The following comes from a July 1 posting of Inside the Capitol.
California’s legislature continues its anti-life parade this week with more hearings on three bills that devalue the intrinsic, sacred nature of humanity.
As we’ve anticipated for two weeks, the Senate Health Committee on Wednesday will hear AB 154 (Atkins, D-San Diego), the proposed law that will expand abortion access by allowing physician assistants, nurse practitioners and nurse midwives to perform the invasive procedures; AB 980 (Pan, D-Sacramento), which will redefine abortions as non-surgical while also decreasing the building code requirements for those clinics; and AB 714 (Bonilla, D-Concord), which allocates $1 million in taxpayer money to fund embryonic stem cell research for spinal cord injuries.
A fourth bill, AB 926 (Bonilla, D-Concord), which would pay women of reproductive age to “donate” their eggs for research, is awaiting a floor vote on the Senate at any time. The full Senate is also poised to vote on AB 1266 (Ammiano, D-San Francisco), which would force campus officials to accommodate the “perceived gender” of students in all sports and public school-based activities.
The anti-life votes in California come at a time when other states are pushing to tighten abortion laws. In Texas, pro-life legislators are vowing to push through a new law that would ban abortions after 20 weeks and, unlike California, increase clinic building regulations after a Democrat-led filibuster derailed an attempt last week.
A week earlier, conservatives in the New York Senate held back an aggressive push by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to expand late-term abortions as part of a comprehensive, 10-part legislative package promoting women’s equality. The conservatives, determined to squelch abortion on demand, derailed the entire package so as to protect unborn babies—even though most of them supported the other nine measures, which included domestic violence protections.
“Women’s lives and babies’ lives will be saved as a result of blocking this legislation,” the Rev. Jason McGuire, of the conservative New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, told the Associated Press.
Because California’s legislature has a Democrat super majority in both houses, the political maneuvering seen in Texas and New York is not a reality here until we are successful at shifting the balance of power. That means the only viable way to stop the progression of these bills is for citizens to put pressure on their elected officials.
To help guide you in that process, we’ve provided sample messages for each of the bills, which you will find after the bill summaries we have provided for legislation set for hearings this week. Click here for sample letters and committee rosters to help you direct your correspondence. Now is the time to let your legislator know that it is indeed “inconceivable” that life is not sacred for all.
To read original message, click here.
Taken from National Review online
Abortion and the Idol of Self
By David French
July 1, 2013 3:35 PM
Comments449
“Let’s imagine for a moment that you find yourself in a difficult position — one that has led to abject panic about your future career, the fate of a valued relationship, or whether you’ll even be able to make ends meet. Let’s also stipulate that your difficulty is largely your fault. You made some short-sighted, bad decisions that precipitated the crisis, but questions of responsibility are moot now — all that exists is the crisis, the stress that has overtaken your life. To be sure, there’s a way forward, a way out of the crisis, but even the most attractive options will require considerable commitment for most of a year — with potential for prolonged heartache.
Then, one evening you’re offered a way out. Your most recent troubles can go away, for the cost of a few hundred dollars and most of an afternoon. The catch? Someone has to die.
Oh, it’s not anyone you know or will ever know. They don’t have family that knows them, they don’t have spouses or children, and they’ll be so thoroughly unmourned that no one will even have to pay for a funeral. Decide now, and they might not even feel pain. Wait longer, and they’ll feel pain — but only for a little while.
You don’t have to see the body. You won’t know the person’s name. No one will have to know what you did. Indeed, the law strictly protects your confidentiality. An anonymous kill . . . then you’re free.
Ask the vast majority of rational people if they’d kill another person to change their own circumstances for the better, and they’d quickly answer no. Put them in the actual situation, and we know that millions answer yes. We know because of abortion.
For quite some time we’ve conducted the abortion debate as if people weren’t fallen, as if mankind’s nature weren’t inherently sinful. So we convince ourselves that if only mothers and their pressuring families or boyfriends knew that the child was a child and not just a “clump of cells,” then they’d make different choices. We’re heartened in this belief by some improvements on the margins, by slight changes in polling numbers — changes that coincide not just with patient pro-life advocacy, but also in astounding leaps forward in medical science, leaps that allow us to see inside the womb, to understand undeniable medical facts (that Kevin Williamson articulates) of the unborn child’s separate genetic identity from his or her mother, and to even watch a tiny child reach from the womb to cling to a doctor’s finger.
