SC Bombshell: Court Knocks Down Excessive Texas' Abortion Law In 5-3 Decision

States with major impediments to abortions.

Imagine, just imagine, if getting a colonoscopy required one to only have it at a fully -equipped surgical operation center, and with all gastroenterologists required to have full  admitting privileges to a hospital.  If that were in fact the case the cost of colonoscopies would go through the proverbial roof, and fewer people would have access to them at  gastroenterology screening centers. Fortunately, this is not the case so that if the gastroenterologist accidentally perforates your colon (which happens in about 1 of 200 cases) then you still must be rushed to the nearest ER for repair surgery. The existing centers do not have the wherewithal to do it.

Well, in Whole Woman's Health vs. Hellstedt Texas tried to impose similar burdens on abortion clinics which already had been whittled from 41 down to 19, and only 9 or so would have been left. This would have made getting abortion services extremely problematical for most women in the state given its vast expanses.

The Texas law, passed in 2013, would have required abortion clinics to act more like hospital surgical centers, so they would have had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars - and in some cases millions - to upgrade their facilities.  It also would have required doctors at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges. The state claimed the actual aim was to protect women's health, to ensure they had the optimum facilities for their recovery and so on.

Of course, any idiot could see through this smoke screen, given it basically used the ruse of making the perfect the enemy of the "good". Thus, most abortion clinics in the state were good enough to ensure women's health was protected but Texas insisted on making them "perfect".

Thanks to Justice Anthony Kennedy this bogus law has now been shot down, as well as a raft of similar bogus laws being considered in other states. Obviously, since this has set a judicial precedent then any other wacko state that tries to implement it will also lose.

Thus, had the court upheld the law in this case, it would have not only affected Texas but other states considering similar laws restricting women's access to abortions.

Interestingly, this marks the first time Justice Kennedy found an abortion regulation he didn't like, which went too far, and as Justice Stephen Breyer put it in his opinion the Texas law "imposed an undue burden on women to obtain an abortion".

The whole episode speaks to the extreme use of subterfuge, diversion and distraction that  states are now willing to invoke in order to try to do an end run around Roe vs. Wade.. Fortunately, even if Antonin Scalia had been alive and present on the court it wouldn't have made a difference - other than one more for the opponents.

Another reason liberals have no choice but to vote Hillary this November. We can't afford the luxury of women losing any more ground in the abortion wars.

Confusing Issues Again: The Reeptards Mix Up Cecil The Lion Outrage with Abortions At Planned Parenthood

One of the many daffy images put out by the Right to try to make millions feel guilt over reacting with sympathy to Cecil the Lion's brutal slaughter- but not to abortions.

Jeebus! The sanctimonious ninnies and nannies of the Right never cease to amaze. Now we have Sen. Marco Rubio - running for President- bellyaching that we oughtn't get so worked up over Cecil the Lion when "hundreds of human babies are being annihilated every day". Uh look, dingbat, last time I checked those were not "babies" but fetuses.  Repeat after me: Neither a zygote or fetus  is a baby, or a person!

But trying to drill through their craniums is like trying to drill through concrete. It just doesn't work because they are incapable of processing scientific distinctions, far less nuanced arguments. Hence, the hue and a cry raised by conservos over  people's reactions to Cecil's vile butchering but "they're hardly making a sound over all those butchered babies". Well, maybe because some of us are intelligent enough to be able to distinguish a zygote or fetus from a baby!

Let's leave aside for the moment the fact that no sane person in his or her right mind can possibly regard a "zygote" as a person, or a fetus as an "unborn child". There is simply no standard by which that passes even elemental laws or tests of logic, or science.  A child cannot be "unborn" because by definition it is already born!  Thus, we send the 'child' to school, get him to do his homework, to take his medicine, cross streets safely, respect his elders and so on. If unborn, it's a fetus, not a "child"  so all those activities are preposterous. They also show the entity is not a person. Don't these ignorant twits know any better?

A person, a human person, must have at least minimal capacity for basic cognition and rudimentary choice. It must possess a brain, at the very least, which evinces definite brain waves. Anything that doesn't is a proto-human entity, but clearly not a person. The logical error made is called the "genetic fallacy" as first described by Antony Flew ('Thinking About Thinking'). That is, arguing that because a thing is going to become something, it IS something. It would be like me picking up an acorn and claiming it's an oak tree. Nope. No way. Only an insane person would assert that!

