THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY DOES NOT INCLUDE THE RIGHT TO KILL OTHER HUMAN BEINGS
from: LiveAction News

(11 July) The abortion industry and its advocates have long held that a woman's right to privacy contains within it the "right" to end her pregnancy by killing her undelivered child (abortion). It's an argument that doesn't hold water but is still being used today in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Just as the right to bodily autonomy doesn't include the right to cause harm to another person's body, a right to privacy does not and should not protect injustices perpetrated against innocent human beings.

How a marital right to privacy gave way to legalized abortion

In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court found in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut that the Constitution protects marital privacy against state restrictions on the use of birth control. The Court explained that while there is no explicit right to privacy in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights establishes the right to privacy through several amendments that create a zone of privacy into which the government can not interfere. It ruled that the First, Third, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments combined create the right to privacy within marriage.

In addition, Connecticut had outlawed the use of contraception, which Planned Parenthood's Estelle Griswold believed to conflict with the 14th Amendment, which says, "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny any person the equal protection of the laws." The Court ruled that Connecticut's law prohibiting the use of birth control conflicted with the right to privacy within a marriage.

This case established a constitutional right to privacy regarding birth control decisions in a marriage, but it opened the door for the legalization of birth control for unmarried individuals, and eventually abortion. In 1972, birth control was legalized for non-married individuals in the Supreme Court case of Eisenstadt v. Baird after the plaintiff argued that allowing married couples to use birth control but not allowing unmarried people to do so was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Then in 1973, the right to privacy was used to legalize abortion in Roe v. Wade when the Supreme Court ruled that banning or even restricting abortion would violate the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.

A right to privacy can never be used to justify abuses

The right to privacy, the Supreme Court determined, allowed a woman to undergo an abortion as a Constitutional right. However, nearly 50 years later, the Court determined that the Constitution holds no such right.

As Edward Lazarus, a former law clerk to the author of Roe, Justice Harry Blackmun, said, "What, exactly, is the problem with Roe? The problem, I believe, is that it has little connection to the Constitutional right it purportedly interpreted. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent." And this is essentially what Justice Samuel Alito also wrote in his June majority opinion overturning Roe in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

In addition, the Fourth Amendment provides a "right of the people to be secure in their houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." But this doesn't clearly offer a right to an abortion.

While abortion and contraception are often put under the same "reproductive rights" umbrella, they are vastly different. One allows the prevention of the creation of new life while the other allows the destruction of a newly created life.

This broad definition of a right to privacy upon which Roe was built is wide enough to allow child abuse and neglect, spousal abuse (including rape), the possession of child pornography, and other horrific crimes that occur behind locked doors. Abortion intentionally causes the death of a living human being and therefore should never have been justified under a right to privacy – just as none of these other abuses should ever be.

As explained by Susan E. Wills, Esq., the right to privacy in marriage, contraception, and raising children, does not, as Blackmun tried to prove, allow for a right to abortion. She states, "Certainly marriage, and building and raising a family are fundamental aspects of human life that predate human laws and nations. They are implicit in the concept of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, though even these rights are subject to state limitation, such as laws against bigamy, incest, and child abuse and neglect."

"But," she continued, "abortion does not fit neatly among these spheres of privacy. It negates them. Abortion is not akin to childrearing; it's child destruction. A pregnant woman's right to abort nullifies the [man's] right to procreate upheld in 'Skinner.' [Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson found procreation to be a fundamental right.] He no longer has a right to bring children into the world, but only a right to fertilize an ovum, which his mate can then destroy without his knowledge or consent." [read more...]

COMMENTARY: As stated in our last issue of ARC-News, less than 1.5% of pregnancies are the result of rape, incest, or high risk of death to the mother. And yet, abortion is the leading cause of death in the U.S. (1,200,000 baby humans), double that of heart disease – the number 2 killer. Subtract that 1.5%, or 18,000 abortions, and we have 1,182,000 babies killed simply by the mother's "free choice."

RE-EXAMINING AUTONOMY
from: BioEdge.org

(27 June) The buzzword cutting through the noisy controversy over the US Supreme Court's repeal of Roe v. Wade is "reproductive autonomy." This is raised on a pedestal as the liberal ideal for which American women should strive.

