Thread by me.
TORONTO, Ontario, October 27, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – After proving the humanity of the unborn in an August video, teen pro-life orator Lia Mills has released a new video aiming to prove that the unborn are also “persons” by virtue of being human, as are other classes of humans who have been denied the status of ‘person’ in the past.
The video, released Tuesday, comes out as Lia prepares to address the International Pro-Life Conference in Ottawa, taking place this Thursday through Saturday. She will be joined by a star-studded cast of major leaders from the international pro-life movement, including North American pro-life pioneer Dr. Jack Willke.
"The unborn are definitely human. It's obvious and it’s supported by science,” says Lia in her new video. She points out, however, that people now generally accept the unborn’s humanity and argue instead that they can be killed because they are not yet 'persons'.
"How can we tell when exactly the unborn gain their personhood?" she asks.
To help, she goes to a dictionary, which defined person as “a human being.” “Since the unborn are humans, that means based on this definition the unborn are persons as well," she says. But she then concedes that the issue is more complicated, because the definition of person changes depending on the academic discipline. In law, she points out, “a person is whoever the governing authorities decide to give rights to. ... Under the law, you're only a person if the lawmakers say you are.”
Lia then discusses four examples in history when lawmakers denied personhood to a certain class of people – Jews in the Holocaust, black slaves in the US, North American natives, and women.
"The Jewish people were stripped of their personhood and thereby stripped of their rights and their value, and that's why all of the atrocities committed against them were considered acceptable," she explains.
“People are quick to judge the Germans at the Holocaust, but we have our own Holocaust that's taking the lives of millions of unborn babies every year,” says Lia. “We do it using the same tactics that the Germans did. We deny personhood to the unborn and thereby deny them their rights and justify our own actions.”
"Who decided that the Jews weren't persons, that the natives and slaves weren't persons, and that women weren't persons?” she asks. “Lawmakers."
“Who decides today that the unborn aren't persons? Lawmakers.”
“Personhood has become a fabricated term used by lawmakers to decide who has rights and who doesn't,” she continues. “Personhood is denied to [the unborn] because they're dependent, because they look different, and because they can't do what older babies, children, and adults can do.”
“Should those in power be allowed to decide which humans are 'persons' and which are not, who gets rights and who doesn't?” she asks in conclusion. “Once you allow one group of humans to lose their personhood, every other group's personhood becomes vulnerable and no one is safe.
“When will someone else decide that you're not a person?”
The International Pro-Life Conference will be the first of its kind to take place in Ottawa in 20 years. Lia will be speaking at the conference Friday with Rebecca Richmond of the National Campus Life Network on youth in the pro-life movement.
Conference speakers include, among others, revered pro-life leader and pioneer Dr. Jack Willke (President, International Right to Life Federation), John Smeaton (President of The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, UK), Bill Saunders (Senior Counsel, Americans United for Life), Brad Mattes (winner of a 2010 Emmy Award for his pro-life TV show, “Facing Life Head-on”), and John-Henry Westen (Editor-in-Chief of LifeSiteNews.com).
A ticketed banquet on Friday night will feature Rev. Johnny Hunter of the Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN), and Canadian author and artist Michael O’Brien will speak at a ticketed lunch on Saturday.
The conference is sponsored by Campaign Life Coalition, LifeCanada, LifeSiteNews, and the International Right to Life Federation. It will run from Thursday, October 28 to Saturday, October 30 and will be held at the Hampton Inn Hotel & Conference Centre, 100 Coventry Rd, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Thread by topher.
San Diego, October 27, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As Americans approach the eve of election week, Cardinal-designate Raymond Burke has said in a new interview that they must recognize their solemn obligation to defend their unborn brothers and sisters when approaching the voting booth.
“You can never vote for someone who favors absolutely the right to choice of a woman to destroy a human life in her womb or the right to a procured abortion,” the archbishop told Thomas McKenna, President of Catholic Action for Faith and Family, in an interview released this week.
McKenna interviewed Cardinal-designate Burke in Rome on Oct. 20 literally hours after it was announced he would be elevated to cardinal.
(Click here to send a note of congratulations to the archbishop)
The archbishop told McKenna that, “As a bishop it’s my obligation in fact, to urge the faithful to carry out their civic duty in accord with their Catholic faith.” Catholics, he said, have “a very serious moral obligation in voting to vote for those candidates who would uphold the truth of the moral law, which of course also serves the greatest good of everyone in society.”
In recent years Cardinal-designate Burke, who is prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Church’s “supreme court,” has taught repeatedly that Catholic politicians who support abortion rights may not receive Holy Communion and that Catholics who know of the politicians’ voting record on these issues cannot vote for them and retain “a clear conscience.”
In the recent interview, the archbishop explained that such politicians create “scandal,” which he defined as “doing something or omitting to do something that leads other people into confusion or error about the moral good.”
“Here's the perfect example of Catholics who betray their Catholic faith in political life, as legislators, as judges, or whatever it may be, leading other people to believe that abortion must not be the great evil that it is, or that abortion is in fact a good thing in certain circumstances.”
To those who would vote for pro-abortion politicians because they agree with those politicians on other issues, the archbishop said he would say, "Do you follow the golden rule that was taught to us by the Lord himself in the Gospels?"
“In other words,” he explained, “do you do unto others as you would want them to do unto you. Do you really consider it fair to advance some interest you have, which may be a good interest - whether it’s the environment, or whatever it might be - at the cost of denying to other members of society, especially those who depend upon us completely for life itself, to deny them the right to life?
“I think that if most people would reflect in this way, simply in terms of the golden rule, they would realize that no, it can never be right.”
The archbishop also pointed out that while some criticize the Church for upholding traditional marriage as a form of "discrimination" against homosexuals, such critics fail to recognize that, “The Catholic Church, in teaching that sexual acts between persons of the same sex are intrinsically evil - are against nature itself - is simply announcing the truth, helping people to discriminate right from wrong in terms of their own activities.”
While racial and other types of discrimination may be unjust, he said, "There is a discrimination which is perfectly just and good, and namely that's the discrimination between what is right and what is wrong."
In a press release announcing the interview, McKenna commented, “Millions of Catholics have no idea it’s a sin to vote for candidates who favor these grave evils, which attack the very foundations of society." In his interview, said McKenna, "[Cardinal-designate Burke] makes it very clear what the responsibility of every American Catholic will be next Tuesday."
The videotaped interview is available in two five-minute videos on YouTube, and a 25-minute Q&A video interview that is available for broadcast at CatholicAction.org.