So why all the outrage about Cecil the Lion and not extending to unformed zygotes or aborted fetuses? Because Cecil was an independent, autonomous living creature in his own right - not a parasite dependent for its existence on the blood supply of another.  Cecil was also the embodiment of a nation's pride as that magnificent, autonomous beast - with his black mane.

In addition, Cecil's death was violent beyond measure with the SOB Walter Palmer letting him suffer 40 hrs. before finishing him off then lopping off his beautiful head to mount as a trophy - while letting the carcass to rot after skinning. DO NOT even try to compare this with aborting a zygote!

As for those knuckle draggers who insist on charging after Planned Parenthood after those  videos by a nutso group ('Center for Medical Progress') - obtained surreptitiously and hence illegally because of state wiretapping laws (i.e. against electronically recording conversations without the person's permission) let me clear up a few things:

- Most of Planned Parenthood's services are NOT for abortion. The true data, shows that barely 3% were abortion services last year, the remaining 97% were for health screenings such as mammograms, pap smears, and even prostate exams for males. None of this was disseminated by the vile Rs, but when one traced the source, he located the lie most often being repeated at Fox

- NO federal funds are used for abortions. Under the Title X legislative clause, they are not permitted to use one single dime of federally allocated funds for abortions! This is a detail that could be pursued anywhere, yet as we know, believers seldom do this because of the risk of having their preconceptions overturned by facts!

- NO profits are obtained from the distribution of fetal tissue. Women who have miscarriages or abortions voluntarily donate that tissue to help others, such as those suffering from MS, Parkinson's disease etc.

Instead of getting hysterical, the Right's minions need to more thoroughly avail themselves of facts before they go bonkers over the outrage directed at Cecil's slaughter, and not at the abortion of zygotes or fetuses. Also, if they wish to be taken seriously in respect to their extraordinary concern for the unborn - they need to show lots more concern as well as action on behalf of the already born! 

The problem is that all those now screeching loudest on behalf of all those unborn are prepared to turn a blind eye to the needs of the already born. Thus, they are morally near sighted in vociferously defending unborn life but failing to stretch that concern to supporting life of actual real life humans- already born.  Thus, their hand-wringing over the value of life in the womb comes up hollow. One could then ask them what they are doing:


- To provide affordable health care and proper nutrition benefits to the baby-child. (If against Obamacare and specifically contraception then they are enablers of the abortions they complain about)

- To provide state-run and paid for child care to a mom trying to get off welfare, or to be able to work.

- To provide free schooling, right through university, as Barbados and other progressive nations have done.


If you're only pro-life to birth, then you're a damned hypocrite, and don’t truly believe black lives (or any lives) matter at all.  If you’re an anti-higher tax clone of Grover Norquist – or believe taxes are only for military defense and not social support, ditto.

If you're truly pro-life you have to take civic, community ownership for the child's welfare -after it is born as much as before, via appropriate legislation- enabling it, not impeding it. And further this has to be effective  all the way through that child’s dependent years.

Even conservative WSJ columnist William Galston acknowledges the crucial importance of universal post-natal care- something most liberals have long advocated. He notes it would be "wonderful if churches and voluntarily organizations" were doing this, but they aren't because the scale necessary is too large for them. Hence, "when families are weak either government steps in or children don't have a fair chance to succeed." Thus, liberals are correct in favoring gov't interventions that "start at birth  or before".  But especially after birth in providing subsidized child care, thereby enabling mothers to seek employment and not have to worry about their charges.

But rather than make the effort to raise taxes for the provision of such care the moral phonies on the Right are more about protecting life up until birth. It costs too much in tax dollars to take care of it after. Besides, "that's the parents' job and if they can't do it..." - well, you can finish the sentence. Try to find an ending that makes sense given the Reepos are so het up on defense of pre-natal life.

