Coming to a neighborhood near you?

It is hard to imagine that we live in a world in which this is possible, but we do.

I think everyone should take a time each day not only to make a good examination of conscience, but also to contemplate the Last Things and also to get your head into a mental place wherein you can see these sorts of things happening to you and your loved ones.

85-year-old French man fined: urging woman not to have abortion

85-year-old French pro-lifer Xavier Dor was fined 5,000 euro ($6,350) Monday by the Appeals Court of Paris for having exerted “moral and psychological pressure” to dissuade a woman from having an abortion, reports LifeSiteNews.

In 2012, the frail, almost blind, medical doctor, pediatrician, and researcher had given tiny knitted baby shoes to a woman who was approaching a Planned Parenthood center in central Paris.

The court also imposed a suspended fine of 5,000 euro, payable in case of a repeated offense, and awarded 750 euro damages to each of the three pro-abortion associations that had introduced the judiciary proceedings against Dor.

[…]

Meanwhile…

From thecollegefix:

TRENDING: MORE COLLEGE STUDENTS SUPPORT POST-BIRTH ABORTION

A trend seen by prolife activists that frequently engage college students on campuses nationwide is the growing acceptance of post-birth abortion, or killing the infant after he or she is born, campus prolife outreach leaders tell The College Fix.

Anecdotal evidence by leaders of prolife groups such as Created Equal and Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust said in interviews that not only do they see more college students willing to say they support post-birth abortion, but some students even suggest children up to 4 or 5-years-old can also be killed, because they are not yet “self aware.”

“We encounter people who think it is morally acceptable to kill babies after birth on a regular basis at almost every campus we visit,” said Mark Harrington, director of Created Equal. “While this viewpoint is still seen as shocking by most people, it is becoming increasingly popular.”

Campuses where the high school, college students, local activists and staff members of Created Equal have encountered this opinion include Purdue, University of Minnesota, and University of Central Florida. And at Ohio State earlier this year, the group captured a debate on video between one of its members and an older woman on campus who defended infanticide.

“This is the whole problem with devaluing human life at any stage—it will naturally grow to include other groups of humans; in this case, born humans as well as preborn humans,” Harrington said. “[I] talked with one young man at the University of Minnesota who thought it was alright to kill children if they were under the age of 5 years old, as he did not consider them persons until that age.”

[…]

So, it has arrived at a neighborhood near me, in a way.

The University of Minnesota was ideologically skewed when I was there, a long time ago. It has gotten worse, I see. To think of U of M and “alma mater” in the same sentence after reading this gives me a chill.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
This entry was posted in Emanations from Penumbras, Four Last Things, Religious Liberty, Semper Paratus, Sin That Cries To Heaven, The Coming Storm, The Drill, The future and our choices, The Last Acceptable Prejudice and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

18 Comments

  1. The Masked Chicken says:

    I thought that the younger generation was supposed to be more pro-life. This is a very skewed sample of people willing to argue with the pro-life groups. It is hardly a fair and unbiased sample. I suspect that many of these people have been influenced by Peter Singer.

    The Chicken

  2. LarryW2LJ says:

    “Post-birth abortion”, because the word “murder” has a such an ugly connotation!

  3. +JMJ+ says:

    One of the things about this article…if the video they’re referring to in that article is the one I’ve seen, the woman in question had no clue was meant by “post-birth abortion.” She was quite clearly defending the right to ABORTION, not infanticide. Not that this makes it much better, but we need to make sure that the pro-life side of the issue makes accurate statements, because an inaccuracy like this can discredit the entire article or argument.

    That being said, this actually surprises anybody? Remember – we’re the country that served as the model for Hitler’s eugenics program.

  4. moconnor says:

    My 4-year-old son is most certainly “self aware.” Just extend the practice to stupid college students (I am college professor, and I see examples every day) and this nonsense will stop.

  5. Kathleen10 says:

    Shocking, and as The Chicken said, the name that came to mind was the notorious Peter Singer. Hell surely yawns before “Professor” Singer, promoting all these years of the murder of born children. His influence has probably been significant on college campuses. These sick notions catch on and spread exactly like pop trends do among teens. Universities have become the best venue for spreading evil.

  6. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    “[I] talked with one young man at the University of Minnesota who thought it was alright to kill children if they were under the age of 5 years old, as he did not consider them persons until that age.”

    Imagine what-all else pre-fives will be available for, without appreciable legal protection, on these terms.

    I remember, partly in the Singer context, looking into the legal situation in Britain some 30 years ago, and finding that in various details unborn animals enjoyed considerably more protection than unborn people with respect to experimentation on them…

  7. MKR says:

    Academics overwhelmingly support infanticide. These are college kids. This isn’t surprising. My generation will be the first solidly pro-infanticide-choice American generation.

  8. Legisperitus says:

    Dear Chicken: It doesn’t even seem to pretend to be a representative sample, since it says it’s “anecdotal” rather than statistical. Still, it’s scary enough that they can even find a few collegiate skulls full of mush who think it’s OK to murder what they themselves were 15 years earlier.

  9. JeremyB says:

    The interviewer should have asked if the student thought it should be acceptable for his fellow students to take his life while he is in a drunken coma with Sharpie marked all over his face with his “friends” taking pictures of him and putting them on Instagram. He is not self-aware at that time either.

  10. JesusFreak84 says:

    OK, I want off this planet >.>

  11. The Masked Chicken says:

    “Academics overwhelmingly support infanticide.”

