Here’s another incredible story for you:
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Unborn Baby Saves His Dad’s Life
From Julie Ryan Evans at The Stir:
According to Sara McDonald, who is 7 1/2 months pregnant, her husband, Thomas, wouldn’t be here today if her baby hadn’t given her a very powerful sign that something was wrong — a big kick. She says that kick from her baby, Cameron, jolted her out of a deep sleep where she found her husband unresponsive.
She told the station he didn’t have a heartbeat and that he was “purple from the waist up.” She was, understandably, terrified and called police after trying to perform CPR herself. Officers say they weren’t sure he would make it, but fortunately he did, and he’s going to be fine.
McDonald has no doubt that her unborn son was responsible.
It’s like my baby saved my husband’s life. And he’s not even here yet and he saved his dad’s life. It’s an amazing feeling and I don’t think anyone else can say that.
While skeptics may say it was just a coincidence, who’s to know really. Stranger things have happened, and perhaps a baby’s sense in the womb is stronger than we know.
What a great story! Click here to read more and watch video of a local news story on it.
NFP in Africa!
From Human Life International’s Adam Cassandra at CatholicLane:
The St Mary Mother of Charity and Consolation Clinic for NFP opened last November in Nyeri, Kenya as part of the pro-life outreach efforts of HLI Kenya. The clinic, which teaches couples the Billings Ovulation Method of NFP, has been embraced by local Church leaders.
“We hope mothers who go through this training will pass this knowledge to their daughters,” said Father Raphael Wanjohi, director of HLI Kenya, who is also in charge of the clinical and psychological counseling for the Nyeri Catholic Archdiocese.
This is wonderful, especially considering Africa’s huge AIDs problem. Many in the West think that the answer to the AIDs crisis is increased condom use, but recent studies show that behavior change, specifically a reduction in multiple sexual partnerships, is what really makes a difference reducing HIV numbers. HIV/AIDs is spread through risky and immoral sexual behavior. Giving people condoms just lulls them into a false sense of security and can actually encourage that dangerous behavior and increase the risk of disease.
Human beings are exceptional creatures. We are capable of controlling our actions and we should be encouraged avoid those that are a danger to us altogether, rather than just “reducing the risk” and hoping for the best. That is why NFP practitioners emphasize abstinence before marriage and then fidelity within marriage.
Peace is a Sleeping Baby, Not a Dead One
I don’t know if you caught this or not, but Pampers ran a beautiful commercial after Christmas last month featuring sleeping babies from around the world to the tune of “Silent Night” and the tagline: “peace on earth”
Apparently it’s an old commercial of theirs that has been re-run over the past few years, but I only just saw it recently. When I did I was really struck by what a stark contrast the ad was to Planned Parenthood’s distasteful (to say the very least) “Choice on Earth” Christmas campaign. Upon first hearing about the Planned Parenthood 
campaign a few years ago I noted how sadly ironic it was that the word they chose to replace with the word “Choice” is “Peace” since that is exactly what is destroyed by the choice of abortion which they promote and carry out (more than any other pregnancy related “service”). In fact, Mother Teresa called it the greatest destroyer of peace today because it is a “war against the child.”
Indeed. Abortion is the ultimate act of violence against the most vulnerable members of our species – murder by the mother herself. Peace is a sleeping baby, not a dead one.
Speaking of Pampers, check out their other pro-life themed commercials here and here.
Suicide Debate Heats Up in Canada
In Canada, Justice Lynn Smith of the B.C. Supreme Court is considering an attempt by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association to overturn Canada’s ban on euthanasia and assisted suicide and the public debate is heating up. Last week, Canada’s Campaign Life Coalition launched a month-long national media campaign expected to reach over 3.2 million viewers with 60-second TV ads running on the Sun News Network from Jan. 6-29. Here is their latest ad warning Canadians about the slippery slope that has already been experienced in Holland:
Most people who claim to support for assisted suicide say they do so for very limited cases of terminally ill patients in unbearable pain. But, to quote assisted suicide advocate and well-respected British philosopher Lady Warnock, once killing becomes an accepted, legal “treatment” to relieve human suffering, “it is irrational to confine it to those who are terminally ill” – and then it wouldn’t make sense that it should only be administered at the patient’s request.
Speaking of what “most people” think, results from a poll were published last month showing that 67% of Canadians do support overturning their country’s ban on assisted suicide. That’s a staggering number, but Diane Coleman, founding President of the Disability Rights group Not Dead Yet, suggests that, because of the superficial and often misleading poll questions, it’s not a true representation of the public’s assisted suicide views.
It will definitely be interesting to see how this turns out. Ms. Coleman might not think that those numbers are accurate, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were. We are developing a very pro suicide culture here in the West, a dark cavernous autonomy of individuals that undermines society and brings death to the soul of civilization. Let’s pray that the Canada does not bow to the altar of radical autonomy and continues to protect the weak members of its society by upholding its ban on assisted suicide.
Related: Suicide for Everyone – On Demand!
Reece’s Rainbow: a Ray of Hope for Children With Down Syndrome
The majority of children prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome are never allowed to make it out of the womb alive. For those who do, especially in the Ukraine, many are abandoned at birth and could even be institutionalized after 4 or 5 years for the rest of their lives. Reece’s Rainbow helps these kids find loving homes. ABC News reports on one one lucky little girl who was saved from life in an institution thanks to this organization:
Be sure to read the article attached to this beautiful story.
Today the Bridegroom Claims His Bride!
