End of Life

Pro-Lifers Can’t Forget: It’s Our Duty to Protect the Elderly, Sick and Dying

by Sarah Zagorski 

On Friday morning, attendees of the National Right to Life Convention heard some of our Nation’s leading experts in the “Bioethics War on Humans” debate. They discussed ways to protect our elderly, terminally ill and sick, from a society that increasingly favors killing rather than curing sickness. The team of experts also elaborated on the ideologies that lead the charge in these discussions.

The first speaker, Wesley J. Smith, Ph.D, who is a renowned author, lawyer, and bioethicist, began by mentioning some key terms that we must become familiar with to understand the bioethics war on humans. Those who believe in killing rather than curing in America are often called, mercy killers, assisted suicide proponents, and right to die advocates. While some of these individuals genuinely believe they are alleviating suffering, the path they are leading us down have very damaging ramifications.

Smith reviewed medical proposals from Ivy League Universities, like Harvard, which mention sick and dying patients donating their organs before being declared medically dead. Smith said that while this has not occurred in America, these proposals are not as uncommon as one might think. He said that this is because our society is adopting ideologies similar to that of secular philosopher, Peter Singer, who supports euthanasia, abortion and assisted suicide.
Another speaker during the session was Burke Balch, J.D., who is the Director of Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics, the bioethics arm of National Right to Life. He dynamically began his talk by comparing two ancient Greeks. The first was Hypocrites of Cros, who is often referred to as the “father of modern medicine” and is known for coining the Hippocratic oath. For thousands and thousands of years, medical professionals took this sacred oath and promised to respect the dignity of every human being.
During the session, Balch quoted anthropologist, Margaret Mead, to describe the inception and the impact of this oath on society–
            For the first time in our tradition there was a complete separation between killing and curing. Throughout the primitive world, the doctor and the sorcerer tended to be the same person. He with power to kill had power to cure, including specially the undoing of his own killing activities. … With the Greeks, the distinction was made clear. One profession, the followers of Asclepius, were to be dedicated   completely to life under all circumstances, regardless of rank, age, or intellect – the life of a slave, the life of the Emperor, the life of a foreign man, the life of a defective child. . . This is a priceless possession which we cannot afford to tarnish, but society always is attempting to make the physician into a killer – to kill the defective child at birth, to leave the sleeping pills beside the bed of the cancer patient. . . . It is the duty of society to protect the physician from such requests.
The second Greek scholar he mentioned was Plato, who many study for guidance in philosophy. However, some are unaware that in book three of Plato’s Republic, he writes this concerning good physicians:
            “They will minster to better natures, giving help to both soul and body. But those   who are diseased in their body they will leave to die, and the corrupt and  incurable souls they will put an end to themselves.
The dramatic differences between these two ethics are what we see warring in our nation today. Balch elaborated by saying that the frightening thing about our society is that in the medical schools across America, doctors are no longer taking the Hippocratic oath, nor are they told to ask the question, “how to treat”, but instead, “whether to treat”. America is teaching their physicians to consider the cost of the treatment first, and whether the money is worth the life of their patient. This is putting medical professionals in a place where they are told that making ‘quality of life’ judgments is their job.
During the session, Balch said that while there are fundamental differences between the views and practices of the death advocates that exist now in the medical profession, and the ones that dominated Europe seventy-five years ago during the Holocaust, their quality of life ethic is the same.
He said it is critical that we understand that the actual application of their ethic is extremely subjective and very arbitrary. Balch argued that this is because humanity exists on a continuum of our degree of mental mobility, and on a continuum of physical health. The issue of where you draw the line of whether a particular persons life if worth living, or a particular life is not worth living, is something of a gut instinct or of a consensus among doctors.
Lastly, Balch discussed how Obamacare is forcing physicians and health care providers to ration health-care. This is why many are leaving the health profession. Some doctor’s are uncomfortable deciding who receives treatment and who doesn’t, while others are arrogantly making God-like decisions.
Balch emphasized that ultimately Obamacare is designed to prevent us from using our own money to help our sick and dying loved ones. He closed his sobering message by reiterating how important our obligation is to our families to protect and guard them from all of the evil lurking within our own nation.

Source: LifeSite News

Justina Pelletier

Justina Pelletier’s Law Would Stop Federal Funding of Dangerous Medical Research on Foster Children

by Liberty Counsel 

Liberty Counsel Action is proud to support “Justina’s Law,” a bipartisan bill that prohibits federal tax dollars to be used for medical experimentation on a ward of the State.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) joined with Reps. Karen Bass (D-CA), Tom Marino (R-PA), and Jim McDermott (D-WA), to introduce “Justina’s Law” in a response to the case of Justina Pelletier.
In February of 2013, acting on the advice of her physician, Lou and Linda Pelletier took their daughter, Justina, to the ER at Boston Children’s Hospital (“BCH”) to see Dr. Flores, a gastroenterologist who had been treating Justina before transferring to BCH approximately one month prior.

Dr. Jurriaan Peters, a BCH resident who was only seven months out of medical school, saw Justina and decided he would change her diagnosis from Mitochondrial disease to Somatoform Disorder. He did not contact any of Justina’s previous expert physicians who had treated her for years and refused to allow Dr. Flores (the doctor she came to see) to see her or examine her issues. BCH psychologist Dr. Simona Bujoreanu confirmed the Somatoform diagnosis after only 25 minutes with Justina, likewise without contacting other physicians. Dr. Bujoreanu is researching Somatoform Disorder under an NIH grant. Read the complete timeline.

BCH and many other hospitals have policies in place that permit a ward of the state to be used in medical research that presents a greater than minimal risk, even if there is no prospect of any direct benefit to the child.

Justina became a ward of the state and was placed in a psych ward. Justina remained imprisoned by the state for 16 months. In the last year, during Justina‘s struggle, the Boston Globe has uncovered at least five other instances of families having their children taken by BCH under the same or similar circumstances as the Pelletiers.

“Whether it is one child or thousands, it is our duty to guarantee that children are kept safe from harm while in the custody of their respective states,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann. “Sixteen months ago, Justina was a figure skater. Today, she cannot stand, sit, or walk on her own. It is unconscionable what happened to Justina, and we must do all we can to prevent it from ever happening again. Removing federal funding from such experimentation is an important first step,” Bachman concluded.

Mark Trammell, Director of Public Policy, Liberty Counsel Action, said, “The purpose of Justina‘s Law is to protect children, plain and simple. As evidenced by the bill’s bipartisan support, it is not about partisan politics; it is about advocating for the health and safety of children.” Trammell continued, “It is irresponsible and inexcusable to subject foster children, or any child who is a ward of the state, to medical research that presents a greater than minimal risk of harm to the child with no prospect of direct benefit. These are children, made in the image of God; they deserve to be treated that way, not like human lab rats.”

Source: LifeSite News

More On Meriam

Meriam Ibrahim and Her Family Released on Bail, But Not Free to Leave Sudan

by Jordan Sekulow 

After being re-arrested less than a day after being released from death row for her Christian faith, Meriam Ibrahim and her American family have reportedly been released from the custody of Sudanese police forces on the condition that they not leave Sudan, as possible charges are brought against them.


They are not free.

Meriam and her American family were about to board a flight to freedom earlier this week, when 40 members of Sudan’s National Intelligence Security Service (known as the “Agents of Fear”) detained her along with her American husband and her two American kids – Martin, a toddler, and Maya, a newborn baby girl.  After being detained at the airport, Meriam and her American family were arrested and taken to the police station.

