Your "Pro-Life" President is At It Again

Former President Donald John Trump, who bills himself as the “most pro-life president ever” and is considered as such by many Catholics even though he supports “exceptions” to the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment, has taken it upon himself to act as a secular pontiff concerning what constitutes “pro-life” positions.

Readers of this site will recall that the former president, who is certainly under attack by the use of a Soviet-inspired lawfare by Democratic Party prosecutors in New York and Georgia and by the United States Ministry of Injustice’s own Jack Smith, made it a point last year to tell pro-life Americans that they had to start accepting “exceptions” to the inviolability of innocent preborn human life. Here is a reminder of what he said then, and what he continues to say on the campaign trail:

“And I have to tell you, the pro-lifers now have tremendous power to negotiate, which they didn’t have before the ruling,” Trump said of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization at the South Carolina GOP fundraising dinner earlier this month. “They have to understand how to talk about it. Because Republicans, you’re going to have to learn how to talk about it.”

Trump made similar comments at the Alabama state GOP dinner this month, where he was introduced by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who is holding up military promotions to protest the Pentagon’s abortion travel reimbursement policy.

“I have to tell you from a conservative and Republican standpoint, you have to learn how to talk about pro-life, you have to learn how to talk about that decision,” Trump said. “Because you don’t know how to talk about it.”

“Pro-lifers have a tremendous power now with that termination [of Roe] to negotiate. They had none,” he continued. “They didn’t have any before that ruling. They had no power whatsoever, [people] could kill babies at any time they wanted, including after what we would call birth. They could kill babies. Now [pro-lifers] have tremendous power.”

"But on pro-life, I will tell you what I did on Roe v. Wade, nobody else, for 50 years they've been trying to do it. I got it done,” Trump said in an interview in May. “And now we're in a position to make a really great deal and a deal that people want."

"We're in a position now — and I'm going to be leading the charge — we're in the position now where we can get something that the whole country can agree with, and that's only because I got us out of the Roe v. Wade where the pro-life people had absolutely nothing to say,” he said.

Abortion opponents tend to see the issue more as a matter of principle in legally protecting fetal life rather than Trumpian deal-making. An abortion policy the whole country can agree with seems like an elusive goal, more difficult than ending the Russian war in Ukraine in 24 hours.

But Republicans are struggling on abortion in swing districts and even on what ought to be more favorable terrain, like Ohio and Kansas. Democrats used abortion policy to get back in the game during the midterm elections, and President Joe Biden plans to do the same next year.

Democrats, Trump said in South Carolina, “have energized this issue and the Republicans are going to have to learn how to fight it.”

Trump’s suggestion is twofold: nudge Republicans away from their hard-line branding on the issue by allowing abortion in some of the hard cases while forcing Democrats to defend the least popular aspects of their position.

“Like President Ronald Reagan before me, I support the three exceptions, for rape, incest, and the life of the mother,” Trump said in Alabama. “In terms of running, you have to go with your heart; you have to go with what you want. But to me, the three exceptions are very important. I think to a large portion of people on this issue are very important.”

“Remember, the Democrats are the radicals on this issue. We’re not the radicals on this issue,” he continued. “The Democrats are the radicals because they’re willing to kill babies in their fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth and ninth month and even after birth.”

Trump brought up former Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam. “Remember the governor of Virginia, that wack job who thought he was Michael Jackson?” Northam spoke in 2019 on the radio station WTOP during a dispute over late-term abortion in the state, saying, “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

“The Democrats are the extremists on this issue,” Trump said in South Carolina. “And if you think about it, what we have been able to do, bring it back to the states,” has increased elected officials’ capacity to regulate abortion — if politicians who wish to do so can prevail at the ballot box.

This is not the position of the biggest anti-abortion groups. Trump’s past support for legal abortion may not give him the credibility to persuade them despite his role in Roe’s reversal and his policies as president. He is testing his leverage with social conservatives a few short years after winning them over.

In 2016, Trump sometimes outmaneuvered his GOP primary foes because his political instincts came from outside the conservative movement. At the same time, he generally showed good judgment about which factions of the party he could not afford to alienate, social conservatives and gun owners chief among them. It remains to be seen whether he can maintain that balance in 2024.

But Trump’s earlier abortion stance, adopted when he was considering a run for the 2000 Reform Party presidential nomination against Pat Buchanan, was similar to that of some swing voters on the issue.

“I’m very pro-choice,” Trump told Meet the Press in 1999. “I hate the concept of abortion. … But still, I just believe in choice.”

That may be the type of voters Republicans will have to deal with on abortion. (Trump exhorts Republicans to learn the 'art of the deal' on abortion.)

“Go with your heart”?

No, Mister President, we use our intellects to submit to the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment, which prohibits the direct, intentional taking of all innocent human life from the moment of conception to death. Innocent human life cannot be taken in the womb. Innocent human life cannot be taken after birth by means of suicide, assisted suicide, physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, “brain death”/vital organ vivisection, the starvation and dehydration of certain patients, and “palliative care”/hospice. There are no exceptions to the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment, and the only consensus that a believing Catholic can agree to is this: Stop all attacks on innocent human life now. No qualifications, No exceptions.

Although former President Donald John Trump wants us to believe that the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi State Health Officer v. Jackson Women’s Organization, June 24, 2022, stopped baby-killing in this country, I explained the truth of the matter in: Roe v. Wade is Gone, Baby-Killing Will Continue, part one, Roe v. Wade is Gone, Baby-Killing Will Continue, part two|, and Roe v. Wade is Gone, Baby-Killing Will Continue, part three).

