Posted on 02/05/2003 5:40:47 AM PST by narses
North Dakota Catholic Bishops Paul A. Zipfel (Bismarck) and Samuel J. Aquila (Fargo) have flatly refused to endorse a bill criminalizing abortion now pending in the North Dakota House of Representatives.
House Bill 1242, authored by Representative Sally Sandvig (D-Fargo) and co-sponsored by Senator Russell Thane (R-Wahpeton), creates a new section of the North Dakota criminal code: “A person is guilty of a class AA felony if the person intentionally destroys or terminates the life of a preborn child.”
HB1242 was introduced January 10, 2003 and referred to the House Judiciary Committee. A “preborn child” is defined in the bill as “a human being from the moment of fertilization until the moment of birth.”
Read the Preborn Child Protection Act.
Rep. Sandvig introduced the Preborn Child Protection Act at the request of Fargo pro-life attorney Peter B. Crary, who resides in her district. In response to a letter from Attorney Crary requesting support for the bill, Christopher Dodson, Executive Director of the North Dakota Catholic Conference, stated that the bill was unacceptable to the Bishops because it holds culpable the woman who intentionally procures an abortion. “[C]riminalizing the woman,” Mr. Dodson explained, “serves no legitimate purpose[.]”
Mr. Dodson further indicated that even were the proposed legislation to grant the mother legal immunity for killing her own child, it still would not pass muster with the Catholic Bishops of North Dakota because it lacked “a realistic possibility of withstanding constitutional scrutiny.”
Read Attorney Crary's letter requesting support, and the reply of the North Dakota Catholic Conference.
North Dakota has two Catholic dioceses, the Eastern Diocese in Fargo, and the Western Diocese in Bismarck.
“I was astounded,” stated Mr. Crary, “that a representative of the North Dakota Catholic Church would in effect endorse Roe v. Wade by demanding that a mother be accorded legal protection for killing her preborn child.” Roe v. Wade is the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that created a constitutional right for a woman to terminate the life of her unborn child.
Mr. Crary further stated: “If any legislation aimed at protecting the lives of preborn children must have ‘a realistic possibility of withstanding constitutional scrutiny,’ then Roe v. Wade is beyond challenge. I am truly amazed to hear that my own Catholic Bishops have made a public policy decision to conform to Roe v. Wade. I have always been taught as a Catholic that life begins at conception, and to kill a preborn child is murder. What then is objectionable about outlawing murder?”
After receiving Mr. Dodson’s letter, Mr. Crary wrote individually to the North Dakota Catholic Bishops asking if Mr. Dodson had correctly represented their position on HB 1242.
On January 20, 2003, Bishop of Bismarck, Paul A. Zipfel, responded to Mr. Crary, stating: “I am in total agreement that this bill serves no legitimate purpose and can even be counterproductive to the goals of the Gospel of Life.” Bishop Zipfel strongly endorsed the requirement set forth by Mr. Dodson that no pro-life legislation should hold a mother culpable for killing her own child. “Bishop Zipfel’s position,” stated Mr. Crary, “is fully consistent with Roe v. Wade.”
Bishop Samuel J. Aquila of the Fargo Diocese has responded in the same vein.
“As a Catholic I am ashamed,” Mr. Crary said. “The North Dakota Bishops do give lip service to the protection of innocent life. However, by refusing to challenge in any manner the Supreme Court mandate set forth in Roe v. Wade, my own Bishops have acquiesced to the Culture of Death.”
Read the Bishops' letters:
* Bishop Zipfel * Bishop Aquila
Read Mr. Crary's:
* Letter to North Dakota Legislators * Analysis of the Bishops' Letters ("Defending the Unborn against the Catholic Bishops")
(At the link.)
More useless political destruction wrought by the Right to Life fanatics - offering up a bill which is stillborn in terms of its enforceability, and forcing people to either embrace the idiocy and look ridiculous, or to denounce it as irresponsible hogwash and be subject to being slimed.
Absurd. Who else would be more responsible?
So am I. Why, why, why do we have to continually fight with our bishops to be Catholic?
The problem is with the wording of the bill. The Bishops are trying to show compassion for a woman who is sometimes caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to abortion. Now as far as the abortionist goes, I'd go for a bill that holds him or her culpable because it is cold blooded.
Folks writing these bills need to take some care in their crafting. Maybe they should have consulted with the Bishops beforehand!
Sometimes punishment is compassionate. If the prospect of punishment deters an abortion-minded mother, then not only is the baby's life saved, but so is future anguish for the mother.