Sudan is accusing Meriam of attempting to use an “illegal [false] travel document” in trying to leave the country and is accusing her husband – a U.S. citizen – of being an accomplice.  It is unclear from reports if Sudan has formally charged Meriam with a crime, one that could carry with it a seven-year prison sentence, or whether they are still investigating the allegations.

Regardless, the fact remains that Meriam, her American husband, and her American kids are not free to leave the country.

Meriam’s attorney stated, “Meriam was released after a guarantor was found, but, of course, she would not be able to leave the country.”  Unlike bail in the U.S., in Sudan a guarantor would not just forfeit money, that person may actually have to stand in the place of Meriam criminally were she to flee the country.

According to press accounts, her lawyer also stated that Meriam and her American family are now in the U.S. embassy.  This is a critically important development for her safety.  However, they are not free to leave Sudan.

The United States must never let Meriam and her family who are U.S. citizens leave their sight from this point forward.  There were reports that when Meriam was taken into custody at the airport, it was done in the presence of U.S. diplomatic personnel.  This can never happen again.
Yesterday, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said that “from our perspective, Meriam has all of the documents she needs to travel to and enter the United States. It’s up to the Government of Sudan to allow her to exit the country.”

Later that day the State Department released a short statement, providing:
The State Department has received confirmation that Meriam Ibrahim Ishag has been released on bail and is no longer being detained at a Sudanese police station. She and her family are in a safe location and the Government of Sudan has assured us of the family’s continued safety. The Embassy remains highly engaged in Ms. Ishag’s case. We will provide more information as it becomes available consistent with privacy laws.

The Obama Administration, and the State Department in particular, must continue to aggressively demand freedom for Meriam and her American family.  While not physically in the custody of the Sudanese government at the present time, Meriam and her American family are not truly free until they are safely in America.

It would be an act of diplomatic malpractice were the U.S. to allow Meriam and her American family to fall back into the hands of the Sudanese government – the government that just days ago planned to execute her for her Christian faith.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have demanded Meriam’s freedom.  Meriam expressed her gratitude for that support when she left the police station, telling the BBC, “I would like to thank those who stood beside me.”
At the ACLJ, we will not rest until Meriam, Martin, Maya, and Daniel, their American husband and father, are safely home.  Join us by urging the Obama Administration to take direct action to bring them home.

LifeNews Note: Jordan Sekulow is Executive Director of the American Center for Law & Justice and writes for On Faith’s blogging network at the Washington Post, where this column originally appeared.

Source: LifeSite News

Pornography

Porn addiction is as serious as drug addiction
BY NICOLE M. KING


The News Story - Florida man demands right to wed computer

A recent article in The Telegraph reports that a former lawyer, Chris Sevier, recently sought a marriage license to marry his Mac-book computer.  In trying to argue his case, Sevier explained that he had become addicted to pornography via his computer, and so, “over time, [he] began preferring sex with [his] computer over sex with real women.”

The Telegraph reports Sevier as trying to make a case against the legalization of gay “marriage.”  Sevier stated in court: “If there is a risk that is posed to traditional marriage and children, both man-man couples and man-machine couples pose it equally.”  And he went on to say that “[in] considering the equal protection clause, there are no fewer policy reasons for preventing man-machine couples from marrying than there are for same-sex couples.”

While it might not be clear whether Sevier really wanted to marry his computer, or was just trying to prove a legalistic point, Sevier cites other cases where people succeeded in marrying inanimate objects or animals: One case where a woman “married” a dolphin, and another where a Chinese man “married” a cardboard cut-out of himself.

In addition to Sevier’s use of gay “marriage” to motivate legalizing machine “marriage,” recent research tells us how pornography can make romantic relationships with others less satisfying.  Given what habitual pornography viewing can do to one’s brain, it shouldn’t be surprising that porn-addicted men like Sevier prefer to be sexually stimulated by his computer over women.

The New Research - Porn: like taking drugs

It is time to start thinking about addiction to pornography—a destroyer of marriages—the same way we think about addiction to illegal drugs. So argue two neurosurgeons from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

In surveying “the medical implications of pornography” in light of “current evidence supporting an addictive model,” the two Texas scholars report that, like other addicts, those addicted to pornography suffer from “various manifestations of cerebral dysfunction collectively labeled hypofrontal syndromes. In these syndromes, the underlying defect, reduced to its simplest description, is damage to the ‘braking system’ of the brain.” Thus, like other addicts, pornography addicts suffer “a dysfunction of the mesolimbic reward centers of the brain.” More particularly, these addicts experience “reduced cellular activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, a brain area . . . [relied upon] . . . to make strategic, rather than impulsive, decisions.” The pornography addict may, in fact, manifest “decreased interest in pursuing goal-directed activities central to survival.”

Nor is it just a matter of medical science when pornography disrupts normal brain functions. The two scholars adduce evidence indicating that pornography use affects “sexual behavior in adolescents” and “does indeed cause harm in humans with regard to pair-bonding.” What is more, researchers have uncovered evidence that pornography may prime users for “actual sexual relations with children” and may foster “violent attitudes toward women.”

 (Source: Bryce J. Christensen and Robert W. Patterson, “New Research,”  The Family in America Vol 25 Number 1, Spring 2011. Study: Donald L. Hilton Jr. and Clark Watts, “Pornography Addiction: A Neuroscience Perspective,” Surgical Neurology International 2.1 [February 21, 2011]: 19.)

This article has been republished with permission from The Family in America, a publication of The Howard Center. The Howard Center is a MercatorNet partner site.

MORE ON THESE TOPICS | addiction, pornography

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China

She prayed for years for a Chinese daughter - now she’s raising China’s youngest political prisoner: VIDEO

china , one child policy , reggie littlejohn

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A U.S.-based human rights activist is raising China’s youngest known political prisoner and her sister after the girls fled their native country, where their famous father is still imprisoned.

Reggie Littlejohn, founder of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, which fights gendercide and forced abortion in Asia, recently told LifeSiteNews the dramatic story of the events that led to her adoption of the girls, in a video interview with Managing Director Steve Jalsevac in Washington, DC.
Littlejohn said that Anni Zhang, 11, and her elder sister Ruli, 19, left China in September after their father, political dissident and nuclear physicist Zhang Lin, was once again imprisoned for speaking out against the Communist government.  He had already spent 13 years behind bars for his involvement in planning the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and for publishing comments critical of the Chinese government online.
Zhang’s most recent imprisonment came after Anni – then ten years old – was kidnapped from her school by the authorities and detained overnight without food, water, a toilet, or even a blanket.  After she was returned to her father, she was told that she would not be allowed to attend school anymore because of her father’s pro-democracy activism.

Undaunted, her father led protests against the school and the Communist Party, demanding they give his daughter an education.  But during the protests, they were both detained by police and subsequently placed on house arrest.  They were able to escape last summer, but Chinese authorities caught up to them in July and once again arrested them.  When Zhang realized he would be returning to prison, he reached out to the international activist community for help.  He wanted to get Anni out of the country, as it was clear she would never be able to live a normal life in China.