But there are other, more nuanced, views of autonomy, viewed especially through a feminist lens. In a European journal called Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, Ji Young Lee, of the University of Copenhagen, argues that "this liberal reading of reproductive autonomy only offers us a limited ethical understanding of what is at stake in many kinds of reproductive choices, particularly when it comes to different uses of reproductive technologies and third-party reproduction."

She goes on to state:

"Plausibly, then, reproductive autonomy is a good thing – something it would be entirely reasonable, if not ideal, to aspire to in reproductive decision-making. Yet, the oppressive and inegalitarian social environments that make up our non-ideal world complicates the ethically explanatory power of a liberal framework of reproductive autonomy. This is because the liberal framework on its own does not fully capture the question of who benefits from which reproductive options, the extent of the risks and harms involved in various reproductive interventions, and the reasons for why people are driven to make certain reproductive choices. I take these factors to constitute three major limitations of the liberal framework. This should provide us with enough reasons to doubt the status of liberal reproductive autonomy as the prevailing ethical ideal for reproductive decision-making."

The liberal model of autonomy, she contends, privileges free decision-making. But a healthier view, which she calls "relational autonomy," takes into account the costs of the decision and the reasons for which the decision is made. It is not enough merely to have "options"; one must examine the content and limitations of the options as well.

She uses the example of egg-freezing, a reproductive method which allows women to have a career and also experience motherhood. Companies like Facebook and Apple are offering it as an employment benefit. But who really benefits – the women or the company? [read more...]

COMMENTARY: As explained in our first article, the notion of a woman's "reproductive autonomy" directly contradicts the right of a husband to have a family, reducing the man to simply the role of having sex, not being a responsible father who provides for his family and helps create the next generation for our society to continue to exist. This notion also demeans the intrinsic value of the woman, making her into merely a sex object. So how do these results coincide with any meaningful definition of one's autonomy as a valued person, if they make that person into just an object, not a real person whose value consists in being created in the image and likeness of God?

RUSSIA: ORTHODOX PRIEST DETAINED FOR OPPOSING WAR "OUTRAGED BY ABSURDITY OF ACCUSATIONS"
from: Forum 18 News Service

(8 July) Fr. Ioann Kurmoyarov posted videos outlining his religious opposition to Russia's war against Ukraine. Arrested on 7 June, he is in St Petersburg's Kresty prison awaiting trial for the new criminal offence of disseminating "knowingly false information" about the military. St Petersburg Investigative Committee has not responded to Forum 18's questions. "He is aware that he may be sentenced to a long term of imprisonment – up to 10 years – but he does not intend to deviate from his convictions," says his lawyer Leonid Krikun.

The Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case against a Russian Orthodox priest for his explicitly religious opposition to Russia's 2022 war against Ukraine. Fr Ioann Kurmoyarov had posted videos online criticising the war. Arrested on 7 June, he is currently in detention at St Petersburg's Kresty prison awaiting trial for the new criminal offence of disseminating "knowingly false information" about the Russian military (Criminal Code Article 207.3). Fr Ioann is "outraged by the absurdity of the accusations," his lawyer told Forum 18.

Fr. Ioann Kurmoyarov left the Moscow Patriarchate for the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad after conflict with his diocese. Fr. Ioann does not admit guilt, the lawyer Leonid Krikun added. "He is aware that he may be sentenced to a long term of imprisonment – up to 10 years – but he does not intend to deviate from his convictions. In the case of a guilty verdict with imprisonment, he plans to continue preaching in the prison camp."

St Petersburg Investigative Committee has not responded to Forum 18's questions including:
- why the expression of religious views on war in general and in Ukraine is considered distribution of false information about the Russian Armed Forces;
- why it was deemed necessary to put him in detention.

The Investigative Committee has also opened a criminal case against a second Russian Orthodox priest, Fr Nikandr Pinchuk from Sverdlovsk Region, for his explicitly religious opposition to the war in Ukraine. He is under investigation under Criminal Code Article 280.3, which punishes a repeat offence of "discrediting" the Armed Forces. Russia's invasion, he commented to Forum 18, is a "mortal sin."

Nina Belyayeva, a Baptist and Communist municipal deputy, became the first person known to face prosecution under Criminal Code Article 207.3 for opposing Russia's invasion on religious grounds. She has fled Russia. On 1 June, she announced that she had been added to the Interior Ministry's wanted list. Interior Ministry officials have also requested that Interpol issue a Red Notice against her, although this does not yet appear to have happened. The Investigative Committee has also twice charged Belyayeva under anti-terrorism legislation for calling for regime change in Russia.