Yet abortions still happen, on a massive scale.
Why? Because people love themselves so much that they’re willing to kill another person to keep a boyfriend, to maintain a standard of living, or for many, many other reasons — none of which would ever justify killing another person outside the womb.
The fight for life of course has a critical political component. No just society allows one person to kill another for convenience. But this debate long ago veered from rationality and into the darkest part of the heart, to the most base and primal desire for self-interest. When people “Stand With Wendy,” they – as Charles C.W. Cooke so eloquently put it — “stand with death.” And here’s the worst part: They know it.
The pundit looks at abortion and sees the need for persuasion. The pastor looks and sees the futility of persuasion absent repentence.
The precursor for abortion is the idol of the self. Mandatory sonograms and other measures can impact the softer hearts among us — and are thus valuable for that reason alone — but abortion won’t end until the idol is destroyed.
And for that, good pastors are far more necessary than even the best pundits or politicians.”
Amen. I am sending this to my pastor. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.
Catherine you are correct….people have forgotten how often we can fall deep in the sin of idolatry. I think that it has been desensitized that many make so many excuses and have forgotten how to identify such grave sins.
BTW, notice the hand in the picture? It is a girl’s hand.
Skai I am in tears…..you have a gentle heart…that you noticed…God bless you.
Hi Catherine,
I wonder if the excerpt from your comment below is about the father or the mother :
“Let’s imagine for a moment that you find yourself in a difficult position — one that has led to abject panic about your future career, the fate of a valued relationship, or whether you’ll even be able to make ends meet. Let’s also stipulate that your difficulty is largely your fault. You made some short-sighted, bad decisions that precipitated the crisis, but questions of responsibility are moot now — all that exists is the crisis, the stress that has overtaken your life. To be sure, there’s a way forward, a way out of the crisis, but even the most attractive options will require considerable commitment for most of a year — with potential for prolonged heartache”
Hi jenny,
That is a excellent point. Perhaps David French, the writer of the article and that quote knew that both men and women would relate to these circumstances.
I have often thought and prayed for a handsome young man who brought his girlfriend to have an abortion. He told me that he had just come home from serving in the war in Iraq for just a few months when his girlfriend got pregnant and told him that she wanted to abort their baby. I met him outside the abortion mill and I asked him if he could go inside and have her come out to talk. He said that he could not because she had made up her mind. I asked him if it made any sense for him to go to another country to defend strangers yet drive his girlfriend to an abortion mill and pay money to have his own flesh and blood son or daughter killed? He agreed that it did not make sense. He said that his own mother tried to talk his girlfriend out of the abortion but she would not listen. He did not want her to do this so here is another example where the father was willing to do the right thing in accepting responsibility for his actions. I spoke with him about God’s forgiveness and I told him that a time would come when his girlfriend would regret her abortion. I also told him that this would be a very hard thing for his heart and mind to carry and that he needed to get closer to God so that in time he would see things more clearly and be able to forgive himself. People might think that this man would get angry at a stranger for telling him this but people more often listen than not listen. This still shows how hungry the world is for truth and for God. This man was very sad and when his beautiful girlfriend came out of the building she had what appeared to be a big smile of relief on her face. A child had just been killed in order for her to feel relieved. The young man’s face showed that he was already suffering so thank you jenny for bringing up the sometimes forgotten or never discussed impact that abortion has on not only the precious and innocent victim and mother, it greatly impacts the father and grandparents and a future world who never got to enjoy the presence of that little loved one who was rejected and murdered for being inconvenient.
We know that God sees everything and we know that God is a loving God. To this day I am completely awestruck by the unfathomable mercy of God when I reflect on the fact that God has witnessed the slaughter of millions of babies who He authorized and gave what should have been the gift of life. The fact that we are not obliterated shows us just how merciful God is. The recent Supreme Court ruling has the cup more than overflowing. When a pastor lovingly addresses the topic of abortion, in truth and in love the Holy Spirit will touch and convert the hearts of those who have been complicit and often suffer alone in silence. These mothers and fathers and grandparents always benefit when a loving pastor helps to bring them out of the land of denial.
Catherine this is heart breaking. I’m glad that you were honest with him. His story you have shared here tells me how hardened people’s hearts are today. Do you think I am cruel to think that he should break up with the girlfriend for murdering his child? He shouldn’t have even driven her there….he should have no part in it but only to try to help her choose life. I think that sometimes we may need to take those actions to help people feel and face the consequences. It’s painful not only for him but for the grandparents…I feel for them all.