Zhang is “terribly courageous,” Littlejohn told LifeSiteNews.  “He has been tortured horribly in jail.  For example, his older daughter Ruli has said that what the Chinese Communist Party will do is, they will put him in a cell with people with highly infectious fatal diseases, and murderers, and … they’ll tell the murderers, ‘Do whatever you want,’ and he has been beaten within an inch of his life.”
Littlejohn said the injuries Zhang has suffered in prison are so severe that since Anni was about eight years old, she was the one taking care of her father – cooking, cleaning and doing the household shopping.  (Anni’s mother divorced Zhang and left the family in 2011.)
According to Littlejohn, the government’s treatment of little Anni – detaining her, placing her under house arrest, and denying her an education – are “typical” tactics the Communist Party uses to try to silence dissidents.
“They did their best to silence Zhang Lin through incarceration and torture and denial of medical treatment, [but] they could not silence him,” Littlejohn said.  “So then they go after his kids.”
Littlejohn first met the Zhang family in 2013 during the protests at Anni’s school.  Anni and her father were interviewed for Boxun Radio at the same time as Littlejohn was being interviewed via satellite link.  During the broadcast, Littlejohn said, “Zhang Lin gave a fiery speech, Anni gave a fiery speech, I gave a fiery speech, and at the end of it, the interviewer said, ‘Would you and Anni like to speak to each other?  You’re a women’s rights activist in the United States; she’s an up-and-coming women’s rights activist in China; so of course we said yes.”

“I was able to say to her, ‘Anni, I am so impressed with you.  I’m impressed with your courage, I’m impressed with your intelligence, with your articulateness, with your poise; you know, that at ten years old you have the wherewithal to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party.  If you would remain true, if you can remain humble, if you could remain pure, you can help lead your people to freedom.’”

“That was our first conversation,” Littlejohn said.  “Our first conversation was over national radio.”  At the time, Littlejohn had no idea that Anni would soon be living in her home, being raised as her daughter.

It was in August that Zhang Lin was able to get a message out to Littlejohn saying he wanted Anni to go to the United States.  He asked Littlejohn to find a safe place for the little girl to live, where she could get an education and live a normal life, away from the constant surveillance and threats of the Communist Party.  Otherwise, he worried Anni might end up in a state-run orphanage.
Little did Zhang know that his request was an answer to ten years of Littlejohn’s prayers – her work with Chinese girls had given her a strong desire to parent one, but she knew that the Chinese government would never approve her request for adoption because of her human rights activism.
Littlejohn has devoted her life to fighting for women and girls in Asia. As a lawyer in the early 1990s, she represented a client who sought asylum in the United States after undergoing a forced sterilization in China.  Littlejohn was so shocked to learn about the widespread human rights violations targeting Asian women that she founded Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.

“I [asked Zhang], ‘Well, where is she going to go?’ and [Zhang said] ‘We don’t know.’  So I said, ‘Let me call my husband,’” Littlejohn recalled.

“My husband is the most awesome man in the world,” she added.  “It was just a phone call.  I didn’t even have to sit him down on the couch and say, ‘Honey, there’s a girl in China,’ you know, I just said, ‘Rob, remember Anni?  She needs to come to the United States; she needs a place to stay,’ and there was, like, this pause, and he said … ‘Is this the daughter from China that you’ve wanted for so many years, for ten years?’ And I said, ‘I think so.’”

Littlejohn and her husband agreed to take the little girl in, so activists in China went to work smuggling the girl and her sister out of the country.

“It was a long process to get [Anni] out of China and into the United States,” Littlejohn said.  “There are four people currently detained in China because they helped Anni [escape]. Four people are in jail right now because they helped Anni.  So the Chinese Communist Party let her go, but they made sure it was very, very costly.”

It was only after the girls’ arrival in the U.S. that Littlejohn learned that Anni – as the second child fathered by Zhang Lin – was almost a victim of China’s One-Child Policy – the same policy she has dedicated her life to destroying.

“The family planning police had come after [Anni’s] mother and had been pressuring her mother to abort her, to the extent that her mother was almost going crazy with the constant, constant, constant pressure,” Littlejohn said.  “Her mother had to hide. Zhang Lin was able to finally get permission for Anni to be born, but Anni could have been one of the 400 million lives that have been prevented by the One-Child Policy … as far as I’m concerned, every one of those lives that was prevented could have been Anni, could have been my own daughter.”

Since the girls’ arrival in the U.S., they have been focused on learning English and acclimating to their new lives.  Anni has taken a liking to hamburgers, and enjoys playing the piano.  Meanwhile, Ruli has started to speak out more about the human rights violations her family has endured, penning an open letter to world leaders on the recent 25^th anniversary of Tiananmen Square in which she slammed the Chinese government for “doing their utmost to persecute people, even reaching their evil claws to a ten-year-old child,” and divulging more details about the abuse their father endured at the hands of the Communist Party.

It is Littlejohn’s hope that Anni will someday follow in both her families’ footsteps.
“Anni has the personality … of a leader,” Littlejohn told LifeSiteNews.  “She is very charismatic, [and has a] very strong personality. … [She is] smart like her father and a survivor of the One-Child Policy, and someday I would love to see her take over the reins of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.”

Source: LifeSite News

Abortion, Gay Marriage and Illegal Immigration

What do abortion, gay ‘marriage’ and government-sanctioned illegal immigration have in common?

As I write these words, thousands of Mexicans, many of them using small children as stalking horses, are pouring across the border of my country into Texas, against federal law, with the explicit encouragement of the branch of our government charged with the duty to execute that law.
And judges in two other states, many orbits out of their juridical authority, have struck down statutes stipulating that two and two make four, that a dog is not a cat, that fish swim in water, and that it takes a man and a woman to make a marriage, on the grounds that the statutes were irrational.
And the president of my country, for two years, has been altering the new health-care law by fiat, not only delaying implementation of its rules more numerous than the sands on the seashore, but changing their terms and choosing who will have to abide by them. The country does not care, since everyone seems to regard it as “his” law, as if he were a king, and not merely the executive of the people's representatives, whose law it is, for better or for worse.

What all of these things have in common is a hatred of boundaries: a refusal to honor what makes a thing the kind of thing it is, and therefore a refusal to observe the limits of one's own business, whether moral or political.

And in a thousand clinics and hospitals from San Diego to Saint John's, a needle injecting salt, or a scalpel to cut, or scissors to snip, or a vacuum tube to suck out, is invading the warm haven of the womb, to end the life of a child whose parents would not honor the holiness of marriage or the inviolable right of the innocent to live.

And in a little old French village on the Atlantic coast, the caretakers of a fortress-museum are preparing for a big celebration in two weeks, to honor men who sow the seed of human life in the place of evacuation and disease, or who cruise bars and secluded rest stops for the anonymous fling.
And the solons of death-spiraling California have ordered schools to allow boys to use locker rooms with girls if the boys in question say that they are girls. And scientists, for what boon to mankind we are not to know, have been welding human genes with those of pigs, though no pig as yet has been found to say he is human. And Catholic school administrators in Ontario have proclaimed themselves “co-parents” of children whom they can neither number nor name, conferring upon themselves the right to overrule parents who have not learned to like the taste of the progressive pie a la mode. 
What all of these things have in common is a hatred of boundaries: a refusal to honor what makes a thing the kind of thing it is, and therefore a refusal to observe the limits of one's own business, whether moral or political.

