Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D.
Director of Education, The National Catholic Bioethics Center

Fr. Tad is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. As an undergraduate he earned degrees in philosophy, biochemistry, molecular cell biology, and chemistry, and did laboratory research on hormonal regulation of the immune response. He later earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Yale University, where he focused on cloning genes for neurotransmitter transporters which are expressed in the brain. He also worked for several years as a molecular biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church
47650 North Territorial Road
Plymouth, MI 48170
(On the corner of Beck & North Territorial)

This series is sponsored by Gospel of Life Committee at OLGC. For more information, please contact Mark Renfer @ mark.renfer@gmail.com

Fr. Tad studied for 5 years in Rome where he did advanced work in dogmatic theology and in bioethics, examining the question of delayed ensoulment of the human embryo. He has testified before members of the Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Virginia and North Carolina State Legislatures during deliberations over stem cell research and cloning. He has given presentations and participated in roundtables on contemporary bioethics throughout the U.S., Canada, and in Europe. He has done numerous media commentaries, including appearances on CNN International, ABC World News Tonight, and National Public Radio. He is Director of Education for The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia and directs the Center’s National Catholic Certification Program in Health Care Ethics.

The Dignity of Life speaker series is a response to the crisis of modernity as described by Pope John Paul II. He wrote that the crisis of our age is the pulverization and degradation of the dignity and uniqueness of the human person. The speaker series address this crisis and hopes to offer concrete avenues to transform the culture into a genuine civilization of love.

From “The Clone Age,” by Lori B. Andrews, page 7:  “Is it the wrong time for a pregnancy, but you want to freeze the fetus in case you later want to bring to life that very baby?  Cryogenic Solutions of Houston offers such freezing, even though the technology to ‘reanimate’ such a fetus is not yet available.”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Although, I probably shouldn’t be surprised, it’s not like people don’t already freeze their children — that we don’t have thousands of little kids on ice right now.  But something about how very callous that statement is just struck me in a unique way.  This is not about a couple wanting desperately to have kids and the only way is to conceive in a petri dish.  This is about your personal convenience!  That poor child has already been conceived normally and is growing and thriving in his or her natural environment, and you want to rip him out of your body and freeze him — oh, but hang on there kid, because some day I might decide that I want you?!!?!?!

There is nothing in that decision that has anything to do with love — except for the extreme, selfish love of self of the individual making that horrible decision.

And, supposing you do this, what do you tell your kid???!?  “Hi, honey.  Yeah, well I want you now, but I didn’t want you earlier,”?????  What is that going to do to the poor kid’s self esteem?

This is a sick, sick world in which we live.

Okay, so the elections are not too far away. Here’s my little rant about terminology regarding, for me, the biggest issue in this election: the pro-life versus pro-choice issue.

Now, seriously. Is it fair that the two sides are answering different questions for self-identification? No! That just confuses the issue and tries to sway people one way or the other based on sentiment — appealing to their emotions, rather than their reason.

Let me try to explain:

Pro-life: well, who wants to be pro-death?

Pro-choice: who wants to be anti-choice?

This makes for a conflict for people when they are trying to vote for candidates, and are really looking at this issue to try and see what is the most moral, correct thing to be voting for. And the “other side” takes horrible advantage of this naming inconsistency with one side saying that the other side is “pro-death” and the other side saying that their opposite is “trying to take away the rights of women” — Wow! I don’t want to be pro-death OR take away women’s rights, so how do I vote? Is there a position that I can take that I can live with?

Let’s take a look at the naming inconsistency for a moment. Pro-life. Okay, whose life? The fetus. So, they are “pro” the life of the fetus — under all circumstances. Let’s apply that to the other appellation. Pro-choice. So, they are “pro” the choice of the fetus. I don’t think so. The fetus never gets to choose if it will be carried to term or not. So, if we are being consistent in the question we are asking, the “other side” cannot be labeled “pro-choice” because this does not fit. And to say pro-death is a little harsh and tries to persuade to emotional shock. But is it accurate? Well, certainly in some instances, that’s exactly what’s going on. In an abortion, the woman is “pro” the death of the fetus. But — to confuse the issue — not all women who are “pro-choice” are “pro” the death of the fetus — some actually have children of their own whom they love very much and are very much in favor of other people also having children. I suppose a more accurate name would be “pro-situational-death,” since this group wants to retain the “right” to kill the fetus in certain situations, often citing the situation of a very young girl who finds herself pregnant after a rape (talk about emotional assault with that one!).

Let’s go the other way. Pro-choice. Choice of whom? The woman. Okay. So, the other side is “pro” the life of the woman? Boy, will they be happy to hear that! You can either have choice, or have life! You pick! And to a degree, this may not be an inaccurate thing. There are many women out there who do not realize the emotional impact an abortion will have on them and it does tear them apart from the inside, to know that they have killed their child. And, I know, some people may be getting upset the way I am saying “killing,” but when you are stopping a heart from beating — that’s killing. Seriously. It’s not “removing a clump of cells,” as if they were just skin cells in need of exfoliation. Skin cells will never become their own living, breathing, thinking person — no matter how well you nurture them.

