Pro-Life Even When it’s Uncomfortable

by Michael Lane

I was blessed a couple of weeks ago to chaperone a pilgrimage to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and to attend the National March for Life rally in Washington, D.C. This was a week of firsts for me. I met my first Nashville Dominican sisters, visited D.C. and several of its sites, such as the Holocaust Museum for the first time, and I experienced my first March for Life and all it offered. I originally intended for this post to discuss the many beautiful things I experienced, such as praying the Angelus outside the Shrine with a close friend and a Dominican sister in the blinding snow, the gorgeous and inspiring Basilica, and my own interior growth from this pilgrimage. Unfortunately, they will all have to wait, because I wish to write on one particular aspect of the Pro-Life movement I discussed with other young adults on the trip. That is the latter part of ‘from conception to natural death.’ Last week, I learned one of my fellow graduate students committed suicide unexpectedly. We were not close, but this news does not diminish the shock or dismay of hearing someone in the ‘prime of life’ made the choice to end their life.

First Responder

There are a limited number of responses to a tragedy such as the suicide of a loved one: grief and numbness. These may be quickly followed by questions of frustration and, possibly guilt. How could this have been prevented? Did I do or not do something to reach out to make the individual feel loved and welcomed? My friends who knew this individual asked these very questions. One of my first thoughts though was for the salvation of his soul. Then, while discussing the nature of suicide with a friend, I began to think of how Holy Mother Church approached such a grievous sin. In times of confusion and despair, the Church provides us a safe port in the storm. There is comfort in the Church’s foundations in Jesus Christ, and 2000 years of continual guidance by the Holy Spirit. Knowledge of the ‘what and why’ of a teaching gives the faithful firm ground to stand upon.

The Church’s teachings, however, is where I think we get into sticky territory. Like divorce or ‘leaving’ Catholicism, the Church’s teaching on suicide is one issue that most Catholics do not fully comprehend, and do not attempt to enlighten themselves. Instead, they look to secular answers to console their grief. First, some will say suicide is the right of the individual to end the life they own, and thus is not wrong. Second, suicide can never be a sin, because anyone who commits suicide is not in their right mind, and thus are not culpable for their actions. Third, saying suicide is wrong is callous and inconsiderate of the victim’s family.

I do believe that some sincerely offer these or similar consolations to families, because there is very little one can offer in those first moments of grief. Our good desire to help others feel better cannot come at the price of denying the reality of sin and its consequences. These sentiments are merely a part of our culture’s desire for an amoral world without consequences; a place where all things are possible and can be justified as a right, even a morbid one. St. Thomas Aquinas tackled similar statements in his Summa.

continue reading at http://catholicstand.com

The Sheer Idiocy of “Every Child a Wanted Child”

by Leila Miller

“Every child a wanted child” has to be one of the more insidious pro-abortion slogans. Think about this silly little euphemism for a second. There are only two ways to ensure a child’s “wantedness”:
1) We start wanting the children we create.
or
2) We kill all the unwanted children.

The first option is the choice to love. The second option is the choice to kill.

Voilà! Both options will leave us with only “wanted” children! Since the unborn child is helpless and has no way of remedying his “unwanted”/”wanted” status, the “unwantedness” or “wantedness” of a child falls, 100% of the time, on the adults around him, including the adults who made him in the first place (the parents), the adults around those parents, and the adults in society at large.

The Culture of Life’s solution is love, and the Culture of Death’s solution is, of course, death.

But let’s go with the fun little slogan for a moment, and expand it. How about, “Every woman a wanted woman”? The rest of you will be shot at dawn! Too bad for you — you should have been wanted, heh heh heh. Maybe “Every Jew a wanted Jew”? Wait, someone in the 1940s already thought of that one. Oh, sorry, I’m so out of line there.

Back to the original: ”Every child a wanted child.”

continue reading at http://catholicstand.com

Girl Scout Cookie Boycott Rocket Still Accelerating and Needs Y-O-U!!!

From John Pisciotta, 
Director of Pro-Life Waco

Cookiecott (www.cookiecott.com) launched just last Thursday and is blasting through the old media, web media, social media, and word of mouth. Today (Tuesday) has been a very big day for this national campaign: talk radio interviews, powerful news articles and editorials, a Facebook post by Governor Huckabee, and Twitter going crazy. Plus the “real big one” is a fair and balanced news story from Associated Press. This has been picked of by dozens of on-line, television, and print news outlets.

This national boycott was launched by Pro-Life Waco with the support of many collaborative pro-life, pro-family organizations.
 