When God made the world, He made things, with their characteristic boundaries. That is what the sacred author of Job insists upon. God said to Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” And, “Who shut up the sea within doors, when it broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb,” and said, “to here shall you come, but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed?”
Likewise in Genesis we see that God divides and distinguishes when He creates, not only when He divides the light from the darkness, and sets the firmament between heaven and earth, and orders the waters into one place so that the dry land may appear. He does so when He makes every living thing after its kind, a crucial phrase for understanding the whole. The kinds are so by means of boundaries: an apple tree brings forth apple blossoms after its kind; birds flock together and mate after their kinds. Man too is made after his kind, male and female; and it is characteristic of man to be made by God, for God: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
That explains the single small but necessary “boundary” which God sets for Adam and Eve: the prohibition against breaching the prerogative of God. They must not eat of the fruit of a single tree, nor even touch the tree, lest they die. It is nothing more, and nothing less, than to acknowledge that they are made in the image of God, which is also to say that they are not God. 

We know the rest of the story. The first breacher of order, the first transgressor, the first pretender to be what he is not, the first intruder into the integrity of a fellow living being, the serpent-puppeting devil, the “liar and murderer from the beginning,” persuades Adam and Eve that they can be more than they are by being other than what they are. They eat, and to their dismay find themselves all the more painfully aware of their most obvious and vulnerable boundary. They hide their naked skin from one another, and their stripped consciences from God.

I wish to assert several things about our hatred of boundaries. It ultimately must be hatred of kinds of things, an impatience with nature, including our own. It must therefore riddle us with holes, as judges, teachers, executives, doctors, legislators, the promoters of disordered and boundless libido, and even parents will not honor what is proper to another – the innocence of children, the life of a baby in the womb, the integrity of marriage, the authority of the mother and father over the school, the prescriptive rights of common people in their folkways. But they cannot do so without perforating themselves likewise. That kind of all-lying and all-attacking pride is a universal solvent; nothing on earth can contain it. It devours the hands that spill it.

 

Source: LifeSite News

China and Abortion

One-child policy drives Chinese father of four to suicide

one child policy

Co-authored with Paul Wilson
China’s draconian one-child policy has claimed many victims—hundreds of millions of unborn children have lost their lives, tens of thousands of women have died from botched abortions and sterilizations, and tens of thousands more have committed suicide to end the pain of late-term, forced abortions—but Wang Guangrong’s story is particularly tragic.
Wang, a 37-year old Chinese father of four, had long been persecuted by local government officials for daring to flout China’s restrictions against multiple children. He had been subjected to heavy fines, had his livestock confiscated, and his children declared to be non-persons.

What kind of a country leaves loving fathers like Wang Guangrong with no way to help his own children but to take his own life?

Things came to a head when Wang sought to have his children, three daughters and one son, enrolled in the local school. Public education in China is free, at least up to junior high school, but local officials insisted that Wang pay another round of heavy fines before agreeing to admit his children. After the previous rounds of fines and punishments, Wang and his wife were destitute.
They had nothing left to give the government—except Wang’s life. Public suicides in protest of official wrongdoing have a long history in China. So Wang decided to end his life in the hope that this would shame local government officials into allowing his children to attend school. That way, they would have the chance at a better life that an education would provide them with.
A British newspaper, the Daily Express, interviewed Wang’s wife, Wu Jinmin, who explained that her husband grew desperate after his children were denied schooling. “He couldn't take it anymore,” said Wu. “‘What did we bring them into the world for, to be as dumb as cattle?’ he said to me. ‘I cannot see my children grow up uneducated.’ And then he cut his wrists.”

Wang’s sacrifice was not in vain. When the domestic and international press picked up on the story, local government officials were quick to engage in damage control. They promised to compensate his widow for the loss of her husband and even pledged to build a new house for her and the children.
We are glad that Wang’s widow and children will not be left to starve in the shadowy world that China’s illegal children occupy. But millions of other children of the shadows—“black” children, as they are called in China—have not been nearly as lucky. They have not just been abandoned by the Chinese state, they have been positively ostracized by a government which refuses to feed, house, clothe, or educate these lost children in any way.

One sees them begging on the streets, or working in sweatshops, or hawking cheap trinkets to passers-by, all in a desperate effort to survive. Their only crime is that they were born without official permission in a state where birth permits are mandatory.
 
None of this is any secret, of course. The Chinese people are constantly barraged with anti-natal propaganda, and are well aware of the extensive system of punishments that awaits those like Wang who violate the misnamed “family planning policy.” Everyone in China understands that having multiple children makes you—and your “black” children—enemies of the state.

We would not have predicted that the one-child policy would have endured this long, given its devastating effects on Chinese society. Suicides, forced abortions, sex-selection abortion—all are rampant in China. China’s bachelor population already numbers in the tens of millions, while its population of elderly is also in the tens of millions.

What kind of a government considers it a crime to bear too many children, and punishes those who do? What kind of a country leaves loving fathers like Wang Guangrong with no way to help his own children but to take his own life?
Reprinted with permission from the Population Research Institute.

Source: LifeSite News

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California and Abortionists

Christian leader calls California rate increase for abortionists “insanely distorted health care”

8:17 am, Jun 24, 2014 Lauren Enriquez


The Catholic bishop of Sacramento, California did not mince words when he responded to the recent California State Budget, which reveals that the California Department of Health Care Services will be allocating a 40% higher rate for abortionists. Meanwhile, all other hospitals and providers continue to suffer from a 10% cut in their rates thanks to Medi-Cal budget cuts. The bishop, the Most Rev. Jaime Soto, is concerned for the women and families who will suffer from what he describes as distorted priority in the budget.

Bishop Soto. Picture from Cal Catholic.

Despite the fact that millions of Californians are pro-life on abortion, Rev. Soto says, “buried deeply in the State Budget and in the Medi-Cal Estimates provided by the Department of Health Care Services [DHCS], is the fact that at a time when all health care provider rates remain slashed by 10% and women and families are struggling to find doctors, nurses, and hospitals willing and able to provide essential medical care, abortion providers like Planned Parenthood and others are poised to receive a 40% increase in the fees they receive for performing abortions.”

Dismayed by the move, Bishop Soto called the situation “insanely distorted healthcare,” pointing out that millions of California women and families are currently unable to access basic medical care due to the budget cuts. He said that the legislators who approved the abortion-heavy budget are pushing their own preference for abortion onto women, who will now have much more ease of access to abortion — which they may not want — than to essential medical care.

The bishop concluded with a plea that concerned Californians call on the governor, Jerry Brown, and the DHCS to “undo this wrong,” insisting, “Women deserve better. Children are not a threat to California. We believe abortion is bad health care for women and families.”  The California Catholic Conference has issued the following Action Alert, urging all Californians to take a stand against the budget’s abortion funding.

 

Source: LiveAction News

 

Sad and Terrifying News

Meriam Ibrahim Arrested Again While Trying to Leave Country After Initial Release

by Steven Ertelt 

Meriam Ibrahim, the Christian woman who was jailed and forced to give birth in prison in the Muslim nation of Sudan and who was released yesterday after a court overturned a verdict of apostasy, has been re-arrested.


CNN has more details on what happened to Ibrahim and she and her husband and newborn daughter Mara attempted to leave the country:

A Sudanese woman whose death sentence for refusing to renounce her Christian faith was revoked has been rearrested, her legal team told CNN Tuesday.

Meriam Ibrahim, 27, and her husband, Daniel Wani, were arrested Tuesday at an airport in Sudan’s capital as they were trying to leave the African country, Ibrahim’s legal team said.

Details about why the couple were arrested weren’t immediately available.

