Bobby Schindler: The President’s Torturous Dilemma

I spent a lot of time watching news coverage of President Obama’s recent speech at Notre Dame. I couldn’t help but be reminded of my sister Terri’s two-week ordeal that took place at the hospice facility where she was killed in March of 2005.

The was so much that was eerily similar—from the amount of media present and the pro-lifers who were there in prayer, to the dozens of people who were arrested for protesting against what was taking place.

Along with so many other Catholics, I found it profoundly disturbing that President Obama was not only invited to speak at a Catholic university but that he was given an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. It was what Vatican official Archbishop Raymond Burke referred to as the “source of the greatest scandal”.

However, just as disturbing to me was watching the Catholic students, parents and faculty praising President Obama by giving him standing ovations for his “can’t we all just get along about abortion” speech.

They seem to have forgotten the president’s extreme pro-abortion record when he was in the Illinois state senate and his already-lengthy actions in favor of abortion as president. His direct assault on the value and dignity of life and human rights runs completely contrary to Catholic teaching.

But that didn’t seem to diminish the red carpet treatment he received from Notre Dame President John Jenkins who invited Obama to speak. It is shocking and disheartening that a Catholic university would show such adoration for a president who has already been categorized as one of the most pro-death politicians to ever be elected to office.

Of course watching and listening to the media’s fawning coverage was just as difficult as listening to Obama himself. Indeed, the media would repeatedly insist that pro-lifers should try and find common ground with Obama’s position on abortion and embryonic stem cell research. It seems that the mainstream media wants to portray conservatives as a group that needs to adhere to the Obama administration’s policies and his vision of “change” or risk becoming extinct. As is frequently the case, they clearly just don’t get it.

Amidst all this media coverage I also reflected on Obama’s position on euthanasia and his offensive remark about Terri during the campaign. Then candidate Obama claimed his biggest “regret” as a senator was trying to stop Terri’s imposed death. This is especially scary because a growing number of health care experts are already warning us that Obama’s new health care plan could potentially open wide the door to euthanasia in our nation.

Make no mistake: President Obama’s position on how we should treat the most vulnerable members of our society is the same for disabled and medically vulnerable people as it is for innocent unborn children. In short, he seems to believe they fall outside the protection our nation offers. This is especially absurd, given his crusade to protect America’s sworn enemies from methods of “torture” (his word) that fall far short of what happens during an abortion or a euthanasia death by dehydration and starvation.

This same man who advocates unlimited abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy and regrets trying to save the innocent from a horrifying death by dehydration is doing everything is his power to protect the “rights” of the most merciless terrorists in our custody. His administration has even expressed outrage that caterpillars were put in a room with a terrorist as a form of torture. Since the average caterpillar is neither scary nor dangerous, it made me wonder how that would compare to depriving our most vulnerable American citizens—innocent of any crime—of food and water until they dehydrate to death. I find it ironic that he doesn’t seem worried about “regretting” what might happen if any of these terrorists are set free to attack America again.

During all this Notre Dame controversy I also heard more than once from our media that “54 percent of Catholics voted for Obama.” That is a number I never agreed with because I believe that zero percent of true Catholics voted for Obama. If you adhere to the teachings of the Catholic Church, you did not vote for him. “Catholics” who voted for Obama chose the “change” and false “hope” offered by a dynamic candidate over the values of their faith. To my mind, they are not Catholics at all.

It was, however, heartening to read of the hundreds of thousands of Catholics (including nearly 100 cardinals and bishops) who did object to the president speaking at Notre Dame and also to see all of the people who showed up to protest Notre Dame’s decision.

Words have meaning and one can only hope that Obama believes in his own rhetoric about change, because if his position does not change with respect to life—and he remains an advocate for the continued death of our most vulnerable—then Notre Dame will be forever associated with giving such a person not only a platform for his position but a prestigious award for it as well. What a badge of shame for a previously great university.

A fairly well-balanced article on euthanasia.

Thread by me.

Assisted suicide debate beginning in Lake County

In the Oscar winning movie “Million Dollar Baby,” the female boxer Maggie Fitzgerald ends up paralyzed from the neck down and asks her coach to end her life.

“I got what I needed. I got it all. Don’t let ‘em [the doctors] keep taking it away from me,” she begs.

When those words were uttered in 2004 the debate over assisted suicide was underway, but today the debate strongly rages on in the national spotlight.

Jerry Dincin, Lake County resident and president of the Final Exit Network, thinks this is an issue that people need to start thinking about.

