION INC NEW YORK NEW YORK 10.00 PER COPY William Murchison on THE ODDEST COUPLE ABORTION POLITICS Christopher White on POPE FRANCIS AND HIS PRO LIFE CRITICS Brandon McGinley on KERMIT GOSNELL A GROTESQUE SUPERMAN Richard Weikart asks DOES SCIENCE SANCTION EUTHANASIA Brian Caulfield on LETTING DAD DIE Audrey Ignatoff on I REMEMBER EUGENE ABORTION IN NORTHERN IRELAND John Grondelski interviews Bernadette Smyth ABORTIONCHANGESYOU COM Ifeoma Anunkor and Michaelene Fredenburg Booknotes Reviews by George McKenna and Maria McFadden Maffucci ALSO IN THIS ISSUE A Handful of Dust R J Snell Turning the World Around Donald DeMarco Appendices Robert P George Hadley Arkes Antonin Scalia Bobby Schindler

FINAL COVER SPRING PUB 2016

ABOUT THIS ISSUE Antonin Scalia was widely known for his dissents though that doesnt mean his dissents were widely read They should be One of his last penned in response to Anthony Kennedys majority opinion in Obergefell v Hodges the Supreme Court case that legalized same sex marriage is included here not only to honor the late Justice but to broadcast what turns out to have been a parting warning A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers Justice Scalia wrote last June does not deserve to be called a democracy Appendix A page 80 We also reprint tributes by his friends Robert P George Antonin Scalia An American Originalist Appendix B page 85 and Hadley Arkes Memories of Nino Appendix C page 89 Thanks to The Public Discourse and First Things for allowing us to sharethese with Review readers Thanks also to National Review for permission to reprint Bobby Schindlers What Terri Schiavo Still Can Teach Us Appendix D page 93 which appeared on NRO on March 31 marking the 11th anniversary of his sisters death The court ordered extermination of Terri Schiavo was a spectacular episode in the ongoing public rehabilitation of euthanasia over the past few decades Richard Weikart in Does Science Sanction Euthanasia or Physician Assisted Suicide page 30 utilizes an historical approach to answer the question A professor of modern European history at California State University Stanislaus Dr Weikart has just published The Death of Humanity And the Case for Life Regnery Faith April 2016 Wesley J Smith a frequent contributor who will have an article in our next issue has long warned that physician assisted suicide would herald a return to euthanasia Encounter Books has just issued a new paperback edition of his acclaimed Cultureof Death Another Review contributor Ian Gentles has also examined the subject in a recent book Its Not That Simple Euthanasia Assisted Suicide Today deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research 2015 These pages feature the work of three new contributors Brandon McGinley Kermit Gosnell A Grotesque Superman page 23 is the Editor for EWTN Publishing a collaboration between Sophia Institute Press and the EWTN Global Catholic Network R J Snell A Handful of Dust page 44 is William E Simon Visiting Fellow of Religion and Public Life in the James Madison Program at Princeton University and Professor of Philosophy at Eastern University The third new voice belongs to Ifeoma Anunkor currently the Human Life Foundations McFadden Fellow AbortionChangesYou com page 59 A graduate of Columbia Law School Ms Anunkor is the founding director ofEXPECT a new initiative of the Human Life Review to reach college students and young professionals A student essay contest details of which you will find on page 76 is one of her projects Please pass the word along to anyone you know who might be interested all entrants will get a free digital subscription to the Review ANNE CONLON MANAGING EDITOR

FINAL BOOK SPRING 2016

SPRING 2016 1 the HUMAN LIFE REVIEW Spring 2016 Vol XLII No 2 Introduction 2 Maria McFadden Maffucci The Oddest Couple Abortion Politics 5 William Murchison Pope Francis and His Pro Life Critics 11 Christopher White Turning the World Around 19 Donald DeMarco Kermit Gosnell A Grotesque Superman 23 Brandon McGinley Does Science Sanction Euthanasia Richard Weikart 30 Letting Dad Die 37 Brian Caulfield A Handful of Dust 44 R J Snell I Remember Eugene 49 Audrey Ignatoff AbortionChangesYou com 59 Ifeoma Anunkor Michaelene Fredenburg Abortion in Northern Ireland 63 John Grondelski Bernadette Smyth Booknotes . George McKenna on Daniel K Williams Defenders of the Unborn Maria Maffucci on Abby Johnsons The Walls Are Talking Appendices 80 Antonin Scalia Robert P George Hadley Arkes Bobby Schindler Editor Maria McFadden Maffucci Senior Editors Ellen Wilson Fielding Mary Meehan William Murchison Managing Editor Anne Conlon Consulting Editor Europe MaryKenny London Contributors Lynette Burrows James Hitchcock Rita L Marker William McGurn George McKenna David Quinn Wesley J Smith Business Manager Rose Flynn DeMaio Production Manager Christina Angelopoulos Publishing Consultant Edward A Capano Founding Editors J P McFadden Faith Abbott McFaddenPublished by THE HUMAN LIFE FOUNDATION INC Editorial Office 353 Lexington Avenue Suite 802 New York NY 10016 Phone 212 685 5210 The editors will consider all manuscripts submitted but assume no responsibility for unsolicited material Editorial and subscription inquiries and requests for reprint permission should be sent directly to our editorial office Subscription price 40 per year Canada and other foreign countries 50 U S currency ISSN 0097 9783 2016 by THE HUMAN LIFE FOUNDATION INC New York N Y Printed in the U S A

2 SPRING 2016 INTRODUCTION The fly in the buttermilk writes Senior Editor William Murchison in our lead article The Oddest Couple Abortion Politics is the deep reliance Americans have come to place since the 1930s on political solutions for essentially nonpolitical questions This stubborn habit is one reason the fundamental question of human life has been reduced to garden variety chitchat on the campaign trail A prime example is the early spring contretemps over Lord help us Donald Trumps and Hillary Clintons views onabortion if a scrambled set of reflexive attempts at positioning can dignify the word views As he describes how the presidential candidates tripped over their tongues and fell while attempting to denote the action government should take regarding abortion he warns that deciding abortion policies by nose counting politics is trying to resolve a moral matter by non moral means More ominous he warns is that this 2016 presidential campaign is bringing us perilously close to a moment when power does in fact rule when power speaksshoving formerly well understood moral propositions to the ground Lord help us indeed Murchison writes that deeply anchored understandings in moral issues arise in part from religious witness certainly this is true of the witness of the Catholic Church against the culture of death And yet stalwart soldiers in the pro life movement were disturbed some felt betrayed by remarks on abortion made by the newly elected Pope Francis in September of 2013 In Pope Francis and His Prolife Critics Christopher White Director of Catholic Voices USA says its time to put an end to this false narrative While affirming that the Pope makes a lot of people uncomfortable with his strong challenges to those on both right and left White cites what Francis has actually said and written about abortion in these past three years and argues that he has in fact reinvigorated what it means to be prolife offering a renewed approach that is converting hearts and minds to the prolife cause and exemplifying a new strategy for moral articulation in the 21st century Francis identifies abortion as a crime an absolute evil but he links it repeatedly to other symptoms of a throwaway culture one that dismisses the unemployed undocumented and the disabled and eliminates those who are physically or socially weaker Professor Donald DeMarco would agree that abortion is not a stand alone issue but he emphasizes the waves of damage that radiate from it In Turning the World Around he writes that if back at the time of Roe v Wade many naively believed that abortion was an event limited to the horizon of the woman and her private decisions the effect of legalized abortion has been to shatter not just the bonds between mother and child but those between husband and wife and the bonds of family And it needs to be countered DeMarco writes with love Abortion and love contend to move the world in opposite directions but as long as there is love there is hope for love disdains moral inertia and constantly aspires to something better

SPRING 2016 3 THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW One could hardly find a better example of abortion shattering humanity than the case of Dr Kermit Gosnell A Grotesque Superman as new contributor Brandon McGinley describes him McGinley spoke to filmmaker David Altrogge whose interviews over a nine month period provided the material for 3801 Lancaster American Tragedy a documentary film about the horrors found in Gosnells clinic at that Philadelphia address While it behooves abortion advocates to caricature Gosnell as a freakish monster the portrait of a man which emerges from Altrogges interviews is much more complicated and disturbing as you will read in McGinleys gripping account Gosnell understands himself as a man who steps outside of conventional morality in order to improve society not unlike writes McGinley other supermen in history who couch their cruelty in humanitarianism Gosnells twisted belief that he was helping the poor by snipping babies necks is not that freakish or uncommon in the world of abortionists The first serious proposal to practice infanticide for progress was in 1870 writes Richard Weikart in our next article Does Science Sanction Euthanasia or Physician Assisted Suicide when Darwinian biologist Ernst Haeckel advocated the killing of infants with disabilities in order to support humanitys evolutionary progress Weikart follows the historical trail of euthanasia and eugenics from Europe to the United States and back to the atrocities of Nazi Germany after which euthanasia became a harder sell in Western societies temporarily Today secular ethicists like Peter Singer advocate killing the weak in the name of science in a culture writes Weikart that refuses to see that science has little value when misapplied to trying to determine what is moral or beautiful Issues of life and death cannot be adequately handled then by either politics or science and even religion Brian Caulfield writes falls short of fully countering deaths cold finality His Letting Dad Die is both a poignant memoir about his father who survived an attempt by the medical community to let him die more than five years earlier see Saving Dad HLR Fall 2010 and a meditation on the paradox of death for Christians Though we believe in a blessed death that in the state of Gods grace has the well founded hope of eternal life the cold undoing of death itself is not good it is a scar a wound and worse an insatiable devouring void The comfort and hope we experience come from the love that survives To be a human person is always to be utterly contingent ashes to ashes writes R J Snell in his philosophical meditation on being which follows A Handful of Dust Wonder Reverence and Fear We are not sufficient unto ourselves for we are not the answer to why there is something rather than nothing and we are created persons whose innate brokenness seeks union with the other we are not meant to wander and wonder alone We inhabit our own nature best when we give ourselves fully to the task of confirming and recognizing the other person An enduring relationship beyond death is remembered as well in Audrey Ignatoffs haunting memoir I Remember Eugene In a poignant tale of love lost one that evokes beautifully the America of John F Kennedy the Beatles the

4 SPRING 2016 INTRODUCTION beehive hairdo Ignatoffs memoir also reveals the shocking treatment the disabled suffered before the disability rights movement and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 Eugenes story remains a disturbing mystery as you will read one in which eugenics practices not so far removed from the Nazi experimentation on the disabled may have played atragic role We next have an article based on a discussion new contributor Ifeoma Anunkor had with MichaeleneFredenburg the founder of the website Abortion Changes You It speaks powerfully to the need to end the silence on abortions wounds for women themselves but also for the other people who suffer the loss fathers grandparents and siblings And next John Grondelski interviews Bernadette Smyth the president of the largest pro life group in Northern Ireland a country which has steadfastly retained abortion as a criminal offense but which now battles a movement to legalize it where a child has been diagnosed with a life limiting disability Sound familiar Hitlers Final Solution was preceded by the euthanizing of disabled babies and children In Booknotes George McKenna has written an absorbing review of the important new book Defenders of the Unborn The Pro Life Movement before Roe v Wade by Daniel K Williams a readable and meticulously researched study of the battles fought by the pro life movement over the past seventy years McKenna finds thebook factually rich except for the unfortunate failure to credit some of the major intellectual fathers and mothers of the pro life movement Your servant follows with a brief review of Abby Johnsons new book The Walls Are Talking Abortion Clinic Workers Tell Their Stories We were shocked and saddened by the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia on February 13 In tribute we reprint his powerful dissent in Obergefell v Hodgesas well as reminiscences from his close friends and colleagues Professors Robert George and Hadley Arkes Finally we reprint another poignant piece about love lost about cruelty to the disabled and euthanasia Bobby Schindler writes about the state imposed death murder of his sister Terri in 2005 Sadly it is now legal in every U S state to deny food and water leading to fatal dehydration And yet out of that tragedy has come the Terri Schiavo Life and Hope Network a nonprofit group headed by Mr Schindler that has assisted more than 1,000 families over the past decade to fight for the lives and human dignity of their loved ones Out of suffering and death hope and new life an appropriate thought with which to wrap up this Spring issue MARIA MCFADDEN MAFFUCCI EDITOR

SPRING 2016 5 The Oddest Couple Abortion Politics William Murchison Naturally the politicians jumped in The politicians always jump in invited or not welcome or not at the first sight of social or cultural turbulence Hey Heres what Id do to make things Fair and OK for All Concerned Heres what the jerkover there my honorable opponent in this present electoral contest would do which is the last thing you want to do Naturally And so went the early spring contretemps over Lord help us Donald Trumps and Hillary Clintons views on abortion if a scrambled set of reflexive attempts at positioning can dignify the word views Im not sure they ever can Why talk of them then For illustrative purposes The Trump Clinton contretemps is the front door to more extended treatment of the abysmal confusion in which we wander while waiting for politicians to address a distinctively non political question It is a matter not unlike soliciting help from a dry point etcher in designing a rocket lift off device theoretically possible otherwise not entirely logical Or helpful Well get back to that First what happened in March and April with Trump Clinton and abortion Oh you know Everybody knows They tripped over their tongues and fell while attempting to denote the action government should take regarding abortion First came The Donald during a town hall event in Wisconsin Pursued by Chris Matthews of MSNBC for an answer to the highly leading question Does abortion deserve punishment Trump squared his jaw and finally said yes There has to be some form of punishment Rachel Lu at The Federalist called Trumps answer rare and impressive Which it may in one sense have been given the uproar that followed in which fire rained down from the pro life as well as the pro abortion side March for Life called the candidates remarks completely out of touch with the pro life movement The National Right to Life Committee said it never has supported penalties for women who have abortions Trump several hours later tried to repair the damage with a statement calling for the punishment of doctors who perform abortions but no not the woman Hillary Clinton tweeted Just when you thought it couldnt get worse Horrific and telling And from Bernie Sanders Your Republican frontrunner ladies and gentlemen Shameful William Murchison writes from Dallas for Creators Syndicate and is a senior editor of the Human Life Review He is currently working on Moral Disarmament a book examining the consequences of our moral disagreements The Cost of Liberty his biography of John Dickinson an influential but neglected Founding Father of the United States was published in 2013 by ISI Books

6 SPRING 2016 In fact Mrs Clinton was next in line to face the music for attemptingto stake out what she regarded as a broadly reasonable hence politically plausible public stance on abortion On Meet the Press she raised the question of constitutional rights The unborn person doesnt have constitutional rights said she Now that doesnt mean that we dont do everything we possibly can in the vast majority of instances to you know help a mother who is carrying a child and wants to make sure that child will be healthy to have appropriate medical support The unborn person She might as well have struck a bronze gong The reverberations sound throughout the house What unborn person was what her usual allies on the pro abortion battle lines wished to know privately cutting her by withholding outrage and condemnation the slack to which the most pro choice presidential candidate of them all is surely entitled Still some markers had to be laid down for the sake of consistency Illinois Planned Parenthoods Diana Arellano tweeted that Mrs Clintons phraseology further stigmatizes abortion by calling a fetus an unborn child Wait Mrs Clinton couldnt have meant could she to endow an unborn person with the constitutional right she had just gotten through saying didnt apply to unborn persons Hardly There was that word nevertheless person If a fetus was a person wouldnt that mean Um well hmmm you step into precisely such bear traps when attempting to talk about abortion as a matter inviting or requiring political adjudication Abortion is so not a political matter the wonder is it doesnt more regularly trip up candidates endeavoring to frame an abortion policy covering all major bases respect for a womans choice respect for the blessings of motherhood respectful sorrow for the whatever it is that wont now see the light of day fetus product of conception unborn child The job can be attempted but it cant be done It cant be done with profit that is to any common understanding of citizenship such as political figures try to evoke when they talk of health care or national defense The reduction of abortion to garden variety chitchat on the campaign trail is telling evidence of the U S Supreme Courts folly as if further evidence of foolishness were necessary in inventing a thitherto undreamt of constitutional right The seven justices who signed the majority opinion in Roe v Wade had no idea of the mess they were making through the introduction of political considerations into the weighing of heavy almost god like decisions When is life not life Such is the unanswerable question the justices call on our political institutions to resolve democratically I repeat It cant be done WILLIAM MURCHISON

SPRING 2016 7 The fly in the buttermilk is of course the deep reliance Americans have come to place since the 1930s on political solutions for essentially nonpolitical questions like love and marriage and honesty and personal dignity Maybe its a bad idea but we keep on trying Such is habit Comparatively few human questions are in fact straightforwardly political Nor are politicians of whatever political disposition not even Donald Trump not even Hillary Clinton qualified to address the purely human questions that people under appropriate moral guidance can make for themselves That such questions deserve fencing off from politics is the most underrated under talked about proposition of this or any other political season Moral questions confront every society of course every form of government They cannot be shooed away They deserve all the same a special status born of recognition that particular truths particular understandings cannot without great cost be put up for legislative or administrative disposition Legislative enactments are based on the counting of noses not the unassailable establishment of principle Politicians are the greatest nosecounters in the world It is their bread and butter Thus we hear Hillary Clinton trying to distinguish between rights that belong to live citizens and rights that obtain to shall we say pre citizens What is her premise Clearly that emergence from the womb is the operative factor in citizenship She wishes to draw a distinction between gaining permission to emerge and failing to gain that permission in either case the decision of a second party the mother is dispositive Mrs Clinton cedes the decision to the mother But on what grounds Moral Religious Not in the least The grounds for Mrs Clinton are political The political system has handed to the mother the power of life or shall we say playing her game for a minute non life She herself decides Or does she Democratic majoritarian politics might confer such a right on one class of citizen over another class But is that the function of democratic majoritarian politics to decide who lives and who doesnt no guilt as under the criminal code attaching to the parties in the matter The nose counters say yep thats politics for you We vote we count and those with the fewest votes go along with the majority The reasons this approach doesnt work for anyone but the politicians that is become plain whenever Candidate X or Y or Z opens up on the matter to the voters Every attempt to win favor at the polling place shows the impossibility of resolving a moral matter by non moral means Every such proposal is self contradictory hence an invitation to the public disunity that democratic politicians are encouraged to shun so far as possible THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

8 SPRING 2016 Mrs Clinton wants to help a mother who is carrying a child and wants the child to be healthy Helping people is the essence of modern democratic politics But Mrs Clinton in political mode excludes from public concern the child of a mother who doesnt want a healthy child who in factwants no child at all How do you rationalize this morally You dont even try You emphasize the Supreme Courts grant of rights to the woman in the early stages of pregnancy in the process raising another question Why just the early stages Why not the late as well Why not every stage Because and there is no other answer the political process makes these distinctions These may on their own terms lack internal logic but so do many political determinations based as they are on what the people allegedly desire and whats possible in that fraught context The art of the possible politics looks at a human conundrum and says well heres what we can do so maybe thats what we do Moral analysis regularly yields another result It considers not just whats possible but whats right based on perceptions that proceed from within and are verified by experience and teaching Or that proceed from Above in the deep tones of religious authority And may in fact proceed from both sources The great irony of the human life debate is that it is a debate over life and yet goes forward with minimal if any discussion of the premises on which the purposes of life may be said to outrank the purposes of political solicitation The substitution of political for moral discourse is one of the signal features of modern times and one of the main causes of disorders that unaccountably so far as politicians reckon these things disrupt our political affairs The abortion debate such as it is invites the electorate and its representatives to weigh in on questions once generally regarded as nonpolitical Personhood for instance The Constitutional Convention debate over how to count slaves for representational purposes affords the only previous instance hardly an encouraging one of the personhood questions intrusion into politics The issue is at its heart a moral one What are the supposed criteria in a religious and democratic context our own kind of context for political recognition of personhood Their value to the state is the sole criterion that comes to mind But such a criterion robs the human person of the dignity due it you would suppose as a creation not of the state but rather of GodA practical politician may be excused the obligation of distinguishing between Gods creations and the states but shoving God to the sidelines has the effect detrimental our society once supposed of operating a different WILLIAM MURCHISON

SPRING 2016 9 kind of shop than the founders took for granted one in which the arbitrary classification of groups and individuals becomes a government tool a means of keeping order anddistributing power What is more such arrangements as one political regime sees fit to make have only temporary tentative status A new regime can supplant the old arrangements which are after all human and disposable with its own arrangements No guarantees whatever exist for the maintenance of a political dogma that rests on no foundation other than a public mood a public desire that one thing or another may be done ormade possible Thus political judgments are evanescent Good until the ink dries then expungeable Not so the more deeply anchored understandings that arise from natural law religious witness and the fortification that long experience brings to intelligent appraisal of enduring problems Such as life life and what to do about it For politicians to pretend otherwise is well frankly what we may have coming to us in an age where more and more we judge ideas as fresh or faded duties as riddled with escape clauses institutions and humans themselves as instrumental to ends we design for ourselves rather than acknowledge as proceeding from outside factors Its all about us Yes that would likely sum it up Political calculations weigh on us precisely because politics provides the means of changing that which we come to resent or which we find old hat and useless Yet the politicians themselves have to feel their way along with great care In a land lacking landmarks you never know when a trap or a quicksand pit lies just ahead Would that be the way of it Mrs Clinton Language and policy must be framed carefully no room for misjudgment lest the pagan gods of public opinion turn and bite Mrs Clinton erred She knows it She used language she hoped fit the case it didnt as she quickly learned Trump too erred He spoke of punishments For what offense Maybe theres no offense to talk about Maybe under existing arrangements political power as opposed to any innate sense of right and wrong is all we have to reckon with We approach with heavy tread and snapping of underbrush the moment when power does in fact rule when majorities can be assembled on any occasion to grind down the moral protests of minorities never mind the grounds on which those protests are framed The men and the women with the votescome to outrank hence to dominate those without the votes and thus to enjoy the capacity of remaking the world in their own image in accordance with their own instincts and wishes The ability of raw power to stifle or extinguish dissent may not ever be underrated THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

10 SPRING 2016 In which respect the 2016 presidential campaign plays an informative part in our affairs We see how things actually workout when power speaks shoving formerly well understood moral propositions to the ground We dont have to like what we see We shouldnt in fact We should watch in fascinated horror as if a tornado were headed our way or worse surrounded us now raw relentless power dismantling concepts we once took as safe and durable But which arent Clearly WILLIAM MURCHISON We should do this again sometime except with different people

