“he raised his voice, the earth melted”

Hey everyone,

Fr. Terry has asked me several times to start posting on the blog again. So I will. Right now actually.

My brother-in-law posted an article on my facebook this morning. You can read it here if you’d like: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37920310/ns/health-more_health_news/

The article says that British health experts have come out with a new study that concludes a baby in the womb cannot feel pain before 24 weeks. And that, because of this fact, British abortion laws (which allow abortion up to 24 weeks) should not change.

I started googling. First, to figure out if other doctors agreed with this medical statement, and, second, to see what the pro-life community was saying in response. I found a great article at LifeNews.com which does both. You can read that one here: http://www.lifenews.com/nat6467.html.

I find it encouraging that information opposing this study was so readily available. It really wasn’t hard to find statements from doctors, surgeons, and anesthesiologists that challenged the idea that babies cannot feel pain before 24 weeks.

On the article posted by FoxNews.com (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,595284,00.html), one of the quoted doctors made an important point regarding the supposed finality of the British study. Dr. Manny Alvarez says, “There is no way to quantify pain in-utero….To say that we don’t know if fetuses feel pain before 24 weeks would be a more accurate statement.”

Many times the media will present a theory as fact, and people will accept it without question. However, if we take the time to actually research what we hear and read, especially when it comes to medical finds (and, more importantly, medical finds regarding pro-life), we see that the information didn’t create a new indisputable fact at all, just a different possibility.

When I talk to pro-abortionists who tell me that a baby in the womb is absolutely not a person, I often ask them how they can be so certain of that. And, since most of them are not doctors, they usually find themselves at a loss for an unarguable answer. Instead they shoot my question back at me, “Well, how do you know that it is a person? You can’t prove your point either.” And they are right. No matter how many medical studies we do, if a person is unwilling to believe that a child in the womb is a gift from God which we are incapable of imitating, they are not going to see any reason for offering it protection.

The British government is an excellent example of this. They hope to use this study to keep the pro-life community in their country from increasing the limitations on abortions.  They do not care if the study is conclusive or credible, only that it is published and readily available for their pro-abortion agenda. That is the way of a broken world. They willfully choose, again and again, despite evidence or conviction, to ignore the life of an unborn child.

This does not mean we should consider all lost and keep silent.

Psalm 46 says: “God is our refuge and strength,  a very present help in trouble…The nations made an uproar, the kingdoms tottered; He raised His voice, the earth melted. The Lord of Hosts is with us….” Thankfully, God is much bigger than our governments, and fully capable of healing the brokenness that comes from powerful men and women making unrighteous decisions. I invite you to continually pray for pro-life voices in countries around the world, and to find a way to be a voice yourself.

I also pray that other doctors in the British medical community will speak up for the unborn and publicly contest this study, and that the British pro-lifers will not be discouraged by their government’s bias, only encouraged by the presence of a mighty God.

Peace of the Lord be always with you, and thanks for reading the blog.

Sarah

Experts Rebuke Pro-Abort Prof. Claim that “a Fetus is Not a Person”

Experts Rebuke Pro-Abort Prof. Claim that “a Fetus is Not a Person”

By Patrick B. Craine

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 7, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A philosophy professor at Saint Mary’s University (SMU) in Halifax is drawing rebuke from experts in bioethics, medicine, and philosophy for a Monday column in which he advocates abortion based on the notion that “a fetus is not a person.”

If pro-abortion advocates can show that the unborn child is not a person, argues Dr. Mark Mercer in an op-ed for the Ottawa Citizen, then a woman’s reason for aborting him or her “cannot be outweighed by the fetus’s right to life, for, not being a person, the fetus has no such right.”

But according to bioethicist Dianne Irving, who ripped into Mercer’s column in a Tuesday essay, Mercer’s science is “grossly objectively erroneous” and his concept of “delayed personhood” is “deceptively achieved by means of using academically indefensible ‘philosophy’.”

Mercer admits in his article that “abortion involves the deliberate killing of a human being,” but maintains that that is “no reason for abortion to be illegal,” and that one should not be “morally troubled by it.”

