I know that the title is uninspiring, but sometimes there is little to work with. In my last post, I elaborated on the (then) current situation in the Post-Roe environment. The developing situation as we approach mid-term elections is now best illustrated by the headlines:

Pelosi calls restricting abortion ‘sinful’; Gutfeld calls out Biden’s ‘soul of a nation speech,’ saying he ‘sold his soul to pro-abortion lobby’; New Mexico governor pledges $10 million for new abortion clinic; Beto O’Rourke won’t say whether he supports any limit on abortion; Vulnerable House Democrats mostly refuse to say whether there should be any limits on abortion; Michigan Board of Canvassers deadlocks on abortion rights initiative vote; Michigan Board of State Canvassers punts abortion ban to state Supreme Court; Abortion most important issue to Democratic voters despite recession risks, poll shows; Catholic Virginia nurse practitioner says CVS fired her for not providing abortion drugs: lawsuit; Legally recognizing ‘personhood’ of unborn babies will ‘harm’ ‘health’ of pregnant women: NY Times guest essay.

So… is the New Mexico governor “insane” and is Pelosi herself “sinful” and are pregnant women “in danger” if a baby is recognized as a person in development, as the rest of the above stories relate.

In other news…. Planned Parenthood, ACLU sue to block Indiana abortion ban; Democrats made abortion the centerpiece of midterms message, but many won’t explain their own position; US government can’t force Christian groups to perform abortions, gender reassignment surgery, court rules; Republican Senate candidates hit back on abortion attack ads from Democrats; Bill Maher defends pro-lifers, rejects Dem attack that those opposing abortion ‘hate women’; Biden says abortion restrictions ‘beyond the pale’ in latest midterms pitch…

And…. Baseball team shuts out pro-life organizations, cancels family night hours before first pitch; North Dakota judge blocks abortion ban trigger law while legal challenges continue; Oregon sees surge in out-of-state visitors seeking abortions; MSNBC host Alex Wagner: We need ‘Underground Railroad’ for women seeking abortion ‘freedom’; Tim Scott rejects claims Roe overturn will hurt GOP, cites ‘infanticide’ discussion by Northam; Texas judge blocks enforcement of President Joe Biden’s abortion guidance….

That is more than enough for me. Democrats want to make abortion the big issue in the mid-tern elections, but are not willing to take a specific position; Republicans want to make the election about the economy and unpopular Democrat policies. Everybody is fighting for the hearts and minds… and the votes…of the people. And, like all politics, it is getting uglier.

All of that being as it may, we should be stepping back to ask if we are going to approve or reject hate and violence and discriminatory and punitive actions against people for their beliefs. Does that not sound wrong when tested against our constitution, the laws of the nation, and our own sense of morality? It would seem so, and the wrongful nature of such a proposition is widely repeated by legal scholars, law enforcement officials, and media pundits.

However, those who advocate for respect of life and preservation of the dignity of every person are demonized by some for their beliefs. How can it be so? At the same time, those who want a voice in decision-making and want the people to vote on issues are denigrated as a “threat to democracy” (??? what???… for wanting to debate issues and vote on them???… isn’t that the very essence of democracy???)

It is quoted again and again about those who deceive as a way of life that, when one tells a lie often enough and stifles opposing opinions, pretty soon the people believe the lie. It is for that reason that the success of such people who lust for totalitarianism depends upon a distortion of history and control of the education of our children.

This election and the outcome of lawsuits and decisions by the US Supreme Court threatens the process by which a one-party rule can be established. That explains pretty well the hate speech, threats of violence against Supreme Court justices, fear mongering over regulation of abortion, calls for closing of facilities that support mothers in crisis who might otherwise choose abortion, and the persecution of people whom oppose the demands of those holding political power.

Let us all examine our values and look at what our leaders have done and what they propose to do. Let us examine the outcome from their previous policies. Let us evaluate whether our leaders respect opposing opinions, whether they are willing to debate in the light of day, and whether they value personal freedom. Even if not encouraged to do so, we must discern the truth from all the noise. The armor of knowledge and truth is empowering, the battle is engaged, and the battleground is in our communities.

After 50 years of prayers and battling for the hearts and minds of the public, the efforts by millions of people to educate, inform through science, and persuade through faith have finally resulted in overturning that unjust decision in Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in 1973.

The battlefield for the hearts and minds now shifts to our communities.  We must fight harder than ever to win the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens, convincing them that life in its tiniest condition must be respected and protected. It is abundantly clear from every point of view that the human life growing in the womb is a developing person. Nobody has dared to claim a point at which the developing baby suddenly is transformed from a “thing” into a “person.” As an ancient philosopher has said, “What will be human, is human.”

However, the pro-abortion people are smart, determined, and well funded.  They will be relentless in pursuit of the goal to have abortion on demand at any stage of pregnancy as well as the right to allow a child born alive to die from neglect if it is not wanted.  Their weapons are fear, deceit, intimidation, violence…and they use these to keep pro-life people from running for office at all levels, from school boards to US presidency. It is not an exaggeration and not an inflammatory statement;  it is in our news stories daily. It is all about power and money.

The SCOTUS opinion in the Dobbs case was released on June 24, but the judgement was released on June 26 (a technicality related to the timeline for so-called “trigger” laws in various states). Such laws will take effect at a time after the date of the judgement. Thirteen states had laws in place on June 26, 2022 that were “triggered” to take effect and regulate abortion at an interval after the decision in Roe v. Wade was overturned. Texas had such a “trigger” law, and it will be discussed below.

However, Texas had a law on the books from 1925 that banned abortion without exception that, while unenforceable since the Roe decision in January 1973, was never repealed. Immediately upon the release of the judgement on June 26, the law became enforceable as it was written, and long before the “trigger” law was scheduled to take effect. Although this was challenged, the Texas Supreme Court ruled on July 2 that Texas could enforce the law because it was passed by the state legislature. However, no attempt has been made to do so.

In Texas, the Human Life Protection Act was passed in 2011 and finally took effect August 25. New human life is now protected from abortion beginning at the moment of conception. Abortion is a first degree felony punishable by up to 99 years in prison and a fine of at least $100,000 and the Medical Board “must” revoke the license of an offender. There are exceptions for medical emergencies, ectopic pregnancies, and treatment of miscarriage. There is no liability for women.

Abortion clinics in Texas have closed. Some have declared that they will move to a state where they can do abortions. That has obvious monetary implications for selling property, breaking leases, and incurring the expense associated with moving to a new location out of state. Some clinics say they will stay in Texas and focus on health care for women, including birth control and sterilization. However, converting from the low overhead, high income business of abortion to a high overhead, (comparatively) low income practice of OB-GYN in competition with numerous established doctors having good reputations, being board certified, and having hospital privileges does not sound like a good business plan (even if a doctor could be found to start such a practice). It is felt that most such practices would not produce sufficient income to pay the bills.

At the same time that prior abortion clinics are facing financial hardship, Texas appropriated $100,000,000 in the current 2-year budget for the highly successful existing Alternative to Abortion program. This helps women bring the baby to term and keep the baby or place for adoption. Support is available for at least three years after birth from nearly 200 pregnancy centers, maternity homes, and adoption centers. About 150,000 women are served every year.

