Obama advisor John Holdren: newborns are not fully human

Who is in the White House?  Who are President Obama’s choice advisers?

This from LifeSite with my emphases and comments.

Obama Science Advisor John Holdren Also Said Newborn Baby Not Fully Human

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 29, 2009

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — John Holdren, the Science Czar chosen by pro-abortion President Barack Obama, has already come under criticism for backing population control and forced abortions. [Get that?  Forced abortions.]  Now, new information is appearing showing Holdren didn’t believe that newborn infants are fully human.

Holdren co-wrote a 1973 book ,“Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions," with infamous population control advocate Paul Ehrlich in which his view supporting forced abortion appears.

Holdren’s office later denied he held those views.  [But… scriptum manet is, I think, the principle here.  Mr. Holdren could publicly clarify his views, of course.  I think a microphone could be found for him and people might pay attention.]

In another manuscript, Holdren also says a newborn child “will ultimately develop into a human being” if properly fed and socialized[So, for Holdren, how a person thinks and acts determines the level of "human"?]

“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food [ummm… does this mean that the under-nourished are not fully human?  Are the over nourished, then, super-human?  Or do they lose humaness due to lack of what some expert defines as "ideal weight"?] during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being,” Holdren wrote.

Obama chose Holdren to become the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

According to a report in CNS News, the controversial passage is found on page 235 in the 1973 book in chapter 8, titled “Population Limitation.” The news service indicates the book, written before the Roe v. Wade decision, argued in favor of legalized abortion.

"To a biologist the question of when life begins for a human child is almost meaningless," Holdren argues. [What a monstrous position.] "To most biologists, an embryo (unborn child during the first two or three months of development) or a fetus is no more a complete human being than a blueprint is a building."

Holdren continues, "The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being. Where any of these essential elements is lacking, the resultant individual will be deficient in some respect.”

Holdren also notes that legal scholars don’t view unborn children as human under the U.S. Constitution until “it is born.

“From this point of view, a fetus is only a potential human being" with potential italicized in Holdren’s book. “Historically, [So… he is a kind of originalist… what an ironic twist…] the law has dated most rights and privileges from the moment of birth, and legal scholars generally agree that a fetus is not a ‘person’ within the meaning of the United States Constitution until it is born and living independent of its mother’s body.”

CNS news indicates Holdren argues for abortion, saying it spares “unwanted children” from “undesirable consequences.”  [Such as being born.]

Monster.

I wonder if he presently holds these views.

People can, after all, eventually grow up and develop into a human being.

Just remember… President Obama is committed to reducing the number of abortions.  Keep saying that to yourself over and over again.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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28 Comments

  1. Amy MEV says:

    Classic comment at the end, Father.

  2. thereseb says:

    ‘In another manuscript, Holdren also says a newborn child “will ultimately develop into a human being” if properly fed and socialized.’

    Looks like Mother Holden wasn’t too hot at some aspects of the socialization.

  3. Jack Hughes says:

    Monsters like Holdren are what happen when people abandon sound philosophy i.e. Thomism (yes I know that other philosophies have been used by pope’s saint’s ect but Leo XIII says that that the AD’s philosophy is par excellance), I’d love to go five rounds with him at the Oxford debating society.

  4. DavidJ says:

    As monstrous as the view is, it does have consistency. If you hold that a fetus that travels down a birth canal becomes a human being once it’s traversed a couple of inches and emerged, you’re off your logical rocker. At least this guy’s gotten rid of that notion.

    That being said, it’s still a monstrous view.

  5. Agnes says:

    Right, after all, a fetus is only a little human.

    I wonder if Mr. Holdren ever received sufficient nourishment and socialization himself, and so…? Hitlerian line of thinking, isn’t it.

  6. Girgadis says:

    I really frown on mindless references to Nazis, etc. [Indeed… cf. Godwin’s Law] but isn’t this the same sort of thinking that gave rise to concentration camps and the mass genocide of people viewed to be less than human? But of course, pro-aborts don’t view abortion as genocide because they don’t acknowledge that the victims are human. In fact, they don’t even acknowledge that there IS a victim. Most frightening, to me at least, is the commonly held view that there is something good about abortion and that ecological concerns trump the right of a baby to be born. I would bet there is something of this nature in his chapter about population limitation. It’s sickening.

