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Today's email update and Action Request:

    **IMPORTANT!** Please read this message in
    its entirety and take action immediately!!

In a direct attack on 40 Days for Life and the rights
of local pro-life sidewalk counselors, the Chicago
City Council on Wednesday passed a new ordinance
intended to cripple 40 Days for Life and silence pro-
life free speech within a 50 foot "Bubble Zone"
around abortion facilities.

The new city ordinance will not only block sidewalk
counseling and pro-life signs within 50 feet of all
entrances to an abortion facility, it would also
prevent any pro-lifer from being within eight feet of
an abortion customer without getting that person's
permission. Anyone found in violation could be fined
up to $500.

The law is such a clear violation of First Amendment
Constitutional rights that even the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) -- no friend of the pro-life
movement -- sided with local pro-life interests in
opposing aspects of the ordinance.

According to observers at the council meetings, a
Planned Parenthood representative testified that pro-
life vigils make it difficult for women to reach
their "services," while a representative from a local
late-term abortion facility (that has seen business
detrimentally affected by 40 Days for Life) directly
mentioned the 40 Days for Life prayer vigil as reason
to pass the ordinance.

While this is a setback for the Chicago 40 Days for
Life, I want to emphasize that this is NOT merely a
Chicago issue. Planned Parenthood and the abortion
industry are working aggressively to implement Bubble
Zone laws like this across the country.

That's the bad news. But here's the good news:

    ** WE CAN STILL DEFEAT THIS BUBBLE ZONE **

Before this bad law goes into effect, Chicago Mayor
Richard Daley has to approve it. We have a narrow
window of time to convince the mayor to VETO the
Bubble Zone ordinance.

PLEASE call Mayor Daley's office immediately at 312-
744-3300 to say: "Mayor Daley, please don't restrict
freedom of speech in Chicago. VETO the Bubble Zone
ordinance!"

So many calls have already been flooding into the
mayor's office that they've set up an automated
system for the public to speak out on the Bubble
Zone. If you get the automated system, here are the
steps to follow:

1.) CALL Mayor Daley's office at 312-744-3300

2.) PRESS 1 to submit your opinion on the Bubble
     Zone ordinance

3.) Then PRESS 2 to vote NO on the Bubble Zone

To send the mayor a fax instead: 312-744-8045

If we don't push back hard against this clearly
unconstitutional law, Planned Parenthood and the rest
of the abortion industry will feel empowered to
trample on the rights of pro-life free speech all
across the country.

Please act now -- while there's still time!

Day 17 - October 9

Intention:

May all understand more deeply that the pro-life message is rooted in the two basic truths of life:

There is a God;
He isn't me

Scripture:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

-- Genesis 2:7

Reflection:

From the beginning of the Bible until the end, the theme is echoed that God alone has dominion over human life. He made it; shared it; died to save it; will raise it up forever. The act of creation described in Genesis 2:7, and earlier in Genesis 1:26-27, is a sovereign act. God did not have to do it, and would have been happy forever without us. Yet without our asking for it or earning it, God brought us out of nothingness and into life, and sustains our existence at every moment. And He does so in Christ. "For by Him all things were created…in Him all things exist" (Colossians 1:16-17).

"You are not your own," Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 6. God alone owns us. While He entrusts us to the care of one another, He does not allow any human being to own another. A Southern California abortionist, James McMahon, once explained how he justified killing children after 20 weeks gestation by partial-birth abortion. He did not deny that this was a child, but rather asked, "Who owns the child? It's got to be the mother." The struggle over abortion is really a struggle over the dominion of God. The Christian individual, and the Christian Church, cannot sit idly by when others declare that God is not God.

Prayer:

Lord, we are yours. Thank you for breathing into us the breath of life. Thank you for claiming us as your own. May our words and actions in defense of human life proclaim to all the world that you alone are Lord of life and death, Lord of our freedom and of our choices. We pray in Jesus' Name. Amen.

Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life