Articles by Father Thomas Berg
Some Objectivity on Abortion and Healthcare Reform
Sep 29, 2009 / 00:00 amSince I last wrote in August about the healthcare reform bills currently before Congress, there remains much public consternation and confusion as to whether these bills will or will not provide government funded abortion coverage. This concern is not surprising when public opposition to such coverage is mounting as demonstrated by recent polls. Last Tuesday, a new survey commissioned by the USCCB revealed that fully 60% of those who support health care reform oppose government funding for plans that include abortion. These results confirm similar results found in a poll commissioned by the Susan B. Anthony List and a recent Rasmussen poll. Upon careful analysis, the truth remains that if passed in any of its current forms, legislation in both the House and Senate will authorize broad federal funding of abortion through both private and publicly subsidized healthcare. Here's why.In late July, the House of Representatives approved an amendment to the House bill (H.R. 3200) which was proposed by Rep. Lois Capps (D-California), as a putative "compromise" on the abortion coverage issue. An honest and careful reading of the Capps amendment reveals a deceptive use of linguistic gymnastics. And quite to the contrary, we discover that it explicitly authorizes the Secretary of the Health and Human Services to include coverage for elective abortions in the services offered under the public option, and mandates coverage for current Medicaid abortions. If retained in a final form of the bill, the Capps amendment would indeed allow broad federal funding of abortion for the first time in American history. Specifically, H.R. 3200 states that some abortions (in cases or rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother) "shall" be covered -- thus mandating coverage -- by the "public option" plan. The Capps amendment grants power to the secretary of Health and Human Services to use public dollars for abortion, establishing that "nothing in this Act shall be construed as preventing the public health insurance option from providing" abortion services that are currently prohibited from federal funding -- principally elective abortions. Dorinda Bordlee, legal counsel for Bioethics Defense Fund, a nationally known expert on bioethics legislation and pro-life issues, has spent weeks in painstaking review of the various legislative drafts as they have emerged. Bordlee concludes that, "as a lawyer, the President is choosing his words very carefully to misguide citizens about the fact that the proposals he supports authorize government funding of abortion on demand." That conclusion was recently confirmed by the independent, non-partisan Factcheck.org of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania which determined that "despite what Obama said, the House bill would allow abortion to be covered by a federal plan and by federally subsidized private plans." In sum, unless Congress specifically excludes abortion from coverage, it is a certainty that abortion will be part of that package either because it will be overtly required by the Secretary of HHS, or because the courts will determine that the broadly worded coverage requirements include abortion. Several attempts by pro-life congressmen to amend the House bill with language specifically prohibiting such a mandate for abortion coverage have all been rejected. Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, recently introduced a proposal (America's Healthy Future Act) not yet in bill form which, while not contemplating a public option, is nonetheless geared to secure abortion coverage in a manner very similar to the Capps amendment, including the mandated coverage (in the minimum benefits package) of those abortions currently open to federal funding under the Hyde Amendment. Additionally, the Baucus plan provides $6 billion for the establishment of health insurance cooperatives which would be permitted to cover abortion. And unlike the current federal practice of not subsidizing plans that cover abortion, the Baucus plan would allow refundable, advance-able tax credits and cost-sharing credits to be applied to plans that pay for elective abortions. The current proposals embrace the fallacy that abortion is healthcare. We know the truth to be otherwise. If the Obama administration insists on lifting current restrictions on federally funded abortions by means of healthcare reform legislation, Americans are at least entitled to an honest admission of that objective, and to truth in packaging.
