TIME TO PARTY ON COLUMBUS DAY

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on what’s behind the anti-Columbus Day fervor and the monument madness:

This Columbus Day most American cities and states will have the usual celebrations, but there will be important exceptions.

The Los Angeles City Council voted in August to rename the explorer’s holiday “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” In doing so, it followed the lead of San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Seattle, and Minneapolis, as well as South Dakota, Hawaii, Alaska, and Oregon.

No one really knows who, or what, an “indigenous” person is. For one thing, all so-called indigenous peoples migrated here from across the Bering Strait. Moreover, even the United Nations confesses it doesn’t know how to define them.

In 2004, the U.N.’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs issued a document, “The Concept of Indigenous Peoples.” After much study, it concluded that indigenous peoples were not a reality—they were a “concept.” It further noted that “the prevailing view today is that no formal universal definition of the term is necessary.”

That being the case, no one knows exactly who, or what, will be celebrated in those cities and states that hate Columbus.

The furor over Columbus, just like the hysteria over many of the monuments, is as contrived as it is baseless. With few exceptions, up until recently, no one felt put upon by these public tributes to prominent Americans.

It is not as though there was some new revelation about those honored in the public square. For example, everyone knew that many of the Founders owned slaves. What changed is our reaction.

This is a game, and it is a dishonest one. Most of those demanding that we take down the monuments are not driven by some noble sentiment—they are driven by hate. That is what is fueling the anti-Columbus agenda. They’re also phonies.

The haters are not upset about slavery—many of these mean-spirited activists have long supported the slavery that marked the Soviet Union and Mao’s China—they are upset that their goal of subverting America hasn’t materialized. So they play their slavery card as a way to bring shame to our nation.

They need a reality check.

There is not a place on the globe that has not known slavery. The ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans not only tolerated slavery, they saw nothing wrong with it. Neither did the Chinese and Japanese. Slavery was outlawed in the U.S. in the 1860s, but was not made illegal in Africa until the 1980s (it still exists there today).

The evidence is clear: there are those who have a vested ideological interest in putting the worst possible face on America. Their anti-monument madness is only their latest foray into disabling the nation, and that is what is driving the animus against Columbus.

So who should we pay tribute to on October 9? Columbus? Or Indigenous Peoples? The decision is an easy one for us at the Catholic League. It all comes down to partying. Those who will celebrate Columbus are party animals—just our kind of people. By contrast, we have nothing in common with those bent on honoring a “concept.”

In the event the “concept” celebrants decide to crash our event (they may settle for a pot party or poetry reading), they will be denied admission: it’s “dancers only.”




RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION FOR HHS MANDATE

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the fate of the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate:

President Trump did not let Catholics down: his administration has granted a religious exemption to the HHS mandate. Those employers whose “sincerely held religious beliefs” are compromised by providing for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraceptives in their healthcare plans do not have to abide by the mandate.

By providing for the religious exemption, the Trump administration affirms conscience rights, a liberty trashed by the Obama administration. This means that organizations such as the Little Sisters of the Poor will not have to abide by healthcare provisions deemed morally offensive.

What still needs correction, not simply clarification, is the Obama administration’s pernicious attempt to redefine what constitutes a Catholic organization. Catholic entities that hire and serve non-Catholics do not lose their Catholic status simply because the government defines them as functionally secular

This issue still needs to be addressed. Indeed, it is the most important matter in the entire HHS mandate controversy.




HARVEY WEINSTEIN—CHAMPION OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the fall of Harvey Weinstein:

Harvey Weinstein and I have been doing battle for decades—he is the supreme Catholic basher in Hollywood. Now we know that he is a serial abuser of women. He never paid a price for his anti-Catholic bigotry, but this is different: liberals are supposed to object to womanizers.

What makes this case so interesting is that Weinstein is known as a great champion of women’s rights. Just recently, he marched in a women’s rights parade in Utah; it was during the Sundance Film Festival. He also helped endow a chair at Rutgers in Gloria Steinem’s name. Now he is pledging, as part of his Mea Culpa Campaign, to raise $5 million to support scholarships for women directors at the University of Southern California.