Ibrahim, 27, was convicted in May by a Sudanese court on charges of apostasy, or the renunciation of faith, and adultery — charges that led to international controversy. Ibrahim was eight months pregnant when she was sentenced to suffer 100 lashes and then be hanged.

But an appeals court in Sudan this month ruled that a lower court’s judgment against her was faulty, and she was released, according to her lawyer.

Reuters confirmed the reports, indicating: “Sudanese authorities re-arrested a Sudanese woman on Tuesday hours after she was freed from death row, and detained her husband and two children as the family tried to board a plane in Khartoum, a security source said. The official did not comment on the reasons for Tuesday’s re-arrest.“

Reports yesterday indicated the Sudan court has reversed itself and would free Ibraham, who was forced to give birth in chains in a Sudanese prison as she awaited a death sentence ad brutal flogging by Muslim officials.

“The appeal court ordered the release of Mariam Yahya [Ibrahim] and the cancellation of the [previous] court ruling,” Sudan’s SUNA news agency said on Monday. The London Daily Mail, late Monday, posted a picture of her out of prison with her family.
Ibrahim, 26, joined the Catholic Church shortly before she married U.S. citizen Daniel Bicensio Wani in December 2011.

Ibrahim was not sentenced to die for her Christian faith for two years, until such a time as her newborn baby girl Maya is weaned, but she could have been flogged within days if her appeal of her death sentence was thrown out. LifeNews recently covered the terrible nature of the flogging she would have had to endure and how it would have literally take her skin off of her body.

Source: LifeSite News

Sex Selection Abortion

Human Rights News

Planned Parenthood demands lawmakers kill pro-life amendments

 

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California Planned Parenthood affiliates launched an alert to members of the state legislature, urging lawmakers to kill all pro-life measures, including amendments that would ban sex-selective abortions. The memo, dated June 12, stated that the Golden State is a “pro-choice state,” and amendments to restrict abortion would greatly threaten abortion access.
In the memo, affiliates said restrictions like sex-selective abortion bans, required ultrasounds, or regulations on abortion providers and drugs, “do not improve women’s health,” but limit access to reproductive care. Additional restrictions on abortion are meant to block women seeking “safe, legal abortions,” the memo said.


The alert was sent on behalf of over 110 Planned Parenthood locations in the state, and threatened lawmakers that any vote for pro-life legislation would be included on the PPAC Legislative Scorecard.
In May, the California Assembly Health Committee rejected a measure that would have eliminated the practice of “gender-cide” in the state. AB 2336, sponsored by Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, was voted down 13-6 on party lines. Although the number of pro-life citizen advocates outnumbered pro-choice proponents, Democrat committee members said eliminating the practice of sex-selective abortions would impose “too much of a burden to abortion access.”
“Despite how blue a state California has become in recent years, this vote was jaw-dropping to me and other pro-life advocates in California,” said Johnathan Keller of the California Family Council. “Our efforts to stop the push towards abortion-at-all-costs have been thwarted by the consistent mantra of needing to protect women.”

Source: LiveAction News

Life is Lifesaving

 

 

 

Unborn baby alerts doctors and saves his mother’s life

By Kristi Burton Brown

Byron Sanders

In October, 2013, Byron Sanders told a Dallas, Texas, audience the true story of how his wife’s life was saved by their unborn son. It’s a truly remarkable story – one that proves the humanity and value of the unborn, as well as their capacity for great love.
Yes, as Byron Sanders’ family discovered, mothers need their children.
Over two months before little Bryce was due to be born, his mother, Celeste, went in for a prenatal checkup. That day, Bryce wasn’t moving around as much as he normally did, and the doctor decided that more monitoring was needed.

While it wasn’t supposed to be a big deal, the medical team ended up being quite concerned with what they discovered. Bryce’s heartbeat was too slow.
But also, Celeste was suffering from placenta accreta. This condition could cause her to bleed to death, and would require the removal of her uterus.
Bryce was delivered by c-section, and despite his underdeveloped lungs, he came out wailing bravely. Next, though, it was Celeste’s turn to fight for her life. And, as Byron believes, a big Someone and a little someone were also fighting for her.

Celeste’s condition was even worse than the doctor had expected:

The worst is placenta percreta, where the placenta grows through the uterus and begins attaching to surrounding organs. It’s extremely dangerous and extremely rare. One out of every 50,000 births. A high bleed risk has elevated to a potential breaking of the dam. Only a couple of decades ago, this was a death sentence. Today, if doctors are surprised by this, it’s still extremely life-threatening. Our doctors were surprised. …

They took her uterus and cut her bladder in seven different places. She lost her entire body’s volume of blood, and then some. They used 14 units of blood on her, when most adults only have 11. But she was alive. Eight hours of procedures later, with the work of eight surgeons, but she was alive. Praise God.

She would later tell me that I looked at her with a sense of wonder that made her a bit uneasy when they finally wheeled her out of the operating room and into the intensive care unit. And she was right. Based on what had just happened, I was wondering how our reunion was possible. Yet there she was, smiling. A mother of two with a brand new mama’s boy to spoil. I had one main person to thank: Bryce.

Byron shares that, after this near-death experience, Celeste came up with the perfect pair of middle names for their tiny son: Paul William, which means “small protector.” If Bryce’s heart rate hadn’t dropped that day, and if he hadn’t been so very still, the doctor likely wouldn’t have ordered the necessary monitoring that Celeste so desperately needed.
Who knows if either of them would be here today to tell the story?
As Byron puts it:

At nearly 4 years old today, [Bryce] has grown up to be the roughest, toughest fella who’s willing to challenge the law of gravity every chance he gets. He was fine. But he knew Mommy wasn’t.

I believe Somebody gave him a mission. “OK, listen here little buddy. I need you to do something for me. Your mom is in danger. But nobody knows it. If we wait, she’ll have to come home sooner than I want her to. The only way we can keep that from happening is for you to be very, very still. Can you do that for me? Good.” If you ask Bryce today if he remembers being in Mommy’s tummy, he’ll say yes. He’ll say, “God was with me in mommy’s belly. And he told me good job.”

I’ll say. He put his little lungs on the line and told the doctors the only way he knew how that his Mommy was in trouble. It’s just miraculous that everyone who needed to, listened.

Now that you’ve gotten a small taste, listen to Byron tell the whole amazing story himself in the video.
Editor’s note. This appeared at liveactionnews.org.

Source: NRLC News

Late Term Abortion

 

Blackburn: We Have a Moral Obligation to Protect Women and Babies from Dangerous Late-Term Abortions

Calls on Senate to Pass Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act

Editor’s note. One year ago today the House passed H.R. 1797, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, intended to protect women and babies from dangerous late-term abortions on a vote of 228 to 196. The measure has languished in the Senate under the leadership of pro-abortion Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nv.)

Pro-life Congressman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)

Today called on the Senate to take up and pass H.R. 1797.
“I have always believed America is better than abortion. We have a moral obligation to end dangerous late-term abortions in order to protect women and these precious babies from criminals like Kermit Gosnell,” Blackburn said. “The struggle to end dangerous late-term abortions is not over simply because the House passed H.R. 1797. It will take the continuing effort of putting pressure on the Senate to not abdicate their responsibility to human life.

“The House of Representatives has spoken, as have the American people – this legislation should not languish in the Senate for another day. It is time the blight of late-term abortion was taken seriously by Senate Majority Leader Reid and time we learn where Senate Democrats stand in the fight to protect viable life. By refusing to allow H.R. 1797 to come to a vote, Senator Reid is tacitly endorsing the abhorrent crimes of Kermit Gosnell and others who prey on the most vulnerable people in our society.”