    Don’t over-generalize. Certain academic disciplines are more liberal than others. Most academics probably do not support infanticide, although many in certain areas support a liberal agenda. English professors are, in my observation, overwhelmingly liberal, but classical musicians are overwhelmingly conservative. I suspect that either the academic discipline trains the man towards liberalism or the man is attracted to the particular discipline because of its liberal features.

    The Chicken

  12. CrimsonCatholic says:

    Masked Chicken,

    Most polling I’ve seen shows that the youth in majority support legal abortion in most or all cases. The Pew poll from the beginning of September has 58% of 18-25 year olds favor legal abortion in most or all cases. A similar Quinnipiac University poll from earlier in the year has 57% favor the same in the 18-49 year old group. Only the 65+ age group was significantly less. Have you seen a historic trend for the 18-25 year old views on abortion? I have seen that the overall population trend of those who wanted abortion in most or all cases had decreased a couple years ago from the level in the 90’s. However, I have never seen the youth support trended anywhere.

  13. aviva meriam says:

    Have any of you spent time in the TEEN section of the local Bookstore. It you want to understand where some of this is coming from, spend time in that Teen section of B&N…. in particular spend time in the DYSTOPIAN section.

    The Unwind series (by Neal Shusterman) is an AWARD WINNING series about a world where parents can LEGALLY unwind a teenager between ages 13 and 18. The unwinding process is disassembling the teen body and using the parts for transplant. In the series, most clergy are in agreement with the idea (some adherents TITHE a child ). The author’s neutral stance is that since parents cannot abort before birth, this is the compromise to deal with the unwanted.

    Our Culture does NOT value Life.
    We do not defend Life nor the Creator of Life.
    Are we surprised our youth (the readers or MARKET for this genre) lack any respect for life?
    I don’t know the statistics (or trend lines) but my guess is, if you “read the culture” we will see more horror in the future.

  14. KateD says:

    Here’s a video of college kids signing a a petition to murder children up to the age of 5:

    http://youtu.be/92VOxknTtlM

    It makes me think of the babies who were killed when Moses was an infant and the innocents murdered by Herod shortly after Jesus and John the Baptist were born. The numbers lost in the last 40 years are unimaginably more than in those instances….it makes one wonder at the spiritual repercussions.

    I have hope for the future, though, as there are some really wonderful young people working to end abortion. The next generation’s prolifers are intelligent, dedicated and will not rest until the rights of the unborn are protected under the law.

  15. The Masked Chicken says:

    “Most polling I’ve seen shows that the youth in majority support legal abortion in most or all cases.”

    My point was not to say that youth are more pro-life, now, but, rather, that I have heard that there was a supposed return to conservative values among the young (as witnessed by the more conservative younger priests) and that this did not seem to jibe with the report in this post.

    The Chicken

  16. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    aviva meriam,

    Whew! The things one hasn’t heard of, but ought to have! Thank you!

    It sounds like Neal Schusterman has taken the premise of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005: film version, 2010) and run with it – combining it with the caricatural Christian-bashing of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985: film version 1990) – although a lot of successful effort seems to have been going into producing such clergy in many “Churches and ecclesiatical communities” (to use the terminlogy of Lumen gentium 15) over the course of the past half-century and more, without the ‘ inconvenience’ of the unavailability of legal abortion.

    The questions of content, including (authorial) perspectives, of dystopian and science fiction, and related possibilities of influence and opportunity are more complex. For example, I think one can benefit from reading Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and Orwell’s 1984 (1949) without sharing all their ideas (which is not a sweeping recommendation of either book!), even as non-Catholics can benefit from Benson’s Lord of the World (1907). That is not to say your “guess […], if you ‘read the culture’ we will see more horror in the future”, is an unlikely one. Yet the authors, working with the ‘materials’ provided in creation, by the Creator, cannot prevent readers seeing more truth in their works than they intended.

  17. aviva meriam says:

    ‘Venerator Sti Lot

    I read 1984 as a young teen and read it as a warning…. a literary shot across the bow. I did not see it as advocating the mindless, dictatorial nightmare state, but rather a direct case at the power of group think. I HOPE the teens reading today’s dystopian literature are analytically inclined… enough to see through all the positions presented. I pray the readers will see through the author’s intent and reach truth.

    Please don’t buy the books or increase the number of hits to Shusterman’s website (or on Amazon). I don’t want to reward him.

    My reason for pessimism is the growing acceptance of the Margaret Sanger/Nazi euthanasia movement language. “Life unworthy of life ” has become “quality of life” and “personal choice”. A woman with inoperable brain cancer would NOT have publicized her intent to commit suicide 20 years ago, and is now lauded by many within the popular culture as “brave” after releasing videos.

    It’s one level of evil to say (as Bill Clinton did in the 1990’s) that abortion “should be safe, legal and rare” and another to state with pride the number of abortions had (like Wendy Davis).

    Just fear the slippery slope created by moral relativism. Or, as one friend said “this is what happens when a nation takes God out of their lives”……

  18. ASD says:

    At least pre-Christian Romans were consistent about the question. Here’s Seneca on what to do with kids we don’t want (De Ira, I.XV.2):

    portentosos fetus extinguimus, liberos quoque, si debiles monstrosique editi sunt, mergimus; nec ira sed ratio est a sanis inutilia secernere.

    we destroy monstrous births, and we also drown our children if they are born weakly or unnaturally formed; to separate what is useless from what is sound is an act, not of anger, but of reason.

    If you think it can’t happen here in the civilized blue state suburbs, consider: Seneca has been considered one of the most civilized men who ever lived.

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