If Rutgers and USC have any integrity, they will follow the lead of Spelman College: the black college terminated a professorship endowed by Bill Cosby, another great champion of women’s rights.

Several Democrats in Washington are donating money given to them by Weinstein to charity. Good for them. Which raises the question: Has Harvey contributed to the Clinton Foundation? We know he is best friends with Hillary, and, of course, Bill, a real champion of women’s rights.

On the Republican side of the aisle, we learned today that Rep. Tim Murphy, a pro-life lawmaker, is planning to resign. This follows revelations of his adulterous affair which included a bid by him to have his lover have an abortion.

Imagine Murphy trying to cover his behind by pledging to give money to crisis pregnancy centers! It’s unfathomable. But when women-abusing champions of women’s rights give big bucks to universities on behalf of women’s rights, the liberal community doesn’t blink. It’s all so typical.

Good luck, Harvey, you will need it. And by the way, are you still going to bring out your latest Catholic-bashing flick, Mary Magdalene? In February you took some cheap shots at me when the movie was under production.

In the event you decide to grease the Catholic League, please know that we would shamelessly take your money. And then we would buy boxes of chastity belts, sending you a ton of them.




NEW YORK TIMES OK WITH CENSORING ART

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the New York Times‘ reaction to art that was banned by the Guggenheim:

When the Catholic League protested a vile video exhibit at the Smithsonian in 2010 that featured large ants crawling over Jesus on a crucifix, an editorial in the New York Times said, “The Catholic League is entitled to protest.” But it strongly criticized the decision of the museum to pull the video, saying that it was giving into the “bullying” of Rep. John Boehner. It cited its support for “culturally challenging images.”

When the Catholic League protested a filthy exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999 that featured a huge portrait of Our Blessed Mother adorned with elephant dung and pictures of vaginas and anuses, an editorial in the New York Times applauded the decision of the museum to “defend artistic freedom.”

When the Catholic League protested an obscene play at the Manhattan Theatre in 1998 that featured Jesus having sex with the twelve apostles, an editorial in the New York Times cheered the performance, saying, “This is not only a land of freedom; it is a land where freedom is always contested.”

But when the Guggenheim decided to ban three exhibits that upset animal rights activists, two of which are videos—the exhibition starts today—the New York Times failed to issue an editorial defending the art. What gives?

Why is it that when Catholics are offended, the New York Times always lectures us on the need to understand that art is supposed to make us “uncomfortable.” Is it saying that the artistic community has no right to make the animal rights crowd “uncomfortable”?

Why the silence on the Guggenheim censors? We’d love to read an editorial in the New York Times that explains its reasoning.

Contact James Bennet, editorial page editor: james.bennet@nytimes.com




LAS VEGAS KILLING STUMPS MEDIA

Catholic League president Bill Donohue discusses the way the media are explaining the Las Vegas tragedy:

Pundits on both the right and the left cannot understand why there is no apparent political or religious motive involved in the Las Vegas killings. There doesn’t have to be: Paddock was socially ill, a loner whose boredom was relieved by taking risks—flying single-engine planes and engaging in high-stakes gambling. Consistent to the end, his life ended in a blaze of excitement.

The media have a hard time thinking outside the box. So when politics and religion are taken off the table, one of the few things left for them to chew on is race. Take the Associated Press story, “Terrorism, Race, Religion: Defining the Las Vegas Shooting.”

The AP is impressed that Paddock was “a white gunman” who attacked “a mostly-white country music crowd.” So what? Blacks kill each other in the streets of Chicago all the time. If AP has something it wants to impute to Paddock’s race, it should say so. But it chose not to, and that’s because there is nothing there. However, that didn’t stop it from looking at this story through a political lens.

For example, the AP story mentions the role of Islamic extremists in acts of terror, which is undeniable, but then it tries to “balance” the piece by noting Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik; he is described as a “neo-Nazi” who gunned down 77 people in 2011.

Breivik was never a neo-Nazi. In fact, as Norwegian social scientist Lars Gule said, he was a “national conservative, not a Nazi.” Nor was he a Christian, as some said he was: he put his faith in Odinism. In terms of his politics, the Jerusalem Post called him out for his “far-right Zionism.” So what was he? He was a deranged man who was high on drugs when he struck.

