Blithe Spirit, the Blog

A good point about the Rick Majerus blather about the joys of abortion on demand, from Wash Times’s Tom Knott:

Majerus probably would be unhappy if one of his assistants used his free-speech right to publicly question the defensive philosophy of the basketball program.

M. coaches b-ball at St. Louis U., a presumed Catholic institution, and recently expressed himself freely about “choice” at a Billary rally, then complained about the local archbishop’s attempt to inhibit him. 

But what about that hypothetical assistant mouthing off about zone vs. man-to-man or when to cut, when to dribble?

Tom Roeser nails Andrew Greeley.  How shall we count the ways?

“I subscribe to the position that abortion, now mater how nearly universal in human history, is morally unacceptable…”

said Greeley in Sun-Times column 11/28.  He continued:

“But I wonder if it is proper or prudent to try to impose this Catholic moral view on a whole society that does not agree with us, especially when we cannot even persuade most of our own people.”

It’s as if Hubert Humphrey in 1948 wondered about the propriety or prudence of pushing civil rights when most Dems didn’t buy it, says Roeser.  Greeley continues until he comes up with this atrocious observation: 

“Perhaps for the time that it would take to persuade our own, we may leave the embryos to God’s loving care, the God who also must protect the vast number of embryos who spontaneously abort.”

Roeser:

Leave them to God’s care. Just as we do miners who are trapped in West Virginia, eh, Andy? We go to the utmost to save them; we search lakes and ponds for missing people. We don’t we leave them to God’s loving care?

Greeley doubts if bishops can “convert anyone” by “ukases,” being “tarnished . . . by the abuse scandal.”

To which Roeser:

But when it comes to Iraq where Andy has a partisan interest, yes-yes-YES the bishops must speak!

There’s more more more . . .

During National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it is fitting and proper that women be informed about any newly discovered dangers, even as the public groans under the weight of all the warnings surrounding the mere act of living.

So speaketh Dennis Byrne in today’s Trib, “Snubbing cancer study will only hurt women.”  It may be fitting and proper, but as he makes abundantly clear in the rest of his column, not if the information conflicts with women’s health as understand by pro-abortion people.

Read on, and do not overlook the last two paragraphs, in which he (a) analyzes the madness of crowds as fomented by newsies and (b) cites the General Sanchez critique of media as ignored by them in favor of his critique of the Iraq war in the same speech!

Planned [Non-]Parenthood lies, and thousands die, or will in Aurora:

Without shame, Planned Parenthood confessed to intentionally avoiding public disclosure and transparency because of its perceived fear of negative public reaction. Equally shameless was how facilely Planned Parenthood defenders excused this end-justifies-the-means strategy,

says ChiTrib columnist Dennis Byrne today, not knowing, though maybe suspecting, that the city of Aurora was to give the OK to its new under-radar “women’s health center” this afternoon. 

Facile is PP’s middle name when it comes to misrepresenting its opponents, says Byrne, detailing its sweeping, discredited claims of anti-abortion violence. 

These claims were offered by ChiTrib columnist Eric Zorn as justifying “creative subterfuge.”  But they also are the basis for the libel suit protestors filed (also today) in Kane County.

“You cannot accuse the peaceful citizens of violent crimes and advocating violence simply because you disagree with their message,” said Tom Brejcha, an attorney with Thomas More Society of Chicago.

Byrne also noted that the Aurora protestors have been “legal and constitutionally protected” — a point of special interest in that Zorn’s drumbeat was all about legality:

In fact, the deceptions are an effort by Planned Parenthood to be sure the law is followed — to be sure their plans and proposals are considered as though they came from an organization engaged in lawful activity. Which, in fact, they do.

Ah, but protestors are also so engaged, are they not?

[Father] Pfleger recalled asking [an opponent of moving the Children’s Museum to Grant Park], “Why would you want to put a museum for the whole city in a black park?” and went on to tell her he would not listen to her racial comments. All those geographic references, he said in a later interview, were code.

“When people say ‘South Side’ or ‘West Side,’ they’re talking about the black community,” he said.

Wait.  Fr. P. knows code? but “snuff” for killing a gun seller he doesn’t get?

Defending a proposed Aurora, IL, “woman’s health center” yesterday, pro-choice clerics said they mean to reclaim the moral mantle from pro-lifers.

Rev. Larry Greenfield, exec minister of Metro Chi’s American Baptist Churches, said to deny access to abortion is to deny “moral standing” to people who want one and those who approve that. 

He spoke in a press conference at Chicago Temple (1st United Methodist Church), across Washington from the Daley Center.  American Baptists are known by some as Northern Baptists, i.e., not Southern.

The health center in question is what many would call an abortion mill, which is by definition bad for the health unborn child and arguably also for that of the mother.  Hence the quote marks. 

Choice is a matter of social justice, said Mr. Greenfield and eight other ministers.  He criticized members of “the religious right,” who claim to hear “the voice of God” and “try to impose their hearing of it on the rest of us by law.”

He added, “To deny somebody choice is contrary to what I believe to be the teachings of Jesus . . .”

However, Mr. Greenfield did not address the objection (not put to him but lurking in the minds of some) whether courts have imposed by law on Illinois voters a denial of choice whether to permit abortions. 

Nor was he asked to define social justice, a seemingly all-purpose category which F.A. Hayek attempted to expose as meaningless.  Newspaper and blog readers may decide if he succeeded by reading his Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 2, The Mirage of Social Justice.

Or go to the Winter 1997 issue of Critical Review, which offers pro and con on his thinking.

Or a sock-‘em-bust-‘em Front Page defense of his social justice critique, see FP for 2/27/04.

Here’s a late-18th-century argument against abortion from a feminist milestone book:

“Women becoming, consequently, weaker, in mind and body, than they ought to be, [if] one of the grand ends of their being [were] taken into account, that of bearing and nursing children, have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection, that ennobles instinct, either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast it off when born. Nature in everything demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom do so with impunity.”

That’s Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) in her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, quoted in an email from Feminists for Life.