Despite the official support for Russia's invasion shown by many religious leaders, most notably those in the Moscow Patriarchate, small numbers of clergy and laypeople in Russia continue to protest for explicitly religious reasons against the renewed war in Ukraine. In consequence they often face detention, prosecution, and the loss of their jobs. [read more...]

COMMENTARY: Since the above article was published, we have received two more: RUSSIA: SECOND ORTHODOX PRIEST FACING CRIMINAL CHARGES FOR OPPOSING UKRAINE WAR about Orthodox priest Fr. Nikandr Pinchuk facing criminal charges for opposing Russia's war against Ukraine, and RUSSIA: ADMINISTRATIVE PROSECUTIONS FOR OPPOSING UKRAINE WAR about artist Ivan Lyubimov being detained for quoting on his anti-war poster John Donne's text "No man is an island" and UN figures for civilian casualties in Ukraine: "8,691 peaceful civilians including 664 children."

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SAYS ONE STATE OVER-INSTITUTIONALIZES KIDS WITH DISABILITIES
from: Disability Scoop

(28 June) The U.S. Department of Justice announced this month that Maine is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act for over-institutionalizing children with disabilities in psychiatric hospitals, residential treatment facilities and even the state-operated juvenile detention facility.

Federal investigators have concluded that Maine unnecessarily segregates children with mental health and developmental disabilities even though federal courts have ruled they have a right to live and receive services in appropriate integrated settings, typically their homes and communities.

In a written statement, a spokeswoman for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services said the agency agreed with the findings and that the failings of the state's behavioral health system date back decades.

"The administration has worked over the past three and a half years to rebuild a system of services that was dismantled during the previous administration, dedicating new funding to strengthen behavioral health in every budget and re-establishing the Children's Cabinet," spokeswoman Jackie Farwell said.

Advocacy Agency Triggers Action

The investigation was sparked by a complaint from Disability Rights Maine, an advocacy agency for Mainers with disabilities, on behalf of a group of children with disabilities, alleging these children cannot access needed community-based services, resulting in their institutionalization.

The organization said it hopes the Justice Department letter will finally push Maine to address the well-documented deficiencies in the children’s behavioral health system – which cause real harm to children and families – with the sense of urgency they require. [read more...]

COMMENTARY: This is another example of devaluing human beings, not seeing them as persons who are created in God's image. Instead, bureaucrats treat them as economic units of non-production, a liability instead of an asset. When children who are different from the average are treated as "stupid" or "worthless" they most often begin to view themselve in the same way. The same is true when we treat someone as "untrustworthy" or a "thief" – they begin to act in the way we expect of them.

Grocery stores in the U.S. extend the "honor system" to customers by stocking their products on open shelves and very few people steal them – many stores even have customers do the checkout and payment by themselves. But in many countries like the USSR and to some extent in present-day Russia the products are behind counters staffed by dozens of clerks who write little bills for each item. The customers must then go to a manned register to pay before they can go back to the counter with a receipt and get the item. The result: a very high rate of thievery in Russia, responding to not being trusted.

"UOC-MP IS A COLLABORATOR, POISED TO COOPERATE WITH ANY GOVERNMENT" – GEORGE KOVALENKO
from: Religious Information Service of Ukraine

(5 July) George Kovalenko, a priest of the OCU and rector of the Open Orthodox University of St. Sophia-Wisdom, believes that the fate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate depends on the success of the Armed Forces in waging war. He said this on the air of Radio NV:

"We see a potentially collaborative entity that is ready to cooperate and try to please any government. On our territory, they are trying to please the Ukrainian authorities. Therefore, probably, their fate depends on the Armed Forces of Ukraine and our success at the frontline," Kovalenko said. The priest explained that when Russia's political influence weakens in Ukraine, the UOC-MP "begins to mimic."

"[And then the Moscow Patriarchate] first declares itself an Exarchate, next time it's independent, next time it is autonomous, then it's almost autocephalous – it comes up with various options for itself. But when/if Moscow returns to power (as is the case now in the occupied territories, as it was in the 20s, when the Bolsheviks came here, as it was after the year 1944, when Soviet troops entered here), all this independence would completely evaporate and those very people remain bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate," Kovalenko added.