The problem with Breivik, like Paddock, was his persona, not his politics. He was initially diagnosed as having paranoid schizophrenia, and shortly thereafter he became increasingly isolated and withdrawn. He was subsequently declared criminally insane.

A second round of psychiatric evaluations said his problem was best understood as an antisocial personality disorder, not a mental illness; he was also diagnosed as having a narcissistic personality disorder.

Those conditions are clearly reflected in the life of Stephen Paddock (click here to read my account). And just as Paddock had a severely dysfunctional upbringing, so did Breivik. His parents divorced when he was a year old, and his mother brutalized him: she “sexualized” him, beat him, and told him that she “wished that he were dead.”

Obviously, most people raised in a lousy family do not turn out to be mass killers. But when a background like the one Breivik, and Paddock, endured is coupled with other psychological and social factors, it makes a lot more sense to probe these personal experiences than it does to look exclusively at external matters.

There is a whole world out there besides politics, religion, race, sex, and sexual orientation, though this escapes most pundits these days. Unfortunately, those looking to blame anyone or anything but the culprit—”the guns did it”—are totally blind to this reality.

Just as it is important not to simplify complex issues, the temptation to over-analyze must also be resisted. Sometimes the answer is right before our eyes.




UNDERSTANDING THE LAS VEGAS KILLER

Catholic League president Bill Donohue holds a Ph.D. in sociology from New York University, and has taught and written on the subject of criminology for many years. He offers the following analysis of the Las Vegas killer:

Why did Stephen Paddock murder at least 59 people, wounding well over 500? His rampage was not politically motivated, and he has no history of mental illness. He was a multimillionaire and quite intelligent. Indeed, he worked for Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor, and was an accountant and property manager. But he was socially ill.

To be specific, he was a loner, unable to set anchor in any of his relationships, either with family or friends. That played a huge role in his killing spree, which ended when he killed himself.

Before considering his upbringing and lifestyle, the role that nature may have played cannot be dismissed.

Paddock’s father was a bank robber who was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. More important, he was diagnosed as “psychopathic” and “suicidal.”

“It has been established for some time that genes play a significant role in the makeup of those individuals eventually diagnosed with such conditions as Antisocial Personality Disorder,” writes Dr. George Simon, an expert in this area.

There is no doubt that Paddock was acutely antisocial, and there is much evidence linking that trait to pathological behaviors.

Dr. Samuel E. Samenow is a clinical psychologist and author of Inside the Criminal Mind. He co-authored, with Dr. Samuel Yochelson, the highly influential book, The Criminal Personality. His understanding of mass shooters as loners has much to recommend.

Who are these people? “They are secretive individuals who do not want others to know them. They may be highly intelligent, achieve high grades in school, and even obtain responsible positions.” But their inability to establish bonds is undeniable, and that is critically important to understanding what makes them tick.

Significantly, the loner turned murderer possesses a personality that drives people away from him. “These are not likable individuals,” Samenow says. “No one seems to have known them well. They marginalize themselves, rejecting the world well before the world rejects them.”

Now consider what we know about Paddock. His profile matches up eerily well with Samenow’s observation.

Paddock had no relationship with his gangster father, and was estranged from his brothers. Moreover, he had few, if any, friends. Twice divorced, he had no children. Moreover, he was not in a position to make friends with co-workers: the last time he had a full-time job was 30 years ago.

Paddock never laid anchor anywhere. Growing up, his family moved from Iowa to Tucson to Southern California. His next door Florida neighbor, Donald Judy, said, “Paddock was constantly on the move, carrying a suitcase and driving a rental car,” noting that he “looked like he’d be ready to move at a moment’s notice.”

He certainly got around. He once owned 27 residences in four states, and bragged how he was a “world traveler” and a “professional gambler.” There is no evidence that his world traveling, which was done on cruise ships, ever involved someone else.

Paddock’s recreational pursuits were always solo enterprises. He owned single-engine planes and was a licensed fisherman—a popular solitary sport—in Alaska. His gambling was also a solitary experience. For instance, Paddock did not play the crap table, where gamblers interact. No, he only played video games by himself.

His brother Eric is distraught at his inability to understand Stephen. No matter, his observations about him shed much light on who he was.