SPRING 2016 11 Pope Francis and His Pro Life Critics Christopher White Perhaps the doubts about Pope Franciss pro life credentials began in September 2013 when he gave the now infamous interview with the Romebased Jesuit journal La Civilt Cattolica less than six months after being elected Pope In a wide ranging conversation published concurrently by numerous Jesuit publications throughout the world Pope Francis remarked We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion gay marriage and the use of contraceptivemethods This is not possible I have not spoken much about these things and I was reprimanded for that But when we speak about these issues we have to talk about them in a context The teaching of the church for that matter is clear and I am a son of the church but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time 1 If this wasnt the starting point it was undoubtedly a flashpoint for some pro life activists both Catholic and non Catholic alike who began to view the pontiffs pro life commitments with a certain skepticism By September 2015 when the Pope did not utter the word abortion in his address to the United States Congress some had become convinced that he lacked the conviction of his predecessors and the pro life faithful who had been fighting the good fight for the last fifty years These complaints continue to linger Consider the following headlines Pope skirts abortion in speech to Congress 2 Pro life and Catholic leaders voice grave concern over Popes contraception remarks 3 or even Why so many people think Pope Francis is the antichrist 4 So too go the conversations often heated at professional gatherings academic conferences and cocktail hours and in the comment boxes of online news outlets A certain disgruntled pro life contingent continues to promote the false narrative that Pope Francis is weak on pro life issues Anatomy of a Falsehood Its time to contest these ill conceived and counterproductive notions Three years into his papacy Francis has in fact reinvigorated what it means to be pro life offering a renewed approach that is converting hearts and minds to the pro life cause and exemplifying a new strategy for moral articulation in the 21st century Its important to understand why and how some have come to question just what it is that Pope Francis is up to with his papacy and thus why some Christopher White is Director of Catholic Voices USA

12 SPRING 2016 are wary when he speaks or doesnt about abortion Simply put hes made a lot of people uncomfortable and not just when it comes to this single issue For those on the right Francis has pushed the issue of climate change repeatedly issued strong challenges to our current economic structure and highlighted its deleterious effects on the poor and championed immigration as a pressing moral issue On the left Franciss unwillingness to rebuff the Churchs long held teachings on divorce contraception or womens ordination has agitated those who long believed they were merely one pope away from a modernized Church And of course for almost fifty years prelates and laity alike have been galvanized by the abortion debate upon hearing statements that it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time some feared the worst Such anxiety however seems to be a largely American problem While most African Latin American Asian and European countries benefit from either anti abortion laws or tighter regulation Americas unrestricted abortion policies matched with American optimism regarding the potential to overturn Roe v Wade have elevated abortion to a cultural religious and political totem Given that the Catholic Church has been the largest force of opposition to abortion in the United States any concerns that its leader might be calling a truce on the fight rattled its weary warriors A closer examination reveals that he is merely calling for a change in our tactics Reframing the Conversation Speaking to the Catholic Bishops of the United States at St Matthews Cathedral in Washington D C the day before his address to Congress Pope Francis stated I appreciate the unfailing commitment of the Church in America to the cause of life and that of the family which is the primary reason for my present visit Then he continued I encourage you then to confront the challenging issues of our time Ever present within each of them is life as gift and responsibility The future freedom and dignity of our societies depends on how we will face these challenges The innocent victim of abortion the children who die of hunger or from bombings the immigrants who drown in search for a better tomorrow the elderly or the sick who are considered a burden the victims of terrorism wars violence and drug trafficking the environment devastated by mans predatory relationship with nature at stake in all of this is the gift of God of which we are noble stewards but not masters 5 Some who were monitoring the visit closely expecting to hear remarks exclusively focused on climate change or capitalism were stunned But they shouldnt have been In May 2015 when Francis released his muchanticipated encyclical Laudato Si On the Care of Our Common Home most commentators reduced it to his reflections on the environment Something CHRISTOPHER WHITE

SPRING 2016 13 much deeper was afoot Francis was and is challenging us to consider how we think of creation as a whole including but not limited to its nascent forms of being Writing in Laudato Si he observes Since everything is interrelated concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings however troublesome or inconvenient they may be if we fail to protect a human embryo even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away 6 Here Francis is in continuity with his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI who in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate declared If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death if human conception gestation and birth are made artificial if human embryos are sacrificed to research the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and along with it that of environmental ecology It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves 7 Over the past decade theres been no shortage of politicians superstars activists and everyday citizens that have made climate change their cause clbre By validating and sharing in these concerns however Francis challenges this same constituency to understand that a consistent interest in protecting our ecosystem must embrace the protection of human life inits embryonic stages of development His is a philosophy of integral ecology as outlined in Laudato Si where he calls on us to cooperate with Gods design in our relationship with the natural world and with one another When we get these intertwined relationships right we also grow closer to God and we come to understand thatour individual decisions have social consequences Francis explicitly appeals to the moral intuitions shared by those concerned about environmental degradation and links them to concern for all living creatures This approach is making inroads in unlikely places Upon the release of Laudato Si for instance Lisa Miller took to thepages of New York magazine hardly a pro papal publication to dissect the ways in which Pope Francis Is Reclaiming the Meaning of Pro Life 8 For Miller Franciss approach appeals far beyond the religious masses that already oppose abortion and identify as pro life As is the case with another theme of his papacy the culture of encounter Francis is interested in pursuing new ways to reach those who might have second thoughts about just what abortion culture has wrought Its in this sense that Francis is as papal biographer Austen Ivereigh has THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

14 SPRING 2016 termed it the Great Reframer 9 Soon after being elected pope Francis called for Catholics to engage in a creative apologetics which would encourage greater openness to the Gospel on the part of all 10 This is precisely his method with abortion Francis is reframing the way much of the world has come to view the issue of abortion For years the language in which those inside and outside of the Catholic Church have talked about abortion has been centered around the debate over a womans right to choose Such rhetoric too often pits the woman against the child she is carrying to term Francis is inviting the Church and the world to act in a way that recognizes the intrinsic dignity of both parties and speaks on behalf of the defenseless unborn In fact among prominent world leaders he is probably the one who has spoken most sensitively about women facing unplanned pregnancies and the need for all of us to do what we can to accompany them in their situations Hes gone so far as to offer to baptize their children even cold calling one such woman to remind her of this offer Its because he recognizes in his words and actions the intrinsic dignity of these mothers as well as their babies that Franciss rejection of our throwaway culture has been so effective Pope Francis has also applied to the pro life context a moral drawn by those who lament a culture that dismisses the unemployed the undocumented and the disabled In a 2013 speech to the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations Pope Francis critiqued a widespread utilitarian mentality the culture of waste that now enslaves the hearts and minds of many and has a very high cost that requires the elimination of human beings especially if they are physically or socially weaker He then gave the commission the following charge You are called to take care of human life in its initial phase reminding everyone with facts and words that this is always in all its phases and at any age sacred and always of quality And not as a matter of faith no no but of reason and science There is no human life more sacred thananother just as no human life is qualitatively more significant than another The credibility of a health care system is measured not only in efficiency but above all in the attention and love towards people whose lives are always sacred and inviolable 11 Lest his critics have any doubt that Francis reserves such strong statements only for closed door addresses to Catholics consider his words to diplomats in Rome during a January 2014 meeting when he condemned a culture of waste and directly tied it to abortion Unfortunately what is thrown away is not only food and dispensable objects but often human beings themselves who are discarded as unnecessary For example it is frightful even to think there are children victims of abortion who will never see the light of day 12 CHRISTOPHER WHITE

SPRING 2016 15 Or his words to the international press corps en route back to Rome after his February 2016 visit to Mexico Abortion is not the lesser of two evils he stated It is a crime It is to throw someone out in order to save another Thats what the Mafia does It is a crime an absolute evil 13 And in his most recent apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia a document devoted to marriage and the family he condemned abortion and asked the world to pause to think of the great value of that embryo from the moment of conception We need to see it with the eyes of God who always looks beyond mere appearances 14 These are not the words of someone ambivalent about abortion but someone who identifies it as a pressing moral issue and one of the greatest tragedies confronting the world today Renewing Our Efforts On December 8 2015 Francis inaugurated a Jubilee Year of Mercy for Catholics worldwide During this year Catholics are called to undergo deep consideration of the practice of mercy In marking the occasion Francis noted that This will be a year in which we grow ever more convinced of Gods mercy How much wrong we do to God and his grace when we speak of sins being punished by his judgment before we speak of their being forgiven by his mercy But that is the truth We have to put mercy before judgment and in any event Gods judgment will always be in the light of his mercy 15 During the Year of Mercy Francis has given all prieststhe power to forgive the sin of abortion While some critics were quick to pounce on this as an effort by Francis to trivialize abortion nothing could be further from the truth Indeed for Francis it is precisely because abortion is such a serious matter that the need for mercy is so great By offering the balm of forgiveness to all who have been affected by this tragedy Francis hopes to reawaken the world to the damage that is done when even one innocent life has been destroyed And this is exactly Franciss grand strategy He realizes that political victories related to abortion important as they may be are never a long term win for the cause of life For Francis like his predecessors St John Paul II and Benedict XVI culture is upstream from politics and that is where we must engage in the changing of hearts and minds when it comes to abortion A renewed paradigm of mercy is what begins to soften hearts and reengage even the staunchest abortion activists to see that when Catholics say no to abortion we do so in hopes of offering a greater yes to a consistent ethic of life that affirms that all life at all times is valuable And the right to life for THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

16 SPRING 2016 the unborn child as Francis has evidenced in the strongest terms remains the fundamental starting point for securing any other human rights one hopes to promote Lets return for a moment to that speech to the United States Congress While Pope Francis didnt utter the word abortion heres what he did say Let us remember the Golden Rule Do unto others as you would have them do unto you This Rule points us in a clear direction Let us treat others with the same passion and compassion with which we want to be treated Let us seek for others the same possibilities which we seek for ourselves Let us help others to grow as we would like to be helped ourselves In a word if we want security let us give security if we want life let us give life The Golden Rule also reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development This conviction has ledme from the beginning of my ministry to advocate at different levels for the global abolition of the death penalty I am convinced that this way is the best since every life is sacred every human person is endowed with an inalienable dignity and society can only benefit from the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes 16 Instead of using his time on the dais to lecture politicians about the moral failures of a government that does not protect unborn children Francis offered them something to aspire to He reminded them and us of the principles that have guided this country since its founding and he asked us to consider how were measuring up In challenging us to reflect on the morality of the death penalty Francis is asking us to consider much more than just one standalone issue It has often been said that one of the most important tools of persuasion is to allow your audience to draw their own conclusions from a debate or lecture Theres a certain amount of trust one has to place in the audiences ability to reason and form their own opinions but if they come to the right conclusions on their own the victory is yours and the effects are likely to endure In recalling to us our nations greatest ideals beginning first and foremost with the commitment to protection of life Francis allows us to drawour own conclusions about how weve fared And what we see in the mirror he holds up to us is a nation where nearly 60 million of our fellow brothers and sisters have not benefited from that supposed right to life So where does that leave us For starters it calls all who care about the cause of life to work together not only to shore up legal protections for the unborn but also to ensure that mothers will receive the support they need once their children are born This doesnt require changing the long held Catholic teaching that abortion is a fundamental issue but it does ask that we offer an extended integrative narrative of a world in which we pledgeto promote life at all stages and find new creative ways of doing so It requires rejecting the tired path of pro life partisanship and providing room in both CHRISTOPHER WHITE

SPRING 2016 17 major parties for those who believe that all human life deserves protection Only under these conditions will there be space for the brave witnesses of folks like Democratic New York State Senator Rubn Daz who has vigorously fought off attempts to expand abortion access much to the dismay of his colleagues Its the banner of a whole life strategy and thinking that led to the efforts of Democrats for Life to champion a bill in the U S Congress that would ban abortion after twenty weeks and also provide greater assistance to pregnant women Its also why the 2016 March for Life a yearly event at which multitudes of Americans rally in Washington D C to protest abortion and defend life selected Pro Life and Pro Woman Go Hand in Hand as its theme and the phrase Choose Both as its tagline And its a clarion call for all those who claim to care about the environment to also care about human beings in the earliest forms of development too lest such environmental commitments be deemed hypocritical Perhaps its the reason that a priest in my notoriously liberal parish on Manhattans Upper West Side decided to use his Sunday homily to encourage his fellow Democrats to speak out not only about gun control but about abortion too In sum Francis is calling on us all to recognize that the duty to protect life begins with protecting human life in the womb but then extends to all human beings in need and also to the environment of the planet we inhabit and any others we may someday journey to To accomplish such a large task we will need to build bridges of moral cooperation G K Chesterton once wrote that each generation is converted by the saint that contradicts it most Following Franciss trip to the United States polling commissioned by the Knights of Columbus revealed an increase in six percentage points to 62 percent among the general American population in support for the pro life movement and an astonishing jump to 81 percent among practicing Catholics 17 By Chestertons standard through Pope Franciss missionary work of mercy he may well one day be remembered by Catholics and non Catholics alike as one of our greatest pro life popes In a world marred by violence anger and judgment Francis is inviting us to recover something sacred something worth protecting something valuable He does so with a message of mercy that encourages us to truly see whats at stake love more deeply and convert Its an approach that allows Francis to reach a new audience and enables us to reach even the most jaded hearts in the most unlikely of places His pro life critics should be the first to recognize this and to heed his example THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

18 SPRING 2016 NOTES 1 Antonio Spadaro S J A Big Heart Open to God America The National Catholic Review 30 September 2013 http americamagazine org pope interview 2 J C Derrick Pope skirts abortion in speech to Congress World Magazine24 September 2013 http www worldmag com 2015 09 pope leaves abortion out of speech to congress 3 John Henry Westen Pro life and Catholic leaders voice grave concern over Popes contraception remarks Life Site News 23 February 2016 https www lifesitenews com news pro lifeand catholic leaders voice grave concern over popes contraception 4 Jennifer LeClaire Why so many people think Pope Francis is the antichrist Charisma 29 July 2015 http www charismanews com opinion watchman on the wall 50752 why so manypeople think pope francis is the antichrist 5 Meeting with the Bishops of the United States of America 23 September 2015 https w2 vatican va content francesco en speeches 2015 september documents papafrancesco 20150923 usa vescovi html 6 Pope Francis Laudato Si On Care for Our Common Home 24 May 2015 http w2 vatican va content francesco en encyclicals documents papa francesco 20150524 enciclica laudatosi html 7 Pope Benedict XVI Caritas in Veritate 29 June 2009 http w2 vatican va content benedictxvi en encyclicals documents hf ben xvi enc20090629 caritas in veritate html 8 Lisa Miller Pope Francis Is Reclaiming the Meaning of Pro Life New York 19 June 2015 http nymag com daily intelligencer 2015 06 how the pope is reclaiming pro life html 9 Austen Ivereigh and Kathryn Jean Lopez How to Defend the Faith without Raising Your Voice Our Sunday Visitor 2015 10 Pope Francis Evangelii Gaudium 24 November 2013 http w2 vatican va content francesco en apost exhortations documents papa francesco esortazione ap 20131124 evangeliigaudium html 11 Edward Pentin Popes Strong Words in Defense of the Unborn National Catholic Register 20 September 2013 http m ncregister com blog edward pentin popes strong words in defenseof the unborn VvrlclITBUQ 12 Pope Francis Address to Members of the Diplomatic Corps 13 January 2014 http w2 vatican va content francesco en speeches 2014 january documents papafrancesco 20140113 corpo diplomatico html 13 CNA EWTN News Pope Francis Abortion Is a Crime and Never the Solution to Zika Virus National Catholic Register 18 February 2016 http www ncregister com daily news popefrancis abortion is a crime and never the solution to zika virus ixzz44KIzkPlkm 14 Pope Francis Amoris Laetitia 19 March 2016 https w2 vatican va content dam francesco pdf apost exhortations documents papa francesco esortazione ap 20160319 amorislaetitia en pdf 15 Full text Popes homily inaugurating Year of Mercy Catholic Herald 8 December 2015 http www catholicherald co uk news 2015 12 08 full text popes homily inaugurating year ofmercy 16 Pope Francis Visit to the Joint Session of the United States Congress 24 September 2015 https w2 vatican va content francesco en speeches 2015 september documents papafrancesco 20150924 usa us congress html 17 Gary Nguyen Pro Life Support Quickly Increased After Pope Francis Visit World Religion News 23 October 2015 http www worldreligionnews com p 19861 CHRISTOPHER WHITE

SPRING 2016 19 Turning the World Around Donald DeMarco Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I shall move the world Archimedes bold request was never granted because no one could find either a lever long enough or a place for him to stand He could neverput his theory into practice And just as well for dislodging Planet Earth from its fixed orbit would have proved catastrophic But times have changed The idea of moving the world fascinated me when I was very young and enjoyed listening to football games on the radio The broadcaster in an attempt to bring the listener visually closer to the game would say Notre Dame will be moving the football from right to left on your radio dial This did not enhance my identification with the game however but ushered in the fantastical thought of how I couldmove the world by simply moving my radio If I turned it 180 degrees in either direction I would then cause Notre Dame as well as the rest of the world to be moving from left to right It was a dizzying idea My radio became my lever my place to stand was on the floor next to my magical receiving set What amazes me today isthat broadcasters still indulge in this amusing and innocent fantasy I do know that in turning my radio around the only thing I affect is the radio and certainly not the world But there is something that does turn the world only not in the way old Archimedes had envisioned The world in this instance is not the physical but the moral realm And that something is abortion Back in 1973 at the time of Roe v Wade many naively believed that abortion was an event limited to the horizon of the woman and her private decision The Blackmun Court agreed Abortion according to an unusual reading of the United States Constitution was presumed to be a private matter a penumbra of the right to privacy discovered by the Court in its 1965 Griswold v Connecticut ruling which legalized contraception It soon became abundantly clear however that abortion was not restricted to the sphere of a womans private choice The question nonetheless remained concerning whether the father of the unborn child had a right to veto his wifes decision to abort Three years after Roe Planned Parenthood v Danforth answered Donald DeMarco is a Senior Fellow of Human Life International He is professor emeritus at St Jeromes University in Waterloo Ontario an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell CT and a regular columnist for the St Austin Review His latest works In Praise of Life Ten Major Moral Mistakes and How They Are Destroying Society and How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad are available through Amazon com

20 SPRING 2016 the question in the negative The father has no such right According to the Supreme Court the State has no constitutional authority to give the spouse unilaterally the ability to prohibit the wife from terminating her pregnancy when the State itself lacks that right The abortion circle widened to include the father Attorney John C Danforth thought he could save marriage from the sweep of abortion In that same decision that bears his name he argued courageously but not successfully that marriageis an institution the nature of which places limitations on the absolute individualism of its members The Court ruled however that despite the fact that joint consent was required for a husband to get a vasectomy or a wife to procure a tubal ligation or even for the married couple to dispose of property they co owned there would be no joint consent required for abortion nor respect for fatherhood or marriage The abortion tide was moving swiftly and claiming much along its path of destruction Abortion separated the mother from her unborn child But this separation was merely a prelude to a series of additional separations that would shatter the family into a collection of isolated fragments The father was separated from his child and thereby separated from his wife Marital unity was compromised If there were siblings they too would be separated from their brothers or sistersGrandparents would be separated from their unborn grandchildren The extended family would lose its honor and its integrity Abortion cut through the family and weakened the contribution the family would make to society Beyond marriage and the family abortion would make significant inroads into the spheres of medicine law education and politics The institutionalization of abortion required compliance and cooperation from theseinstitutions as well as from religious ones where the reluctance to impose against abortion would become a trend even among the God fearing Abortion became entrenched in the establishment Those who protested came to be regarded as racketeers 1 and even terrorists 2 They were silenced in universities ridiculed by the media and excluded from certain political parties Abortion hardly a private matter became the Archimedean lever on a moral level that moved the world Another ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle had a different slant on how to move the world He contended that love is the lever He reasoned that everything aspires to its own perfection because everything aspires to the condition of God Aristotles God is the great magnet that draws everything to itself as the Prime Mover All things that move do so because they love what is supremely lovable And because they love what is supremely lovable DONALD DEMARCO

SPRING 2016 21 they aspire to their own highest end Therefore love makes the world go around This notion of aspiration truly captures the spirit of the Ancient Greek philosophers especially that of Socrates Plato and Aristotle This trio of gifted thinkers would have abhorred the political correctness that has now replaced the pursuit of wisdom for PC is the great leveler making every moral choice appear to be of equal value By the same token political correctnessmakes any moral determination seem to be unjustifiable As G K Chesterton caustically remarked Let us not decide what is good but let it be considered good not to decide it The hierarchy of values is replaced by a flat moral universe Allan Bloom author of The Closing of the American Mind lamented that Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine According to deconstructionists wisdom in the modern world gives way to undecidability Aristotles notion of love moving the world is halfway toward the Biblical notion of love The Stagirites God moved everything not because he loved them but because they loved him if we may assign gender to Aristotles God The God of Scripture created the world out of love Christian writers sing of this love Dante speaks in his Divine Comedy of The Love that moves the sun and the other stars lamor che move il sole e laltre stelle The great Christian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky identifies humble charity as the most powerful force in the universe He was not impressed by money sex or political power And if we need a secular voice to add to this notion we can turn to the popular American novelist Stephen King who has said Love is what moves the world Ive always thought it is the only thing which allows men and women to stand in a world where gravity always seems to want to pull them down bring them low and make them crawl We live out our lives between two opposing forces gravity and grace If we do nothing wesurrender to the force of gravity and are pulled downward Yet no one who feels the weight of the world who feels down and depressed finds this to be a pleasant condition In order to follow the path of grace we must aspire to something higher We speak of higher education and high moral values Cultural historians write aboutthe high points of past civilizations We believe that good art can inspire us to a higher level of awareness Thus the novelist Joseph Conrad could state Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world But the present culture seems to have rejected the line of grace and its concomitant aspiration to something higher The Italian philosopher Marcello Pera contends that the West is suffering THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

22 SPRING 2016 from acute moral paralysis He strongly criticizes those who see no evil and speak no evil to avoid becoming involved who see no evil and speak no evil to avoid appearing rude who proclaim half truths and imply the rest to avoid assuming responsibility Such is the paralyzing consequence of political correctness a cowardly preference to deny that anything can be better than anything else It is the death of aspiration As a result birth is not deemed better than abortion life is not better than death hope is not better than fear and good is not better than evil Moral paralysis is the condition that ensues when people submit to a form of political correctness that is in truth their concession to gravity Abortion and love contend to move the world in opposite directions the former in the direction of dissolution the latter in the direction of actualizing life in its highest potential Abortion is an act that negates all the potential aspiration that is bound up in the unborn child It defiantly rejects the path of grace On the other hand as long as there is love there is hope for love disdains moral inertia and constantly aspires to something better As long as that hope is alive love will ultimately secure the victory of grace over gravity light over darkness life over death Yet the battle will be long and the effort demands nothing less than sustained dedication It falls to each of us then to do what we can by choosing life to turn the world in the right direction Our Archimedean task is to move the world through the lever of love NOTES 1 See Religious Tolerance Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance Use of the RICO Act Against Pro life Groups The US Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act RICO of 1970 was originally written to target organized crime It allowed the courts to attack enterprises that engage in a patternof racketeering A similar piece of legislation The Hobbs Act of 1946 makes it a crime to take property from another with force Both have been used by pro choice groups to target anti abortion organizations 2 Steven Ertelt LifeNews com Obama Administration Calls Pro Lifers Terrorists Again July 6 2012 Washington Once again the Obama administration has called terrorists the majority of Americans who support the pro life view on abortion A January 2012 Department of Homeland Security document is making the rounds on the Internet and it paints an unflattering picture of pro life Americans DONALD DEMARCO

