Category Archives: abortion

Has Abortion Becomes A Means of Birth Control?

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24 million: Numbers of viewers that watched the finale of Dancing with the Stars in 2010
8 million: Population of North Carolina
9.2 million: Abortions in China in 2008

You know about China’s one-child policy already, where the government forces women to have an abortion if they get pregnant while already a mom to one child. Then they sterilize her. But maybe what you aren’t hearing is that the abortion rate among China’s young, unmarried women is skyrocketing out of control. The number of abortions increased from 7.6 million in 2007 up to 9.2 million in 2008 but could be as high as 13 million a year since the earlier numbers only account for hospitals. That’s more than the entire population of Pennsylvania.

A clinic manager explains that the shame is much higher in China over having a baby when one isn’t married than having an abortion. The Chinese describe abortion in more truthful language than here in the US:

“Luckily, in Chinese culture people generally feel that before the actual birth, you don’t yet have an actual person, so we have cases of induced abortion at seven and eight months along,” Li said. “I think this is to China’s advantage from a population control point of view … China has absolutely no need for the so-called ‘right to life’ argument, no need to introduce ideas about abortion as murder and so on.”

But then again, they cater to their new clientele:

Clinics and hospitals are stepping in to meet the demand. Online ads and cheery brochures in pastel colors advertise “painless artificial miscarriage,” private recovery lounges and post-surgery massage meant to help shrink the swollen uterus back to normal size.

The abortion clinics blame the lack of education about birth control on the huge increase in abortions. A study in Spain just came out that blew this theory out of the water. The study followed women of child-bearing age since 1997 and checked in with them every two years on their contraceptive method and whether or not they had a child or an abortion.

The study found overall use of contraceptive methods increased from 49.1% to 79.9% during the 10 year time period ending in 2007. Condom usage rates rose from 21 to 38.8 percent while women were more likely to use the birth control pill (14.2% to 20.3%).

Despite the increase reliance on birth control and contraception, the elective abortion rate increased from 5.52 to 11.49 per 1000 women.

In 2008, a Swedish study revealed that abortions increased even as record numbers of the “morning after pill” were sold.

Abortion is clearly being used as a birth control method. In 1968 Pope Paul VI released Humanae Vitae, the controversial document on human life that said Catholics should not use artificial contraception for several reasons. The document was prophetic and the pope pointed out, among other things, that the widespread use of contraceptives would “lead to conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality.” He also predicted that “the man” will lose respect for “the woman” and “no longer (care) for her physical and psychological equilibrium” and will come to “the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.”

How far do we need to look to see both of these prophecies fulfilled? Over 9 million Chinese babies died at the hands of their own parents and millions more in the rest of the world met the same fate. You can’t keep blaming contraceptive failure. What about personal responsibility and the respect for your own and your partner’s body and eternal soul?

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‘No Easy Decision’ Indeed

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The popular pop culture cable station MTV has two huge hits on their hands dealing with teen pregnancy – “16 & Pregnant” and the spinoff “Teen Mom.” 16 & Pregnant just finished up their second season and Teen Mom is heading into season two this month. All of the girls in the series chose to give birth to their children and some gave their babies up for adoption.

The stories are heart wrenching to say the least. A lot of the girls don’t have support from their boyfriends and families yet couldn’t bring themselves to choose to abort their child…until now.

But MTV aired a controversial follow-up to these two hit shows last week called “No Easy Decision.” It was about one of the girls on 16 & Pregnant, Markai Durham, who delivered her baby girl and then found out she was pregnant again with her boyfriend James only eight months later. No Easy Decision follows Markai as she weighs the decision to give birth or to have an abortion.

Your heart will ache for the teen since she’s so close to doing the right thing (she becomes distraught when James calls the unborn child a “thing” and a ball of cells and she points to her daughter and, in tears, says a “thing could turn out just like her”). She voices that she already loves the baby who is doing nothing but making her sick – she had the abortion at 6 weeks gestation.

Pro-life blogger Jill Stanek has a post up questioning the sponsors since the show ran without commercials, unheard of for MTV – plus she includes all the feminist cheerleaders for the girls having abortions.