Moreover, there will never be an acceptance of the binding truth that all innocent human life is inviolable without exceptions until men permit themselves to be informed by the teaching of the true Church, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and submit themselves in humility and docility in all that pertains to the good of souls without complaint or reservation. It is precisely because this country has been divided by error from its very beginning that men believe everything is arguable, something that is but the ultimate result of one of Protestantism’s fundamental errors: the belief in the private interpretation of Scripture. There can be no unity among men when they have taught to disagree about or entirely ignore the plain words of Holy Writ and to discount entirely Sacred Tradition as a source of Divine Revelation that is safeguarded by Holy Mother Church from even a slight taint of error (cf. Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

There are many committed pro-life Americans who have spoken the full truth in love about the inviolability of all innocent human life but these good people have been stymied by the acceptance of the “life of the mother” exception by the National Not-So-Right-to-Life Committee, by the professional, careerist Republican politicians who have long desired that the issue of baby-killing disappear from the radar screen, and by many of the “consistent ethic of life” “bishops” within the counterfeit of conciliarism.

There are thousands upon thousands of Catholics who volunteer their time to engage in sidewalk counseling, to work at crisis pregnancy centers, to run homes for unwed mothers, and who will speak to various groups at a moment’s notice. These people know full well how to speak about the truths of the Fifth Commandment without any advice from an amoral man who believes that everything is negotiable according to the ever-fungible stands of his own “art of the deal.”

There are also dedicated researchers and scholars who have devoted their entire lives to speaking about the unvarnished truth concerning matters of family life, most notably Mrs. Randy Engel of the U.S. Coalition for Life and Dr. Paul Byrne, whose work on behalf of the protection of innocent lives from conception to death has earned him the scorn of so many in the American legal and medical systems. (From Memorandum to Donald John Trump: The Inviolability of Innocent Human Life is Non-Negotiable.)

Well, Donald John Trump, a man who is clueless about First and Last Things, a cluelessness that has led him to commit acts of reckless imprudence that the caste of totalitarians in charge of “justice” system federally and in many states and localities has used as the basis for baseless indictments, is at again, this time urging the members of the Alabama State Legislature to overturn a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that fertilized human embryos are indeed what they are, namely, human beings whose lives must be protected.

First, here is a report about the Alabama Supreme Court decision on Friday, February 16, 2024:

MONTGOMERY, Alabama (LifeSiteNews) — The Alabama Supreme Court recognized frozen human embryos as “children” on Friday, in an in vitro fertilization (IVF) case that could have significant long-term ramifications for protecting the preborn.

AL.com reports that the case concerned a wrongful death lawsuit brought by three couples against the “fertility clinic” Center for Reproductive Medicine and Mobile Infirmary Medical Center for the accidental destruction of their embryos. The parents contended the tragedy was covered under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

The suits were first filed in 2021 after Mobile Infirmary, where the embryos were being stored, “allowed one of its patients to leave and/or elope from his or her room in the Infirmary’s hospital area,” they state, “and access the cryogenic storage area,” who then removed the embryos, after which “it is believed that the cryopreservation’s subzero temperatures burned the eloping patient’s hands, causing him or her to drop the cryopreserved embryonic human beings on the floor, where they began to slowly die.”

Mobile County Circuit Court Judge Jill Parrish Phillips tossed the case in 2022 on the grounds that the act did not apply to embryos outside the womb, but now the state’s highest court has ruled otherwise, reversing Phillips.

The “sweeping and unqualified” Wrongful Death of a Minor Act “applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location,” determined Justice Jay Mitchell. “It applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation. It is not the role of this Court to craft a new limitation based on our own view of what is or is not wise public policy. That is especially true where, as here, the People of this State have adopted a Constitutional amendment directly aimed at stopping courts from excluding ‘unborn life’ from legal protection.”

Section 36.06 of the Alabama Constitution says that the state “acknowledges, declares, and affirms that it is the public policy of this state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life,” as well as to “ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn child in all manners and measures lawful and appropriate.” Alabama law bans abortion for any reason other than an alleged threat to the mother.

Abortion and IVF supporters expressed outrage at the ruling, which pro-lifers pointed to as a tacit admission that the IVF industry requires the destruction of human life to thrive.

In vitro fertilization is fraught with ethical peril, including because it entails the conscious creation of scores of “excess” embryonic humans only to be killed and human lives being treated like commodities to be bartered over. 

The Catholic Church teaches that IVF is gravely immoral because it separates the sexual act from procreation and violates the right of the child to be born of a conjugal union.

This is not the first time a ruling in an IVF case has drawn unwanted attention to the humanity of its “products.” Last year, a Virginia judge agreed that human embryos “may be valued and sold, and thus may be considered ‘goods or chattels’” under a Civil War-era law that had once applied to human slaves. (Alabama Supreme Court affirms frozen embryos are children ‘regardless of their location’.)

The Alabama State Supreme Court decision is indeed correct as fertilized human embryos are indeed human beings. However, no human institutional of civil governance, including a state legislature, has any authority from the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, to do anything other than to protect innocent human life. No human being, whether acting by himself or in concert with others, has any authority to dispense with innocent human life, and no human being, whether acting by himself or in concert with others, has any authority to endorse the creation of human life artificially.

 A world that has cast off the sweet yoke of the Social Reign of Christ the King removes all external constraints upon the ability of men to play God, up to and including the development of scientific means to act contrary to the Divine and Natural Laws. Eugenicists and their mad scientific cohort championed the cause of prevent the conception of children by artificial means and later pioneered scientific technologies developed first for use with livestock (cattle, horses, sheep, goats) that they marketed as “solutions” for infertile couples, ignoring the fact that many, although far from all, cases of infertility in women are the result of contraceptive pills and devices. It is perhaps quite useful to note that many “vaccines” have been developed to produce infertility in women, especially for use in the Third World, and infertility has been one of the many myriad evil consequences of the poisons developed under former President Donald John Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.

There is a straight path from artificial conception, which is a denial of the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of Holy Matrimony, to the artificial creation of human beings, which is a denial of the very hallowed nature by which God has ordained for men and women to procreate new lives for His honor and glory in this life so as to be brought to the baptismal font to have their souls regenerated in His very inner life by means of Sanctifying Grace—and from there to have the possibility of living with him for all eternity as they behold His Beatific Vision in Heaven.