To follow the media do a Google search on “girl scout cookie boycott” Also, you can go to a special media summary page I have created:  http://www.prolifewaco.com/CookiecottNews.html 

To see all that is behind the boycott, go to our special website http://cookiecott.com/

The trigger for the boycott was Girl Scouts USA using Twitter to applaud Texas State Senator Wendy Davis as worthy of consideration for Woman of the Year 2013.  You will see on the special web site that Girl Scout problems run much deeper. Here is a photo of Gloria Steinem—one of the women praised in the Girl Scout curriculum for grades 9-10.

 
What can you do NOW to provide critical support for Cookiecott? Please do at least two or three of the following.

Here is the Cookiecott agenda for OUR side:

1. Go to http://cookiecott.com/ and click the button for the flyer that is central to the boycott. You can print multiple copies. The flyer contains the main facts on Girl Scout associations with pro-abortion leaders, organizations, and agenda. All you have to do at a cookie sale is hand the flyer to an adult and say this explains why you're not buying. I know some of you feel like you want to support your local Girl Scout troop, which are very often wholesome in contrast to the national GSUSA. One option is to donate cash to the local troop or donate gift cards from Hobby Lobby. The local troop generally gets just 70 to 90¢ from each box of cookies sold.

2. Spread the word frequently on social media. For Twitter, we are using #cookiecott

3. Write articles for on-line media, for newspaper editorials and letters about Cookiecott, and send them to newspapers online media sources and letters to the editor.

4. On-line “comments” on web articles. Do a Google search for “Girl Scout cookie boycott” Find the most recent ones.  Go to the article and it will often contain an opportunity to comment.  Write your point of view. The dark side is active. We need to be active too.

5. If you are involved in a pro-life, pro-family organization urge the organization to publicly endorse Cookiecott. Perhaps you lead an organization. The organization can send out communications to all members AND send a news release to local media about your endorsement. It was just this type of endorsement from Pro-Life Wisconsin that led to the Associated Press article and many news stories in Wisconsin.  You can do this in your state.

6. Talk to your friends, relatives, and pastors about Cookiecott. This is in large part an educational campaign. We want adults to have full knowledge of the Girl Scout USA agenda for children. Any church direct involvement with Girl Scouts should be scrutinized very closely. In my personal judgment, such associations should not continue. There are other scouting organizations to work with such as Awanas, Junior Catholic Daughters and American Heritage Girls.

7. Forward this email throughout you sphere of influence and friendship.

8. Pray that all pro-lifers involved in Cookiecott will be granted the wisdom and prudence to follow our Lord who loved the little children so passionately.

This is our opportunity to act in loving concern for the futures and well-being of our children. Such opportunities do not come along often. The financial costs for Cookiecott have been modest. I do NOT request financial contributions for this Cookiecott venture. I do ask for your prayers in addition to your open and bold acts of support.

How We Marked the 41st Anniversary of Roe v. Wade: Attending Marches Across the Country

Since the 1973 Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade, more than 56 million lives have been snuffed out in America. That’s more people than the population of Texas, and it’s nine times the number of people who were killed during the Jewish Holocaust.

But every year during the third week of January, millions of Americans from all races, creeds, and socioeconomic and religious backgrounds come together in cities across the nation to stand up for the unborn and remind the world that abortion is the moral injustice of our day.

As a pro-life outreach organization driven by compassion for both the unborn and for women facing crisis pregnancies, Online for Life participated in this year’s life marches to show love and grace while proclaiming the truth about abortion and life.

Despite the snow and near-zero temperatures, thousands gathered in Washington, D.C. to make the annual trek up the National Mall to the Supreme Court Building. Arguably America’s largest life march, the National March for Life headlined some leading pro-life advocates, including Jeanne Monahan, president of March for Life; Giovanna Romero of Latinas por la Vida; Nicole Peck of Silent No More; youth speaker Molly Anne Dutton (Auburn University student); and many more. Online for Life was there, marching alongside staff members from several pregnancy resource centers that work with us.

continue reading at http://liveactionnews.org

Planned Parenthood Covers Up Child Rape in Philadelphia

by Eric Scheidler

In a review of inspection reports posted recently by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the Pro-Life Action League has uncovered some very disturbing findings concerning two Planned Parenthood facilities in Philadelphia.

