Tag Archives: Unborn

NYT writer worried that vegetables – not unborn children – feel pain

Story here in the New York Times. (H/T Weasel Zippers via ECM)

Excerpt:

But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze. It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.

Just because we humans can’t hear them doesn’t mean plants don’t howl… It’s a small daily tragedy that we animals must kill to stay alive. Plants are the ethical autotrophs here, the ones that wrest their meals from the sun. Don’t expect them to boast: they’re too busy fighting to survive.

So, plants are people, too, and we shouldn’t do violence to them by eating them. Interesting… But you know who doesn’t deserve protection from violence, according to the secular left? Unborn children, that’s who. I don’t see them mentioned in this NYT article.

In fact, the left wants to use government power to stop conscience rights for pro-life doctors, and even the public expression of pro-life convictions. (H/T Lex Communis)

Don’t forget all the pro-life clubs that are banned across Canada. But maybe plants have a right to life, because maybe they feel pain.

People on the secular left like recreational sex, but they don’t like having unexpected mouths to feed. They want the pleasure of sex, but not the work of taking care of innocent little babies. To feel less guilty about killing babies, they have to invent a new morality that blesses something else they want to do as morally good, like recycling, animal rights activism or vegetarianism. It’s idolatry – inventing a god of your own that you can appease just by doing anything you want.

Pro-life Democrat will vote for taxpayer-funded abortion in health care bill

Story from the Washington Post. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Democratic leaders worked for days to hammer out a deal with Nelson, and finally reached a tentative agreement late Friday night with him on abortion coverage provisions that had proven the major stumbling block to winning his support. Nelson also secured favors for his home state and to benefit different factions of the health-insurance industry.

Thirty pieces of silver.

The Weekly Standard comments:

Harry Reid has released the manager’s amendment that Ben Nelson has reportedly agreed to vote for, meaning that the Senate bill has 60 votes. The abortion language includes the phony segregation of funding language that was rejected in the House. It would allow individual states to opt out of the abortion-funding program–in other words, the default position is to pay for abortions; states would have to pass legislation to not fund abortions. But states where public abortion-funding is mandated by state court rulings would be required to pay for abortions…

If Nelson is indeed on board, then he just voted for Christian taxpayers to subsidize the murder of innocent babies. But Planned Parenthood will probably be happy and will no doubt offer many more political donations to Democrats in exchange for these new taxpayer subsidies to their booming business.

Scientists create sperm and eggs from embryonic stem cells

Story from the UK Daily Mail. (H//T ECM)

Excerpt:

Scientists at Stanford University in California found the right cocktail of chemicals and vitamins to coax the cells into becoming eggs and sperm.

[…]It paves the way for a cure for infertility and could help those left sterile by cancer treatment to have children who are biologically their own.

But it raises a number of moral and ethical concerns. These include the possibility of children being born through entirely artificial means, and men and women being sidelined from the process of making babies.

Opponents argue that it is wrong to meddle with the building blocks of life and warn that the advances taking place to tackle infertility risk distorting and damaging relations between family members.

Children need a stable environment with both a mother and a father in order to be happy and well-adjusted. Right now we are already in the middle of a crisis such that newborn children are not being raised by their biological mothers and fathers. This is become worse as single motherhood, same-sex marriage, cohabitation and unilateral divorce become mainstream. Are children becoming nothing more than a consumer good?

The general trend is for the selfish needs of adults to trump the needs of the children. This is to say nothing of abortion and embryonic stem cell research, in which the selfish-needs of adults result in the actual murder of children so that the more powerful adults be happier. This is, I think, a consequence of the decline of the Christian worldview ( humans relating to a morally good God) and the ascension of materialism and hedonism.