 Given the Right's miscreants have no problem with eschewing the quality of life after birth (for humans) it's no surprise they wouldn't care about the after-birth lives of other living things - including Cecil the Lion. Or dismiss them as "no big deal". Therein the problem lies, including in the resistance to rational gun control, given in the U.S. there are now an average of 88 deaths per day from gun violence (according to the documentary 'Requiem for America'). But, of course, none of those deaths were of entities in the womb - only those already forced to live outside it! Cognitive dissonance, anyone?

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-margolis/63263/for-cecil-the-lion


and:

http://www.salon.com/2015/08/01/5_most_absurd_conspiracy_theories_peddled_by_anti_choice_christians_partne/

Absolutist Ethics Needs to be Replaced by Provisional Ethics

If you ask too many ethicists about fundamental rules for their ethics, at the top they usually list "reverence for all life" without qualification.  But obviously, a glance at the real world shows that such a prescription isn't being practiced anywhere. Even the U.S., which has more religious believers than any other advanced industrial nation executes more convicted killers than just about any place except China, Iran and Russia.  Can you have "reverence for life" when you're offing killers? Oh yes, this constitutes an exception! He was a killer, after all! Yeah, well now so are you!

Wars, especially those of the choice variety like Vietnam and Iraq are similar, and in  fact they scraped the bottom of the moral-ethical barrel because so many innocents were slaughtered as well - such as at My Lai, e.g.


There, Lt. William Calley and his troop of "following orders" butchers killed 507 innocents including 173 children and 76 infants. Calley alone murdered 102 in all. And what was the response in the aftermath? Hell, 100,000 letters a day from birdbrain, morally bankrupt 'Muricans poured into the White House praising Calley and his butchers. Some daft morons even concocted a stupid song entitled "'The Battle Hymn of Lieutenant William Calley' which sold a million copies in one week, if you can believe it. So it appears the much vaunted "reverence for life" went right out the damned window so long as that life was only comprised of "gooks".

The point is that no one really practices absolutist morality, they (even the Churches) only pay lip service to it. For example, the RC Church riffs on sexual "sins" like fornication and masturbation then - for years- turned a blind eye to priestly predators sexually abusing kids.  So at one time or other everyone is in on this stupid game.

The next thing is, adherence to absolutist ethics and morality is causing thousands to die each year for no good reason other than some abstract notion of a "higher good" or misplaced "reverence for life'. A classic illustration recently noted in the New York Times is the case of those needing kidney transplants.  Currently, something like ten times more people need kidney transplants than the number of available kidneys. The result is thousands of unnecessary deaths each year which could have been prevented if we permitted kidney purchase markets like in Iran. There are no "waiting lists" or deaths in Iran at all from kidney failure (due to lack of transplants), as the Times observed.

But oh no! Our hifalutin' morality based on squeamishness prohibits the selling or trading of organs from human donors. (Never mind the medical -industrial complex is making gazillions each year harvesting organs - including eyes, skin - from deceased organ donors for whatever purposes it wants.)  What is so funny and hypocritical here is how the Neoliberal capitalists continually preach the benefits of markets über alles but won't allow them for organs. (And when I say "allow", I mean regulated markets - such as for pot here in Colo.)

Then there is the ISIS bunch, which just recently beheaded journalist James Foley in a despicable video. Do these vermin have a right to life? FUCK NO! As I said in an earlier blog post, they are the perfect candidates for the designated use of a nerve gas like sarin. Wipe 'em all out like roaches, fuck any "reverence for life" for these assholes. Of course, when I broached this to wifey, with her fine sensibilities, she was horrified: "That's horrible! You can't use that on them! You sound like your brothers!"  Really?

Well, I'm not exactly  fond of being compared with two hardcore conservos, but in this case, well....it's true (assuming they do agree that sarin is the solution to ISIS).  But again, WHY NOT? Because our "American values" preclude such action because then "we'd be like Saddam". So what? If it's effective in eliminating the scum ISIS rabble we DO it! And as I will show, there are no special "American values" unless they can be translated into positive actions to save the innocent! 

