PA-Gov: Wolf Intends to Block Controversial Abortion Bill

by Eddie deSciora, Contributing Writer

Politics PA

Add to the list of obvious differences between the heavily Republican legislature and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Tom Wolf the issue of abortion.

Today, Wolf made clear he would not sign a major abortion bill being pushed by the legislature.

“Tom Wolf would not sign this bill,” spokeswoman Beth Melena declared. This is just an attempt to make it more difficult for women to access reproductive health care.”

Incumbent Tom Corbett is widely expected to support the bill.

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

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We Will Not March

Bill Donohue issued the following remarks today:

The Catholic League, which has marched in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade for 20 years, will not do so in 2015.

Prior to the announcement that a gay group would march under its own banner in the 2015 parade, I was consulted by parade organizers about their plans. I told them that I could only support this decision if there were a formal revision in the parade’s rules governing marching units, and that is exactly what I said in my first public statement. To be specific, I asked them to pledge that a pro-life Catholic group would also be permitted. I was told that a formal change in the rules had been approved and that a pro-life group would march. Now I am being told that the list of marching units is set and that no pro-life group will march in next year’s parade. Accordingly, I have decided to withdraw our participation.

Why should this matter? For the past two decades I have been the parade’s most vocal defender of its rules. Repeatedly, I have said that gays have no more been banned from marching than pro-life Catholics have: members of both groups can march with other units; they simply can’t march under their own banner. Why? Because the parade is not about gays or abortion, or anything other than St. Patrick.

Bill Donohue issued the following remarks today:

The Catholic League, which has marched in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade for 20 years, will not do so in 2015.

Prior to the announcement that a gay group would march under its own banner in the 2015 parade, I was consulted by parade organizers about their plans. I told them that I could only support this decision if there were a formal revision in the parade’s rules governing marching units, and that is exactly what I said in my first public statement. To be specific, I asked them to pledge that a pro-life Catholic group would also be permitted. I was told that a formal change in the rules had been approved and that a pro-life group would march. Now I am being told that the list of marching units is set and that no pro-life group will march in next year’s parade. Accordingly, I have decided to withdraw our participation.

Why should this matter? For the past two decades I have been the parade’s most vocal defender of its rules. Repeatedly, I have said that gays have no more been banned from marching than pro-life Catholics have: members of both groups can march with other units; they simply can’t march under their own banner. Why? Because the parade is not about gays or abortion, or anything other than St. Patrick.

Attempts will now be made to pit me against Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the Grand Marshal of the 2015 parade. The suggestion that I am at odds with the New York Archbishop is not only false, it is despicable. Cardinal Dolan has no more rabid supporter than Bill Donohue, and nothing that has transpired recently changes anything.

My reasons for withdrawing from the parade have nothing to do with Cardinal Dolan or with gays. It has to do with being betrayed by the parade committee. They not only told me one thing, and did another, they decided to include a gay group that is neither Catholic nor Irish while stiffing pro-life Catholics. This is as stunning as it is indefensible. To find out how this sad chapter unfolded, click  here.

Militant Pro-aborts Invade Hotel to Disrupt Pro-life Event

By Cheryl Sullenger
Operation Rescue

Albuquerque, NM — A small but vocal group of protesters from the militant pro-abortion group Stop Patriarchy invaded the vestibule of an Albuquerque hotel where Project Defending Life was holding its annual banquet and attempted to disrupt the event.

The particular objects of scorn for this leftist, anti-male group?

None other than Operation Rescue’s Troy Newman, who was the featured speaker for the event, and honored guest New Mexico Archbishop Michael Sheehan.

The rowdy group of feminists broke into the hotel vestibule wielding signs and a bullhorn and chanting “Abortion on demand” and “Operation Rescue is a fascist organization!” as banquet-goers looked on from the lobby.

At one point, briefly seen in a cell-phone video of the incident, Archbishop Sheehan approached the protesters and blessed them.

The obviously misguided and ill-informed abortion supporters simply ignored the realty of exactly who they were protesting.

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

Operation Rescue® is one of the leading pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation. Operation Rescue® recently made headlines when it bought and closed an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas and has become perhaps the most visible voice of the pro-life activist movement in America. Its activities are on the cutting edge of the abortion issue, taking direct action to restore legal personhood to the pre-born and stop abortion in obedience to biblical mandates.

