Sarah Palin And Some Jesuit Perspectives On Abortion

Former Governor Sarah Palin lambasted abortion advocacy groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL who give women the message that they can't juggle both a baby and a career or education.

“It is so bogus that society is sending a message right now and has been for probably the last 40 years that a woman isn't strong enough or smart enough to be able to pursue an education, a career and her rights and still let her baby live,"

she said.

Link (here) to the full article entitled Sarah Palin Rallies Thousands Against Abortion at Wisconsin Pro-Life Event by Steven Ertelt at the website called Lifesite.

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This is a quote from Fr. James Martin, S.J. during a televised round table that included EWTN's Raymond Arroyo during the heated speech at Notre Dame by President Obama.

"abortion is a fundamental situation in the Catholic Church, and I think it’s very important, and I’m pro-life. The question is, you know, disagreeing on tactics, and

I don’t think that the sort of extreme pro-life movement is really a good way to enter into dialogue, which is what we need. I don’t understand how the Catholic Church can dialogue with our political leaders if they adopt these extreme tactics.

So -- so my only concern, you know, in those situations is that it marginalizes the Catholic Church -- it makes us look like a fundamentalist sect with whom it’s more and more difficult to talk. And with that, we lose any sense of common ground or any sense of voice in the public square."

Link (here) to the full transcript of Father Martin's television interview.

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Dr. William Blazek, a Jesuit scholastic and physician, is a board certified specialist in Internal Medicine and a Research Scholar in the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University School of Medicine. He teaches ethics and clinical skills as an Adjunct Assistant Professor while preparing for ordination to priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church.

This is a portion of his editorial entitled, A Jesuit's Perspective on Abortion.

"As a practicing physician licensed to care for pregnant women, I believe that abortions kill a living human being in the earliest stages of development.

The moral question at hand is not if we are killing; it is whether the victims have any claims as persons or not. While the U.S. legal balance is at present skewed towards the denial of rights for the unborn, Catholics and many Evangelical Christians argue that both the mother and the unborn have rights.

On a spiritual level, a woman seeking an abortion should recognize that exercising her “choice” will kill a vulnerable and defenseless human being. There is no doubt about this. There is also no doubt that an action can be legal and at the same time be wrong."

Link (here) to the full piece in the Washington Post.

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Fr. John F. Kavanaugh, S.J., is a professor of philosophy at St. Louis University in St. Louis, Mo. Father wrote this in an open letter to then Senator Obama, it was published in America prior to the 2008 presidential election.

"Perhaps your seeming ambivalence is related to your position on late-term abortions and partial-birth abortions. Second- and third-trimester abortions comprise a small percentage of all abortions, but they are horrific. Anybody who thinks not, does not think."

Read Fathers full statement (here)

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This is an excerpt from an interesting interview and debate between Fr. Robert Drinan, S.J. and the Rev. Jerry Falwell, it is from a larger article published by First Things magazine, entitled Robert Drinan, Infanticide and the "Unthinkable".

"The Supreme Court said that there's a constitutional right in a couple, or in a woman, to have an abortion. Can the federal government say that we are going to restrict and constrict that particular right? . . .

I have not repudiated the position of my own church. I've said thousands of times that abortion is immoral in my judgment and coming out of my tradition, but that this is oversimplified piety,

as if everything that the churches hold must in fact be put into American law. . . . A lot of Catholics in the Congress and throughout the country feel that the state should not deny Medicaid funds to people who are entitled to an abortion under the law. . . "
Link (here) to the full article in First Things.