U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian has temporarily blocked a Trump ruling that would cut funding to Planned Parenthood by about 60 million.
By Deacon Frederick Bartels
26 April 2019
Judge Bastian issued a nationwide injunction Thursday, blocking the Trump administration from “imposing new anti-abortion restrictions on the use of federal family planning funds designed to assist 4 million low-income women,” reported the Washington Post.
The Trump rule, initiated by the Department of Health and Human Services in March, is called a “gag rule” by its critics because it would prevent entities from receiving government funds if they recommend abortions or refer patients to abortion facilities such as Planned Parenthood.
“Planned Parenthood, a regular target of the President Trump and HHS, would have been particularly hard hit as the nation’s single largest provider of reproductive health services” reports the Washington Post.
Planned Parenthood is a Trump target? I would hope PP would be any reasonable American’s target. Anyone with a conscience should want to close its doors. It should certainly be any Christian’s target. It’s not only an unnecessary, tax-eating organization, it’s a child-killing abortion mill. But let me ask, then, who is the Washington Post’s target? Recall the Covington-Nathan-Phillips-Nick-Sandmann fiasco. President Trump, anyone conservative politically or Catholic religiously, is also a target of the Washington Post.
Planned Parenthood offers “reproductive health services”?
Nope. Contrary the Post’s language, PP’s main thrust is facilitating abortions—in number of ways. “Reproductive health services,” like “family planning services,” are frequently used euphemisms for intrinsic evils like abortion, abortifacient contraceptives, and other means of contracepting that thwart procreation, one of the ends of marriage. When you hear “reproductive health care,” read culture of death, a militant attack on the transmission of human life and the right to life, as well as a powerful force in denigrating women and ruining their lives.
U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian granted a preliminary injunction preventing the HHS from implementing the Trump admin’s rule. His injunction is nationwide in scope and was initiated in response to law suits brought forth by the state of Washington, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, et al.
Judge Bastian wrote, the rule “creates unreasonable barriers for patients to obtain appropriate medical care; impedes timely access to health care services; interferes with communications regarding a full range of treatment options between the patient and their health care provider, restricts the ability of health care providers to provide full disclosure of all relevant information to patients” and “violates the principles of informed consent and the ethical standards of health care professions.”
Judge Bastian’s statement is filled with ridiculous euphemisms and pro-abort speech. Let’s take a brief look at some of his verbal engineering.
Is abortion “appropriate medical care”?
One online medical dictionary defines medical care this way: “the provision by a physician of services related to the maintenance of health, prevention of illness, and treatment of illness or injury.” There is no relationship whatsoever between abortion and medical care. Abortion is defined as the intentional and direct killing of a pre-born human child. Medical care always has to do with saving lives. Abortion always has to do with taking them.
Is abortion a “health care service”?
Again, health care services refers to benefiting human persons, not destroying them. It has to do with the maintenance of health, the prevention of illness, or a treatment of an illness or injury. Referring people to have abortions or providing them, and promoting contraceptives and their use are not health care services. Such activities are, in fact, gravely detrimental to health: they are ordered toward either killing innocent human persons or preventing them from ever coming into being.
Some people will object. What’s wrong with contracepting? What’s wrong with preventing procreation? People who ask these questions either reject or are unaware of the following principles:
- The primary principle of the moral law is to avoid evil and do the good. One must never commit evil so as to bring about an intended good. Using contraceptives is an intrinsic evil. People use them to enjoy the good of sexual pleasure irresponsibly and in a disordered way by engaging in the evil of contracepting.
- Hormonal contraceptives and other devices like IUD’s often work as abortifacients. They not only prevent pregnancy, they terminate it. When people use particular forms of contraception, they often abort newly conceived children.
- Couples place their souls at risk when using contraceptives. Engaging in sex while intentionally preventing the transmission of new human life by contracepting is an intrinsic evil. It is opposed to the natural law and Divine Law. Also, it is opposed to human dignity since people who use contraceptives injure themselves spiritually and, often, physically.
Is abortion one aspect of a full range of “treatment options”?
Does a full range of treatment options include murder? Abortion is not a “treatment option.” Again, abortion is an intentional and deliberate choice to end the life of another human person. It’s not one “good” option among others. It’s not like choosing between a low carb or paleo diet, or between one form of skincare or another. It is undisputed biologically that human life begins at conception. At that moment, a separate human organism exists, who is simply in a process of development from zygote to adult, from tiny person to big person.
Does abortion violate the “ethical standards of health-care professionals”?
Everybody’s heard of the Hippocratic Oath. In its original form it was written between the 5th and 3rd centuries B.C. It has historically been taken by physicians and is the western world’s earliest expression of medical ethics. Its main principle is: “First do no harm.” Yes, abortion does violate ethical standards of health-care professionals, but not in the way Judge Bastian thinks. Abortion violates the ethical standards of any health-care professional who has ethical standards.
The ethical standards of health care professionals dictate that they should do no harm. Health-care professionals are supposed to promote and support the health of human persons, not destroy it by killing innocent children. Not only that, practitioners who support abortion often destroy the lives of mothers and fathers by convincing them that abortion is one “health care option” among others.
Planned Parenthood must be defunded.
If we Americans truly believe in the right to life, liberty and happiness; if we believe it is unacceptable to murder children; if we believe people have a right to grow up and live their lives freely, then we must defund and shut down America’s largest abortion mill—along with all the others.
Our tax dollars should be used to support our nation and build up the common good of all, not murder children and dismantle society. A society that aborts its children is a self-terminating society. A nation that funds the intentional killing of its youngest citizens is a nation operating under the tenets of unspeakable evil and darkness. It’s a nation that wars against itself in sterile rooms where highly educated yet morally corrupt men use surgical tools, acids and other means to dismember, dissolve, and/or excise human babies from their first home.
It seems obvious to everyone who loves God and human life that abortion must be defeated, that Roe v. Wade must be rescinded, that Planned Parenthood’s days must end. Yet here we are. In the midst of this brutal and bloody battle.
The fact is, some people love the truth and others hate it. That’s not going to change this side of heaven.
But that doesn’t mean we give up. No. It means we speak the truth all the more fervently and frequently.
Deacon Frederick Bartels is a member of the Catholic clergy who serves the Church in the diocese of Pueblo. He holds an MA in Theology and Educational Ministry, is a member of the theology faculty at Catholic International University, and is a Catholic educator, public speaker, and evangelist who strives to infuse culture with the saving principles of the gospel. For more, visit YouTube, iTunes and Twitter.
Deacon Bartels is most convincing that Judge Bastian is wrong and our President is right..
Planned parenthood must be defunded. It has corrupted our youth for decades by marketing contraception to them and abortion.. I held this position before but after reading the article it has given me more tools to defend it.