It would normally be unacceptable to kill a reader of the Citizen, he says, for example, because the reader is “a creature richly aware of its environment and full of beliefs and desires, including the desire to continue living. … To kill a reader of this paper would be to destroy a self-aware locus of experience, one, moreover, that prefers not to die.”

“A human fetus, on the other hand, though human, has only a rudimentary awareness of its environment and lacks self consciousness entirely,” he continues.  “It has no interest in living, for it can have no interests at all.”

While he admits that an unborn child is “potentially a person,” he claims that this fact is only a concern “if it is better to have that particular future person walking around than it is to respect a here-and-now person’s autonomy.”

“The overall point is that abortion is not in any degree a morally fraught option,” he concludes.  “A woman considering whether to have an abortion or, instead, to raise a child is making a practical decision, not a moral one. This is what we who are pro-choice have to make more widely known.”

Irving points out that Mercer’s arguments have been used by pro-abortion bioethicists, such as Princeton’s Peter Singer, for decades, “regardless of their fatal faults.”

If Mercer is right about the unborn not being a person based on the fact that they don’t have “rational attributes,” she says, we must also accept that the following are not persons: “the comatose, the mentally retarded, the mentally ill and depressed, drug addicts, alcoholics, a lot of teenagers, etc. – even Mercer, or the Readers when they are sleeping!”

In fact, she points out that Singer does indeed say that the mentally disabled and others are not persons.  Are Mercer and the readers, just like Singer, willing “to argue seriously that all these same living adult human beings could be intentionally killed, used in destructive medical research, dismembered and then pitched into mass graves, etc.,” she asks, “since they are just human beings but not ‘persons’ who actively exercise ‘rational attributes’?”

“We should demand no less than an immediate response from Mr. Mercer. Come on, Mr. Mercer – if Peter Singer has the gall to so conclude, why not you?” she adds.

Irving argues that “in the real world, there is no real distinction between a human being and a human person.”

In fact, Professor Michael Schintgen, the chairman of philosophy at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy, pointed out that Mercer “takes a definition of person out of thin air – assuming without argument that what distinguishes a person from a non-person is awareness.”

Irving, on the other hand, relies on the traditional definition of person, as introduced by the philosopher Boethius in the 6th century, that a person is “an individual substance of a rational nature.”

“A human being, simply by virtue of being a human kind of being, with a specifically human nature, is a human person precisely because he/she is an individual of a rational nature,” she writes.  ”If allowed to grow, develop and flourish, these human persons hopefully will be able to eventually actively express ‘rational attributes’ and ‘sentience’ if possible.”

But even if the human being does not reach Mercer’s established attributes, Irving continues, they are still “innocent living human persons who possess a rational nature,” and who thus also possess “the same inherent rights as all other human persons – socially, ethically, legally, etc.”

Professor Schintgen noted that Mercer’s arguments are “just warmed over ideas from the Disco Era.”  “Mercer dredges up arguments used by Peter Singer, J.J. Thomson, Mary Anne Warren, and others from the 70s. The only thing missing is the bellbottoms,” he told LifeSiteNews.

Schintgen also said that Mercer assumes a false notion of autonomy.  “Even if we grant that the fetus is not a person, why should I be allowed to do what I want with it?” he asks.  “A great deal of modern talk about rights assumes this idea of autonomy without giving any reason for it.  Does wanting to do something automatically give me a right to do it? I might like to have lobster for breakfast. Does that mean I have the right to have lobster?”

“One would expect a professor of philosophy to have arguments that meet the objections raised to these arguments in the past 30 odd years, but none are in sight,” he concluded.

Mercer also got a rebuke from Dr. Paul Claman, a professor of reproductive medicine at the University of Ottawa, who wrote in a Thursday letter to the editor that Mercer’s argument “does not hold water.”  “Extrapolating Mercer’s argument would make a parent’s decision to kill a month-old baby or a dependent parent with severe Alzheimer’s disease only a practical and not an a morale one,” he said.