The Texas Medicaid program already pays for over half of all prenatal care, births, and follow-up care for mothers and babies. The Healthy Texas Women program for low-income women also provides all manner of gynecological services as well as general medical care. https://www.healthytexaswomen.org/

In other news, the defeat of the proposed Value Them Both amendment to the Kansas constitution was disappointing, gaining only 41% of the vote. It would have clarified that the state constitution does not “create or secure a right to abortion” and “does not require government funding of abortion.” In 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court found a right to abortion in the state constitution that nobody knew was there, similar to the way in which the SCOTUS decided the Roe case in 1973, with the bizarre finding that a right to privacy meant a right to abortion.

Although this result in Kansas was much celebrated by those favoring unregulated abortion, a similar amendment in Louisiana passed by 62% in 2020. Similar amendments were also passed in Tennessee in 2014 and then in Alabama and West Virginia in 2018. Lawmakers in Iowa and Pennsylvania are pushing for similar measures.

An article by Michael New https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-new-york-times-misleads-on-kansas-pro-life-defeat/ explains a number of factors which likely caused the amendment in Kansas to fail, not the least of which was the huge amount of outside money poured into negative advertising by pro-abortion supporters that would stand to lose a lot of money and the associated political power.

However, the same amendment as that defeated in Kansas is on the November ballet in Kentucky, and a Montana proposition would make all infants born alive at any stage of development a legal person entitled to medical care, a point especially relevant to abortion survivors who are often left to die. At the same time, California and Vermont will try to make the right to an abortion part of their state constitutions.

Michigan had a “trigger” law from 1931 that banned abortion except to save the life of the mother. However, a judge has issued a temporary restraining order against enforcement following a lawsuit by (unsurprisingly) Planned Parenthood. A campaign to place on the ballet in November an initiative to amend the Michigan state constitution to affirm the right of women to make their own decisions about abortion and birth control without state regulation has received a huge number of signatures and is expected to be on the ballet. However, pro-life activists are very strong in the state. Furthermore, the upcoming re-election of the democrat governor, attorney general, and members of the US House are hotly contested, and these elections may well lead to push back against their pro-abortion policies as well.

Finally, to close out this update, Indiana became the first state after the Dobbs decision to pass a new law banning abortion, and by huge margins. The law will take effect September 12, and has exceptions for rape and incest (up to 10 weeks gestation), to protect the life and health of the mother, and if there is a lethal fetal abnormality. Abortions may also be performed only in hospital owned facilities, so all abortion clinics will lose their licenses, and any doctor performing an abortion “shall” lose their medical license.

This action followed the scandalous story of a pregnant 9-year-old rape victim (as unlikely as it would be for a girl that young to be ovulating) who traveled from Ohio to Indiana to get a legal abortion (which occurred just after she reached age 10). In Ohio, the fetal heartbeat law prohibits abortion after a fetal heartbeat is heard (typically by 6-8 weeks) and makes no exception for rape. The rapist was a 27-year-old man from Guatemala living in the US illegally. DNA studies on the aborted fetus confirmed he was the father.

Returning to where we started, the battle for the hearts and minds of the people is now fully joined in our communities, and it is likely to be long and arduous. However, I have no doubt that the vast majority of people will ultimately accept that the tiniest growing human is a person, and that women should be offered everything she needs to have a healthy baby. That is our hope. Let us be proud that we have joined the battle.

It is now four weeks post release of the Dobbs decision by SCOTUS on June 24. Incidentally, that day was a Catholic Holy Day for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and it was the same day that my book “Building a Culture of Life” was first available in print. What an interesting and exceptionally busy four weeks this has been!

The decision by SCOTUS was explained in lengthy, detailed, and erudite fashion, basing the findings upon solid legal grounds and precedents, citing also the original meanings of the amendments to the constitution, observing that the findings of SCOTUS in 1973 were not based upon the same considerations and therefore were in error, and noting that the court in 1973 totally ignored without explanation why the 10th amendment (giving authority to the states) did not apply in Roe v. Wade.

Some people have attributed to the court in 1973 a “decision looking for a justification.” In present day, leadership in the highest positions in US government, as well as activists with a vested interest in preserving liberalized access to abortion, complain that this court is “off the rails,” as well as offering a plethora of other disparaging remarks, with some also advocating violence against the justices. Hate speech has been plentiful and has stimulated attacks against churches, pregnancy resource centers, cemeteries, and even religious bookstores, with spray painting, broken glass, additional vandalism inside churches, theft and damage to religious objects, and setting fires. Some PRC workers have been assaulted, and at least one person was slightly injured by a gunshot wound.

What has not happened is also important to those with reason. No legal scholar has found a flaw in any of the citations and conclusions by the justices in the Dobbs decision, unlike the decision in Roe which puzzled legal scholars immediately and has been a topic of discussion for decades.

Let us look at what Pope Francis has said in an interview about the Dobbs decision. On July 4, he compared seeking an abortion to “hiring a hit man.” Mother Teresa once commented to someone (I am paraphrasing) that if it is legal for you to kill a baby, then what is there to keep me from killing you. To that I add my personal observation that we have a society that denigrates life and promotes at the highest levels of government support for taking the life of an unborn child, so why should we be surprised when people kill each other on the streets, and why should we be concerned when someone kills children in a school. Is it not because we do not respect life in all its stages and conditions that we do not respect life in any of its stages and conditions.

Whereas we now celebrate the SCOTUS decision that returns the regulation of abortion to be debated by the people in their communities and enforced by their elected representatives through a democratic process, the pro-abortion faction howls at having their cherished income streams (and political power bases) reduced. At the same time, the war is not won; indeed, the next battle is just being joined. The prize we now fight for is in the hearts and minds of the people. It is a matter of hate and violence versus love, mercy, and peace.

The ultimate pro-life goal is for most people to realize that the tiniest human life is a person in development. We all start very, very tiny and develop bigger and bigger, becoming more complex in our abilities until we can live without the protection of the womb. But, even then we are not ready for prime time. We continue to develop, becoming an infant, a toddler, a child, an adult, then middle-aged, and ultimately elderly. Life is a continuum of changes in our body. We might look the same from one day to another, but over a few years, the changes are quite evident. So, it it is a biological truth proclaimed by medical science that the smallest human entity is a person in development from the moment of conception, a process that continues through all of the stages of life. However, that does not make that entity legally a “person” under law.

Since being a person under law provides entitlement to protection of life under the US constitution, some argue the question concerning at what point does the growing human entity become a person entitled to protection of life, thus the point at which abortion would be illegal. Some assert that it is at such times in development that a baby can live outside the mother, but that is different in every pregnancy. Many people do not want to even consider the question because its answer could mean that abortion at any stage is killing a person. So, the growing baby is declared not be a person, basically just “because I say so.” [For a more in-depth discussion of the process by which philosophers have tried to link personhood with ensoulment, please see the relevant chapter in my book.]

If a baby is a person at the time of natural birth, how about a few hours before birth when a baby is delivered by C-section…surely the baby is a person then. Well, how about a week earlier? Then, how about at 20 weeks? Some babies have survived as early as age 15 weeks, so they must have been a person then.

