Teen Goes to Jail for Attempted Manslaughter of Unborn Child

ChelseaAbortion, Pro Life, Right to Life1 Comment

This always amazes me about our country. Killing unwanted unborn children is perfectly legal, but this is what happens when someone tries to kill an unborn child who is wanted:

COLVILLE, Washington (AP) — An 18-year-old pleaded guilty to trying to hire a hit man to kill his ex-girlfriend’s nearly full-term fetus and was sentenced to more than six years in prison.

Charles D. Young received 76½ months in prison Tuesday after pleading guilty to first-degree solicitation to commit manslaughter. State law allows for such a count when a viable fetus is the intended target.

Prosecutors allege Young, then 17, offered an undercover officer posing as a hit man $3,250 last October to injure his estranged 17-year-old girlfriend so badly that her fetus would die.

It just doesn’t make sense.

I Fear This Man’s Nomination

ChelseaAbortion, Politics, Pro Life, Right to Life2 Comments

Rudy GiulianiOn Wednesday Rudy Giuliani told CNN that he still supports public funding of abortion because:

“Ultimately, it’s a constitutional right, and therefore if it’s a constitutional right, ultimately, even if you do it on a state by state basis, you have to make sure people are protected.”

So apparently he also thinks that abortion is a constitutional right, which suggests that he doesn’t think that Roe v. Wade should be overturned. When he repeated his promise to appoint “strict constructionist” judges to the Supreme Court he denied that this was a way to appeal to pro-lifers:

“A strict constructionist judge can come to either conclusion about Roe against Wade,” he said. “They can look at it and say, ‘Wrongly decided thirty years ago, whatever it is, we’ll over turn it.’ [Or] they can look at it and say, ‘It has been the law for this period of time, therefore we are going to respect the precedent.’ Conservatives can come to that conclusion as well. I would leave it up to them. I would not have a litmus test on that.”

Finally, there is Giuliani’s “personal opposition” to abortion, which is always a red flag for me. He told CNN:

“I’m in the same position now that I was 12 years ago when I ran for mayor — which is, personally opposed to abortion, don’t like it, hate it, would advise that woman to have an adoption rather than abortion, hope to find the money for it,” he said. “But it is your choice, an individual right. You get to make that choice, and I don’t think society should be putting you in jail.”

It would seem, then, that while he is “personally opposed” to abortion, he might not think that abortion is the murder of an innocent human being. I mean, I don’t think that these women should go to jail, but I do not think that anyone has the right to kill an innocent child.

If Giuliani is elected the Republican presidential nominee, it means we have lost our pro-life base and there is no longer a clear “pro-life” party. If that happens, I’m seriously considering switching to the Constitution Party.

Brownback for President

Society’s View of Large Families

ChelseaFamily, Pro Life, Vocation4 Comments

This week Our Sunday Visitor has an article about large families, something that our culture doesn’t understand. OSV editor Gerald Korson offered his opinion of society’s view of large families in a seperate column of the paper and I found it very amusing. Here is a bit of it:

Here’s how society’s perception of family size appears from our side of the maternity ward:

Child No. 1: In today’s culture, everyone is entitled to have a chid. No problem there. It’s a birthright. It can be a boy or a girl – it doens’t matter.

Child No. 2: You’re allowed a second child, as long as it’s the opposite gender from your first. “How wonderful! You have one boy and one girl,” we heard when our second child came. “Now you can quit.” Quit? At 25, we’re done having kids?

Child No. 3: The culture allows you, if you insist, to have a third child, but only if you failed to get a matched set with the first two. Call it a mulligan. If you have two girls, you go for a boy; two boys, and you’re after a girl. if you blow it and get another of the same, too bad. You get no more do-overs.

Child No. 4: Now you’re just getting ridiculous, especially if the kids are close in age. You’re officially christined “Fertile Myrtle” and “Virile Cyril.” Knock it off.

Child No.5: People begin to suspect you are nuts. Or just plain irrisponsible. Or both.