Blackburn was a leader of the bipartisan effort on June 18, 2013, when the House approved H.R. 1797 to provide nationwide protection for unborn children who are capable of feeling pain, beginning at 20 weeks fetal age (equivalent to “22 weeks of pregnancy,” the beginning of the sixth month).

Source: NRLC News

Brain Dead??????

 

What if Jahi McMath is Alive?

By Wesley J. Smith

Jahi McMath

A news story reports that Jahi McMath, declared dead by the State of California, is being maintained at a Catholic hospital in New Jersey. More, that she may be becoming responsive. From the San Jose Mercury News story:

KPIX reported that she is receiving round-the-clock care and has responded to commands, moving specific parts of her body when asked. Attorney Christopher Dolan, who represents Jahi’s family, would not comment on her location.

In a statement to Bay Area News Group, he said that “Jahi’s physical condition is much better than when she was at Children’s Hospital,” adding that predictions that her organs would shut down and her heart would cease pumping had not come to pass. “I have seen Jahi and none of what Children’s (Hospital) said would happen to her as inevitable physical death has occurred. I have seen much more movement in Jahi, response to her mother’s touch and voice and what appears to be movement in response to voice command.”

We should be cautious here. But if​ these changes are indeed occurring–which will need to be demonstrated by objective medical testing–she isn’t dead.
What might that mean?

First, that she would become entitled to receive benefits for her care. To prevail, in my opinion, Jahi’s mother would have to prove evidentially that her daughter is alive by demonstrating, for example, that she has reflexes that originate in the brain.

Second, it would challenge the concept of brain death in the minds of many, forcing the medical community on the defensive. At the very least, I think it would lead to universal and rigorous mandatory criteria for its determination, something now sorely lacking. It might also require application of the more sophisticated brain scanning techniques now coming on line, which have shown that many people thought to be in a persistent unconscious condition, are actually aware.
Third, it would create a nightmare firestorm for Children’s Hospital of Oakland, not only legally but with regard to the trust it is held in the community.

Fourth, it would validate Judge Evilio Grillo’s wisdom–achieved via a settlement–that sometimes it is better not to coerce dissenting families in medical controversies to give up their quest for the “miracle.” In this regard, it would also validate the work of Bobby Schindler and the Terri Schiavo Life and Hope Network, who and which, stuck their necks out pretty far in this case to help Jahi’s family.

Fifth, and ironically, it would empower those bioethicists who want to expand organ harvesting from the dead to the profoundly cognitively disabled. Dead isn’t what matters, these advocates say, but the loss of “personhood.” They would make Jahi’s case as a battle flag to pressure society to stop worrying about brain death and start harvesting unquestionably living people like Terri Schiavo.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The bodies of young people who are brain dead sometimes last far longer than those of adults. The key question is whether she has demonstrable brain function.

Source: NRLC News

Beautiful Story

Three months later “stillborn baby” thriving

By Dave Andrusko
Good news—indeed, great news—is always welcomed, even if we learn about it after the fact.

Back on March 8, Robin Cyr was about to deliver her full-term baby. But the baby got wedged in the birth canal. After a difficult, complicated labor, Cyr delivered her nine-pound baby girl around three in the morning.

But she wasn’t breathing. After 25 minutes of frantic effort to revive the baby, doctors IWK Health Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, thought all was lost.
Cyr explained to Ruth Davenport of the Metro Halifax News that her aunt, Pearleen Shephard, told her, “Your baby girl’s gone,” and that the baby’s body had already been taken out of the room.
“But shortly after getting the devastating news, a stuttering, breathless nurse rushed back into the room to say the baby had started breathing again,” Davenport reported.

“My aunt was there, and it’s a blessing because her prayers are very deep and strong,” said Cyr, speaking in a whisper through tears at the hospital. “When she started praying, my baby came back.”
Cyr said her doctor apologized. “He said, ‘I’m very sorry I gave up on your baby when I did, because I turned around and she’s breathing on her own.’”

Three months later Cyr told Metro Halifax News that her baby girl is “doing everything on time,” adding, “She holds her head up, she turns to your voice, she smiles.”
But the search for a reason continues–according to Davenport, “a review is underway to determine what, if any explanation, there may be for the baby’s apparent resurrection.”
But Pearleen Shephard has an explanation. Doctors were not the only one in the room March 8.
“It’s a miracle, and God is doing his work,” she said. “The doctors took their hands off her. They called it. She was gone. So she truly, truly is a miracle.”

Cyr, 34, had one name already picked out, but decided to change her baby girl’s name. She is “Mireya,” a Spanish name that means “miracle.”

Source: NRLC News

Abortion and Breast Cancer

 

Censoring Studies on Abortion and Breast Cancer: How Science and Free Speech are Stifled

By Mary L. Davenport, M.D.
Editor’s note. This appeared at Reproductive Research Audit.  What follows first is RRA’s introduction to Dr. Davenport’s essay.
Reproductive Research Audit covers studies that address the most controversial topics in reproductive health research, including the long-disputed (but recently affirmed) link between induced abortion and preterm birth, the contested link between induced abortion and breast cancer (ABC link), and the suppression of studies that suggest abortion may contribute to problems in mental health. RRA covers these topics not just in spite of widespread hostility toward researchers and suppression of these findings, but due to the fact that such persecution and censorship is contrary to standards of scientific discourse and intellectual honesty.
Today RRA welcomes this guest post from Dr. Mary Davenport who not only expands upon research in these areas but offers her personal account of such censorship in the medical community. This information is even more timely in light of this most recent study that found a 2.8 fold increase in breast cancer risk in relation to induced abortion. RRA is grateful to Dr. Davenport for sharing her article which first appeared at The American Thinker.

In the U.S. we are used to abortion advocates claiming that the risk of elective abortion is relatively trivial, and major medical organizations denying any link between abortion and breast cancer. Now a powerful new study from China published [in February] by Yubei Huang and colleagues suggests otherwise. The article, a meta-analysis pooling 36 studies from 14 provinces in China, showed that abortion increased the risk of breast cancer by 44% with at least one abortion, and 76% with at least two abortions and 89% with at least three abortions.

This new article is another example of the recent excellent scholarship on abortion in peer-reviewed journals coming out of the People’s Republic. There is no bigger data base than China, where there are an average of 8.2 million pregnancy terminations every year, and 40 abortions for every 100 live births. Chinese researchers and physicians are unencumbered by abortion politics, and do not cover up data showing long term effects of induced abortion, as do their U.S. counterparts in governmental, professional and consumer organizations.

Huang’s study shows an even stronger increase than the 30% higher risk found in the 1996 meta-analysis by Joel Brind and colleagues on abortion as an independent risk factor for breast cancer. The Brind meta-analysis, combining the results of 23 studies, gave a more complete view than any single study. But even though it was the most comprehensive study on the topic at the time, it was disregarded by establishment medical groups.

Brind, a professor of biology and endocrinology at Baruch College, is not unique in having experienced censorship of his findings for the past two decades, including at the notorious National Cancer Institute (NCI) workshop on “Early reproductive events and breast cancer” in 2003. This important workshop was manipulated by its chairperson NCI epidemiologist Louise Brinton to suppress critical information on the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link. The main speaker on abortion and breast cancer, Leslie Bernstein, who had never published on this topic, openly said, “I would never be a proponent of going around and telling them (women) that having babies is the way to reduce your risk,” even though it has been an established fact, conceded by abortion proponents that this is true.