“This is going to be the ultimate civil rights issue of the 21st century,” said Dincin. “People don’t like to talk about it, but they will have to soon.”

Bonnie Quirke, the vice-president of Lake County Right to Life, believes that the assisted suicide debate is no different than the abortion debate.

“They have just moved the geography of the debate from the womb to the ward,” said Quirke.

The 2005 case of Terri Schiavo brought this debate to the forefront of most American’s minds, but Quirke believes the issue really began in 1973, the year of the Roe decision.

“The whole problem started in ’73,” said Quirke. “When you take one class of people and segregate them from the human family, it becomes easier to segregate anyone from the human family.”

. . .

This is simply heartbreaking on so many levels.

Thread by NYer.

Woman aborts other mother’s last embryo (implanted in wrong patient)

A MOTHER desperate to have a second child has told how she lost her last IVF embryo when the NHS implanted it into the wrong patient.

When the other woman found out that the embryo was not hers, she aborted it.

Details of the blunder raise fresh questions about the way IVF clinics are regulated.

The Sunday Times has previously revealed that women undergoing fertility treatment have had their eggs fertilised with the wrong sperm.

Deborah, the woman who lost her chance of another baby, is so traumatised by the error that she is reluctant to risk further IVF to have a longed-for sibling for her son, Jamie, 6.

Because Deborah is 40 her prospects of having another child with her boyfriend, Paul, 38, are slim and diminishing.

Deborah, who does not want to disclose her surname, said: “I will never forget the moment the hospital broke the news to us. Initially, the hospital told me there had been an accident in the lab and that the embryo had been damaged. I thought that someone had, perhaps, dropped the embryo dish.

“I remember thinking: ‘That’s our last hope gone – we will never have another child.’ I left the hospital feeling totally shell-shocked.

“When we went back to the hospital two days later and we were told the truth about my embryo being given to someone else I was so angry.”

Deborah, a healthcare worker, and Paul, who have been together for 17 years, went on the NHS waiting list for fertility treatment in 1996. After two failed attempts, Jamie was born on the third cycle in 2003. . .

Zero, Hitlery, Biden and the rest can try to redefine Christianity all they want, but Christians have ALWAYS opposed abortion.

Thread by me.

Early Christians and Abortion

June 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - This article presents the Christian attitude toward abortion before the first ecumenical council, that is, until A.D. 325. Because the New Testament does not comment on the morality of abortion, this article considers the writings of the first generations of Christians after the apostles, for they indicate that opposition to abortion (1) was shared at a time when the writers — or Christians not many generations earlier — personally knew the apostles or their first disciples and thus benefited from their unwritten teachings and interpretations of Scripture, (2) comes from a date so early that there was no likelihood for the original gospel to have been corrupted, and (3) is not based on only one interpretation of the Bible among many but was the interpretation of Christians who were personally familiar with the New Testament writers or their early followers.

With the exception of one author who wrote at length on the subject, early Christian writings do not discuss abortion in depth but merely state in a few words or phrases that it was forbidden to Christians. Most of the authors of the period do not touch on the subject but those who did considered it among the worst of sins. . .

It's sickening to see which lives the leftist media values and which lives they don't.

Thread by rhema.

Abortionist Killed: National News -- Abortionist Kills Woman: Ignored

Abortionist George Tiller's death brought an outpouring of national media headlines and Congressional condolences to his family by a resolution approved by the US House. Laura Hope Smith's death at the hands of an abortionist was and continues to be ignored and her mother's effort to bring it to the attention of her senator was stonewalled.

"Where was the press when my daughter Laura died at the hands of an abortionist?" asks Eileen Smith, Laura's mother. A media search shows mostly news reports from nonprofit organizations, religious news and other alternative media.

Laura's death was mentioned 10 months later in one major publication, The Boston Globe, when the abortionist was indicted for manslaughter. It was 6 weeks before her local paper, The Cape Cod Times, mentioned Laura's death, although it sought out her mother for a two-hour interview just 2 days after Laura's death. Smith says the local newspaper rationalized delaying a report on Laura's death so it could corroborate it with an autopsy report.

"Since when has news been postponed in lieu of reporting facts except in the abortion deaths of the mothers?" asks Smith. "I have to believe that it is only because the media's bias toward abortion determines what makes news," she said.

"If Laura had died falling off a bike or in a car accident it would have been in the paper the next day," she said. "My daughter walked into that abortion facility healthy and she left dead," Smith said. . .