On May 27, the UOC-MP held a Council, which declared "full independence and autocephaly" from the Russian Church and expressed disagreement with the position of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill. [read more...]

COMMENTARY: It appears from the photo that George Kovalenko has been in a friendly relationship with Moscow Patriarch Kirill and Metropolitan Onufry, head of the UOC-MP, but now has come out against them. Or is he himself doing what he accuses the UOC-MP of doing? It's unclear.

STUDY IN CHILD LANGUAGE DEFICITS REVEALS IMPORTANCE OF VOLUNTARY IMAGINATION IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION
from: Disabled World

(14 July) A study of language development in children with language deficits highlights the importance of the voluntary imagination component of language. Language evolution is not limited to speech acquisition: an extensive study of language development in children with language deficits highlights the importance of the voluntary imagination component of language. When a sentence cannot be interpreted by recalling an image from memory, we rely on voluntary imagination to construct a novel mental image in our minds.

Did the boy bite the cat, or was it the other way around? When processing a sentence with several objects, one has to establish who did what to whom. When a sentence cannot be interpreted by recalling an image from memory, we rely on voluntary imagination to construct a novel mental image in our minds.

In a previous study, the team of Dr. Andrey Vyshedskiy, a neuroscientist from Boston University, USA, hypothesized that this voluntary imagination ability has fundamental importance for combinatorial language acquisition. To test the hypothesis, the researchers designed a voluntary imagination intervention and administered it to 6,454 children with language deficiencies (age 2 to 12 years).

In that three-year study, published in 2021, the scientists concluded that children, who were engaged with the voluntary imagination intervention, showed 2.2-fold improvement in combinatorial language comprehension compared to children with similar language deficiencies. These findings suggested that language can be improved by training voluntary imagination and confirmed the importance of the visuospatial component of language.

In his latest work, now published in the open-science scholarly journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), Dr. Vyshedskiy builds on these experimental findings to address the question of language evolution and suggest that evolutionary acquisition of language was driven primarily by improvements of voluntary imagination, rather than the speech apparatus.

Dr. Vyshedskiy explains:

"Chimpanzees and bonobos can learn hundreds of words. However, apes that know the names of objects, colors, and sizes are not capable of identifying 'a large red pencil' among multi-colored, multi-sized pieces of Lego, crayons, and pencils. This suggests that apes cannot mentally integrate color, size and objects together. Thus, voluntary constructive imagination must have been acquired by humans after our ancestors split from chimpanzees 6 million years ago."

"Evolutionary development of voluntary imagination can be traced back through the evolution of stone tools, since the process of hand ax manufacturing – for example – requires voluntary imagination of a future [my emphasis] tool. Apes do not manufacture stone tools, further confirming their imagination limitations." [read more...]

COMMENTARY: Talking and reading to children and even teaching them to read at an early age stimulates their imagination and language skills: this is a well-known fact. It's quite interesting that the researcher frequently uses the words "evolutionary" and "evolution" as if blind, random chance produced the development of "voluntary imagination of a future tool" that he describes. This clearly implies intelligent foresight and forward planning, which contradicts the fundamental idea of random chance evolution. How could the eye or earf or brain have "randomly evolved" from various subsystems if they had no current use as they "evolved"? The complex organs of humans – eyes, ears, brains, etc. – require foresight and design by an intelligent Designer who envisioned their future purpose. Evolutionists' denial of an intelligent and loving Creator deprives humans of any value or future purpose.

One of our participants in our "Morning Prayers and Readings" is Annastacia in Nairobi, Kenya. (We've had others take part in our online prayers from Kenya, other African countries, Hong Kong, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and even one man in Afghanistan who was hiding from the Taliban!) Annastacia just this week started her own YouTube channel, shown here. In it, she offers advice and counseling to women who are having problems in marriage (husbands cheating, finances, HIV, etc.). Pray that many women in Kenya will be brought closer to the Lord through her ministry!

On a personal note: Cheryl continues to recover from falling in the kitchen and breaking her left femur – it will be three months ago on Monday, 18 July. She's using a cane most of the time, only using a walker when she gets up in the morning. This Thursday, 14 July (Bastille Day), marked 65 years from when I committed my life to Christ as my Savior and Lord, to serve Him for my whole life.