What is Marriage? -Part II
Sep 22, 2009 / 00:00 amLast Tuesday, 90 members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bill (H.R. 3567) that would repeal the one federal law that currently protects the traditional definition of marriage, the Defense of Marriage Act. This is the latest in nation-wide attempts to redefine the traditional understanding of marriage. Last week in this column, I began a reflection on why that traditional understanding must be upheld and why gay couples suffer no injustice in being denied the unique legal privileges traditionally granted to married heterosexuals. It all hinges on what marriage is in the first place.Last week's column led to a consideration that the traditional (natural law and Catholic) understanding of marriage is based on a vision of the human person as a soul-body whole in which the body is not merely instrumental to an intense emotional bonding (as in the contemporary understanding of "marriage") but rather can be constitutive of a unique kind of union which only one man and one woman can enter into through sexual intercourse. Consequently, sexual intercourse (and not other kinds of sexual acts, including sodomy) is uniquely capable of bringing about that kind of union which the natural law tradition, Catholic theology, and human cultures for millennia have exclusively called marriage. And here's why.Even though a man and a woman are complete organisms in themselves, with regard to the act of human reproduction each stands as an incomplete, complementary and potential participant. The act of sexual intercourse -- unlike any other human action and unlike any other kind of act involving human genital intimacy -- renders the man and the woman together a complete reproducing organism, a potentially life-producing unity. And even if the couple happens to be sterile, by the very nature of the act, they still become one organism, one flesh.Persons who argue that acts of sodomy, mutual masturbation, and so on can have the same value as sexual intercourse presuppose a premise that the traditional view rejects, namely, that sexual acts are merely a means to achieving the end of intense emotional bonding. Genuine marriage, to the contrary, is a total sharing of life and love, based not on intense emotional communion, but founded rather on the physical communion uniquely possible between a male and a female due to their sexual complementarity. That complementarity can bring about what the Bible calls a "one flesh union." Tragically, this understanding of marriage has largely been lost in contemporary culture. Now, if the preceding argumentation is true, one could challenge it by saying it leads to the implausible conclusion that rape or premarital sexual intercourse would also render those involved "married." Such a conclusion does not follow, however. Sexual intercourse can in fact bring about such a union, but only when simultaneously based on the willing and publicly pledged consent (in permanence and exclusivity) of the man and the woman to enter into that kind of union. The unique union we call marriage is that which is entered into by one man and one woman who constitute with their bodies what they consent to with their reason and will. When those conditions hold, such a commitment brings about marriage; subsequent love-making consummates that commitment, making it real, literally as "one flesh."Consequently, teenagers, or even engaged couples who have sexual intercourse share partially in physical and emotional intimacy, but they do not bring about the complete communion of life and love which only the pledge of permanent and exclusive fidelity can make possible. In fact, persons who engage in sexual intercourse outside of marriage not only engage in the mere counterfeit of the genuine good of marital union, but also open themselves up to an array of potentially damaging consequences stemming from the essential disorder of their sexual relations.Such is not merely a "Catholic opinion." It is, rather, a reading of human nature in truth. To hold that only one man and one woman can bring about a genuine marriage, and that gay couples are incapable of doing so is broadly considered discriminatory and its expression, "hate-speech." Such are the cultural turbulences we must endure in bearing witness to fundamental truths about the human person. We acquiesce to the extinguishing of those truths only to our own peril.
What is Marriage? -Part I
Sep 15, 2009 / 00:00 amWith New York Governor David Paterson determined to legalize same-sex "marriage" in New York, it's a good moment to revisit this controversial issue from a Catholic and natural law approach. The legal recognition of gay "marriage" is currently required by court order in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa, and by legislation in Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire. Active efforts to repeal gay "marriage" are taking place in New Hampshire and Iowa, and a referendum to that effect will be on the ballot in Maine this November. A federal challenge to California's Proposition 8 is now underway and seeks a ruling that would overturn laws protecting the traditional definition of marriage in all states, making gay "marriage" the law of the land. There is also a separate court challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act.To understand why the traditional definition must be upheld and why gay couples suffer no injustice in being denied the unique legal privileges traditionally granted to married heterosexuals, we must first step back and ask: what is marriage in the first place?Princeton University professor of Jurisprudence Robert George responds to that question in the current issue of First Things. In what follows, I attempt to make Dr. George's superb but understandably technical and philosophical explanation a bit more accessible to readers. Most people would agree that marriage, whatever it is, is about two people becoming united, about the union of two human persons. Assuming this is true, we then ask ourselves: what kind of union are we talking about? It is safe to say that a broad spectrum of people believe this union to be a special kind of human bonding which takes place in the depths of their psychological-emotive selves. Marriage, in this view, is essentially about the union of two psychological 'selves' on that intense emotional level of their being. On such an understanding of things, bodily expressions of intimacy and physical union are very important, but serve only as instrumental means of expressing this unique but preeminently emotional bond of the two selves. And this is because a person -- in this conception of things -- is primarily the conscious, individual 'self,' while bodily existence is only instrumental to fulfilling the wants, desires, and preferences of that 'self'. (And a corollary to this view is that once the 'self' is apparently deteriorated -- because of mental illness, brain injury or disease -- and that 'self' is no longer expected to express itself in a meaningful way or experience a "quality" existence, many in our culture find it difficult to explain why we should continue providing nutrition and hydration to such individuals, that is, why we should continue maintaining their bodily functions when such preservation arguably fails to serve the end of maintaining the mental activity of the 'self'). Now, if that -- what I have just described -- is the essence of marriage, then I don't have a leg to stand on in opposing gay "marriage." I concede that two gay men or two gay women can attain that level of psychological-emotional bonding. If that is marriage, then exclusion of gay couples from the benefits accorded to those who have entered into such a bonding would, indeed, be discriminatory.Allow me then to disagree with the major premise, namely, that the union sought by persons intending marriage is a kind of extreme emotional bond. There is another kind of union which marriage brings about, a unique union, the understanding of which requires us to reject other premises from the foregoing view:
Stem Cell Research and Cloning
Aug 25, 2009 / 00:00 amSpecial note: Fr. Thomas will be away for two weeks. "With Good Reason" will resume on September 15.