Abeca,
I don’t think you are being cruel. You ARE being wise. He should break off their relationship. Many young girls have more than one abortion. I have read that statistically those kind of relationships do not last. He should not have driven her to the abortion mill in the first place. He should have told her that he would take no part in assisting her to kill their child. Abeca, without contrition, confession and the grace of God this relationship will be doomed to experience much turmoil and especially since the father of the baby said he did not want her to have an abortion.
This is the idol of self because how does one comfortably sit across from a girlfriend on a next date, knowing that a few days prior, that this person who is the mother of your son or daughter made the deliberate choice to kill their child. The girlfriend is still a mother only she is the mother of a dead child. The same goes for the father. The sin of abortion is a falsely perceived quick fix where the woman thinks she has solved her situation. She and the father will both eventually have to accept the fact that they not only chose to murder their baby, they eventually learn that abortion is a lying quick fix and falsely perceived short term gain in exchange for the reality of many years of regret and suffering long term pain.
cont.
Taken from Priests for Life Website
Excerpts from Gloria Swanson’s Abortion
A review of her autobiography Swanson on Swanson
by Herbert Ratner, M. D.
It is easy to scrape a baby out of the womb, but not so easy to scrape the aborted baby out of the mind and – one may add – heart and soul.
Nowhere is this shown more poignantly than in Gloria Swanson’s life history, which she wrote when she was 80 years of age. In Swanson on Swanson, her remorse over taking her unborn baby’s life begins and ends her autobiography. Despite her sophisticated, colorful, worldly career as a renowned movie star, despite her half a dozen marriages – or perhaps because of them and their lack of fulfillment – she still hadn’t forgotten a death that had taken place 55 years earlier. She began her autobiography by saying:
I’m going to start with the moment in my life when I thought I had never been happier, because until that moment, I hadn’t ever assessed the events that had come before it, and once it was over, I could never view my life or my career in the same way again.
That blissful morning in Passy when I married my gorgeous Marquis lifted me to the very pinnacle of joy, but at the same time it led me to the edge of the most terrifying abyss I had ever known. One moment I had everything I had ever wanted, the next I was more wretched than I had ever been before; and in the days that followed, the more I blamed my misery on the fame and success I had achieved in pictures, the more famous and successful I seemed destined to become.
I was then twenty-five and the most popular female celebrity in the world, with the possible exception of my friend Mary Pickford ….
What the press and fans didn’t know that January morning was that I was pregnant. Not even my dear, sweet Henri knew that, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him . . . and I couldn’t let him take the responsibility for a decision I would have to make alone. What I knew was that if I had Henri’s child in seven months, my career would be finished. The industry and the public would both reject me as a morally unsound character, unfit to represent them . . . . Therefore, I took a single close friend into my confidence and with his help arranged to have a secret abortion the day after my marriage. The very idea horrified me, but I was convinced that I had no choice. I consoled myself with the fact that Henri and I were young and could therefore have other children. I already had two, a girl of my own and an adopted boy. Surely, I told myself peremptorily so that I wouldn’t argue back – I could have more. With that I stifled my fears and doubts and kept the dreaded appointment ….
In a steady stream of cablegrams Mr. Lasky and Mr. Zukor begged me to sail with my Marquis to America in time for the New York premiere of Madame Sans-Gene, the film I had just made in Paris. Then, they said, they would transport us across the country for the Hollywood premiere, and then back again to New York, where I would start my next picture as soon as I felt up to it.
I wanted to refuse them. I wanted to hold them responsible for my misery and blame them for controlling lives like mine that didn’t really belong to them, and for making me destroy my baby. But I am a very pragmatic person. I could not, after all, back up and undo what I had done, so I cabled Mr. Lasky that I would attend both premieres. I sent my children on ahead with their governess and a few trusted friends, and Henri and I sailed on to Paris the third week in March ….
The night of the premiere of Madame Sans-Gene at the Rivoli Theatre, the police had to route all traffic around the block ….
It was our first quiet moment in days, the first time I could really think.
Mother finally said, “Glory, you’re so quiet. This should be the happiest night of your life.” My mother and I could always look out the same window without ever seeing the same thing. I shook my head. “No, Mother,” I said, “it’s the saddest. I’m just twenty-six. Where do I go from here?”
