November 23, 2004
Dear Friends,
This email brings warm and prayerful wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving. I'll
remember
you in my Thanksgiving Day Mass. My regular column is below, along with the
Spanish
version of the previous column.
I thank you for the great response to our request to contact your Senators about
Sen.
Arlen Specter. It paid off! Specter has affirmed, publicly and in writing, that
he will not
block pro-life judicial nominees. I include below the comments of Paul Weyrich,
a
leading conservative voice on Christians and politics, which he wrote at my
request to
explain the situation to you.
Meanwhile, if you're doing Christmas shopping, you may want to consider the
items at
www.priestsforlife.org/products
Talk to you soon!
Fr. Frank Pavone
Comments of Paul Weyrich on Senator Arlen Specter
November 19, 2004
The agreement Senator Arlen Specter signed is the best we could achieve under
the
circumstances.
The seniority system is so strong in the Senate that only one Senator was
willing to
advocate his ouster (Inhofe of OK).
That being the case, we are better off with Specter now publicly tied down than
we would
be with an ousted Specter who was obligated to no one.
Specter is smart. He is intimidating. His colleagues are afraid of him. If he
had been
toppled, he would have worked wit the Democrats to destroy the President's
judicial
nominees.
This way he had to agree in public that pro-life judges will get fair treatment.
Moreover,
he agreed to try to implement measures to stop the filibuster of judges.
It was good that we advocated the ouster of Sen. Specter. It caused him to be
willing to
negotiate. It caused his colleagues such as Senator Larry Craig (R.-ID) to push
him into
the agreement he finally signed.
Will he go back on his word? Perhaps. But he will do so at a price. And since
the
agreement was public it is far less likely that he can now make a U-turn.
If pro-family activists had not been willing to make the calls, e-mails, and
faxes, we
never would have had this extraordinary victory.
Abortion and Child Abuse - Part 2
Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life
There is a significant statistical association between child abuse and abortion
- a mutual
relationship, whereby having an abortion makes the abuse of subsequent children
more
likely, and being abused as a child makes having an abortion later in life more
likely.
Obviously, and first of all, abortion itself is the worst form of child abuse.
Secondly, it
should be noted that we are talking about statistical associations. These
connections do
not mean that everyone who has an abortion will abuse her children, or that
everyone
who is abused will have an abortion.
Having said that, let's examine why having an abortion may lead to more child
abuse.
First of all, every pregnancy is a "crisis" in the best sense of the
term. Pregnancy creates
unique demands and challenges to the mother to mature; the body, the mind, and
the
spirit must grow in order to accommodate to the child. This "crisis of
incorporation," as
psychologists call it, puts the mother at a crossroads: either she accepts the
changes
required of her by the pregnancy, or she aborts the child, hence choosing to
regress rather
than mature.
The choice not to mature, but rather to remain selfish, makes it more likely
that the
mother will remain a less mature parent, and this immaturity is a key cause of
abuse and
neglect of other children.
A second problem is that fathers have no legal right to save their unborn child
from an
abortion. Not knowing if the child will live or die creates an ambivalence in
the father,
and a reluctance to bond to the child. Unattached to their baby, they show less
support to
their partner as well. After an abortion, the alienation worsens. Some studies
show as
high as an 80% rate of breakup of relationships after abortion. The mother's
anger at the
lack of support from the baby's father can be displaced to a born child.
A third reason why abortion can lead to child abuse is related to bonding.
Having an
abortion makes it more difficult to bond to a subsequent child, and babies who
are not
well bonded are more likely to be abused and neglected. A pregnancy following
abortion
creates more anxiety, caused in part by a fatalistic sense that the child will
be abnormal
(as a punishment for having aborted the previous one.) This anxiety can
interfere with
bonding.
Moreover, if the grief from the abortion is not adequately processed, it becomes
a post-
partum depression, which interferes with bonding. When one is still grieving a
lost baby,
one cannot attach to a new baby, because the attachment is still to the one who
died.
Failure to attach to the one who is alive can lead to abuse and neglect.
There can also be a sense of disappointment in the subsequent child, who is
compared to
the aborted baby who is often idealized in the mother's mind. Expectations of
the new
child, sometimes viewed as a "replacement baby," are not fulfilled,
resulting in anger that
can lead to abuse and neglect.
This column can be found on the web at
www.priestsforlife.org/columns/columns2004/04-11-23abortionchildabuse2.htm
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