There is the additional argument, “what if the mother’s life is in danger?” often made by proponents of the pro-choice cause. This is a real consideration. This really gets down to the crux of the matter. Are all lives equally important? Or are some lives more important than others? Even in the pro-life camp, if there is a situation where continuing the pregnancy would result in death of the mother, and/or death of both the mother and the child — they concede that there may be just cause for killing the child so as to preserve the life of the mother.

While I could probably go on at length for a while longer, I will end this post with an appeal: please look at all issues out there, including this most important issue of life, and vote — not according to your emotions — but according to your reason.

But, which children?  Obviously, it can’t be all children, because if you are “pro-choice,” then you are in favor of the destruction of certain children, at least conditionally.  So, certainly you are not “pro-” that child. 

Then, which children are you in support of?  Those whom you have deemed acceptable due to an arbitrary standard?  Those whom are convenient and fit into your plans for your life?  What of the others?  Are they unnecessary, inconvenient and defective and thus able to be discarded carelessly?

Apparently, this is a true statement, at least according to the culture of death in which we find ourselves.  It doesn’t only apply to the unborn — it is also true for those who are not “productive members of society” or those who are too old or too sick or too whatever-it-may-be.  For those who do not fit society’s arbitrary measuring stick of personal value.

And what if God took this view?  Could I be seen as unnecessary, inconvenient and defective in His eyes?  Certainly, God doesn’t, strictly speaking, need anything.  So, I suppose that it could be said that I am unnecessary.  Inconvenient and defective?  Well, I think those go hand and hand to a degree.  I am certainly a stubborn, sinful little sheep.  I would imagine that it would be more convenient to only accept into heaven those people who were not sinful.  Probably a little inconvenient to have to purify people in Purgatory.  And defective?  Well, if my heart and will are not conformed to Christ’s, then, yeah, I’m still defective.  And we all have concupiscence, so I would imagine that that applies to each of us.

Praise God that He is not “pro-choice” in this manner.  Thanks be to God that He is “pro-life,” and not just in a general sense, but pro- my life and pro- your life, specifically.  In a radical and passionate way, is He pro- our lives.  He gave His only son — for us!  We hear that and we say that a lot — but do we really get it?  I don’t think so.  I think at most, on our good days, we might get a sliver of what this means, but we probably do not really get it on a day-to-day basis.  For if we did, how could we possibly make the bad decisions that we do?

“Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.”  I think a lot of us are here.  We are like blind little sheep with hardened hearts.  Some of us are content to stay this way, or think that we know better and are rooted in place, spiritually, by our own pride.  Some of us are struggling to overcome our sheepness, and grow in virtue, and we will continually fall, but I think the point here is that we forgive each other our transgressions and work with one another to pick each other back up, point our brother in the correct direction towards God, and continue in the journey until — please, God — we have all made it safely home.

I pray today, Lord, that You will give me the grace to master my will against my tendency to sin.

Towards the end of the question and answer period, which kept trying to become a heated debate between students/attendees, a girl (I call everyone girl, regardless of age, just a quirk of mine — she called herself an X-year old woman) was upset at the speaker, saying (essentially) that the speaker was talking of ideals and of a perfect world that does not exist, and that since we are currently in a world where women are still being put down for their sex and still in relationships where the men have control over when the couple will be conjugally active and where rape still exists — that abortion should still be legal, so that these women would not be forced to continue with a pregnancy that they might not have freely chosen.  One of her main points was that abortion was necessary as long as society devalued women [her] because “I have a vagina.”

Okay.  So my interpretation of what she is saying goes something like this:  You are upset because someone [males in power in society, presumably] is not giving you full human rights and dignity due to the anatomical fact that you have a vagina.  However, you do not see any irony in the fact that you are willing to deny someone [the unborn] every human right, beginning with the right to life, due to the anatomical fact that they have an umbilical cord?

And, further, if you are concerned about equal status and equal value amongst the sexes, promoting an attitude where certain people [the unborn] are not valued is not going to promote a societal ethos where that equality will be felt in the heart of the people.  Only if every single person, regardless of age, sex, birth status, mental capacity, etc., is seen as a unique, unrepeatable, special individual made in the image and likeness of God, in whom God is deeply and radically in love, can we begin to live in a society where each person is treated with the respect and dignity that they deserve.

 Yeah, so basically, I tried really hard to fight the urge to want to whap everyone there upside the head with a copy of “Theology of the Body.”

I may have to create a whole separate page on my blog just to talk about this issue, until I have properly vented.  What do you think?  Shall we have a pro-life forum here?  :)