I suddenly felt empty and sick and bitter and exhausted and desolate. Henri took my hand. I’m sure he knew what I was thinking. I was thinking every victory is also a defeat…
I was thinking of the price I had paid two months ago to be able to walk that orchid-strewn aisle tonight. I was wondering what all those glamorous important people would have thought if I had stood up and shushed them and spelled out that price for them; if I had told them that in order not to break my contract or create a scandal, I had had to speak to a French surgeon like a criminal and sacrifice a child I was carrying . . . .
“But I just have to tell someone, Andre; that I have such a bad conscience about what I’m thinking of doing.”
“There’s no other way, is there?” I ask
“Of course not Gloria,” he said.
His voice was reassuring and I smiled feebly at him in gratitude. Then I heard another voice speaking very clearly: “Don’t do this,” it said.
The voice, I knew, was inside me. It as the voice of my unborn child. I tried not to listen. “Your heart is pounding,” the voice said. “I know you hear me. Listen to me. I want to live. I am frightened of the sewers.”
I shuddered and started to sob.
Andre came over…He didn’t ask me what was wrong. He thought he knew. But of course he didn’t know at all, and I could never tell him what I had just heard.
Five and a half decades after those events, she could write:
“. . . the greatest regret of my life has always been that I didn’t have my baby, Henri’s child, in 1925. Nothing in the whole world is worth a baby, I realized as soon as it was too late, and I never stopped blaming myself.”
Herbert Ratner, M.D., is editor of Child and Family Magazine
1994 Herbert Ratner, M.D. Celebrate Life/ May-June 1994 /13
I just read that as the Texas legislature debates restrictions on abortion, the Christian activists supporting the bill were singing “Amazing Grace” while the pro-abortion people there were chanting “Hail Satan” in response.
Do we need to see or hear any more ?
That article summed up what the two sides of the issue really represent.
In the language of a Poker game, they “tipped their hand”.
Pro life friends,
We’re trying to prevent Planned Parenthood from setting up shop in downtown So. San Francisco with prayerful and peaceful assembly. We have filed an appeal with the City as to why PP should not be allowed a permit to do business and will have it heard and a decision rendered by City Council on July 24th. The owner of the property (John Penna, a professed Catholic) has assaulted our peaceful demonstration on numerous occassions, but went over the line last Saturday by injuring a very old Priest who stands with us. Please read the link below for details. Please pray for our pro-life efforts, stand with us and spread the word. Thank you.
Please see website for the story.
I would like ask everyone to please invite as many people as you can to come to our PEACEFUL AND PRAYERFUL demonstration this Saturday. July 6 at 435 Grand Avenue from 9am to 12 noon.
Thank you for your continued commitment and support.
God Bless America!
website: everythingsouthcity
What John Penna professes (to be Catholic) will determine how John Penna is judged. Right now his chances look very bleak, but so do the chances of his priests unless they have told him the truth.
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
Sandra,
Pray tell what have we as a Nation done to get God to bless us? God have mercy on us would be more appropo!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
Sandra D.
By striking a very old priest or a priest of any age without sufficient reason, John Penna has excommunicated himself!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
God bless you SandraD, I don’t live near nor do I know anyone that lives hear there but you are in my prayers.
Re the story posted above, and the brilliant reprint from National Review Online, there is a further development ongoing in this life-or-death struggle to revive the FACT of preborn human life at it’s most vulnerable point, conception, ANYTIME it’s present in the womb of ANY mother, there’s a story on “NewAdvent.Org,” this morning about the struggle of Gov. Rick Perry of Texas to ban ALL abortions after 20 weeks. And that is the LUCIFERIAN response from those folks OPPOSED to the new legislation he’s positing; they chanted “HAIL SATAN.” SHADES OF “ROSEMARY’S BABY!” Anyone who has seen the 1968 movie should remember the climactic scenes where the satanic mob who now have what they want, antichrist covcieved by rape through the drugging of the hapless Rosemary, chant just that: “HAIL SATAN.” And said action by the (largely) demonratic party Texas opposites sure gives validity to the notion that in THIS fight, pro-life vs. anti-life, St. Paul’s words once again ring true: (paraphrase) “we do not fight against flesh and blood, but against PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS,” etc. More Rosaries, please, for in the end, the Rosary and Our Blessed Lady are the REAL powers that will FINALLY reverse Roe v. Wade and restore complete protection to the helpless innocent unborn! VIVA CHRISTO REY! and GOD BLKESS ALL, MARKRITE
Let’s connect the dots. Who elected the Democrat super majority that will enshrine AB 154 in law? The same 52% of Catholics who elected Obama in 2012 did. Who doesn’t issue a clear and complete Catholic voter guide that would make voting Democrat all but impossible? The USCCB doesn’t. Who allows scandal by not disciplining double-dealing “Catholic” politicians. The bishops do. Who can’t partner with double-dealing bishops? I can’t.