SPRING 2016 23 Kermit Gosnell A Grotesque Superman Brandon McGinley In 2013 a Pennsylvania jury convicted Dr Kermit Gosnell of three counts of first degree murder for snipping the spinal cords of born alive babies in his West Philadelphia abortion clinic Those convictions represented only three of seven charges of infanticide brought by the prosecutor and those charges represented only seven of the hundreds of born alive babies killed by Gosnell in his four decade career Gosnell will die in the prison where filmmaker David Altrogge interviewed him over the course of nine months For a man whose name has become synonymous for those who followed his story with monstrous inhumanity this was an opportunity to present his self justification to a society that had to his mind so ungraciously abandoned him The resulting film 3801 Lancaster American Tragedy named for the address of the Gosnell clinic may be the rawest glimpse of the abortion industry we have available to us all the more so due to its scrupulous evenhandedness Altrogges posture towards Gosnell in his interviews is that of a man trying to understand his fellow man not that of a man studying a monster This is more than good journalistic practice it is essential for those who sincerely desire to understand not just Kermit Gosnell but the practice of abortion generally It behooves abortion advocates to caricature Gosnell as a freakish monster a one off wacko who slipped through the cracks of state regulators and of the otherwise exemplary abortion industry The truth of the matter that Kermit Gosnell is in the words of Altrogge a thoughtful affable even kind man is far more challenging It might just mean that Gosnell is more an exemplar of his profession than an exception within it On multiple occasions in the film Gosnell asks how it could be that a doctor to whom patients voluntarily came for forty years was a terrible person On one hand this feels like casting a line for affirmation and justification On the other hand however this is the crucial question How does a person come to accept severing the spinal cords of writhing babies as part of his everyday life By all accounts Kermit Gosnell is not a psychopath He didntmutilate chipmunks or light fires as a boy Journalists family members and other associates of Gosnell portray him as an active and well liked community Brandon McGinley is the Editor for EWTN Publishing a collaboration between Sophia Institute Press and the EWTN Global Catholic Network A 2010 graduate of Princeton Universityhe lives with his wife and two children in Pittsburgh

24 SPRING 2016 member He did not become an abortionist in order to commit evil or out of indifference toward good and evil Rather we have no reason to doubt his sincerity when he describes his vocation as motivated by humanitarianism At the same time though Gosnell has had from the beginning an unseemly interest in the technology of abortion In 1972 he presided over the brutal super coil experiment in which a helix shaped razor was inserted into the uterus to initiate the expulsion of the fetus Nine of the 15 women who participated in the televised procedure experienced serious complications and the method was abandoned However between the 1972 Roe v Wade ruling and the mid 90s when complaints about his Womens Medical Society in West Philadelphia began to accumulate Kermit Gosnellwas a successful but unexceptional abortionist He built his business raised his family and volunteered in the community David Altrogge with whom I spoke for this essay described his conversations with Gosnell as disorienting While he was far from the Bmovie villain of media portrayals long stretches of reasonable discussion would still be punctuated by pointed and unflinching defenses of his crimes most notably the practice of killing third trimester infants outside the womb by snipping the back of their necks with surgical scissors Perhaps strangest of all Gosnell casually offered that he had completed his first full reading of the Biblein prison and came away more convinced than ever of the righteousness of his actions after all in Genesis it is Gods breath that instills Adam with life so how could a child who has yet to breathe on her own be alive The most revealing self justification though is Gosnells appeal to George Bernard Shaw Gosnell George Bernard Shaw said that practical man changes to live within his society Impractical man has the priority of changing society to meet his own needs Therefore progress can only be accomplished by impractical man Altrogge Would you describe yourself as an impractical man Gosnell No question laugh No question Gosnell gets the Shaw quotation wrong in three important ways First the distinction is not between practical man and impractical man but reasonable man and unreasonable man This is likely a simple slip up by Gosnell though we might speculate that impractical has a more appealing connotation to a man desperate for affirmation thanunreasonable Second and more substantially while this idea was committed to paper by Bernard Shaw it was infact ascribed to his protagonist Jack Tanner in his 1903 play Man and Superman Specifically this paraphrase comes from BRANDON MCGINLEY

SPRING 2016 25 Tanners Maxims for Revolutionists part of his Revolutionists Handbook which Shaw placed in an appendix to the printed editions of the play Tanner was a political radical who not unlike Shaw believed in the necessity of breeding a new race of supermen who would improve upon human nature supplant ordinary people in the social order and press forward to the first authentic human progress in generations Third Gosnell embellishes Tanners words in a telling way The originalmaxim does not explicitly say that the unreasonable man has any priority or duty to change society to meet his own needs It is descriptive not prescriptive The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself In adding the pointedly prescriptive element Gosnells gloss on Shaw begins to sound more like Raskolnikov on geniuses If such a one needs for the sake of his idea to step even over a dead body over bloodthen within himself in his conscience he can allow himself to step over blood Of course both Shaws Tanner in reaction and Dostoevskys Raskolnikov in anticipation are working with the Nietzschean concept of the bermensch Tanner sees the bringing about of the superman through creative evolution a favorite Shaw concept as justifying the suspension of conventional morality by enlightened revolutionaries such as himself Raskolnikov similarly argues that certain exceptional persons have the priority to transgress moral boundaries in the service of introducing to society a new word an authentic progressive innovation On his own self understanding then Kermit Gosnell transgressed a socially constructed moral boundary in executing born alive infants but it was a transgression justified by his personal duty to bring about a better society with a better morality He may have been a butcher but he quite consciously even if just in retrospect placed his butchery within a sophisticated intellectual tradition And it is this pop Nietzscheism that undergirds implicitly or explicitly all practitioners of abortion Neither I nor David Altrogge believe that Kermit Gosnell explicitly thoughtof himself as a harbinger of the bermensch as he snipped the necks of babies in West Philadelphia Gosnell says in the film that he explained to his son who wondered if his father was the monster portrayed in the mediaI really have to do a lot of reading to feel comfortable that I was on solid ground with my thoughts and my approach And yet pop Nietzscheism is exactly where he settles Whether he fully appreciated it or not at the time the idea that conventional morality did not apply to him that he sought a kind of gnostic greater good to which he had privileged access was implicit in the business he had chosen He had THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

26 SPRING 2016 decided like Raskolnikov that he could step over a dead body over blood in the serviceof his vision for society That vision it should be noted was neither radical nor intrinsically inhumane Kermit Gosnell like many others in the American progressive tradition simply and sincerely believed that the poor benefit as does society as a whole when they have a means to apply control to their fertility Ruth Bader Ginsburg put this idea in an uncharacteristically inelegant way when she said that at the time of Roe there was concern about growth in populations that we dont want too many of Now history teaches us that programs of reproductive freedom targeted at the poor quickly become de jure or de facto programs of anti reproductive coercion This certainly happened at 3801 Lancaster where patients report Gosnell pinning them tothe bed if they expressed last minute reservations But the original social impulse is not in and of itself cruel rather through a process of moral corrosion it slowly begins to justify cruelty Kermit Gosnell didnt begin his career by dumping shrieking babies in bins until they expired But once he had decided that he was an unreasonable man who could step over a dead body in the service of his social vision that is to say when he decided not just to support abortion but to become an abortionist the precise method of killing became only a matter of efficiency One might object that Gosnell and his fellow abortionists dont embrace the full Raskolnikov vision because they dont believe they are taking real human lives But the truth is that no person infull possession of his faculties could possibly believe that the babies splayed out in Gosnells clinic were not killed The conceit that aborted children were never meaningfully alive is a politically convenient fiction a polite rationalization The truth is closer to the concept developed in early 20th century Germany and later embraced by the Nazis lebens unwertesleben or lives unworthy of life The everyday advocate of abortion can maintain the political fiction rather easily the abortionist and especially the late term abortionist who must confront dailythe tiny corpses he must dispose knows the truth whether he admits it or not All abortionists know at some level that they are transgressors Like any transgression killing unborn children surely gets easier with time this is from the Christian perspective in the very nature of sin Some may go into the business with a preexisting commitment to the Jack Tanner Rodion Raskolnikov worldview that they are entitled transgressors of social and moral norms Others like Gosnell may develop that understanding over time as part of the natural process of rationalizing ones apparent cruelty Regardless all abortionists are unreasonable men What distinguishes Kermit Gosnell from other abortionists then is not BRANDON MCGINLEY

SPRING 2016 27 the nature of his actions or his justification for them but rather the extent to which his own humanity had been corroded by that work and its justification This corruption also manifested itself in the arrogant carelessness that got him caught while presumably others just as callous continue to operate Gosnell is different in degree not in kind from his colleagues If he is a monster it is because he represents the monstrous logical conclusion of the abortionists mindset not a departure from it Jack Tanners Revolutionists Handbook from Shaws Man and Superman is an incredible document It may be the closest we get to Shaws own perspective articulated through one of his characters In his disorienting combination of thoughtful erudition and casual inhumanity Tanner is reminiscent of his admirer Kermit Gosnell The main thrust of Tanners manifesto is that eugenic breeding can improve not only human strength and intelligence but human nature itself There can be no meaningful social progress so long as we are hampered by common rubes and a weak nature King Demos must be bred like all other Kings Put more bluntly We must eliminate the Yahoo or his vote will wreck the commonwealth Only a few pages before casually announcing the extermination of the socially unfit though Tanner demonstrated an easy prescience with regard to the institution of marriage Tanner and therefore Shaw clearly saw that contraception disentangled the domestic from the conjugal aspects of marriage rendering theinstitution as traditionally understood both obsolete and unintelligible While this statement may have seemed extravagant in its day the intervening century has proven it beyond doubt what are our current public disputes over marriage if not the final working out of precisely the fact Tanner recognized But the disentanglement of marriage brought on by contraception would have another benefit ancillary to destroying the conjugal institution It would permit the kind of breeding necessary to hasten the creation of the Superman Those degenerates in whom the instinct of fertility has faded into a mere itching for pleasure will weed themselves out of the race Meanwhile the consequent survival of the intelligently fertile means the survival of the partizansof the Superman for what is proposed is nothing but the replacement of the old unintelligent inevitable almost unconscious fertility by an intelligently controlled conscious fertility and the elimination of the mere voluptuary from the evolutionary process It would be silly to argue that Kermit Gosnells appeal to one line from Jack Tanner entails the wholesale acceptance of his manifesto And yet it is THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

28 SPRING 2016 striking how the most prominent examples of transgression counselled by Tanner are in the areasof marriage and reproduction Any attempt to radically re form society must begin with the primordial society of the conjugal pair and with the primordial act of human creation procreation that can only take place within such a coupling Its no mistake that Tanners instrumentalization of not just individual persons but the entire ordinary human race finds its most appalling expression namely the human stud farm in the discussion of reproduction When we permit ourselves to believe that we may transgress the fundamental prohibition on using human beings as means to some other end it will always be the unborn and the just born who are targeted first not just because they are inherently vulnerable but because they are the future of society To control fertility as Tanner says and progressives have continued to say since using more or less tactful language is to control the future itself This is why reproductive freedom degrades so quickly into coercion the future is too delicate to be left in the hands of the poor the stupid the Yahoos It doesnt take much imagination to see how this crass instrumentalization begins to run downhill how elimination through breeding becomes elimination through extermination And in truth while he abhorred the anti Semitism of the Nazis a few decades after Man and Superman Shaw expressed admiration for the gumption of Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin who were trying to get something done by adopting methods by which it is possible to get something done These words so perfectly vague that they could justify anything could just as easily have come from Kermit Gosnell as from George Bernard Shaw One almost suspects that the only reason Gosnell didnt quote these words to Altrogge is that he has yet to discover them or that he has and is embarrassed by their original object But the fact is that it would be perfectly appropriate all abortionists are tiny tyrants They are the Supermen in their contrived universes where they pridefully transgress the human conscience in the manner simultaneously most bold and most pathetic by stepping over the blood and the dead bodies of unborn children They couch their cruelty in humanitarianism as all despots do but they love humanity only in the abstract real individual persons are not worthy of their concern This was G K Chestertons criticism of his friends play that Shaw simply does not like his fellow man It is not seeing things as they are to imagine a demi god of complete mental clarity and then see all men as idiots And this is what Mr Shaw has always secretly done BRANDON MCGINLEY

SPRING 2016 29 When we really see men as they are we do not criticise but worship and very rightly For a creature with miraculous eyes and miraculous thumbs with strange dreams in his skull and a queer tenderness in his heart for this place or that baby is really a stupendous and splendid thing The abstract affection of the humanitarian cannot replace the particular care we must have for all personsIt is in fact quite dangerous to cultivate the former without the latter as soon actual persons begin to look like speed bumps to the progress of the species rather than instances of the humanity one has pledged oneself to champion David Altrogge told me that nothing was clear when talking with Kermit Gosnell The patchwork of vague humanitarianism and personal cruelty and desperate justifications and sincere doubt formed no cohesive portrait of a man least of all to himself That is the ultimate irony of the logic of abortion In dehumanizing others abortionists dehumanize themselves What is left of Kermit Gosnell is like an image in a warped and faded mirror grotesque and inchoate only barely recognizable as a man And yet he is a man and will remain a man His crimes must not obscure that essential fact for us to the contrary his crimes should remind us of his humanity and of what men are capable of doing and justifying Kermit Gosnell is not a monsterHe is a man rendered monstrous by the practice of abortion THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

30 SPRING 2016 Does Science Sanction Euthanasia or Physician Assisted Suicide Richard Weikart Ever since the Scientific Revolution intellectuals have been struggling to figure out the limits of science Some such as Isaac Newton used math and empirical science as powerful tools to understand the natural world but did not consider them helpful in other spheres of knowledge such as religion morality or politics Later however David Hume Auguste Comte and others would insist that empirical science and math were the only valid sources of knowledge They and many later positivists and materialists molded a comprehensive scientific worldview that provides answers about everything including who we humans are and how we should live This extension of science to all domains of life often called scientism by critics has profound implications for the debate over euthanasia for a more detailed discussion of this issue see my new book The Death of Humanity And the Case for Life During the eighteenth century Enlightenment several prominent thinkers believed that their scientific outlook should replace traditional notions of religion and morality including the Christian prohibitions on suicide In his posthumously published essay On Suicide for instance Hume argued that suicide should be permitted becausehuman life in his arresting words is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster 1 Hume failed to tell us what scientific experiment or empirical observation supported this assertion Though discussion about suicide began in earnest in the eighteenth century the debate over euthanasia only surfaced in the late nineteenth century Earlier the word euthanasia had meant providing pain relief to dying patients but by the late nineteenth century the meaning had shifted to a medical hastening of death Many of the early proponentsof this new understanding of euthanasia not only supported suicide and assisted suicide but also favored killing people with disabilities without their consent These early euthanasia advocates often appealed to science to justify their position In Germany the first serious proposal to kill people with disabilities came from Ernst Haeckel a leading Darwinian biologist In the 1870 edition of his Richard Weikart is professor of modern European history at California State University Stanislaus and author of The Death of Humanity And the Case for Life Regnery Faith April 2016 a book which examines and critiques many secular ideologies that have contributed to the decline of the Judeo Christian sanctity of life ethic since the Enlightenment

SPRING 2016 31 popular book on biological evolution The Natural History of Creation he proposed killing infants with disabilities He worried that modern medicine and humanitarianism would allow the weak and sick to survive to reproduce thus subverting humanitys evolutionary progress To prevent such an outcome he suggested variouseugenics proposals including infanticide 2 By 1904 Haeckel was publicly supporting the killing of disabled adults He thought decisions on who should be killed should be left to the physicians not the patients 3 In 1870 the same year as Haeckels book Samuel D Williams wrote an essay entitled Euthanasia for the Essays of the Birmingham Speculative Club setting off the British debate over euthanasia Despite the journals small circulation Williams essay attracted attention and provoked discussion in other British journals in the 1870s LikeHaeckel Williams wished to replace the Judeo Christian sanctity of life ethic with a secular scientific ethic Both men stressed euthanasias beneficial role in the evolutionary struggle for existence Williams pointed out that the struggle for survival in nature results in the continuous crushing out of the weak and the consequent maintenance of what is called the vigour of the race Since according to Williams death for the sickly was not only inevitable but also beneficial to society he argued that Man should ensure that the weak went to the wall in the most comfortable fashion 4 Williams position was too radical for most Britons and the medical profession of his time remained adamantly opposed to euthanasia Only in 1901 did the first British physician publicly support assisted suicide and involuntary euthanasia for the disabled 5 However growing secularism combined with the increasing acceptance of Darwinism contributed to a climate that made euthanasia more acceptable In an 1894 essay British philosopher F H Bradley claimed that Darwinian theory had superseded Christian ethics Bradley argued forthrightly against the sacredness of human life the inherent rights of individuals and the equality of human beings He stated But when justice as it must be is dethroned and when Darwinism as it will be is listened to there will be a favorable hearing for the claims of ethical surgery By ethical surgery Bradley meant getting rid of those deemed unfit since The removal of diseased growths of worse varieties Darwinism insisted was obligatory 6 The debate over euthanasia did not reach the United Statesuntil the 1890s One of the most prominent early advocates of euthanasia in America was Robert Ingersoll a flamboyant freethinking lawyer who campaigned ardently to replace Christianity with science In 1894 he argued that assisted suicide should be permitted for those with terminal illnesses Six years later physician William Duncan McKim wrote in his book Heredity and Human Progress THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

32 SPRING 2016 that science militated against the unreasonable dogma that all human life is intrinsically sacred 7 What brought about this shift a minority shift but very significant nonetheless in thinking about suicide assistedsuicide and killing the disabled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Ian Dowbiggin and Nick Kemp in their fine studies of the history of the euthanasia movement in the United States and Britain respectively both emphasize the role of secularization in general and Darwinian theory in particular in mediating this transformation Dowbiggin states Trends such as eugenics positivism social Darwinism and scientific naturalism had the effect of convincing a small yet articulate group in the early twentieth century that traditional ethics no longer applied to decisions about death and dying He concludes The most pivotal turningpoint in the early history of the euthanasia movement was the coming of Darwinism to America 8 Kemp strongly supports Dowbiggins position writing While we should be wary of depicting Darwin as the man responsible for ushering in a secular age we should be similarly cautious of underestimating the importance of evolutionary thought in relation to the questioning of the sanctity of human life 9 Scholars studying the German euthanasia debates largely agree with Dowbiggin and Kemp One of the leading experts on the pre World War I euthanasia debates in Germany Hans Walther Schmuhl explains By giving up the conception of the divine image of humans under the influence of the Darwinian theory human life became a piece of property which in contrast to the idea of a natural right to life could be weighed against other pieces of property 10 Another leading scholar of the German euthanasia movement Udo Benzenhfer devotes an entire chapter of his book on the history of euthanasia to tracing the impact of social Darwinism and eugenics on the budding euthanasia movement in the late nineteenth century 11 The American debate over euthanasia and infanticide erupted into public controversy in late 1915 when Chicago physician Harry Haiselden publicized the case of the Bollinger baby who was born severely deformed Haiselden convinced the parents not to request lifesaving surgery resulting in the babys death after five days Haiselden then took his case for passive euthanasia to the American public by co authoring and starring in The Black Stork a fictionalized film version of the Bollinger case and of his belief that the defective should not be allowed to live Initially when the Bollinger controversy first erupted in 1915 Haiselden insisted that he supported only passive measures such as withholding treatment not active killing of infants However later he gave a lethal dose of medication to a microcephalic infant RICHARD WEIKART

SPRING 2016 33 and increasingly supported active infanticide12 Haiselden proclaimed that his support for euthanasia was simply a matter of exalting science above sentimentality However his view that people with disabilities were unfit and dangerous apparently dated from childhood In his autobiography he related that as a boy he and some comrades beat up a helpless girl who hada mental disability Not only did the adult Haiselden express no remorse for his youthful transgression but he claimed his action was justifiable because it was directed against the menace in these wretched beings 13 Haiseldens contempt for people with disabilities was commonplace in the early eugenics movement which wasled by scientists and physicians who portrayed eugenics as scientific Not everyone in the eugenics movement supported euthanasia though some did but four key ideas that permeated the eugenics movement provided fodder for the euthanasia movement 1 More humans are procreated than can possibly survive 2 Humans are biologically unequal and some are more valuable than others 3 The human soul is entirely physical and 4 Deathof the so called unfit is beneficial because it produces evolutionary progress Eugenics and euthanasia proponents insisted that all four ideas were scientific rationales for killing people with disabilities In the first half of the twentieth century the euthanasia movement continued to gain adherents resulting in the formation of the Voluntary Euthanasia Legalisation Society in Britain in 1935 and the Euthanasia Society of America in 1938 Most members of these two organizations were progressives with secular perspectives such as H G Wells George Bernard Shaw Julian Huxley and Margaret Sanger though some were Unitarian or liberal Protestants such as Harry Emerson Fosdick Havelock Ellis a prominent British physician who joined the Voluntary Euthanasia Legalisation Society reflected a common attitude among euthanasia proponents when he asserted that the prohibition against infanticide was one of the unfortunate results of Christianity He hoped to sweep away these allegedly benighted restrictions on killing the weak since there is a place in humanity for murder that is to say by killing the unfit 14 Though both the American and the British euthanasia organizations officially campaigned only for assisted suicide many of their members also supported involuntary euthanasia for people with disabilities More ominously in Germany in 1933 Hitler came to power heading a regime that was committed to a radical racialized version of social Darwinism THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

34 SPRING 2016 Not only did Hitler hope to rid the world of so called inferior races but he was equally hostile toward Germans deemed to be biologically inferior In a major speech in 1929 Hitler strongly implied that he supported infanticide for people with disabilities 15 Many scientists and physicians including many Americans cheered when he passed legislation for compulsory sterilization of the hereditarily diseased in 1933 During theThird Reich biology instructors assured their students that this program was a scientific imperative When Hitler authorized mercy killing of the disabled in 1939 which would result in the murder of about 200,000 disabled Germans by 1945 he did not have to twist the arms of German physicians Karl Brandt Hitlers personal physician who was put in charge of the Nazi euthanasia operation was a fanatical supporter of killing people with disabilities 16 Other Nazi physicians zealously supported this program The physicians and staff at Hadamar were so enthusiastic about their mass murder of those with disabilities that they threw a party celebrating the death of their ten thousandth victim In one especially troubling case the psychiatrist in charge of a German asylum continued killing inmates even after being liberated by the American army 17 Following the fall of Nazi Germany and widespread revulsion against the full gamut of its atrocities euthanasia became a harder sell in Western societies However in the latter part of the twentieth century support for various kinds of euthanasia picked up steam Just as before many euthanasia proponents justified their position by appealing to science Peter Singer one of the most influential bioethicists promoting involuntary euthanasia for people with disabilities argues that science especially Darwinian science shows us that human life has no ultimate purpose so we should unsanctify human life and permit euthanasia both voluntary and involuntary He asserts that biological life began in a chance combination of gasses it then evolved through random mutation and natural selection All this just happened it did not happen to any overall purpose 18 Singers colleague James Rachels devoted an entire book to argue that Darwins theory does undermine traditional values In particular it undermines the traditional idea that human life has a special unique worth 19 He thus relegated prohibitions on euthanasia to the misguided pre scientific past Many of the leading scientific materialists of our age call on science to sanction euthanasia Agreeing with Singer and Rachels the biologist Richard Dawkins has dismissed the pro life position as deeply un evolutionary Dawkins not only argues that euthanasia should be permitted but has expressed the desire that others would kill him if he is ever past it whatever that means 20 The materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett admits in Darwins RICHARD WEIKART

