Monday, March 5, 2012

Sandra Fluke and Obama the Totalitarian

The purpose of birth control pills is to enable women (and men) to engage in acts of sex while avoiding conception. Sandra Fluke is not married, so any acts of sex she is engaging in are out of wedlock. I will not express a personal opinion on the morality of such acts, but will only note that in my lifetime the Catholic Church has often made a reasonable case that men and women engaging in acts of sex outside of wedlock are behaving immorally. Consequently, what Sandra Fluke is asking for is that the state compel a Catholic institution, namely Georgetown University, to provide her with birth control pills free of charge so that she can engage in acts of sex the Catholic Church would ordinarily regard as sins of lust.

The Catholic Church also holds that life begins at conception and opposes the use of abortifacient drugs. As the Wikipedia article on the Catholic Church and abortion states:

    The Roman Catholic Church opposes all forms of abortion procedures whose direct purpose is to destroy an embryo, blastocyst, zygote or fetus, since it holds that "human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life."

Again, I will not express a personal opinion about these beliefs, but only note that in my lifetime society has generally accepted the right of the Catholic Church to formulate such doctrine. (In passing, I will also note that science agrees that a fertilized cell is something unique, with its own unique DNA, somthing that under normal circumstances will develop into a human being.) If the Catholic Church were suddenly to reject these beliefs, say what you will, but the Catholic Church would cease to be the Catholic Church. In my opinion, a world without the Catholic Church would be worse off.

The Wikipedia article on Totalitarianism defines it as "a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible." This is an apt description of the Obama Administration's attempt not only to impose its authority on the Catholic Church, but also even to define what a Catholic institution is. Under Obama and his radically leftist Democratic regime, totalitarianism has come to America.