"The ends never justifies the means"? We had no problem with that ethical principle when we dropped those A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago. We certainly believed the ends:  saving thousands of American lives, justified the means - A -Bombs. So why not similarly accept  that the ends: eliminating the ISIS refuse, justifies the means: Sarin?  How are bodies having eyes popping out in bubbles and skin burned off to reveal skeletons any different from convulsions, bubbles frothing the mouth and jerking a bit before croaking? I don't get it, but maybe it's just me. They're just as dead in either case, so what's the big deal?  Besides, at least with a sarin attack on ISIS we're going after REAL bad guys, not innocent civilians as with the A-bombs dropped on two Japanese population centers! (Even Bill Maher  - treading over the edge of political incorrectness on one of his 'Real Time' shows, asked why it's any different shooting a guy than to gas him, say in an execution. He's just as dead, one way or the other.)

The point is that eliminating the ISIS bugs would preserve tens of thousands of lives just like allowing a market for kidneys would.

Kai Neilsson describes examples of provisional ethics in his brilliant Ethics Without God. As one extreme example he considers four spelunkers who are exploring a deep cave, 1,500' below the surface. A rock fall closes the cave at one end while one member - a very obese guy - has found himself trapped in the only other available opening. The group has two choices: all die of oxygen deprivation or find some means whereby most can escape.

Absolutist ethics rules that all must die rather than any one sacrifice his or her life for the benefit of the others. Provisional ethics, meanwhile, argues that the optimum outcome is for most of the party to survive- however that is achieved. In Neilsson's example, one of the spelunker's happens to have a small stick of dynamite and a match and inserts it into the obese guy's boot to detonate him - thereby opening the only available path so the remaining three can escape. Yes, there's a risk of another cave in, but it's the only shot the group has and it works, since all more prosaic efforts to dislodge the obese man were for naught.

In the same way we beheld a real world application of provisional ethics in the case of a nun doctor who was summarily excommunicated from the RC Church 2 years ago because she saved a pregnant mom and permitted her fetus to die. The issue was that the mom's blood pressure was increasing malignantly and would have surely killed her if she'd been forced into labor. The nun had two choices: save the fetus and let the mom die, or spare the mom and let the fetus die (without any birth). The nun reasoned the fetus was nascent human life but the mom was full fledged human life- manifested as an autonomous thinking and fully conscious person. Therefore, the mom had the greater claim to life. Meanwhile, absolutist ethics would have argued that an effort to save both ought to have been made, despite the fact that medically both would have died.

Now it is also important to note that adopting a provisionalist ethics doesn't mean "anything goes". Two examples here:

1) Abortion: According to ethical provisionalism, abortion cannot be ethical in ALL circumstances for all conditions. Thus, since research has found that fetal brain waves appear past 6 months, NO abortions should normally be allowed in the third trimester. The only (provisional) exceptions would be: a) the health of the mother (e.g. if she were to have the child she'd die), or b) case of incest or rape - wherein having the child would create extreme mental trauma for the victim. (By that I mean possible psychosis or severe depression, including attempted suicide).

2) War: In the judicious application of moral provisionalism, NO war would be permitted to be launched by the U.S.A. unless an actual DECLARATION of WAR by congress is made. This would give congress the opportunity to exercise its constitutional rights, and impart moral and ethical authority in rendering a war truly just. In this light, we'd have no more Vietnams, Iraqs, Afghanistans or other adventures finagled outside the parameters of congressional validation. For too long wars have been waged “through the back door” at great financial and moral cost to the U.S. - which inflicts a disproportionate injustice.

This will also have another effect, in reclaiming the separation of powers! Given how congress has abdicated its war making powers over the past 50 years or so, it's little wonder the executive is so powerful now. Conservatives who rail against excess executive power (as in the case of Obama) should therefore welcome a return to congressional declaration of war as opposed to going along with assorted executive-driven,  fig leaf  "resolutions" (like the Tonkin Gulf Resolution for Vietnam, and the Iraq War Resolution under Dumbya Bush.)

If they argue against formal declarations of war, they can't be taken seriously in any other complaints to do with Presidents (especially Democrats) usurping their congressional authority, say via executive actions. If they abdicate it for wars, they merit no authority for immigration, health care or anything else. None! They've demonstrated that they don't wish to circumscribe executive power! (Of course, one reason for not authorizing declarations of war is cowardice. Congress, for the past 50 years, has been made up of too many yellow bellies who don't wish to have any votes for war in the congressional record. Let the Prez take the blame! But, an abdication of power is still an abdication and it means they can't complain in other spheres just because they're too cowardly in one!