Dr. Drew Pinsky, who wasn’t exactly an unbiased moderator, hosted the special as well as the reunions for 16 & Pregnant and Teen Mom. As a Catholic, watching Dr. Drew hoist condoms on these young couples as the best way to prevent another unwanted pregnancy was sickening. Not once did the issue of self-control, self-respect, the respect of their partners and love come up. Not once did anyone suggest – hey, I really don’t want to get pregnant again so we’re just not going to have sex. Not once. It was all about artificial birth control and contraception, which the Catholic Church adamantly opposes and deems “intrinsically evil.”

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote yesterday about the shock of reality TV that leaves out abortion because, maybe, it’s just a little too real. He said that it’s probably a victory for pro-lifers but also a denial of culture since one in five pregnancies ends in abortion in the US (so much for “safe, legal and rare”). But taking it a step further, Douthat tied in infertility and abortion:

 In every era, there’s been a tragic contrast between the burden of unwanted pregnancies and the burden of infertility. But this gap used to be bridged by adoption far more frequently than it is today. Prior to 1973, 20 percent of births to white, unmarried women (and 9 percent of unwed births over all) led to an adoption. Today, just 1 percent of babies born to unwed mothers are adopted, and would-be adoptive parents face a waiting list that has lengthened beyond reason.

 Douthat printed a poem from Kevin Young in last week’s New Yorker:

 The doctor trying again to find you, fragile,
fern, snowflake. Nothing.
After, my wife will say, in fear,
impatient, she went beyond her body,
this tiny room, into the ether—
… And there
it is: faint, an echo, faster and further
away than mother’s, all beat box
and fuzzy feedback. …

And then ended the column with these lines:

This is the paradox of America’s unborn. No life is so desperately sought after, so hungrily desired, so carefully nurtured. And yet no life is so legally unprotected, and so frequently destroyed. [our emphasis]

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“Women Veterans Bill of Rights” Opens Door to Taxpayer Funding for Abortion at Veterans Facilities

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Today the House will consider HR 5953, the “Women Veterans Bill of Rights”.   This legislation contains language that may be of concern to pro-life groups.

The first section of HR 5953 would establish a “Women Veterans Bill of Rights” which enumerates 24 rights to be “displayed prominently and conspicuously in each facility of the Department of Veterans Affairs and distributed widely to women veterans.”  The rights that women veterans “should have” according to HR 5953 include rights to health care and health care providers.  These rights could then be used as a basis to require funding for abortion and access to abortion at veterans facilities.

The Department of  Veterans Affairs (VA) does not currently provide abortions and abortions are currently excluded from the VA health benefits package, because abortion is excluded from the scope of ”general reproductive health care” that is authorized by P.L. 102-585. But that exclusion does not extend a prohibition to other authorities created by earlier or later legislation, this bill could lay the groundwork and legal precedent for the VA to provide abortions in the future.  More detailed areas of concern are listed below.

Possible pro-life concerns with HR 5953 are as follows:

- A right to “coordinated, comprehensive, primary women’s health care” could provide a legal basis to require funding for abortion because this language would be in conflict with current policy. (Right #1)

-A right to a “primary care provider who can meet ALL her primary care needs, including gender-specific…” could be used to mandate access to abortionists at every VA health facility. (Right #1)

- A “right to innovation in care delivery” raises concerns about the provision of “telemed abortions” through which abortion pills are dispensed without a physician present.  Instead the physician dispenses the abortion pills by entering a code over the internet. (Right #3)

- A “right to request and get treatments by clinicians with specific training and experience in women’s health issues” could be a used as grounds to demand access to an abortion provider and could create a funding conflict as well because it implies a right to have abortion paid for. (Right #4)

- “Gender equity” and “equal access” and “parity” in this context could also give rise to an abortion access and funding demands.  In the past, pro-life groups have oppose the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) unless an abortion exclusion is added for this reason.  The most recent example, New Mexico’s ERA was used as a legal basis for the courts to require state funded abortions.  (Right #6 and 7)

Call your Representative today at 202-225-3121 and urge them to vote no on HR 5953 as it leads to taxpayer funding of abortion.

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The Power of Photos

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Not the photo we're talking about

Photos are incredibly powerful – a picture is worth a thousand words, right? There are many reasons why certain pictures can capture attention, one of them being complete repulsion and stomach-churning graphic horror.