Eric said Stephen got bored with flying planes, so he gave it up. It appears that he was looking for some excitement in his lonely life, which explains his gambling preference. “It has to be the right machine with double points,” Eric says, “and there has to be a contest going on. He won a car one time.”

Similarly, Eric notes that Stephen “was a wealthy guy, playing video poker, who went cruising all the time and lived in a hotel room.” He added that he “was at the hotel for four months one time. It was like a second home.” It would be more accurate to say that Stephen never had a home.

Eric recalls that Stephen excelled at sports but never played or joined organized clubs. “He wasn’t a team kind of guy.”

Stephen was not close to any of his brothers, and in the case of Patrick, the two had not seen each other for 20 years. This explains why Patrick did not initially recognize Stephen when his face was shown on TV.

Stephen’s Florida neighbor, Donald Judy, said that the inside of Paddock’s house “looked like a college freshman lived there.” There was no art on the walls, etc, just a bed, two recliners, and one dining chair.

Diane McKay lived next door to Paddock in Reno. “He was weird. Kept to himself. It was like living next door to nothing.” Indeed, “He was just nothing, quiet.”

The local sheriff from Mesquite, Nevada, where Paddock also lived, labeled him “reclusive.” One of Paddock’s neighbors agreed, noting that he was “a real loner.”

“Real loners” are not only unable to commit themselves to others, they are unable to commit themselves to God. So it came as no surprise that Paddock had no strong religious beliefs. It would have been startling to find out otherwise.

It’s all about the “Three Bs”: beliefs, bonds, and boundaries. As I found out when I compared cloistered nuns to Hollywood celebrities on measures of physical and mental health, as well as happiness (see The Catholic Advantage: How Health, Happiness and Heaven Await the Faithful), it is not the nuns who are unhealthy, or who suffer from loneliness, depression, and suicide.

“People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” This is one of Barbra Streisand’s most famous refrains. She didn’t quite nail it. There is nothing lucky about needing people—it’s a universal appetite. People who have people are the luckiest people in the world. Paddock was not so lucky.

Most loners are not mass murderers, but most murderers are loners. In the case of Paddock, it appears that his antisocial personality, coupled with an acute case of ennui, or sheer boredom with life, found relief by lighting up the sky. Sometimes the mad search for causation can lead us astray; we should not overlook more mundane reasons why the socially ill decide to act out in a violent way.

Sadly, our society seriously devalues religion, celebrates self-absorption, and disrespects boundaries. This is not a recipe for well-being; rather, it is a prescription for mass producing Paddock-like people. We are literally planting the social soil upon which sick men like him feed.




AUSTRALIAN ABUSE REPORT DEEPLY FLAWED

The following analysis is the work of Catholic League president Bill Donohue and Catholic League director of communications Rick Hinshaw; Donohue has a Ph.D. in sociology and Hinshaw has an M.A. in political science:

On October 6, Cardinal George Pell will appear in a Melbourne court on trumped up sexual abuse charges. The media will no doubt turn its attention to a report issued in August by the Centre for Global Research at RMIT University, Melbourne, “Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church.” It offers what it calls an “interpretive review of the literature and public inquiry reports” on the subject. Its reach is wide: it offers biblical and historical analysis, and covers many nations.

By any measure, the report is deeply flawed and highly politicized. It is also poorly edited—the exact wording on various subjects is repeated several times. Quite frankly, it is one of the most sophomoric attempts to deal with the issue of clergy sexual abuse ever published.

The authors of the report are two embittered ex-priests. Their goal, it is plain to see, is to justify a state takeover of the Catholic Church.

Desmond Cahill is lead author. In 2012, he testified before a committee of the Parliament of Victoria on the subject of sexual abuse. His agenda includes many reforms, ranging from an end to mandatory priestly celibacy to a fundamental restructuring of the priesthood. Most of all he wants to neuter the Church’s authority. “The church is incapable of reform,” he declares, “so the state will have to do it.”

Co-author Peter Wilkinson was one of the founders of the dissident Australian group Catholics for Renewal. Writing in the online publication Catholica, he expressed “a growing conviction that the Church must now rely on outside secular authorities to give it moral guidance.”