On August 29, 2013 Department of Health inspectors conducted an annual registration survey [PDF]  of Planned Parenthood’s Locust Street Health Center, during which they reviewed the facility’s policy related to external reporting to appropriate agencies as related to The Pennsylvania Crimes Code and the Child Protective Service Law.
The Planned Parenthood Locust Street Health Center’s policy, updated December 2012, stated:

Statutory sexual assault (“statutory rape”) is sexual intercourse when one person is under the age of 16 and the other is 4 or more years older. It is a crime, however it is NOT a mandated reportable incident. …

But under Pennsylvania law, statutory rape is a mandated reportable incident.  Planned Parenthood’s policy was flat-out wrong.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health made very clear in its report:

continue reading at http://www.lifenews.com/

U.S. Abortions Decline to Historic Low

New report: Abortions Are Down  

13 Percent from 2008 to 2011

 

Abortion rates are falling steadily in the United States as more pregnant women gain access to the education and support that they and their families need.

A  new report shows U.S. abortion numbers at a near-record low in 2011. There were 1.06 million abortions in 2011, down 13 percent from 2008, according to a new report by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. The report reflects a similar trend here in Pennsylvania, where abortions declined by almost 5 percent in one year from 2011 to 2012.

Now more than ever, women are choosing life as they discover the truth about a baby's development in the womb. And pregnant and new moms can access material and emotional support through pregnancy resource centers in their own communities.

Yet, 1 million abortions per year is still a massive tragedy in our country. Pro-lifers are making progress in helping to protect preborn babies and their mothers from abortion, but there's still a lot of work to do.

Consider volunteering with one of our 40 chapters as we help Pennsylvanians all across the Commonwealth to see that there's always a reason to choose life!

The Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, Inc., is committed to promoting the dignity and value of human life from conception to natural death and to restoring legal protection for preborn children. Through legislation, political action, education and other legal means, we proclaim the truth about abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. 

Use this link to learn more about the Pennsylvania Pro-life Federation http://www.paprolife.org/about_us.html

PRI Takes Down Abortion-Promoting Blog

Illegal campaign to promote Misoprostol abortions suffers major setback in Peru

by Carlos Polo

For some years now, the abortion movement has been setting up so-called “safe abortion hotlines” in Latin American countries, and secretly (and illegally) advertising them on the internet. In Peru, the offensive website was under the domain of Blogspot, and it relentlessly promoted abortion. Women who visited the site looking for help were instead given encouragement to break the law and to perform a dangerous and illegal chemical abortion on themselves by obtaining and ingesting Misoprostol from a local pharmacy.

At least, this is where matters stood until PRI launched a campaign against the website. As a result, hundreds of Peruvian citizens filed complaints with Blogspot to shut down the website. After hesitating for some months, Blogspot finally acted. It shut down the  site on the grounds that it was violating Blogspot policy by promoting drugs, in this case an illegal drug. If you type in the site’s one-time address at  http://lineabortoinfosegura.blogspot.com/, what comes up is a message that this “Blog has been removed.”

This is a significant victory because this website was the primary means of advertising and promoting the so-called "safe abortion hotline." And the hotline in turn was the chief means by which the abortion movement was attempting promote, perform, and legalize abortions in pro-life Peru.

Like many Latin American constitutions, the Peruvian constitution defines life as beginning at conception. Abortion remains illegal. And any attempt to advertise abortion services on television, radio, or in the newspapers is quickly shut down by the authorities.

This is why the international abortion collective has invested so much time and energy into anonymous “hotlines” and remotely run websites in Latin America. And it is also why its chemical abortifacient of choice is Misoprostol, which can be used to initiate early-term abortions in secret, but which must then be completed—on the grounds that the woman is suffering a “natural miscarriage”—in government-run clinics and hospitals.

In fact, we at PRI believe that this strategy is being deliberately used, not just to carry out thousands of clandestine abortions, but with the broader goal of subverting pro-life laws throughout Latin America. That is to say, the international abortion movement hopes to make abortion by Misoprostol so common in countries like Peru that the legalization of all abortions will necessarily follow this cultural shift. We see something similar happening with the legalization of marijuana in some American states.

Such pro-abortion blogs and hotlines are promoted internationally by the Collective of Free Information for Women (CLIM) and by Women on Waves, itself notorious for providing shipboard abortions offshore of countries where abortions are prohibited. But their efforts are supported by nearly all major pro-abortion and radical feminist organizations, which have come together in the  Latin American Consortium Against Unsafe Abortion.

In short, by taking down the site, we have at the same time taken away from the international abortion movement its primary way of promoting abortion in Peru. The site will no longer encourage women to abort their unborn children. It will no longer give information about how to obtain and use Misoprostol to end pregnancy.  At the same time, we at PRI are working hard to help women in crisis pregnancies in Peru.

And hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children will live.

The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation." Find us at pop.org. 

PRI is a 501(c)(3) educational organization. If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation to PRI, please go to our Donations Page. All donations (of any size) are welcomed and appreciated

Summary of Known Health-Risks of Abortion

How Abortion Harms Women and
Why Concerns for Women’s Health Must be Part of Abortion-related Policies and Media Debate

 

 

The grisly trial of now-convicted murderer Dr. Kermit Gosnell brought national attention to the deplorable conditions in America’s “legal” abortion industry. Gosnell’s trial showed that abortion carries inherent risks to women, whether it is performed at a clinic like his, or not.

In an increasingly health-conscious society, why does abortion lack a “warning label?” Numerous, welldocumented studies in peer-reviewed medical journals demonstrate that abortion poses significant medical risks for women.

The health risks of abortion undermine the false narrative promoted by the abortion industry, namely that the abortion debate requires choosing sides between mothers and their unborn children. The truth is that regulating abortion benefits both mothers and children – even their children in future pregnancies.

Women and girls deserve to know the facts about abortion. Information is the lynchpin of true “choice.” Consider the following:

continue reading at http://www.realhealthcarerespectslife.com

 

 

Ohio Abortionist With 41% of RU-486 Complications Seeks License for Clinic Closed by the State

Operation Rescue files complaint against clinic for advertising surgical abortions without being licensed to do them. RU-486 abortion pills already being dispensed.

By Cheryl Sullenger

Akron, OH – A former Planned Parenthood abortionist who is responsible for nearly 41% of medication abortion complications in Ohio has reopened and renamed an abortion clinic closed by the state last year for serious health and safety code violations that went uncorrected.

David M. Burkons continues to dispense RU-486 abortion pills at the former Capital Care Network — now named the Northeast Ohio Women’s Center — in Cuyahoga Falls, outside Akron, Ohio. He has filed an application to obtain a license to conduct surgical abortions with the Ohio Department of Health, which discovered 34 pages of deficiencies at that facility in February, 2013, and ordered it closed in April after the deficiencies went uncorrected.

Violations that posed a danger to the public included:

• Hiring employees who lacked training and proper qualifications.
• Unqualified employees routinely dispensing controlled substances to patients.
• Logs for controlled substances not properly maintained.
• Missing drugs.
• Expired pharmacy license.
• Shoddy lab practices resulting in dubious test results.
• Failure to maintain proper sanitizing methods in surgical areas.
• Illegible or incomplete medical records that revealed a lack of patient monitoring.
• Lack of evidence of informed consent.
• No evidence that some sedated patients had transportation by another person as required upon discharge.
• No Registered Nurse assigned to surgery as required, affecting at least 19 patients.
• Lack of mandatory Advance Life Support Certification for surgical and recovery room employees.
• Failure to maintain a “Quality Assurance” program at the facility.
• Lack of new employee training and staff evaluations.
• Lack of infection control training.
• Lack of a tuberculosis control plan.
• Employee time card irregularities lending to conditions ripe for financial malfeasance.
• Failure to provide credentialing information for one abortion provider.
• Complicated lock on the exit door used for emergencies which could delay emergency care.

continue reading at http://www.operationrescue.org

Courageous 14-Year-Old Rape Victim Chooses Life: Now Her Rapist Attends Her School

Ashley was 14 years old when I read an article about her in the newspaper discussing how she was raped and as a result became pregnant. From the moment Ashley found out she was pregnant, she knew that carrying her baby to term was her only option. On June 26, 2013, her son Aiden was born, and he has warmed everyone’s heart that he comes into contact with. Throughout the summer and fall of 2013, I have had to privilege of getting to know not only Ashley and Aiden, but Ashley’s parents as well. Ashley has a wonderful family, and I have come to realize that they are her biggest supporters.


Ashley’s rapist was 17 years old and happened to be a friend of her brother’s at the time. He was convicted and charged as a juvenile, so the judge decided to charge him only with molestation. Being that he was a minor, a charge of molestation instead of rape might seem reasonable to some, but sadly, this was not his first offense; it was his third. He had been charged with molestation of two other girls he had raped besides Ashley. He didn’t spend any time in jail for his crimes, and his punishment was probation, drug testing, and sexual aggression classes. Since Ashley’s rapist was charged as a juvenile, he does not have to register as a sex offender.

continue reading at http://liveactionnews.org/