The FDA has mandated that cigarette companies put some of these revolting photos on their cigarette packs to show how smoking is extremely harmful, even deadly. A couple of the graphic photos are images of corpses or nearly dead humans. It’s truly sickening. Photos are here.

The use of images to convey a message is extremely powerful.

Whether or not you agree with using these images to convey certain messages is another matter, especially when it comes to the abortion movement. Irrelevant of that fact, we have to ask if the FDA would be so considerate of unborn children and mandate abortion clinics post photos of aborted children in their clinics so women could see them before making the decision to kill their child.

Some of these photos may make people queasy (like the photos of the corpses the FDA is mandating people see) so we won’t post them here but if you want to see what we’re talking about, go here.

Describing a procedure, or disease, is a lot different than seeing a photo of the aftermath. Yes, the pictures are incredibly sickening but they are the truth, whether or not you agree that they should be used on sidewalks or cigarette cartons.

What do you think? Are the photos of aborted babies equivalent to those that the FDA is mandating cigarette smokers see?

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The Pill: A Prescription for Breast Cancer?

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Catholics have had a lot to cheer about lately. Midterm election victories for the unborn. Justice for those in office who betrayed the value of human life and have been voted out of office. Clear guidance from our Holy Father on how our conscience must vote.

But no matter who is in office, an alarming threat remains for women and their health: the widely used carcinogen known as The Pill. 

We are calling on St Michael Society members to become educated on the pill so that you can share the health dangers with the women you care about in your life.

The Birth Control Pill Isn’t Just a Catholic Issue

We know the Catholic Church opposes artificial contraception because it defies Natural Law and how God intended us to work with him in procreation. Even more serious, some of these contraceptives – like the Pill – can act as an abortifacient, ridding a mother’s body of her embryonic child without her even knowing she is pregnant.  But the consequences also go beyond Catholic morality …

In order to silence the public discussion of the harms of contraception we have often been told that we are pushing our ‘Catholic’ views on women. This has effectively kept many health care providers and pro-life groups silent on this issue. Do you know what has nothing to do with being Catholic? Experiencing breast cancer in your 30s, having a stroke in college, or having an undetected and sudden blood clot that results in permanent health damage or death are life-threatening side effects that visit women of all faiths.

This is according to Jennifer Giroux, registered nurse and executive director of HLI America. We’ve written about Ms. Giroux’s work before  and she has a new Zenit column with medical evidence from credible experts citing the connection between hormones in the Pill and deadly breast cancer.  

Read it in full here. 

But only if you’re willing to share it with friends and family who may need an unwelcomed wake-up call.

Because withholding information like this from a loved one may put their health – and their life – at risk. And  there are too many bad consequences in this life and the next that might result from silence.

Women deserve to know the truth. They have been failed by physicians in not being warned of the physical damage that they are doing to their bodies, and they have been failed by their priests in not being warned of the spiritual damage that they are doing to their souls.

May God give us the courage to share this with the women who matter most in our lives.

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Goodbye, Speaker Pelosi. Hello, Pro-Life Congress!

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Happy mid-term election, pro-lifers!

What a great 24 hours it has been as the polls closed and races were called, many of which put pro-life Representatives into office. This also means many pro-choice legislators were voted out of office, many of whom have had a lot of power and influence in pushing ObamaCare forward and advocating against the unborn.  

Here are several excellent rundowns from LifeNews.com on the biggest victories – both new pro-life blood coming in and bad anti-life going out.  

Pro-Life Advocates Capture House of Representatives, Topple Pro-Abortion Pelosi  

Obama Loses His Pro-Abortion “Yes Men” in Congress    

 

 

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Action Alert: Protest Anti-Catholic Democratic Ad

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If this doesn’t get your blood boiling six days before midterm elections, I don’t know what will.

A new Democratic campaign ad has unleashed an anti-Catholic attack and we are calling on St Michael Society members to demand Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine denounce the slur.

See for yourself …

 “Democrats in Minnesota want to defeat an evangelical preacher, Dan Hall, who is running for the state senate there. So they sent out a mailer with this stunning image,” according to National Review Online.