Fallen men have cheapened that which is to be used exclusively by a man and a woman in lawful wedlock and they have now reached a point where they feel free to act without regard for any concept of morality, even on the natural level, to prevent the conception life, discard of life after conception, to conceive children artificially to be used in monstrous experiments or to be implanted “on demand” to women as well as to those in the abomination called “marriages” between people of the same gender. Additionally, men drunk with their own power, such as Elon Musk, who is no friend of the binding precepts of the Divine and Natural Laws, are using their billions to develop “artificial intelligence” to be implanted as chips into the brains of willing human subjects. As I have written about in the past, we are indeed on the cusp of the monsters of apocalypse.

None of this matters, of course, to the man in whose name was affixed to a book called The Art of the Deal, Donald John Trump.

Donald John Trump knows nothing about the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of Holy Matrimony. He was a longtime donor to Planned Parenthood and it was during the 2016 primary season that he said, “Planned Parenthood does good work.” He has used contraception throughout his adult life, been unfaithful to each of the three women to whom he has been “married,” and is still an unapologetic support of the lavender agenda with a few qualifications here and there. Yet it is that this man is seen as supreme of a “supreme pontiff,” if you will, by many Protestants, especially of the evangelical and fundamentalist variety, who use contraception themselves and are supporters of “exceptions” to the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment’s proscription of the direct, intentional taking of innocent human life.

Most Protestants live their lives awash in sentimentality and emotionalism, and many in the camp of the false opposite of the naturalist “right” have latched onto Donald John Trump as a combination of secular savior and the latest coming of William Franklin Graham, Jr., who was himself a supporter of both contraception and said that the surgical execution of preborn children in the “hard cases” was morally justified (see Shed No Tears for the Fuller Brush Man). Those who project onto Trump some kind of salvific powers listen to him attentively, which is why his opposition to the Alabama State Supreme Court decision carries much weight:

Legislature to find a way to preserve in vitro fertilization (IVF) in Alabama following the Alabama Supreme Court ruling last week that frozen embryos are considered unborn children, asserting that the “Republican Party should always be on the side of the Miracle of Life.”

“Under my leadership, the Republican Party will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families. We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder!” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Friday.

“That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every State in America,” he continued.

“Like the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of Americans, including the VAST MAJORITY of Republicans, Conservatives, Christians, and Pro-Life Americans, I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby,” Trump said, calling on the Alabama Legislature to “act quickly to find an immediate solution to preserve the availability of IVF in Alabama.”

“The Republican Party should always be on the side of the Miracle of Life – and the side of Mothers, Fathers, and their Beautiful Babies. IVF is an important part of that, and our Great Republican Party will always be with you, in your quest, for the ULTIMATE JOY IN LIFE!” (Donald Trump Calls on Alabama Legislature to Find Way to Preserve IVF.)

What a dope.

What an incorrigible dope.

No one has a right to a child as they are gifts of God to be welcomed with generosity according to the means He has given them to continue the species. The conception of children is not to be prevented, and those who cannot have children are called to accept their cross with equanimity while considering the adoption of children and/or to seek the advice of a believing Catholic obstetrician/gynecologist in an effort to determine whether a case of infertility is medically or surgically remediable.

One can pray for the gift of children, but one can never take matters into their own hands by having recourse to monsters who make billions of dollars by defying God in the creation of human life artificially.

The Protestant Revolution’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King let loose the forces of anti-Incarnational forces of naturalism upon the world that gave us, in successive turn, divorce, contraception, abortion, the promotion of sodomite and its ever-increasing spectrum of perverse vices, in vitro fertilization, “brain death”/vital organ vivisection and transplantation, the starvation and dehydration of innocent human beings, “palliative care”/hospice, legally sanctioned infanticide, euthanasia, suicide and doctor-assisted suicide and, of course, the curse of human fetal stem-cell research that has spawned the cottage industry of mad scientists who believe that there are no God-given limits on their work and that they will never have to answer to God, in whom most do not believe, for daring to mock His omnipotence.

The downward spiral, though, was over four centuries in the making, longer yet if one considers how certain elements of the Renaissance helped to undermine the integrity of Faith and Morals in various intellectual and artistic circles in the century before the rise of Martin Luther, but we are seeing the tragic consequences of this spiral into the abyss right before our very eyes.

Contraception, of course, resulted in widespread adultery, divorces, broken families, the feminization of poverty and, ultimately, the “legalization” of surgical abortion up to and including the day of birth. This denial of the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage has produced a mentality of selfishness between spouses, most of whom view children as something to be “planned” or “wanted” and not the first end of their married lives. The belief that one can “plan” to have children was followed by the belief that married couples have a “right” to have a child if a wife (or the husband) is infertile. Those who do not accept that it is part of God’s Holy Providence for men and women to join together in Holy Matrimony to welcome as many or as few children as He sees fit to send them will not accept His Holy Will if they are incapable of having children.

There is a long history of infertile couples over the centuries who have chosen to adopt children. Some of these couples continue to do so quite generously in our day. The logic of contraception is such, however, that the desires of the couple, whether married or not these days, are the sole determinant of how many children to have and what to do if even morally acceptable surgical remedies are incapable of rendering an infertile man or woman fertile.

It is this narcissistic and sentimentally-driven belief that led certain scientists who have no regard for the laws of God to create a “market” for the infertile by means of in vitro fertilization. This immoral process of creating a human being outside of the laws ordained by God was based on the expectation that untold thousands of fertilized human embryos, who are human beings, will die before being implanted within a woman’s uterus. Perhaps it should be noted that it came to pass that artificially fertilized human beings were implanted in the wombs of “surrogate” mothers. A very profitable money-making industry was created to cater to human sentiment in an era when people are indifferent to, ignorant or just plain hostile to the laws ordained by God.

The first such “petri dish” baby, Louise Brown, was born forty years ago. A 2015 news story about this supposed biological breakthrough that represented another phase in the realization of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World recounted the story, which includes a matter-of-fact statement that in vitro fertilization has made it possible for “same sex” couples and “single mothers” to have children:

In July 1978 Louise Brown was hailed as the world's first "test-tube baby", born through the fertility treatment IVF. But how does her story compare with modern procedures?