Child No. 6: The diagnosis is confirmed. Besides, a family of eight is simply impractical. Most minivans seat seven. Now you need a full-size van or nine-passenger SUV, or one of those classic early 1980s station wagons with the fake wood panelings and the fold-down third bench seat (I recommend the 1983 Pontiac Parisienne).

Child No. 7: By now, anywhere you venture as a family, you are inevitably asked, “Are they all yours?” Take no offence. Between day-care, field trips and the proliferation of blended families, it’s actually a legitimate question.

Child No. 8: Since No. 5 you’ve been hearing that timelessly coarse quip, “Don’t you know what causes that?” You have permenant teeth marks on your toungue from trying to suppress snappy sarcastic replies. (One wouldn’t think of making remarks about fertility to couples with few or no children. Why are large families fair game?)

Child No. 9: Neighbors, strangers and even a few well meaning friends have pretty much given up on you long before now. They compare your progeny to sprting events: With nine, you’ve got a baseball team.

Child No. 10: You’ve gone American League and added a designated hitter.

Couples with large families aren’t necessarily better parents, better Catholics or more blessed than others. We’re simply blessed in a different way – and, like all persons of faith, we are called to raise up our blessings for the greater glory of God.

Previous posts:
How Can There Be Too Many Children

Pro-Life T-Shirt Day is Approaching

ChelseaPro Life, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

Pro life t-shirt dayJust a reminder that National Pro-Life T-Shirt Day is April 24. If you want to participate it would be a good idea to order the shirts soon, if you haven’t done so already. I just ordered mine tonight!

The T-Shirt Day website has a lot of helpful information for anyone wishing to wear it at a public school including a link to a letter from the Thomas More Law Center, written for school administrators about students’ free speech rights in school and advise on what to do if harassed.

Also, if you do participate, please send me pictures of you, your friends, your church group, or students wearing the t-shirts at school or out in public and I will post them on this website. This is a great way to show your committment to fight for the rights of the unborn and to be witness to others.

Send pictures to chelsea@zimmcomm.biz

The Gators Do It Again – Oh MY!!!

ChelseaPersonalLeave a Comment

Ohio State = Gator Bait! Alright, so I’ve got to take some time again to mention the Florida Gators’ National Championship win, this time in basketball for the second year in a row. A football and TWO basketball National Championships – can you say Gator domi’Nation’?? Oh, it’s great to be a Florida Gator!

In case you missed this football season, here’s a little video clip from the DVD “National Champions: The Story of the 2006 Florida Gators”

Also check out the BCS Championship Movie at youtube.

Previous posts:
How Sweet It Is

The Unscientific Political Cloning Debate

ChelseaCloning, Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Politics, ScienceLeave a Comment

As I have been pointing out with regards to the Feinstein-Hatch “Cloning Ban and Stem Cell Protection Act”, the cloning debate, in the world of politics, has ceased to be a rational scientific discussion and has become completely ridiculous. This week David Freddoso has an article on the false claims of cloning proponents asking, if embryonic research is so promising, why do its backers need to lie?

I do not use the word “falsehood” here to refer merely to differing philosophical views — even over such important questions as whether an embryo should be treated as a human being. Rather, proponents of embryonic-stem-cell research routinely make misleading and demonstrably false factual claims — about biology, for example, and about prospective embryonic-stem-cell treatments and the therapeutic human-cloning procedures they would require.

The lies go well beyond such fatuous statements as that of former Sen. John Edwards, during the 2004 presidential campaign, that increased federal research funding would make Christopher Reeve “get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”

The widespread use of even more specific falsehoods helped bring about the repeal of Iowa’s cloning ban last month. The 2002 ban had attached criminal penalties to the creation of human embryos through somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Although backers of this procedure go out of their way to avoid calling it what it is, SCNT is the term used in every reputable science textbook to refer to a method of cloning — it is the same method that produced Dolly the sheep…

Proponents of repealing the cloning ban also tried to assert that they were not producing embryos. State Rep. Patrick Murphy (D) wrote to a constituent that

somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is what this legislation would permit, authorizes the creation of embryonic stem cell lines, which are not even close to actual embryos. There is no sperm involved in somatic cell nuclear transfer, so there can be no embryo.

No embryo? How can one possibly derive “embryonic stem cell lines” without embryos, let alone without “anything close to actual embryos,” whatever that means?

The idea that “no sperm” translates to “no embryo” is laughable from a scientific perspective — the whole idea of cloning is that one can produce an embryo without fertilization. But Murphy’s confused biology does not just reflect the mistaken notions of one state representative — it has become a common scientific fallacy, turning up in a Joplin, Mo. Globe editorial that denies SCNT is cloning or that it produces embryos, on the grounds that SCNT “does not use fertilized eggs.” More frightening, two actual scientists at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, who should know better, have passed along the same lie in order to prevent their state from banning human cloning.

Even James Thompson, the first scientist to isolate and culture embryonic stem cells, scoffed in a 2005 interview at the idea that there was “no embryo” involved in SCNT. “If you create an embryo by nuclear transfer, and you give it to somebody who didn’t know where it came from, there would be no test you could do on that embryo to say where it came from,” he said. “…[Y]ou’re creating an embryo. If you try to define it away, you’re being disingenuous.”

Previous posts:
Bogus Cloning Ban Reintroduced Last Week
Feinstein-Hatch Fiasco

John Paul II and the Culture of Life

ChelseaFamily, Pro Life, Religion, Right to Life1 Comment

Me and JPIIThe late great John Paul II passed away two years ago this evening. My family and I had the very fortunate opportunity to greet the late pontiff in Feb. of 2001. Once we found out that handicapped people, people in wheelchairs, automatically get to go up and greet the pope after his general audience we couldn’t get to Rome fast enough. My middle sister and I were able to greet him after the wednesday audience on Feb. 14 and a few days later the rest of my family, my parents and my younger sister, received a special invitation, at the request of a dear priest friend of ours, to greet him with a group of people after his daily Mass (I will post all of their pictures below).

He is now referred to as John Paul the Great, but I will always know him simply as JPII. No doubt he was a great and magnificent world/religious leader, but to some of us who grew up under his pontificate, he was also a gentle and humble shepherd who seemed as close and personal to us as our own fathers.

For me the greatest legacy he left us was a blueprint from which to build a culture of life. There are a number of ways in which a culture of life must be built. First, quite obviously, is recognition and respect for the unique dignity of the human person. Theology of the Body is John Paul’s vision of the human person and what it means to be made in the “image and likeness of God.” In it he encourages a true reverence for the gift of our sexuality and challenges us to live it in a way worthy of our great dignity as human persons (from the TOB website). The incomparable worth of every human being, he points out in Evangelium Vitae, is revealed in the incarnation. When the Son of God came to earth and took on human form, he came that we might have life (Jn. 10:10)! “Thus the deepest element of God’s commandment to protect human life is the requirement to show reverence and love for every person and the life of every person.” This includes loving the life of a criminal, which he showed by visiting and forgiving the man who tried to kill him.

The culture of life depends upon an increase in Christian families. Many of the problems in our society stem from the breakdown of the family. In Familiaris Consortio, John Paul recognizes the “precious value of marriage and of the family“, especially when it comes to educating the essential values of human life. The family is the “first vital cell of society” and by embracing the plan of God for marriage and family, Christian families will contribute to the “renewal of society and of the People of God.”

Finally, a culture that respects all human life must also have a joyful acceptance of human suffering. As we saw with the starvation of Terri Schiavo and many cases like hers, our society has a great disdain for human suffering which leads to the tragic death and outright murder of people whose lives are considered worthless. We can counter this by following the example of JPII whose physical health gradually deteriorated after the gun shot wound that almost took his life. Despite the obvious pain and suffering that came with his sickness, the pope never let it slow him down. Even in his final days, when his health was at its worst, he struggled to be in front of the faithful.

JPII was a great leader in the fight against the culture of death. Hopefully we will learn from his example and work to advance the culture of life with the same enthusiasm as the late pontiff. JPII, WE LOVE YOU!

My family with JPII:

Mom and JPII Dad and JPII

Carly and JPII Caitlin and JPII

Love Life, Live Life, and Honor Terri Schiavo

ChelseaDisabled, Euthanasia, Pro Life, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

terri-schiavo.jpgYesterday marked two years since Terri Schiavo was starved to death (I know, I’m really up on things, huh?) for having a life not worthy of living. I got very personally involved with the Schiavo case in my own little corner of the world. I don’t know how many emails I sent out during the entire horrific ordeal urging people to pray that her life would be spared. I was pretty devastated that things turned out the way they did, but the whole thing gave me a renewed zeal – especially as a disabled person – to continue to make the most of my life and to show others that all life, even a life of suffering, is worth living.

Sadly I think that it may not have had the same effect on others who may not have seen the starvation and dehydration of an innocent young woman, but only an ugly battle between family members of the treatment of their wife, daughter and sister. In the wake of Terri’s death I heard many people say that they want to make it perfectly clear their intention to have their own feeding tube removed if they were ever in the same situation in order to avoid the conflict that erupted between the Schindler/Schiavo families. And because they would not want to be a burden on their families. This is the anti-life mentality of our culture, it is better to be dead than to live a life of hardship and suffering and it is better to bury a family member than to take the time to love and care for them.

I think that the best way we can learn from this tragedy and truly honor the memory of Terri Schiavo is to love the life that God has given to us and to keep living it despite the many setbacks and sufferings we endure – and to encourage others to do the same. We must promote a culture of life, especially among the weak and disabled. As human beings our intrinsic value is based on the fact that we are made in the image and likeness of a Divine Creator, not on our functional abilities. Life should be cherished as an invaluable gift from God, and now, because of the passion and death of His Son (which we will be remembering this week), even our sufferings have meaning.

Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation
The Will to Live

Previous Posts:
Life is Worth Loving
Life is Worth Living
Lives Not Worth Living
Lives Not Worth Living II

Exposing the Fruitless Deeds of Darkness

ChelseaAbortion, Pro Life, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

I really can’t tell you what I’m feeling right now. I was checking my email from the past few days and I came across an email from Priests for Life. Normally I don’t read these emails right away, but this headline caught my attention: ‘The Applause From Hell” Ok, I thought, what’s Fr. Frank got for us this time. What I found what probably the most disturbing thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Click here to listen to the applause from hell. This is audio of a doctor giving a presentation of how to do a partial birth abortion at the 16th Annual Meeting of the National Abortion Federation Conference 15 years ago. Here are Fr. Frank’s comments:

Applause from hell

If we think of hell, we might imagine screams coming out of the flames, or the sinister laughter of the devil. But the sound I recently heard coming from there was that of applause.

What I heard was an audiotape of Dr. Martin Haskell giving a presentation at the 16th Annual Meeting of the National Abortion Federation Conference in 1992 in San Diego. It was a gathering of abortionists — men and women who make their living by killing babies. Haskell was describing to his audience how to do a partial-birth abortion. Listen to his words about how this procedure takes place:

“The surgeon then introduces large grasping forceps … through the vaginal and cervical canal … He moves the tip of the instrument carefully towards the fetal lower extremities — and pulls the extremity into the vagina … The surgeon then uses his fingers to deliver the opposite lower extremity, then the torso, the shoulders, and the upper extremities. The skull lodges in the internal os. The fetus is oriented … spine up … The surgeon then takes a pair of blunt curved Metzenbaum scissors in the right hand. … the surgeon then forces the scissors into the base of the skull–spreads the scissors to enlarge the opening. The surgeon–surgeon then introduces a suction catheter into this hole and evacuates the skull contents.”

Haskell, having described these brutal details, shows his audience a video of himself doing one of these procedures. And at the end of the video, after the sound of the suction machine taking the brains out of the baby’s head, the audience applauds.

That, my friends, is applause from hell.

We often speak about “the fires of hell.” It is also true, however, to say that hell is very cold. It is the absence of all conscience, of all pity, of all love. That kind of hell is reflected on earth when a group of human beings can sit around a video machine, watch someone deliberately kill a baby, and then applaud. That’s the heart and soul of the abortion industry. That’s the heart and soul of “pro-choice.”

It’s the same chilling attitude of which Dr. Bernard Nathanson repented. He writes about how he felt after he killed his own child by abortion. “I swear to you that I had no feelings aside from the sense of accomplishment, the pride of expertise. On inspecting the contents of the bag I felt only the satisfaction of knowing that I had done a thorough job” (The Hand of God, p.60).

I am convinced that the first and overall most effective way to fight abortion is to expose it. People need to hear descriptions of the procedure, see what it looks like, and get a glimpse into the utter corruption of the abortion industry. Saint Paul tells the Ephesians, “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them” (Eph. 5:11). Let’s put Paul’s words into practice and spread the information in this column!

Prayer to End Abortion

Lord God, I thank you today for the gift of my life,
And for the lives of all my brothers and sisters.

I know there is nothing that destroys more life than abortion,
Yet I rejoice that you have conquered death
by the Resurrection of Your Son.

I am ready to do my part in ending abortion.
Today I commit myself
Never to be silent,
Never to be passive,
Never to be forgetful of the unborn.

I commit myself to be active in the pro-life movement,
And never to stop defending life
Until all my brothers and sisters are protected,
And our nation once again becomes
A nation with liberty and justice
Not just for some, but for all.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen!

Contraception Prevents Abortion, Doesn’t It?

ChelseaAbortion, Contraception, Family, Marriage, Pro Life, Religion, Sex, VocationLeave a Comment

fr-tom.jpgNot so as Fr. Euteneuer explains in the first of a series of video emails explaining common contraception msiconceptions. As I said in the comments section of my previous post on this subject, the Sean Hannity contraception flap is not just about Sean and Fr. E. knows it. That is what prompted this video series. As he mentioned in on his blog under the post ‘Hannity Lessons Learned’:

One final lesson learned. There are literally millions of Catholics out there who, like Mr. Hannity, haven’t the slightest idea about Church doctrine on critical issues and are living in a de facto state of contradiction concerning their own religious faith.

Indeed, the statistics show that over 90% of Catholic couples practice contraception despite the Church’s consistent teaching against it. Fr. E. attributes this to the ‘malaise of religious education’ that resulted after Vatican II. Something that I can attest to, having had nine years of Catholic education. It’s not that I didn’t learn that the Church was against contraception, I always knew that, but I never learned any real good reasons why the Church was opposed to it.

So in his first video Fr. addresses the argument that contraception will prevent abortions. This was one of the reasons that Mr. Hannity gave for why he favors contraception, he would rather people use contraception than have abortions. But does this rationalization hold up? Not when you consider the fact that about 60% of abortions take place because the contraceptive device that was used, failed. And, not only does the use of contraception increase and promote promiscuity, but it perpetuates the ‘abortion mentality’ of rejecting the child – not to mention the abortifacient effect of the birth control bill.

To truly understand and appreciate the Church’s opposition to contraception one must understand her view of the sanctity of human sexuality. As Fr. E. points out, contraception kills not only life, but also love, robbing people of the only gifts that they can really give, the gift of self and the gift of life. The Church holds that sexual intercourse within the covenant of Marriage is to be an act of total self-giving. This beautiful view of marital intercourse means that man and wife come together in a special way to renew their marriage commitment to give themselves entirely to each other. This total self-giving includes our fertility. To borrow from Christopher West in his book The Good News About Sex and Marriage:

The choice to withhold one’s fertility during intercourse, or to refuse to receive it as a gift in one’s spouse, is a contradiction of the deepest essence of conjugal love right at the moment when it should find its most sincere expression. Precisely at marriage’s ‘moment of truth,’ the truth is exchanged for a lie.

There is so much more to contraception and the culture of death that I won’t go into now. I will keep you posted as Fr. Euteneuer comes out with more video emails. Check out the resources on contraception at the Human Life International website, which includes the protestant perspective. Also check out the HLI article, Contraception the Love Killer.

From the Popes:

Pius XI – CASTI CONNUBII
Paul VI – HUMANAE VITAE
John Paul II – FAMILIARIS CONSORTIO