They were helpless and dependent on their mothers at age 14 weeks, and 12 weeks, and 6 weeks, and at 4 weeks…. but they grew until they reached an age when they could live outside the mother and be a person, so they must have been a person during the entire growth period. People may not like it, they may not want to think about it or discuss it, but it is logically true and the culmination of two thousand years of philosophy and medical science. Some things are just true whether one believes it or not. The battle is to convince more and more people that incipient human life in its tiniest condition is a person, thus entitled to having its life nourished and protected.

When I look at the work before us, I find myself inspired by a quotation from Pope St. John Paul II, “Never tire of firmly speaking out in defense of life from its conception and do not be deterred from the commitment to defend the dignity of every human person with courageous determination.” That is my plan.

I will not spend much space here discussing the SCOTUS decision in Dobbs that was announced June 24. However, the implications are huge and will affect every person in the US in ways they will either embrace, reject, or not even understand. My purpose herein is to acquaint subscribers with a cross-section of what is going on in just the last one week. After all, the purpose of this part of the web site is to provide subscribers information from many sources about happenings that they may not know about, and yet be interested in. However, we all have limited time and cannot seek out all relevant information or even read all that we get in emails. I hope you will find this update a useful overview.

First, the Dobbs decision essentially is that SCOTUS has no authority under the constitution to make any decision in the case; the 10th amendment plainly states that any matter not explicitly relegated in the constitution to the US Congress, is relegated to the individual states and to the people to regulate through their elected representatives. The court also ruled that the decisions in Roe and Casey are overturned because the court had no authority to rule in those cases either, for the same reason it has no authority in the Dobbs case. The decision is 237 pages in length and (to the extent that I have read it so far) clearly and systematically explains US cultural history on abortion, legal history, and the meaning of various constitutional amendments (specifically explaining in detail why this court rejected attempts to invoke certain phrases in the amendments as having “hidden meanings” providing women a “right” to abortion).

For the Pro-Life movement, the battleground now shifts to the states where the hearts and minds of the electorate are the prize. People elected to state and federal offices will determine laws that either protect or denigrate life. Pregnancy Resource Centers (PRC) have already been preparing to meet women’s increasing requests for help “Post-Roe.” Leaders across the country are calling for increased donations to fund an expanded outreach to women so they will know that help is available to meet their every need. In a poll of 120,000 households, 73% did not know about the services of PRC. There is much work to do.

On that point, we must observe the sobering fact that those we send to Congress have the power to pass a law permitting abortion throughout the country at any stage, even permitting unwanted newborns to die. The integrity of elections and those we vote for at every local and state level, for Congress, and for president matters now and in future more than ever before, with the lives of countless babies at stake.

These circumstances have been thrust rapidly upon PRC and pro-life activist groups in the context that 13 states (including Texas) have “trigger” laws in place that will take effect and regulate abortion in various restrictive ways now that Roe is overturned. There are many other laws passed by various state legislatures in years past that proposed to regulate abortion in those states but which have been under temporary restraining orders preventing enforcement. Now, these will also be released to become effective.

In Texas, the legality of abortion has become confused during the last week by a plethora of hastily written and poorly researched news articles, as well as by some inaccurate information deliberately distributed. Herein, I present below the facts as of July 1. However, the reader must realize that there is a great deal of legal action taking place that can alter the short term environment and add more confusion. Please check here for new posts as these issues evolve, which I pledge to be accurately resourced.

In 1925, Texas passed a law totally banning abortion: “If any person shall designedly administer to a pregnant woman or knowingly procure to be administered with her consent any drug or medicine, or shall use towards her any violence or means whatever externally or internally applied, and thereby procure an abortion, he shall be confined in the penitentiary not less than two nor more than five years.” That law is still part if the statutes in the State of Texas. In the aftermath of Roe in 1973, this law could not be enforced, but was not removed from the statutes, and Texas began to issue licenses for abortion clinics. In 2004, the Fifth Circuit court ruled that the the law had been “repealed by implication.” However, while a court can block enforcement of a law, no court can remove any law from the statutes of a state. This must be done by a state legislature. When the Dobbs decision was published June 24, the Texas 1925 law immediately became enforceable.

In 2021, Texas passed The Texas Heartbeat Act banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, and the US Supreme Court refused to overturn it. Typically, this fetal activity can be detected by 8 weeks on abdominal ultrasound and by 6 weeks on a vaginal ultrasound. Of course, in routine exams, it is an abdominal ultrasound that is performed. Even if a heartbeat is present, the quality of the ultrasound machine and the skill of the technician will determine if the heartbeat is detected earlier or later in gestation.

In 2021, Texas also passed The Human Life Protection Act of 2021 “trigger law” that bans abortion 30 days after the overturn of Roe (e.g., on July 24, 2022), except when “the pregnant female on whom the abortion is performed, induced, or attempted has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced.”

On June 28, a Harris County Judge issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against enforcement of the Texas 1925 law totally banning abortion. The TRO expires July 12, and will be subject to a hearing on that date. Interval legal appeals of the TRO may alter the timeline and even set aside the TRO. However, the Texas Fetal Heartbeat Law remains in effect. That has given rise to comments that abortions can proceed “up to 6 weeks gestation,” which we have seen is an inaccurate statement. And the “trigger” law is set to take effect July 24. At this writing, the 1925 law totally banning abortion without exception for the life of the mother, although antiquated, is still enforceable (when the TRO expires), and it takes precedence over the heartbeat law and the “trigger” law. It seems highly improbable that the 1925 law will ever be enforced by prosecution (although it is likely that it will not be removed from the books), whereas the “trigger” law is legal under the Dobbs decision and will be enforced beginning July 24, regardless of whether the TRO survives that long.

With abortion clinics unable to do abortions in Texas, there are reports that some are referring women out of state, and some states (notably California) are attempting to become an “abortion-tourist” destination. Some organizations are raising money (and pledging tax-payer money) to pay air fare, food, lodging, expenses, and lost wages, to get women to California for an abortion. Legal action attempting to delay or mitigate the impact of the Dobbs decision is in process in all states, creating much confusion. Consult this web page for information as these events play out.

At the same time, some in the pro-abortion factions have reacted with hate speech, intimidating protests, and a call to violence against churches and PRC. There are about 300,000 churches and 3,000 PRC in the US. There has been some vandalism (relatively little so far), but churches, synagogues, mosques, schools, and businesses have all been hardening their perimeters with security. These are unplanned expenses that have a bottom line impact on churches and PRC that are dependent on donations and only exist to help people and were never intended to need a defensive profile. Perhaps unsurprisingly, donations have been pouring in to meet these needs as the mass of silent majority pro-life people want their voice to be heard and now feel encouraged. However, that additional need for financial support will be ongoing because there is an increasing need to reach and educate women about all the resources available to them. And, these must be expanded rapidly since the need is increasing rapidly.