The Latest in Stem Cell Research and Cloning
Aug 18, 2009 / 00:00 amBuried under all the uproar over proposed healthcare reform legislation, there has been some significant news this summer regarding stem cell research. To begin, let's recall some of the basics of this issue. What are stem cells? Maureen Condic, Senior Fellow with the Westchester Institute, concisely responds to that question in a recent article in Ethics and Medics:
Is There a Right to Healthcare?
Aug 11, 2009 / 00:00 amIn a provocative op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal in late July, Theodore Dalrymple (the pen name of British physician Anthony Daniels) argued that there simply is no such thing as a fundamental right to healthcare. "Where does the right to health care come from?" asked Dalrymple. "Did it exist in, say, 250 B.C., or in A.D. 1750? If it did, how was it that our ancestors, who were no less intelligent than we, failed completely to notice it?"Honest questions. The determination of what does or does not constitute a genuine human right can be a complex philosophical question. Further complicating matters, we live in a time when the language of human rights has become seriously problematic due to hyper-extension of the term. Today, at the drop of a hat, anyone can claim almost anything as a 'right.' Some claims -- like a right to own a fuel efficient automobile -- might be patently silly. But how about something more serious, like a 'right' to own a home? That claim was at the heart of the subprime mortgage debacle that plunged us into a near economic collapse. Or how about a 'right' to have a child? No takers on that one, at least in the Catholic moral tradition. So what about a fundamental human right to adequate healthcare? On that count, the U.S. Catholic bishops have been firm believers for decades. In a 1993 resolution on health care reform titled "A Framework for Comprehensive Health Care Reform" the bishops wrote:
Obamacare and Conscience Protections in Healthcare
Aug 4, 2009 / 00:00 amGrowing alarm that an eventual healthcare reform bill would mandate universal coverage of abortion in health insurance has raised the immediately related concern over how this legislation would impact the issue of conscience protections in healthcare generally.To be sure, President Obama is on record as favoring a "robust" federal policy protecting health-care workers who conscientiously object to performing certain procedures. Speaking to reporters just before his first meeting with Pope Benedict a couple of weeks ago, President Obama insisted that, under his administration, Catholic healthcare professionals would not be forced to participate in procedures that violate their conscience. He described himself as a "believer in conscience clauses."Yet, he recently proposed to rescind a strong conscience rights regulation set in place by the Department of Health and Human Services in December of 2008 which reinforced existing conscience protection statutes. Consequently, at present, conscience rights in healthcare for those who would refuse involvement in procedures such as abortion is in limbo.Against this backdrop of ambiguity, the healthcare reform legislation (H.R. 3200) now under consideration will make taxpayers fund abortions unless abortion coverage is explicitly excluded. And if conscience protections remain weak (or never materialize in this particular piece of legislation or as part of the U.S. Code) then the impending abortion mandate in Obamacare could mean that scores of healthcare workers will be given the choice of either violating their consciences or losing their jobs, especially since the abortion mandate will almost certainly result in a broader availability of abortions and in higher numbers. Additionally, if those conscience protections are lacking, more and more providers will face discrimination based on their beliefs as they are faced with the prospect of participating in abortions and other objectionable procedures. Obviously then, it would be optimal to embed specific language addressing conscience protections in any eventual healthcare reform bill. Representative Bart Stupak, a pro-life Democrat from Michigan, accomplished that -- at least in part -- last week, when the Energy and Commerce Committee (ECC) accepted part of Stupak's amendment to the ECC's version of the health reform bill. The current version of the bill now provides for the conscientious objection of providers at least in the context of abortion: A federal agency, or state or local government receiving federal funds under the Act, may not discriminate against an individual or institutional health care provider because the provider does not provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.