  7. mpm says:

    To most biologists, an embryo (unborn child during the first two or three months of development) or a fetus is no more a complete human being than a blueprint is a building.

    This is so typical of what you would here in the ’60s and ’70s.

    The analogy of the “blueprint” is a poor choice, since it is redolent of the artificial, i.e., the “man-made”, not the natural development proper of living things. There is a blueprint, but one which requires no architect, general contractor, sub-contractors or other extrinisic assistance apart from its mother’s body, in order to “construct” itself. That’s what it means to be “natural”.

    As to the “potentially human” argument: If absolute human perfection is the standard, are any of us human?

  8. John V says:

    President Barack Obama: Taking the politics out of science. And the ethics. And the science.

  9. Dove says:

    Philosopher Peter Singer has been pushing a consistent culture of death philosophy for many many years, giving the philosophical underpinnings for the animal rights movement making humans and animals equivalent–after all if you cease to be a dog owner and become a dog guardian then the dog has legally shifted to the legal equivalent of a child. After all, in law, a legal guardian has previously only been for children or people who need protection of a guardian due to old age or other disability. Once the mind of the culture shifts to accepting that one is a guardian of child or an animal, then it is a smaller logic step to accepting that medical decisions made for pets (such as euthanasia to avoid suffering, or to end the life because of some disability) are reasonably applied to humans for the same reasons of avoiding pain other suffering.

    The evil we are seeing rising into power is there because Christians have forgotten that we are Church Militant and meant to be fighting the darkness of evil. The philosophy of Peter Singer goes unchallenged, the assertions of the animal rights movement go mostly unchallenged, the abortion and euthanasia questions are hardly considered in our everyday lives–we are effectively ASLEEP in the light of God’s grace and ALLOWING evil to prosper.

    More prayer and lots more action are needed.

  10. haleype says:

    “The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being. Where any of these essential elements is lacking, the resultant individual will be deficient in some respect.

    Apparently, Holdren had some “essential elements, early socializing or nourishment” lacking in his development. Egads, what a jerk!

  11. gloriainexcelsis says:

    A scanning of the backgrounds of Pres. Obama’s appointees as “czars,” etc., show the most radical left-wing idealogues ever. Holdren is only one. As we should know by now, re: promises – Watch what he does, not what he says. Pray.

  12. Ellen says:

    He is just one in a long line of eugenicists. They think that if only we can get rid of the “human weeds”, we can achieve heaven here on earth. Margaret Sanger was one, so was H.G. Wells, so is Peter Singer and this guy too.

    They and their ideas are not new, but they are dangerous. Pray for our country.

  13. wolskerj says:

    I think “Monster” is accurate.

    For more info on Holdren and Ehrlich’s book Ecoscience go here.

    and for more on his current views see this interesting (but sickening) essay about his lifelong admiration for the eugenicist Harrison Brown

    Chesterton was right – “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”

  14. Prof. Basto says:

    Let me see if I get this straight:

    For Holdren, an individual with a disease or condition that affects social interaction and communication will not ultimately develop into a human being? That individual will bear a deficiency, a disability at the level of his or her humanity? Is that it?

    In other words, for President Obama’s “science czar”, people, say, with autism, aren’t really human beings like the rest of us? Is my logic wrong?

    Now, given that they are not fully human, do they enjoy, in the science czar’s opinion, the same protection of the Laws as we do, or do they have fewer rights?

    Will the White House’s environmental program involve the use of Zyklon-B?

  15. Dismas says:

    How’s Malta, Doug?

  16. Jack Hughes says:

    As someone with Autism I’d like to second Prof. Bastro

    To continue his point, then Bill Gates, Thomas Edison and Issac Newton wern’t/arn’t human despite the fact that they exercised their rational faculties, one wonders if mr Holdren and Dr Strangelove of Princeton would prefer to put thier ideas to paper with quills whilst writing by kerosene lamps

  17. moon1234 says:

    While some would like to compare this man to Hitler, I think this is only a partial comparison. Hitler believed in a Supreme Aryan race. As such it was absolutely forbidden to harm an “Aryan” child even while in the womb. To do so was a capital offense.