I’ve mentioned here before that Christmas is a celebration of the Bridegroom coming for His bride. Love, love, love, the antiphon for today’s Canticle of Zechariah in Morning Prayer:
Today the Bridegroom claims his bride, the Church, since Christ has washed her sins away in Jordan’s waters; the Magi hasten with their gifts to the royal wedding; and the wedding guests rejoice, for Christ has changed water into wine, alleluia.
Happy Feast of the Epiphany!
Previous post:
Our Lover is Coming!
A Thanksgiving Marathon – Please Help!
I have written a few times here about the wonderful work that the Comunita Cenacolo is doing to not just get people off drugs, but helping them find true peace and freedom that comes only from a life in Christ. It’s such a great organization doing amazing things for people lost in the darkness of addiction.
On Facebook recently I got a notice that a woman is running a half marathon next month in thanksgiving to Cenacolo for helping her brother. Her goal is to raise $5000 for the community and right now she’s only a little over a quarter of the way there. Here is her story:
I am committing to run this half marathon in honor of my brother and all of the work he has done over the past two years to make enormous changes in his life.
Through his late teens and early twenties, he battled a horrible addiction and has recently celebrated his two year mark of being clean from all drugs and alcohol. While this has been a labor of love and hard work for him and my entire family, he would never have made it this far – nor would we – without Comunita Cenacolo.
Comunita Cenacolo, where Jack has lived for the past two years, is pretty much the school of life: a dedication of faith paired with hard work and almost no material possessions. “The community”, as it is called, has helped thousands of young men and women over the past 28 years overcome their addictions and go on to live fulfilling and healthy lives for many, many years.
Cenacolo is completely self-sufficient, receives no state or federal funding, and relies SOLELY on the donations of families, friends, anonymous donors and the general public. They operate under the assumption that any item they need – from a car to new shoes for the guys to butter – will be provided when it is necessary. They ask for nothing and receive everything.
While I don’t think I will ever fully understand the community, as I have never actually lived it, I will be eternally grateful to them for the life they have given back to my brother – and thousands of others just like him and their families.
I am running this half marathon in gratitude to the Comunita Cenacolo and am asking for your support not only in what they have done for my brother and my family, but for the thousands of men and women who will need their services for years to come.
As she said, the Community relies heavily on generous donations to make this life-changing experience free for all who enter –please help if you can and/or pass it along to someone else who can! The run will be on Feb 26, 2012 – Deadline to give is Mar 15, 2012.
Also check out:
‘School of Life’ is Path to Freedom and Peace for Addicts
Why Not Sterilize Drug Addicts?
Appeal Process Moving Forward for Federal Stem Cell Funding Suit
In 2009 two researchers filed a lawsuit claiming that new National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines easing restrictions on human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research are a violation the Dicky-Wicker Amendment, a budgetary amendment prohibiting federal tax dollars from being used to create or destroy human embryos for scientific research. In August 2010, district court judge Royce Lamberth agreed and temporarily blocked the NIH from using federal dollars to fund any hESC research. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit later overturned Lamberth’s preliminary injunction, and he dismissed the case in July.
The plaintiffs filed an appeal last September and now, according to Science Mag’s Science Insider, judges and dates have been set for that appeal. Briefs are due between January and mid-March and the oral argument has been set for April 23 at 9:30 a.m. The judges — Chief Judge David Sentelle, appointed by Ronald Reagan; Karen LeCraft Henderson, appointed by George H. W. Bush and Janice Rogers Brown, appointed by George W. Bush — are considered rather conservative. In fact, justice Henderson was the lone dissenter on the ruling last April that favored the NIH. So, there is a good chance that the court could rule in the plaintiffs’ favor.
The outcome of this lawsuit is significant because here in the United States there are absolutely no laws limiting any kind of research involving the creation, use and destruction of human embryos (including human and human/animal hybrid cloning). The only thing we have in terms of protecting human embryos from exploitation at the hands of researchers is the Dicky Amendment prohibiting the Federal Government from paying for such research.
In recent years, private investment into ESC research has been steadily declining for several reasons, not the least of which being the fact that it has failed to deliver the incredible results that its supporters have been promising. That’s why ESC researchers have been lobbying heavily for expanded government funding for their research. And they’ve been getting lots of it!
Since Obama took office 434 million in taxpayer dollars has been spent on ESC research – $143 million in 2009, $165 million in 2010 and $126 million in 2011. That’s nearly half a billion!
In 2010, Geron Corp., the first company to begin human trials on a treatment derived from hESCs, was awarded five cash grants totaling $1.2 million under the “Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Project” included in Obamacare. Three of those grants were for ESC research and were valued at $735,000 altogether. Last November Geron shook up the scientific world when they announced that they were suspending their groundbreaking trials after a little over a year and abandoning embryo-destroying research entirely. One would think that this news would make the federal government a little reluctant to expand its funding of such controversial research, but just last month the NIH approved more hESC lines for taxpayer funding.
This has got to end. It’s bad enough that, unlike other, more progressive countries the United States has no laws protecting the smallest of our species from being torn apart in the name of science, the least we can do is not force taxpayers – many of whom have serious moral and ethical objections to it – to foot the bill for such research.
This article also published at CatholicLane.com
Bliss
It’s a rare warm, sunny day here in Perdido Key, FL and I’ve been sitting outside listening to the crashing waves and enjoying this gorgeous view as I work on my MacBook:
And I’m being surprisingly productive! I could really get used to this. Anyone care to donate to the Reflections of a Paralytic beach house fund??
