NEW CATHOLIC POLITICS

(Reposted from True Slant)

In the early years of the anti-abortion movement, supporters argued that eliminating the right to life for the unborn wasn’t just bad for those in the womb (and their mothers). It was also bad for those out of the womb. Once society takes away one class of human being’s right to life, they argued, it will take away another class’ right to life. For decades, it was possible to believe that this line of argument was wrong-headed at best or fear mongering at worst.

But the events of the past two decades have shown that the anti-abortionists’ argument was prophetic, if less dramatic than they predicted. More bad criminals were executed by the state. The frailest of the elderly were euthanized. And in Europe at least, brain-damaged infants were taken off of ventilators.

Now another class of humans is being targeted: infants without a high quality of life. That’s the gist of a story from the Daily Telegraph in Britain. Although I don’t like to post stories in full, I think this story gives you the necessary details:

A British hospital wants to remove a 1-year-old boy born with a rare neuromuscular condition from life support, but the child’s father is fighting to keep him alive.

The baby’s mother agrees with hospital officials, who plan to seek High Court permission Monday to remove the boy from the ventilator that allows him to breathe, British newspapers reported Sunday.

The infant, known only as “Baby RB,” was born with congenital myasthenic syndrome, a muscle weakness that limits the movement of his limbs and his ability to breathe on his own. He has been in the hospital since birth.

Lawyers for the father say the baby’s brain is unaffected by the condition, so that he can see, hear and feel and recognises his parents. He is also able to play with toys and enjoy stories and music, they say.

If the hospital’s application is successful, it would be the first time that a UK court has, against the will of a parent, determined that life support may be withdrawn or discontinued from a child who is not suffering brain damage.

A court order prevents identification of anyone connected to the family or the hospital.

Dependent on a ventilator to breathe, the child has been in hospital since birth.

His father, in his twenties and who is amicably separated from the mother, believes a simple tracheostomy procedure, which creates an opening in the neck to deliver oxygen to the lungs, would allow Baby RB to be discharged from hospital to be cared for at home.

But the hospital, backed by the child’s mother, says the baby’s quality of life is so low that it would not be in his best interests to save him.

In an attempt to persuade the court that Baby RB’s quality of life is such that the hospital trust’s application should be refused, the father will submit video footage showing his son playing with his toys and interacting with his parents, who have both been at their son’s side since his birth, living at dedicated family accommodation near the hospital.

Christopher Cuddihee, a solicitor who is acting for the father, said: “This is a tragic case. The father feels very strongly that Baby RB has a quality of life that demands the trust should continue to provide life-sustaining treatment. The father clearly adores his son and hopes to demonstrate to the court that the trust’s application should be rejected.”

Congenital myasthenic syndrome is the result of a gene abnormality affecting the junction between the nerve and the muscle, disrupting the ’signal’ between the two when the nerve wants the muscle to contract – resulting in muscle weakness and ‘floppy’ limbs.

Degrees of severity vary tremendously among the 300 people in the UK with the condition. The most commonly affected – and obvious – muscles are those in the face, resulting in a telltale inability to smile. Those around the eyes are particularly affected, leading to leading to double vision and droopy eyelids.

The premise of the wife’s and hospital’s argument, and the husband’s too to an extent, is that quality of life should determine whether a person lives or dies. The boy can’t breathe on his own, so he should die, one side argues; the boy can play with toys, so he should live, another side argues. What should be obvious to everyone, I think, is that quality of life is an inherently subjective criteria.

It’s also a bad criteria. Quality of life is what some philosophers call a secondary characteristic of humanity, just as race and gender are. It’s not a primary one. All humans are whole, separate, and unique. When society turns its back on this standard, I’m afraid to say, it seems to be only a matter of time before your group will be targeted. Think of it as like the final scene in Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia: Sooner or later, the gun will be pointed at you.

Before the month runs out, I need to post this hymn.

Readers of this blog will likely guess the answer to this question. But you might find my reasoning interesting. Click here to read my post at TrueSlant.

Tom Monaghan hasn’t gotten much love in the press lately, even from those who should be in his corner — Christian traditionalists. Rod Dreher criticized the pizza mogul as little more than an incompetent bully, while Mark Shea gave him the back of his hand. But over at True Slant, I make the case that Monaghan’s legacy is more complicated. Here is an excerpt:

For one thing, Monaghan has been an active Catholic benefactor. His money helped build a new cathedral in Nicaragua, which had been ruined by an earthquake in 1972, and it helped defeat an abortion-rights referendum in Michigan. For another thing, Monaghan seeks to do more than create a good Catholic university; he wants to build a great one that will influence the culture. As [Peter] Boyer writes of Monaghan’s goals,

A university could train young people who would, in turn, train the next generation of priests, teachers, nuns, and school principals. “You’ve got to create a sort of critical mass,” he said. “If we can get priests who are turned on to the faith, then you have a good congregation. It’s a multiplication. If you have a good principal, you have a good school. If you have a good catechism teacher, you have a good child. So you’re not catechizing one person, you’re catechizing thousands and thousands. And not just in one locality but all over the world. That’s why the university is such an efficient thing–a tool to change the world.”