In this report, the two authors use similar language. They state that “Catholic bishops around the world have been found to be incapable of addressing the problem of clerical sexual abuse on their own.” They also argue that the Holy See “has never committed itself to resolving the issue of child sexual abuse within the ranks of the Catholic Church.” Furthermore, the “Code of Canon Law has not been and remains clearly not up to the task of dealing with the sex abuse scandal.”

All of this is done to justify state control of the Church.

There is much about the Church they find objectionable. For example, they oppose the autonomy of diocesan bishops and the “monarchy” of the pope. They find the seal of the confessional extremely problematic, and manage to link it to the abuse scandal. Ditto for celibacy. In both cases, the link they establish is pitifully weak, if not non-existent.

This is particularly telling given that just recently Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended that the government overrule the seal of the confessional when it comes to reporting sexual abuse of minors. “Clergy should not be able to refuse to report because the information was received during confession,” the Commission stated. Both of the men were consultants to this Royal Commission.

The Commission’s final report is due in December. It will be interesting to see if the enthusiasm these two consultants have for a state takeover of the Church is one of the recommendations.

To make its case against the seal of confession, the authors seize upon the 1962 Vatican document, Crimen Sollicitationis (the Crime of Solicitation). “Priests often identified potential victims and their vulnerability in the confessional, leading them to begin the grooming process.”

This interpretation is beyond flawed: there is absolutely no support for it in the document. In fact, the policy that was crafted not only did not give a priest protection if he engaged in sexual solicitation, it allowed for him to be thrown out of the priesthood. It also made it clear that if the penitent were to tell someone what happened in the confessional (perhaps another priest), he or she had 30 days to report the incident to the bishop or face excommunication. If anything, this proves how serious the Vatican was about an offense—it threatened to punish the penitent for not turning in the guilty priest.

The authors know that if celibacy were the cause of sexual abuse, there never would have been a sudden increase in offenses beginning in the 1960s, so the best they can do is to say it plays a role “when combined with other risk factors.” The truth is their opposition to celibacy reflects their politics, not the data.

In fact, Cahill’s push for ending mandatory priestly celibacy goes back more than 40 years; he links it to his demand for “a fundamental restructuring of the (priestly) ministry.” He made this statement in 1976 in a letter explaining his resignation from the priesthood. Thus, it had nothing to do with the sexual abuse of minors. Of course, if the Church doesn’t make this change, he is quite content with the state authorizing it.

In 2012, Cahill’s politics were featured again when he described the Church as “a holy and unholy mess, except where religious sisters or laypeople are in charge, for example schools and welfare agencies.” He called for “a religious sister with expertise in psychology and religious formation” to chair a group that would “review the selection and education of candidates for the priesthood.” He also called for a national or archdiocesan synod, “with full lay involvement…to deal with the theology and practice of the Catholic priesthood in and for the new millennium.” Anyone but the bishops.

Wilkinson also wants more lay involvement in the selection of bishops, as well as “full gender balance” in running every aspect of Church governance. Indeed, the dissident group he helped found, Catholics for Renewal, sent an “Open Letter” to Pope Benedict XVI in 2011 deploring the “patriarchal attitude towards women within our church.” The group even went so far as to challenge papal infallibility.

All of this background information is necessary to evaluate how the authors explain the causes of the sexual abuse scandal. Given their ideology, it is not surprising to learn that nowhere do they confront the overwhelming evidence which shows that most of the sexual abuse of minors was committed by homosexuals. This is typical of dissidents in the U.S. as well as Australia.

We know from the best data in the United States that 81 percent of the victims were male and 78 percent were postpubescent. When men have sex with men, that’s called homosexuality. Furthermore, the 2011 report by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, cited by Cahill and Wilkinson, showed that in the United States less than five percent of the sexual abuse was committed by pedophiles. In short, there never was a pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church—it was driven mostly by homosexuals.

So how do the authors get around the obvious? The Church’s “terrorisation” against masturbation, they contend, caused offending priests and religious to forego masturbation and opt instead for sexual abuse of minors; this reflected their “struggle for sexual purity.” But if this bizarre explanation were true—the “If I can’t masturbate, I’ll settle for raping a minor” thesis—why does it apparently apply mostly to homosexual priests, and not, by and large, to heterosexual priests?