It is clear that we need to alter our ethical perceptions ASAP because changing conditions in the world won't wait. Retaining an absolutist ethics, which is both irrational and unsustainable (especially after Peak Oil hits) is a losing wicket.

'Fellowship of Catholic University Students' (FOCUS) Is Out to Lunch on ACA

Would one of the FOCUS women rather be emulating this secular teacher at a Catholic HS, or accepting an unplanned pregnancy because of a rat bastard doing a "roofie-rape"? Inquiring minds want to know!

According to the news in yesterday’s  Denver Post (‘Suit Filed Over Birth Control’ p. 2A), a Catholic college group (FOCUS – or the Fellowship of Catholic University Students)  plans to challenge  the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act health coverage mandate on the basis of its “forcing religious employers to offer sterilization and contraceptive services, and abortion-inducing drugs for employees.”

 

Mouthpiece Mike Norton of the “Alliance Defending Freedom” (a fulsome name if ever there was one) bloviated yesterday that:

 

“Faith-based organizations should be free to live and operate according to the faith they teach and espouse.”

 

Adding:

“If the government can fine Christian ministries out of existence for keeping their faith there is no limit to what freedom they can take away.”

Of course, this is absolute nonsense. There is no attempt whatsoever to “fine Christian ministries out of existence” – only to have them adhere to the standards of all other employers in the public sphere. If then the Catholic Church operates as an employer in the public sphere – never mind it’s a religious institution – then it’s bound to adhere to public standards pertaining to the Affordable Care Act, which all other public employers at other institutions, corporations are also bound to accept.

Hence, the only thing being “taken away” here is the Church employer’s ability to take away secular employees’ rights to the same standard of health care as all other secular employees’ in the public or private sphere.  The Church, meanwhile, is quite free to morally legislate its own members’ do’s and don’ts to its heart’s content. NO one is taking away that right. 


If the Church sees fit to deny its own members’ as employees access to birth control or the morning after pill, or abortion, then fine. It is well within its purview. But it can’t extrapolate that to secular employees and retain tax-free status as a peculiarly religious institution.  Here's another reason this applies: Unknown to many Catholic purists, many secular hospitals have been taken over by Catholic ones. Their original secular workers who had benefits under those private secular hospitals now see them threatened because of antiquated Church dogmas invoked after the corporate takeover.

According to the Post (ibid.):

“The legal group filed a lawsuit in Denver district court on behalf of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students- a non-profit organization founded in 1998.”

Here's some more of the folderol in their statement(ibid.):

“The (ACA) mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as well as the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.”

Which, again, is total bollocks. There is no such violation because Catholic employers – whether in schools or hospitals or whatever – are quite free to set whatever moral standards they wish for their OWN Church members who are employed in such venues. What they are not free to do is to set those standards for secular employees! Not if they wish to continue to receive  tax-free status from the federal state. As for violating the First and Fifth Amendments, that’s totally preposterous: there is no proscription against freedom of speech – they can spout whatever medieval nonsense that they desire. Nor is there proscription against being a witness against oneself.

 

One of the ignorant First Amendment arguments usually employed is that: "No one is denying the secular women access to contraception or abortion if they want it, they just don't wish to be forced to pay for drugs that violate their religious beliefs".   The point is the "drugs" aren't doing that because they're not being used by the Catholic women who are free to follow their own mores.  They're being used by secular workers as part of the coverage promised under the ACA  health insurance plan!  And, moreover, those drugs - such as contraceptives - may well be needed for more than birth prevention (though that ought to be important enough - given too many mouths to feed can tilt a family over to food stamps, welfare).   But as Sandra Fluke noted in her testimony in March last year: e.g. 

Contraceptives can be used to treat ovarian cysts. If this is not done, the contraceptives denied, then an ovary may need to be surgically removed- and health care costs explode beyond what they would have been.

Contraceptives are also key in limiting severe health problems - such as miscarriage or stroke - which could ensue if a woman becomes pregnant. Moreover, once one commences use of  contraceptives then they need to be taken regularly or they don't work - an educational point that had to be reinforced on dimwit Repukes during their 2012 'war against women'.

