in this issue:
hot button issues: PRO-LIFE MEMORIAL DAY / SPIRITUAL BOUQUET / WRITING CONTEST
abortion: TRAINING
abstinence education: SUCCESS RATES
activism: IVF AND MORE / WAL-MART
euthanasia: AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION / FIEGER
politics: RIGHT TO LIFE ACT / VOTING
sexually transmitted disease: HERPES
stem cell research/ ethical: SKELETAL MUSCLE
stem cell research/ unethical: EMBRYO-SAFE?
victory: WACO
zinger: HOW DO YOU DO THAT?
reflection for prayer: HARDNESS OF HEART
hot button issues
PRO-LIFE MEMORIAL DAY: For the second year, American Life League is sponsoring Pro-life Memorial Day on October 2. Please join us as we pause to remember the 47 million innocent lives lost through surgical abortion. Ordering information for the official T-shirt of Pro-life Memorial Day is available online.
SPIRITUAL BOUQUET: Several weeks ago we told you that Bishop John Yanta of Amarillo, Texas will be turning 75 on October 2. Pro-lifers will honor this great pro-life bishop, who has closed down 17 of the 19 Planned Parenthood clinics in his diocese, by giving him a spiritual bouquet on his birthday. If you would like to honor this wonderful man and great pro-life leader, please let us know what prayers or other spiritual exercises you will do for his intentions. Send an e-mail to ?subject=Bishop_Yanta”>Jim Sedlak. You can also send a card to American Life League, P.O. Box 1350, Stafford, VA 22555.
WRITING CONTEST: Homeschoolers for Life, an American Life League Associate group, has announced the organization’s first homeschoolers’ pro-life essay contest. Homeschooled students between the ages of 7 and 17 are eligible. Essays must be postmarked by October 16. For information and contest rules, see Homeschoolers for Life.
abortion
TRAINING: Planned Parenthood of Connecticut has established a medical residency training program with the Yale medical school. Two four-week rotations, with instruction in ways to kill a baby by vacuum aspiration and medication abortion, are provided.
(Reading: “Tomorrow’s providers,” Planned Parenthood, 8/22/06)
abstinence education
SUCCESS RATES: The teenage birth rate is dropping, but columnist Peter Hannaford wonders, “Will the zealots of Planned Parenthood and their allies admit the evidence of their eyes and applaud the drop in teenage sex and pregnancy? Don’t hold your breath.”
(Reading: “No sex, please; we’re teenagers,” The American Spectator, 8/28/06)
activism
IVF AND MORE: Visit Life Issues Institute and read the latest issue of “The Connector,” which includes an expose on in vitro fertilization, updated material on the March of Dimes and a ministry that provides hospice care for unborn babies.
WAL-MART: Since the company has chosen to be among the first in line to provide the abortive morning-after pill, here are two things you can do:
- Contact corporate headquarters and register your concern about the babies whose lives will be taken and the women whose lives may well are in danger as well. Contact Wal-Mart Stores.
- Visit your local Wal-Mart and have a talk with the pharmacists; give them info on why the morning-after pill is not a good idea. For documentation you can use, send a request to for printed material or check out “Emergency contraception: the morning-after pill.”
euthanasia
AMERICAN BAR ASSOICATION: The ABA’s Special Committee on Bioethics has a new chairwoman. Estelle Rogers is the former executive director of the Death with Dignity national center, and has ties to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU.
(Reading: “Pro-euthanasia attorney to head ABA’s special bioethics committee,” Focus on the Family, 8/28/08)
FIEGER: Euthanasia supporter Geoffrey Fieger, the attorney who defended Jack Kevorkian, was reprimanded by the Michigan Supreme Court for “likening judges to Nazis.” He allegedly made the comments during a radio interview. While the court described Fieger’s remarks as “vulgar and crude,” the reprimand will not affect Fieger’s practice of law.
(Reading: “Attorney reprimanded for calling judges Nazis,” North Country Gazette, 8/2/06)
politics
RIGHT TO LIFE ACT: With the addition of the 100th Congressional sponsor to the Right to Life Act, the pro-life movement has reached an important milestone in its quest to end the slaughter of innocent preborn children by abortion.
COMMENT: Are your members of Congress co-sponsors? If not, ask them to get on board.
VOTING: These words of Pope John Paul II should help pro-lifers decide what is right and in agreement with God’s law: “No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the Law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church.”
COMMENT: We are called to stand behind those candidates who are willing to stand behind 100 percent of the babies and to challenge and educate those who don’t believe every child has a right to live.
(Reading: “Evangelium Vitae,” Section 62, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 3/25/95)
sexually transmitted disease
HERPES: Herpes has become quite common among teen girls, according to a recent study that analyzed data from 100 women ages 14-18. Though this is a questionable sample of teenage girls, the fact is that 59 percent of these 100 teens tested positive.
(Reading: “Herpes infections frequent in adolescent girls,” Reuters, 8/1/06)
stem cell research/ ethical
SKELETAL MUSCLE: Preliminary research suggests that skeletal muscle is a promising source of cells that can differentiate into cartilage-producing cells.
(Reading: “Genetically engineered muscle-derived cells can repair cartilage,” Arthritis & Rheumatism, 2006)
stem cell research / unethical
EMBRYO-SAFE? Advanced Cell Technology announced a new process for creating stem cells without destroying human embryos. However the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was quick to point out that the method “raises more ethical questions than it answers.”
(Reading: “New method makes embryo-safe stem cells,” Associated Press, 8/23/06)
victory
WACO: Congratulations to Pro-Life Waco, an American Life League associate. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an ordinance that was used to prevent demonstrations in front of the local Planned Parenthood. The Planned Parenthood office is located in a school zone; the ordinance effectively barred pro-life protests since “street activity and parades” were prohibited during certain hours within school zones.
(Reading: “Waco ordinance against congregating near schools struck down, anti-abortion protestors celebrate,” Waco Tribune, 8/25/06)
zinger
HOW DO YOU DO THAT? The Detroit News reports that “Michigan Right to life did not oppose the approval [of over the counter status for Plan B] because it recognizes the drug as contraception.”
COMMENT: Apparently the clinical evidence that the pills can kill prior to implantation has missed the radar screen in Michigan Right to Life’s office. Pity.
(Reading: “Morning-after pill OK revives debate,” Detroit News, 8/25/06; “Morning-after abortion pill should be opposed,” Family Policy Network)
reflection for prayer
HARDNESS OF HEART: Pope John Paul II has written about people who resist the action of the Paraclete: “The action of the Spirit of truth, which works toward the salvific ‘convincing concerning sin,’ encounters in a person in this condition an interior resistance, as it were an impenetrability of conscience, a state of mind which could be described as fixed by reason of a free choice. This is what Sacred Scripture usually calls ‘hardness of heart.’ In our own time this attitude of mind and heart is perhaps reflected in the loss of the sense of sin.”
(Reading: “Dominum et Vivificantem,” Section 47, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 5/18/86)