Abortion Coverage Mandates at Nominally Catholic Colleges

by Bruce Frohnen
Crisis Magazine

It seems only yesterday that the Supreme Court, in the Hobby Lobby case, held that the federal government cannot force Christian owners of closely held corporations to pay for employee health insurance coverage for abortion inducing drugs. After that case, some commentators predicted greater government respect for the rights of religious believers to refuse their support to contraceptive and abortion “services.” This always was a false hope because the Hobby Lobby decision was based, not on the Constitution, but on a particular statute (the Religious Freedom Restoration Act or RFRA) and the protections it provides individuals (not churches or even corporations) to “express” their religious “opinions.” That is, the Court only purported to defend the rights of some religious believers to express their religious beliefs through their control of policies that clearly could be traced back to themselves, for example in closely held corporations. There was no pretense of respecting the rights of corporate groups (churches in particular) to govern themselves according to the tenets of their religions. Nor was there any finding of a Constitutional right to religious “expression” in this area that might protect people and communities from other laws less friendly than RFRA.

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

Bruce Frohnen is Professor of Law at the Ohio Northern University College of Law. He is also a senior fellow at the Russell Kirk Center and author of many books including The New Communitarians and the Crisis of Modern Liberalism, and the editor of Rethinking Rights (with Ken Grasso), and The American Republic: Primary Source.

Preparing for Philadelphia 2015: A Liberty Bell for the Family

By Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director

Priests for Life

A year from now, believers from around the world will gather with the Pope in Philadelphia to celebrate God's gift of the family. Marked by the themeLove is our Mission: The Family Fully Alive, this will be the Eighth World Meeting of Families.

Established by Saint John Paul II, these regular world gatherings began twenty years ago, in 1994. They are coordinated by the Vatican agency also established by St. John Paul II, the Pontifical Council for the Family. I had the privilege of working there myself in the late 1990's and I helped coordinate the Second World Meeting of Families in 1997 in Rio de Janeiro.

I just got back from a visit with Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, and we discussed the upcoming celebration in Philadelphia. He gave me the book that essentially serves as a "study guide" for the theme of the meeting. In the days of this gathering, various presentations are given to help participants understand the Church's teaching about the family, and we will explore these themes along with you in the coming months at http://www.priestsforlife.org/Family.

In my conversation with the Archbishop, I presented to him a letter from 70 national pro-life organizations in the United States -- groups representing many denominations -- and we discussed the eagerness of these leaders to promote and participate in the World Meeting of Families. Their promotion of this event highlight, of course, one of the key dimensions of its theme: the call to choose life. As we always said when I worked at the Pontifical Council for the Family, "There can be no family without life," and, consistent with the theme of the 2015 gathering, the family cannot be "fully alive" if its youngest and most defenseless members, the children still in the womb, do not have their lives protected. Indeed, as veteran abortion researcher and psychiatrist Dr. Philip Ney asserts, there is nothing in human experience that is more destructive of the family than abortion.

Indeed, love is our mission, and love is exactly the opposite of abortion. Love says, "I sacrifice myself for the good of the other person;" abortion says, "I sacrifice the other person for the good of myself." This dynamic is seen powerfully in the life and death of the saint who is one of the patrons of this upcoming World Meeting of Families, that is, Saint Gianna Beretta Molla, who sacrificed her life for her unborn child. The other patron saint of the gathering is Saint John Paul II, who, along with being named the "Pope of the Family," can rightly also be called the "Pope of Life."

Last year, our Executive Director, Janet Morana, interviewed Archbishop Paglia about the World Meeting of Families, and he referred to his recent visit to Philadelphia, where he was very inspired by seeing the Liberty Bell. In the interview, he expressed the hope that the 2015 gathering would be a moment for a new "liberty bell" for the family. Let this event, and the commitment of those who attend it, signal a new freedom to understand what the family is, and a new freedom for all its members, starting with the youngest, to live out their calling as a sign and instrument of God's love and life in the world!

Please use this link  with a contribution to help Priests for Life with their work. 

Burying the Dead: The Recovery and Burial of 500 Victims of Abortion

Let Us Honor Their Memory—and the Memory of All Aborted Children

Posted by Ann Scheidler, Vice President 
Pro-Life Action League

One morning in early March, 1987 the phone rang at our home on Chicago’s Northwest Side. It was Tom Bresler, founder and director of the Aid for Women pregnancy resource center on Michigan Avenue.

Tom had just received a call from the marketing director of the Michigan Avenue Medical Center, an abortion clinic located just down the street from his pregnancy center. The gentleman from the abortion clinic was disturbed about some of the “protocols” he witnessed at the abortion clinic. He wanted to come and talk to Tom Bresler about it.

Tom was open to meeting with him, but wanted Joe Scheidler (my husband) to join him for the meeting.  Joe, however, was out of town on a speaking tour. So I offered to join Tom for the meeting, and headed down to Aid for Women.

It was an interesting hour.

continue reading at http://prolifeaction.org/hotline

The Abortion Industry Un-Masked: Admitting Privileges Debate Illustrates the Ugly Reality of Big Abortion’s Incompetence

From:

"The group leading the [pro-life] legislative charge... is Americans United for Life." - The Progressive

Over the summer what might have seemed a minor piece of model legislation -- hospital admitting privileges -- has captured the hearts and minds of pro-life advocates, while leaving a hyperventilating abortion industry exposed. Americans United for Life’s hospital admitting privileges model law merely requires that the abortionists calling themselves doctors and performing out-patients surgeries have a standing agreement with local hospitals to accept patients should a horrific emergency arise -- a common sense health and safety standard to protect women when their lives are threatened by abortion. Such regulations are sweeping the country.

The Associated Press reported: “Many of the recent laws are modeled on proposals by Americans United for Life, which depicts abortion as a danger to women's health. The aim of the tighter restrictions, says AUL's president, Charmaine Yoest, is ‘protecting women and their unborn children from a largely unregulated, unrestricted, and unrepentant abortion industry.’"

"It used to be a brick-by-brick approach, and now they're throwing up the wall all at once, so you can't get over it no matter how high you jump," said Jennifer Dalven, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive Freedom Project.

more on this story at http://bigstory.ap.org/

More Misinterpretations of Hobby Lobby

By John M. Grondelski
for Crisis Magazine

Hobby Lobby was never so much about the principled Constitutional issue of whether there is a right to conscientious objection (be they based on religious or scientific convictions) as much as a prop in the melodramatic political “war on women” by which some cynically hope to save at least a pro-abortion Senate majority in the last two years of Barack Obama’s presidency. One might even say that they secretly welcomed it: had the decision gone the other way, what would they talk about? Barring corporate political contributions just isn’t as sexy (and would not be expected to garner as many votes) as “defending the Pill” against Wall Street (or Oklahoma City) employers “in your bedroom.”

That, of course, is the current line of the media elite repeated recently by Gail Collins in her September 6 New York Times column “Passion for the Pill,” in which she suggests that Republicans who want to win in November will have to pledge loyalty to “birth control.” Given the flood of ink spilled in the wake of the Hobby Lobby decision one hesitates to contribute to the deluge, but the absence of certain themes in that commentary demand a few thoughts:

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

John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ.

Wisconsin Success Story in Decreasing Abortions a Model for Other States

By Heather Weininger, Executive Director
Wisconsin Right to Life

The long-awaited day finally arrived — the day we look for all year long. It’s the day the Wisconsin Department of Health Services releases its “Reported Induced Abortions” in Wisconsin annual report for the previous year. And, once again, Wisconsin abortions have decreased, this time by a whopping 6.7%!

In sheer numbers, it means that in 2013, 465 more babies were saved from abortion and their mothers spared a lifetime of emotional pain when compared to 2012. Wisconsin recorded 6,462 abortions in 2013, down from 6,927 in 2012. The Wisconsin abortion ratio of 10 abortions per 100 live births is half of the national number.

This report is essentially our Wisconsin Right to Life report card. Daily tasks can become mundane, routine – unless you work at organizations such as Wisconsin Right to Life where you realize that everything you do is geared towards pushing those numbers down.

How many babies can we save this year, we ask ourselves?

How do we do it? Our strategy is essentially three-pronged:

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