 

Meanwhile, we also behold this drivel from John Zimmer – FOCUS VP -  that:

“FOCUS sincere religious beliefs forbid it from providing insurance coverage that includes birth control for its employees, it says: ‘ As Catholics we do not impose our faith on anyone but propose to others the life-changing power of God’s love.”

 

But as I noted in my recent book (‘Beyond Atheism, Beyond God’), humans with their limited neural capacity aren’t in any remote position to define or know “God” since the noun (G-o-d) isn’t the same as the entity. Since the entity is supposedly “infinite” then no finite brain can comprehend it. The best it can do is forge approximate god-concepts which are relative, limited and subjective.  Hence the term “God’s love” is totally meaningless other than on a subjective level. It’s vacuous verbiage because if one can’t comprehend “God” one surely can’t comprehend any “love” derived therefrom.  And by extension one is proposing to others nothing more than one’s own ideations as internally subjective lingo.  As Philosopher Joseph Campbell put it (The Power of Myth, p. 56):

 

“ 'God’ is an ambiguous word in our language because it appears to refer to something that is known..”

 

All of which reinforces the point that when people use the word G-o-d they’re not talking or writing about an actual entity but a limited construct or ideation configured as a noun, which we call a God concept. People BELIEVE they are referencing the real entity by use of the noun but they are deluding themselves. It would be analogous to me going to a restaurant – seeing a ‘steak’ picture on the menu – then tearing the image out, consuming it and asserting I’d eaten a ‘steak’.  Any such pretense would ordinarily earn one a fast trip to the loony bin.

 

As for the claim of “not imposing their faith on anyone”, I am afraid FOCUS’ collegians need to take a semantics or logic course, preferably both.  If indeed, they’re all about preventing SECULAR employees – say atheists like me – from accessing artificial  birth control- then they are indeed imposing their faith.  Besides - what if the tables were turned? How would Catholic purists and dogmatists react if a Hindu-run corporation took over a Catholic Hospital? Would such a happenstance be called a "forced conversion" or  "violation of religious liberty"? OR - would it be considered a business transaction only? Also, if the newly merged entity produced subsidiary corporations - what religious principles would rightly apply? Catholic blowhards and tools like FOCUS need to think such questions through before they get all sanctimonious on us.

 

Now, if instead they confined their natural law moralism to Catholic employees only, there’d be no objection. “Imposing one’s faith” means taking away rights of secular citizens– based on invoking one’s own imagined religious principles.  In other words, extrapolating their “principles” beyond their proper moral domain to take away the rights of citizens who aren’t part of that domain other than in an employee capacity.

 

While we’re at it, let’s take a closer look at these principles which they profess to hold so dear. Biologist Elizabeth A. Daugherty  has asked ('The Lessons of Zoology'. in Contraception and Holiness, p. 110):

"Why do we call secondary the ends of the sexual act which have been accorded in fullness to us, and why do we call primary the end which we share with the lower animals?"

She's referring to the fact that the core of Pius XI's  original encyclical Casti Connubii was that the "sin" of artificial contraception inhered in making primary a sexual aspect that in reality is only "secondary". According to that pontiff:

"Since therefore the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature."

Which is irredeemable codswallop. As Daugherty notes in her chapter (op. cit.)  what the pontiff and his ilk really sought to do is reduce humans to the state of lower animals, at the behest of their "natural" reproductive cycles. In this sense, unlike the lower animals, humans have the intellectual capacity and sense of novelty to introduce a vast variety of pleasure-play into their sex relations. They aren't yoked to  primitive instincts to simply mount and hump at specific times. As Daugherty notes (pp. 96- 97):

"After ovulation, all mammalian females are under the influence of progesterone from the corpus luteum. This is a period of rapidly declining estrogenic activity which ends the sexual receptivity of the lower mammalian female, whether or not fertilization occurs.
 

But (in humans) marital relations continue during this progesterone -dominated period before the abrupt onset of menstruation. It is the period of lowest estrogenic activity and the progesterone-dominated period after ovulation which are known as the 'safe period' for marital relations."