This workshop was designed to influence subsequent governmental policy, academic scholarship, physicians, and popular perception of the topic, and succeeded in doing so. It also influenced the individual life trajectories of many women who were led to believe, falsely, that an abortion decision would not have an impact on their future breast cancer risk. Because there is a lag time between abortion and the appearance of breast cancer, the effect of an abortion is not immediate for an individual. And abortion is only one of a number of factors influencing breast cancer risk, such as family history, use of hormones, and age at first childbirth. The majority of women who have breast cancer have never had an abortion. Nonetheless, there will be some women who develop breast cancer and die from it, impacted by the failure to inform them of the ABC link, or its dismissal by establishment medical and consumer groups such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Susan G. Komen Foundation. This is an ethical breach of huge proportions.
The new Chinese meta-analysis not only concerns the ABC link on an individual level, but also confirms the observation of statistician Patrick Carroll, who predicted the rise in breast cancer in several European countries following legalization of abortion. Again, because of the lag time between abortion and the appearance of breast cancer, the link is not immediately apparent. Carroll’s work is important because he finds that not only is induced abortion an independent risk factor for breast cancer (separate from such factors as late child-bearing) but that it is the best predictive factor for forecasting a nation’s future breast cancer rates. Nations such as China, with traditionally low breast cancer rates, are now seeing an increase, many years following their legalization of abortion.

Unfortunately, the ABC link is not unique in suffering a systematic cover-up by ideologically-driven medical organizations intent on suppressing information about complications of abortion. Preterm birth is the leading cause of neonatal death, in the taking the lives of hundreds of thousands of infants annually, with a cost of 26 billion dollars in the U.S. alone. It has risen 20% between 1990-2006. It causes cerebral palsy, long-term intellectual and visual handicaps, and much suffering. There are 135 studies from diverse locations world-wide that link abortion and preterm birth.The relationship is most pronounced with multiple abortions, and very premature infants born before 28 weeks gestation, the “million dollar babies” that spend months in neonatal intensive care units. Preterm birth disproportionately affects African Americans.

Yet the medical community, WHO, and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) have long ignored this association in their official publications and task forces to combat the problem. Another big cover-up involves the psychological consequences of abortion, especially suicide, which are inadequately acknowledged by mainstream groups because they conflict with the propaganda-driven view of abortion as a health “benefit.”

This year I was personally prevented from delivering a paper at a conference at the last minute, along with two other women physicians presenting papers on abortion complications, at the MWIA (Medical Women’s International Association) in Seoul, South Korea. These were academically sound presentations on maternal mortality, psychological issues, and preterm birth that had been accepted months earlier. Shelley Ross, the Secretary-General of the organization personally barged into an interview with Korean journalists to attempt to prevent us from speaking to them, almost causing a fist fight. In a press release regarding this incident, she claimed that the presentations threatened a woman’s reproductive rights, and further asserted that “the evidence is overwhelming and undisputable that a woman’s control over her reproductive health is linked to…the health of women and children.” But if she is talking about abortion, it is obvious that breast cancer and suicide do not improve the health of women, and preterm birth and abortion obviously do not improve the health of a woman’s future children or the aborted babies.

It is a disgrace that a more honest discourse about difficult medical topics can be found in the People’s Republic of China than in the USA. The censorship of medical journals, prevention of conference presentations, denial of grant money and faculty promotions, and self-censorship of honest scholars in academic medicine who want to tell the truth but feel they cannot, impoverishes us, and should not be tolerated.

Source: NRLC News

Abortion Survivor

The Secrets Families Keep

By Melissa Ohden
Editor’s note. In 1977, Melissa survived a “failed” abortion. She has spoken multiple times at the National Right to Life Convention and will again this year in Louisville. The 2014 convention begins in eight days! For more information about registering for the convention, go to nrlconvention.com. This article first ran in 2012.

Melissa Ohden

Dominique Moceanu. It didn’t matter that when she was an Olympic gold medalist in 1996, I was 18 years old. I still wanted to be like her. As a young girl, I had been obsessed with gymnastics. My family couldn’t afford gymnastics classes, so watching it on TV was the closest I ever got to the sport. Even at the age of 18, I still glued myself to the TV whenever gymnastics were on, and my mother still apologized for never being able to give me the opportunity to participate in the sport. And there was Dominique, at the age of 14, along with the other members of the “Magnificent Seven” medaling in Atlanta. I was so impressed with her talent, her poise, her personality.

Little did I know that day in 1996 as I watched her in the Olympics that Dominique’s lives and mine were more alike than I ever could have imagined. No, I may never know what it’s like to be an Olympic gymnast, but I do know what it’s like to have a secret adoption in the family (and in my case the abortion that preceded it), to have that secret come to light, and to have siblings involved.
As the AP and Life News reported last week, in her recently released memoir, “Off Balance,” Dominique discusses how, in 2007, she received a letter from a young woman who identified herself as her biological sister who had been placed for adoption. As Moceanu states in a recent 20/20 interview, “It was the biggest bombshell of my life. I had this sister that was born who was given up for adoption, and I never knew it.”

When Dominique confronted her parents, Dumitru and Camilla, she learned that her sister had been born with serious health issues, including not having any legs. Her Romanian parents were encouraged to make an adoption plan for her due to the difficulties and costs that would come from raising their daughter. Dominique reports that she has since met with her sister a number of times, and that their similarities are “mind-blowing”– “the tones in our voices, our handwriting, the way we laugh and chuckle.”

Interestingly enough, just as Moceanu discovered this great family secret back in 2007, it was in that very same year that I finally found my own biological family after ten years of searching. When I found my biological family and had some communication with them, I learned that I have a number of siblings, including two on the maternal side and one on the paternal side. Sadly, in the past five years, I have never had the opportunity to know any more about my siblings or have the chance to meet them. And although I’ve had contact with my maternal grandparents and I have a close relationship with my paternal grandfather and a paternal great aunt, by and large, I am still much of a family secret. I’m the other side of Dominique’s story—like her adopted sister.
Believe it or not, I live in the very same city as my biological sister on the paternal side of my family. Of all the places in the world, I live in the very same city of about 80,000 people. Yet five years after finding out about me, my biological father’s family has not been able to navigate the waters of the great family secret that was held for 30 years and enable us to connect with one another. The fact that my sister is still young (in high school), and that she is still dealing with the loss of our father in 2008 creates many obstacles to connecting, and I understand and respect our family’s decision to not yet tell her about me, but it’s incredibly hard.

Little does my sister know, just like Dominique didn’t know for years about her own sister, that I exist. Little does she know that she has a sister who survived a failed abortion and was then placed for adoption. Little does she know that this sister has a picture of her, obtained from their grandfather, that hangs on the side of her sister’s refrigerator, and that it is with great pride and joy that her sister reads about her academic and musical achievements in the newspaper and has kept the clippings chronicling all of it. Little does she know that her sister prays for her every night, and looks forward to someday meeting her. Little does she know that many a day her sister wonders if the young woman that she sees at the mall, at the pool, at the grocery store might be her.