SPRING 2016 35 Dangerous Idea not only that Darwinian science is toxic to religion but that it implies that there are gradationsof value in the ending of human lives He also implies that killing disabled infants is morally acceptable The notion that science should dictate our entire worldview including our morality has a long pedigree and remainsprominent today Euthanasia proponents still regularly call on science to justify their view of human life and human death That is why in order to combat the euthanasia movement we need to stress the limits of science First and foremost scientism is selfdefeating since one cannot scientifically prove that empiricism is the only path to knowledge Scientism is not scientific but rather a philosophical assumption Further though science produces marvelous benefits when properly targeted at the investigation of natural laws it has little value whenmisapplied to trying to determine what is moral or what is beautiful We should celebrate the expansion of true scientific knowledge and use that knowledge to benefit our lives However we should firmly reject the idea that science has anything to say to us about what we should do how we should live or when we should die NOTES 1David Hume On Suicide in Life Death and Meaning Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions ed David Benatar Lanham MD Rowman and Littlefield Publishers 2004 291 92 2 Ernst Haeckel Natrliche Schpfungsgeschichte 2nd edition Berlin 1870 152 55 quote at 155 3 Ernst Haeckel Die Lebenswunder Gemeinverstndliche Studien ber Biologische Philosophie Stuttgart 1904 135 36 For further discussion of Haeckels position on euthanasia see Richard Weikart From Darwin to Hitler Evolutionary Ethics Eugenics and Racism in Germany New York Palgrave Macmillan 2004 146 48 4 N D A Kemp Merciful Release The History of the British Euthanasia Movement Manchester Manchester University Press 2002 11 21 quotes at 20 5 Kemp Merciful Release 35 36 6 F H Bradley Some Remarks on Punishment International Journal of Ethics 4 1894 269 84 quotes at 276 278 7 Ian Dowbiggin A Merciful End The Euthanasia Movement in Modern America Oxford 2003 1 10 12 20 21 8 Dowbiggin A Merciful End 2 8 9 Kemp Merciful Release 3 quote at 19 10 Hans Walter Schmuhl Rassenhygiene Nationalsozialismus Euthanasie Von der Verhtung zur Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens 1890 1945 Gttingen 1987 18 19 quote at 106 11 Udo Benzenhfer Der gute Tod Euthanasie und Sterbehilfe in Geschichte und Gegenwart Munich 1999 ch 4 on the connections between Darwinism and euthanasia see also Weikart From Darwin to Hitler ch 8 12 Martin S Pernick The Black Stork Eugenics and the Death of Defective Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915 New York Oxford University Press 1996 3 6 8 87 13 Pernick Black Stork 95 98 14 Kemp Merciful Release 88 109 15 Hitler Appell an die deutsche Kraft 4 August 1929 in Hitler Reden Schriften Anordnungen THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

36 SPRING 2016 3 348 49 for more on Hitlers position on euthanasia see Richard Weikart Hitlers Ethic The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress New York Palgrave Macmillan 2009 179 87 16 Ulf Schmidt Karl Brandt London Hambledon Continuum 2007 17 For more on the Nazi euthanasia program see Michael Burleigh Death and Deliverance Euthanasia in Germany 1900 1945 Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1994 and Henry Friedlander The Origins of Nazi Genocide From Euthanasia to the Final Solution Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1995 18 Peter Singer Practical Ethics Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1979 331 19 James Rachels Created from Animals The Moral Implications of Darwinism Oxford Oxford University Press 1990 4 20 Richard Dawkins The Word Made Flesh Guardian December 27 2001 Dawkins also discusses these views in Gaps in the Mind in The Great Ape Project Equality beyond Humanity eds Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer New York St Martins Press 1993 80 87 RICHARD WEIKART Kicking an old lady into an oven isnt going to go over sowell so we better say she was an evil witch or something

SPRING 2016 37 Letting Dad Die Brian Caulfield Dads decline surprised us He was nine weeks in hospice and we were told death was imminent yet when he actually took a turn for the worse our family was unready We looked at one another as though we hadnever quite faced the possibility before though we had spoken openly for weeks about funeral arrangements and burial plots We talked in half sentences hoping our thoughts would remain unfinished and thus delay dads decline that our words and remembrances could pull him back from a downward slide But he looked so good just yesterday He was quite lively when I saw him He ate a few small pieces of chicken just this afternoon Maybe he simply needs rest Hell bounce back just like the other times We were grasping for little bits of good news telling ourselves what we knew couldnt be true as time went on that at age 88 with cancer and congestive heart failure our dad who had fought so long and kept in such good spirits could put offdeath indefinitely The doctors had given him 10 14 days to live when he entered hospice and he made it to nine weeks Although he couldnt get out of bed needed a catheter to urinate and had to be cleaned each day by a dedicated hospice staff we knew dad would gladly have opted for another nine weeks and we would have continued to rearrange our lives to visit him as much as we could For my mom my two brothers and me any time was quality time and any life was quality life Those were the lessons he taught us and thats the way he lived as a husband and a father We knew from sad personal experience that the best of medical opinion and practice did not necessarily favor extending life More than five years earlier after dad had broken his femur in a fall requiring surgery he was marked by our favored New York hospital as one of the frail elderly whose quality of life was limited When he was brought to the emergency room some months after his fall with an apparent heart attack the staff stabilized him and then stopped I wrote about this incident in this journal at the time The chief of the ICU came to consult with us and this respected specialist laid out the situation in perfect dualistic terms no doubt crafted to touch the heart of an elderly loving wife We could opt for comfort care and let Brian Caulfield is editor of Fathers for Good fathersforgood org an initiative of the Knights of Columbus and vice postulator for the canonization cause of Venerable Father Michael McGivney

38 SPRING 2016 things go their course or we could demand aggressive care that would merely delay the inevitable and probably cause pain and discomfort After forcing the doctor to admit that comfort care meant letting dad die we took the aggressive measure of inserting a breathing tube as my dad was anointed by a priest we had called In the ICU dad was off the respirator in three days back to breathing on his own and lived five more happy relatively pain free years at home with my mom He got to see his grandchildren grow as well as his financial investments he watched Mass twice a day on TV voted in a few more elections and cheered on hundreds more Jeopardy champions A lot of quality time came with the added quantity Dad always seemed to make the best of a situation with skills honed in a large Irish Catholic New York City family Love for Life Born at home on New Years Eve a few minutes before the turn of the calendar to 1927 he was of the Greatest Generation His parents came from Ireland to America on separate boats in different years and met and married in New York They struggled through tough times and the Depression and the heartbreak of a son dying young in a tragic accident at home Yet they still managed to house feed clothe and Catholic school seven children in the busy midtown immigrant neighborhood east of St Patricks Cathedral My father was the third born child the eldest of four boys and many responsibilities fell to him at an early age His father was for a while a contractor and my dad bolstered by little more than teen enthusiasm and filial obedience would carry the heavy toolbox to the next job My dads face would show the strain years later when hed tell the story yet he was proud of his manly effort At age 17 he withdrew from high school and signed up for the war worried that the fighting would be over before he got his crack at it On a destroyer in the Atlantic he was a baker mixing bread and rolls for a few hundred men His mother a baker of some repute would have gladly traded places to keep her son from harm Yet my dad came home safely ready to resume high school as the eldest senior at St Anns respectfully called pop by his classmates At a Catholic high school dance with nearby Dominican Academy he saw an attractive red headed sophomore and nudged his buddy saying Thats the girl Im going to marry It happened that way in those days My dad didnt dance well so he poured two glasses of punch and asked this lovely girl to sit down Seventy years later my mom still tells the story with the glint of youth He was a very good conversationalist not showy or loud like some boys and he listened He was also very handsome She and her friend BRIAN CAULFIELD

SPRING 2016 39 went with dad and his friend to get a soda after the dance and he walked her home to a building that had an awning and a doorman She was impressed that he wasnt impressed and intrigued that he didnt try to steal a kiss but politely shook her hand as he asked if he could see her again When her parents found out that Buddy Caulfield had been in the Navy they demanded to meet thisyoung man before any more dates My mom explained Hes always bringing me to church and he only shakes my hand She was somewhat disappointed there was no more to tell yet she knew this was the kind of man she wanted for life I dwell so long on their meeting and courtship because they show so much of who my father was what he believed in and lived for His marriage was the central part of his identity and he cherished his wife through good times and bad I once asked my dad what was the happiest memory of his life and he said without hesitation Outside of marrying your mother it was the birth of my three sons The only thing that competed in his mind with family was work During the week he bought furniture and supplies to modernize the home office of Met Life then at 1 Madison Avenue On Saturdays he would go off to one of his many part time jobs the coolest one at a newsstand in Grand Central Terminal Hed bring us with him often and let us stock shelves and serve customers and treat us to candy and soda On the way home hed tell us about growingup on those very same city streets all the people he knew the buildings and businesses that used to be here and there always remarking or lamenting that things never stay the same Itll be a great city when they finally finish building it he would say every Saturday shaking his head profoundly Looking back now I realize that those fun days filled with so much life with my dad were also presentiments of death His smile would fade and his eyes grow distant as hed remember a childhood friend who lived in an apartment house that was no more replaced by a new high rise Death loss and change touched him and through him me though new life new times and new buildings were budding all over the busy city There were strange shadows in the streets of childhood and when the phone sounded at an odd hour with a seemingly different ring we knew the news wouldnt be good An Enduring Mystery Now past the age my father was when he taught me these things I know there is no explaining the cold bare fact of death Even in the Garden when God warned Adam not to eat a certain fruit he simply announced the ominous fact of death with no footnotes For on the day you shall eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you will surely die There Adam THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

40 SPRING 2016 and Eve were naked and unashamed a few hours or mere days old with no one to guide them in the ways of the world and already God set forth the punishment of death What did they know or think of death How much more do we know today Despite medical advances death is still a mystery It is seen clearest through the lens of religion or poetry The best that has been said or written about it throughout the centuries still grabs our mind and heart like the tragic news of the day When it comes to death we are as one with the ancients When Cain rises up to murder his brother Abel we feel the fatal blow in our belly When Sophocles writes of Antigones grief over her brothers unburied body we want to join her in resisting the unjust regal edict When Hamlet asks To be or not to be the question echoes in our hearts as so familiar that weve surely said it ourselves When Donne commands death be not proud we cling to the closing hope that death thou shalt die In fact much of our Western culture is built upon a Christian understanding of one particular death which we celebrate as salutary We know that Christ rose and believe we will too yet still set apart 40 days each year leading to the hush of Good Friday My first brush with death came with my grandfather My mother visited him in the Bronx hospital as my brothers and I stood on the sidewalk outside watching him wave from the window a shadow of a skeleton saying goodbye Someone could die on a sunny day on the top of a steep hill in a hospital in the Bronx I remember thinking in my young mind I unconsciously thought if I made this death very specific to this person place and time I could say it wouldnt necessarily happen to me But then in years to come as my grandmother died and then an aunt and even my high school lab partner I began to accept what was always known Death is as specific as the passing of this one person yet general in its effect over time We can avoid or put off nearly every other encounter in life but we must come to terms with death ready or not Death Is Not Good Yet there were my brothers and I by the bedside tongue tiedas dad declined In retrospect our reaction was just right It is one thing to be told by doctors that all medical signals point toward the end of life it is another to actually sit by your fathers bedside and look into the eyes that can barely open hold the cold hand that can barely grasp hear the forced breathing through a mouth that is open sideways and doesnt seem to want to close Death is inevitable but the death of this particular person should never be willed and certainly not seen as a good We should always bear the preference BRIAN CAULFIELD

SPRING 2016 41 of life over death even in hospice even under a DNR even if we pray God to take him quickly and painlessly Anything else would be surrender a soft presumption against the value of lifea negation of however many years have gone before and an opening to euthanasia a so called good death Death is not good It has never been and will never be a good alongside other palpable goods such as health love compassion and life We plan for death in so many ways throughout life accept death as inevitable and even surrender to it when it comes as the last act of a life well lived Yet we should not see it as normal or fitting or in any way conformed to our human nature It is a scar a wound and worse an insatiable devouring void implacable in its seething greed to lay waste all that breathes before it Christians have never prayed for a gooddeath though we may forget that in these days of legal euthanasia We pray for a happy death a blessed death a death in the state of Gods grace that has the well founded hope of eternal life in heaven A good death is thestuff of dreams that we once refused to feed our children The old fairy tales dont always deal in happy endingsdanger and death are as real and fierce as the giant who stalks Jack the Pied Piper who leads the children away Be foolish or lazy or too trusting in mankind or nature and youll wind up in an oven or a boiling cauldron Death may be happy because it leads by faith to something better but the cold undoing of death itself is not good In fact it stinks and any good son is right to protest over it In this Dylan Thomas had it backwards The one dying may indeed be free resigned ready and even content as death descends it is the living who are left to rage against the dying of the light The light of the loved ones life the light of your own life which seems more tenuous now that something of your flesh and blood has passed away And so it happened Not long aftereating half a turkey sandwich on Thanksgiving Day a feast for him at the time my father began to consume lessand less He would take a few sips of water and sigh with exhaustion a spoon or two of soup and motion that it was enough Soon even these morsels became too much of an effort for him to ingest and he turned his head in a set position away from the tray away from the window and toward the door as though waiting for someone long expected to arrive Time and Change Happeneth I sat with him on his last Sunday praying remembering talking asking questions that received a slight nod or blink of an eye when suddenly I thought of my studies in metaphysics Substance is the underlying reality or identity of a thing a substrate of being to which certain accidents may attach THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

42 SPRING 2016 or inhere things such as shape size color or even location While a dog may be large or small thin or fat it still remains a dog through these accidental changes While there are many examples of accidental changes there are very few substantial changes i e cases in which one thing turns into another thing Digestion is one A piece of beef is eaten and digested and broken apart so that there is nothing of the meat remaining Some is assimilated into the body some becomes waste but nothing remains of the beef itself Another substantial change is death A living being turns into an inanimate body The soul anima separates from the body leaving a disembodied soul and a deanimated body but nothing is left of the person who is dead I looked at my frail father so thin and unable to eat unable to physically perform the most basic duty of digestion If he could not perform that substantial change I thought he would soon undergo a substantial change in himself from living to deceased Somehow this metaphysical insight gave me consolation and a more sober hold on the dying process How limiting that our culture demands only emotional responses to death to engage in such philosophy at this time may be seenas heartless or uncaring an intellectualizing of what should be solely heartfelt emotion Yet in our Western Christian tradition philosophy is meant to accompany theology to give answers to lifes deepest questions In the 6th century Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy without a tinge of irony Yet when it comes to death we live today with a strange mix of emotional effusion and medical technology We are told that our existence is simply an accident of evolution and death is the end of a mechanical life yet we weep amid the beeping hospital monitors and grieve without knowing quite why Christians too have faced a paradox of death and blessedness At the passing of his mother Monica Augustine wondered if the grief that welled within him showed a lack of faith Was not his holy mothers soul in a better state with God To his eternal credit Augustine concluded that death is a real human loss that cannot be prayed away He rightly wept for his mother as Jesus did at the tomb of Lazarus And so did we weep when the call came Tuesday December 15 2015 shortly before midnight my brother in New York was told by the hospice nurse that our dad had died peacefully in his sleep as we all had prayed he would My brother called me from the bedside and wondered if dads soul was still nearmaybe hovering over his body as we prayed by phone A young priest arrived to bless the body and we knew wherever dad was at that moment we had done all we could to effect a happy death As I considered the fact that dad was no longer in the flesh it became clearer to me that no one is dead until he truly dies There is a world of BRIAN CAULFIELD

SPRING 2016 43 difference between hanging on the cusp of life as my dadhad done for weeks and actually crossing over into death It was of the greatest importance that we could say he was never pushed and was always loved and he had hung on for long to his one earthly life in a gracious and dignified way May he rest in peace and may our minds as well THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW I like it better from here than up close

44 SPRING 2016 A Handful of Dust Wonder Reverence and Fear R J Snell Of all questions we ask perhaps the most abiding and fundamental is this Why is there something rather than nothing While captivating to philosophers scientists and theologians in an intimate way it matters to us all whatever our discipline or work I suspect each of us at some time has experienced the shock of recognizing that the world is that existence is Its hard to put into words but you dont forget it once its happened I remember well an early experience perhaps when about six or seven years old making snow forts with my friends on the wintry prairies in snow pants and mittens lying back and staring into the heavens feeling the sheer utter terrifying enormity of it all its presence its reality Reality just was At six I had not much to say about it but even the Nobel prize winning poet Czeslaw Milosz struggles to say more writing after so many attempts at naming the world I am able only to repeat harping on one string the highest the unique avowal beyond which no power can attain repeating only Is It Is Something not nothing This experience is shared by many the startling realization that the real offers itself to be known Do you remember this You know what I mean Children know it and it delights them And they remember Luigi Giussani poses a thought experiment What would it be like to be an infant newly born but with the same level of awareness that you now have If I he says were to open my eyes for the first time in this instant I would be over powered by the wonder and aweof things as a presence Something not nothing You might call this wonder or amazement Plato and Aristotle named it so and rightfully for its a shock which moves us to understand to know to grasp what it all means andhow it all hangs together but its more than simple curiosity for we are moved in some massive and dynamic way everything seems to be at stake Perhaps reverence would be more apt In that moment where the presenceof the world is manifest we recognize that we are not its cause nor the cause of ourselves We may not know what the cause is we may each give different accounts in the end but in the experience we find ourselves halfway between R J Snell is William E Simon Visiting Fellow of Religion and Public Life in the James Madison Program at Princeton University and Professor of Philosophy at Eastern University This essay is adapted from a talk given at an interfaith service held on Respect Life Sunday at the Princeton University Chapel October 4 2015

SPRING 2016 45 birth and death utterly contingent ashes to ashes dust from a handful of dust Reverence acknowledges our limits rejecting the hubris or irreverence of thinking that we are sufficient unto ourselves We are not sufficient unto ourselves for we are not the answer to why there is something rather than nothing Nothing need be and yet here it all is I need not be at some point I will be no longer and yet I am This is a wonder a prompting of reverence And more The experience of being of the immensity of it all this presence brings our own selves sharply to focus In the experience of this tremendous reality we note ourselves We find ourselves as frightfully small as insignificant as grass which withers and fades away Its something of a paradox Experiencing the real makes us feel as though we are nothing but at the same time brings us face to face with ourselves and our contingency In reverence we find not only the universe but also ourselves We also belong to this world of being Not only is there something but I am one of those things And so we never stop asking Who am I What am I What am I for Who am I for No matter how much we explain ourselves away reducing ourselves to brains or genes or social forces we can never quite convince ourselves that the problem is solved for we still worry and deliberate and obsess and love and sometimes hate ourselves as ourselves not as genes or brains but selves We can never lose ourselves we dwell with ourselves always We belong to this reality But we belong in a strange way for we sense ourselves to be somehow alienated exiled We belong and yet we yearn to belong full belonging seems always to elude us receding from us tantalizing us In the still hours of the night or when heartbroken or abandoned or betrayed we know ourselves to be alone Loneliness torments us How often have you feared being alone How badly do you wish to be understood by another to be seen as you are and how many wounds do we each carry from not being recognized or welcomed From being overlooked rejected discarded Ours is a broken belonging Our awareness of our own selfhood a burden In the Symposium Plato has Aristophanes tell a story of how Zeus fearing the power of humans cut each in half leaving them radically incomplete longing to overcome their brokenness and be reunited As he puts it So ancient is the desire for one another to reunit e our original nature seeking to make one of two and to heal the state of the human More poignantly even than Plato is the Tanakhs account of Adams loneliness and Gods declaration that it was not good for Adam to be alone How does this make sense given the prior text In the story God has created the world bestowing the radiance of light existence on all things THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

46 SPRING 2016 separating the waters that ancient symbol of death from the dry land and bringing forth life from nothingness All of which God declares repeatedly to be good Then nearing completion of his task God elevates creation with his own breath rendering a handful of dust into an image of the divine a bearer of divine capability This is good But despite this paradise God judges that something is not good It is not good for Adam to be alone even though God and Adam converse together Adam is with God and that somehow is not sufficient Now whether you think of the Genesis story as sacred text or not theres something powerful in the well known tale Adam exists formed by Gods own craft and breath made in the divine image and as a person the sort of being created for its own sake someone with dignity and agency But given his status as agent Adam is oddly passive here It is not Adam but God who notices Adams solitude just as it is God who parades the animals puts Adam into a deep sleep and makes Eve We dont see Adam acting much like a person until he encounters Eve And then in her presence he finally acts does something says something His words are powerful they are the sort of words that all of us long to hear said about ourselves At last Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh He is full of joy he recognizes and acknowledges her with delight Here he seems to say is a friend a second self another like me I belong with her Martin Buber puts it this way Man wishes to be confirmed in his being Secretly and bashfully he watches for a YES which allows him to be and which can come to him only from one person to another Dont we all long for this Secretly and bashfully shyly we hope for the other to see us and respond with ah at last its you youre here To take but one example I think of myself asking another my beloved to have and to hold me Secretly and bashfully I offered secretly and bashfully I hoped Fearing that I would be unmade undone unwanted Of course all too often we dont experience this YES do we All too often the cry of at last does not occur replaced by other harsher rejoinders And then we are ashamed In the story recall Adam and Eve are naked but unashamed They stand in each others presence without reserve or remainder They do not hold back from the other they do not give a false self a persona They are for and with each other and without shame or bashfulness for they are welcomed each by the other Now so far Ive been treating this from the perspective of the one welcomed But the story tells us something more namely that Adam becomes most himself when he encounters and embraces Eve Its not just that the one R J SNELL