Despite his abortion advocacy, Mercer did take a stand on behalf of pro-life students at his university in 2009, when he told media that SMU had given in to mob rule by allowing pro-abortion activists to silence a speech by Jose Ruba of the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform.  ”I don’t want to defend what he said as non-hate speech because I think that’s irrelevant,” Mercer told the Chronicle Herald. “Even if he was saying ‘Black people suck,’ people who shout him down should be carried away.”

“We’re not to silence anybody on campus, not to prevent people from listening, not to prevent people from expressing themselves,” he added.

Saint Mary’s University was the first Roman Catholic university established in Canada, dating back to 1802, though it has formally separated from the Church.

Archbishop Anthony Mancini of Halifax, who sits ex officio as a ‘Visitor’ on SMU’s Board of Governors, told LifeSiteNews: “My personal position on the question of abortion is that of the Roman Catholic Church.  I hold and uphold these views, knowing that everyone neither shares nor accepts this point of view.”

“As for the ideas expressed in the article in question, I do not agree with them professionally or pastorally,” he added.  “No doubt there are professors at Saint Mary’s University who also hold views quite different than those in the article.”

Incompatible With Life? Some Children Die in Abortions, But Bella is Now Two

by Rick Santorum

May 5, 2010

LifeNews.com Note: Rick Santorum represented Pennsylvania as a member of the House and then the Senate. He was the sponsor of the partial-birth abortion ban and is widely considered one of the pro-life leaders in Congress during his tenure. He is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center

“Incompatible with life.” The doctor’s words kept echoing in my head as I held my sobbing wife, Karen, just four days after the birth of our eighth child, Isabella Maria.

Bella was born with three No. 18 chromosomes, rather than the normal two. The statistics were heartbreaking: About 90 percent of children with the disorder, known as trisomy 18, die before or during birth, and 90 percent of those who survive die within the first year.

Bella was baptized that day, and then we spent every waking hour at her bedside, giving her a lifetime’s worth of love and care. However, not only did she not die; she came home in just 10 days.

She was sent home on hospice care, strange as that sounded for a newborn. The hospice doctor visited us the next day and described in graphic detail how Bella would die. In sum, she could die at any time without warning, and the best we could hope for was that she would die of the common cold.

Karen and I discontinued hospice so that we and our amazing doctors, James Baugh and Sunil Kapoor, could get to work focusing on Bella’s health, not her death.

Like so many moms of special kids, Karen is a warrior, caring for Bella night and day and, at times, fighting with health-care providers and our insurance company to get our daughter the care she needs.

Being the parent of a special child gives one exceptional insight into the negative perception of the disabled among many medical professionals, particularly when they see your child as having an intellectual disability. Sadly, we discovered that not only did we have to search for doctors who had experience with trisomy 18. We also had to search for those who saw Bella not as a fatal diagnosis, but as a wanted and loved daughter and sister, as well as a beautiful gift from God.

We knew from experience that Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was such a place. Fourteen years ago, we had another baby who was diagnosed as having no hope, but CHOP’s Dr. Scott Adzick gave him a shot at life. In the end, we lost our son Gabriel, but we will always be grateful to Dr. Adzick for affirming the value of his life.

When Bella was 3 months old, she needed some minor but vital surgery. Some doctors told us that a child like Bella wouldn’t survive surgery or, even worse, that surgery was “not recommended” because of her genetic condition – in other words, that her life wasn’t worth saving. So we again turned to the Children’s Hospital and found compassion, concern, and hope in Dr. Thane Blinman. He told us he had several trisomy 18 patients who did well – and so did Bella.

Next week, we will mark Bella’s second birthday. Over these two years, we have endured two close brushes with death, lots of sleepless nights, more than a month in CHOP’s intensive care unit, and the constant anxiety that the next day could be our little girl’s last.

And yet we have also been inspired – by her fighting spirit, and by the miracle of seeing our little flower blossom into a loving, joyful child who is at the center of our family life.

Most children with trisomy 18 diagnosed in the womb are aborted. Most who survive birth are given hospice care until they die. In these cases, doctors advise parents that these disabled children will die young or be a burden to them and society. But couldn’t the same be said of many healthy children?