Immediately after the SCOTUS announcement, a coalition of pro-life organizations (including Texas Right to Life and Houston Coalition for Life) organized a rally at the huge Planned Parenthood abortion factory on the Gulf Freeway in Houston the next morning. Then, astonishingly, over just 2-3 days, over 57 national organizations were drawn together in a webinar in which 43 leaders spoke before an on-line audience of 23,500 to discuss the many facets of the post-Roe challenges and how they will work together to meet them. Impressive knowledge, talent, organization, and commitment was demonstrated over the 2 hours and 40 mins event! One speaker had prayed at the Supreme Court location for an overturn of Roe every day for 6,500 days. Watch a replay of the webinar:

https://lifebeyondroe.com/event/?inf_contact_key=e39a4a019b131119ac9031248e664162680f8914173f9191b1c0223e68310bb1

If it is a bit too big to consume at one sitting, try 30 mins a day for 5 days. Make notes to help yourself when discussing and planning with others…and share the link.

Many local, state, and national organizations have provided podcasts and webinars to reach their constituencies in the last few days. The 40 Days for Life organization is hosting a Post-Roe Symposium August 5/6 in Houston. https://www.40daysforlife.com/en/

[[Before you finish this post and leave the web site, please click on the “Upcoming Pro-Life Activities” tab on the Home page and review the entries to see what you might be interested in.]]

Changing to a more sobering topic, my latest Community Impact Newsletter just carried a story “Maternal Mortality Rates on the Rise in Harris County.” Hillary Clinton also said on TV this past week that “Women are going to die” because of the SCOTUS decision in Dobbs. So, what is the truth. The topic is quite complicated and does not lend itself well to discussion in this format. I spend time on this subject in my book Building a Culture of Life, which is now being rolled out everywhere and available to be ordered from Amazon and Barnes and Noble. We must be ready to meet the needs of women on every level, because she must also be able to survive a pregnancy, or the baby will die with her. This often involves health care long after delivery.

The bottom line is that more women have been entering higher risk groups over recent decades. There is a rise in obesity that is associated with high blood pressure and diabetes, and these lead to cardiovascular disease. One might think that CV disease would not be a major complication in young women, and you would be partially right. However, with more women entering these high risk groups, more women will have serious complications, including death. This is what is happening in Texas and across the country. The risk is greatest in women over age 35, and in Black women. The latter (as a group) have more morbidity (diseases), and thus higher risks and, consequentially, a mortality rate nearly twice the national average.

The blame has been placed on a complex of factors including failure to control risks before pregnancy, late visits to doctor when pregnant, variations in the perception of need for such healthcare, lack of healthcare resources, and variable quality of resources for high risk pregnancies…the discussion goes on. I must finish this brief narrative by saying that the problem is systemic and must be addressed at multiple levels concurrently… if our politicians would only do so.

On another front, the National Catholic Register (NCR) is reporting that the four Catholic bishops of Colorado have pronounced that Catholic lawmakers who voted for an abortion law stripping the unborn of any human rights and permitting abortion up to the moment of birth should not take Holy Communion. Colorado was the first state to legalize abortion, in1967. Every year nearly 300 babies are killed after 21 weeks gestation in Colorado, many because they are unwanted girls or because they have Down Syndrome. Perhaps they will compete with California for the title “Best Culture of Death.”

It is also a Catholic scandal that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an ardent advocate of unregulated abortion at any stage of development, was prohibited by the bishop from taking Holy Communion in the archdiocese of San Francisco. So, she made a point of going to a church in Washington DC and calling media attention to her defiant behavior while taking communion there. Then, this week she visited the pope at the Vatican and was offered Holy Communion there.

For religious Catholics, taking Holy Communion is a sacrament, an act of affirming the teaches of the Catholic church (in a broad way) and bonding oneself with the “body of Christ” (which is the Church), and to Christ himself. To do so, one must be in a state of grace, that is, acknowledging one’s sins, asking forgiveness, and asking for the grace to be worthy of the same. The message many Catholics are getting from the pope is that one does not have to be in state of grace to receive Holy Communion, and that the sacraments are therefore meaningless. Come back here for follow-up on the stink produced by these events.

I normally post an update in pro-life news roughly every 2 weeks. However, I may publish follow-up posts more often in near future, if events dictate, since the situation is so dynamic and volatile. Take time to watch the webinar referenced above. Your whole perspective on life will be changed, and you will be greatly encouraged. Amid consternation over so many serious concerns that we face going forward, there are such magnificent people of impressive talent, faith, and dedication to uplift us, give us hope, and make us feel an important part of something great, which we are !

Most of the recent news has centered around the Supreme Court leak of a draft of the majority decision in the Dobbs case and public responses to that revelation. I will not spend much time on that subject here. I am sure that we are all aware of the vitriolic and hateful rhetoric by the pro-abortion faction and the manner in which the Justices are being threatened. However, those who embrace the culture of death hate foremost those of us who care about women in distress with an unplanned pregnancy, women desperate, confused, and worried.

They hate us because we want to help those women. I invite the reader to come up with a self-consistent set of beliefs about the rights of women that excludes providing help at the time of an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. Those who believe that every woman who finds herself in such a situation should have an abortion, and should not be helped with other choices, are a strange set of personalities indeed.

In their delusional mental condition motivated by hate and lust for blood, they have assaulted pro-life advocates and carried out acts of vandalism and arson on pregnancy resource centers, stolen religious objects and desecrated churches. At the same time that pregnancy resource centers are preparing to reach out to women in need and provide even more help to more women, many of those organizations and many churches are improving security and hardening access to bad actors….not without good reason, since the hate-mongers are calling for a summer of violence against them.

With the reasonable expectation now that SCOTUS will invoke the 10th Amendment to the Constitution and rule that the individual states have the right to regulate abortion according to the will of the people through their elected officials in those states, the National Catholic Register, in the May 22, 2022 edition, presented an analysis by the Catholic News Agency of the situation at the present time in the various states. The article revealed which states have “trigger” laws that will restrict abortion in such a case. Some states have the right to an abortion enshrined in state law. Some states are more pro-life, and other states are rather mixed. It is an excellent source of information to use in researching these issues, but is obviously too much information to comment on here.

The new battleground over abortion is expected to be at the state level. However, a pro-abortion political party in Congress will continue to try to pass laws providing unrestricted access to abortion at any stage of pregnancy, with some even advocating that unwanted babies should be allowed to die of neglect after birth. Now more than ever, we must fight for the hearts and minds of the people.

NCR also carried an article with reactions in Central and South American countries to the leaked version of their hoped for ruling in Dobbs. Comments by leaders of pro-life movements in Mexico, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, and Argentina inform us of how far-reaching the decisions of SCOTUS are, how the US acceptance of abortion in Roe v Wade influenced the acceptance of abortion in their countries and around the world. A new ruling by SCOTUS that the US Constitution does not provide a nation-wide right to an abortion, but that it delegates to the individual states in the 10th Amendment the responsibility to make laws regulating abortion, is hoped to have a ripple effect on the attitudes of people and the development of laws in many other countries. This was reiterated in the NCR edition on June 5, 2022 in which it is noted that national newspapers all across Europe carried the story as front page news. It is this realization by the powerful abortion industry, and by politicians supported by the huge wealth they control, that has pro-abortion leaders acting like a dangerous wounded animal fighting for its life.