SPRING 2016 47 welcomed is confirmed in her being its also that the one who welcomes is confirmed We are meant to belong we are meant to exist in communion with others and if we reject that communion we dont merely reject the other but also ourselves If Adam said no to Eve he would also have said no to himself rejecting that which he was and consigning himself to a life out of keeping with his proper good He would have turned himself into something other than he was God seems to be testing Adam here Putting him through some trial by which to educate Adam into his own personhood One of the oddthings about education is that no one else can really teach you anything you always need to understand for yourself even if the teacher helps God knows that its not good for Adam to be alone but Adam doesnt know this God knows that Adam is meant for communion that when he welcomes another he will become fully himself but Adam doesnt know this God could just tell Adam but Adam wouldnt understand or his understanding would be abstract and alien not personal knowing not real knowing So God tests Adam who passes and becomes himself and knows himself to be what he is Adam who represents each of us is most himself when open to others We inhabit our own nature best when we give ourselves fully to the task of confirming and recognizing the other person Each of us overcomes our exile and is most at home belonging when we give of ourselves when we give ourselves Friendship is like this Marriage is like this Family too Perhaps thats not quite right not said adequately It isnt that friendship and marriage and family are like givingour welcome to the other but rather that friendship and marriage and family are giving ourselves in a certain way These relationships those that count among the aspects of our lives we cherish most are constituted by gift and reception of gift Brokenness though is all around all present in this room in our homes our friends ourselves Present in those overlooked or scorned the youngest the oldest the weakest the most feeble the ill the powerless Each is a person each carries within him or herself the same human nature Each formed from a handful of dust and each offering as a gift to the world his or her personhood Thomas Aquinas the great medieval thinker suggests that persons are the only things which exist for their own sake That is independent of their usefulness persons are ends in themselves Most of the things we encounter are valued for their instrumentality their usefulness I want money for instance not for its own sake but because money is an instrument to other things a car say but I dont want the car for its own sake either I want it in order to get to work and I want to get to work in order to each of these is valued for what it can do its use its ability to provide something else THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

48 SPRING 2016 But not persons Yes its true there are times we value persons for what they can do but thats not really why they are valuable They are valuable for their own sake and no one is more or less valuable because of what they can provide or can do or can have or what they cannot provide or do or have Each is their own end Persons need not justify their existence they are their own justification And more as ends in themselves they outweigh the value of any merely instrumental good They outweigh the value of all instrumental goods put together You are I am worth more than the entire universe of instruments Which is why no person ought to be devalued when not useful why no person ought to be treated merely as a tool why no person ought to be discarded however little use he or she may be Easy words But we have grown accustomed to them and often fail to heed them We have become so accustomed tovaluing those who do and those who have that its all too easy to overlook persons as persons John Paul II suggested we were in danger of forgetting that life was a gift thinking of it instead as property subject to control and manipulation We have become he said concerned with doing and busy ourselves with programming controlling and dominating On the one hand refusing to acknowledge the world as gift gives us a certain power and weve used it to extraordinary effect Freed from a sense of limit we are unshackled as creators and weve programmed and controlled with incredible result Weve become very strong On the other hand this strength betrays a deeper weakness We are afraid Afraid that we are but a handful of dust When our value is determined by what we can do or accomplish or have our worth teeters on a razors edge for not only is someone else always capable of more but we are but one tragic moment away from losing all of our havings and doings Its fragile all of this and so we clutch tightly clenching our fists in a desperate grasp Were like children hiding a toy in our hands fearful that another will pry them open We are not as strong as we think for we view others as threats or resources Threats to batter away or resources to clutch But neither attitude becomes us for neither welcomes the other and since we do not welcome we are diminished for we are most ourselves when we give and receive gift Too often we think of life as resource or threat But what place is there for reverence for wonder in such disposition Thinking ourselves masters we are diminished for we are most ourselves not when we clutch and grasp but when we give and receive gift when we give and receive life When with wonder and reverence life whether our own or the life of another is met with a joyous welcoming cry At last at last youre here R J SNELL

SPRING 2016 49 I Remember Eugene Audrey Ignatoff The years 1963 and 1964 hold significant memories for me The promise of young John Kennedys presidency shattered by his assassination Martin Luther Kings inspiring I Have a Dream speech which ignited the Civil Rights movement The Beatles first trip to America after which neither the music world nor the society at large would be the same But most of all after more than fifty years I remember a young man named Eugene Badalaty and the impact he had on my life back then and continues to have now Eugene was my first boyfriend and I loved him as one onlydoes ones first love We met in 1963 when I was a volunteer candy striper at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn New York I was sixteen and Eugene was about to turn twenty one It was the summer before my senior year and I was anticipating fun friends college admission prom and graduation I was a typical teenager frolicking in a leopard print bikini with my friends at Brooklyns Manhattan Beach All the kids from high school went there toting portable radios and libations I also enjoyed roller skating and hanging out at the local soda shop then Jahns Ice Cream Parlor on Flatbush Avenue I was a carefree kid whose only worry was getting pimples I just wanted to enjoy life and dream about future adventures When I wasnt dreaming I was shopping for the latest fashions trying new makeup and hairdos and listening to rock and roll My friends Francine and Phyllis and I danced with all the guys In short I wasnt very concerned with changing the world Myvolunteering was an attempt to Do what you can for your country as President Kennedy had advised I was verymuch looking forward to going back to school in the fall because I had a huge crush on my English teacher Mr Margolis who was always kind and understanding I wasnt too interested in boys my own age When summer began I was still relishing the fun Id had at my birthday party six months earlier dancing to Neil Sedakas Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen The gang from the project came including Erwin Soules Stanley Schuster and Dennis Tinerino The three of them had chipped in and bought me a large hideous handbag covered with an ugly old fashioned tapestry pattern I thought it was sweet Erwin who was the intellectual of the group Audrey Ignatoff is a consultant at Senior Arts and Systems She provides seminars and training on health care and issues concerning disabled people A staunch advocate for the disabled the elderly and victims of bullying Ms Ignatoff has written numerous articles and several books including Remembering Terri Schiavo Reflections of a Health Care Warrior 2009

50 SPRING 2016 was very overweight But Stanley and Dennis were tough and macho guys Dennis would become Mr Universe and compete with Arnold Schwarzenegger Stanley a chain smoker was often in trouble with the law They escorted me to our friends homes at night because the area surrounding our Brownsville project was too dangerous for a girl to be out in by herself there were gangs of kids carrying guns and knives I dreamed of moving to a safer hipper neighborhood where I could date boys who were too afraid to come to the projects Not long after I started working that summer my family moved to East Flatbush which was a much better neighborhood than the projects in Brownsville and only two blocks from the hospital I worked as a candy striper along with my high school friend Elizabeth She and I had developed a close friendship since meeting in history class our sophomore year She was a socially awkward girlwho didnt have many friends but I thought she was funny and intelligent I began to go out with her and invited her to attend events with my friends We both wanted very much to go to college But my family was poor My father told me that if I wasnt accepted by one of the city schools I couldnt go at all and would have to get a job At the time the New York City colleges were free except for a small tuition of 50 per semester My father said that if I got in I would have to work for extra money to pay for such things as books lunches and carfare and new clothes which of course I wanted Not only would I have to get a summer job after graduation but I would also have to work part time while studying Since I was young and energetic it didnt seem like a hardship I had seen Eugene as I transported patients down the hallways and did other duties at the hospital Helived there and usually looked sullen and serious Most of the time he didnt say much or even nod Then one day near the end of the summer he stopped to chat with Elizabeth and me His smile was so vivacious it lit up the room and his blue eyes sparkled He asked if we could visit him on Labor Day weekend after our work as volunteers ended Apparently he had noticed me before I had become aware of him and was waiting for an appropriate moment to approach me I fell in love immediately with this handsome young man with broad shoulders thick wavy light brown hair and sparkling blue eyes He was the most handsome man Ive ever seen I was blinded by love and couldnt do anything about it My heart was pounding I felt light headed my palms were sweating There was no going back Elizabeth and I agreed to come by on Labor Day around two in the afternoon It was a pleasant visit We laughed a lot and exchanged telephone numbers and senior photos I immediately placed Eugenes photo in my wallet He looked so handsome in his graduation cap and gown We all shared our AUDREY IGNATOFF

SPRING 2016 51 dreams and goals Elizabeth and I wanted to become professionals perhaps work in science Eugene wanted to leave the hospital and have his own place He also wanted to own a red convertible Ford Thunderbird with black seats He would take us for the first ride We were young at a very hopeful time in America and with President Kennedy as our leader anything seemed possible Around that time we all heard Martin Luther Kings I Have a Dream speech encouraging us to think about changing the world for the better and challenging us to see people who were different as equals I was ecstatic about my new relationship with Gene as I came to call him and quickly forgot about my crush on Mr Margolis as well as any thought of other boys Elizabeth and Gene became good friends and supportive of one another Elizabeth was one of the few people who understood my intense love and devotion to this young man My other friends didnt understand My parents were not pleased at all and thought I had gone mad to settle on this one boy especially since many others were interested in me including the captain of the football team and a young man named Harvey who drove a great looking 1957 restored Chevrolet He asked me out often but although he was a nice person there was no attraction on my part I did go out with the football team captain a couple of times but there was no chemistry there for me either Gene was a typical 20 year old except that he was confined to a wheelchair He had been born with a condition called spina bifida and was a resident of the hospital where he worked as a therapy aid in the metal shop He could not visit me at my apartment because we lived two flights up and there was no elevator After Labor Day weekend I began visiting Gene about twice a week Hed usually call on Wednesday evening and we would make plans for me to come by on Thursday after school and on Saturday or Sunday He had to use the pay phone on the hospital floor because he didnt have a private one It was very annoying to speak to someone on a pay phone because the operator was constantly interrupting to say more coins were needed for the call to continue I started having my mom tell Gene that I was out so I could call him back from my home phone That eliminated the possibility of being cut off and it saved him his hard earned money Genes birthday was on September 13 There was a party for him at the hospital Elizabeth and I chipped in for presents and visited him that evening I used my babysitting money so we could buy him an expensive beautiful blue sweater for the chilly days ahead It also matched his eyes I wore my pink dress and matching pink shoes from my sweet sixteen party My hair was in a beehive because that made me look taller than my 4 foot 11 inch frame it made me feel older and more mature too Gene said I was the THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

52 SPRING 2016 prettiest girl hed ever seen and this was his best birthday ever because I was there to help him celebrate He was turning 21 and that was a big deal He had gotten lots of cards because he was very well liked Later he showed me stacks of birthday and holiday cards that he had saved over the years He was sensitive and sentimental and very grateful that people remembered him And he was proud of his collection hundreds of cards which he had categorized by year Sometimes Elizabeth came with me to visit Gene sometimes I went alone He had told Elizabeth in a telephone conversation that he wanted to ask me to go steady but not to tell me Of course she did I tried to act surprisedwhen he asked me and I did accept Who else but Gene did I care for He gave me his ID bracelet as was the custom at the time and also told me he was making a special necklace for me in the art shop I couldnt wait to see it When I would visit it was always a thrill to see him Somehow the autumn leaves looked brighter than they ever had before and fall became my favorite time of year It still is Now when I see the leaves turning I think of Gene and the happy times we spent together We would go outside on the grounds when the weather permitted and stay inside when it was rainy or cold as winter approached We were happy staring into each others eyes holding hands and planning a future together a future we hoped would get him out of the hospital Often we would order pizza and sodas and think about how lucky we were to have found one another Gene didnt like to speak much about his past which had been mostly spent in the hospital he would rather focus on the present and the future with me As far as I could tell Gene didnt feel sorry for himself He had beenborn with a disability so being disabled was all he knew he was taken to the institution as a very young child so that was the only life he knew He was very curious and managed by the age of seven to learn how to use complicated machines to make things He joined a Cub Scout Troop and earned many badges He also participated on a wheelchair basketball team and in a bowling league where he won many trophies for his skillsand accomplishments He had received his high school diploma in 1962 after studying very hard and completing all the necessary work His philosophy could be summed up in one of his favorite sayings Y is a crooked letter Often he was mysterious about things like when he would say he had a surprise in store for me When I asked what it was he would smile in a devilish way and say Thats for me to know and you to find out I enjoyed his teasing It was practically impossible for Gene to get out and about in 1963 with no curb cuts no ramps and no wheelchair accessible bathrooms for the disabled Nor did movie theatres and restaurants have seating for AUDREY IGNATOFF

SPRING 2016 53 wheelchair patrons But we made the best of our time together In those days a person with a serious disability might as well have been a prisoner and society his warden The constraints of the environment conspired to make a disability more horrendous than it had to be Gene however had a lot of hope for a better life and never gave up That fall on November 22nd news suddenlycame of President Kennedy having been shot and killed I first heard it on the loudspeaker at school then we were dismissed early The whole country was in shock and I was no exception After arriving home I immediately went to see Gene as I craved the peaceful and reassuring feeling that being with him gave me Gene was my love my life and my future We held hands and prayed for the President and his family We were grateful to haveeach other and that no tragedies were looming in our lives at the moment Although the country seemed to have lost its innocence we were still optimistic about our future On February 17 1964 I turned seventeen My friends wanted me to celebrate with them and go out ice skating and then to Jahns for ice cream sundaes I chose to pass and spent my birthday with Gene instead We had cake and he presented me with special birthday flowers and a big kiss He was wearing the blue sweater Elizabeth and I had given him and he looked fabulous it made his blue eyes look even brighter This was going to be the best year ever with the man I loved at my side Everything was possible We could write our own script That same month the Beatles came to America for the first time Gene and I were thrilled to watch them on The Ed Sullivan Show I Want to Hold Your Hand became our song as we held hands and listened to them sing it on television We were at our happiest then One Wednesday evening passed with no call from Gene I began to worry so I called the next day after school The person who answered said that Gene had been ill with a cold or flu and had taken to his bed I went to see him armed with chicken soup and some magazines and was shocked to learn that he shared a ward withtwenty other men most of whom were in very bad shape Some were bedridden invalids who couldnt even move around The dcor was drab hospital green and the place smelled bad Thankfully Gene recovered from that episode and was back to his old self in a short time It was depressing and didnt seem right that a very bright and energetic young man had to live that way The goal became how to get him out of there for good I began to think that perhaps we should get married and I get a job instead of going to college After all his good friend Vinnie was engaged to a woman he had met when she was a 15 year old volunteer Now she worked THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

54 SPRING 2016 as a hairdresser and their plan was to marry and live together in an apartment which they eventually did when Vinnie turned 26 It had worked out for them Vinnie went on to college and received a degree in psychology He then became a counselor for both disabled and non disabled people as well as a trainer in a workshop for disabled workers Another good friend of Genes John Gallon eventually married another patient Natalie and they moved to an apartment in Long Branch New Jersey He became an insurance agent and Natalie got work at a local community college Gene was more important to me than anything else and I was going to be there for him no matter what When President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in July of 1964 I wondered if disabled people would ever get equal rights too and be able to be included in society Certainly this was not the case in 1964 and was considered by many back then to be an impossible task Eugene taught me very important lessons that have stayed with me throughout my life When a man wants a woman he will try very hard to win her affection even if it means risking rejection Also when you love someone you will risk everything and even change your life around to be with that person To me being with Gene meant incurring my parents disapproval and having most of my friends think I had gone raving mad I had given up the carefree life of a teenager in 1963 because I fell madly in love with a man in a wheelchair and my view of the world changed greatly The only thing that mattered to me was being with Gene whatever the future held for us I didnt get to see Gene all week as I was busy with midterms and visiting my favorite uncle for his birthday It was March 1964 When I telephoned him after I arrived home from my uncles someone on the floor answered and told me Gene was in the acute care division I immediately threw on my coat and ran to the hospital arriving in a cold sweat I was led to his room where he lay on a bed attached to tubes and screaming in pain He had experienced kidney failure Shortly afterwards his father arrived I had never seen him there before We exchanged greetings and telephone numbers He knew that I was Genes girlfriend I stayed after his father left and arrived home well after midnight I regret not stayingall night Not being able to sleep because I was so worried I was up early the next morning and called the hospital The person I talked to said she couldnt tell me anything about Gene and said I should contact his family I immediately ran to the hospital His room was empty and I was directed to the office of the doctor on call He informed me that Gene had expired during the night I almost fell down immediately starting to shake and cry uncontrollably How could this happen How could a 21 year old man suddenly be dead AUDREY IGNATOFF

SPRING 2016 55 There had to be a mistake I couldnt digest or accept it Gene died on March 18 1964 After that I dreaded the month of March and wanted it to pass quickly I felt guilty that I hadnt stayed all night and wondered if I could have done something proactive to save him But I was just a 17 year oldnave kid I never thought he could die he was so young and so full of life When I arrived home from the hospital there was a message that Genes father had called I immediately called him back but could hardly speak through my tears He wanted to tell me about the funeral arrangements There was to be a wake at a localfuneral home before the church service I took down the information and tried to steel myself to go through themotions even though I was a complete basket case When I arrived at the funeral home for the wake Elizabeth joined me outside Her eyes were also red from crying We were in total disbelief and anguished There were many people there including relatives and friends and staff from the hospital They all tried to comfort me but itdidnt help Genes good friends Vinnie and John were also crying in disbelief and shock I was inconsolable but had to get through this terrible ordeal Suddenly I went from being 17 to 70 Surely I would never feel young and carefree again The pain was unbearable and I couldnt control it After the funeral I returned home feeling lower than ever I couldnt study and I didnt care about school or going to college My life felt like it was over I didnt want to live without ever being able to be with Gene again to hear him speak to see his wonderful smile and his sparkling blue eyes The depression set in very deep and there didnt seem to be any relief from it I told myself that this was not real it was just a trick someone was playing on me to get even for some sin I must havecommitted I continued to cry every day My grades went from As to Ds and Fs I had no interest in going to graduation or the prom although I had several invitations from very nice boys I had imagined taking Gene to the prom of being the first one to invite someone in a wheelchair to such an event We would have had such fun When graduation time came I had to attend because my parents insisted though I had no enthusiasm for the occasion especially since the line went by order of height and I was the shortest girl in the school meaning Iwould have to lead it The festivities just made me more depressed because the most important person in my life was not there to share them with me That summer held no allure for me either Each day was another chore to get through as I didnt want to be among the living anymore I didnt want to think about college I no longer saw any point to it I was able to commiserate with my friend Elizabeth who was the only one who truly understood my intense grief and despair In this state I had no THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

56 SPRING 2016 interest in socializing with other friends or participating in any activities I wandered around aimlessly hoping to get lost and not have to return to my everyday life which seemed so pointless and meaningless without Gene I began to see him appear wherever I went it felt like I was ricocheting out of control Genes parents invited me for several dinners and gave me some of his things including his basketball and bowling trophies Somehow I didnt feel that they were grieving as much as I was After all he had been much more a part of my life than theirs he had not lived at home for many years and they didnt visit him at the hospital on aregular basis We lost touch after a while About a month after Gene died I received a call from a strange man He said he had found my wallet in a booth at a neighborhood diner I had gone to with Elizabeth for a soda He suggested I meet him there so he could give it back to me The man was very tall and slender and dressed in black He told me he was my guardian angel and that hed been sent to protect and take care of me Then he asked if I needed anything I was very shocked to hear all this After our meeting whenever I came home from school he would be standing in front of my apartment building waiting to greet me and ask how I was doing After months of my telling him I didnt need anything he suddenly wasnt there anymore When I went to the address he had given me the landlord told me he had just left in the middle of the night and gave no forwarding instructions This was all very strange but I guess that he meant no harm The only thing that I needed or wanted was to have Gene back alive and well but that was not possible I really didnt believe that lifewould ever hold anything worthwhile for me again It didnt seem fair that I was alive and Gene was not I had only his photo ID bracelet and sports trophies to hold onto along with memories that would last a lifetime I was much too depressed to know exactly what to do so I just cried and felt very sorry for myself and sorry for Gene because it had been his fate both to be born disabled and to die young Recently I learned something that made me wonder if these two aspects of Genes fate could possibly have been related The year before Gene died unethical medical experiments were conducted on patients at the hospital where he lived Dr ChesterM Southam a well known virologist at New Yorks Sloan Kettering Hospital had been studying for over a decade how cancer affected the immune system He had travelled to Africa where he injected live viruses such as dengue and West Nile into people already sick with cancer to see how their bodies would respond to the introduction of AUDREY IGNATOFF

SPRING 2016 57 new cancer cells He had also done experiments atthe Ohio State Penitentiary injecting healthy prisoners with cancer cells Now he wanted to learn how patients who were already debilitated from other diseases or conditions would respond to injections of live cancer cells In 1963 he arranged for 22 men at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital to participate in his study Dr Emanuel Mandel the hospitals medical director at the time consented to the experiment even though he knew Southamhad no intention of telling the patients what he was doing to them Informed consent laws werent on the books back then and the Nuremberg Code developed after the horrific experimentation perpetrated by the Nazis wasnt legally enforceable in the United States Apparently it was unknown to many doctors here and ignored by others Still three doctors at the hospital all of them Jewish refused to participate in the project and resigned going public with revelations about what was happening at the hospital The story made headlines and the New York State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz launched an investigation In 2013 the journalist and author Allen M Hornblum who published a book that year titled Against Their Will The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America recounted the history of Southams experiments at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in a piece that appeared in the New York Post The following is from his report The front page headline of the New York World Telegram on Jan 20 1964 shocked readers ChargeHospital Shot Live Cancer Cells into Patients Doctors Avir Kagan David Leichter and Perry Fersko were all asked to assist Southam with his research initiative Each one refused Pressure was placed on Kagan as well as Leichter and Fersko to comply they were told the research would advance science and association with the project would be good for the hospital But the doctors stood their ground When I tracked down and interviewed Southam in the mid 90s he was retired and residing on Philadelphias affluent Main Line He was reluctant to talk about the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital case the media firestorm it created generated painful memories But it could have been worse He was never prosecuted and only received a one year probation a one year suspension was stayed from the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York And he was far from ostracized by his peers Southam was elected president of the American Association for Cancer Research just a few years later Obviously breaching a code of medical ethics wasnt an impediment to career advancement in the the 1960s I have no proof that Gene was one of Southams unwitting subjects According to news accounts those who were injected were mostly old some were suffering from dementia and others spoke only Yiddish I dont even know if records from the time Gene was living at the hospital which has THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

58 SPRING 2016 AUDREY IGNATOFF gone through a series of changes and is now known as the Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center still exist I do know that one of the hospitals board members at the time a lawyer named William Hyman sued Southam and Mandel in civil court asking for access to the medical records of their research subjects The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York ruled in 1964 that Hyman didnt need to see the records because the hospital had since changed its policy and would now require that informed consent be obtained from patients before they could participate inresearch studies The records were sealed In 1990 24 years after the signing of the Civil Rights Act prompted meto wonder when discrimination against people like Gene might be ended President George H W Bush signed the Americans with Disabilties Act into law By then I had been working for several years as an advocate helping to craft legislation to tear down barriers that made life more challenging for the disabled than it already was especially for people who were confined to wheelchairs Over the last 25 years the ADA has transformed our society Handicap accessible bathrooms in most public places are a given Ramps that allow access to buildings and curb cuts that make manuevering on sidewalks easier are common Public transporation now serves disabled members of the public along with everyone else To this day I still feel Genes presence with me that hehas guided me in my life and prepared me for much of my journey I did go to college and graduate school and have spent my adult life working to improve conditions for disabled people When I go to any new place I makeit a point to inspect the bathroom for handicap assessibility Im thrilled when I find that it is there and say to myself that it is Genes work and his legacy

