What or who is a thanatist? H.E., Winnipeg, Manitoba.
The word comes from the Greek word for ‘death.’ Today, a thanatist is a person whose professional calling or function, is to kill someone whose life is judged by others to be of no value, e.g., the terminally ill, the handicapped newborn, the elderly.
It has already been suggested that there is a place for thanatists as a ‘special group’ in the medical profession, for, after all, thee is a sub-set of practitioners called abortionists who are only concerned with killing pre-born babies. To the pro-death mind it probably seems logical that there should also be Dr. Deaths who earn their living by killing, usually by injection, anyone considered worthless by their family or by society.
The danger of thanatists is not far-fetched. It is freely acknowledged that thanatists are at work in Holland today. The world knows that the Nazi doctors were thanatists on a colossal scale.
Articles on the development of the unborn baby use the word ‘gamete’. The word is not in my dictionary (Pocket Oxford). What is its exact meaning? L.M., Ottawa.
A gamete is a reproductive cell. The female’s cell is the ovum (egg); the male’s cell is the spermatozoa (sperm).
The fact that pregnant women who contract German Measles (Rubella) may be pressured to have abortions – as mentioned at the annual pro-life Conference held in Winnipeg this past July – has led to many questions. Here is a sample.
What are the effects of maternal Rubella on the unborn child? How serious are they?
First, it is important to note that studies show that over 83 per cent of the babies are not affected in any way. Many of these perfectly healthy babies are killed each year.
The 17 per cent (approximately) of the babies who are affected may suffer in some degree from one or more of the following: hearing loss, heart defects, congenital cataracts, mental retardation. However, most of the children with hearing loss can hear with hearing aids; almost all the heart defects are correctable by surgery; and modern cataract surgery enables most children to have fair vision. It is true that some children may be mentally retarded, but their rate of retardation, while 1.5 per cent, is not all that greater than one per cent of the general population.
None of these conditions seems to warrant a death sentence for the pre-born child (considering that the abortionist might well have a hearing aid, wear glasses, and/or have had bypass surgery).
Is Rubella equally damaging all nine months of pregnancy?
No.
According to Sir William Liley (the Father of Fetology) after the twelfth week of pregnancy the danger “is effectively zero.” The baby is most vulnerable before the mother even knows that she is pregnant; that is, in the first four weeks when the embryo development is most rapid. Studies in New Zealand show that in the first month the risk could be as high as 50 per cent, but it drops rapidly to five per cent by the third month, and by twelve weeks is virtually past.
Why are people not immunized?
According to the experts, it seems that the only ones at risk are pre-born babies, and therefore, it is important that women be immunized or have had a mild infection before becoming pregnant. Many young women do not take this precaution before they marry. I quote one famous doctor regarding the need for immunization for the rest of the population. “Rubella is a relatively trivial infection against which expenditure of public funds would not be justified,” but the doctor was adamant on the need for “fetal preventative medicine before the baby is even conceived.”
Would it harm the baby is a pregnant woman received Rubella vaccine?
Dr. John Willke, past president of the National Right to Life Committee, in his book Abortion deals with this question. He refers to studies on many hundreds of vaccinated women between 1971 and 1983. There were no cases of Rubella vaccine effects.
