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Nov, 21, 2008
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Caroline B. Glick:
Civilization walks the plank
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The Kosher Gourmet
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The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Spread the wealth? Jewish tradition and income equality
Elliot B. Gertel:
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Nov, 18, 2008
Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn: The End of the Age of Reason
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Nov, 17, 2008
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The End of the Age of Reason
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Nov, 14, 2008
Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The Power of Spiritual Inertia
Caroline B. Glick: The perils ahead
Nov, 13, 2008
Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: How Bush and Obama together could change the Middle East dynamic
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by JeanMarie Brownson: Sweet and savory, crispy and meltingly tender bestilla
Nov, 12, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Tyrannical Co-Workers
Michael Doyle: High Court to consider today donated monuments that may have religious messages in public parks
Nov, 11, 2008
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Will Obama stop government officials considering institutionalizing financial jihad?
Jonathan Tobin: They Will Decide Their Own Fate
Nov, 10, 2008
Rabbi Avi Shafran: $8 billion, modern-day Tower of Babel being built?
Barry Rubin: A letter to the president-elect from a Middle East realist
Nov, 7, 2008
Rabbi Francis Nataf: Of Children and Immortality
Caroline B. Glick: Livni's Obama strategy
Nov, 6, 2008
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: How I tricked a classroom of apathetic students into grasping the fallacy of moral relativism
The Kosher Gourmet
By Gina Kim: Tips for making the perfect soup --- includes recipes
Nov, 5, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Destitute Debtors
Bruce Weinstein: 'Religulos': Bad title,even worse movie
Nov, 4, 2008
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Treasury Dept. submits to Shariah law
Frida Ghitis: A surprise for Obama in the Middle East
Nov, 3, 2008
Jonathan Rosenblum: Who says Jews are Smart?
Jonathan Tobin:
Was He Wrong About Everything?
Oct. 31, 2008
Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Our Immutable Noble Essence
Caroline B. Glick: Running against Bush
Oct. 30, 2008
Jonathan Rosenblum: The End of the Special Relationship?
Steve Lipman: 'Kid Kosher' Gets A Title Shot
Oct. 29, 2008
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: GET US THE TAPE THE L.A. TIMES REFUSES TO RELEASE, AND WE'LL GIVE YOU CASH!
Dr. Ari Korenblit: Making The Write Choice for President
Oct. 28, 2008
Mona Charen: Denial runs through American Jewry
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Sell-off to capitalism or sell-out to Islam?
Oct. 27, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Are tax deductions for charitable donations moral?
Jonathan Mark: The Mystery Of The Arab-American Vote
Oct. 24, 2008
'Why aren't all religious people vegetarians?': Response by Miriam Kosman
Caroline B. Glick: Testing Obama's mettle
Oct. 23, 2008
Daniel Pipes: Obama Would Fail Security Clearance
The Kosher Gourmet
by Linda Gassenheimer: A fast chicken dish with an Asian accent
Oct. 20, 2008
Gary Rosenblatt: Still One Torah
Jonathan Tobin:
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Oct. 17, 2008
Jonathan Rosenblum: Sukkos and the Great Meltdown
Caroline B. Glick: The disappearance of law
Oct. 16, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Copying DVDs: RIP OR RIPOFF?
Cal Thomas: Blaming the Jews (again)
March 22, 2007
J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)
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Jewish World Review
August 27, 2008
/ 26 Menachem-Av 5768
Pope Pelosi At the Gate
By
Kathleen Parker
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
When Democrats decided they wouldn't let the GOP be "G-d's Only Party," they weren't kidding. Thanks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, none other than St. Augustine has been summoned to Denver.
He was resurrected as Pelosi was trying to respond to the question that refuses to die: When does human life begin? This time, it was Tom Brokaw asking on Sunday's "Meet the Press." Citing Barack Obama's recent pass on a similar question "At what point does a baby get human rights?" Brokaw asked Pelosi what she would say to Obama were he to ask her advice.
Pelosi didn't finesse her answer, as Obama did when he said the question was above his pay grade, but she may wish she had.
"I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time," Pelosi began. "And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctrines of the church have not been able to make that definition. ... St. Augustine said at three months. We don't know. The point is, is that it shouldn't have an impact on a woman's right to choose. ... I don't think anybody can tell you when life begins, human life begins."
Few paragraphs have contained more falsehoods. The reaction was swift from Denver's archbishop, the Rev. Charles J. Chaput, among others, who condemned Pelosi's comments during Mass that same evening. Blogging on Monday, Chaput quoted Jesuit John Connery, author of "Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective," who concluded that "The Christian tradition from the earliest days reveals a firm anti-abortion attitude."
It is true that laws and penalties concerning abortion have evolved through the ages. "Right to life" is a relatively new concept. It is also true that Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas eight centuries later subscribed to a "delayed hominization" theory, meaning that abortion couldn't be homicide because the fetus doesn't receive a soul until a certain point in its development.
Augustine even thought that "hominization" occurred earlier for males than for females. Is it possible that the same authority whom Pelosi invokes to justify her belief in choice also ranked the female fetus below the male on G-d's "Ensoulments To Do" list?
We may forgive Augustine, of course, because people didn't know much about nascent life in the early 400s. The ovum wasn't discovered until 1827. Fetal imaging, now routine for expectant parents, was unimaginable.
If Augustine had known then what we know now, would he stand by Pelosi as she asserts that when life begins should have no bearing on a woman's right to choose?
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled as much in Roe v. Wade, obviously, but Justice Harry A. Blackmun dodged the question of when life begins using the same rationale as Pelosi that because scientists, theologians and others couldn't agree on when life begins, then a woman's privacy trumped the unborn's right to due process.
One may choose to believe that out of convenience or conscience, but the logic of the court was both self-contradictory and incorrect, according to Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. By its ruling, says George, the court implicitly determined when life begins (against the fetus), while ignoring science that long before had determined the facts of human embryogenesis.
In his new book, "Embryo," George and co-author Christopher Tollefsen, associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, left religion behind and set out to establish the embryo's personhood by reviewing all the major scientific works on human embryogenesis and early intrauterine development.
Included was American medicine's most prominent human embryology text, "The Developing Human," whose authors are not imprecise on the matter of life: "Human development begins at fertilization when a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoon) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to produce a single cell a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual."
In other words, human life begins at conception. That is not a religious posture, but a scientific fact that the lowest paid laborer on the planet can assert without qualm. What we do with that understanding is another matter, but no one in the 21st century should pretend not to know when human life begins.
On this matter at least, the church and science are in agreement.
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