All children are a gift that comes with no guarantees. While Bella’s life may not be long, and though she requires our constant care, she is worth every tear.

Living with Bella has been a course in character and virtue. She makes us better. And it’s not just our family; she enriches every life she touches. In the end, isn’t that what every parent hopes for his or her child?

Happy birthday, Isabella!

Buzz up!

Poll Shows 70% of Irish Oppose Abortion – Boosts Pro-Life Election Campaigners

By Hilary White

DUBLIN, May 4, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A recent poll showing that 70 per cent of the people of the Republic of Ireland support keeping the country’s constitutional protections for the unborn, has bolstered the work of pro-life lobbyists in Northern Ireland in the build-up to the UK general election on May 6.

The poll by PLC/Millward Brown found that 70 per cent of Irish people favor retaining a prohibition on abortion, while allowing the existing practice of intervening to save a mother’s life in accordance with medical ethics.

The poll was published as abortion activists, including the Irish Family Planning Association, affiliated with Planned Parenthood International, are taking the country’s pro-life laws before the European Court of Human Rights in the “ABC case,” in which three anonymous women are petitioning to have them overturned.

Pro-life advocate Dr. Seán Ó Domhnaill, who works with the group Youth Defence, called the result the fruit of “persistent, committed pro-life educational work.”

“Pro-life volunteers in Youth Defence have been holding public street information stalls every week, rain, hail or snow, for almost 20 years, throughout the country,” he said. “It’s a marvelous achievement, and the commitment and the educational effect achieved, is paying rich dividends.”

Youth Defence’s Rebecca Roughneen said that the pro-life views of the Irish is the result of a “huge number” of voluntary hours in creating advertising, education projects in colleges and on the internet that are “showing great results amongst young people.”

“But at the end of the day, the commitment to the daily and weekly work at abortion and referral agencies and on the street is so important.”

The poll has encouraged pro-life lobbyists who are urging Northern Irish voters to consider candidates’ positions on abortion and related life issues. The group Precious Life says its campaign, urging the public to vote only for candidates who will oppose abortion, is gathering speed.

The group has distributed thousands of its Vote For Life leaflets across the north. The group is encouraging the millions of pro-life voters in Northern Ireland and Britain to bombard the political parties and their candidates with telephone calls, emails and letters, asking them to oppose abortion.

Video Slideshow of Pro-life Freedom Rides

Pro-life Freedom Rides Has Been Launched

Pro-life freedom ride project has been launched!

EWTN will show video clips about the Pro-Life Freedom Rides on EWTN Live, Wednesday, April 28 at 8pm ET  and on Life on the Rock, Thursday, April 29 at 8pm ET.

Phase 1: Prayer Campaign: Pentecost Sunday (May 23) through Independence Day (July 4)

Priests for Life invites you to become a Freedom Rider for the unborn by first of all joining the prayer campaign.  This consists of saying the daily prayer to end abortion which you can find by clicking here.

“My Uncle Martin had a dream that Protestants and Catholics and Gentiles and Jews would join together and sing the age old spiritual ‘Free at Last,’” stated Dr. Alveda King. “At Priests for Life, we will be singing and praying on the Pro-life Freedom Rides. We urge all people of good will to join us as we link the Civil Rights Movement of the 20th Century to the heart cry for life in the 21st Century.”

Six Principles of Non-Violence and Glossary of Non-Violence

A video message from Dr. Alveda King about the Pro-Life Freedom Rides (3:70)

Dr. Alveda King, who is a full-time member of the Pastoral Team of Priests for Life and niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., will be leading “Pro-life Freedom Rides” in the coming months, building on a method that the Civil Rights Movement used effectively forty years ago.

In that movement, thirteen individuals boarded a bus in Washington DC in 1961 and headed for New Orleans. Their intent was to test the enforcement of a Supreme Court decision the previous year that outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting areas of bus terminals that served interstate travelers.

That one ride led to dozens of others in various parts of the country, with hundreds of people getting involved.