Caesar fiddled on his violin while Rome burned. Now the political and religious leaders in Ukraine, Russia, and Syria are playing a deadly game of chess while millions of Ukrainian lose everything: their homes and possesions, their physical and mental health, or their very lives. Also, hundreds of millions of malnourished adults and children in poorer countries may be starving to death due to these political-military games.

According to The Wall Street Journal, in order to firm up its political-military alliance with Syria, Russia is stealing grain from Ukrainian storage facilities in territories Russia controls, using its soldiers to drive truckloads of grain to ports on the Black Sea, and shipping this grain – over 400,000 tons of it – to ports in Syria.

The Wall Street Journal's documentary "Video Investigation: Russia Is Using a Secret Network to Steal Ukraine Grain" offers detailed evidence of just how these trucks and ships were tracked from those Ukrainian grainaries to the ports and then to Syria.

This is how Russia intends to profit from conquering Ukraine. Most often, war is not really about ideological or religious issues, it is about profiting from the material wealth garnered from the defeated country and its international trade. Religion or ideology is merely being used as a smokescreen: the Pope has admonished Patriarch Kirill against being "an altar boy for Putin."

While living in Moscow for 11 years, we frequently picked up the latest issues of The Moscow Times newspaper. At the start of this war, the newspaper's staff fled to various countries and has assembled a virtual network of reporters to publish The Moscow Times online that I receive each week. Their piece "Investigations Uncover Russia's Alleged Ukrainian Grain Smuggling" adds some details to the above story:

"Satellite images and GPS data indicate that Russia could be exporting grain smuggled out of occupied Ukrainian territory, investigations by the BBC and the Financial Times have revealed. Russia has been accused by Western powers of using food as a weapon in its war with Ukraine by targeting the country's grain storage facilities and blockading its Black Sea exports.

The publication also tracked activity consistent with the smuggling of looted goods, such as vessels switching off their transponders in violation of international law, using ship-to-ship transfers at sea and forging paperwork to obscure the origins of its cargo." "Alleged" is too soft a word: the evidence is rather damning.

Dmitri Trenin, director-in-exile of the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes in his article "Russia's Interests in Syria" that "because Russian foreign policy is currently acquiring an ideological dimension, with the Russian Orthodox Church becoming a key political ally and partner of the Kremlin, the protection [my emphasis] of the dwindling Christian community in Syria, and more broadly in the Middle East, is ostensibly beginning to feature as a new geopolitical interest, at least rhetorically."

How does Patriarch John of the Greek Orthodox of Antioch pay for this "protection"? – by switching from supporting its traditional ally, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, as the Greek Orthodox Church does, to supporting Russia's Patriarch Kirill, who would like to make himself the Ecumenical Patriarch, denies that the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople had the authority to grant autocephaly to the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine, and has gone into schism against the true Ecumenical Patriarch. Grain stolen by Russia from Ukraine is now feeding members of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch in Syria. In turn, with Russian assistance Assad's army protects that Church in Syria.

According to the article "Widespread Orthodox Church Backlash Unleashed Against Russia's Aggression in Ukraine," the three-way political chess game that is the war in Ukraine "is one of high stakes for the Russian Orthodox patriarch... as a bad outcome could imperil the dominant sway he [Patriarch Kirill] holds within Orthodox Christianity because his Church is much larger numerically than any other national Orthodox Church.

By losing Ukraine, Russia would lose a very substantial part of its own Church; if it lost Ukraine, it would become much less than half of what it is now, and with this it would also lose universal primacy in Orthodoxy." Due to his "third Rome" mindset, the Moscow Patriarch considers that he already possesses "universal primacy" and does not want to lose it by losing Ukraine. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of soldiers on each side are being maimed or killed and millions of civilians have been forced to become refugees in other lands.

Holding the Antiochian Church hostage for "protection" is the same sort of tactic as blackmailing Western Europe by threatening those countries with an oil and gas embargo. In "Ukrainian World Congress to sue Canada for returning Nord Stream 1 turbine," we read that Paul Grod, Ukrainian World Congress President and CEO in Canada, says – "We cannot supply a terrorist state with the tools it needs to finance the killing of tens of thousands of innocent people. This is not just about a turbine or possible many turbines to support Russia's energy exports, this is about continuously succumbing to Russia's blackmail." [my emphasis] I wonder whether the consciences of any Antiochian Orthodox Christians besides mine is troubled about participating in this theft, protection racket, and blackmailing?

(Get this as a separate article on our ARC-News blog at blogspot.com.)