The UN’s high-level conference on HIV/AIDS began [last] Wednesday with fanfare and a veritable parade of delegates, scientists, activists, and UN bureaucrats. In keeping with what is now standard procedure, there was a panel integrating a “gender-mainstreamed” perspective into the discussion: “Women, Girls, and HIV.” The panelists told the audience with authority and enthusiasm that the […]
Recently I heard a minister describe children this way. And I agree with him. What is convenient about children? Pregnancy is inconvenient. Not that I have ever personally experienced it, but I hear things. Nausea. Throwing up. Weight gain. Kicking against the bladder. Toxemia. Leaking. More weight gain. Overheating. Not able to get comfortable. Restless […]
Some in the UN believe that comprehensive sexuality education is the main intervention needed to prevent new HIV infections – even for adolescents as young as 10 years old. “It is time to seize the opportunities to promote sexuality education and comprehensive knowledge of HIV and other health matters among very young adolescents before they […]
The wound comes from well-meaning people. “Well, it wasn’t that far along.” “You can always have another child.” “Lots of people go through this.” Miscarriage is a tragedy that so many people misunderstand. They are not quite sure how to console a friend or relative who has suffered this loss. While there are no magic […]
By authorizing the use of a single drug, the World Health Organization has simultaneously raised hopes for saving thousands of mothers’ lives and raised fears that the drug will also be used to kill perhaps millions of unborn children. Misoprostol is used to help stop bleeding during delivery, the main cause of maternal deaths, but […]
The feast of Divine Mercy is celebrated by the Catholic Church on the first Sunday after Easter Sunday. At least one of the purposes of celebrating this feast in the heart of the Easter season is to remind us that the salvific death of the now risen Lord, replete with the promise of Resurrection and […]
As Beijing continues to vigorously pursue its infamous one-child policy, PRI has gathered evidence showing that Chinese villagers who cannot afford to pay these fines have their “illegal” children abducted and sold by Chinese population control officials. It is well known that those who violate the one-child policy have sometimes been subjected to coerced abortions […]
The Problem “Quality of life” and “death with dignity” have more than a few folks erroneously asserting that the range of legally-acceptable end-of-life options should include “voluntary euthanasia,” and/or “physician-assisted suicide” also known as “physician aid in dying.” [1] In a recent commentary entitled Human Dignity and the End of Life, Cardinal Rigali and Bishop […]
Today the French government holds the fate of thousands of innocent lives in their hands. The French Parliament is considering a bill mandating that health care professionals offer universal pre-natal testing for Down syndrome. When a diagnosis of Down syndrome is given to a pregnant woman in France, there is a 96% abortion rate. Most […]
In the early hours of Holy Thursday, 2011, as Churches were preparing – and in some parts of the world already celebrating – the Mass of the Lord’s Supper and the washing of the feet, “Baby Joseph” was flown from St Louis, where he has been treated since I brought him there in mid-March, to […]
How are Catholic health care professional to act, morally and professionally, in a culture where legislative mandates diminish the exercise of the moral conscience of the clinician and threaten human dignity and freedom? The following principles are offered to guide moral action of health care professionals when confronted with a decision to disregard mandated unethical […]
When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n.1777). We live in a culture where health services are driven by moral relativism, commodification of the human person, the technological imperative, profitability in health services, the creep of utilitarian and impersonal ethical paradigms, escalating […]
Death is part of our lives, and the Gospel reminds us that we know not the day or the hour of our demise. And so it was this year when a professional colleague of mine and then an old friend both died sudden deaths. One was young; the other old. One died with a massive […]
Children of God for Life ( www.cogforlife.org ) and Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute ( www.soundchoice.org ) are calling on federal officials to investigate the cause of autism in children who have received vaccines produced using aborted fetal cell lines. Past studies have focused on the use of thimerosal in vaccines as reason for the rise in autism. […]
China’s just-released 2010 census is grim news for those who claim that suppressing population growth boosts economic development. China is graying more rapidly than previously predicted and its demographic dividend will decline sharply just two years from now, causing an economic slow-down and political and social unrest. China Brief’s Willy Lam analyzes the new census […]
Many people today are very busy, sometimes wondering “who’s got time to read?” And yet, given the rapid and varied scientific breakthroughs which render contemporary research and healthcare contexts evermore complex and morally confusing, relevant reading is arguably imperative given our responsibility to the common good as voters, donors to charities, and investors in corporations […]
Early in my work at Priests for Life a woman wrote, “I can’t help but think that if twenty years ago I heard a sermon in my Church against abortion, I would have found the strength to keep my baby instead of killing my baby.” Since then, countless women, as well as men, have said […]
I was praying before the tomb of the great Cardinal Mindszenty in his cathedral at Esztergom, when I heard the news that his beloved Hungary had passed a new, pro-life constitution. The Cardinal, who took sanctuary in the U.S. Embassy for 16 years after Soviet troops crushed the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, would be proud. […]
It is not news that in the last 40 years the Sacred Liturgy has been treated with a banality that has gone from the sentimental to the silly to the irreverent to the heretical, and back again, a few million times. Now, of course, there is nothing silly or banal about the Eucharist and other […]
The UN is about to ask governments to fund the vaccination of every girl in the world against the sexually transmitted disease HPV, human papillomavirus. The controversial campaign could cost as much as $300 per person, totaling billions. Dignitaries who launched the campaign at the UN in mid-April included a prominent African first lady, […]
A recent press release by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) declares that the world’s population will reach 7 billion people on October 21, 2011. According to PRI President Steven Mosher, while the release pays lip service to human achievements, it also makes a veiled demand for more population control. In the release, UNFPA’s Executive […]
Pope Benedict XVI has aroused some opposition but also worldwide hope for dialogue and discovery of shared truths about our humanness, God, and moral and social crises of our times. He has focused much of his initiative on the core question of “human dignity” and, by implication, “the sanctity of life.” There is good reason […]
“This case is not over,” said lead attorney Samuel B. Casey about Friday’s 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. that gave the green light for the destruction of human embryonic stem cells for research purposes. That action overturns an injunction put in place by a District Court judge last summer. […]
Virtues empower folks to reliably, freely, and happily engage in truly noble acts by which they become even more virtuous than they already are. Like a surgeon who has progressed into a surgical virtuoso — a fully flourishing surgical artist whose patients rightly trust with their lives and their limbs — clinicians of various stripes […]