There are already more than two hundred Catholic colleges and universities in the United States, but, in Monaghan’s view, though some are great universities, none are great Catholic universities. Notre Dame has become the sort of institution that stages “The Vagina Monologues.” The Jesuit-run University of San Francisco offers students a minor in gender and sexuality studies. Some schools, like Manhattanville College and Marist College, have surrendered their Catholic identity. Other Catholic schools, such as Franciscan University, in Steubenville, Ohio (of which Monaghan was the principal benefactor), and Thomas Aquinas College, in Santa Paula, California, were resolutely orthodox but had no ambitions to become first-tier research institutions. Monaghan was looking for a high-level academic institution that was also, as he puts it, “seriously Catholic.”

If you’re a traditional or orthodox Catholic like me, you’ll be impressed by Monaghan’s accomplishments and ambitions for his faith. But there’s a problem. How should we square his successes and goals with his heavy-handed and bullying tactics? The jury, I think, is still out on this question. On the one hand, Monaghan treated those below him – administrators, faculty, alumni, students – more like Larry Ellison or George Steinbrenner than popes John Paul II or Benedict XVI. On the other hand, Monaghan created and built the first Catholic university and law school in America in 50 years.

I thought of this question a lot over the past year. Now Catholic prelates will need to turn it over in their minds: What to do about burying Ted Kennedy? Should he receive a funeral befitting a flawed but virtuous man or a great sinner with some notable qualities?

Over at True Slant, I attempted to make sense of Kennedy’s passing. Here is an excerpt:

The good Ted Kennedy did more perhaps to help the poor, disabled, and marginalized than any American politician in the last two generations. A partial list of the bills he sponsored or shepherded to passage reveals a breadth of support for groups that only Lyndon Johnson or Franklin Roosevelt could match: The bilingual Education Act; the Fair Housing Acts; the Age Discrimination Act; the South African sanctions; the Federal Disabilities Act, and the Children’s Health-Insurance Program.

The bad Ted Kennedy honored politicians who threatened the poor, disabled, and marginalized. When George C. Wallace in February 1974 announced his candidacy for a third term as governor of Alabama, he noted that several prominent Northern politicians had flown to the state capitol of Birmingham to kiss his ring. One of those was Kennedy, who contemplated running for president in 1976, a time when the South was still up for grabs. All of those Northerners, Wallace told his followers at a morning press conference, had but one message: “How great thou art in Alabama!”

In case you’re asking yourself the same question, and you know you are as a viewer of the town hall meetings about health care, check out my answers over at True Slant. Here is an excerpt from today’s post:

Klein’s argument strikes me as partly correct: During the second Bush administration, Democratic leaders did not retail the false statements, lies, and rumors of progressive activists, though John Kerry’s contention in the 2004 campaign that Bush would likely reinstate the draft is surely an exception to the rule. But his argument is also partly false. Has he forgotten Ted Kennedy’s famous harangue on the Senate floor of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in 1987. Or how about Andrew Sullivan’s contention, one that he continues to hold, that Sarah Palin faked her last pregnancy or Gloria Steinem’s statement that Palin “shares only a chromosone” with Hillary Clinton. That’s not asymmetric extremism; that symmetric extremism.

Posting will be light this weekend and next week. I will be visiting my family and friends out West. I’d like to post a few times, but anything more than that would be realistic. Hey, I got my 20th high school reunion, two Giants games, golf, and the racetrack to go to.

Conservatives are making a lot of claims about a provision in a House version of the legislation that would pay doctors to consult with seniors every five years about their end-of-life care. Some are bogus. Others are not. Over at True Slant, I argue that the provision does open the door to euthanasia:

As Wesley J. Smith notes, if Blumenauer’s provision becomes law, more than a few doctors would be influenced by publications such as the “Caring Conversations” workbook of the Center for Practical Bioethics. It assumes that unless patients can achieve “quality of life” they should not receive care.

In addition to “quality of life” considerations, other doctors will add one more consideration: cost containment. Many progressives deny or reject this claim, but some liberal ethicists admit that it’s true, though they don’t say so explicitly. In The Washington Post last week, a bioethicist had this to say about end-of-life care:

“I don’t think it’s about cutting costs; it’s about quality,” said Tia Powell, director of the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Bioethics. Pointing to extensive research, she said: “The good news is if you get people in an environment that is of their choosing, where there is support and they have good pain control, it is very likely to extend their life.”

It goes without saying that Mollie Hemingway and Douglas LeBlanc at my old employer tell pretty much all you need to know about the press’ mostly inadequate treatment of the fight over abortion coverage in health insurance legislation and the New York Times‘ profile of the late Dr. George Tiller and his opponents.

It’s one thing to support the legalization of artificial contraception, which strikes me as bad for the republic but impossible to reverse. But it’s another to support federal funding of Planned Parenthood. Why should tax dollars go to an organization that performs abortions? If this were the mid-19th century, no opponent of slavery, not even Lincoln, would support federal funding for slaveowners in hopes of reducing the number of slaves.

Which is why I think that contra William Saletan, conservative pro-lifers’ opposition to the so-called abortion reduction bill is not “militant.” And which is why the votes of pro-life Democrats against the amendment to defund the organization is worthy of condemnation. (Tip o’ the hat to Deal Hudson)

(Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of seamusiv.com)

Update: Via Mark Shea, a Harvard senior research scientist concludes that in Africa at least, condoms are no solution to the AIDS epidemic:

Condoms fail because people do not use them consistently, because they are not used once people get to know someone, and because they provide a false sense of security, allowing people to take greater risks then they would take if condoms were not used at all.