Another Successful Rally

ChelseaCloning, Politics, Pro LifeLeave a Comment

cloning-rally.jpg
The No Cloning Rally was yesterday at the Capitol and it was a great success. Sen. Matt Bartle said that it was the biggest advocacy day turnout he’s seen for any issue in the eight years he’s been in the legislature. Missouri Right to Life estimated turnout at about 1,000. That’s incredible considering this was an all day event that took place in the middle of a work week.

I am always amazed at the great devotion of the pro-life crowd. Despite over 30 years of legalized abortion and new attacks on human life, like embryonic stem cell/cloning research, disguised as compassionate ways to ease human suffering, the movement continues to grow. Sen. Bartle also said that the passage of Amendment 2 has awakened a sleeping giant. I don’t know that we were ever really fully asleep, but Amendment 2 has certainly deepened our resolve to fight against the culture of death and the forces of evil in our day. I’m not sure how much luck we will have in the legislature with the joint resolution, but one thing is certain – we will not give up. Amendment 2 supporters “have taken on a highly motivated pro-life community that is used to long, protracted battles. We don’t give up. We will not stop until we are successful.” That is another quote from Sen. Bartle, who knows a thing or two about long battles, he has tried to get a cloning ban through the legislature since 2003.

Sen. Chuck Graham, who is paralyzed from a spinal cord injury, has vowed to filibuster the resolution if and when it gets to the Senate floor. So please say a prayer for us! We are fully prepared to start an initiative petition drive, but the joint resolution is our best option since it lets us control the ballot language. Otherwise it’s in the hands of the Secretary of State.

Child Born Despite Mother’s Best Efforts

ChelseaAbortion, Pro Life, Right to Life, Vocation, Women1 Comment

You just can’t get good help these days. Jennifer Raper is suing Planned Parenthood and two other doctors for a failed abortion “causing the plaintiff to remain pregnant.” The “abortion” was performed in April of 2004 and a subsequent doctor visit in July failed to detect the un-terminated pregnancy causing her to give birth to a healthy baby girl in December. Regular Guy Paul has some great commentary on the causation of her pregnancy:

Her “continued pregnancy” was caused by the failure of the abortionist. This is the type of fuzzy thinking (“darkening of the intellect” is the phrase used in Catholic teaching) that is brought on by the embrace of abortion and the culture of death.

My continued life this past five-plus years has been caused by my failure to be in the World Trade Center in Manhatten on September 11th, 2001.

The fact that I’m still here at this keyboard is caused by the failure of those around me to stop me before I blog again.

I owe the lives of my children to the failure of… well, everyone they’ve ever encountered, who have failed to murder them, thus causing them to continue living.

No, modern medical science, perhaps only recently, has pretty conclusively determined the cause of pregnancy, and it has a great deal more to do with Ms. Raper and the baby’s father (of whom the article makes no mention — am I the only one to think that strange?), whose actions were the cause of that pregnancy.

This is also an illustration of how abortion and the modern feminist movement has destroyed our sense for the sacredness of maternity and authentic femininity. Motherhood is a supreme calling for all women, without exception – either biologically or spiritually. Gertrude von le Fort writes in her book The Eternal Woman: “To be a mother, to feel maternally, means to turn especially to the helpless, to incline lovingly and helpfully to every small and weak thing upon the earth.” This is God’s greatest gift to women, according to Mother Teresa – the ability to love as a woman, to be maternal. As she pointed out at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington 13 years ago, abortion teaches a woman not to love, but to kill even her own child to solve her problems. Instead of rejoicing in the great gift of motherhood, Ms. Raper is suing Planned Parenthood for failing to kill her now two year old daughter. This is not new, of course, though frequently this type of litigation involves the birth of a severely disabled child whose parents, had they known, would have killed the child in-utero.

A woman’s soul is meant to be maternal. Abortion, and the abortion mentality, distorts that virtue and wounds the very soul of a woman.