Dominique Moceanu’s story has brought me a lot of joy. As I so un-eloquently stated on Facebook the other night, I’m so glad that her sister was adopted and not aborted. Subconsciously, I guess you could say that I am grateful that her opportunity at life and being loved was different than mine. And I have found great joy and great hope in the meeting of these two sisters. It has renewed my hope for my own life.

Whether it’s said out loud or not, Dominique’s family story is a lot like many of our stories. Every family has its’ secrets. Many of those secrets revolve around the issues of abortion and adoption, and in cases like mine, both. Whether it’s said out loud or not, the Moceanu family story also speaks volumes about the sanctity of human life and about the loving option of adoption. Although I can’t imagine how difficult it was for their family to carry the secret of the adoption and then have it come to light, they have nothing to be ashamed of. Adoption is nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed of.
And in the case of my life and families like mine who have experienced abortion, I believe that it (abortion) needs to be talked about. As I have seen throughout my work as a therapist and throughout my work in pro-life ministry, abortion affects families, whether it’s talked about or not. And it isn’t until the abortion is finally talked about, that family members can truly understand why they’ve heard, felt, experienced what they have within the family. It isn’t until the truth is brought to light that all family members can begin to heal.

As for me, I will continue to patiently await the day that I will get to communicate with my sister and even my other siblings, God willing. I will continue to pray for them, for my entire family. And while she may no longer be a gymnast, I am still a Dominique Moceanu fan, and now a fan of her whole family, too.
Editor’s note. This appeared on Melissa’s webpage  and is reprinted with permission.

abortion, abortion survivor, adoption

 

Source: NRLC News

 

Assisted Suicide and Religious Liberty

 

The “unthinkable” comes to Scotland while the U.S. Supreme Court is about to rule in a battle over religious freedom

By Dave Andrusko

Hobby Lobby’s David and Barbara Green

For the last post of the day, I’d like to revisit two stories we ran Tuesday.
In February when Belgium legalized the euthanasia of children, we all knew two things. The “protections/safeguards” weren’t worth a plug nickel and that the virus would quickly spread.
I don’t know enough about Scotland to have predicted what are called “children’s charities” would come together to piggyback on efforts to legalize assisted suicide for adults, which is still illegal. That’s right, the slippery slope is so steep that an organization called “Together” has cautioned members of the Scottish Parliament not to set an age limitation of 16!

That organization includes two “children’s charities”–Barnardo’s and Save the Children.
Together bills itself as working to ensure the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is implemented in Scotland.

To that end there is a Parliamentary committee which is looking into the Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill. Under this bill, people as young as 16 with a “terminal illness or progressive life-shortening condition to be helped to commit suicide,” according to the Christian Institute.
But that’s not good enough (so to speak) for Together. It argues that under the Convention, “a child’s opinion on his or her healthcare ‘must be respected and given due weight’ in accordance with their ‘age and maturity,’” The Christian Institute reported. Where should the Scottish Parliament (the Holyrood) look for guidance? Together recommends (who else?) Belgium.
The anti-assisted suicide organization Care Not Killing responded, “Right-minded people will be baffled that such an idea can be advanced, not least from one organisation purporting to represent the interests of children. Such a monstrous idea should be unthinkable.”
It should be unthinkable, but it isn’t.
We also talked about the thinly-disguised attack on the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, one of the two family-run corporations whose challenge to the Obama mandate was heard by the Supreme Court. A decision is expected soon.

We pointed how lame was the attempt to portray Hobby Lobby as something just this side of subversive. I did not know it at the time, but Jonathan S. Tobin had written on the same topic for Commentary magazine’s website.

Tobin astutely notes that “rather than confining the debate to the question of constitutional rights, critics of the plaintiffs in Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius have done their best to portray the business owners who seek to strike down the government mandate as not merely wrong but a threat to liberty.”
His next sentences are particularly shrewd:

“In order to do this, the administration and its cheering section in the mainstream media have sought to transform the debate from one that centers on government using its power to force people of faith to choose between their religion and their business to the dubious notion that dissenters from the mandate wish to impose their beliefs on others.”

When we posted, we wrote about the “scandal” (to those who wish to marginalize the Green family) that the family is underwriting “a Bible curriculum they hope to place in public schools nationwide” as an elective and “building a huge museum dedicated to the Bible a few blocks from the Mall.”
Tobin cuts directly to the intolerance that is at the heart of this debate over religious liberty:

“Contrary to their government opponents in their lawsuit, the Hobby Lobby owners are not trying to force the actions of others to conform to their beliefs. What they want is to be left alone to practice their faith while also trying to persuade others to share it. Bible study may not be everyone’s cup of tea but the notion that it is a threat to democracy would have been hard to sell to this nation’s Founders. The attacks on the Greens illustrate the intolerance of openly expressed faith that is at the core of the mandate the administration is seeking to enforce. The Greens are no threat to the liberty of non-believers who need not visit their bible museum nor read the religious materials they publish. But a government, egged on by a liberal media establishment, that can’t tolerate Hobby Lobby’s practices is one that has little interest in defending anyone’s religious freedom. In such an atmosphere, it’s little wonder that Hobby Lobby’s advocates see the outcome of this case as a crucial moment in the fight to defend constitutional liberty.”

Source: NRLC News

Abortion Cliniuc

 

Turning a dismal former Planned Parenthood clinic “into a place of light and laughter”

By Dave Andrusko
Never in my experience have I ever encountered a better example of what Natalie Gross of the Lubbock Avalanche Journal calls “repurposing.”

In place of two Lubbock, Texas-area Planned Parenthood clinics, the Institute for Creative Learners is using one space to expand its outreach to children with learning differences and the other to operate a women’s clinic managed by another wing of the parent company, Generation Covenant.

“We were offered an amazing opportunity,” Merinda K. Condra, CEO of Generation Covenant, told Gross. “We were approached to take over the Planned Parenthood locations, their assets and the clinics, and we really viewed this location as an amazing place for Creative Learners.”
In a press release, Condra explained that the prospect of turning the abortion clinic on 67th street and Avenue M “into a place of light and laughter was a significant motivating factor.” Condra added, “[A]s an organization, we could see so much potential. We have a vision. We can already see the children we will serve playing in the courtyard — we can already hear their laughter.”
As a condition of taking over the abortion clinic and the (non-abortion) clinic located in Briercroft Office Park, also in Lubbock, Texas, all Planned Parenthood board members resigned and the abortion clinic was closed, Condra said.

Gross explained that The Institute for Creative Learners opened last year and focuses primarily on helping children with dyslexia. “However, the institute continues to grow and expand into other areas as well, and with 200 children scheduled for services this fall, the need for a larger location became evident.”

“Research shows that these children have an amazing propensity towards creativity,” Condra told Gross. “They are out-of-the box thinkers. They think in colors; they think in pictures. They’re the inventors, the entrepreneurs, the artists of their generation. What we want to do is make sure that their challenges with academic success don’t crush their self-esteem so they cannot achieve what God intended them to.”

What a joy that Generation Covenant also creatively thinks outside the box. They saw a place where life is destroyed and envisioned instead a haven for children who can get lost in a traditional school.
Where Planned Parenthood sees life in black and white—death to the “unwanted” and the “imperfect”—Condra and her associates think in the vibrant colors of life.

Where Planned Parenthood matter-of-factly crushes the heads of defenseless unborn babies, the Institute for Creative Learners works to ensure that difficulties in an academic setting do not crush the self-esteem of children who learn differently.
A great story that can be read at lubbockonline.com.

Source: NRLC News