Finally, for now, I offer a few messages for Catholics. You may wish to catch EWTN Pro-Life Weekly on Thursdays at 9:00 pm (central). You can also download meditations for a pro-life rosary at https://ewtn.com/proliferosary . Some people may be able to attend the EWTN Family Celebration in Phoenix on October 1, 2022 https://ewtn.com/familycelebration

Let us pray for the SCOTUS Justices and for the unborn and for those who embrace death that they may have their eyes opened to the sanctity of new life and the importance of preserving the dignity of every individual.

Well friends, if you thought it could not get any crazier…. or more despicable…

Time magazine published an article on May 21, 2022 that attempts to link the tragedy perpetrated by the Buffalo shooter to the pro-life movement (which they call the anti-abortion movement). The authors try to portray pro-life people as racists who want to stop the abortion of white babies so that more white people can keep the black and brown people subjugated to their dominance.

In making this assertion, they declare that the abortion movement was born in the 19th century due to “white fears of a declining white birth rate.” They try to place this in the context of white Protestants fearing the immigration of white Catholics and Jews, which does not make any sense. In fact, there was such a concern by Protestants “in the 19th century” about the immigration of Catholics (not Jews) as part of the prevailing anti-Catholic sentiment of the time. It had nothing to do with abortion. I have discussed the history of abortion in my book, and it only became a public issue when the women’s rights movement gained a lot of attention. There ensued a major split between the leadership and a minority faction that wanted to bring abortion into the mix.

Another untruth that the authors perpetrate is that pro-life people want to prevent the abortion of white babies. The truth is that 40% of current surgical abortions are black babies. A minority of abortions are in white women. That is why Planned Parenthood has placed 86% of their abortion clinics in predominately Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. This fact has been decried for years by Alveta King (niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.), and especially in the movie “Blood Money: the Business of Abortion.”

More recently, US House Rep Rep. Burgess Owens delivered an impassioned speech against abortion, arguing that it discriminates against Black women in the United States. He declared that abortion has taken the lives of 20 million Black babies, and that 40% of his race has been exterminated. At the same time, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that restricting abortion would be bad for the economy. Many have expressed outrage at the implication that aborting Black babies is good for the economy.

In fact, the selective elimination of “unfit” black babies (by birth control measures and sterilization of women) was the stated purpose of Margaret Sanger from the beginning. This scandalous racist history actually led to the change of the name of the parent organization to “Planned Parenthood.” However, Sanger was solidly against abortion, which was not practiced by PP until after her death. This assertion by the authors that pro-life people are racists is the practice of racism itself, disguised in a distorted history of which most people are unaware in a blatant attempt to deceive the uneducated. This whole story is accurately told in my book. Here is the link, although it is so goofy and full of distorted quotes and half-truths that I do not recommend you spend any time on it. https://time.com/6178135/buffalo-shooting-abortion-replacement-theory/

In other news… the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of San Francisco has declared that Nancy Pelosi, who labels herself as a devout Catholic and supports unrestricted abortion at any stage of development (an oxymoron, to say the least), is barred from receiving Holy Communion (in the Archdiocese of San Francisco). The issue of people in high offices in the United States who call themselves Catholics and yet support abortion in defiance of the church’s position on the sanctity of life, has produced a schism within lay Catholics who support one political party or another on other issues as well.

Two days later, Pope Francis addressed participants in the “Let’s Choose Life” march in Rome, applauding their “commitment in favor of life and in defense of conscientious objection, the exercise of which is often attempted to be restricted.” “Unfortunately, in recent years there has been a shift in the common mentality, and today we are increasingly inclined to think that life is an asset at our total disposal, which we can choose to manipulate, give birth to or let die as we please, as the exclusive outcome of an individual choice.” “Let us remember that life is a gift from God,” he said. “It is always sacred and inviolable, and we cannot silence the voice of conscience.” These statements will, no doubt, be welcomed by Bishops who have tried to give guidance to lay people on the issue of why political leaders can call themselves Catholic and take communion while aggressively supporting abortion, but other Catholics are called upon the respect the sanctity of life. However, the issue is far from settled.

On May 19, while the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the topic of “Abortion Access and Care,” pro-abortion activist Aimee Arrambide affirmed her belief that everyone can decide for themselves what a woman is and that men can get pregnant and have abortions. Twitter reportedly lit up with people mocking her. One person observed that Arramide has admitted her belief that men have a right to an opinion on abortion because they can get pregnant and have an abortion. The pro-abortion faction has tried to discredit opinions by men by saying it is exclusively a female issue since only women get pregnant. It keeps getting crazier…

Vice President Harris has opined that a SCOTUS decision that the people in the individual states have the constitutional right to regulate abortion under the 10th amendment would keep women from exercising a “right” to an abortion (which is, in fact, not a “right” under the constitution or any US statute). She also attempted to cause concern that “rights” like “gay marriage” and “use of contraceptives” could likewise be regulated by the states. Well, Ms. Harris, they are already. Critics are unsure if she is ignorant of how state laws work and what is/is not federal law and what is protected constitutionally, or whether she is just trying to inflame the ignorant.

On the other hand, the New York Times, despite publishing chilling pro-abortion articles, published this guest essay “When Abortion is Pro-Life” by Dr. Matthew Loftus on May 20, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/opinion/abortion-doctor-pro-life.html Dr. Loftus is pro-life and was greatly conflicted when he had to perform a late term abortion… to save the life of the mother who was bleeding to death.

An Oklahoma bill has been sent to the governor for signature, which is expected. The bill bans any procedures that “cause the death of an unborn child,” which is defined as a “human fetus or embryo in any stage of gestation from fertilization until birth.” Exceptions are provided for rape, incest, or if the mother’s life is in danger. As one might expect, there is much acrimony among pro-abortion people.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the Dobbs case by the end of June, before going into recess. Due to the now famous “leak” of a draft of the ruling, it is widely believed that the majority of the court will rule that the 10th amendment to the constitution is unambiguous in giving to the individual states the right to regulate issues not expressively retained to the “United States” (that is, the federal government, or Congress). Therefore, the issue of abortion, which was not at any time a topic of conversation in drafting the constitution or any of its amendments, must be regulated in the individual states by the elected representatives of the people in those states.

It has been largely assumed that this draft was leaked by a clerk (typically a very bright attorney who was able to get a plumb of a job working for the court), and it has been reported that the Justices are very unhappy with the betrayal of confidence. Much comment has also been rendered on the long term impact on the court. However, experts also say that the perpetrator should have been quickly uncovered. Someone on the inside contacted pro-abortion activists and coordinated the leak with demonstrations planned to take place immediately after the release.

What if the source was not a lower level clerk but one of the dissenting, very liberal female Justices who supports unrestricted abortion… maybe somebody appointed by President Obama. If the source of the leak is not discovered among the lower clerks, then one has no choice but to suspect an activist Justice. That would make the Supreme Court a political activist organization that, in future, could shape public opinion through leaked information and demonstrations targeted at intimidating dissenting Justices and potentially carrying out violence against their families. The importance of a resolution to this issue and a removal of the guilty party cannot be overstated.

On April 7, the US Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson as the latest new Supreme Court Justice. Jackson is highly qualified, but many of her prior rulings have been so controversial as to make her nomination appear to be related to an extreme left wing world view. However, Biden made it clear that he picked her based on race and gender, she being black and a woman. Sadly, that obscures her stellar career, albeit that some of her rulings have been said to be “outrageously radical.”