"On the day I was born, my mum had to be taken to the operating theatre for her Caesarean section in pitch darkness, with just a torchlight showing the way," Louise Brown explains.

"Only a few staff knew who she was, and my parents didn't want others realising her identity and tipping off the newspapers."

Louise's birth was cloaked in secrecy. Even her father John's first visit to see her in Oldham General Hospital was under the eye of police officers, who lined the corridor outside.

The reason was that his daughter, from Bristol, had become the world's first "test-tube baby", as the press hailed her.

More accurately, she was the first to be born through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), a process in which an egg is removed from the woman's ovaries and fertilised with sperm in a laboratory, before being implanted into the uterus.

It is a treatment used to enable couples with a range of fertility problems to conceive a child, and now allows same-sex couples and single mothers to have children too.

Technological advancements mean - according to 2013 estimates - more than five million people worldwide have been born through this process.

But in 1978 it was highly experimental, and Dr Mike Macnamee, chief executive at the world's first IVF clinic - Bourn Hall in Cambridge - believes Louise "really was a miracle".

The two men who pioneered the treatment - gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Robert Edwards - "had gone through hundreds of embryo transfers before Louise was conceived", he adds.

The pair had joined forces a full 10 years earlier, with skills that perfectly complemented one another - Edwards having developed a way to fertilise human eggs within the laboratory and Steptoe having devised a method for obtaining the eggs from the ovaries.

When Louise's mother Lesley was put in contact with Steptoe by her doctor, she was warned there was a "one in a million" chance of success.

So when it worked, it was such a momentous scientific advancement that the birth had to be filmed - under agreement with the government - to give documented evidence that Louise was indeed her mother's.

Even before her mother was able to hold her newborn, Louise had undergone around 60 different tests to ensure she was "normal".

This is a far cry from modern procedures, which - owing much to the work of Bourn Hall in the 1980s - follow a refined and well-established clinical process.

"Once they [Steptoe and Edwards] worked out how to fertilise the egg, they very soon wanted to restrict the number of embryos they transferred into women - so they didn't have too many multiple births," Dr Macnamee explains.

"Development of the freezing technique in the mid-80s meant they could implant one or two embryos [into the would-be mother] and then freeze other embryos for future use, saving her the uncomfortable procedure of having the eggs removed again."

Progress can also be seen in the modern use of ultrasound imaging to harvest the eggs under a mild sedation, rather than the form of keyhole surgery known as laparoscopy that was previously employed.

Techniques developed in the late 1980s also made a big difference in treating male infertility by injecting single sperm directly into the egg.

These, and other, small incremental steps mean the success rate for each round of IVF has grown from 10% to 40% since the early 80s, when Dr Macnamee's first role included the hands-on task of mixing the eggs and sperm in a petri dish.

The chances of successfully conceiving through IVF decline with age, but the process is now more effective per cycle than natural reproduction. It does not, however, have approval from all quarters.

In November, Pope Francis said the process promoted children as "a right rather than a gift to welcome" and was "playing with life".

Yet in August 1978, Cardinal Albino Luciani - shortly to become Pope John Paul I - unexpectedly refused to criticise Louise's parents for using IVF, saying they had simply wanted to have a baby.

"It helped to counteract some of the negative things people were saying," Louise says.

"My mum got loads of letters from people. They were mostly positive, but there was some hate mail. (Louise  Brown Reflects at thirty-five.)

Acknowledging the fact that children conceived artificially are human beings who have immortal souls made in the image and likeness of the Most Blessed Trinity and ignoring this news report’s celebration of a violation of the laws of God that the adversary has used to further destroy the family and to convince a large percentage of people worldwide to accept any kind of “family” as perfectly legitimate as long as those involved are “happy,” the section in bold just above should disprove any lingering myths that Archbishop Albino Luciani, who was a true bishop, was any kind of “traditionalist.” He was not. He was a heretic, and he believed that there could be instances in which married couples could use contraception licitly, which is why he could accept in vitro fertilization so blithely.

Alas, the pull of Protestant and Judeo-Masonic sentimentality is such that even most Catholics alive today have the sensus Catholicus of the late Albino Luciani/John Paul I, which is to say that they believe there is no conflict between doing what one wants for “good motives” and doing what God commands. After all, a “merciful God” wants people to be “happy.” Why shouldn’t they use-contraception and/or in vitro fertilization? The temptations to go along with everyone else in a pluralist culture are so strong that it gets easier and easier over time for even believing Catholics to grow silent in the face of evil and to sublimate even any attenuated sense of serving as a soldier in the Army of Christ the King to openly oppose the incremental advance of that which is offensive to God and injurious to souls—and thus to the common good of one’s own nation and the world-at-large.

This is why even most supposedly “pro-life” Catholics were deaf, dumb and blind as then President George Walker Bush, the son of the late President George Herbert Walker Bush, increased the Federal funding for “family planning” programs, permitted his Food and Drug Administration to authorize the over-the-counter sale of the “Plan B” baby-killing pill and decided to continue Federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research.

Indeed, Dubya Bush was proud of the fact that his administration increased the amount of money being spent by our tax dollars on domestic and international "family planning" programs, which, of course, dispatched innocent preborn babies to death by chemical means. Here is a letter sent in behalf of then President Bush to United States Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) on May 25, 2006:

The Honorable Carolyn B. Maloney
House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Ms. Maloney:
Thank you for your letter to President Bush to request his views on access to birth control. The President has asked that I respond on his behalf. This Administration supports the availability of safe and effective products and services to assist responsible adults in making decisions about preventing or delaying conception.

The Department of Health and Human Services faithfully executes laws establishing Federal programs to provide contraception and family planning services. The Title X Family Planning Program and Medicaid are each significant providers of family planning services.

