Unsurprisingly, the fake New Pro Life Movement is missing in action in regard to Alfie Evans. Go here to read their non-statement statement. Now all of this makes sense when one understands why the fake New Pro-life Movement exists. First, it serves as a platform for Catholic Leftists to attack the real Pro Life Movement. Second, it allows them to argue that you are not really pro-life unless you sign on to their laundry list of Leftist causes. Third, it allows them to decry any legislative attempt to restrict abortion.
If they took a stand against the slow motion judicial murder of Alfie Evans, it would lose them friends and allies on the Left, and, like most Leftists, their motto may as well be no enemy on the Left. Dave Griffey at Daffey Thoughts brings us the news that Mark Shea, surprise!, is all on board with this farce:
John C. Wright takes up the Alfie Evans case. No wondering where Mr. Wright stands. He attacks those preventing the parents from seeking treatment. He mentions Pope Francis stepping in and pleading for the sake of the child. He also uses this issue to suggest this is indicative of the type of Socialism that so many today seem to want. He then offers a requested prayer on behalf of the child in this situation.
Mark Shea, well, doesn’t really speak of the issue. He says he knows nothing about it and doesn’t want to comment out of ignorance. He then gives us his take on a conversation he had with someone he says represents prolife individuals. There is no link, so we have to take Mark’s word that it went down exactly as he reports. Given how Mark misrepresented what I wrote over the years, that’s a tough one.
Mark then goes on to use the conversation to attack prolifers, explain why he rejects prolifers, and went further by insisting that they don’t really care about Alfie Evans at all, but merely exploit him as a club to beat up people like Mark. No further comment on the actual Alfie Evans case.
That is an interesting contrast, at least IMHO. If I were actually a person who considers myself prolife, which of these would I fall behind? Or is there another angle worth looking at.
Update: On a second reading, it’s unlikely that Mark’s appraisal of the conversation can be taken at face value. After all, do we really believe anyone would actually write:
“Reader: But don’t you think the doctors are all evil?
Perhaps the reader said just that, but I find it difficult to believe. As I said, I’ve seen how Mark framed my statements in the past, and that tends to make me skeptical at best.
Plus, Mark suddenly leans on the Pope’s lack of expertise in a particular area in order to justify not merely following the Pope’s lead, as opposed to his usual feelings relative to subjects like the economy. That’s an interesting turn of events, and one that suggests inconsistency in applied standards to say the least.
Go here to comment. Back before he became a Leftist Mark had this to say on the fifth anniversary of the judicial murder of Terri Schiavo in 2010:
Five years since she was murdered for failure to be appealing to the Pepsi Generation.
God rest her soul.
Being pro-life is anathema on the Left, so those who claim to be pro-life and identify with the Left, with certain honorable exceptions, will find a way to redefine being pro-life so it is acceptable to their Leftist comrades. May God forgive them.
How much you want to bet the ‘New Prolife Movement’ is astroturf financed by the sorosphere?
I certainly would not bet against that proposition Art.
The Sun in the UK had a recent article re a “grown” man who stopped growing as a babe at about 11 pounds. Here is my comment in the Sun re how much better for all it would have been had the UK NKS and the Alder Hey Killing Hospital taken him as a babe:
“This is why India needs an Alder Hey Killing Fields Hospital. And a British Natl kILLING Service to take the baby- which in Great (really?) Britain would be the property of the state – away from these incompetent moms and dads, to the Alder Hey Hospital & Baby Parts Store, there for harvesting and killing with compas$$ion; for not only all the monetary savings, not only saving$s to the stupid, non-owning parents, but to society as a whole (hole?). Hey, Hey Alder Hey, how many parts have you sold today? Hey, Hey Alder Hey, how many kids you killed today?Hey Hey Alder Hey, how many vaccines gone wrong today ? Hey Hey Alder Hey how much you feed Alfie today? Guy McClung, Texas”
Guy Mcclung, Texas TBFC
TBFC-take your pick:
Terror Blogger For Christ
Truth Blogger For Christ
And one of the co-founders of the “movement,” rebecca bratten Weiss, has been exposed for heterodoxy, having been caught most recently attacking church teaching on homosexuality and marriage, and is involved in an ongoing attack against franciscan university of steubenville for its orthodoxy. Surprise, surprise.
