Puffs

A couple of short items to start this week.

I don’t know about the rest of the area, however, here in Lawrence the community lost electrical power late Saturday evening.

As Nancy and I were talking about it later, we could not remember a time power was out for that long of time. (Only 3 1/2 hours.)

We concluded we were lucky to have the service of South Central Public Power District to keep the lights on . . . along with all other electrical devises. It’s not everyone who stays up most of the night to keep us comfortable.

Thank you, SCPPD and all who assisted.

A O

Oxygen . . .

Climate Change . . . Many in the major news media outlets are very concerned about carbon dioxide and oxygen, the basic ingredients of our atmosphere.

They may be correct in their concern. They cite the destruction of the Amazon Rain forest as a cause of a future disaster.

That may also be correct, I can’t judge. However, not too long ago I read where the American ‘Corn Belt’ (that includes Nebraska) now produces more oxygen that the Rain Forest. The Corn Belt is a fairly recent thing.

Don’t know if the two offset each other, or not.

Stay tuned. We may need another hundred years to find out the answer, or even if the two things are related.

A O

Abortion . . .

June 24, 2022 is a date that just might go down in history.

That is the date the U. S. Supreme Court consigned the killing of unborn human beings to the dustbin of history. The highest court of the world’s pre-eminent democracy has determined that the U. S. Constitution includes no ‘right’ to terminate the life of an unborn human being. Most of those words come from Mr. George Weigel.

Since that time we have seen a number of ‘protests or demonstrations’ of people who would like to see abortions “legal” in all 50 states. Or we read about those people in our newspapers.

I don’t remember the TV reports or newspaper reports about the “Pro-Life” attempts to get a little publicity for almost the last 50 years.

The national news media does just what it wants and gives publicity to whatever it thinks is important.

The group of people who call themselves “Pro-Choice” have a number of talking points they seem to cling to justifying their choice. I’d like to review a few of them. (Much of the following is from Dr. R. Jared Staudt.)

No. 1: We do not know when life begins . . . It is true that before the 19th century there was debate about the exact mode and timing of how the human person developed, but the German scientist, Oscar Hetwig determined the nature of sexual reproduction through fertilization in 1876. From this moment there is no scientific debate on the origin of human life and every textbook will present the moment of fertilization as the origin of human life.

No. 2: My body, my choice . . . This idea assumes the child is simply a part of the mother’s body. Biologically speaking there is a distinct human organism within the mother’s body. It is true the child cannot survive without the mother, but that is also true of young children and anyone who is vulnerable.

No. 3: Stop pushing your religious views on me . . . Abortion is wrong by its very nature because it violates the inherent dignity of the human person as a rational being. We can explain the evil of abortion without reference to faith, even though faith and reason are in agreement on this point.

No. 4: What if the mother’s life is in danger . . . It is never permissible to kill an innocent human life for any reason. The Church also recognizes the legitimacy of taking action to save the life of the mother even if it may result in the death of the unborn child. The foreseen, but unintended death of the child is not what is chosen directly, for the moral choice is to save the life of the mother.

No. 5: No one should be forced to have a child . . . In our culture we have changed our understanding of the purpose of human sexuality. Many today understand sexuality almost solely from the viewpoint of personal fulfillment. Engaging in sexual intercourse is ordered intrinsically toward procreation and the raising of children. Because it is so foreign to the mainstream way of thinking, this is a hard truth to accept for many people.

No. 6: What about cases of rape and incest . . . The victim of rape or incent has experienced terrible violence. The answer to this violence is not to pass it on to another innocent person (the unborn baby) and thus become a perpetrator of violence.

No. 7: Constitutional freedom demands access to abortion . . . Roe v. Wade used the reasoning of the prior decision on contraception from Griswold V. Connecticut that argued there was a right to privacy in the Constitution, although no such right can be found there.