This message is vital for EVERYONE in the pro-life movement.

Thread by NYer.

Pro-life Leaders Face Death Threats, Require Protection From Abortion Rights Radicals

June 16, 2009 - In the aftermath of the shooting of late-term abortionist, Dr. George Tiller, American pro-life leaders have been receiving death threats prompting round-the-clock protection from authorities.

Jill Stanek, vilified last week at MSNBC, is the Illinois nurse who exposed the practice of abandoning babies that survive abortions. She has tracked and reported on the career of Dr. Tiller for years at her blog. When I asked her this week about her own safety in wake of the shooting, Stanek said that she, along with Troy Newman of Operation Rescue and Fr. Frank Pavone at Priests for Life, had been receiving credible threats from a "troubled man involved in the abortion industry." Jill said that this individual is the child of a pro-choice advocate/writer and his mother had aborted several of his siblings. Following the Tiller shooting, the stalker emailed Stanek again. Federal agents are currently monitoring his movements.

Pro-life leaders have uniformly been forced to increase security measures to address threats of violence. In recent days Stanek has been placed under continuous police and federal protection following email threats to kill her at church or as she left her home

"Let me know which address is right, there's a few I could post. Or I could just drive around the houses and wait to see which one you walk out of.... Don't worry, I will find it."

Stanek also stated that her local pastors have gotten emails calling for her murder at church services.

"the least you could do is offer to hold a rifle blessing service in her honor."

When questioned about security, Fr. Frank Pavone, founder of Priests for Life, said that he needs armed escorts at speaking engagements to guard him against disruptive pro-abortion demonstrators. Individuals from groups such as NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and Catholics for Choice are often bussed in to derail these presentations. Even peaceful prayer vigils, so common to the pro-life movement, can be dangerous. Fr. Pavone was leading a prayer service in Bellingham, WA when someone confronted him and spit in his face. Prior to his appearances, local groups Fr. Pavone calls, "pro-abortion radicals and anarchists," often signal their intent to lead violent demonstrations; but in recent days he says he’s gotten more serious messages.

Father Frank, It would make me very happy if someone were to respond to this by snuffing YOU. No fooling. Right-to-lifers, in my book, no longer have a right to life.

At the Priests for Life blog, another anonymous writer said: "Killing Father Frank will not be murder. It will be justifiable homicide."

In November 2008, months before Dr. Tiller was murdered, Fr. Pavone received the following:

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR FATHER FRANK PAVONE

I am predicting that there will be more anti-abortion terror because of this election. I AM ALSO PREDICTING THAT THIS TIME IT WILL BE ANSWERED IN KIND BY PRO-CHOICE COUNTERTERRORISTS, who will mount similar terrorist attacks against well-known right-to-lifers. FATHER FRANK will be a natural target for pro-choice counterterrorists.

I therefore advise you, Fr Frank, if you read that there has been another abortion-clinic shooting or bombing, get out of town immediately. Take a vacation abroad. Go visit the Vatican. If there is another act of anti-abortion terror, your life will not be safe in the USA.

Good luck.

Visible anti-abortion figures in this country get regular threats on their lives and receive violent anti-social messages. In 2008 UCLA undergrad Lila Rose garnered national attention for exposing illegal practices at Planned Parenthood clinics. The menacing emails have continued since Rose went public with her investigations.

Columnist and mother of nine, Jenn Giroux is founder of the pro-life group, Women Influencing the Nation. Giroux was a leader in the grass roots effort to take legal action against Tiller and his clinic. Following the shooting, she suspended her website, ChargeTiller.com, due to a barrage of profane and violent posts.

Pro-abortion aggression isn’t only a reality for movement leaders. Judie Brown heads up the American Life League, a landmark organization founded after Roe v. Wade. In response to our questions the league issued a statement. It calls to mind the hostility pro-lifers face at every level as they, "stand in beautiful and striking contrast to both the violence inherent to the abortion mill and the street-side violence and drive-by intimidation of abortion supporters."

This is one of the best commentaries I've ever seen by Chuck Colson.

Thread by me.

Chuck Colson: In His Image - The Roots of Social Justice

We’re hearing a lot these days about human rights and social justice—particularly among younger evangelicals, but also among secularists. It’s a good thing that there is a growing concern for the poor and the oppressed around the world.