In several parts of the report, Cahill and Wilkinson seem aware that homosexual priests are the real problem, but they don’t have the courage to say so. So they blame the Church’s “homophobic environment,” which they say is especially prevalent in the seminaries. It is homophobia, they claim, which denied “those with a gay orientation the moral and psychological space to successfully and maturely work through their sexual identity.”

But if homophobia accounts for the sexual abuse of minors, why didn’t the scandal take place in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s? After all, would not everyone agree that that would be the most likely time, in recent history, for so-called homophobia to balloon? Similarly, why did the explosion in priestly sexual abuse take place when sexual norms in the seminaries were relaxed, if not abandoned altogether? Paradoxically, even the authors offer evidence that makes our point, not theirs.

Citing the 2011 John Jay report, they readily admit that “Men ordained in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s did not generally abuse before the 1960s or 1970s. Men ordained in the 1960s and the early 1970s engaged in abuse behaviour much more quickly after their entrance into ministry.”

Apparently, Cahill and Wilkinson have a hard time connecting the dots. Prior to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, which hit every institution in the Western world, including the Catholic Church, sexual abuse was not a major problem. Why? Precisely because of the reigning ethic of sexual reticence. It is when the lid came off that the rate of sexual abuse soared.

In other words, the more tolerant the Church became of homosexuality, and the less “homophobic” it became, the more homosexual priests began preying on young men. Not to acknowledge this is intellectually dishonest.

The authors are so thoroughly compromised that they make the positively absurd statement that “the majority of offenders were heterosexual even if they abused young boys.” This is twice wrong: (a) most of the victims were not “young boys”—they were adolescents, and (b) it is delusional to say that same-sex acts are acts of heterosexuality.

Finally, the authors take an unfair shot at Cardinal George Pell. “One reason why the Australian Church was never able to develop a national strategy accepted by all bishops was that the largest archdiocese of Melbourne, headed by Archbishop (as he then was) George Pell,” they say, “was determined to develop its own strategy and policies.”

In fact, Pell had developed the Melbourne Protocol because he was impatient with the failure of the Australian bishops to develop an effective national response. He was proactive in meeting his responsibility as a diocesan bishop to deal with the crisis.

It is not hard to conclude that Cahill and Wilkinson are not objective researchers. They have an agenda: They seek to destroy separation of church and state, allowing the government to police the Catholic Church. Only when the Church’s teachings and governing structure are changed to meet secular objectives, will these malcontents be satisfied. But not to worry, the Church has survived these power grabs before, and it will survive this one as well.




VOTE SET ON SHIELDING UNBORN FROM PAIN

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a bill that is expected to be voted on this week by the House:

The House is set to vote on the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.” The bill would make it illegal for anyone to perform, or attempt to perform, an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy; it allows exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. A similar measure won House approval in 2015 but failed in the Senate. President Trump has pledged to sign it if it reaches his desk.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, sent a letter to House members last week saying, “All decent and humane people are repulsed by the callous and barbarous treatment of women and children in clinics…that abort children after 20 weeks.” He labeled the 20-week ban a “common-sense reform.”

The Catholic League commends Cardinal Dolan for his leadership on this matter; we strongly support the legislation. The question is why any rational person would oppose it. Curiously, those who do oppose it offer almost nothing in support of their position.

The Feminist Majority Foundation put out a statement against the bill last week, but never once took up the central question of fetal pain. The best the National Organization for Women could do was to quote one doctor who said fetal pain was “not likely.” Which means he is conceding that unborn babies at 20 weeks may feel pain.

When in doubt, why would any rational person not play it safe and support the bill in the event the baby can feel pain?

NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood also fail to come to grips with the issue of fetal pain. In both cases, they fall back on the argument that abortions after the first trimester are “relatively small.” That resolves nothing. Indeed, it dodges the issue: What about the likelihood that an unborn baby can feel the sting of a projectile, one that is designed, of course, to kill him or her.

Cardinal Dolan’s appeal to common sense finds support in the medical practices that accompany fetal surgery: the unborn child is administered anesthesia. Every honest person knows why. That alone should convince those who are on the fence to cast their vote in favor of this bill.