Obamacare and Abortion
Jul 28, 2009 / 00:00 amThe ensuing debate over proposed legislation to overhaul America's healthcare system is generating news and capturing the attention of Americans with a steadily growing level of outrage. And one particularly outrageous element of that legislation as it currently exists in the House of Representatives demands our special attention. If passed in its current form, this legislation will mandate abortion coverage in health care reform and it will be paid for with our tax dollars. That's because, unless amended to specifically exclude abortion coverage, abortion will automatically become a minimum required benefit as a simple matter of interpretation of the law. Here's how it works.
A Disturbing Finding on the Abortion Front
Jul 21, 2009 / 00:00 amPlanned Parenthood, the nation's single largest provider of abortions, has recently engaged in some damage control to mend its image, tarnished by association with the chemical abortifacient RU-486. First some background. RU-486, the "abortion pill" (chemical name mifepristone and not to be confused with the "morning after pill" Levonorgestrel, an over the counter emergency contraceptive) was approved by the FDA in 2000. Mifepristone works by blocking the normal functioning of progesterone, a hormone necessary for the maintenance of pregnancy. The immediate consequence is the degeneration of the uterine lining and the blocking of nutrition to the fetus resulting in its death. Mifeprex is used in combination with a prostaglandin called misoprostol which then causes the cervix to dilate, and the uterus to contract and expel its lining and the now-deceased child. RU-486, we might add, is also the only FDA-approved drug that has as its purpose the death of a living human being. The drug's approval was forced through by President Clinton's administration, which dubiously approved the drug under a provision of drug law reserved solely for drugs developed to treat "serious or life-threatening illnesses" (of which pregnancy is not).
The New Guidelines for Stem Cell Research
Jul 14, 2009 / 00:00 amIn the course of deliberations at the Empire State Stem Cell Board, my colleagues and I have discussed "ethical" guidelines that would ideally govern everything from obtaining informed consent for the "donation" of human gametes or already existing embryos for research purposes to "respect" for the human embryo in the laboratory setting. In the course of those exchanges, I have often had the unpleasant sensation of partaking in something akin to a debate over what color to paint the 'shower' stalls at Auschwitz. In New York State, embryo-destructive research is legal and fundable by the state as long as it is engaged in "ethically."This of course reflects the sad reality that our federal government has vouchsafed a medical and scientific regime that warrants the destruction of "unwanted" IVF embryos for research purposes. This is nowhere more apparent than in the recently released National Institutes of Health (NIH) Guidelines on Human Stem Cell Research which went into effect on July 7.Readers will recall that on March 9, 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13505, "Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells." The executive order directed the Secretary of Health and Human Services, through the NIH, to "support and conduct responsible, scientifically worthy human stem cell research, including human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, to the extent permitted by law" and to develop appropriate guidelines governing the distribution of federal funds to hESC researchers. The NIH is, of course, the great financial umbilical cord supplying U.S. tax-payer dollars to fund the vast majority of biomedical researcher in our country. So, the promulgation of these guidelines has been no small issue of late: how would the new guidelines impact hESC research that was already underway and how would they impact that research in the future? On April 23, 2009 the NIH first published a draft of the proposed Guidelines and allowed for some thirty days of public comment, a period which ended on May 26, 2009 and garnered some 49,000 comments. So what to make of the final product? The guidelines are, first and foremost, tragic: they enshrine a federal fiat for treating "unwanted" human embryos, discarded after their creation for reproductive uses in assisted fertility clinics, as raw material for human embryonic stem cell research. That said, we can nonetheless be grateful that the NIH exercised a considerable degree of restraint in determining what the guidelines would prohibit, render more difficult or frown upon. Here some highlights:
Ideology-Free Science?
Jul 7, 2009 / 00:00 amSpecial note: By popular demand, this column will resume publishing on a weekly schedule, rather than monthly. If you liked the special monthly feature, "While I'm at it," watch for our new blog at www.westchesterinstitute.net, coming soon.