Nevertheless, in her opening statement before the senate Judiciary Committee, she thanked Biden and Congress and then went on to “reaffirm my thanks to God, for it is faith that sustains me…” This gives us hope that she will not support the attacks on religious freedom that we have seen under the Biden administration. But, her record is not encouraging. See my post March 25, 2022.

The Spring 2022 edition of Day 41, a publication of 40 Days for Life, carries an especially noteworthy story about Sue Thayer (1959–2021). Ms. Thayer died 12-24-21 after a brief battle with a rare and very aggressive form of kidney cancer. She worked at a Planned Parenthood location in Storm Lake, Iowa for 17 years from 1991, rising to a management position before she converted to the Pro-Life movement.

Her Planned Parenthood location did not perform abortions, but PP began “an outrageous webcam abortion scheme” in which a doctor would see a woman on a webcam and prescribe abortion pills without a physical exam or even verifying pregnancy. Sue was very troubled because she knew about women who had been injured and even killed by the abortion pills. However, her job paid very well and had exceptional benefits, and her family needed the income, so she “buried her head in the sand” for a while.

Ultimately, she was required to do shifts at an abortion clinic and then to go watch a day of surgical abortions. That left her even more troubled as she thought of “all those babies in the sewer system.” Then, although not trained and licensed to do so, she was required to perform ultrasounds before abortions with a machine that clearly showed the features of a developing baby. She was fired after she declared, “I’m not going to do this!”

It was not long afterwards that she joined 40 Days for Life campaigns and began to lead others. She exposed the PP webcam scheme, accused PP of Medicaid fraud, and testified before Congress. Whereas there is not enough space here to give justice to her efforts, it will have to suffice to say that she also opened Cornerstone for Life Pregnancy Resource Center https://cornerstoneforlifeprc.com/about-us/ which continues to serve the community. She later joined the staff of 40 Days for Life and was tireless in both national and international work, often with a grueling schedule. Ironically, just a week before her death, the Biden administration approved mail-order abortion pills for do-it-yourself chemical abortions. In a previous post, I cited a 500% increase in ER visits due to chemical abortions. https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/new-study-finds-chemical-abortion-leads-to-higher-rate-of-er-visits/

In Washington, DC, anti-abortion activists known as Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) obtained a box from the driver of a medical waste disposal company outside an abortion clinic. Within the box were the remains of 115 babies. Of these, 110 were given a funeral mass and were buried. However, 5 of the bodies appear to be late term abortions. On April 8, nearly 70 lawmakers lead by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) have requested the Dept of Justice and the FBI to investigate the deaths to determine whether they occurred in violation of the “Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.” PAAU and other pro-life groups are maintaining a vigil and demanding “Justice for the Five!”

In 2013, the pro-life group Live Action released a video in which the abortionist at this clinic said, regarding any baby that survived an abortion attempt and was born alive, that he would allow the baby to die. This is what happened to Melissa Ohden who was born alive at 30 weeks gestation after an attempted abortion and put aside to die. She was rescued by a nurse and lived. Read her story in “You Carried Me” (available everywhere). https://abortionsurvivors.org/

The Vermont legislature has passed Proposal 5 to amend the Vermont Constitution to add: “That an individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course and shall not be denied or infringed unless justified by a compelling State interest achieved by the least restrictive means.” If that has you saying “What???,” then you are in good company with many people in Vermont. The people of Vermont will vote on this in November 2022.

As people wonder what that means, it is being discussed that it would appear to permit a minor child to obtain an abortion, puberty-blocking hormones, and gender-changing surgery without parental consent or even notification. The state already allows minor girls to consent for an abortion without parental approval. Vermont is the most abortion-friendly state in the country. In 2019, the state enacted an “all -nine-months” bill which declared a fundamental right to have an abortion and stated that an unborn baby “shall not have independent rights under Vermont law.”

One of the issues which I have discussed in prior posts concerning Roe and Dobbs is that of the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution, which leaves to the individual states all matters not explicitly given in the Constitution to Congress. Obviously, that includes abortion. Some legal scholars say that the Supreme Court should never have taken the Roe case because of the 10th Amendment. Many comments made in the case of Dobbs concern themselves with the prospects of returning decisions regarding all manner of reproductive health to the individual states pursuant to the 10th Amendment. Indeed, the central issue in Dobbs is whether the people of Mississippi have the right to enact laws regulating abortion according to the values of the people of Mississippi.

As we await the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has organized an ecumenical initiative called the “Pray for Dobbs” campaign. Pro-Life organizations around the country have been discussing the “what-if’s” and preparing for various contingencies. https://www.prayfordobbs.com/ Indeed, we should continue to “Pray for Dobbs.”

On of the most talked about topics at present is President Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court. It was certain that Biden would pick a candidate who has an acknowledged ideology with a legal track record to match when he made his decision. He also stated that he would choose a black woman. Albeit that Biden makes so many gaffs that he has been subjected to much ridicule at home and abroad, it is particularly sad that his thought processes work with an overlay of sexism and racism. How sad it is for the black woman nominated to know that, out of all the qualified persons with ideologies favored by the President, she was selected over others, not by her accomplishments, but only because of her gender and skin color, the essence of the motivations so many people work to erase.

Now that she has been before the Senate (the hearing concluded yesterday), the public is learning more about Judge Katanji Brown Jackson. Unsurprisingly, she ducked questions about her previous rulings and her views on the Constitution. However, we learned that she has been shockingly soft on child sex abusers, and she was unable to offer any explanation for repeatedly giving the absolute shortest and weakest punishments possible.

Furthermore, she stated that she does not know when life begins. In 1973, Justice Blackmun, in the Roe v Wade decision, wrote the same thing on behalf of the Court, saying that the Court did not know when life begins. However, in the 1960’s every medical book in the world contained the information that the Supreme Court claimed not to know: life begins at the moment of conception and cells divide over and over while the tiny growing human person is shaped into a baby ready to be born and live outside the mother’s body.

It is amply demonstrated by abortion survivors that the tiny growing new life is a person, and abortion survivors declare that they had a right to live when their lives were almost taken by abortion. It is proving impossible to dispute that the unborn are real people. The assertion is powerful that their lives are just as worthy as the lives of anyone else. So, what about all the babies who are killed…that is what the Senate committee wanted to know from Ms. Jackson. In fact, everyone knows when life begins, and abortionists know that they are killing a developing baby, a real person. They just do it anyway. It is increasingly the case that those who support abortion, like Jackson, know it is the deliberate taking of a human life. So, if our leaders in the highest positions and our Supreme Court Justices do not value the lives of the weakest and most defenseless among us, then what kind of people are we?

Jackson also stated that the legal cases of Roe and Casey, which established a woman’s “right” to an abortion, were “settled law.” While not surprising that she would support abortion, legal scholars have commented since 1973 that the reasoning used in the Roe decision were baffling, summoning fragments of assertions in various amendments and then drawing conclusions that were clearly not the intent of the amendments when they were originally debated and supported.