But when the younger generation approaches people like me and tells us that we need to be working for “social justice,” what I tell them is that we’re already doing it. In fact, I believe it’s the single greatest apologetic of the Christian Church.

But what makes us different from the secularists, however, is our worldview—especially in our belief in a fundamental truth that goes right to the heart of who we are. We know all human rights and social justice are grounded in the imago Dei—the fact that we are created in the image of God.

I can’t emphasize that enough. The secularists want social justice, but at the same time, they want to turn right around and deny the very thing that makes social justice possible. It doesn’t work.

I heard a magnificent sermon recently by Dr. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. He makes this point powerfully in a sermon called “In the Image of God.” With great eloquence, Keller talked about what it means to be created in God’s image and its implications for the way we live.

Because we are created in the image of God, human life is sacred. We have value, worth, and dignity. Science by itself doesn’t give us any basis for that view. So when a society loses its belief in God, it starts to believe that humans are only valuable based upon their “capacities”—and then you get views like those of Dr. Peter Singer of Princeton, who believes that some human lives have no value and deserve no protection.

The whole civil rights movement sprang from a biblical worldview. It’s not just a tradition in Western thought, Dr. Keller reminds us. Even “Aristotle said some races are born to be slaves.” But the Bible tells us in Genesis that humans are accountable for each other’s lives, precisely because God created us in His image. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders took their views directly from this way of thinking about God and humanity. Dr. King even talked about the imago Dei in his sermon “The American Dream.”

And this is exactly why you and I can’t make a distinction between being pro-life and fighting for human rights. As Dr. Keller shows, there is an unbroken connection between human life in the womb and human life in all other stages and circumstances.

That is the Christian view. It’s why early Christians condemned abortion and cared for abandoned babies. It’s why I wrote in my book The Faith that if you say you are a Christian and are pro-choice, you’d better check whether you are acting in obedience to God and belong in the company of Christian fellowship. “When you believe in the image of God,” Dr. Keller explains, “the circle of protected life expands. But when you don’t believe in the image of God . . . the circle will continually contract.”

Visit our website, BreakPoint.org, to find out how you can order a copy of Dr. Keller’s brilliant sermon, “In the Image of God.” You’ll never hear a better explanation of one of the unique and most important contributions Christianity has made to Western civilization.

Archbishop Burke has again spoken out on Zero's Notre Dame speech.

Thread by me.

Church Must Prevent Repeat of Notre Dame Betrayal Says Top American Prelate in Vatican

VATICAN CITY, June 17, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Archbishop Raymond Burke, the highest ranking American prelate in the Vatican has given an interview in a Catholic magazine, in which he says that Notre Dame’s decision to honor President Barack Obama was not only “profoundly shocking,” but also underscores a grave situation requiring action to ensure the incident is never repeated.

Burke is the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court of appeal in the Church next to the Pope, and an outspoken advocate for life and family values. He has made headlines repeatedly for his insistence that ministers of communion should deny the sacrament to publicly and obstinantely pro-abortion individuals, especially politicians. He told the Catholic periodical, Inside the Vatican, that a number of lessons must be taken from Notre Dame’s high-profile conferral of an honorary doctorate on Obama, the most aggressive pro-abortion president in American history.

Burke said that the “betrayal of the Catholic identity of Notre Dame University” grew out of the danger of “pursuing a kind of prestige in the secular world, which leads to a betrayal of the sacred aspect of its work, namely the fidelity to Christ and His teaching.”

“So I think everybody now realizes the gravity of the situation. Also I believe that the whole situation has sensitized more people with regard to the gravity of the practice of procured abortion in our nation, that is, they realize even more how far we have gone away from God’s will for human life,” continued Burke.

“That the premiere Catholic university in the United States would give an honorary doctorate of law to one of the most aggressive pro-abortion politicians in our history is profoundly shocking.”

“Now, we cannot forget what has happened at Notre Dame,” said Burke. “We need to take the measures that are necessary so that this is not repeated in other places. If it could happen at Notre Dame, where else could it happen?”

Burke praised the witness of Bishop John D’Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, whose diocese encompasses Notre Dame, for his “very powerful witness” to the “Gospel of Life.” D’Arcy had boycotted the Notre Dame graduation ceremonies in protest and rebuked the school’s president, Fr. John Jenkins for honoring a President who has made “laws which are against innocent life.”

. . .

This is a heartwarming thread, but it also shows how dangerous the pro-death movement has become.

Thread by Free ThinkerNY.