Kathryn Lopez, story author, says it’s safe to say this is “unholy politics” and that Democrats can make their point “without the use of abuse of clerics.”  Read her full piece here.

A National Catholic Register reporter also calls this “THE most anti-Catholic political advertisement I’ve ever seen.” 

Please contact DNC Chairman Tim Kaine at 202-863-8000 or e-mail at dmca@dnc.org  

Ask him to denounce this anti-Catholic slur by the Minnesota Democratic Party.

The Catholic Church is the largest charitable organization on Earth. Defending the dignity of life is foundation of a moral vision for society and the motivating principle for Catholic charitable work including care for the poor.

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Call Your Representative: No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act

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Government prohibition on taxpayer funding for abortion was recently introduced in the House by Representatives Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Dan Lipinski (D-IL).  So far over 175 Members of Congress have agreed to cosponsor the Smith/Lipinski bill titled the “ No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” (HR 5939).   Read the text of the bill here.
 
It is important for pro-lifers to urge all  Members of Congress to cosponsor the legislation with the goal of demonstrating that there is enough support to pass the bill.  Call your Representative today at (202) 224-3121.

Priority calls: 

Republicans: Biggert, Bilbray, Bono Mack, Capito, Castle, Dent, Djou, Dreier, Flake, Frelinghuysen, Hastings, Heller, Kirk, Lance, Mack, C., Nunes, Putnam, Reichert, Rohrabacher, Rooney, Royce, Young, B., Young, D.,

Democrats: Baca, Barrow, Berry, Bishop, Boccieri, Cardoza, Chandler, Cooper, Costa, Cuellar, Davis (AL), Doyle, Etheridge, Gordon, Hill, Holden, Kaptur, Kildee, Langevin, Lynch, Matheson, Melancon, Michaud, Mollohan, Neal, Obey, Perriello, Pomeroy, Reyes, Rodriguez, Ryan (OH), Salazar, Shuler, Skelton, Snyder, Space, Spratt, Stupak, Tanner, Teague

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$600,000 to be Awarded to Life Saving Heroes

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Exciting news out today from the Gerard Health Foundation …

The foundation again will be awarding $600,000 in prize money to those who have succeeded in saving human lives and awakening the conscience of America at an invitation-only event this January in Washington DC.

That’s some prize money!

Ray Ruddy, founder of the Gerard Health Foundation, shared this at the launch of this year’s program:

Our Foundation has a profoundly simple mission: to save lives. Life Prizes works to honor those who have best accomplished this noble goal and to inspire the next generation to break the mold in their life-saving work. As last year’s winners will tell you, ordinary people can achieve extraordinary goals. We look forward to celebrating six new heroes and thanking them for their ingenuity, dedication, sacrifices and leadership.

You may recognize most if not all of the six inaugural award winners 2009:

  • Jill Stanek – Nurse who first publicly exposed infanticide of abortion survivors
  • Lila Rose - Student leader who has launched several successful, undercover investigations exposing statutory rape cover-up and racism at Planned Parenthood
  • American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) - A professional voice reaffirming the unique value and dignity of individual human life in all stages of growth and development from conception onward.
  • Richard Doerflinger – Associate Director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, bioethics expert, and consummate researcher
  • Kay Coles James – Founder of The Gloucester Institute and of Black Americans for Life, pro-life advocate in the highest levels of government for decades
  • Margaret “Peggy” Hartshorn – President, Heartbeat International, a preeminent network of more than 1,000 pregnancy resource centers

As Human Events’ Elisabeth Meinecke notes in her piece , the 2009 ceremony and reception “drew over 1,200 attendees, with Laura Ingraham serving as master of ceremonies” and was held in January of 2009.  The popular rock band BarlowGirl headlined the fantastic event and several St Michael Society editors were fortunate enough to attend. It truly was like the Oscars of the pro-life movement.

LifeNews.com also aptly notes  that

… with the mainstream media frequently ignoring or twisting the coverage of pro-life advocates and Hollywood awards ceremonies featuring a who’s who of pro-abortion celebrities, the Gerard Health Foundation decided to create its own awards ceremony to honor pro-life heroes working against abortion.

Watch last year’s event video and read the ceremony speeches at www.LifePrizes.org.

We can’t wait until October when the award winners will be announced!

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