Likewise, the Roe decision was based on such faulty assertions about when life begins, the trimester system, and fetal viability that use of such arguments to justify abortion is just plain scientifically dishonest. The Court also failed to explain why the very simple and plain language of the 10th amendment does not give the individual states the right to regulate abortion according to the values of the people living in those communities. While Jackson stated to believe that future Courts must follow the precedence set by prior decisions, these issues were far from “settled” in Roe or Casey or any of the other related cases since.

A very good example of how the Court can make very bad decisions that must be corrected is the Dred Scott decision in 1857. Jackson claims she does not know what the issues were in that case. That is a very disappointing statement, because it means either that she lacks enough legal knowledge to even qualify as a lawyer, or she is blatantly lying.

Dred Scott sued to obtain his freedom from slavery because his owner had taken him to reside in a slave free state and a slave free territory for a while (too much more detail to relate here). The Court said that Scott did not have a right to sue because a “Negro” could never be a US citizen, amid other racist comments, and that the US did not have the authority to say anything for or against slavery in the new territories (an important issue of the day and a major issue in the lead up to the Civil War). At least some of the Justices were slave owners, and no Justice recused himself for conflict of interest.

Should this remain the law of the land? Or, is Jackson simply saying something she knows not to be true in an effort to protect any revision of Roe and other Court decisions based on Roe? The Dred Scott decision is often said to be the most egregious example of the Court’s bad decisions. In my mind, the decision in Roe is an equally egregious example of convoluted and illogical reasoning, and it has influenced the lives of hundreds of millions more people than the issue of slavery leading to the Civil War, and it has cost the lives of sixty million more people than died in the Civil War.

Jackson declared that “all Supreme Court cases are precedential” and “their rulings have to be followed” (all must include Dred Scott and Roe). Once again, there are no surprises here, but it does point out once again that elections to the highest positions in government do matter. One can only hope that Biden will be forced to select another candidate and that confirmation of any dishonest ideologue can be delayed and eventually declined.

In this edition, there is much about which to be informed. As previously mentioned, as if one needs to be reminded, there is “wailing and gnashing of teeth” among those pro-abortion factions who fear that their ability to dispatch the unborn in the US will be restricted by regulations enacted by the people in their own states….God forbid that people should have a choice!? Pro-life is the real pro-choice !

Whereas one can hope that some day women will cease to choose abortion, it is our duty to ensure that they have a choice, are well-informed, and have easy access to everything they need, every kind of help, and every alternative so they can choose life and have a healthy baby. Therefore, even while we hope the Supreme Court will rule (at least in part) that the individual states have the right under the 10th amendment to the constitution to regulate abortion according to the will of the people, there is much to do by way of education and improving a smooth pathway to meet all of a woman’s needs when feeling anxious, abandoned, and hopeless with an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy.

Now for the news.

Citibank has announced a new policy in a regulatory filing with the US Security and Exchange Commission on March 15. The bank stated: “In response to changes in reproductive health care laws in certain states in the U.S., beginning in 2022 we provide travel benefits to facilitate access to adequate resources.” They do not have any plans to provide help to women. I am forever mystified at the blood thirsty positions people take. This is, of course, nothing new with the abortion industry…that is how they make their money. But, with war in Ukraine, we hear people calling for a more widespread war…. for killing the Russian soldiers, and sending our young men and women to their deaths. Where were they in the first 6 months of 2020 when a peaceful solution could have been negotiated…if people wanted peace.

Idaho has become the first state to model a law after that of Texas, banning abortion after 6 weeks and allowing family members to sue anyone performing an abortion. Those who would have been fathers, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles have 4 years to bring the lawsuit, which provides for minimum damages of $20,000.

On Ash Wednesday, March 2, while President Biden appeared before reporters wearing ashes on his forehead, a reported asked how he could claim to be Catholic while supporting abortion in defiance of church teachings. The president’s wife pulled him away to prevent him from attempting to give a response. Biden has said that Pope Francis told him he approved of his taking communion. At the same time, the Pope has said that abortion is murder. If Biden is a murderer, be must be truly sorry and repentant before he can receive absolution and communion. The dichotomy of teachings from the Pope has fragmented the Catholic Church, reminding us once again that it is up to us to provide what women need. The solution does not lie with the Church or any government.

Readers of previous posts know about H.R. 3755, the Women’s Health Protection Act, which aims “to protect a person’s ability to determine whether to continue or end a pregnancy, and to protect a health care provider’s ability to provide abortion services.” This is an attempt to codify the “ability” to have an abortion as the federal law of the land before the Supreme Court rules on the Dobbs case in June. The bill passed the Democrat-controlled House 218-211 and was presented before the Senate. On May 1, the Senate voted 48-46 NOT to bring the bill up for debate in the Senate. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) joined Republicans in opposing the bill. Six senators did not vote. Do they not have the character to stand and be counted for what they believe is right? How about each of us….

A new report shows that the use of abortion pills is up from 44% of all abortions in 2019 to 54% in 2020, largely due to the pandemic and increasing public awareness of the option. Planned Parenthood began to use telemedicine and overnight delivery of the pills. Let us be reminded that our mission includes changing the hearts and minds of the public as well as providing all the physical help and emotional support a woman needs to choose life. When a woman can abort in private, it is only her conscience which is offended. It is virtually certain that the pills will never be illegal. Such a law would be impossible to enforce; witness the use of currently illegal drugs.

The Constitutional Court of Columbia has voted to legalize abortion up to gestational age 24 weeks. Previously, abortion was illegal unless the pregnancy resulted from rape, there were fetal malformations, or if the mother’s life was in danger. While all of these prior exceptions can be met with objections (discussed in earlier posts and some of my other writings), abortion up to 24 weeks means that the most hideous procedure of killing a well-developed person in the womb, sucking out the brain and dismembering the body is now cheered in Columbia as an “historic step”…indeed it is, with great sadness. Beyond 24 weeks, there remain restrictions on abortion, while the pro-abortion faction is still calling for complete decriminalization of abortion at any gestational age for any reason.

A group of Republicans in the House Pro-Life Caucus have decried a recent report investigating allegations of illegal and unethical activities practiced by the University of Pittsburgh surrounding its fetal tissue research, calling it a whitewash. “A truly transparent and comprehensive assessment would not have evaded the questions raised by public records, especially and including whether the University of Pittsburgh used the body parts of babies who were born alive and died from having their organs harvested, as well as if individuals procuring the baby body parts for the university altered abortion procedures to suit their gruesome research.” I have reported on this previously also. It is truly sickening. But, the fact is, there are those who feel that laws are inconvenient, so they just ignore them. We see it frequently in so many areas of concern these days, and in the highest political offices in the land.

The question of when life begins…really? Justice Blackmun did not know in 1973, but every doctor in the world and every medical library in the word in the 1960’s knew the answer…life begins at the moment of conception. That is medical science and not simply a pro-life message arguing that abortion is taking a human life. President Biden has said often since at least 2008 that he believes life begins at conception. In 2015, he said that he was able to accept that premise, but he was not ready to say that to others who have a different view (whatever that means). Now, he has moved even further away from supporting life, saying he respects people who believe life begins at conception, but he disagrees. Will the next step be to decide whose life has value? Should some people be euthanized? Let us know history and understand how that journey began with small steps. Let us not be deceived. Many people already advocate shocking ideas. Let us not be confused. See Https:lifefirst.org under “When does life begin?” (your answer matters).