This then, is what the Catholics'  “rhythm method” (of  Ogino-Kaus)  seeks to do: establish the "safe period" for a particular woman and then ordain that this is the time to safely have sexual relations if one wishes to not have any kids. The trouble is, it requires meticulous temperature taking at various times during a cycle to establish where that safe period begins and ends, and often this will be for no more than 10 days or so in a given month. Presumably, the couple is quite happy to do without sex the other two thirds of the time!

Thus, the moralizers of the Vatican are actually demanding that married couples act UNNATURALLY, since as Daugherty observes (ibid.):

"Humans are free from physiologically determined sexual desires so we possess a more or less permanent sexuality from adolescence to old age."

Indeed! But the Church and its robed minions (and now evidently younger acolytes in colleges)  seek to dictate that despite being sexual or having sexual desires from adolescence until old age, her members are only free to discharge those desires under certain limited times and limited conditions. For example, teens who have such exploding desires on account of their hormones are warned they cannot even masturbate to relieve themselves because those organs are only allowed to morally function in the state of marriage. Then....once married, the couple is informed they may gratify their mutual sexual desires only if they are open to conception....that is, unless they use the rhythm method.  Anyone not see a pattern here?

 

But once more, my gripe is not so much the Vatican roping  in its own flock’s gonads, but seeking to rope in the gonads of secular employees working at their schools, hospitals etc. (And please don’t anyone tell me “They can get another job!” – NO, not in this low aggregate demand, high unemployment environment. That’s like telling a guy who’s been denied food stamps (and on his last legs)  to go jump off a roof, then he won’t need them!) Besides, would Catholics tell Catholic employees to just "get another job" if their hospital was taken over by Hindu owners? I doubt it!
 

Julian Pleasants has observed (op. cit., p. 88) the Vatican has always been hostage to:

 

"Aristotelian modes of thought which tend to fix behaviors within very limited and fixed definitions and categories."

Thus, the Church once believed it "natural" that some men be enslaved because they were “unable to manage their own affairs”  (ibid.)So why be surprised when the same Church seeks to ordain all her members abide by a sexuality more fitting of lower primates?   However, be that as it may, we MUST express surprise (and outrage ) when the Church and its enablers like FOCUS seek to impose that same sexuality on secularists. That is simply unacceptable.

 

The abiding question for me is: Why would 21^st century college students, embedded in a bunch like FOCUS,  be yoked  to Aristotelian modes of thought they seek to impose on their more enlightened peers or secularists? Maybe they are jealous they themselves never broke free of their mental chains to see just how limited they are by the Vatican’s nonsense. And while we’re at it, let me remind them that the birth control proscription has never been stated ex Cathedra so it’s not infallible. It is proposed under the Magisterium or Teaching Office. As one honest padre once confided to me: "You are free to use your own conscience in this regard, since the teaching isn't binding."

 

As for abortion, the FOCUS groupies ought to bear in mind that John Connery, S.J,  a leading Catholic historian,  showed that up to 1869 the Church’s Canon Law had historically held abortion to be murder only subsequent to the end of the first trimester.[1]  The interesting thing is that for the bulk of Church history the practice of abortion was allowed, at least up to the first three months of pregnancy. More interesting is that the doctrine of papal infallibility was pronounced in 1870. Could it be that the latter doctrine was introduced to back up the Church’s change in its moral position on abortion? If so, one wonders who really controls the Church, the Holy Spirit-  as is so often claimed-  or zealous prelates in positions of high power who fear relinquishing vise-like grips on their congregations[2]?

Oh, one also wonders if they still teach critical thinking at Catholic universities, as Loyola did in the 1960s - even encouraging atheists such as Jean -Paul Sarte to lecture us on existentialism! To see FOCUS' antics is to wonder if critical thinking went the way of the Dodo - at least in the universities that harbor FOCUS outlets!

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[1] Sagan and Druyan: PARADE, (April 22, 1990), 6.

[2] And  (most recently), nuns, mainly belonging to The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which was issued a reprimand by the Vatican for straying outside the purview of Church teachings – especially after they defended the inclusion of contraceptive services in Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The Vatican has also censured Sr. Margaret Farley (of Yale Divinity School) after publication of her book, ‘Just Love’. Farley evidently stepped on Vatican toes when she justified artificial contraception as well as masturbation within marriage as an aid to preserving fidelity.