There does seem to be a rush to acquit in this case. I’m reading that removing from feeding tubes and ventilators may not have been bad in this case, there are ‘quality of life’ sounding explanations, and the thought that the State interfered with the parents, while not necessarily a good thing in this case, treated as no big deal. And it’s no just one or two crazy blogs out there saying this.
Getting support from it, definitely.
Actual pro-life stuff is getting too successful.
Mark has begun defending himself in his comboxes.
Of course a lack of knowledge has never stopped him from commenting on something before…
I think Shea has banned almost all Christians from commenting on his blog.
When Terri Schiavo was involved Shea had no such qualms about supporting her right to life. Now Shea is on a team that has only scorn for the very concept of a right to life.
In regard to Alfie Evans his “doctors” initially ordered, after he was taken off the ventilator, that he go without food or water to hasten his death. They relented as to water, I do not know if they have relented as to food.
“But Donald! There’s no starving this time.”
Or there is. It looks like half of this fight is going to be just figuring out what actually happened. I know at one point I heard the ventilator was removed and he started to breathe on his own. Then according to this article exactly what’s wrong with Alfie isn’t even known. (so then one has to ask Shea, how do we know there are no alternatives?)
It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if this was a case where the hospital & health system didn’t want to bother, but now that an uproar has been created, they’re working hard to cover their ***. So when I hear “he’s not being starved” I can’t help but attach “yeah, NOW” reflexively in my head.
But, I also know the mob can be unmerciful so there’s possibly a case for the hospital to be made.
The real explanation will be on whether and why policemen were posted to prevent the child from leaving. If that’s true, then I can see no adequate defense for the system.
Even given Soros’ resources, I think he’d find the NPLM a bad investment. It’s an exercise in bourgeois progressive pieties and spitballing. Not exactly going to move the needle much.
Look, the seamless garment does what it always does when this sort of thing comes up: it hems and haws at how complex the issue is and immediately leaves the vicinity of the pro-lifers on the ground. I will credit Ms. Weiss for sincerity, but did anyone expect a full-throated stand against creeping euthanasia? This is England and its vaunted single-payer system. Single-payer: the holy grail of progressive Catholics.
A fight against that on behalf of some hapless working class types and their unseemly supporters is not a welcome one.
In regard to Alfie Evans his “doctors” initially ordered, after he was taken off the ventilator, that he go without food or water to hasten his death. They relented as to water, I do not know if they have relented as to food.
They relented re: food after a couple of days, because the parents kept kicking up a fuss.
Of course, they didn’t originally expect to have to starve him: turning off the ventilator was supposed to kill him within minutes. Given that the doctors were so wrong about that, I’m not sure why we should place total faith in their prognosis for his recovery.
As for Mark’s claim that “There is no evidence, none, of a conspiracy to kill him,” I’m not sure what conclusions to draw — has he not been following the case, or does he not think that “switching off a ventilator to kill someone” counts as a “conspiracy to kill”?
He’s sick from a “mystery illness,” although it has been reported as a rare degenerative one the actual doctors quoted say he doesn’t have a diagnosis.
They removed food and water when they took the breathing aid. After over 24 hours, they let him have some food and nutrition again, and he’s on at least some occasions got an oxygen mask.
If you lock someone in a box and take their food and water, that is killing them. Holds true even if the bars are “only” forcibly preventing them leaving.
Alfie Evans mortuus est.
https://www.facebook.com/merseypolice/posts/1778080245581945
Oremus:
Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine
Et lux perpetua luceat ei:
Requiescat in pace.
Amen.
If the hospital no longer willed to help Alfie Evans, they ought to have returned the child to his parents.
Sadly Alfie is deceased. I have to wonder if he was ever given any nutrition after being removed from life support and breathing on his own? The courts and the hospital had the upper hand in denying his parents’ their parental rights and Alfie’s. This in the land of the Magna Carta. Alfie’s hospitalization seemed like a chapter out of a dystopian novel of the future but the future is now.
Prayers for his grieving family.
Cam- they claimed that they were starting up water and food…maybe the parents figured out that was a fake, and thus the “new, conciliatory tone” that popped up.
Rather worrying that the kid died less than 24 hours after the peaceful protesters “threatening” the hospital by publicly standing there said they weren’t going to buzz off.
Good point, Foxfier. The whole situation smells on the hospital/ government/English Catholic Church sides.
The link to Mark Shea’s Terri Schiavo “Five years since she was murdered…” is dead.
Down the Memory Hole…?
Perhaps. I don’t know what happened.