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Everyone's a victim in America, even a woman who goes to a doctor so he can suck her baby's brains out. SHE's a VICTIM, too! Poor thing! Value-free, consequence-free, responsibility-free America.

North Dakota's a little too close to Nebraska for the bishops to do this safely — Bruskewitz might just run up there & beat some sense into them.

This really tells us where we stand. Not even Catholic bishops truly support the right to life. If there is anyone who wants to pretend that we are making "progress," or that the Catholic bishops are "improving," this article is a wake up call.

Bishop Zipfel strongly endorsed the requirement set forth by Mr. Dodson that no pro-life legislation should hold a mother culpable for killing her own child.

Absurd. Who else would be more responsible?

As a Catholic I am ashamed,” Mr. Crary said.

So am I. Why, why, why do we have to continually fight with our bishops to be Catholic?

The Bishops are trying to show compassion for a woman who is sometimes caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to abortion.

Sometimes punishment is compassionate. If the prospect of punishment deters an abortion-minded mother, then not only is the baby's life saved, but so is future anguish for the mother.

Besides, a mother who kills her child deserves punishment. And punishment may deter her from killing again.

The bishops should endorse this bill. Then, they should call on Governor Hoeven, a Catholic, to sign it AND ENFORCE IT against the abortionists in North Dakota.

This would be a sound Catholic approach, because the Church forbids anyone to obey an immoral law or command. The Governor, in other words, is prohibited, by Catholic teaching, from obeying Roe and Doe--which are immoral commands addressed to HIM by the Supreme Court.

Methinks the North Dakota Bishops' brains have frozen due to the weather. Perhaps the recent Vatican missive to politicians has not gotten to North Dakota because the smoke signals are inoperative in high winds....who knows? Too many lawyers employed by Bishops???

My most sincere apologies to the people of Bismacrk for Zipfel. He came from my archdiocese - and frankly is not the only wimp from here. It makes me very angry.

Murdering an unborn child should be treated like any other form of murder is.

A 13 year old girl who goes out and gets an abortion should be liable to the same penalties as the 13 year old who decides to strangle her two year old sister.

There is the question of whether she was coerced by her parents, boyfriend, etc. But our legal system has means for dealing with those contingencies in other murder cases.

I read the letters of the two bishops and I am further horrified. They have lost all sense of justice and morality. It is the grossest insult to women to act as though they were incapable of being responsible for their actions and their moral choices. It reduces them to the level of animals. I can't even say "to the level of minors," since the current trend is to prosecute minor boys as adults for all violent crimes. To feel remorse after you commit the worst of all violent crimes does not make you a victim. Hopefully it makes you human, and therefore responsible for your actions, and subject to justice, both human and divine.

So much for moral fortitude.

Here we have pro-life legislators trying to outlaw abortion, and we have the bishops of the state lining up on the other side.

[T]he intent of this bill is clearly to challenge the Roe v. Wade decision by passing a state law that would have to go before the Supremes. The bishops are refusing to challenge the Culture of Death, and are therefore on its side.

The chips were down: come out for abortion or against it. They came out for it. Those are the facts.

[H]ow can we in justice hold blameless a person who consents to and participates in the killing of a child?

Justice (which must be consistent) and common sense require that the mother be held responsible for her actions. How can we penalize the doctor for killing the baby, while holding blameless the mother who asked that it be done, and cooperated with the crime? (I would also hold responsible a father who was an accessory to an abortion.)

It is difficult for me to believe that these bishops have not thought this matter through to its inevitable conclusion. Their stand against the law on the grounds that it penalizes one of the principal perpetrators of a homicide I must see, therefore, as a subterfuge.
. . .
[T]hese bishops came out flatly opposing the bill on specious grounds. . . .I can't square their actions with a genuine desire to defeat the culture of death.

[T]heir grounds for opposing this bill are that it holds responsible a mother who arranges for her child to be killed, who takes out a contract on him, so to speak.
. . .
We cannot reasonably and logically hold both that abortion is the killing of a child and that a mother who commits this act is blameless. Even if we have no intention of jailing such a killer, the law must still recognize that an offense has been committed. Inconsistencies such as this make for very bad law, and are clearly unjust. Imagine the outcry if we punish abortionists but not the mothers who go to them to have their babies killed. And how much credibility would a law have that prohibited abortion but held blameless a person who solicited and received one?

Those bishops cannot be unaware of these things. It’s just not plausible. And for those reasons I reiterate that their reason for opposing the law is transparently specious. I suspect their game might be to sabotage effective laws by supporting weak ones.

[T]he best way to prevent good, effective measures is to support weak, inadequate measures.
 

Excerpted from:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/843380/posts#5

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/836400/posts