Besides, a mother who kills her child deserves punishment. And punishment may deter her from killing again.
The bill should call for the imprisonment of abortionists - there is no crime of passion or confusion in their actions. They murder defenseless children in exchange for cash on the barrel.
This would be a sound Catholic approach, because the Church forbids anyone to obey an immoral law or command. The Governor, in other words, is prohibited, by Catholic teaching, from obeying Roe and Doe--which are immoral commands addressed to HIM by the Supreme Court.
I'm much more interested in legal sanctions for abortionists.
What I don't understand is his nasty way of beginning conversations.
As for the Chancellor, let him go back to the Reichstag.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/836435/posts
There was no evasion, BTW. I said it should be treated like any other murder.
A 13 year old girl who goes out and gets an abortion should be liable to the same penalties as the 13 year old who decides to strangle her two year old sister.
There is the question of whether she was coerced by her parents, boyfriend, etc. But our legal system has means for dealing with those contingencies in other murder cases.
Sorry to disappoint you. Maybe you can do another few rosaries or something.
I guarantee that if you pour holy water on your computer tower, you won't see my posts on that machine - but make sure you're wearing rubber soled shoes and are standing well back when you do.
What do you believe? What's your religion, your political persuasion, etc?
Why don't you put your beliefs on the table. You know what Catholics believe...why don't you enlighten us about your beliefs?
Your homepage doesn't say much--of course.
(1) The just war doctrine of the Catholic Church has always included preemptive warfare as justifiable.
(2) The Pope's current position is that all reasonable peaceful means of resolution be exhausted. I would agree with the view that the current Pope takes a rosier view of man's inherent goodness than I do - but that's a matter of temperament, not of doctrine.
The Pope has neither condemned preemptive warfare in itself, nor has the Church ever done so.
His main thing is hating the Church - he does not have a positive agenda.
I read the letters of the two bishops and I am further horrified. They have lost all sense of justice and morality. It is the grossest insult to women to act as though they were incapable of being responsible for their actions and their moral choices. It reduces them to the level of animals. I can't even say "to the level of minors," since the current trend is to prosecute minor boys as adults for all violent crimes. To feel remorse after you commit the worst of all violent crimes does not make you a victim. Hopefully it makes you human, and therefore responsible for your actions, and subject to justice, both human and divine.
A new generation of bishops who were ordained priests during the liberal ascendancy of the 1970's and 1980's is now coming into office. Their education and experience will naturally lead them to excesses their immediate predecessors would never have considered. Imagine a Church with a Roger Mahony, Walter Kasper or Rembert Weakland heading every diocese. I would bet my right arm on it happening.
You want to ban PBAs in the 3rd trimester? Fine - I'll agree with that. Set up a judicial bypass with parental notice? I'll agree with that, too. Put the screws to clinics in terms of how they are to be equipped and staffed? Great.
However, you will never get those first trimester abortions stopped until you make the option of following through with the pregnancies and having the babies attractive. That would include canning lobbyists, firing paid staff, and using picket line walkers as fundraisers for shelters and homes, offering free adoption services to both ends, lobbying to make the process easier and cheaper, paying for counseling service and tuition assistance, etc. Only when you make it appear that you happen to care about the pregnant girls themselves will you achieve traction - and to date, clamoring against contraceptives, making the process expensive, and offering up little support paints you as moralist zealots who can't convince people rationally, and have no recourse but to do it at law.
As one FReeper put it, platforms are written by the truest believers, given some lip service, then ignored by the candidates.
Your interesting use of the term "anthropomorphize" makes me wonder what a child two months after its conception is. Is it a bat or a hippo which we have anthropomorphized? What genus or species would it rightly fall under?
Another question: how many children do you have?
The majority of Americans do not support abortion on demand, not even if limited to the first trimester.
I have more than 2 children, and I'm married to their mother (a long term marriage, BTW).
Our goal is to ensure that women with problem pregnancies have the kind of support, material and otherwise, they need for themselves and for their babies, not to be punitive towards those for whose difficult situation we have only compassion. We oppose abortion, but our pro-life agenda does not include punitive action against women who have an abortion. We salute those who provide alternatives to abortion and offer adoption services, and we commend congressional Republicans for expanding assistance to adopting families and for removing racial barriers to adoption. The impact of those measures and of our Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 has been spectacular. Adoptions out of foster care have jumped forty percent and the incidence of child abuse and neglect has actually declined. We second Governor Bush’s call to make permanent the adoption tax credit and expand it to $7,500.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.