Check out:
The Privilage of Being a Woman

What’s Going on in Missouri

ChelseaPolitics, Pro Life, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

The pro-life news sites constantly news have updates about pro-life laws in all of the states. I don’t normally comment on them just because there are too many to keep up with – I have a hard enough time keeping track of what’s going on in my own state. If they’re anything like Missouri, each state could have at least a handful of laws up for a possible vote. But I thought I could fill you in on what’s happening here. I told you last week about my Rep’s bill to protect Pharmacies from lawsuits when they or their employees refuse to sell certain abortifacients. There are a few other good pieces of legislation in the works, which include:

A joint resolution to ban cloning – HJR 11 and SJR 20

Alternatives to Abortion Services – it appears there are two bills in the house for this, one sponsored by a Democrat: HB 691, and one sponsored by a Republican: HB 1055. Both are co-sponsored by many of the same people so I am not sure what the purpose of this is.

The Unborn Child Pain Prevention Act – HB 821 and SB 196

And the biggie, a semi-abortion ban: HB 99O says, “Any person who performs or induces, or attempts to perform or induce, an abortion on another, other than to save the life of the mother, is guilty of a class B felony.” Though, it is only for unborn children “of twenty or more weeks gestational age.” Still a good start.

So there you have it. The session is still young, too. Who knows what other bills may pop up in the months ahead. Tomorrow is the “No Cloning Rally” to suppurt the joint resolution. I am praying that a lot of people show up. If this resolution doesn’t pass we head to the streets to collect signatures.

Calling All Catholics

ChelseaAbortion, Pro Life, Religion, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

Kathryn Jean Lopez has an article on Townhall.com about the recent resignation of the MSM’s favorite “Catholic” darling, Frances Kissling as head of Catholics For Free Choice. For those of you who don’t know, though the name pretty well speaks for itself, CFFC is a group claiming to be Catholic and openly rejecting Catholic Church teaching on the sanctity of human life. CFFC has been denounced by the USCCB more than once. In 2000 they issued this statement:

“A group calling itself Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC) has been publicly supporting abortion while claiming it speaks as an authentic Catholic voice. That claim is false. In fact, the group’s activity is directed to rejection and distortion of Catholic teaching about the respect and protection due to defenseless unborn human life … (CFFC) is an arm of the abortion lobby in the United States and throughout the world.”

Lopez remarks that Kissling’s retirement opens the door for media outlets such as the New York Times to “report on some other Catholics – maybe even Catholics who actually believe what the Church teaches to take to the media.” And calls on all Catholics – “those who truly have the courage to stand athwart a secular culture of death yelling stop” – to “find their best and brightest clear-talking believers, and get them into the Blackberry address books of reporters and bookers and bloggers. The “Catholic” voices ought to be Catholic. That’s how you get out the Good News.”

That is assuming the media would even give them the time of day.

Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life:
CCC
Evangelium Vitae

Who’s Selling the “Promise?”

ChelseaAdult Stem Cell Research, Science, Stem Cell Storage, Umbilical Cord BloodLeave a Comment

This article in the LA Times is ripe with criticism of the recent push for stem cell banking:

KEVIN MANNIX is a salesman and entrepreneur in the healthcare industry, a husband, father of two and the son of a man who died of a heart attack at 52. In matters of business and of health, he lives by the same principles: Do your research, hedge your bets, avoid regret and — every once in a while — take a leap of faith…

Adult stem cells are Mannix’s leap of faith. And after a fair amount of research, he’s intent on putting his in a bank…

As stem-cell research has gathered momentum in recent years, these microscopic powerhouses have come to spark at least as much hope as they have controversy. And they have spawned new businesses eager to cater to this blossoming of public optimism. Private tissue banks, which offer to harvest and store adult stem cells for a client’s future personal use, are among the most visible of these. And they are springing up across the country.

The result is an industry marked by hype, high cost and only a limited chance that the cells extracted and stored will be of use when the fog of scientific inquiry — still very much underway — clears….

Adult stem cells exist in the blood and organs after a human has emerged from the womb, and remain there, hiding in a crowd of more specialized cells. They do not bear the same ethical baggage as their embryonic counterparts, because they can be harvested without creating or destroying new life. But scientists also believe they probably lack the wide-ranging curative potential that embryonic cells have.

Mannix (a man the article cites as , however, is a believer, and he’s not the only one. In a future that he and many others see as dawning already, adult stem cells will heal the ravages of age, genetic inheritance and environment. They will treat and cure heart disease, cancers, autoimmune conditions such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and injuries including banged-up bones and joints and damaged spinal cords.

