57 Days of Life: Adopting a New Attitude

As you might already know the theme for the 2014 March for Life is adoption and this month is officially “National Adoption Month”, (as seen here as Indiana Governor Mike Pence (R) proclaimed it for his great state) so now might be a good chance to look at some recent adoption news:

Popular among the reality show set is the show Duck Dynasty.  Recently two of their stars were honored at the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s Angels in Adoption Gala.  When Duck Dynasty stars Willie and Korie Robertson adopted their son, Will, they didn’t have the money to pay the adoption fee.

“There shouldn’t be kids without homes. It just shouldn’t happen,” Korie told PEOPLE.   When she accepted her award, she started crying as she reminisced about her parents loving, open home, and adopting their son when he was 5 weeks old.

“From the moment we found out about him, he was ours,” she told the audience. “I swear, I had labor pains the night before I went and picked him up at the foster home he was living at. He’s our child, just like our biological children.”  . . .

“I’ve done a lot of cool things in the past couple of years, I’ve been to Super Bowls, I’ve met Presidents – but the best decision we ever made – that made the biggest impact on our life was the adoption of our son Will,” Willie said.

The creative Radiance Foundation thought that November would be a good time to release their moving web site Adopted and Loved.   Trust me, as you watch these videos you are going to want to have some tissues handy.

Lastly I’d suggest reading “A Trinitarian Love: The sacramentality of adoption” – a good read on adoption from a scholar at Notre Dame University.

On the fiftieth anniversary of his death it is hard to avoid stories about John F. Kennedy (JFK) so I thought I would add another one.  Most stories describe JFK as a devout Catholic, though most stories also highlight the former president’s extra-marital activities. 

The truth is during John F. Kennedy’s lifetime abortion was simply not the hot button issue it is today so there is little found that could point in one direction or another.  One book, JFK, Conservative by Ira Stroll did find this quote:

“Now, on the question of limiting population: as you know the Japanese have been doing it very vigorously, through abortion, which I think would be repugnant to all Americans.”

While the quote is far from conclusive the 35^th President does have a major pro-life legacy – he appointed Byron White to the Supreme Court.  Justice White was the writer of the dissent in the tragic Roe v. Wade case that, with Doe v Bolton, legalized abortion at all stages.  Justice White dissension, where he was joined by Justice William Rehnquist, is the only sane part of the whole opinion.  Here is an excerpt:

With all due respect, I dissent. I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers [410 U.S. 222] and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally dissentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the mother, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

The Court apparently values the convenience of the pregnant mother more than the continued existence and development of the life or potential life that she carries. Whether or not I might agree with that marshaling of values, I can in no event join the Court’s judgment because I find no constitutional warrant for imposing such an order of priorities on the people and legislatures of the States. In a sensitive area such as this, involving as it does issues over which reasonable men may easily and heatedly differ, I cannot accept the Court’s exercise of its clear power of choice by interposing a constitutional barrier to state efforts to protect human life and by investing mothers and doctors with the constitutionally protected right to exterminate it. This issue, for the most part, should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.

Justice White returned to the issue thirteen years later in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. In Thornburgh Justice Harry Blackmun for the majority struck down various state abortion regulations reclaiming that abortion is a fundamental constitutional right. Justice White disagreed:

Abortion is a hotly contested moral and political issue. Such issues, in our society, are to be resolved by the will of the people, either as expressed through legislation or through the general principles they have already incorporated into the Constitution they have adopted. Roe v. Wade implies that the people have already resolved the debate by weaving into the Constitution the values and principles that answer the issue. As I have argued, I believe it is clear that the people have never-not in 1787, 1791, 1868, or at any time since-done any such thing. I would return the issue to the people by overruling Roe v. Wade.

For more on the opinions of the justices involved in Roe v. Wade I suggest reading Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade by American’s United for Life’s Clark Forsythe. It has incredible new insight into what went into one of the worst decisions in Supreme Court history.

One aspect of the train wreck that is commonly called Obamacare is the provision that allowed Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, with the full support of President Barack Obama, to force companies and individuals to pay for and/or subsidize contraception, sterilizations and abortifacients.  Obvious to all except for the pro-abortion crowd and the Obama Administration, those who are opposed to paying for such life ending procedures and drugs feel it is wrong that the government should force them to either violate their beliefs or pay a large fine or go to jail.  Do they deserve to be protected?

The following is adapted from consciencelaws.org:

Protections of conscience laws ensure that people cannot be forced to facilitate practices or procedures to which they object for reasons of conscience.  These may include abortion, capital punishment, contraception, sterilization, artificial reproduction, euthanasia, assisted suicide, human experimentation, torture, etc.  An adequate protection of conscience law should protect conscientious objectors from coercive hiring or employments practices, discrimination and other forms of punishment or pressure.  It should also include protection of conscience laws and afford varying degrees of protection for conscience objectors.  They may appear in statutes or in the policies of organizations or institutions.

Protection of conscience laws and conscience clauses are needed because powerful interests are inclined to force health care workers and others to participate, directly or indirectly, in morally controversial procedures.  Physicians, nurses and pharmacists and others have been denied employment, dismissed, or penalized because of objections to abortion, contraception or drugs that can act as abortifacients.  The same pressure will almost certainly be applied to force conscientious objectors to participate in reproductive technology, eugenic screening and in euthanasia and assisted suicide, particularly where such things are legal or tolerated.