One Small Step... III How Do the Presidential Candidates Line up on Partial Birth Abortion?

For a ban on partial birth abortion:

Senator Sam Brownback Kansas (Republican)
ex-New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani (Republican)
Senator John McCain of Arizona (Republican)
Senator Joe Biden of Delaware (Democrat)

Giuliani's position seems to changed shifted since 1999.

Against a ban on partial birth abortion:

Senator Hillary Clinton of New York (Democrat)
Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut (Democrat)
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois (Democrat)
Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina (Democrat)

Senator Obama is "extremely concerned that this ruling will embolden state legislatures" to do more to stop abortions. So much for former President Clinton's desire to make abortions "rare."

For the details read LifeNews.com.

One Small Step... II

It has been a long time since the since the forces for life have read of a victory at the Supreme Legislature, er... I mean Court. After such a parched journey even a water drop is an estatic experience. Yet National Review cautions that it is only a partial victory.

The editors quote Justice John Paul Stevens who concurred as the court struck down Nebraska's partial birth abortion ban writing: “Although much ink is spilled today describing the gruesome nature of late-term abortion procedures, that rhetoric does not provide me a reason to believe that the procedure Nebraska here claims it seeks to ban is more brutal, more gruesome, or less respectful of ‘potential life’ than the equally gruesome procedure Nebraska claims it still allows. . . . [T]he notion that either of these two equally gruesome procedures performed at this late stage of gestation is more akin to infanticide than the other, or that the State furthers any legitimate interest by banning one but not the other, is simply irrational.”

He was right then. He is right now.

One Small Step for Little Humanity (as in "little humans")!!!

The Supreme Court allowed the federal government to ban partial birth abortions! Alleluia!

The Irony of Fate

Easter Sunday, 2007

Easter is the Feast when we celebrate Our Lord's triumph over this world. We must never despair. We must not let the ill turns of apparent fortune turn our hearts sour: God writes in crooked lines. Think how odd it is that the Supreme Court's arrogance in Roe V. Wade has done more to get true believing Protestants and Catholics to work together than all the ecumenical commissions of scholars and prelates put together!

Does God work good through evil? It is too horrible a question to approach, much less answer. Its ugliness drives me to retreat into a fetal position of childish faith. Yet its true answer seems so much more subtle than I can express. In the Lord of the Rings, Evil always seems sure to win. When the heads of your friends are catapulted over the walls of Minas Tirith, can there be any hope left? But your duty is to soldier on. True faith is pietas: doing your fate when you know in your heart you must lose!


Think of Tolkien. You know Sauron can not lose. At least by any calculations of this world. Yet, weakness triumphs! There seems in the books a fate driving events ill, but yet it is undermined by a subtler doom. It is as if there is an apparent fate that shouts through the corridors of time, while Providence whispers. What causes the ring to fall just when it does so that Bilbo finds it? Why does Frodo become the Ringbearer? Tolkien portrays better than my prose can articulate the true nature of Providence. Still more important for our souls, he shows us that any victory on this earth (this middle yard or Middle Earth) is but temporary. There is ultimate victory, but it is not here. It is like Christ's that we celebrate this Easter Day: it comes after death to this world. Then we triumph. That is the true, if not comforting, meaning of the Christian virtue of hope.

The word "virtue" (Latin: "virtus") originally meant a manly quality. The Christian virtue of hope has a larger component of courage than we care to admit.

Happy Easter and soldier on!

Celebrating Holy Week In Iraq

Amy Welborn reproduces a report of what it was like to go to mass on Palm Sunday in Mosul. So you think it is too much trouble to go to mass?