That future may never come, or it may come too late to benefit patients such as Mannix and his wife. It may require stem cells gleaned from embryos, not adult bodies. It may require adult stem cells from different sources than blood, or processed and stored differently than the methods used by banks starting up now.

Nevertheless, private tissue banks are drawing a growing number of customers such as Mannix, who expects to pay $6,000 to harvest his own stem cells from his bloodstream and $400 a year thereafter to keep them cryogenically stored for his future use.

Meanwhile, the Biotech Industry is selling the “promise” and “potential” of embryonic stem cell and human cloning research that, unlike research with adult stem cells, has yet to produce positive results, in order to get laws passed to ensure that they receive millions in public funds.

Brownback at CPAC

ChelseaPolitics, Pro LifeLeave a Comment

Sen. Sam Brownback was at the Conservative Political Action Conference last Saturday and came in third in the straw polling there. The results were as follows:

1. Mitt Romney 21%
2 .Rudy Giuliani 17%
3. Sam Brownback 15%
4. Gingrich 14%
5. McCain 12%

It is a very a positive sign that he came out ahead of Gingrich and McCain considering many think of the Senator as a virtual unknown. It is also a good sign to see Romney (or anyone, for that matter) ahead of Giuliani, which suggests that not all conservatives are compromising their pro-life principles to support a candidate that some consider more “winnable.”

More on Giuliani

ChelseaAbortion, Politics, Pro Life, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

Here is a great analysis by Fr. Martin Fox of a recent Weekly Standard (a “conservative” publication) article promoting Giuliani entitled Lets Make a Deal…

It is all part of the fever that infects more and more folks as elections near: the sense that winning the next election is so supremely important that more and more must be thrown overboard in order to do it. Thus the condescending lectures that are being given these days to various conservative folks that they should just get over their concerns, and get on board the Giuliani (or Romney or McCain or fill in your own name) bandwagon.

It perpetuates the lie — I’m sorry, that’s what it is — that somehow, the “litmus test” of the 100% prolife position is an albatross for the GOP–that the GOP would be better off if it weren’t forced to nominate prolife candidates for president…

The article either betrays a laughable credulity on the part of the author, or the author expects his readers to be gullible dolts, when it says, oh, sure, Giuliani is pro-abortion, but he’ll choose the kind of judges prolifers want! Hold on, hold on…

First: Giuliani said he’d name justices like Alito and Roberts. Hasn’t anyone noticed that these judges have yet to demonstrate they are the kind of judges we hope for, and were promised?

Second: and we’re supposed to be impressed that Giuliani says this? What do you expect him to say? “I tend to favor nominees like Ginsberg and Thurgood Marshall.” I think if you go back, you will find GOP nominees always say the right things about who they’ll nominate as judges–the elder Bush did, so did Reagan. And Reagan has street cred as a conservative–yet of three he named to the high court, two were bad; Bush the elder was 50/50.

So please, how stupid do they think we are? “I’ll pick great judges” Oh, well, glad that’s settled…

Third: the article sidesteps the question of why Giuliani is pro-abortion. I don’t happen to know why he came to that view, but I do know how he justified his support for gun-control: he said, well, it was New York! I.e., he tailored his views so he’d get elected.

Oh, but of course, he’d never do that once he’s president…he wouldn’t want to get pro-aborts on board with anything he wanted, by trading away a supreme court justice? No, not Giuliani…

Another glaring flaw of the article–it’s really insulting, because it is as if the author thinks we’re too stupid to notice–is that it suggests that all conservatives have to object to is just this little ole difference, it’s not so great, really… I mean, it’s not like Giuliani is only a teensy-bit pro-abortion.

Only a few years ago, Giuliani was appearing before the National Abortion Rights Action League, proud to identify with them. “But he hasn’t done that lately!” Yeah, I wonder why?