SPRING 2016 59 AbortionChangesYou com Acknowledging Disenfranchised Grief Ifeoma Anunkor AbortionChangesYou com is a confidential space that offers anonymous sharing tools and resources for those seeking to address the emotional pain of their abortion or the abortion of someone close to them When Michaelene Fredenburg launched the website in 2008 her primary aim was to communicate to men and women grieving abortion the message that they are notalone She began by sharing with them her own journey into a healthy grieving process years after her abortion at the age of eighteen The response was incredible so many people had been similarly impacted by abortion Although resources were available because of their sense of shame and desire for secrecy most people were not taking advantage of them I knew people would open up about abortion if they believed it was safe for them to do so she says For this reason the content of AbortionChangesYou com is devoid of labels and outsidethe abortion debate Fredenburg notes that our society does not provide ways to memorialize grief from reproductive loss hence the need for Abortion Changes You to acknowledge and address what Fredenburg refers to as disenfranchised grief No matter what position one takes on abortion everyone should be able to agree that the American culture like most cultures does not acknowledge feelings of loss and bereavement from abortion That leaves large numbers of people who have not been given permission and space to grieve As Fredenburg puts it We are silent and the silence perpetuates itself To address this problem Fredenburg created Abortion Changes You as a venue for people to share their stories and the emotions they are feeling at any point after an abortion Those stories are unique and compelling Fredenburg recalls two recent postings one from a woman who posted that she wrote her abortion story for submission but then deleted it because she was too ashamed Fredenburg hopes that woman will realize the huge step forward she took just by writingout her story Another is from a man who recounts that after he broke up with his girlfriend she became pregnant by someone else Before they reconciled she had an abortion thinking that the pregnancy would stand in the way of renewing their relationship Although Ifeoma Anunkor is the Human Life Reviews McFaddenFellow and director of EXPECT the Reviews new initiative for reaching young professionals and college students A New York City resident and graduate of Columbia Law School she writes on pro life laws and culture

60 SPRING 2016 she has coped well with the abortion he has not He feels responsible and would haveloved to raise the child as his own Abortion Changes You provides more than a medium for visitors to anonymously post their stories The website also offers a Grief and Loss Healing Model which lays out tasks of dealing with the difficult emotions from abortion build support explore your emotions identify and grieve yourlosses recognize any unhealthy behaviors and let go of the pain Fredenburg emphasizes that the model is not expected to produce instantaneous healing but acceptance of abortion grief and loss so that people experiencing these emotions will ultimately be able to let go of their pain as they continue the process of healing beyond the website The model is general enough to encompass all types of grief and is a concept thatis non threatening and easy to relate to There is also no fixed order to the tasks Believing that professional counseling and therapy can be useful resources for healing Fredenburg added to the website a Find Help Directory which allows users to search for nearby resources that provide after abortion support So far the list ofclose to 1,000 healing resources spans five continents Fredenburg emphasizes that she wants Abortion Changes You to be a helpful outlet for those who feel they have no one to turn to for support or those struggling to come to terms with their abortion In the rare instances when our society addresses abortions emotional effects it usually highlights the extremes Either the woman feels empowered by the abortion or she is devastated by it either she has no negative emotions about her abortion or she has only negative emotions Fredenburg contends that most people fall between these extremes and therefore tend not to identify with them Emotions are complicated and each persons experience is unique She illustrates the ambiguity of the grieving process with the example of a woman walking by a park seeing a child and wondering What if Users word submissions to the website support her argument Under explore your emotions the feelings posted include confused relieved sad and forgiven Users can also post anonymous artwork and poetry or they can journal Journal entries are not posted Friends and family also benefit from the site Fredenburg explains Processing someone elses abortion is complicated when its someone we love We feel like hanging on to the pain otherwise we are betraying that loved one Or we dont want the baby to be forgotten By carrying the wound still we honor that person and his or her life remains significant The vast majority visiting AbortionChangesYou com are coming because they are hurting Others have a story of searching for meaning and want to memorialize their experience says Fredenburg They are mothers fathers IFEOMA ANUNKOR

SPRING 2016 61 grandparents friends brothers and sisters of the aborted child and friends of the parents who chose to abort The site includes a page called Healing that allows people to post the day they decided to let go of the pain of abortion The page is filled with thousands of people memorializing their release of the sorrow they have carried Over the years the response to Abortion Changes You has been overwhelmingly positive Pregnancy centers and other organizations have incorporated its healing model into their services and encourage clients to post their feelings on the website In addition individuals occasionally post comments expressing how much the site has helped them Fredenburg works with diverse groups through Abortion Changes Yous training program As heart wrenching as abortion stories are it is rewarding to see peoples natural reaction during training They sincerely ask What can I do to help Such outpouring of compassion moves and encourages her To Fredenburgs surprise the website has met little opposition since its inception eight years ago What she hears most even from people with differing opinions is that Abortion Changes You is safe nonjudgmental and neutral Counseling firms and health centers have asked Fredenburg toco author anonymous patient information forms to better tabulate and understand the dimensions of reproductive loss At first the number of women impacted by such loss appeared small according to patient information data However counselors reflected and realized that they never directly asked women about reproductive loss For instance after asking Do you have any children If so how many they now follow up with Have you had any additional pregnancies Based on user feedback all posted stories are now searchable so that visitors can easily access the types of stories that relate to them The sites Find Help locator is also searchable by need for instance to locate remote resources or services for men Fredenburg has long encountered women who have had abortions and are discouraged after trying to tell someone they trust about their experience Often confidants want to be supportive but lack the ability to talk with someone suffering grief and loss from an abortion In response Fredenburg and her team have created a website called CreatingaSafePlace com whichpromotes privacy understanding and safety Anyone who is a helper whether a friend healthcare center church or counselor can go to the site and order resources In the future CreatingaSafePlace com will also include microtraining tools As with any successful operation its leader looks to future challenges THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

62 SPRING 2016 Three main types of organizations are now asking Abortion Changes You to equip them to better help those hurting from reproductive loss Pregnancy centers are increasingly seeking training to improve their after abortion help services Fredenburg and her team have prepared specialized tools for them so that when a woman decides to seek after abortion help such places will be ready to assist her Youth ministers clergy and pastors of faith based groups have also called on Abortion Changes You for trainingwhich Fredenburg finds encouraging She observes that Three out of ten women by the time they are 45 will have had an abortion Add to the number the men involved as well as family and friends Churches can be one of the first places someone working with unresolved grief over abortion will approach so it is not surprising that they are asking Fredenburg for help to better understand the healing process and assist men and women Fredenburg has found that there is little to no training in the mental health community for reproductive grief and loss Since up to one out of four pregnancies ends in miscarriage she notes the potential for mental health assistance in this area is great To help fill the gap Abortion Changes You is now training counseling interns and licensed mental health professionals Fredenburg hopes that more practitioners will discover the connection between mental health decline and reproductive loss It is inspiring to see the evolution of a site that began as one womans gift for communicating with men and women undergoing abortion grief Today Abortion ChangesYou is a powerful medium to extend support and empowerment to anyone suffering in some way from the grief of abortion and to those who care about them The website describes its purpose as being a refuge for those who wish to tell their story and begin the process of healing while assuring visitors that healing doesnt mean you have it all together It means youre taking purposeful steps to go through a process Fredenburgs success in fulfilling that purpose is evident in the stories that pour in daily as men and women like the following take their first step on an often long and complex road to healing Hi Ive undergone an abortion almost a year ago and Im still thinking of it every night Here is my story See R Jones and M Kavanaugh Changes in Abortion Rates between 2000 and 2008 and Lifetime Incidence of Abortion Obstetrics GynecologyJune 2011 117 1358 1366 The statistic has been widely accepted most notably by the Guttmacher Institute although some pro life advocates question its accuracy Jones and Kavanaugh themselves caution in the same study that these findings are best interpreted as general patterns as opposed to precise measures at 1363 IFEOMA ANUNKOR

SPRING 2016 63 Abortion in Northern Ireland An Interview with Bernadette SmythBernadette Bernie Smyth is president of Precious Life the largest prolife group in Northern Ireland www preciouslife com founded in 1997 Northern Ireland has recently been the focus of a concerted effort on the part of abortion campaigners judges and some international groups to force changes in its abortion law which still protects the unborn Ms Smyth recently spoke with Dr John Grondelski for the Human Life Review on the question of the current struggles over protection of the unborn in Northern Ireland Dr Grondelski is a former associate dean of the School of Theology at Seton Hall University in New Jersey HUMAN LIFE REVIEW HLR Few people know that when the British Parliament passed the Abortion Act 1967 liberalizing abortion in the United Kingdom its provisions explicitly did not extend to Northern Ireland Why not And what is the state of abortion law there today BERNADETTE SMYTH There has never been any political will to introduce the Abortion Act 1967 to Northern Ireland Firstly let me tell you a little bit about the politics of Northern Ireland and how we have come to where we are today Between 1921 and 1971 Northern Ireland had its own Parliament When the Abortion Act 1967 was passed in Westminster the issue of abortion was left for the Northern Ireland Parliamentto decide It never took it up The Northern Ireland Parliament was abolished with the return of direct rule in 1973 At that time Westminster pledged that it would not impose any change in abortion law on the people of Northern Ireland without consultation with their elected representatives and that any change would come about only with broad support from a cross section of the people As a result of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 a devolved government was established in Northern Ireland This is the Northern Ireland Assembly which has full legislative and executive authority for all matters that are the responsibility of its government departments an example being criminal justice matters which includes abortion The people of Northern Irelandhave always made their voices heard on the subject of abortion saying it would never occur in their name That is why abortion is still a criminal offence here governed by sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and section 25 of the Criminal Justice Act Northern Ireland 1945 There is now however a concerted

64 SPRING 2016 campaign to legalize abortion in Northern Ireland in cases where an unborn child has been diagnosed with a life limiting disability HLR Many people outside Northern Ireland associate it with the long history of sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants But the pro life anti life split is not along religious fault lines is it Can you describe how the two main religious communities in Northern Ireland view abortion and who is really pushing for legalizing it MS SMYTH The pro life and pro abortion divide in Northern Ireland has nothing to do with a divide between Catholics and Protestants In fact the people clamouring for legalized abortion are primarily liberal minded atheists pro choice feminists and human rights activists with a ferocious hostility to any person who stands by the principle that it is morally wrong to kill unborn children Amnesty International have found their very own Jane Roe and have been exploiting the case of a young woman from Northern Ireland who travelled to England for an abortion when she discovered her unborn child had been diagnosed with anencephaly in October 2013 Since then the campaign for legalizing abortion in cases of so called fatal fetal abnormality has been gaining momentum withthe Justice Minister launching a public consultation on legalizing abortion in cases of lethal fetal abnormality and sexual crime in October 2014 Most recently the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission with the support of Amnesty International sought a judicial review of the law on abortion in Northern Ireland claiming that the illegality of abortion in cases of rape incest and serious malformation of the foetus was in breach of Articles 3 8 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights The Catholic Church in Northern Ireland is of course unequivocally opposed to abortion However there is an urgent need for priests and bishops to be more active and to speak out more about abortion and warn their congregations of the current threat to unborn children in Northern Ireland To explain how the Protestant churches in Northern Ireland view abortion it will be most helpful to draw your attention to how each denomination responded to the Justice Ministers public consultation on abortion With regard to the proposal to legalize abortion in cases where an unborn child has been diagnosed with a life limiting disability neither the Free Presbyterian Church the Presbyterian Church in Ireland nor the Caleb Foundation which is a lobby group representing the views of mainstream evangelical Christians in Northern Ireland supported a change in the law However both the Church of Ireland and the Methodist Church in Ireland BERNADETTE SMYTH

SPRING 2016 65 MCI supported a change in the law in these cases 1 With regard to the proposal to legalize abortion when pregnancy is the result of sexual crime no Protestant denomination supported a change in the law 2 HLR Ireland Poland and Malta are often targets of anti life criticism because they are the only countries in the European Union with real pro life protections in their national laws How does the Republic of Irelands pro life position help or hinder Northern Irelands position MS SMYTH In the Republic of Ireland Article 40.3.3 of the Irish Constitution provides that the State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother guarantees in its laws to respect and as far as practicable by its laws to defend and vindicate that right Howeverthe law on abortion was amended in the Republic of Ireland by the Irish Government under the so called Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 Sadly this piece of legislation repealed sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 the Act which historically protected the unborn child from the moment of conception The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 now permits abortion in cases where a pregnant womans life is in danger from a physical illness or when there is a risk of loss of life due to suicide For the past year there has also been a concerted campaign by the proabortion lobby to repeal Article 40.3.3 ofthe Irish Constitution which would effectively strip the unborn child of any protection in the Republic of Ireland The pro abortion lobby are specifically campaigning for the legalization of abortion in cases where an unborn child has been diagnosed with a lifelimiting disability HLR What does this mean for Northern Ireland MS SMYTH I have always said there is no border in this battle to protect Irelands unborn children Since 2007 the people of Ireland both north and south have united in their thousands at the All Ireland Rally for Life which is held every year alternating between Belfast and Dublin When the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill was being debated in July 2013 a massive Rally for Life with 60,000 people from all across Ireland marched through the city of Dublin Prior to the Acts signing there were also crossborder meetings between political representatives in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland where all agreed that the role of any government is to uphold the law that protects the weakest and most vulnerable in our society Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 was an all Ireland safeguard against abortion Its repeal in the Republic of Ireland THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

66 SPRING 2016 has unsteadied the politicians in the north who always had confidence in the historic piece of legislation protecting unborn children on both sides of the border If the laws protecting unborn children are weakened or if abortion is ever legalized on one side ofthe border that will have foreboding consequences for unborn children on the other side That is why political representatives pro life groups and the people in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland must continue to work together to fight back and defeat the current threats to unborn children diagnosed with life limiting disabilities across the island of Ireland HLR Marie Stopes advertises itself as the first abortion clinic in the island of Ireland In the United States Planned Parenthood laments the disappearance of abortionists especially outside of the east and west coasts Few physicians want to get involved in this activity so that a number of carpetbagger abortionists fly around to provide their services at various clinics throughout AmericaThis is why they resist being required to have admitting privileges at local hospitals since they have no community ties Can you tell us something about Marie Stopes Can you also comment on abortion at sea floating abortion clinic boats in international waters and how this phenomenon affects Northern Ireland MS SMYTH Marie Stopes International entered Northern Ireland under a cloak of darkness No one knew that this notorious abortion giant was coming until it was announced by the media shortly before its arrival in Belfast onOctober 18 2012 Since then staff at the Marie Stopes centre have been laughing in the face of the criminal law by proclaiming on their website that they offer the abortion pill up to nine weeks of pregnancy In fact in a meeting before the Justice Committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly in January 2013 Marie Stopes representatives boasted that there is nothing stopping them from performing abortions up to birth In 2007 Paul Cornellisson then Programme Director of Marie Stopes in South Africa admitted at an abortion conferencein London that Marie Stopes clinics do illegal abortions all over the world 3 Marie Stopes does not wait for the law to change but brazenly opens its doors in a country where abortion is against the law with the objective to soften individual consciences in preparation for a widespread push for legalization Precious Life has been tryingall legal and political means to close Marie Stopes But unfortunately this has proved unsuccessful Sinn Fein the Alliance Party and the Green Party voted not once but twice to keep Marie Stopes open ignoring the voices of 35,000 people who made clear that Marie BERNADETTE SMYTH

SPRING 2016 67 Stopes would never be wanted or needed in Northern Ireland Precious Lifes Stop Marie Stopes Campaign holds peaceful prayer vigils outside the Marie Stopes building every day it is open and our street counsellors reach out with advice information and support to women entering the clinic 4 While Precious Life continues in its efforts to shut Marie Stopes Stanton Healthcare Belfast a brand new pregnancy care centre has just opened to offer counselling and practical support for women faced with unplanned pregnancies in Northern Ireland With regard to abortion at sea There is an organization called Women on Waves which sails to countries where abortion is illegal and supplies illegal abortion pills to women A number of years ago a Women on Waves boat tried to dock in Belfast and Dublin but the political representatives refused to let them arguing that they didnt have a permit to dock and that they were breaking the law and endangering womens lives by supplying these illegal abortion pills Whether Women on Waves actually supplies abortion pills in other countries where abortion is illegal is unknown As far as I know there is no evidence to prove that they are doing this I suspect that it is merely a publicity stunt However we are more concerned about the website called Women on Web which claims to supply abortion pills to women in countries where abortion is illegal Our concern would be thata number of women are breaking the law in Northern Ireland by taking these illicit pills HLR Recently a Northern Ireland judge addressed the question of abortion law Can you tell us about that decision MS SMYTH On February 2 2015 the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission the Commission was granted leave for a judicial review of Northern Irelands abortion law The Commission with the support of Amnesty International sought the legalization of abortion in cases of rape incest and serious malformation of the fetus claiming that the requirement that pregnant women travel to Britain or elsewhere to access services in such cases was in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights namely Article 3 prohibition of torture and degrading treatment Article 8 respect for privacy and family life and Article 14 prohibition of discrimination The Commission sought a declaration of incompatibility of sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 with articles 3 8 and 14 THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

68 SPRING 2016 of the European Convention on Human Rights Precious Life was a third party intervener on behalf of the unborn child in this landmark case After five months of deliberation Mr Justice Mark Horner ruled on November 30 2015 that the illegality of abortion in cases of rape incest and when an unborn child has been diagnosed with a fatal fetal abnormality was in violation of a womans right to private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights Although Precious Life welcomed Judge Horners acknowledgement that there is no right to abortion in international human rights law and that he made clear that the illegality of abortion neither discriminates against the woman nor subjects her to inhumane and degrading treatment we were appalled that he refused point blank to recognize that every unborn child by virtue of his or her humanity has aGod given right to life which no judge can ever take away The judge spoke coldly and cruelly about unborn children with life limiting disabilities In his diabolical ruling he completely stripped these little ones of their veryhumanity saying that there is no human life to protect He also degraded every woman who becomes pregnant from rape by calling her merely a receptacle and demonized her child as the child of a rapist On December 16 2015 Judge Horner reached his final conclusion in this case acknowledging that to interpret sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 to allow for abortion in cases of rape incest and when the unborn child has been diagnosed with a life limiting disability would be a step too far Instead he made a declaration of incompatibility meaning that the matter of introducing new legislation would now be for the Northern Ireland Assembly to decide While the Northern Ireland Assembly is not obligated to act on this ruling or to legalize abortion in the above cases it is the responsibility of the people of Northern Ireland to pressure politicians not to bow down to this evil judgment That is why Precious Life has launched its FIGHT BACK campaign to ensure that all unborn children continue to be protected in Northern Ireland We just learned in late January 2016 that the Attorney General for Northern Ireland and the Department of Justice will be appealing Judge Horners judgment HLR To what degree are European human rights provisions being used as ways to try to force abortion on Northern Ireland MS SMYTH Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights a womans right to private and family life is the human rights provision BERNADETTE SMYTH

SPRING 2016 69 most often used to try to force the legalization of abortion in Northern Ireland You can see that this right is being totally abused and how it can be argued in defence of any activity no matter how morally reprehensible HLR The Northern Ireland Government supposedly went through a consultation process on abortion legalization last year Can you describe that process and your evaluation of it MS SMYTH Justice Minister David Fords public consultation on amending the law in Northern Ireland to allow abortion in cases oflethal fetal abnormality and sexual crime was launched in October 2014 On April 15 2015 the Department of Justice published a summary of the responses 5 Despite that 25,140 of the 25,320 responses to the consultation opposed any change to the law David Ford announced that after full and careful consideration of the evidence submitted he had concluded that to change the law along the lines outlined in the consultation paper is the right thing to do and that he would seek the approval of the Northern Ireland Executive to legalize abortion in cases where an unborn child has been diagnosed with a life limiting disability Following this announcement Peter Robinson the First Minister of Northern Ireland retorted that David Fords proposals were doomed as they did not have the support needed to pass the Assembly Since then the Justice Ministers proposals have been put on hold But with the recent High Court ruling the question of changing the law will now be put to the political representatives once again HLR What do you see as the future of the protection of the unborn in Northern Ireland MS SMYTH At this very moment we are facing the greatest onslaught ever seen in the history of the abortion battle in Ireland At this urgent time there must be a public outcry from the peopleof Ireland both north and south There must also be massive prayer and vocal opposition from our church leaders A colossal amount of work now lies ahead to ensure that our politicians continue to uphold the right to life of all unborn children The months and years ahead are going to be very tough but Precious Life and the pro life people of Northern Ireland have faith that with God on our side we can trust in Him that good will overcome evil and that unborn children will continue to be protected in Northern Ireland HLR Please tell us something about the pro life movement in Northern Ireland THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

70 SPRING 2016 MS SMYTH During this time when there is such a ferocious attack on unborn children in Northern Ireland I would like to bring to your attention what Bishop Robert Barron said during his keynote speech at the World Meeting of Families conference in Philadelphia on September 23 2015 The gates of hell will not prevail against you Matthew 16 18 Bishop Barron explained that Were the ones on the march Hell has something to fear from us It is we who are on the march in our campaign to bring the truth to the people around us We will never stop being a voice for the unborn child and will do everything we can do ensure that unborn children continue to be protected in law policy and practice The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International would be mistaken to think that they have won this battle The pro life movement in Northern Ireland is united strong and marching forward in this battle to protect mothers and their unborn children and with God on our side we will have the victory NOTES 1 https www dojni gov uk sites default files publications doj summary of responses on abortionconsultation april 2015 pdf 2 https www dojni gov uk sites default files publications doj summary of responses on abortionconsultation april 2015 pdf 3 http www youtube com watch v 9Cf7Rg8zxds 4 For more information on Maria Stopes in Northern Ireland see following articles at Precious Lifes website http www preciouslife com news 231 new womens health centre stantonhealthcare belfast opened http www preciouslife com news 230 bernie smyth hopes prolifeclinic can replace marie stopes http www preciouslife com news 229 us congressman chrissmith to talk with key prolife politicians 5 There were 712 individually written responses A total of 579 of these written responses opposed change 133 supported change There were 65 responses from representative organizations and interested groups 47 of which supported change 18 against change There were 921 letters opposing change written in support of seven lobby campaigns organized by individual churches and faith groups There were 23,622 petition signatures opposing change The petition called Project Love was organised by Every Life Counts Northern Ireland Department of Justice Substantial Support for Changing Legislation on Abortion Departmentof Justice 16 April 2015 http www dojni gov uk index media centre substantial support for changing legislationon abortion ford htm BERNADETTE SMYTH

