Avoid and Defeat the Planned Parenthood Mentality in this Election

10-18-2020All

Much ink is being spilled about Ruth Bader Ginsberg as a model and heroine if not a “secular saint.” She was a fervent supporter of Planned Parenthood and abortion despite Planned Parenthood’s racist past and present. An element of that racist past is exemplified in a quote from Ginsberg below that the media does not usually refer to. Sadly many claiming to be Catholic also have embraced the Planned Parenthood mentality which includes candidates running for public office in the upcoming election.

Cardinal Mueller the former head of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reminds us:

• Catholic politicians have an obligation to fight against abortion and euthanasia, while applying the whole of Catholic social teaching in their political work,
• We cannot accept euthanasia in civil society because it is contrary to life, or abortion because it means the death of the innocent child in the mother’s womb.
• “Each life of the individual man has an absolute value in itself,” the cardinal continued, adding that politicians can “call themselves Catholics only if they accept this obligation to fight for the fundamental principles of social ethics, which are human rights.”
• These human rights, Mueller said, cannot be redefined according to one’s own preferences. Without respecting this principle, society slips into Social Darwinism, promoting “survival of the fittest” rather than innate human dignity.
• Catholic politicians must promote natural law, the principles of fundamental ethics, also all of the social doctrine of the Church, all efforts for universal peace,” he said. “They cannot promote economic warfare against others,” the cardinal added.
• While the Church teaches that human rights come from God, Mueller said, even those who do not believe in God can understand simply through their intellect that human lives are not to be used and manipulated. “Every life of every man is sacred,” he said. Catholic politicians have an obligation to fight against abortion and euthanasia, while applying the whole of Catholic social teaching in their political work.

Back to Planned Parenthood and Judge Ginsberg: Our country has been too affected by the Planned Parenthood (PP) mentality, the legacy of the racist and eugenicist Margaret Sanger, that unfortunately many Catholics especially the affluent have bought into. The PP mentality looks at large families as if they are radioactive and regards pregnancy as a disease to be protected against. Thus in the PP mentality more concern is shown for animals than human beings especially if the human being belongs to one of “them.” Sanger the racist regarded various racial and ethnic groups as subhuman breeders and therefore she was very much appreciated by the Nazi-eugenicists. The PP mentality is leading to demographic suicide in many countries because couples are not having children in sufficient numbers to replace the population. A recent example of this attitude slipped from the mouth of Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

With respect to abortion, she was asked in a NY Times interview about various aspects of abortion law (July 7, 2009): : Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. (emphasis added)So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

Judge Ginsburg views the abortion decision Roe v. Wade as addressing a concern about “populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” Some questions whose concern? Who are “we”? Who are those populations that we don’t want to have too many of?? That’s the PP mentality: racism, population control, elitism from those who consider themselves superior to the great unwashed. Pope Paul VI was a prophet when he predicted that the use of contraceptives would bring about this devaluation of human life, children, family, and a great lessening of respect for women, not to mention fostering irresponsible men and a crisis of fathers. Countless children are growing up without fathers and often in the media fathers and men in general are ridiculed or seen as the enemy in the service of extreme ideologies. On the other hand we have heroic witness to the teaching of the Church in favor of life, marriage, and family, and the teaching of the Church against the use of artificial contraceptives and against the Planned Parenthood mentality on the part of heroic individuals resisting the current decadence.

***Note on natural law: The light of reason is placed by nature and thus by God in every human being to guide him in his acts." Therefore, human beings, alone among God’s creatures, use reason to lead their lives. This is natural law. The master principle of natural law, wrote Thomas Aquinas, is that "good is to be done and pursued and evil avoided." Aquinas stated that reason reveals particular natural laws that are good for humans such as self-preservation, marriage and family, and the desire to know God. Reason, he taught, also enables humans to understand things that are evil such as adultery, suicide, and lying.