Additionally, this Administration strongly supports teaching abstinence to young people as the only 100 percent effective means of preventing pregnancy, HIV, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

I will provide this response to the other signatories of your letter.

Sincerely yours, John O. Agwunobi, Assistant Secretary for Health (Bush Supports Contraception Letter)

Contraception, of course, of its very evil nature, over and above the fact that most contraceptives serve as abortifacients that kill babies chemically or act to expel fertilized human beings from implanting in the uterus, is denial of the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage and has led to the rise of promiscuity, an epidemic of venereal diseases, surgical abortion, broken homes, maladjusted children, the feminization of poverty and to the open proselytizing in behalf of sodomy, one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.

As noted just above, George Walker Bush announced at 9:00 p.m. on Thursday, August 9, 2001, that he was going to permit the use of Federal taxpayer dollars to fund embryonic stem cell research on embryonic human beings whose "lines" were created before the time of his announcement. In so doing, of course, Bush authorized the death of those human beings and at the same time justify the immoral, evil practice of in vitro fertilization while doing nothing to stop the privately funded death and destruction of such embryonic human beings on those "lines" created after the date and time of his announcement:

My administration must decide whether to allow federal funds, your tax dollars, to be used for scientific research on stem cells derived from human embryos.  A large number of these embryos already exist.  They are the product of a process called in vitro fertilization, which helps so many couples conceive children.  When doctors match sperm and egg to create life outside the womb, they usually produce more embryos than are planted in the mother.  Once a couple successfully has children, or if they are unsuccessful, the additional embryos remain frozen in laboratories. (Remarks by the President on Stem Cell Research.) 

This is what I wrote at the time in the printed pages of Christ or Chaos:

Indeed, this whole controversy is the direct result of the rejection of the teaching authority of the Church on matters of faith and morals, as well as on matters of fundamental justice. For it is the rejection of the Deposit of Faith our Lord entrusted to Holy Mother Church that gave rise to the ethos of secularism and religious indifferentism, which became the breeding grounds for secularism and relativism and positivism.

A world steeped in all manner of secular political ideologies comes not only to reject the Deposit of Faith but to make war against all that is contained therein, especially as it relates to matters of the sanctity of marital relations and the stability of the family.

Contraception gave rise to abortion. Contraception also gave rise to the mentality which resulted in artificial conception. If a child's conception can be prevented as suits "partners," then it stands to reason that a child can be conceived "on demand" by using the latest technology science has to offer.

The Church has condemned artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization on a number of occasions as offenses to the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity of marital relations. Yet it is the very rejection of the Church's affirmation of what is contained in the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law which leads people, including George W. Bush, into thinking that artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization are morally licit to help couples deal with the problem of childlessness, ignoring the simple little truth that no one is entitled to a child.

Children are gifts from God to be accepted according to His plan for a particular couple. If a married couple cannot have a child on their own, they can adopt -- or they can use their time to be of greater service to the cause of the Church in the evangelization of the true Faith. No one, however, is entitled to a child.

Indeed, the whole tragedy of harvesting the stem cells of living human beings has arisen as a result of discoveries made by scientists experimenting on human beings conceived in fertility clinics to help couples conceive artificially.

That George W. Bush endorses this immoral enterprise (which is big business, by the way) and actually commends it as a way to "help" couples is deplorable.

It is as though he is saying the following: "We are not going to kill any more Jews for their body parts. We will only use the body parts of the Jews we have killed already. After all, we have people who will benefit from this research, do we not?"

Living human embryos do not have the "potential" for life, as Bush asserted on August 9, 2001. They are living human beings! To seek to profit from their destruction is ghoulish and will only wind up encouraging the private sector to fund all stem-cell research, creating more "stem cell lines" from the destruction of living human beings. ("Preposterous," Christ or Chaos, September 2001) 

Mrs. Judie Brown, the president and founder of the American Life League, wrote a retrospective on Caesar Georgii Bushus Ignoramus's stem cell decision some years later:

You have probably heard that right at the top of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's agenda is the promise of "hope to families with devastating diseases."

What she is promising, of course, is a Congressional action that will result in tons of federal tax dollars being spent on failed research using the dead bodies of embryonic children.

The White House, of course, is saying "the president has made it clear he believes in stem cell research so much -- the administration has done more to finance stem cell research, embryonic and otherwise, than any administration in history."

You see, Bush never really banned research using the bodies of embryonic children, he merely curtailed how much research could be done using tax dollars. So it would appear that everyone ... Democrat and Republican ... is on the same page.

The tragic reality underlying such statements is that over the course of the last 34 years, politicians and a whole lot of pro-lifers have let the principle of personhood slide away into oblivion for the sake of winning elections. And the result is staring us all in the face. (Embryo Wars.)

Mrs. Judie Brown wrote another commentary in 2012 about the human cost of in vitro fertilization featuring the conversion of a Catholic physician who believed he was advancing the "gift of life" by promoting the artificial conception of children:

During the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology this July, it was announced that five million babies have been born following in vitro fertilization procedures since 1978. Today, approximately 350,000 IVF babies are born annually, and the numbers are increasing.

An eerie silence hangs over these numbers. Unspoken is that most human beings created in the laboratory will die before even given a chance. It is commonly estimated that only one in six embryos created following IVF will make it to birth. However, the numbers published by Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority may be more accurate. In July of 2011, Britain announced that, for every child born by IVF, 30 embryos were created.

This means that for a typical couple seeking IVF, somewhere between five and 30 of their children died so they could give birth to one. On a worldwide scale, this means that 30-150 million children have died because of IVF. In light of such staggering numbers the Church’s teaching makes perfect sense; it is “deeply disturbing” that “the number of embryos sacrificed is extremely high” (Dignitas Personae n. 14). At best, IVF is like playing Russian Roulette with six people, except only one chamber of the gun is empty. IVF treats the new human being as little more than a cluster of cells to be graded, selected, and discarded. As the Church has noted, “In other areas of medicine, ordinary professional ethics and the healthcare authorities themselves would never allow a medical procedure which involved such a high number of failures and fatalities” (Dignitas Personae n. 15).

Unfortunately, such a loss of life is ignored and accepted by the IVF industry. Such “failures and fatalities” are not even recognized for what they are by most physicians who do IVF—it has all become a normal and standardized aspect of the procedure. Further, the beautiful images of babies, slogans about “building families,” and the pristine walls of the typical fertility clinic hide this harsh reality from would-be parents.

The truth, and the gentle yet firm guidance of a priest, recently led a leading IVF doctor in Chicago, Anthony Caruso, to call it quits. As a July 30 Chicago Tribune article attests, “We see babies in our Catholic faith as children of God. . . . What doesn’t get thought about is the process that brought the babies to be.”

Over time Dr. Caruso came to recognize that, regardless of the best intentions, the process of in vitro fertilization is a “false and deceptive solution” and an alarming attack on life. He is grateful to his parish priest for his courage to share the Church’s teaching concerning the industry that Caruso had been involved in for years. He now dedicates his professional life to promoting solutions to infertility that are consonant with Church teaching. (In Vitro Fertilization: The Human Cost .)

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, no one is “pro-life” unless he opposes all offenses against the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity of marriage and the inviolability of all innocent human life without any exception or qualification. In vitro fertilization is monstrous. We will only find out in eternity how many billions of innocent human beings were deprived of the Beatific Vision by being conceived artificially, experimented upon in their embryonic states and then killed off and consigned to Limbo.

The monstrous activities of a scientific world untethered by any respect for the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Lw have been premised upon the acceptance upon the disproved ideology of evolutionism. A veritable race of mad men posing as respectable scientists are rushing to be seen as pioneers in the development of artificial intelligence implanted into robots (one such robot assigned to the International Space Station a few years ago asked a human astronaut not to be “mean” to him—see Cimon Robot Accuses International Space Crew of Being Mean to it.)

Please, good readers, Donald John Trump is not "pro-life" as he does not knows nothing about right principles and lives by visceral feelings rather the use of an rightly informed conscience. Although some Catholics keep believing that "he's coming around," the evidence is that he is hardening his support for "exceptions" to the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment and for the articificial conception of children. Sober up. Do not keep believing in the political equivalent of the tooth fairy.

You can believe whatever you want. However, I will keep insisting that the more people rationalize compromises on first principles in the name of the "lesser of two evils" is the more that the difference between the supposedly "lesser evils" and the greater evils becomes indistiguishable as the institutionalization of evil in any form is offensive to God and deadly to the sanctification and salvation of human souls and thus to the entirety of social order.

On the Second Sunday of Lent

The readings in today's Divine Office on the Second Sunday in Lent contain Pope Saint Leo the Great's explanation as to what Our Lord desired to accomplish by permitting Saints Peter, James and John to see a glipse of His radiant glory atop Mount Thabor in the presence of Moses and Elias:

Dearly beloved brethren, the Lesson from the Holy Gospel which, entering in by our bodily ears, hath knocked at the door of our inner mind, calleth us to understand a great mystery. This, by the grace of God, we shall the more readily do, if we return to consider what hath been told us just before. The Saviour of mankind, even Jesus Christ, laying the foundations of that faith whereby the ungodly are called to righteousness and the dead to life, instilled into the minds of His disciples, both by the voice of His teaching and the wonder of His works, that they should believe Him, the one Christ, to be both the Only-begotten Son of God and the Son of man. Had they believed Him one of these and not the other, it had availed them nothing to salvation; and the danger was equally great, of holding the Lord Jesus Christ to be God without the Manhood, or Man only without the Godhead, since we are constrained to acknowledge that He is perfect God and perfect Man, and that as there is in the Godhead perfect Manhood, so there is in the Manhood perfect Godhead.

To strengthen, therefore, the saving knowledge of this faith, the Lord had asked His disciples what, among the differing opinions of men, it was their own belief and judgment as to Who He was. Then did the Apostle Peter, by the revelation of That Father Who is above all, rising above fleshly things, yea, outstripping the thoughts of men, then did he fix the eyes of his mind upon the Son of the living God, and confess the glory of the Godhead, for he looked not on the substance of the flesh and blood only. And in all the exaltation of this faith so well did he please God, that he was gifted with that joyous blessing, the hallowed establishment of that impregnable rock, whereon the Church being founded, should prevail against the gates of hell and the laws of death; neither, when anything is to be bound or loosed, is any bound or loosed in heaven, otherwise than as the judgment of Peter hath bound or loosed it upon earth.

But, dearly beloved brethren, it behoved that the height of this understanding, which the Lord praised, should rest upon a foundation, and that foundation, the mystery of the lower nature, lest the faith of the Apostle, carried away by the glorious acknowledgment of the Godhead in Christ, should deem it unworthy and unnatural for the impassible God to take into Himself the frailty of our nature; and should thus believe that in Christ the Manhood had been so glorified as to be no longer able to suffer pain, or be dissolved in death. And therefore it was that, when the Lord said how that He must go up unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and rise again the third day, and the blessed Peter, bright with heavenly illumination, and still glowing from the passionate acknowledgment of the Divine Sonship, by a natural, and, as seemed to him, a godly shrinking, could not bear the mention of mockery and insult and a cruel death, he was corrected by the merciful rebuke of Jesus, and moved rather to desire to be a partaker in the sufferings of his Master.  (As found in Matins, The Divine Office, Second Sunday of Lent. The New English Edition of The Mystical City of God explains Our Lady's account of the Transfiguration of her Divine Son atop Mount Thabor. See The Transfixion, Chapter Six: Book Six.)

Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., amplified Pope Saint Leo the Great's reflection for this Second Sunday of Lent as follows in The Liturgical Year:

The subject offered to our consideration on this Second Sunday is one of the utmost importance for the holy Season. The Church applies to us the lesson which our Savior gave to three of His Apostles. Let us endeavor to be more attentive to it than they were.

Jesus was about to pass from Galilee into Judea, that He might go up to Jerusalem and be present at the Feast of the Pasch. It was that last Pasch, which was to begin with the immolation of the figurative lamb, and end with the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, Who taketh away the sins of the world. Jesus would have His disciples know Him. His works had borne testimony to Him, even to those who were, in a manner, strangers to Him; but as for His Disciples, had they not every reason to be faithful to Him, even to death? Had they not listened to His words, which had such power with them that they forced conviction? Had they not experienced His love, which it was impossible to resist? and had they not seen how patiently He had borne with their strange and untoward ways? Yes, they must have known Him. They had heard one of their company, Peter, declare that He was the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Notwithstanding this, the trial to which their faith was soon to be put, was to be of such a terrible kind that Jesus would mercifully arm them against temptation by an extraordinary grace.

The Cross was to be a scandal and stumbling block to the Synagogue, and alas! to more than it. Jesus said to His Apostles, at the Last Supper: All of you shall be scandalized in Me this night. Carnal-minded as they then were, what would they think, when they should see Him seized by armed men, handcuffed, hurried from one tribunal to another, and He doing nothing to defend Himself! And then they found that the High Priests and Pharisees, who had hitherto been so often foiled by the wisdom and miracles of Jesus, had now succeeded in their conspiracy against Him—what a shock to their confidence! But there was to be something more trying still: the people who, but a few days before, greeted Him so enthusiastically with their hosannas, would demand His execution, and He would have to die between two thieves on the Cross, amidst the insults of His triumphant enemies.

Is it not to be feared that these Disciples of His, when they witness His humiliations and sufferings, will lose their courage? They have lived in His company for three years; but when they see that the things He foretold would happen to Him are really fulfilled, will the remembrance of all they have seen and heard keep them loyal to Him? or will they turn cowards and flee from Him?—Jesus selects three out of the number who are especially dear to Him: Peter, whom He has made the Rock, on which his Church is to be built, and to whom He has promised the Keys of the kingdom of heaven; James, the son of Thunder, who is to be the first Martyr of the Apostolic College; and John, James’ brother, and His own Beloved Disciple. Jesus has resolved to take them aside, and show them a glimpse of that glory which, until the day fixed for its manifestation, He conceals from the eyes of mortals.

He therefore leaves the rest of His Disciples in the plain near Nazareth, and goes, in company with the three privileged ones, towards a high hill called Thabor, which is a continuation of Libanus, and which the Psalmist tells us was to rejoice in the Name of the Lord. No sooner has He reached the summit of the mountain, than the three Apostles observe a sudden change come over Him; His Face shines as the sun, and His humble garments become white as snow. They observe two venerable men approach, and speak with Him upon what He was about to suffer in Jerusalem. One is Moses, the lawgiver; the other is Elias, the Prophet, who was taken up from earth on a fiery chariot, without having passed through the gates of death. These two great representatives of the Jewish Religion, the Law and the Prophets, humbly adore Jesus of Nazareth. The three Apostles are not only dazzled by the brightness which comes from their Divine Master; but they are filled with such a rapture of delight that they cannot bear the thought of leaving the place. Peter proposes to remain there forever, and build three tabernacles, for Jesus, Moses and Elias. And while they are admiring the glorious sight, and gazing on the beauty of their Jesus’ human Nature, a bright cloud overshadows them, and a Voice is heard speaking to them: it is the voice of the Eternal Father, proclaiming the Divinity of Jesus, and saying: This is My beloved Son!

This transfiguration of the Son of Man, this manifestation of His glory, lasted but a few moments; His mission was not on Thabor; it was humiliation and suffering in Jerusalem. He therefore withdrew into Himself the brightness He had allowed to transpire; and when He came to the three Apostles, who, on hearing the voice from the cloud, had fallen on their faces with fear—they could see no one save only Jesus. The bright cloud was gone; Moses and Elias had disappeared. What a favor they have had bestowed upon them! Will they remember what they have seen and heard? They have had such a revelation of the Divinity of their dear Master!—is it possible than when the hour of trial comes, they will forget it and doubt His being God? and when they see Him suffer and die, be ashamed of Him and deny Him? Alas! the Gospel has told us what happened to them.

A short time after this, our Lord celebrated His Last Supper with His Disciples. When the Supper was over, He took them to another mount, Mount Olivet, which lies to the east of Jerusalem. Leaving the rest at the entrance of the Garden, He advances with Peter, James, and John, and then says to them: My soul is sorrowful even unto death: stay you here, and watch with Me. He then retires some little distance from them and prays to His Eternal Father. The Heart of our Redeemer is weighed down with anguish. When He returns to His three Disciples, He is enfeebled by the Agony He has suffered, and His garments are saturated with Blood. The Apostles are aware that He is sad even unto death, and that the hour is close at hand when He is to be attacked: are they keeping watch? are they ready to defend Him? No: they seem to have forgotten Him; they are fast asleep, for their eyes are heavy. Yet a few moments, and all will have fled from Him; and Peter, the bravest of them all, will be taking His oath that he never knew the Man.

After the Resurrection, our three Apostles made ample atonement for this cowardly and sinful conduct, and acknowledged the mercy wherewith Jesus had sought to fortify them against temptation, by showing them His glory on Thabor, a few days before his Passion. Let us not wait till we have betrayed Him: let us at once acknowledge that He is our Lord and our God. We are soon to be keeping the anniversary of His Sacrifice; like the Apostles, we are to see Him humbled by His enemies and bearing, in our stead, the chastisements of Divine Justice. We must not allow our faith to be weakened, when we behold the fulfillment of those prophecies of David and Elias, that the Messias is to be treated as a worm of the earth, and be covered with wounds, so as to become like a leper, the most abject of men, and the Man of sorrows. We must remember the grand things of Thabor, and the adorations paid Him by Moses and Elias, and the bright cloud, and the voice of the Eternal Father. The more we see Him humbled, the more must we proclaim His glory and divinity; we must join our acclamations with those of the Angels and the Four-and-Twenty Elders, whom St. John (one of the witnesses of the Transfiguration) heard crying out with a loud voice: The Lamb that was slain, is worthy to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and benediction! (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Second Sunday of Lent.)

As she has been throughout the history of the Church, Our Lady is our sure refuge in our own times of apostasy and betrayal.  She wants to lead us to the glories of Heaven that were foreshadowed to our first pope and the sons of Zebedee atop Mount Thabor. Our Lady will protect us in these monstrous times if we ask her to do so as week her help to remain always pleasing to her Divine Son by means of Sanctifying Grace now and at the hour of our death.

Our Lady has told us that we are in the crossing of her arms and in the folds of her mantle. Shouldn’t this be enough to us as we run to her every day, protected by her Brown Scapular and showing our heart’s oblation to her by praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit?

We have Our Lady. She will shower us with the graces won for us by her Divine Son on the wood of the Holy Cross. She has told us that her Immaculate Heart will triumph in the end. May we keep close to her and to her Most Chaste Spouse, Saint Joseph, who is the patron of departing souls, so that we can have a blessed eternity in Heaven, where we can praise the Most Blessed Trinity with all of the angels and the saints.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon. 

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us! 

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, pray for us. 

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us. 

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us. 

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us. 

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us. 

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us. 

Appendix 

Father Francis X. Weninger Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent

“Lord, cleanse me more and more,” sighed David to God. We all have cause to repeat his cry, even if we forsake the path of evil, and endeavor to walk in the footsteps of the just. Though we try to exercise ourselves in good works, we are yet far from the perfection we ought to aspire to in all our actions, especially in those of daily routine, which our vocation upon earth obliges us to perform. These we must render, like the wheat in the Gospel, worthy of being placed in the granaries of heaven, and, despite their many imperfections, strive to keep in the category, so to say, of good deeds.

We are reminded of this in today’s Gospel: “And His garments became white as snow.” The garments which clothe our soul, are the good works which we practise, according to our station in life. If each one of these were performed with the purest intention, and were free from every stain of imperfection, what an adornment they would prove to be, how they would embellish the soul, and what a gain they would be for heaven! Unfortunately this is seldom the case. There are few of our works whose brightness is untarnished by sin.

We will consider today, particularly, the stains which deface our daily works, and meditate upon the best means of avoiding and guarding against them. Mary, thou who, according to Holy Writ, standest robed in garments of gold, before the throne of the Most High, thou, purest of the pure, in thought and deed, grant that we, taught and guided by thee, may gain strength to free ourselves from every stain of imperfection and sin! I speak in the most holy name of Jesus, to the greater glory of God.

St. John, speaking in the Apocalypse of the saints in heaven, says: “They were clothed in white robes.” These white garments and these shining, precious material of which they are made, says he, are righteousness and good works. This material is made up principally of our daily works. For, in order to become holy it is not necessary to perform great and astonishing outward deeds. The Almighty has not chosen or called every one for such a career; hence every one has not received the divine grace which it requires. As to those great works of which we read in the lives of the saints, they were not the means of making them what they were; it was, rather, the perfection with which they performed their daily duties which made them so rich in merit.

A friend of St. Francis de Sales used to say of this saint, that he did nothing unusual, and yet all that he did seemed unusual, on account of the perfect manner in which it was performed. And what are the stains which cling to our daily works and deface them, and often even totally destroy them, by robbing them of all merit for the life to come? They are these:

First, the stain of indolence, arising from a want of energy to rise early, and always at the same time, in order to say our morning prayers and to implore God to protect and bless us during the day. All who are indolent in rising, who begin the day slothfully and without devout, earnest prayer, stain thus early in the morning the robes of their soul.

The second stain on the robe of our daily works, is want of a pure intention to live that day only to fulfill the will of God, and to do all that we do for Him alone. We seek too much after self, and are too often actuated by the temporal motive of gaining wealth, honor, or enjoyment. This want of a pure intention is a stain on the white garment of our daily work.

Further, this robe is soiled by an ill-regulated performance of the duties of our state of life. We act either too sluggishly or too precipitatedly, with reluctance and through habit. We enter upon our daily duties without raising our minds to God, and, during the day, forget His holy presence. Instead, we often, without reflection or precaution, seek company and dissipation, fritter away our time in idle conversation, and, of course, sully our robe with many sins of the tongue. Who can count the sins that are daily committed by piously-inclined persons through want of a proper guard over their tongues?

Another abundant source of stains on our good works is want of charity. Under this head may be classed cutting remarks, unkind accusations and reproaches, often accompanied with contemptuous and offensive bearing. Then we contract stains by omitting to labor at the instruction and improvement of others, and, in general, to perform corporal and spiritual works of mercy. There are, besides, stains of rash suspicions and judgments, and even of participation in petty backbiting and calumny. I must not forget jealousy, envy, and general narrowness.

Stains in abundance fall on our daily actions from a want of trite love for the cross. Hence comes peevishness, hence impatience, that almost tears our good deeds to tatters. This is especially the case when, through want of love for the cross, man is tempted to murmur against divine Providence, or to submit unwillingly to the decrees of the Almighty.

To these may also be added the spots which arise from obstinacy, selfishness, conceit, presumption, and the want of mortification, a virtue without which life can not be truly holy. In conclusion, the luster of our daily works is stained, and the robe of our soul discolored by our carelessness in preventing temptations from approaching us, or by our sloth in banishing them as soon as they draw nigh.

What a subject for self-examination is all I have just said to yon, my dear listener! How many imperfections, think you, blemish the record of your good works?

As St. Ignatius assures us, the means of freeing ourselves from these imperfections lie in the unremitting exercise of particular examination, or the so-called special daily examine of conscience. Resolve that, from today, you will examine earnestly and faithfully your conscience, and will choose, as subject of your examine, one after the other, all the points I have placed before you. Then the robes of your good works, gradually cleansed from all imperfection, will become more and more white, until you will shine, clothed in most radiant garments, in the community of the saints! Amen! (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent.).