SPRING 2016 71 BOOKNOTES DEFENDERS OF THE UNBORN Daniel K Williams Oxford University Press 2016 29.95 400 pp Reviewed by George McKenna Daniel KWilliams an Associate Professor of History at the University of West Georgia has written a readable and meticulously researched study of the battles fought by the pro life movement over the past seventy years Despite the books subtitle The Pro Life Movement before Roe v Wade the book reaches beyond Roe to recount some of the more recent skirmishes in this long war Williams is generally sympathetic to the pro life movement but he writes with such scrupulous objectivity that people on either side of the struggle can read this book with profit and without annoyance The theme that runs through it is the remarkable adaptiveness of the prolife movement After suffering an unexpected defeat pro life leaders regroup enter a period of self examination and start again with a new approach more in line with the facts on the ground This works for a time until another setback occurs then the process repeats itself A new discernment period leads to a strategic reorientation and new victories At the start of the abortion controversy in the 1930s the pro life side held the high ground Tough anti abortion laws allowing for few or no exceptions had long been in place in most of the states and they were supported not only by the Catholic Church and its vast multitude of adherents but also by a broad social consensus Even Margaret Sanger founder of Planned Parenthood claimed to oppose abortion Then quite suddenly in the mid 1960s a widespread pro abortion movement appeared led by doctors liberal clergy and pressure groups like Planned Parenthood despite its founders stated opposition to abortion Anticipating resistance they moved cautiously at first calling not for outright legalization but for reform of the existing abortion laws allowing for exceptions in cases of rape incest threats to a womans life or health or pregnancies that might result in the birth of children with birth defects The news media sympathized The New York Times and more popular print and TV media carried heartrending stories about women forced into desperate

72 SPRING 2016 measures by anti abortion laws These public relations campaigns soon bore fruit In 1967 Colorado and California enacted liberalized abortion laws and by 1970 so had five Southern states The victory of the pro abortion forces in California was particularly galling to the pro life movement Catholics constituted one third of the population and their Churchs stance was vigorously advanced by the states bishops who by now were experienced in mobilizing voters and letter writers Nevertheless in 1967 the California legislature passed and Governor Reagan signed reluctantly and after forcing the bills chief proponent to modify parts of it a bill that significantly liberalized the states abortion laws In the wake of these unexpected defeats the movement began its first period of soul searching How could this have happened Emerging from their dark night of the soul pro life strategists concluded that their movement had failed properly to adapt itself to the changing times The 60s was the decade of civil rights demonstrations protests against the Vietnam War and the rise of a new womens movement It was time to reframe the issue put it into the context of human rights Liberal Catholic pro lifers veterans of the peace and civil rights movements used that theme to reach out to others bringing more non Catholics and liberals into the tent There was also a conscious effort to recruit more women leaders Women had been in the movement all along but mainly as worker bees Now the male bishops who had been so prominent in the leadership of the movement willingly yielded space to qualified women spokespersons such as Dr Mildred Jefferson a Protestant surgeon who had been the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School The remodeling brought promising results even in liberal bastions like Minnesota and New York In the former an ecumenical and politically progressive organization used sophisticated techniques of voter mobilization and direct mailing to defeat a liberalization bill in 1971 that had previously enjoyed widespread support Even nationally the pro life movement seemed to be gaining strength In the 1972 presidential election pro life mobilization persuaded intimidated both Nixon and McGovern to declare themselves opposed to abortion and beat back attempts by pro abortion Democrats to put a liberalization plank in their platform Then everything fell apart On January 22 1973 by a 7 2 majority the Supreme Court decided in Roe v Wade and its companion case Doe v Bolton that women had an unrestricted constitutionally protected right to abortion for at least the first six months of pregnancy and a slightly qualified right to it during the final three months It undid all the work of pro lifers during the previous eight years The National Right to Life Committee and the Catholic bishops chose to BOOKNOTES

SPRING 2016 73 fight the decision frontally by means of a Human Life Amendment HLA to the Constitution The problem was getting the Democrats to back it By this time the new feminist movement had lodged itself comfortably inside the Democratic Party and since the late 1960s mainstream feminism was thoroughly committed to abortion on demand Democrats like Senator Ted Kennedy and his brother in law Sargent Shriver who had been friendly to pro life causes were annoyed by their insistence on a constitutional amendment abhorred by their feminist allies They tried to mollify the prolifers by emphasizing their personal opposition to abortion but the pro lifers were having none of it In 1975 they submitted to a Democratic Congress six different bills proposing various versions of a HLA All of them were buried by a Democrat led Senate committee The climax of the fight came in 1976 a presidential election year when the Democratic Partys platform writers while acknowledging the religious and ethical nature of the concerns which many Americans have on the subject of abortion explicitly rejected the path of constitutional amendment Jimmy Carter the partys presidential nominee waffled on the issue at first but in the end refused to support the HLA Within three years the pro life movement had suffered two huge defeats one at the hands of the Supreme Court the other by the party that had been the loyal friend of the Catholic Church in America since the Jacksonian era This double whammy set off a new round of introspection culminating in a radical course correction They had trusted their cause too much to the Democratic Party and had been flatly turned down Despite some dissension in their ranks almost all the pro life leaders were cradle Democrats and many were liberals they decided that their best hope lay with the Republicans One major Republican politician pulling them in that direction was Ronald Reagan Despite his earlier mixed feelings on abortion when it came to drafting the Republican Party platform of 1976 Reagan supported a constitutional amendment to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children Then President Gerald Ford competing with Reagan for the partys nomination was dragged into supporting it because he worried about Reagans popularity with pro lifers Four years later when Reagan ran against Carter the lines were fully drawn The Republicans doubled down on their support for an amendment adding that they opposed government funding of abortion and the Democrats were now firmly on record supporting Roe v Wade The new alliance with the Republicans brought new friends from within the party One came from the ranks of traditional Republicans opponents of THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

74 SPRING 2016 government intrusion into the private sphere Here Illinois Representative Henry Hyde proved to be particularly valuable Hyde himself a fervent prolifer won the votes of many traditional Republicans who werent necessarily against abortion but opposed government spending on abortion The result was the Hyde Amendment of 1976 which bans federally funded abortions A second new source of support for the pro life movement came from the ranks of white evangelical Protestants who by the mid 1970s had felt most at home in the Republican Party The evangelicals were at first reluctant to join a movement so heavily Catholic and in opposition to a procedure not condemned in the Bible But as the permissive spirit of the sexual revolution began spilling into mainstream American culture in the 70s with unlimited abortion rights along with gay rights sexual promiscuity and pornography evangelicals were increasingly attracted to the pro life cause and they brought their unique energies into the movement These new alliances brought some promising results over the next three decades At the state level pro life lobbying persuaded many legislatures to pass parental notification laws restrictions on abortion funding mandatory ultrasounds and waiting periods and limits on second trimester abortions At the national level the greatest achievement of the movement was persuading Congress in 2003 to ban partial birth abortion the grisly act of killing about to be born children Today Williams observes the approach is to win incrementally in the legislativearena the courts and in the court of public opinion constantly pushing back against the abortion regime and the abortion mentality In many ways the strategy has worked Abortion rates are the lowest they have been since 1980 there are now more crisis pregnancy centers than abortion clinics in America and more Americans call themselves pro life than pro choice These are indeed victories fresh victories in a movement that has had its share of victories over past half century And yet and yet Roe v Wade hasnt budged it was reaffirmed and restructured by the Supreme Court in 1992 The Human Life Amendment never made it to the floor of Congressand no serious attempt has been made to reintroduce it All the ties that the movement once had to the Democratic Party have been broken such that the term pro life Democrat is effectively an oxymoron Meanwhile despite the declining abortion rate the procedure still kills more than a million children every year not counting all those lost to stem cell research abortifacients and all the other new ways of destroying human life Williams concedes all these points indeed elaborates on them in the closing chapters of his book But he ends on a more hopeful note Over time a strange thing happened As the other moral regulatory causes that the Christian BOOKNOTES

SPRING 2016 75 Right championed eventually lost public support and in a few cases faded away entirely the pro life cause remained the one moral issue that was capable of attracting a younger generation to the Republican Party Noting that public opinion polls show that millennials tend to be more pro life than their parents he attributes this to the new emphasis on human rights making abortion limitations attractive to those otherwise opposed to regulating individual conduct But as we have seen the shiftin the movements messaging from regulation to human rights is hardly new it occurred in the early 1970s during the formative period of their parents generation So why arent their parents just as pro life as they are A plausible explanation I believe is that it took a full generation for the human rights message to sink in The kids marching today with I Am the Pro Life Generation banners are the heirs of intellectual stirrings begun a generation earlier This points up one omission in this otherwise factually rich book its failure to credit the writers and editors whose ideas have animated the pro life movement I see no mention of Amherst professor Hadley Arkes the intellectual father of the 2002 federal law extending legal protection to children born alive after failed abortions nor is there any reference to the work of Princetons Robert George whose writings have methodically demolished the best abortion apologetics or to Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School who has exposed the distorted premises underlying Roe v Wade J P McFadden gets one mention but he is identified only as a writer for National Review in 1973 there is no mention of this journal Father Richard Neuhaus is referred to a few times but mainly to show how the abortion issue pushed him into conservatism and there is no mention at all of his First Things a journal covering a variety of topics but committed to the prolife position Ideas are what make movements move This doesnt have to mean that the young people marching in Washington on January 22nd have actually read any of the thinkers just cited But ideas have a way of going vernacular They move outward from graduate seminars and small circulation journals to undergraduate classrooms and to high schools church groups talk shows the Internet dorm rooms and kitchen tables Williams credits the pro life movement for soldiering on despite all the setbacks it has received over the years His book would have been further enriched by greater attention to formative ideas behind the movementand to the men and women who have generated those ideas George McKenna is professor emeritus of political science at the City College of New York THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

76 SPRING 2016 Pick one out of the three arguments below to expand with your own thoughts Discuss how you agree and or disagree inthe context of a rightto life issue such as abortion or euthanasia I am at once a physician a citizen and a woman And I am not willing to stand aside and allow this concept of expendable human lives to turn this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect the privileged and the planned have a right to live Mildred Fay Jefferson Tyranny need not announce itself with guns and trumpets It may come softly so softly that we will barely notice when we become one of those countries where there are no citizens but only subjects So softly that if a well meaning foreigner should suggest Perhaps you could do something about your oppression we might look up puzzled and ask What oppression Mary Ann Glendon It is the duty of governments and of individuals to form the truest opinions they can to form them carefully and never impose them on others unless they are quite sure of being right But when they are sure such reasoners may say it is not conscientiousness but cowardice to shrink from acting on their opinions and allow doctrines which they honestly think dangerous to the welfare of mankind either in this life or another to be scattered abroad without restraint because other people in less enlightened times have persecuted opinions now believed to be true John Stewart Mill Submit your essay by Sunday August 31 2016 Essay must be no fewer than 2,000 wordsand no more than 3,000 words in length All students who submit an essay will receive a digital subscription to the Human Life Review for one year The author of the winning essay will have his her essay published in the Review and will receive a 250 cash prize A new initiative of the Human Life Review EXPECT is an outreach to young professionals and college students EXPECT PROUDLY ANNOUNCES THE 2016 COLLEGE STUDENT ESSAYCONTEST

SPRING 2016 77 BOOKNOTES THE WALLS ARE TALKING Abby Johnson Ignatius Press 17.95 155 pp Reviewed by Maria McFadden Maffucci You cant make this stuff up I thought as I was reading a particularly gripping account in Abby Johnsons new book The Walls Are Talking Former Abortion Clinic Workers Tell Their Stories http www ignatius com Products WT H the walls are talking aspx a few paragraphs later a clinic worker herself observes that Sometimes truth is indeed stranger than fiction Her story was about a frequent flyer at the clinic a woman who had just aborted her ninth child and whose lack of any remorse or shame for her serial abortions made even the staff feel awkward But in recovery after this ninth time Angieasked Hey do you mind if I see it I mean Ive had it done so many times I might as well know what it looks like Her request though infrequent wasnt completely unheard of so the clinic worker reluctantly retrieved the POC products of conception I debated about how to arrange the pieces she recalls Would it be best to throw them all together in a clump so that none of the parts would be recognizable or should I piece it back together as we normally did to ensure that none of the parts were missing There was no protocol on such things so in the end I opted to piece the parts back together Although my own eyes were still blinded to the true nature of abortion because she seemed so unfazed part of me wanted her to see I wanted her to grasp what she had done nine times Nothing could have prepared me for her reaction Upon seeing what was left of her child Angiebecame completely unhinged the scene described is harrowing and bizarre and resulted in that clinic never again allowing mothers to see aborted fetuses or even ultrasound pictures of their unborn children lest they as Angie did see the horror of abortion exposed In her first book unPLANNED Ignatius Press 2010 http www unplannedthebook com Abby Johnson writes of her journey from Planned Parenthood clinic manager and Employee of the Year to pro life activist Johnson now runs a non profit organization called And Then There Were None http abortionworker com which exists to help abortion clinic

78 SPRING 2016 workers leave the industry and end abortion from the inside out In this new slim volume co written with Kristin Detrow Johnson presents 17 firstperson accounts anonymous to protect the identities of the former abortion clinic employees all of whom came forward to lend their testimonies to the truth The title as Johnson explains in the introduction is in response to the acclaimed 1996 HBO pro abortion film If These Walls Could Talk featuringstars Sissy Spacek Demi Moore and Cher which was nothing less than propaganda at its finest focusing on three generations of hard cases for women but completely glossing over the fact that for every woman daunted by an unwanted pregnancy there is another life at stake The Walls Are Talking does not gloss over anything it is not an enjoyable read Johnson warns but a necessary one Common themes weave through the different accounts Workers who in a moment of troubled conscience or out of compassion for a particularly hesitant client suggest anything other than abortion are reprimanded and denigrated several women speak of sharing a sick gallows humor that could only be understood by a clinic insider In one clinic for example the freezer where the POCs were held until the bio hazard truck arrived was called The Nursery the alarm code was 2229 which spelled out baby One clinic employee who became pregnant with a wanted child and was suffering from awful morning sickness at the office says her co workers jokingly offered her abortion Want me to put you on the schedule And We could give you a freebie Just one of the perks of working here For all of these women the path to the truth about abortion was long and painful Some started out believing they were doing an empowering thing for women others got involved because they desperately needed a job Their doubts in the face of the realities at their clinics were often subsumed in their overall denial and a growing numbness to the brutality of what they were witnessing on a daily basis One woman describes moments of painful clarity which she nevertheless pushed down as she persisted each decision further desensitized me to the truth of what I was doing and added to the callus that was forming around my heart Many expressed shame that their conversion took so long the pages here are ripe with guilt and remorse But what really overflows from these stories as well is hope Because each of these women has come over to the side of life Most talk about being forgiven by God some accounts are more overtly Christian than others but the language of sin redemption forgiveness and the grace for new beginnings is powerfully present Johnson herself was saved she testifies by the peaceful and prayerful witness of the 40 Days for Life protestors who were a regular presence outside her Texas abortion clinic They were waiting to help her BOOKNOTES

SPRING 2016 79 when she made her decision and she now does the same for others waiting she writes with arms wide openThose of us that have worked in the abortion industry all live with a constant burden We cant let the burden slip off our shoulders it is what keeps us on fire It reminds us of why we fight so hard We have seen death and evil in a way that most havent and we participated But we are forgiven He who has been forgiven much loves much And we love a lot I am eagerly awaiting the day when we can call all abortionists and clinic workers former and repentant abortion providers Maria McFadden Maffucci is editor of the Human Life Review and president of the Human Life Foundation THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW Sir Is that old lady bothering you

80 SPRING 2016 APPENDIX A Antonin Scalia served on the United States Supreme Court from 1986 until his death on February 13 2016 We reprint here Justice Scalias dissent in Obergefell v Hodges the 2015 ruling that legalized same sex marriage Obergefell v Hodges Antonin Scalia Justice Scalia with whom Justice Thomas joins dissenting I join The Chief Justices opinion in full I write separately to call attention to this Courts threat to American democracy The substance of todays decree is not of immense personal importance to me The law can recognize as marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes and can accord themfavorable civil consequences from tax treatment to rights of inheritance Those civil consequences and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences can perhaps have adverse social effects but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage It is of overwhelming importance however who it is that rules me Todays decree says that my Ruler and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast to coast is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact and the furthest extension one can even imagine of the Courts claimed power to create liberties that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine always accompanied as it is today by extravagant praise of liberty robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776 the freedom to govern themselves I Until the courts put a stop to it public debate over same sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best Individuals on both sides of the issue passionately but respectfully attempted to persuade their fellow citizens to accept their views Americans considered the arguments and put the question to a vote The electorates of 11 States either directly or through their representatives chose to expand the traditional definition of marriage Many more decided not to 1 Win or lose advocates for both sides continued pressing their cases secure in the knowledge that an electoral loss can be negated by a later electoral win That is exactly how our system of government is supposed to work 2 The Constitution places some constraints on self rule constraints adopted by the People themselves when they ratified the Constitution and its AmendmentsForbidden are laws impairing the Obligation of Contracts 3 denying Full Faith and Credit to the public Acts of other States 4 prohibiting the free exercise of religion 5 abridging the freedom of speech 6 infringing the right to keep and bear

SPRING 2016 81 arms 7 authorizing unreasonable searches and seizures 8 and so forth Aside from these limitations those powers reserved to the States respectively or to the people 9 can be exercised as the States or the People desire These cases ask us to decide whether the Fourteenth Amendment contains a limitation that requires the States to license and recognize marriages between two people of the same sex Does it remove that issue from the political process Of course not It would be surprising to find a prescription regarding marriage in the Federal Constitution since as the author of todays opinion reminded us only two years ago in an opinion joined by the same Justices who join him today R egulation of domestic relations is an area that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States 10 T he Federal Government through our history has deferred to state law policy decisions with respect to domestic relations 11 But we need not speculate When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868 every State limited marriage to one man and one woman and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so That resolves thesecases When it comes to determining the meaning of a vague constitutional provision such as due process of law or equal protection of the laws it is unquestionable that the People who ratified that provision did not understand it to prohibit a practice that remained both universal and uncontroversial in the years after ratification 12 We have no basis for striking down a practice that is not expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendments text and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open widespread and unchallenged use dating back to the Amendments ratification Since there is no doubt whatever that the People never decided to prohibit the limitation of marriage to opposite sex couples the public debate over same sex marriage must be allowed to continue But the Court ends this debate in an opinion lacking even a thin veneer of law Buried beneath the mummeries and straining to be memorable passages of the opinion is a candid and startling assertion No matter what it was the People ratified the Fourteenth Amendment protects those rights that the Judiciary in its reasoned judgment thinks the Fourteenth Amendment ought to protect 13 That is so because t he generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions 14 One would think that sentence would continue and therefore they provided for a means by which the People could amend the Constitution or perhaps and therefore they left the creation of additional liberties such as the freedom to marry someone of the same sex to the People through the never ending process of legislation But no What logically follows in themajoritys judge empowering estimation is and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning 15 The we needless to say is the nine of us History and tradition guide and discipline our inquiry but do not set its outer boundaries 16 Thus rather than focusing on the Peoples understanding of liberty at the time of ratification or even today the majority THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

82 SPRING 2016 focuses on four principles and traditions that in the majoritys view prohibit States from defining marriage as an institution consisting of one man and one woman 17 This is anaked judicial claim to legislative indeed super legislative power a claim fundamentally at odds with our systemof government Except as limited by a constitutional prohibition agreed to by the People the States are free to adopt whatever laws they like even those that offend the esteemed Justices reasoned judgment A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy Judges are selected precisely for their skill as lawyers whether they reflect the policy views of a particular constituency is not or should not be relevant Not surprisingly then the Federal Judiciary is hardly a cross section of America Take for example this Court which consists of only nine men and women all of them successful lawyers18 who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School Four of the nine are natives of New York City Eight of them grew up in east and west coast States Only one hails from the vast expanse in between Not a single Southwesterner or even to tell the truth a genuine Westerner California does not count Not a single evangelical Christian a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans19 or even a Protestant of any denomination The strikingly unrepresentative character of the body voting on todays social upheaval would be irrelevant if they were functioning as judges answering the legal question whether the American people had ever ratified a constitutional provision that was understood to proscribe the traditional definition ofmarriage But of course the Justices in todays majority are not voting on that basis they say they are not And toallow the policy question of same sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select patrician highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation no social transformation without representation II But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in todays judicial Putsch The five Justices who compose todays majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendments ratification and Massachusetts permitting of same sex marriages in 2003.20 They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a fundamental right overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification and almost everyone else in the time since They see what lesser legal minds minds like Thomas Cooley John Marshall Harlan Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr Learned Hand Louis Brandeis William Howard Taft Benjamin Cardozo Hugo Black Felix Frankfurter Robert Jackson and Henry Friendly could not They are certain that the People ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to bestow on them the power to remove questions from the democratic process when that is called for by their reasoned judgment These Justices know that limiting marriage to one man and one woman is contrary to reason they know that an institution as old as government itself and accepted by every nation in history until 15 years ago 21 APPENDIX A

SPRING 2016 83 cannot possibly be supported by anything other than ignorance or bigotry And they are willing to say that any citizen who does not agree with that who adheres to what was until 15 years ago the unanimous judgment of all generations and all societies stands against the Constitution The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic It is one thing for separate concurring or dissenting opinions to contain extravagances even silly extravagances of thought and expression it is something else for the official opinion ofthe Court to do so 22 Of course the opinions showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent The nature of marriage is that through its enduring bond two persons together can find other freedoms such as expression intimacy and spirituality 23 Really Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality whatever that means were freedoms And if intimacy is one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage Ask the nearest hippie Expression sure enough is a freedom but anyone in a long lastingmarriage will attest that that happy state constricts rather than expands what one can prudently say Rights we are told can rise from a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives define a liberty thatremains urgent in our own era 24 Huh How can a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives whatever that means define whatever that means an urgent liberty never mind give birth to a right And we are told that i n any particular case either the Equal Protection or Due Process Clause may be thought to capture the essence of a right in a more accurate and comprehensive way than the other even as the two Clauses may converge in the identification and definition of the right 25 What say What possible essence does substantive due process capture in an accurate and comprehensive way It stands for nothing whatever except those freedoms and entitlements that this Court really likes And the Equal Protection Clause as employed today identifies nothing except a difference in treatment that this Court really dislikes Hardly a distillation of essence If the opinion is correct that the two clauses converge in the identification and definition of a right that is only because the majoritys likes and dislikes are predictably compatible I could go on The world does not expect logic and precision in poetry or inspirational pop philosophy it demands them in the lawThe stuff contained in todays opinion has to diminish this Courts reputation for clear thinking and sober analysis Hubris is sometimes defined as oerweening pride and pride we know goeth before a fall The Judiciary is the least dangerous of the federal branches because it has neither Force nor Will but merely judgment and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm and the States even for the efficacy of its judgments 26 With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them witheach decision that is unabashedly based not on law but on the reasoned judgment of a bare majority of this Court we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