Now, if you read those remarks–yes, they are brief–but they show him rather an advocate of the GOP being “pro choice” on abortion. If he was sincere, that suggests to me he will not be content to be a lonely pro-abort in a sea of prolifers. And of all the things you can assert about Giuliani, the idea that he’s going to leave the levers of power unhandled is pretty hard to swallow. If he becomes President, you can bet he’ll shape the party as he believes. Of course, he might not have been sincere in those remarks; fine–then don’t argue he’s sincere in what he promises you, now…

The Weekly Standard article is one of many showing up here and there, trying to sell conservatives on Giuliani. It reminds me of the scene in A Man for All Seasons, where one of the nobles got irritated with Thomas More (this is a paraphrase): we’ve all sold out, it wasn’t so hard–why do you have to be so prissy?

Who knows what will happen–but my gut is that if Giuliani somehow were to get the nomination, I think the GOP could be in for a big, nasty surprise in November 2008, especially if the Democrats were to decide 2008 were the year to stop being so aggressively pro-abortion (say, they nominated Obama, who seems to be playing a rhetorical game akin to Giuliani’s).

H/T: Pro Ecclesia * Pro Familia * Pro Civitate

Giuliani in His Own Words

ChelseaPolitics, Pro Life, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

I must admit that I am a little concerned about the poll numbers for the election so far, though I realize the election is still over a year away. I shudder at the thought of two very clearly pro-choice candidates. Thankfully, The Intellectual Conservative has a few words of encouragement:

To the best of my knowledge:

– No pro-abortion candidate has ever won the Republican nomination.

– Nobody who has been in bed with the homosexual lobby has ever won the Republican nomination.

– Nobody who has opposed Second Amendment rights has ever won the Republican nomination.

And some think a man saddled with all three negatives will do so in 2008?…

I don’t know what Giuliani’s presidential “exploratory committee” told him a while back, but I could have provided the truth at a tenth the cost. Mr. Mayor, you’d stand a better chance running as an independent; then you might at least be able to make a respectable showing. But, really, you’d be best off devoting your resources to any PGA Tour ambitions your son may be nursing. You miss left far too much to be a contender.

“Common Sense is Dying”

ChelseaPro Life, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

Social conservatives see “Two Americas.” Unlike the two Americas that John Edwards saw in 2004, these two Americas are divided morally. Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America says that we have one side that “says other human beings should be used for your own sexual pleasure, and if someone else is a burden to you, if they are unwanted, then simply eliminate them, abort them.” And another side that “respects morality…wants to put an end to the killing of little human beings who have been designated as less than human” because “of where they are located — inside a woman — or because of how small they are, or because they don’t yet look like you and I do.” They also want to, “protect marriage because we recognize that marriage is the distinct union between a man and a woman, and it is the foundation to a stable society.”

Columnist Ben Shapiro said this is because “Common sense used to tell us these things were bad, but common sense is dying.”

“Now, we have to have social scientists prove to us that chopping off your own leg hurts your self-esteem and therefore is bad before we decide that we’re against self-mutilation,” he stated.

“Social liberals don’t pretend to know right from wrong, or even to care,” he said. “They simply claim they have a right to act as they please as long as they’re not physically harming you.” He described this as a “phantom” right – one that is never explained but “just spring up anonymously, magically.”

“Conservatives understand, by contrast, that rights are granted to us by our Creator to enrich human existence,” he said. As a result, “conservatism is not about standing idle in the face of immorality. It never has been. Slavery didn’t hurt white Northerners physically, but they sure had a right to destroy the institution.”

America is divided in a way that I don’t think we’ve seen since the Civil War and the issue of slavery and it seems to mirror the same issue – the value of human life. How can this issue be resolved? Will it ever be settled through politics or is there another Civil War in our future?

Life Giving Love

ChelseaAbortion, Pro Life, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

carlislefamily.jpgThis is an amazing story about a woman who chose the life of her unborn child over her own. Jennifer Carlisle was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2005 when she was 2 months pregnant with her fourth child. Doctors told her that she would surely die if she did not abort the child, but she and her husband refused. Gabriel Carlisle was born in January of last year and Jennifer died February 15 of this year from the cancer.

“I told her that I loved her,” Joshua Carlisle said, recalling when his wife died in his arms. “And I told her that she needed to go on, that God was calling her home.”

“I held her and she took her last breath,” he said. “There was a peace at that last minute that’s just indescribable.”

This is a beautiful lesson of selfless and live giving love for all of us and is especially appropriate to ponder during Lent.