Now, Dr. King and the team of Priests for Life believe it is time for a “Pro-life Freedom Ride,” a peaceful, visible expression of the commitment of people around the country to work for freedom for the unborn. The rides will choose cities with strategic significance for the movement. While pro-life activists ride the buses, all pro-life people nationwide will be invited to participate simultaneously in concrete activities that will call for freedom on various levels: freedom from the lies that permit abortion, freedom from the despair that leads to and follows abortion, freedom from the fear that keeps people from fighting abortion, freedom from the political oppression that robs the unborn of their rights before the law.

***

Proclaim Freedom for the Unborn

The pro-life movement is all about freedom. That’s why Priests for Life, with the leadership of our Pastoral Associate Dr. Alveda King, is launching “Freedom Rides” for the unborn to galvanize pro-life activity across the country.

During the Civil Rights movement, the “Freedom Rides” constituted a distinctive moment of resolve and unity. The Supreme Court, in its 1960 decision Boynton vs. Virginia, had outlawed segregation in bus terminals and restaurants serving interstate travelers. So the following spring, thirteen people – seven African-Americans and six whites – decided to travel by bus from Washington DC to New Orleans to test the enforcement of that Supreme Court decision.

Along the way, particularly in Alabama, they encountered opposition and violence from those who did not want desegregation. But having been brutally attacked, and some lying with wounds in hospital beds, the “Freedom Riders” vowed that the journey would continue. That’s when others joined in, and the initial Freedom Ride became 60 rides across Southern states in the summer of 1961, with some 450 riders participating. And by the fall of that same year, the government issued orders for the enforcement of desegregation at the bus terminals.

The Civil Rights movement and the Pro-Life movement have the same heart and soul: a longing for equal justice for everyone, based on the inherent dignity of every human life. That’s why, when Dr. Alveda King first walked with me at the annual March for Life and I asked her, “Does this remind you of the marches in the civil rights movement?” she declared, “Fr. Frank, this is the civil rights movement!” Both movements are movements of freedom.

It is therefore time for Freedom Rides for the unborn. The pro-life movement is more ready than ever to proclaim freedom…

Freedom from the lies and the deceit that allow abortion to continue…

Freedom from the fear of speaking up and taking action for the unborn…

Freedom from the shame and guilt of past involvement in abortion, so that those called to speak up and share their testimonies may do so as people who are “Silent No More”…

Freedom from the political oppression that tramples on human rights and denies equality before the law…

Freedom from violence and death itself.

People will be invited to participate in the Freedom Rides themselves. The bus rides are a symbol of the journey we are on, of the fellowship we share with each other, and of the fact that we are a movement. Major events in cities along the bus routes will be held, in which all the different facets of the pro-life movement will be invited to participate.

At the same time, people not on the rides or along the route can participate by being “Freedom Riders for the Unborn” and carrying out special projects that will be coordinated among Freedom Riders nationwide.

In his first public sermon, Jesus summarized his message and mission by saying he had come to “proclaim liberty to the captives…” As his disciples, as his People of Life, let us do the same!

Fr. Frank Pavone

National Director, Priests for Life

Marvel/DC Comics Illustrator Creates Pro-Life Comic Book

By Peter J. Smith

UNITED STATES, April 29, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Professional illustrators come in all shapes and sizes, but very few of them have a pro-life or Christian perspective. But that is something that Dan Lawlis, a professional illustrator for over 20 years who has created comic book art for companies like Marvel and DC Comics, wants to change.

Lawlis is endeavoring to use the internet to bring a new comic book vision to the world, and has made his first go at the effort with the comic called “Orange Peel” – a story set in a technologically advanced future, where evil aliens plot to take-over the neighboring planet Godderth for conquest. However, they first plan to make conquest easy by getting the inhabitants of Godderth to abandon their morality, destroy the family unit, and become so morally impoverished that they will welcome their would-be conquerors with open arms.

The premise of the book is that somewhere in the future, human beings learned how to transport themselves to distant planets, but the transportation led to transformations in their appearance, making them alien-like.

The comic’s artwork is visually stunning and appealing, and little wonder: Lawlis has worked on characters like Spiderman, the Hulk, X-Men and more.

But those characters, he said in an e-mail to LifeSiteNews.com (LSN), are more or less atheistic in their outlook. Instead, he was looking for a character that would appeal to comic book and science fiction fans and help introduce a pro-life Christian message “into what is mostly an anti-Christian atheist entertainment culture.”

The main character, “Paul Roman” wears an orange jumpsuit with a “3” emblazoned on the front – a reference to the Trinity – drives a futuristic roadster called “Orange Peel,” and engages in sharing the Good News with a bunch of alien thugs on Godderth, who call themselves “the Red Menace.”

For Lawlis, this is his first attempt in a goal of creating a product that has a Christian/pro-life message within it, but can be accessible to a mainstream audience. While he admits he may not yet have hit the mark, he hopes to improve the comic with input and ideas from pro-life advocates.

“What I am asking for is feedback/support from the Pro-Life community,” said Lawlis. “The art community is very pro-abortion and I don’t think my comic book will be received well by them,” adding that he may face repercussions in the industry as well.

The comic book can be viewed here. Interested viewers can contact Lawlis with advice and constructive criticism through the Orange Peel 3 website: www.ORANGEPEEL3.com

Another Abortion Clinic Exposed

Baby boy survives for nearly two days after abortion

A baby boy abandoned by doctors to die after a botched abortion was found alive nearly two days later.

By Simon Caldwell

Published: 4:29PM BST 28 Apr 2010

The 22-week infant later died in intensive care at a hospital in the mother’s home town of Rossano in southern Italy.

The mother, pregnant for the first time, had opted for an abortion after prenatal scans suggested that her baby was disabled.

However the infant survived the procedure, carried out on Saturday in the Rossano Calabria hospital, and was left by doctors to die.

He was discovered alive the following day – some 20 hours after the operation – by Father Antonio Martello, the hospital chaplain, who had gone to pray beside his body.

He found that the baby, wrapped in a sheet with his umbilical cord still attached, was moving and breathing.

The priest raised the alarm and doctors immediately arranged for the infant to be taken to a specialist neonatal unit at a neighbouring hospital where he died on Monday morning.

Italian police are investigating the case for “homicide” because infanticide is illegal in Italy.

The law means that doctors have had an obligation to try to preserve the life of the child once he had survived the abortion.

The Italian government is also considering an inquiry into the conduct of the hospital staff.

The case has reignited controversy on the legality of abortion in the proudly Roman Catholic country.

It could also raise questions in Britain over the legal upper limits for abortion and the viability of the foetus – or its ability to survive outside of the womb.

A spokesman for the ProLife Alliance said: “There cannot be anybody in the world who is not horrified by a story like this nor anybody in the UK who would not support a massive reduction in the upper limit for abortion.”

Most abortions at 22 weeks simply involve the induction of the birth which normally results in the death of a young foetus.

The case is causing uproar in Italy because it is the second involving a foetus of that age surviving the procedure in just three years.

The other involved a baby in Florence who weighed just 17oz when he was aborted at 22 weeks because of a suspected genetic disorder but lived for three days.

Since 1978 abortion has been available on demand in Italy in the first three months of pregnancy but is restricted to specific circumstances – such as disability- in the second trimester. The government is considering a review of the working of the laws.

The case also comes as figures in Britain revealed last week that the number of babies born weighing only 2lbs has more than doubled in just two years.

Yet the proportion of tiny babies born stillborn has nearly halved, the health service statistics have shown.

The figures do not reveal at what stage the babies were born but a child weighing under 2lbs is likely to have been born at least three months early.

They will inevitably include some born alive at an age when they could, in other circumstances, have been aborted.

More than 200,000 abortions are performed each year, most for non-medical reasons within the legal upper limit of 24 weeks gestation.

The increasing number of babies surviving below 24 weeks, partly because of advances in medicine, has led to widespread calls for the legal upper limit to be further reduced.

Attempts to lower the limit failed in Parliament in 2008.

In 2005 a baby boy in Manchester was born alive at 24 weeks after surviving three attempts to abort him. He is now a five-year-old schoolboy.