84 SPRING 2016 NOTES 1 Brief for Respondents in No 14 571 p 14 2 Accord Schuette v BAMN 572 U S 2014 plurality opinion slip op at 15 17 3 U S Const Art I 10 4 Art IV 1 5 Amdt 1 6 Ibid 7 Amdt 2 8 Amdt 4 9 Amdt 10 10 United States v Windsor 570 U S 2013 slip op at 16 internal quotation marks and citation omitted 11 Id at slip op at 17 12 See Town of Greece v Galloway 572 U S 2014 slip op at 7 8 13 Ante at 10 14 Ante at 11 15 Ibid 16 Ante at 10 11 17 Ante at 12 18 18 The predominant attitude of tall building lawyers with respect to the questions presented in these cases is suggested by the fact that the American Bar Association deemed it in accord with the wishes of its members to file a brief in support of the petitioners See Brief for American Bar Association as Amicus Curiae in Nos 14 571 and 14 574 pp 1 5 19 See Pew Research Center Americas Changing Religious Landscape 4 May 12 2015 20 Goodridge v Department of Public Health 440 Mass 309 798 N E 2d 941 2003 21 Windsor 570 U S at Alito J dissenting slip op at 7 22 If even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons within a lawful realm to define and express their identity I would hide my head in a bag The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie 23 Ante at 13 24 Ante at 19 25 Ibid 26 The Federalist No 78 pp 522 523 J Cooke ed 1961 A Hamilton APPENDIX A

SPRING 2016 85 APPENDIX B Robert P George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School The following appreciationappeared February 16 2016 in The Public Discourse the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of PrincetonNJ www thepublicdiscourse com It is reprinted with permission Antonin Scalia An American Originalist Robert P George With the death of Antonin Gregory Scalia the nation has lost one of its greatest jurists and a man who embodied the principle of fidelity to the Constitution Over the course of our nations history many jurists have been described as towering figures in the law Antonin Scalia had the distinction of being one of the handful for whom the description is actually justified Justice Scalia preached the principle that the Constitution should be interpreted in a way that honors the text the words on the page understood as it was by those whose ratification made it part of the fundamental law of the land One might have thought this was simple common sense But the principle had been ignored or abandoned by jurists and law professors who sought to expand the authority of judges to invalidate as unconstitutional legislation or executive actions that they happen to regard as unfair unwise or for some other reason undesirable In our own time this impulse has been mainly evident among political progressives It is what has given us court ordered legal abortion in Roe v Wade and judicially mandated recognition of same sex partnerships as legal marriages in Obergefell v Hodges Earlier in our national history it drove the jurisprudence of laissez faire economic conservatives generating such decisions as Lochner v New York a 1905 ruling that struck down a worker protection statute limiting the number of hours employees could be required or permitted to work in industrial bakeries For Scalia judges who yield to the impulse to read into the Constitution rights or other principles nowhere to be found in the text of the document or the logical implications or original understanding of its provisions betray the rule of law and make a mockery of their oath of fidelity to the Constitution To Lochnerize as it has come to be known whether in the cause of laissez faire economics as in Lochner itself or liberal social ethics as in Roe and Obergefell is to deprive the American people of the right to govern themselves For judges on the pretext of enforcing constitutional guarantees to substitute their own moral and political judgments for the contrary judgments of the elected representatives of the people is an assault upon the very Constitution in whose name they purport to be acting Since various theories of constitutional interpretation living constitutionalism the moral reading of the Constitution have been advanced by jurists and legal scholars in efforts to justify the judicial usurpation of democratic legislative authority it became necessary for Scalia and other defenders of theidea that the Constitution means what it says i e what the people who framed and ratified its

86 SPRING 2016 provisions meant by the words they used to give a name to their theory of constitutional interpretation The name they chose was originalism marking the conviction that the original public understanding of constitutional provisions and principles should guide and govern judges in determining whether a law or policy ought to be upheld as constitutionally valid or declared unconstitutional Not only was Nino Scalia an originalist the leading originalist of his time he was also a defender of the equal authority and responsibility of the three branches of government in matters of constitutional interpretation a view that when fleshed out is known as departmentalism In other words he sided with Abraham Lincoln and against Lincolns nemesis Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney on the question of whether the legislative and executive branches must always conform their conduct to the Supreme Courts interpretation of the Constitution Taney said yes Lincoln said no The question arose whether Lincoln as president would consider himself bound by Taneys pro slavery ruling in Dred Scott v Sandford striking down congressional restrictions on slavery in U S territories and holding that blacks even free blacks could never be citizens In the Great Emancipators First Inaugural Address he answered that for the American people to treat the judiciary as supreme in constitutional interpretation would be for them to have ceased to be their own rulers having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal For much of the 20th century however judicial supremacy Taneys old idea that what the judges say goes no matter what that the Supreme Court when it hands down a ruling is supreme not only over the inferior federal courts but over the coordinate branches of government was a kind of orthodoxy among law professors lawyers and judges To question it to embrace Lincolns position came to seem scandalous But Antonin Scalia not only questioned but rejected it And he rejected it for the best possible reasons Lincolns reasons because it is incompatible with the republican principles of the Constitution itself For Scalia as for Lincoln the rule of law was not the rule of judgesand a decision of the Supreme Court was the law of the case binding on the parties but not necessarily the law of the land binding on the other branches of government In a public conversation with me at the Union League in Philadelphia last year Scalia said that although it is generally advisable for the president and Congress to accept a constitutional ruling of the Court even if they regard it as erroneous it is not always the proper course and it is certainly not the proper course where a Court ruling constitutes a gross usurpation of legislative authority a judicial power grab When asked for examples he cited Dred Scott v Sandford Lochner v New York and Roe v Wade cases in which a majority of Supreme Court justices blatantly legislating from the bench invented rights found nowhere in the Constitution in an effort to impose on the nation the justices preferred policy position on morally charged issues of great public moment As a jurist Antonin Scalia was known for his tough questioning of lawyers appearing before the Court and for his brilliant colorful often combative APPENDIX B

SPRING 2016 87 opinions many of which took the form of dissents In addition to his determined advocacy of originalism he will be remembered for his devotion to the constitutional principle of the separation of powers and his efforts to restore federalism despite his belief that the progressiveera constitutional amendment providing for the direct election of Senators made the task hopeless Federalism is dead he told me and our audience at the Union League The Seventeenth Amendment killed it Its dead dead dead What was Nino Scalia like as a person He was a man of limited patience and great compassion To say that he did not suffer fools gladly would be an understatement He had no tolerance for slouchers slackers rentseekers timeservers or free riders and he wouldnt bend the law for anybody even if he personally believed the law too harsh But as his friends of all political persuasions unanimously attest he was capable of great kindness and generosity He was a limited government man both as a matter of political philosophy and constitutional law but he deeply believed in personal responsibility including the duty of charity to those who are suffering or in need A devout Catholic Scalia neither hid nor flaunted his faith When asked about his beliefs he spoke of his Christian commitments with no hint of embarrassment He was not ashamed of the Gospel In a widely publicized speech he reminded his fellow Christians of the teachings of St Paul urging them to have the courage to have your wisdom be regarded as stupidity Be fools for Christ In an interview with an unbelieving and truth be told rather incredulous reporter for New York Magazine he avowed his belief in the existence of the Devil noting that the father of lies has become wilier in the modern period encouraging people not only tosin but to disbelieve in both him and God Among those including alas some in academia still in the grip of the anti Catholic bigotry that Arthur Schlesinger Sr described as the most deeply held prejudice of the American people Scalias candor in speaking about his faith has given oxygen to a crank theory that Scalias originalism was in reality a kind of cover for the resolution of constitutional cases in ways that best comport with Catholic doctrine Beyond having a hearty laugh at such malicious goofiness the less said about it and the people who peddle it the better Scalia himself dealt with it by noting that he was forbidden by a teaching of his faith from manipulating the Constitution for any reason including making the law conform to the teachings of his faith Thou shalt not lie One of Antonin Scalias most remarkable qualities was his gift for friendship a gift that enabled him to form deep and lasting bonds of affection despite religious moral or political differences His closest friend on the Supreme Court was the stalwart liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg with whom he had also served on the U S Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit He also befriended his younger hipper liberal colleague Elena Kagan sometimes dragging her off with him on hunting trips Justice Kagans staunch progressivism and firm rejection of originalism did not diminish his affection or respect for her in the slightest THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW

88 SPRING 2016 Sherif Girgis a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Princeton and a law student at Yale and my co author along with Ryan T Anderson of What Is Marriage Man and Woman A Defense has insightfully summed up Scalias special and quite remarkable appeal to law students and other young men and women who are interested in constitutional law In a field marked by intellectual jockeying preening and mutual comparison Justice Scalia boldly professed things that many of his secular liberal academic colleagues thought simpleminded and nave originalism patriotism faith in God The brilliance and sheer joie de vivre that oozed from his writing and filled the room when he spoke made his ideals attractive to the young often via the shadow law curriculum of his dissents and challenged adversaries to engage him in intellectual combat Nino Scalia was a faithful and loving husband to Maureen his brilliant Radcliffeeducated wife of fifty five years and a wonderful father to their nine children Speaking personally I am indebted to him for many kindnesses When I was installed as McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton he was even happier about the honor that had come my way than I was When I founded the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions he immediately asked what he could do to help in advancing its mission He lectured at my invitation on numerous occasions at Princeton and elsewhere and was always willing to welcome groups of my students as his guests to attend oral arguments at the Court Nino was a dear friend andI shall miss him With the death of Antonin Gregory Scalia the nation has lost one of its greatest jurists and a man who embodied the principle of fidelity to the Constitution Requiescat in pace APPENDIX B

SPRING 2016 89 APPENDIX C Hadley Arkes is the Ney Professor of Jurisprudence at Amherst College and the Founder and Director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights the American Founding in Washington DC This reminiscence was published on February 15 2016 on the website of First Things www firstthings com and is reprinted here with the journals permission Memories of Nino Hadley Arkes It began for me with a voiceover the phone in May 1977 Hadley this is Nino Scalia Id never met him but in the most generous way he was coming to do a commentary on the paper I was offering at the end of my year as a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center of the Smithsonian He had been in the prestigious Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice in the Ford Administration But now as he said The people had thrown us out had turned Gerald Ford out of office in the election Nino had found refuge at the American Enterprise Institute before returning to his real vocation as a teacher this time at the law school of the University of Chicago Twenty one years later he would write me to say that the youngest of the nine Scalia children daughter Margaret or Meg was interested in Amherst College And I figure he said that if the place has tolerated you for 30 years now it cant be all that bad Yes it could be but Meg flourished there And I myself became more absorbed in this loving rolling feast of a family as the years went on At times Id have to remind Nino when his kids were born Catherine is 1966 Mary 1968 Paul in 1970 I had a strange memory for these things a picker up of trifles But then the news coming in on Saturday the shock of his death came with a force that could tilt the earth on its axis The first response was disbelief and denial that someone so life giving and so vital to the country right now should be ripped away from us Friends will be asked in the days ahead to give accounts or offer statements on his legacy and it will beso hard to sift through the memories and notes through the rollicking nights at supper with jokes and song through the recall of the oral arguments made sharper and funnier by his interventions and then to the force ofhis dissents in both dimensions written and oral The writing was pointed piercing going to the logical core but gaining in rhetorical force as it moved to its end But then also in delivery he was often angry and incredulous atthe outcome but the dissent was read with an anger subdued read with a calm voice perhaps the voice of a father seeking with some disappointment and regret to explain to the family gathered around that something had gone wrong I read that dissent he told me one day because there were reporters there and wouldnt you think they would be interested in the First Amendment His colleagues had just sustained a law in Colorado aimed so evidently at one class of demonstrators pro lifers outside abortion clinics and requiring them to stay more than eight feet away from people entering the clinic That was Hill v Colorado in June 2000 Nino let Clarence Thomas take over reading the dissent in Stenberg v

90 SPRING 2016 Carhart as their colleagues were willing to strike down a law in Nebraska that barred the grisly procedure known as partialbirth abortion Nino hoped that the sympathies of the media might be recruited to support the freedom of speech even of people they found uncongenial But the sober lesson breaking through was that the pro lifers alone would be left out of the protections of speech that Nino had been seeking to expand When it came though to the force of dissents read aloud nothing compares with the dissent he delivered in 2013 in the Windsor case when the Court teed up the decision it would render two years later in proclaiming same sex marriage as a constitutional right To defend traditional marriage he wrote is not to condemn demean or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn demean or humiliate other constitutions In the majoritys judgment any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement To question the holding of the Court is to disparageinjure degrade demean and humiliate our fellow human beings our fellow citizens who are homosexual It is one thing for a society to elect change it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis enemies of the human race Maureen Scalia had urged her husband to read that dissent that morning and I could see as he read its effect on her as I could feel its effects on the rest of us If Nino hadnt read that dissent that morning we couldnt have walked upright out of the courtroom that day He caught there what we would see played out with a venomous unbending force a year later as the votaries of same sex marriage would seek to bring down the hammer of the law on such luminaries as bakers and florists These were ordinary people who would not confess the rightness of same sex marriage and their own sinful wrongness in opposing it But the logic of the matter Nino saw at work as early as Romer v Evans 1996 and yet even more sharply in Lawrence v Texas 2003 when the Court struck down the notablyunenforced law on sodomy in Texas Justice Kennedy insisted that his decision that day entailed no further formal recognition of the homosexual relation i e marriage To which Scalia famously said Do not believe it For the premises were firmly in place Justice Kennedy had said that people in homosexual relations seek autonomy for themselves just as people in heterosexual relations do The two stood on the same moral plane Kennedy had helped to plant the point that the laws may not cast an adverse judgment on the homosexual life The laws that permit marriage only to couples of the opposite sex and yet withhold that recognition from couples of the same sex could be seen then as holding back from conferring this recognition on homosexual couples only because of an adverse moral judgment a judgment now stamped as deeply wrong As Scalia summed it up This case does not involve the issue of homosexual marriage only if one entertains the belief that principle and logic have nothing to do with the decisions of this Court APPENDIX C

SPRING 2016 91 Nino remarked once that he had never had a course on logic but he became the sharpest most unrelenting logician on the Court He managed with those arts to expose the vacuities that his colleagues were willing to treat as the reasoning commanding their judgments In the Lawrence case Justice OConnor sought to finesse the issue of same sex marriage by insisting that preserving the traditional institution of marriage is a legitimateinterest of the State There were reasons to sustain marriage without casting any moral disapproval on homosexuals Justice Scalia pointed out the trick of the eye engaged here Preserving the traditional institution of marriage is just a kinder way of describing the States moral disapproval of same sex couples Texass interest could be recast in similarly euphemistic terms preserving the traditional sexual mores of our society In the jurisprudence Justice OConnor has seemingly created judges can validate laws by characterizing them as preserving the traditions of society good or invalidate them by characterizing them as expressing moral disapproval bad What he curiously screened out of his recognition was that this demanding application of logic was at the core of the laws of reason and nature In our persistent jousting he was persistently dismissive and derisive toward natural law while Id point out that he kept offering handsome examples of how a jurisprudence of natural law could be done He associated natural law with some high flown theory rather than finding it in a discipline of reasoned judgment anchored in those laws of reason In the notable case on assisted suicide in Oregon Gonzales v Oregon 2006 Nino invoked the moral logic of the Hippocratic oath that there was a rightful purpose in the medical art and the use of drugs that the purpose was to secure the health of the patient not to speed him to his death To put it another way death could not stand as a rival to the good of life Justice Kennedy remarked that this venerable old view was one legitimate view of the matter To which Scalia replied with an outrage barely muted One of several legitimate views No No less than three times in the opinion Nino insisted that the interpretation of the Attorney General in applying the laws on controlled substance the interpretation guided by the Hippocratic Oath was the most natural interpretation Natural As in natural reflexes But Scalia surely knew that Janet Reno the Attorney General in the Clinton Administration had taken quite the opposite view that nothing in the reigning statutes barred the State of Oregon from permitting drugs to be used by doctors for the purpose of procuring death for their patients When Scalia said then that Attorney General Ashcrofts interpretation was the most natural interpretation he must have meant the most reasonable the decision most in accord with the canons of reason He was doing natural law as he had always done it naturally as a matter of common sense When my wife Judy had died suddenly a little over a year ago Nino and Maureen joined me and my family in a Memorial Mass I was in the first row of this small THE HUMANLIFE REVIEW

92 SPRING 2016 chapel and there was no kneeler there As I knelt I felt the pain of the floor But just behind me Nino noticed And he slipped a cushion under my knees In a note yesterday my friend David Forte recalled that moment which he himself had noticed Nino he said had been my protector at that moment as he had been in his own way the protector of us all And so many had barely noticed No one can take his place in our hearts and to ask Who would take his place on the Court is to ask who is there by character and wit who is worthy enough to take up his mission APPENDIX C Thousands filed through the Great Hall of the Supreme Court on February 19 2016 to pay their respects to Antonin Scalia whose body lay in repose there The portrait of the Justice was done in 2007 by Nelson Shanks an American artist and portrait painter who died in 2015 Reuters

SPRING 2016 93 APPENDIX D Bobby Schindler is president of the Terri Schiavo Life Hope Network author of A Life That Matters The Legacy of Terri Schiavo and an internationally recognized pro life advocate The following article appeared on National Review Online on March 31 2016 and is reprinted with the magazines permission www nationalreview com What Terri Schiavo Still Can Teach Us Bobby Schindler Terri Schiavo Her name my sisters name is seared into the national memory as a face of the right to life movement but its now been more than a decade since her death Many are now too young to remember her witness or they have forgotten At the age of 26 Terri experienced a still unexplained collapse while at home alone with Michael Schiavo who subsequently became her guardian After ashort period of time Michael lost interest in caring for his brain injured but otherwise young and healthy wife Terri was cognitively disabled but she was not dying and she did not suffer from any life threatening disease She was neither on machines nor brain dead To the contrary she was alert and interacted with friends and family before Michael placed her in a nursing home and eventually petitioned the courts for permission to starve and dehydrate her to death It was this decision by Michael that made my sisters story a national story rather than simply a family story It was this decision to deprive my sister of food and water that transformed our familys struggle Rather than trying to work with Michael to care for and rehabilitate Terri as aggressively aspossible we now were battling against Michael to fight for my sisters life Michael finally testified after many years of legal maneuverings against my family that Terri had told him before her accident that she would not have wanted to live in a brain injured condition It was this hearsay evidence that led the media and others to deny Terris right to life and instead speak of end of life issues and advocate for her right to die On the order of Judge George W Greer and despite the efforts of Saint John Paul the Great a president Congress and a governor Terri was deprived of water and food After 13 days my sister died of extreme dehydration on March 31 2005 We couldnt save my sister though millions of advocates did succeed in speaking for the fundamental dignity of every human life regardless of circumstance or condition It was the trauma of our experience fightingfor my sister that led my family to create the Terri Schiavo Life Hope Network a decade ago both in memory ofmy sister and in service to medically vulnerable persons today Unbeknownst to my family at the start of our struggle the method of Terris death the fatal denial of food and water was not altogether uncommon It has only become more common in the decade since her passing as Wesley J Smith so routinely documents Indeed new rights to death are paradoxically being enshrined through the international medical system reshaping a vocation meant to care for and heal the

94 SPRING 2016 sick into one that eliminates suffering by eliminating the sufferer Increasingly medical professionals do this end life even without the patients consent A stranger in other words may very well decide how and when you die It was once true for instance that food and water were considered basic and ordinary care Yet now the presence of a tube as distinct from a spoon to deliver food and water means that basic nourishment is considered extraordinary and a form of medical treatment Yet tubes are often used for the same reason that automation is revolutionizing the work force Theyre cheaper and more efficient than round the clock human care It is now legal in every U S state to deny food and water leading to fatal dehydration This is simply one step on the path to controlled and regulated access to all forms of food and water including whatever a bureaucrat decides can be placed on your mothers nursing home supper tray Hospital ethics committees are often leading the effort to reshape medicine giving themselves unilateral power to decide whether a patient deserves to receive treatment or whether life affirmingtreatment will continue when there is a dispute within a family The tragic case of Chris Dunn who was filmed last year literally begging for his life in a Texas hospital illustrates all too well what happens when an ethics committee decides to appoint itself as a legal guardian in order to deny treatment even when such a course is opposed as it was in Dunns case by both the patient and his guardian mother Not only is death often imposedit is now also encouraged as if death itself were a form of medicine As of last year more than half the states in the country were considering a form of physician assisted suicide legislation It appears likely that suicide will within the next five years be enshrined as a personal health right in most of the country In this we would only be following some of our European neighbors In the Netherlands and Belgium as Wesley Smith recently documented Alzheimers patients infants with disabilities the aged and the chronically ill are routinely encouraged to die or have death imposed upon them Brittany Maynard who committed suicide in November 2014 after already having outlived her doctors terminal brain cancer prognosis was able to choose her death by suicide but how many now will die not because they embrace that sort of death but because they feel pressured by smiling physicians or hovering children and heirs to accept it To die without hope seems the furthest thing from death with dignity Other less fortunate patients will face what Smith explains is considered termination without request or consent a wonderfully anodyne way to describe murder through terminal sedation or the denial of food and water My experience in fighting for my sister and the experience of assistingmore than 1,000 patients and families through the Terri Schiavo Life Hope Network over the past decade have strengthened my resolve and my belief that we can do better as a culture and for those requiring authentic medical treatment than what our present attitudes and laws suggest Its why the Terri Schiavo Life HopeNetwork affirms essential qualities of human dignity including the right to food and water the presumption of the will to APPENDIX D

SPRING 2016 95 live due process rights for those facing denial of care protection from euthanasia as a form of medicine and access to rehabilitative care Each of these were rights mysister was denied and they are rights of every patient that are often at risk or contested outright As we mark the anniversary of my sisters death Im hopeful that we can remember some of these genuine means of upholding human dignity If we do we can be assured that when we face crises in our own lives and the lives of those whom we love we will meet them with a dignity and grace that elevates us in our weakest moments regardless of the outcome That was the promise of medicine once and its what my sister continues to inspire me to fight for daily THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW You can defend life and love well into the future Make the Human Life Foundation part of your legacy Join the Defender of Life Society today For more information call 212 685 5210 today Or e mail defenderoflife humanlifereview com

96 SPRING 2016

Inside backFINAL COVER SPRING 2016

770 people have visited this page. 1 have visited this page today.

Use your keyboard's arrow keys or the arrow buttons on either side of the pages to browse this issue in depth. Click on any page to zoom in, and click again or press "ESC" on your keyboard to zoom out. Not what you're looking for? Return home or search for an article using the box below: