LifeNet

4th PP video - it just gets worse

It's important to watch these videos, but the last three minutes are tough.

Heaven starts on Earth, and so does Hell

                    Archbishop Fulton Sheen

 

Stamford "Women Betrayed" Rally - great speaker!

Christina Marie Bennett, whose website is here. This six minute video from the Stamford anti-PP Rally on Tuesday, July 28th.  Needs to be widely circulated!

 

Ted Cruz at the anti-PP Washington Rally

Yesterday, with thanks to Chris Slattery for the video. Much thanks to Students for Life of America for organizing these rallies nationally,

 

Catholic Witness on PP videos

This is a sister site to Catholics Called To Witness.

Turning Stone into Flesh

Surely you have heard of the newly-released videos documenting Planned Parenthood's alleged sale of body parts of the unborn babies whom they murder. The videos are quite horrifying. In the first video, Dr. Nucatola, a senior director of medical services for Planned Parenthood, is sipping wine and eating salad as she casually talks about carefully crushing babies within their mothers' wombs so as to keep certain parts intact for later (apparent) sale. In the  second video, Dr. Mary Gatter, President of Planned Parenthood's Medical Director's Council, haggles over the price of baby parts, wanting to make sure she gets at least market price, and joking that she wants a Lamborghini.  Utterly disturbing. Not everyone is so disturbed, however. Many media reports defend Planned Parenthood, as usual. What seems to be the problem?

 

The problem is a problem of the heart. Dr. Nucatola and Dr. Gatter's hearts have become so hardened that they can harvest the organs of babies and talk about it over lunch.  Thousands of stony hearts have lost sight of the humanity and dignity of the unborn child, resulting in laws that put us in such an ironic situation--we cannot take someone to court for actually murdering babies, but we can take them to court for selling the remains of the victims. The last 42 years of legalized abortion in our country have desensitized us all--yes, many of us "pro-lifers," too.

 

How have we responded to the latest news about the fate of our most vulnerable brothers and sisters? Do we simply read the news and hope that the government will do something about it? Or have we asked God to open our hearts and show us the horror going on around us? Have we asked God to show us how His heart breaks over the death of his little ones and the spiritual death of those involved? Or are we afraid to really feel that much pain? Are we afraid that God would ask too much of us if we let Him reveal His pain to us?

 

Let us respond to this latest scandal by praying for ourselves, for Drs. Nucatola and Gatter, and for all those involved in abortion, that God will "remove [our] hearts of stone, and give [us] hearts of flesh" (Ezekiel, 11:19).  And yes, we will feel pain. But with hearts of flesh, we will be able to love. And it is in loving that we find true joy.

 

3rd PP video "Human Capital, Part 1"

How Stem Cell Express, one of the buyers of fetal body parts from Planned Parenthood, operates.

 "Heaven starts on Earth, and so does Hell"

                Archbishop Fulton Sheen

Tomorrow's Yonkers anti-Planned Parenthood Rally

Here is the information - 3 to 4PM - please make every effort to be there!

 

July 28, 2015

ADVOCATES OF LIFE

CONTACT PERSON:  Anthony Felicissimo

914-815-3009

[email protected]

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“WOMEN AND FAMILIES BETRAYED”

 

YONKERS, NEW YORK – The Advocates of Life will host a special rally outside the Yonkers Planned Parenthood at 20 South Broadway on Wednesday, July 29 from 3 pm until 4 pm.

Answering the call by Virginia-based Students For Life, the Advocates of Life will host a rally entitled “WOMEN AND FAMILIES BETRAYED.”  We join with citizens throughout the nation demanding that our state and federal government officials investigate and defund Planned Parenthood.  This demand comes in response to the video of Planned Parenthood abortionist, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, casually discussing selling aborted baby parts.  

This undercover video was just the latest of revelations about the inner workings of Planned Parenthood.  Earlier investigations have caught Planned Parenthood employees covering up statutory rape, double-billing taxpayers, aiding and abetting sex traffickers, scheduling sex-selective abortions, promoting unhealthy and dangerous sexual advice to young people, and accepting money to abort African American children.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Advocates of Life is a coalition of individuals, organizations and houses of worship which endeavor to build a culture of life focused on protecting the unborn, the disabled and the elderly. 

“EVERY LIFE MATTERS”

NYT op ed "Looking Away from Abortion

By Ross Douthat, who is the once a week Catholic on the NY Times op ed pages.

Douthat's column could have been titled "Facing Reality" as he writes about the recent Planned Parenthood expose' videos.

It takes four minutes to read the op ed so don't just read the excerpt we'v posted below the link.

In an essay in his 1976 collection, “Mortal Lessons,” the physician Richard Selzer describes a strange suburban scene. People go outside in the morning in his neighborhood, after the garbage trucks have passed, and find “a foreignness upon the pavement,” a softness underfoot.

Looking down, Selzer first thinks he sees oversize baby birds, then rubber baby dolls, until the realization comes that the street is littered with the tiny, naked, all-too-human bodies of aborted fetuses.

Later, the local hospital director speaks to Selzer, trying to impose order on the grisly scene. It was an accident, of course: The tiny corpses were accidentally “mixed up with the other debris” instead of being incinerated or interred. “It is not an everyday occurrence. Once in a lifetime, he says.”

And Selzer tries to nod along: “Now you see. It is orderly. It is sensible. The world is not mad. This is still a civilized society…

“But just this once, you know it isn’t. You saw, and you know.”

Resolute abortion rights supporters would dismiss that claim of knowledge. Death and viscera are never pretty, they would say, but something can be disgusting without being barbaric. Just because it’s awful to discover fetuses underfoot doesn’t mean the unborn have a right to life.

>>>>>>>>>>>

And it’s precisely this argument that’s been marshaled lately in response to a new reminder of the fleshly realities of abortion: The conversations, videotaped covertly by pro-life activists posing as fetal organ buyers, in which officials from Planned Parenthood cheerfully discuss the procedures for extracting those organs intact during an abortion and the prices they command.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

And the problem these videos create for Planned Parenthood isn’t just a generalized queasiness at surgery and blood.

It’s a very specific disgust, informed by reason and experience — the reasoning that notes that it’s precisely a fetus’s humanity that makes its organs valuable, and the experience of recognizing one’s own children, on the ultrasound monitor and after, as something more than just “products of conception” or tissue for the knife.

Thanks to Joe and Linda for sending us this.

 

Sojourner's - liberal evangelical group - condemns Planned Parenthood

Although Sojourner's is a member of Consistent Life they rarely mention abortion. Jim Wallis is the head of Sojourner's and usually is in lock-step with whatever the Democrat Party says.

Not this time. From his Hearts and Minds weekly email. Excerpts below from the full posting which is linked here, and if you hit the link you can leave a comment on the Sojourner's blog posting.

How We Talk About Life — and Death Planned Parenthood Videos Reveal Our Collective Brokenness

It’s not often words escape us. But in the aftermath of the now viral recording(s) raising concerns over whether Planned Parenthood seeks profit from aborted fetal tissue — and the crassness with which its representative discusses how to accomplish it without “crushing” the tissue/organs — that’s where we were left: with no words. We confess to being at a complete loss of what to say in the face of humanity’s brokenness.

Beyond the ethical questions of how an organization receives payment for tissue sales or the debates around the potential benefits of the patients’ donations of fetal tissue, the videos are an in-your-face reminder of our culture’s blatant disrespect for life. That disregard is not unique in our society, of course. Journalism: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Medicine: “There’s nothing more to be done. She’s a vegetable.” Justice system: “He’s gonna fry.” War: “Light ‘em up.” Uncomfortable questions about life and death and ethics are best papered over with emotionless cliché, obviously.

As a society and as individuals, when we fail to recognize the imago dei in others, we trend further away from our uniquely human capacity to empathize and closer to isolated, analytical, and almost robotic assessments of value. In 2008, Sojourners magazine senior associate editor Rose Marie Berger wrote about the Fresh Kills Landfill, which served as a mass grave for hundreds of unidentified victims of 9/11, and the ethics around how we treat our dead. She wrote (emphasis ours):

“Sept.11 has been excessively sentimentalized on one hand, which prevents genuine grieving and authentic resurrection. On the other hand, there is the obscenity of the Fresh Kills landfill where the bodies are kept hidden— because to look at them truthfully may raise questions about America’s existential innocence.”

Those questions linger. How do you show respect for the vessel that once held human life when you don’t — or can’t — recognize it as such?

 

Wahington Post poll: "large majority of Americans are unhappy with where the nation is headed on social issues."

Here's the article.

Liberals have won a series of victories on social issues. Most Americans aren’t thrilled about it.

Sixty three percent of people say they are uncomfortable with the country's overall direction on social issues these days; four in 10 feel "strongly" uncomfortable about the nation's changes.

Plenty of data in the article.

2nd Planned Parenthood selling baby parts video

Just out today.

^{_{"Heaven starts on earth, and so does hell."}}                    

^{_{Archbishop Fulton Sheen}}

Heartbreaking story of four Chinese children

Difficult to read. When family structure is demolished ...

China’s forgotten children

The purpose of preserving and protecting the family structure is largely to protect the vulnerable: children, the elderly and women (or men in some cases) who sacrifice present and future income to bring up their children and cultivate the ‘family life’ of the home. 

Last week I wrote about the horrifying numbers of elderly people dying alone undiscovered for weeks in Japan due to family structure and community breakdown.  

Another story has emerged out of China about staggering numbers of forgotten rural children.  It is again a story of family breakdown leading to society’s most vulnerable being forsaken – this time as a result of poverty and government imposed people flow rules.  

China was shocked last month by the suicide of four children abandoned by their parents. The children, aged 5 to 13, were found dead after drinking pesticide at their home in Cizhu Village in the city of Bijie on June 9. Villagers and officials said the children had lived alone for years because their father had migrated to find work in another province and their mother left home two years ago to escape the poverty of the village.  

Where were the neighbours or friends? The children went unnoticed because their situation is just not that unusual in rural China.   Around 40 percent of children in the poor province of Guizhou live without their parents.  

Heart wrenchingly, the 13-year-old boy highlighted how much children depend on the family unit working well.  After eating raw corn for years and looking after his younger sisters he left behind a letter that said: Thanks for your good intentions. I know you are good to me, but it is time for me to go. I swore I would not live beyond 15 years old, and death has been my dream for years.

The tragedy has drawn attention to the many more children living alone in rural China, and worldwide, when one or both parents go off to find work in bigger cities or abroad.  ‘Left behind children’ are estimated to total 60 million across China.  An estimated 14 million children have stunted growth.  Numbers have increased by 150 percent in the last five years – that’s equivalent to the entire population of Italy - largely as a result of an increasingly urbanised China.  

Hundreds of millions of Chinese people who used to work on the land now work in factories.  Most only get a visit from their parents once a year during the Chinese New Year holiday, partly because the flow of people is strictly controlled by the government.  Under the Communist government there is a household registration system by which if you are born into a rural village you cannot get urban registration even if you work for decades as a migrant worker so you cannot move your children with you to be educated in the city while you work.  It is true that parents can then provide a rural education for children with their pay that they otherwise might not have been able to afford.  However, a system that does not allow for children to be brought up by a mother and a father is not a society working well.   

The Chinese government argues that increased urbanisation has pulled many people out of poverty.  It is true that there is a rising middle class and a phenomenal increase in the demand for luxury goods in China.  However, the government is often not addressing fundamental problems children are facing as a result. 

Both Japan and China serve as grim reminders of what happens when societal culture or laws do not support family connections and the family unit.  The family unit and marriage have always been recognised and protected by the State for the good of the vulnerable; largely children who have a right to be brought up by their mother and father in a family unit. When countries move away from traditional natural family structures because of poverty, concern with career esteem, unsympathetic legal or political systems, a lack of committment or 'stickability', or simply because individuals have come to think first of 'my happiness' at the expense of children, who will be watching out for the vulnerable? As this boy writes in his suicide note, "good intentions" may not be enough.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/chinas-forgotten-children/16450#sthash.3uVVc4OA.dpuf

The purpose of preserving and protecting the family structure is largely to protect the vulnerable: children, the elderly and women (or men in some cases) who sacrifice present and future income to bring up their children and cultivate the ‘family life’ of the home. 

Last week I wrote about the horrifying numbers of elderly people dying alone undiscovered for weeks in Japan due to family structure and community breakdown.  

Another story has emerged out of China about staggering numbers of forgotten rural children.  It is again a story of family breakdown leading to society’s most vulnerable being forsaken – this time as a result of poverty and government imposed people flow rules.  

China was shocked last month by the suicide of four children abandoned by their parents. The children, aged 5 to 13, were found dead after drinking pesticide at their home in Cizhu Village in the city of Bijie on June 9. Villagers and officials said the children had lived alone for years because their father had migrated to find work in another province and their mother left home two years ago to escape the poverty of the village.  

Where were the neighbours or friends? The children went unnoticed because their situation is just not that unusual in rural China.   Around 40 percent of children in the poor province of Guizhou live without their parents.  

Heart wrenchingly, the 13-year-old boy highlighted how much children depend on the family unit working well.  After eating raw corn for years and looking after his younger sisters he left behind a letter that said: Thanks for your good intentions. I know you are good to me, but it is time for me to go. I swore I would not live beyond 15 years old, and death has been my dream for years.

The tragedy has drawn attention to the many more children living alone in rural China, and worldwide, when one or both parents go off to find work in bigger cities or abroad.  ‘Left behind children’ are estimated to total 60 million across China.  An estimated 14 million children have stunted growth.  Numbers have increased by 150 percent in the last five years – that’s equivalent to the entire population of Italy - largely as a result of an increasingly urbanised China.  

Hundreds of millions of Chinese people who used to work on the land now work in factories.  Most only get a visit from their parents once a year during the Chinese New Year holiday, partly because the flow of people is strictly controlled by the government.  Under the Communist government there is a household registration system by which if you are born into a rural village you cannot get urban registration even if you work for decades as a migrant worker so you cannot move your children with you to be educated in the city while you work.  It is true that parents can then provide a rural education for children with their pay that they otherwise might not have been able to afford.  However, a system that does not allow for children to be brought up by a mother and a father is not a society working well.   

The Chinese government argues that increased urbanisation has pulled many people out of poverty.  It is true that there is a rising middle class and a phenomenal increase in the demand for luxury goods in China.  However, the government is often not addressing fundamental problems children are facing as a result. 

Both Japan and China serve as grim reminders of what happens when societal culture or laws do not support family connections and the family unit.  The family unit and marriage have always been recognised and protected by the State for the good of the vulnerable; largely children who have a right to be brought up by their mother and father in a family unit. When countries move away from traditional natural family structures because of poverty, concern with career esteem, unsympathetic legal or political systems, a lack of committment or 'stickability', or simply because individuals have come to think first of 'my happiness' at the expense of children, who will be watching out for the vulnerable? As this boy writes in his suicide note, "good intentions" may not be enough.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/chinas-forgotten-children/16450#sthash.3uVVc4OA.dpuf

 

The purpose of preserving and protecting the family structure is largely to protect the vulnerable: children, the elderly and women (or men in some cases) who sacrifice present and future income to bring up their children and cultivate the ‘family life’ of the home. 

Last week I wrote about the horrifying numbers of elderly people dying alone undiscovered for weeks in Japan due to family structure and community breakdown.  

Another story has emerged out of China about staggering numbers of forgotten rural children.  It is again a story of family breakdown leading to society’s most vulnerable being forsaken – this time as a result of poverty and government imposed people flow rules.  

China was shocked last month by the suicide of four children abandoned by their parents. The children, aged 5 to 13, were found dead after drinking pesticide at their home in Cizhu Village in the city of Bijie on June 9. Villagers and officials said the children had lived alone for years because their father had migrated to find work in another province and their mother left home two years ago to escape the poverty of the village.  

Where were the neighbours or friends? The children went unnoticed because their situation is just not that unusual in rural China.   Around 40 percent of children in the poor province of Guizhou live without their parents.  

Heart wrenchingly, the 13-year-old boy highlighted how much children depend on the family unit working well.  After eating raw corn for years and looking after his younger sisters he left behind a letter that said: Thanks for your good intentions. I know you are good to me, but it is time for me to go. I swore I would not live beyond 15 years old, and death has been my dream for years.

The tragedy has drawn attention to the many more children living alone in rural China, and worldwide, when one or both parents go off to find work in bigger cities or abroad.  ‘Left behind children’ are estimated to total 60 million across China.  An estimated 14 million children have stunted growth.  Numbers have increased by 150 percent in the last five years – that’s equivalent to the entire population of Italy - largely as a result of an increasingly urbanised China.  

Hundreds of millions of Chinese people who used to work on the land now work in factories.  Most only get a visit from their parents once a year during the Chinese New Year holiday, partly because the flow of people is strictly controlled by the government.  Under the Communist government there is a household registration system by which if you are born into a rural village you cannot get urban registration even if you work for decades as a migrant worker so you cannot move your children with you to be educated in the city while you work.  It is true that parents can then provide a rural education for children with their pay that they otherwise might not have been able to afford.  However, a system that does not allow for children to be brought up by a mother and a father is not a society working well.   

The Chinese government argues that increased urbanisation has pulled many people out of poverty.  It is true that there is a rising middle class and a phenomenal increase in the demand for luxury goods in China.  However, the government is often not addressing fundamental problems children are facing as a result. 

Both Japan and China serve as grim reminders of what happens when societal culture or laws do not support family connections and the family unit.  The family unit and marriage have always been recognised and protected by the State for the good of the vulnerable; largely children who have a right to be brought up by their mother and father in a family unit. When countries move away from traditional natural family structures because of poverty, concern with career esteem, unsympathetic legal or political systems, a lack of committment or 'stickability', or simply because individuals have come to think first of 'my happiness' at the expense of children, who will be watching out for the vulnerable? As this boy writes in his suicide note, "good intentions" may not be enough.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/chinas-forgotten-children/16450#sthash.3uVVc4OA.dpuf

The purpose of preserving and protecting the family structure is largely to protect the vulnerable: children, the elderly and women (or men in some cases) who sacrifice present and future income to bring up their children and cultivate the ‘family life’ of the home. 

Last week I wrote about the horrifying numbers of elderly people dying alone undiscovered for weeks in Japan due to family structure and community breakdown.  

Another story has emerged out of China about staggering numbers of forgotten rural children.  It is again a story of family breakdown leading to society’s most vulnerable being forsaken – this time as a result of poverty and government imposed people flow rules.  

China was shocked last month by the suicide of four children abandoned by their parents. The children, aged 5 to 13, were found dead after drinking pesticide at their home in Cizhu Village in the city of Bijie on June 9. Villagers and officials said the children had lived alone for years because their father had migrated to find work in another province and their mother left home two years ago to escape the poverty of the village.  

Where were the neighbours or friends? The children went unnoticed because their situation is just not that unusual in rural China.   Around 40 percent of children in the poor province of Guizhou live without their parents.  

Heart wrenchingly, the 13-year-old boy highlighted how much children depend on the family unit working well.  After eating raw corn for years and looking after his younger sisters he left behind a letter that said: Thanks for your good intentions. I know you are good to me, but it is time for me to go. I swore I would not live beyond 15 years old, and death has been my dream for years.

The tragedy has drawn attention to the many more children living alone in rural China, and worldwide, when one or both parents go off to find work in bigger cities or abroad.  ‘Left behind children’ are estimated to total 60 million across China.  An estimated 14 million children have stunted growth.  Numbers have increased by 150 percent in the last five years – that’s equivalent to the entire population of Italy - largely as a result of an increasingly urbanised China.  

Hundreds of millions of Chinese people who used to work on the land now work in factories.  Most only get a visit from their parents once a year during the Chinese New Year holiday, partly because the flow of people is strictly controlled by the government.  Under the Communist government there is a household registration system by which if you are born into a rural village you cannot get urban registration even if you work for decades as a migrant worker so you cannot move your children with you to be educated in the city while you work.  It is true that parents can then provide a rural education for children with their pay that they otherwise might not have been able to afford.  However, a system that does not allow for children to be brought up by a mother and a father is not a society working well.   

The Chinese government argues that increased urbanisation has pulled many people out of poverty.  It is true that there is a rising middle class and a phenomenal increase in the demand for luxury goods in China.  However, the government is often not addressing fundamental problems children are facing as a result. 

Both Japan and China serve as grim reminders of what happens when societal culture or laws do not support family connections and the family unit.  The family unit and marriage have always been recognised and protected by the State for the good of the vulnerable; largely children who have a right to be brought up by their mother and father in a family unit. When countries move away from traditional natural family structures because of poverty, concern with career esteem, unsympathetic legal or political systems, a lack of committment or 'stickability', or simply because individuals have come to think first of 'my happiness' at the expense of children, who will be watching out for the vulnerable? As this boy writes in his suicide note, "good intentions" may not be enough.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/chinas-forgotten-children/16450#sthash.3uVVc4OA.dpuf

 

PP's medical director, on selling baby parts (no gruesome pictures)

^{_{"Heaven starts on earth, and so does hell."}}                    

^{_{Archbishop Fulton Sheen}}

The unedited, two hour 42 minute video is on their website. https://youtu.be/H4UjIM9B9KQ

 

ABC News: positive look at prolife leadership!

Lila Rose and Kristin Hawkins.

Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia Bill losses in California for this year

The bill the California State Senate passed to make the state the next to legalize assisted suicide has died. SB 128 is reportedly off the table for the rest of the year after Democrats had trouble finding enough votes in a state Assembly committee to move the bill ahead.

... though Democrats are expected to file the legislation again next year — prompting yet another battle to protect seniors, the terminally ill and disabled. ...

“Senator Wolk’s office confirms they have pulled the bill from Assembly Health. Will it be a 2-year bill.. will they put their chips on court action? On an initiative?” Johnston asked.

The pro-life advocate credited looming questions surrounding the assisted suicide death of Brittany Maynard as one of the reasons the bill stalled.

“If the Death with Dignity bill, SB128, requires a consistent request, 15 days apart, then why was Brittany Maynard killed the day after she told the world she had changed her mind and wanted to live?” Johnston asked. “We never found out why, just hours later, she was killed anyways, and we must presume, it was at her own hand. Who ‘counseled her? What was the nature of the counseling? Did she feel media pressure to be ‘back on schedule’? Did she feel even subtle pressure from those around her to, ‘just get it over with’?”

But they always have the Supreme Court to suddenly discover that under the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause assisted suicide/euthanasia is a "right".

USCCB Statement on Critical Supreme Court S-SM Ruling

 

The Bishops' Statement begins as follows...

"The U.S. Supreme Court decision, June 26, interpreting the U.S. Constitution to require all states to license and recognize same-sex "marriage" is a tragic error that harms the common good and most vulnerable among us," said Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Read the full statement here:

Supreme Court Decision on Marriage “A Tragic Error” Says President of Catholic Bishops’ Conference

 LifeNet's view:

As Pope Francis says in his recent encyclical, "Everything is interrelated."

As most of the faithful would attest, it is important that Catholics rightly inform their consciences on this and other important matters that frame our social essence; not only as Catholics, but as human beings made in the image and likeness of God. To neglect this duty is to invite falsehoods into our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren for generations to come. We should be seeking the truth and listening to more than the voices of a relativistic, and predominantly secular culture whose worldview often defies Catholic moral teaching and natural law.

It is only reasonable to want to understand issues like same-sex "marriage" as nothing more than a recognition of equality in a diverse and religiously plural, often atheistic society. This is why it is important for the Church to clearly teach and preach so that reasonable questions can be asked and answered. It is also important to view the long-term consequences of our decision making, and not simply make choices based on the immediate desires of any opinion group, as we have seen happen on the same-sex "marriage" issue.

The Church has always recognized the dignity of all persons. We know that which we all have in common, gay or straight, is that we are all born of a mother and father. If we are looking to unify, this is the natural law by which that occurs. Defining society's citizens by sexual preference, for example, only divides. How is this preferable to basic general unity? Problems have always existed in society and they can be addressed in many ways for the betterment of all. It is the opinion of Life Net editors that this recent, narrowly divided Supreme Court ruling only divides us further as a society. This ruling may not have sought to destroy religious freedoms and our Constitutional framework, but it did so. The saddest element of all is that many people cannot even articulate why.

 

Fr. Barron on same sex marriage Supreme Court decision

A little bit of history - Church vs. Powers That Be ...