Mother cradles baby for last time after life support is switched off (then baby came back to life)

This picture shows the heart-breaking moment a mother believed she was cradling her baby for the last time after making the agonising decision to switch off her life support.

Emily Ashurst cradled her baby Grace close to her chest, thinking they would be her last moments together after the six-week old was struck down by meningitis.

But the baby girl stunned doctors by coming back to life after her life support machine was switched off.

Grace Vincent was given a one per cent chance of survival after being struck down with the deadly brain bug at just six weeks old.

After four days in intensive care, her parents were told she had 'catastrophic brain damage and had no chance of living' and made the awful decision to turn off the life support machine.

But as they stood at her hospital bedside preparing for her last gasping breaths, they saw Grace beginning to breathe on her own.

She has continued her miraculous recovery and today, four weeks on, she was released from hospital and taken home to Holystone, Newcastle.

Her mother, Emily Ashurst, 26, said hearing her cry for the first time in a month was 'the nicest sound in the world'.

It seems that Notre Dame is not alone in their desire to desecrate the Catholic Church.

Threads by bdeaner and me.

Some Catholic College Leaders to Bishops: Withdraw Ban on Pro-Abortion Speakers

In the wake of the Notre Dame commencement scandal, Catholic college leaders representing some of the worst violators of the U.S. bishops’ 2004 ban on honoring public opponents of fundamental Catholic teachings are lobbying the bishops to withdraw their policy.

Yesterday the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), which represents more than 200 Catholic institutions, released its summer 2009 newsletter, including a report on the ACCU’s board of directors meeting last week. The ACCU directors concluded “that it would be desirable for the [U.S. bishops] to withdraw” their 2004 policy, according to the newsletter.

The policy in question is found in the U.S. bishops’ 2004 statement “Catholics in Political Life,” which reads in part:

“The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

The bishops gather today in San Antonio, Texas, for their biannual meeting.

“Why is it so hard for Catholic college leaders to understand that a Catholic institution does great harm when it honors or gives speaking platforms to those who work against core Catholic values?” said Patrick J. Reilly, president of The Cardinal Newman Society. . .

______________________________________________________________

Catholic Colleges Support Internships with Pro-Abortion Orgs, Including Planned Parenthood, NARAL

June 17, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A national Catholic higher education organization has identified 10 Catholic colleges and universities that are promoting student internships with organizations whose missions or activities are directly opposed to the moral teachings of the Catholic Church, including on fundamental issues such as abortion and marriage.

“This discovery validates the concerns of so many thousands of faithful Catholic parents and students, that public scandals at Catholic colleges are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Patrick J. Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS). “Under what definition of ‘Catholic education’ do students receive academic credit to work for leading pro-abortion organizations?”

Last week, CNS wrote to the presidents of these colleges and universities to inform them of the problems with their internship programs. None have yet indicated that they will take steps to remedy the problems. . .

Forget about "safe and legal and rare" now they just want infanticide to be safe and plentiful.

Thread by me.

Global "Safe Abortion" Conference Denies Conscience Protections, Risks of Abortion

NEW YORK, NY, June 19, 2009 (C-FAM) - A year-and-a-half after the "Global 'Safe Abortion'" conference took place in London, abortion advocates Marie Stopes International and Ipas just released the conference report detailing the abortion movement’s worldwide strategy.

While organizers claimed that the primary objective of the conference was to "save women's lives and reduce maternal mortality," the report reveals that participants prioritized a so-called "right" to "safe and legal abortion" above all else – dismissing any evidence of its harmful effects on women and even denying the right of conscientious medical professionals to object to participating in abortions.

The 800 conference participants, culled from the world's major abortion advocacy groups, crafted and signed the "Global Call to Action for Women’s Access to Safe Abortion" demanding that women everywhere "have full access to legal, voluntary, safe, and affordable abortions as part of comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care." The Call to Action also demanded that governments reform their laws and policies "at all levels" to ensure "rights to contraception and safe abortion," and that medical schools provide "physicians, nurses, midwives, and other healthcare workers" with abortion training.

Presenters lamented that even where abortion is legal, there are technical and policy barriers to contend with, such as shortages of trained, authorized healthcare personnel, particularly in rural areas. Strategies to address this lack of access to abortion focused on training non-physician "mid-level providers," such as nurses and midwives, and promoting "medication abortion" to "facilitate" the "expulsion of uterine contents," as well as undermining conscience protections relied on by physicians, nurses and other health care workers opposed to taking unborn life. . .

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