NFP Week

I was talking with a friend this morning who excitedly told me that it was NFP Week.

Who knew there was even such a thing?

A few minutes later we chatted again, this time to commiserate the fact that we missed it. NFP Week was last week!

The USCCB site states that, "The dates highlight the anniversary of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae (July 25) and mark the feast of Saints Joachim and Anne (July 26)."

For more information on NFP click here.

What on Earth is a "Risk of Pregnancy?"

As the "Morning-After Pill" continues to debut at a pharmacy near you, we will be hearing of more and more pharmacists refusing to sell the drug.

A pharmacy owner and two pharmacists have recently sued Washington state due to a new regulation that requires them to sell this form of emergency contraception.

"So what's the fuss?" One may wonder.

Well, for one, one of the functions of the "Morning-After Pill" is to mess with the lining of a woman's uterus. If a woman does conceive, the new life cannot implant inside her uterine wall. The supporters of "emergency contraception" drugs claim that if there is no implantation then there is no pregnancy.

Science begs to differ.

After all, a woman is still able to conceive- and that newly conceived life is just that- a new life.

The pharmacists are claiming that this mandate violates their civil rights by "forcing them into choosing between 'their livelihoods and their deeply held religious and moral beliefs."

Typically pharmacists with personal objections to certain drugs can simply have a co-worker fill an order instead. Personally, I think that is sort of pointless. If I were a pharmacist and didn't want to give someone a certain drug, how is my mind reconciled if I just turn to a colleague and have her do it? "Hey, I don't want to do this bad thing- you do the bad thing!"

The Associated Press once again out-does itself by describing the drug this way: "Sold as Plan B, emergency contraception is a high dose of the drug found in many regular birth-control pills. It can lower the risk of pregnancy by as much as 89 percent if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex."

To which I ask, "What on earth is a risk of pregnancy?" Are there little baby terrorists that invade women? Or does new life come naturally? Are women to put crazy chemicals in their body to try to ward off what is completely healthy? How on earth can people say that women are empowered when women are also told that there is an emergency if a baby is in their midst?

Then again the Food and Drug Administration already paved the path to brilliancy when it made the morning-after pill available without a prescription. Apparently the FDA sees no problem declaring that women's perfectly healthy bodies are "risky."

Partial Progress

Well Louisiana is no loser.

On Friday it became the first state to out-law crushing the skull of partially birthed babies.

Now before anyone thinks that this is an extreme law, consider that the new law allows partial-birth abortions when failure to perform it would endanger the mother's life.

The only argument I've ever heard in support of partial-birth abortion is that it needs to be legal in order to keep women alive.

All proposals to make partial-birth abortion illegal have included the exception of the life of the mother as a permissible circumstance.

According to the Associated Press article on Foxnews.com...

Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed into law criminal penalties for doctors who perform the surgery: fines of between $1,000 and $10,000, and jail terms of between one and 10 years.

Some people may be thinking, "Didn't the prez sign into law a ban on partial-birth abortion?"

Well, he did. But it's held up in the Supreme Court.

Apparently the United States Supreme

Court isn't sure if having your brains sucked out should be illegal or not.

Wow, I'm being graphic. Not my style.

But seriously, the babies are not going to talk for themselves.

The really objective news media summarizes that, "Nationwide, there are just a few thousand such abortions, according to rough estimates, out of more than 1.25 million abortions in the United States annually."

Just a few thousand? What is wrong with us? Why can't we, the great United States, have a higher standard for how we treat the most delicate among us?

The "Religious Right"

I couldn't help but chuckle when I stumbled upon a Planned Parenthood website lamenting how the "religious right" is tactically coercing young Americans to abstain from sexual relations before marriage.

Abstinence-Only Programs on PP's website.

For any lingering thoughts that Planned Parenthood remotely supports a diversity of lifestyles, buyer beware. The support of diversity and the tolerance of different life-styles does not include those who simply wish to keep the 'marital union' in a marital union.