Paul Joseph: The USCCB did indeed put out a voter guide that came out strong against voting for the
party of those who would deny the religious rights of believing Christians. It was a good letter. It was intended to be read from every pulpit in the land. In most places it was suppressed. Some parishes put a flyer in their weekly bulletin, but that was all. It was signed by Cdl. Dolan but the actual author was Ab. Lori, who I believe is a man of faith. It was a perfunctory act only. It fell flat and had zero effect on the outcome of the “Catholic” vote. Problem, as I see it, is that most of our bishops and many priests are stuck on “social justice” as being the be-all and end-all of Catholicism. They are Marxists with a Roman collar.
” Marxists with a Roman collar.” An excellent turn of phrase describing that which too many in the Church refuse to see.
Instead of Rome collaring the Marxists; the Marxists have collared Rome.
Doesn’t say much about the 48% Catholic vote who managed to lose … It took a few apostles to convert billions of pagans to Christ; how is it that such mighty faith has disappeared?
Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb! Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
Mum these little babies, unborn and innocent need you and your protection. Empower us your children to fight and defend them, may it Be God’s holy will. Awaken in our hearts what has been lost. Give us the love and zeal to protect them and help their mum’s choose life and to appreciate these little gifts of life. Blessed Mum Mary oh how much do we need your intercession. Gentle woman, gentle love….safe in your arms blessed Mum we want to be, these little innocent babies we place in your arms.
As broken as we are…your son Jesus can put us back together again….gentle woman and your tender love we seek. You were chosen by the Father, you were chosen for the Son. You are a perfect witness for all women! I ask Jesus to allow you to be a strong witness to these women lost in their ways, that they embrace their gift and choose life and choose your son. Mercy, we pray for mercy!
Psalm 8 (in honor and memory of the unborn babies and to offer up for all the wicked man has allowed on these poor innocent children and for lying to the women that it is acceptable when we know darn well it is not! ) Forgive us Lord for these modern day offenses:
1Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens.
2Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
3When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?c
5You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
6You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
7all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
8the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
9Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Women! WHO LIED TO YOU! Who told you lies and why are you so easily persuaded? Days will come when you don’t have the strength and all you hear is not worth anything. You are made for so much more and you matter to that unborn baby in you……..don’t take it’s life. You are worth so much more…God created you and mercifully you live, you don’t live to destroy life but to share your gifts. Forget the mistakes and move forward. Trust in God.
1 Samuel 16:7 “And the Lord said to Samuel: Look not on his countenance, nor on the height of his stature: because I have rejected him, nor do I judge according to the look of man: for man seeth those things that appear, but the Lord beholdeth the heart. ”
Women! WHO LIED TO YOU. Don’t believe the lie, choose life. You are so much more and your life is not cheap, nor is the child inside you. It’s heart is beating. Set aside your flaws and imperfections and approach the great King, Our Lord Jesus, like His little child that you are and say NO to abortion. For deep down, you know that is not the real answer! Detach yourself from what has brought you here, persevere and it’ll all be worth it. Life is not easy but no one ever said it would be.
JESUS is not a liar! HE IS THE TRUTH! You are loved and your heart can be transformed. Set aside all mistakes and start over, surrender yourself to Jesus. You are HIS and He made you well. He permitted this life to start in your womb….now it’s your turn to do what is right. CHOOSE LIFE. Give up all selfish reasons. Fear is natural but you have the power to not act in fear.
Women! Who lied to you…don’t listen this worldly ways anymore but instead do listen to life….in Jesus! If whatever little faith you have in thee, ask Jesus to increase your faith in Him. Choose life…..a little human being is growing inside you. Regardless of what they said, that it is not human…..don’t believe them, they did not create life but they have shown through time that they can destroy it, so if mankind can destroy life, then how can they know what life really is? For they are not the author of life….look to the real author of life for answers and that is our Lord!
I get chills when I see this picture of the baby’s hand….oh how helpless I feel …because I wish we could do more to stop this injustice on the unborn….