Sanctity of Human Life – Page 324

U.S. Senate Rejects Pro-Life Legislation

Jan 30, 2018Jerry CoxAbortionAbortion, Life, Pro-life, Sanctity of Human Life

Yesterday the U.S. Senate failed to pass a bill banning most abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy.

The bill is similar to one passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last fall and a law Arkansas passed in 2013.

Arkansas’ U.S. Senators John Boozman and Tom Cotton both co-sponsored this good bill and supported it yesterday.

Medical science shows unborn babies feel the pain of abortion, especially after the twentieth week of pregnancy. That’s one reason many states — as well as most countries on earth — have passed laws prohibiting late-term abortions. In fact, the United States is one of just seven countries that allows abortion after the fifth month of pregnancy.

In 2000, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy described the abortion process, writing, “The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn from limb from limb. . . . The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off.”

Abortion is a horrific procedure that takes the lives of unborn children.

I hope you will thank Sens. Boozman and Cotton for supporting the senate bill to ban abortion after the twentieth week of pregnancy. Links to their contact information are below.

U.S. SENATOR JOHN BOOZMAN (R – AR)

Click Here to Email U.S. Senator Boozman

U.S. SENATOR TOM COTTON (R – AR)

Click Here to Email U.S. Senator Cotton

In Europe, Euthanasia is Driving Doctors and Nurses to Quit

Jan 29, 2018Jerry CoxBioethics, Euthanasia and Assisted SuicideAssisted Suicide, Bioethics, Euthanasia, Life, Pro-life, Sanctity of Human Life

Author, attorney, and ethicist Wesley J. Smith recently penned a column outlining a serious problem in European countries like Belgium: Doctors and nurses are quitting because of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Smith writes,

You become a doctor or nurse to be a healer palliator of people in serious pain and distress. You have a special place in your heart for the dying, and so you enter the specialized field of palliative care and hospice medicine.

But then, your country decides you should also become killers of the patients you want to succor. If you refuse, you face public criticism, the prospect of being sued, and perhaps one day, professional censure.

What do you do? If you are an ethical professional, rather than be complicit in homicide, you leave the field.

Doctors who specialize in end of life care and pain management — such as palliative care doctors in hospices and long term care facilities — are being forced to choose between their convictions and their careers.

One Belgian doctor said, “palliative care units are . . . at risk of becoming ‘houses of euthanasia’, which is the opposite of what they were meant to be.”

This is a disturbing trend. Palliative care offers terminally-ill people relief from pain and the opportunity to spend quality time with family as they near the end of life. These doctors and nurses provide vital services to people who are dying and to their families. Unlike euthanasia and assisted suicide, palliative care offers actual relief from suffering — without poisoning or killing any patients.

As we have said time and time again, being pro-life is about much more than opposing abortion. We do not eliminate suffering by eliminating people who are suffering. We must respect the sanctity of human life at the end of life as well as at the beginning.

U.S. Senate to Vote on Bill Banning Abortion After 20 Weeks

Jan 25, 2018Jerry CoxAbortionAbortion, Life, Pro-life, Sanctity of Human Life

Yesterday Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced the U.S. Senate will vote on the federal Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act next week.

This bill prohibits most abortions in the United States after the twentieth week of pregnancy. A similar measure passed the U.S. House of Representatives last fall.

Sen. McConnell told his colleagues,

Congress has an opportunity to take a step forward. The United States is currently one of just seven countries — just seven, including China and North Korea — that permit elective abortions after twenty weeks. It is time we begin to remedy this obvious and tragic moral wrong.

Arkansas Senators John Boozman (R-AR) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) are listed as co-sponsors on this good, pro-life bill.

This is a landmark piece of pro-life legislation. As we have written recently, the federal government has passed very few laws significantly protecting unborn children from abortion. By some estimates, this measure could save as many as 18,000 children each year. The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act is a law the United States desperately needs.