Obama and Notre Dame Revisited
Jun 2, 2009 / 00:00 amAs I noted last month, President Barack Obama is a master at concealing under many guises a strident pursuit of an aggressive anti-life agenda. He knows too that there is no easier way to grab the moral high ground in a contentious debate than by appearing to be the most reasonable of all parties concerned. On that score, the President hit a grand slam with his commencement address at Notre Dame on May 17. In the swirl of controversy which engulfed his presence at the erstwhile flagship Catholic university in the US, the President used the abortion issue to project a catholicized image of himself. In recent decades, the Catholic church has had to assume the role of protector and promoter of the sound use of human reason, in everything from theology to social doctrine, to the relationship between religious creed and public discourse. Indeed, just such leadership was a hallmark of the universal moral appeal exercised by Pope John Paul II. Team Obama seems to have understood this to some degree. Consequently, they confronted the whole Notre Dame controversy by orchestrating a speech that would make their boss look eminently reasonable, a speech that oozed every semblance of the deepest reasonableness. Hence the President's call for a new, more respectful exchange of views on the issue of abortion, a call for "open hearts, open minds, and fair-minded words," a call to reach a new "common ground" on this paramount moral issue. How disappointing -- to not say tragic -- that Fr. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame, would be so intellectually shallow as to describe this whole episode from its very inception as a "dialogue." In a letter he addressed to ND graduates, he went so far as to dress up the dialogue lingo in the trappings of high sounding metaphors borrowed from his famous predecessor Fr. Theodore Hesburgh:
What We've Learned
May 6, 2009 / 00:00 amAs only Mark Steyn could put it, "we're still in the first 100 days of the joyous observances of Barack Obama's first 100 days, and many weeks of celebration lie ahead." And how. The inane swells of euphoria notwithstanding, one has to admit that those first 100 days have been very revealing: we have a President who knows that crisis -- especially an economic one -- is too good a thing to waste; we have a president who, as a person, is vastly more popular than his policies; we have a president who, as Steyn puts it, "has the knack of appearing moderate while acting radical, which is a lethal skill."It is in light of these features of the Obama psyche that pro-lifers must continue to gauge the president's continued assault on human life, and especially his attitude toward the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA).
Analyzing Obama's Anti-Life Assault
Apr 7, 2009 / 00:00 amPresident Barack Obama issued an executive order on March 9, 2009 which suspended the Bush administration policy on the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research and directed the National Institutes of Health to come up with a new set of regulations for that research within a period of 120 days. Much hailed as a major step toward what he described in his Inaugural Address as a pledge to "restore science to its rightful place," it was the center piece of the culture-of-death accomplishments of his first 60 days in office -- many of them aimed directly at the Catholic Church and attacking religious liberties in general. Michael Gerson, former policy advisor and speechwriter for President George W. Bush, discovered a "common thread" running through Obama's pro-choice, anti-life agenda, namely, "the coercion of those who disagree with it." Writing in The Washington Post on March 11, he continued:
What is Social Networking Doing to Our Brains?
Mar 3, 2009 / 00:00 amI have not given up Facebook for Lent.
The Octomom Moment
Feb 24, 2009 / 00:00 amSome of the more disturbing aspects of contemporary western culture all seem to have converged in the recent birth of octuplets to Nadya Suleman, a single mother in California: voluntary single parenthood via sperm donors, manufacturing of babies in Petri dishes, freezing live human embryos indefinitely, a renegade scientific and medical community. It's hard to get one's head around the situation and address it directly because nothing about it is normal or natural, from beginning to end.
The Dualisms of our Age
Feb 3, 2009 / 00:00 amMore than any one thing President Obama said during his inauguration speech (it certainly was not a speech to be remembered), what sticks in my mind two weeks later were those sweeping pan shots of the crowds, the two million or so who stood on the National Mall, braving the bitter cold of winter, to "experience" that "moment."
Deconstructing the Obama Stem Cell Policy
Jan 27, 2009 / 00:00 amPresident Obama is expected to soon reverse the Bush administration policy on the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Presumably, this will be a major step toward what he described in his Inaugural Address as a pledge to "restore science to its rightful place." The New York Times could not resist publishing the sappy story of scientists around the country teary-eyed with joy at the coming "restoration."