    This man can more rightly be equated to Dr. Josef Mengele. Dr. Mengele was the doctor who used twins and other children at Auschwitz to perform science experiments. Dr. Mengele used the EXACT same logic, however he was not a selective killer like Hitler. He would kill anyone or anything for his perverse research.

    At the Nuremberg trials the “doctors” even argued that the work they were doing was for the greater good and so the horrors that they performed were justified.

    The whole facist state is rebuilding itself in the Obama administration. The next few years will be a very interesting time to live thru. We need our Catholic leaders to be strong and more vocal now more than ever before.

  18. Andy Lucy says:

    I believe that Obama might just be able to cut down on abortions. If this guy’s views become the norm, infanticide may just replace abortion as the procedure de jour to deal with certain troublesome beings, those “not yet fully human” creatures.

    I do hope that his views have “matured” a bit. I also agree with moon1234, in that to call this guy a Nazi is degrading to the Nazis, in that they were not in favor of wholesale abortion and infanticide, as Holdren apparently is.

  19. medievalist says:

    [deadpan] And such news is surprising because…? [/deadpan].

  20. Here is a question that ought to be offered to the WH Spokesman:

    Pres. Obama voted against measures that would have kept a baby surviving an abortion any medical help. Pres. Obama appointed to his staff an adviser who doesn’t believe that babies are necessarily human beings. Does the President believe that babies who have been born are human beings?

  21. ssoldie says:

    I believe his mother and father were complete failures.. He fits right in with the B.O. administration. God help us.

  22. Subvet says:

    “Just remember… President Obama is committed to reducing the number of abortions. Keep saying that to yourself over and over again.”

    Everytime I drink some Kool-Aid.

  23. joan ellen says:

    It gets ‘scarier’ by the day. Even for some of us among those who receive the Sacraments often, even daily. Her words, -the Blessed Mother’s- “Pray, Pray, Pray” become more meaningful by the day. Even if we tend toward the loss of hope for a return to a more reasonable state, at least we can still be consoled by prayer and the Sacraments. And if necessary, the mere thought of them can bring us to joy and gratitude.

  24. JohnE says:

    “The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being. Where any of these essential elements is lacking, the resultant individual will be deficient in some respect.”

    Dr. Holdren looks a little gray and appears to have deficient eyesight. Perhaps at one point in his life he was a human being, but clearly not any longer.

  25. MPetryjr says:

    Don’t forget Ezekiel Emmanuel, the WH Chief of Staff’s brother, who is the President’s chief advisor on healthcare reform. He holds some “unsavory” beliefs on end of life too. It is going to take a lot to change my opinion that Mr. Obama is not leaning this direction.

  26. Henry Edwards says:

    A prescient blog post by my comrade in arms and self-described crusty curmudgeon Ken Craven, a deep and unapologetic Catholic thinker of the old school:

    http://truewester.blogspot.com/2009/07/imagining-horror-of-evil-part-one.html

    “The message: a new day has dawned for the whole world. ….. Nazism, socialism, Marxism, fascism: all agree on the central doctrine. The State decides what human life is and eliminates all who do not fit into the perfect society. …..

    “There is no link between that horrible world and this, you may say. Particularly if you are a young reader and have no sense of modern history, you might think such horrors are the stuff or period pieces. The question now, in 2009, is can you imagine the horrors that are here now? …..

    “Consider this: President Obama’s new ‘science czar,’ John Holdren, once floated the idea in a textbook that forced abortions, compulsory sterilization, and an international authority that would control all population levels and natural resources would become necessary to save the planet. No questions were asked, and John Holdren— MIT, Stanford, and an expert at the Kennedy School of Government—was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate in 2009.”

    “The Eichmanns are among us. The Nazis are here. At your elbow.”

  27. Henry: And I don’t think this is merely Godwin’s Law kicking in.

  28. Agnes says:

    *Does the President believe that babies who have been born are human beings?*

    Father, I think the President would tell us he believes whatever his audience at a given time and place would have him believe. He is a political chameleon. And I think his spokesman would find a slippery way to answer – Why of course – children are the future of our great nation, full of human potential (potentially human…)

    I seem to remember some nut trying to make a distinction – saying babies were human *beings* but not human *persons*. One being less valuable than the other.

    Oy. Verbal gymnastics are being used to stretch reality. Which way is up again?

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