There is much more news of which we should be aware and as a result of which we should form opinions and incorporate our opinions into activism and voting. Watch for new posts in a few days until I get caught up. As I have mentioned, we can expect the most hateful and vitriolic rhetoric from those who support abortion. The name-calling has started, and I fear that the worst is yet to come. We are dealing with an underlying evil, not that all misguided persons supporting “women’s rights” are evil…many have no idea what they think they are supporting, and they have not seen what options are available to women who want alternatives. But, there is pure evil at work for profit and to rid the world of those least fit to live. Watch as they call us what they are…. the oldest of tactics… demonize your adversary if you have no logically persuasive argument. That is why we must be prepared by the weapons of knowledge and prayer.

As noted in the title, in this post I draw upon articles in recent editions of the National Catholic Register. The contributors and editors report in every issue on some facet of the struggle to protect the sanctity of life and the dignity of those whose lives are diminished… many of those destroyed by abortion. However, those who attack life and human dignity are also assaulting our freedoms to assemble, speak freely, and educate our children, to name a few of the current serious cultural conflicts.

The National Right to Life sponsored a full page ad with a picture of a tiny developing baby. The caption reads: “Her heart is beating. For Now. An unborn baby’s heart is beating until she dies from abortion. Her brain waves could be recorded as early as six weeks. She, along with 800,000 potential playmates, will die from abortion this year. And powerful political forces believe there should be more abortions, even late in pregnancy, and paid for with your tax dollars.”

An organization named Students for Life investigated 784 Christian institutions, of which 237 (30%) were Catholic schools. They found that 81 of the 547 non-Catholic Christian schools (14.8%) and 22 of the 237 Catholic schools (9.3%) had ties to Planned Parenthood.

The investigation was conducted from viewing the school web sites where such relationships were found as: promoting PP as an internship opportunity for credit; promoting PP as a student resource; advertising or partnering with PP for an event; promoting PP as a career or volunteer opportunity.

When the schools with ties to PP were contacted concerning the issue, the number of non-Catholic schools continuing the relationship dropped to 61 (down from 14.8% to 11.2%) and the Catholic schools dropped to 8 (down from 9.3% to 3.4%). PP performed 354,871 abortions in 2021. None of the schools continuing to work with PP returned calls of inquiry. Some of those schools continued to have the same (or modified) links on their web sites, while at least one school hid the links behind a log in screen.

NCR also recently carried a story on surrogate motherhood. Surrogacy involves an arrangement whereby a woman agrees to bear someone else’s biological child and to surrender the child at birth, typically for monetary compensation. Surrogacy is most often arranged by wealthy couples for the convenience of not having to conceive in a natural way or just because the woman does not want to deal with a pregnancy.

The Catholic Church teaches against the practice, and some feminists express revulsion and cite negative implications for women. Comments include references to the perils of pregnancy and cite that the industry is unregulated. In another comment, there is the issue of the bond between the mother and child and the impact on the child when it is learned that he/she was conceived and carried to term in a rent-a-womb.

The article also cites the Church position that a child is a “gift” and that there is no”right” to a child. A child is not a piece of property. And, by bearing children, man and woman uniquely cooperate with Creator God. Pope John Paul II’s “Letter to Women” speaks to the beauty of being a woman and especially a mother. Other angles on this issue include human trafficking with the intention of reproductive exploitation of both the woman and the child. Other statements point out that poor women are at the financial and emotional mercy of the wealthy; women have to use their bodies or sell their eggs to meet their economic needs.

In another article, there are comments by a man who attended the March for Life in Washington, DC, his first time. He describes himself as an “old culture warrior” who has been in the battle since Roe v Wade in1973. He cites his astonishment at how young the crowd was…average age about 30-35, and he observed buses unloading men and women no older than their 20’s from all over the country. Many, if not most, seemed to be from colleges; he counted over 150 different college logos. He was greatly encouraged that the future of the pro-life movement is in good hands.

At the same time, Catholics at the March for Life Prayer Vigil at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception were praying for a renewed reverence for human life. Outside, a demonstration by “Catholics for Choice” supported abortion on demand for any reason. One has to wonder why they would bother to call themselves “Catholic” while showing such disrespect for the wanton destruction of human life and supporting the denigration of women. Calling oneself a unicorn does not make one a unicorn. Neither are they Catholic who lack compassion and deny women alternatives and support when there is an unwanted pregnancy in a very bad situation.

Let us be mindful of all these things. Whereas abortion is the biggest destroyer of human life and has a serious impact on women and lost fatherhood, and a ripple effect on extended families, it is by no means to only way in which “the culture of death” plagues our society. Let us not become weary, but redouble our commitment to “building a culture of life.”

I will make my post a bit more succinct this time, just to inform of a few interesting developments.

Gallup has recently released numbers on the issue of how the American public feel about abortion: should it be totally illegal 20%, totally legal 32%, legal under some conditions (usually cited as rape, incest, mother’s life in danger) 48%; Identify as pro-choice 49%, pro-life 47%…error bars not cited…so basically 48/48… (note that the numbers were 46/46 in 2002, and that pro-choice and pro-life have both varied up and down 41-51% over the last 20 years, only to wind up with identification unchanged at present…although the definitions and issues over 20 years have surely changed). Also note that from 4-8 people out of 100 just don’t know how they identify…. what if we could bring many of them to the pro-life side….? (Can I here “activism, outreach, and education”??)

Pennsylvania Court of Appeals has refused an appeal by 12 states to prevent Biden from expanding abortion at home and abroad by executive order. Ohio University is sponsoring a “sex week” during which students are asked to “thank abortion providers.”

Fox news is reporting that the NIH is planning to spend $88 million in 2022 (in just this one year) on research using aborted fetal tissues. Approximately $21 million has already been provided by the NIAID which is run by Anthony Fauci. I have written some on this topic in past posts. Federal law prohibits the sale or trafficking in fetal tissues, but illegal activities are known (and Planned Parenthood has been a big player). Huge political contributions and a pro-abortion attitude at high levels of government have insured that there has been no prosecution. I do not have space here to document those statements, but I have written on them in previous posts and in my book. As horrifying as this is to many, it is the tip of the iceberg and the stuff of science fiction. The Democrat majority US Senate has refused to ban human-animal hybrid experiments. For those wishing to read on I supply the links below: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fauci-nih-funding-fetal-tissue-studies and https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pittsburgh-fetal-tissue-project and https://www.foxnews.com/us/planned-parenthood-tissue-procurer-abortion-clinic-testimony and https://www.foxnews.com/politics/unsealed-invoices-planned-parenthood-daleiden-25k Do you want to read about a heart harvested from an aborted baby transplanted into a rat…want to see it beating?

An organization called NARAL has a web site worth visiting. https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/ It advocates unrestricted and unregulated access to abortion, shamelessly advocating abortion as family planning and birth control and a woman’s right to choose…. choose between abortion and no other option. What choice is that ?! However, it is so wrapped up in sugar and love as to make the uninformed person want to sign up right away. The pro-abortion faction is very well funded with the best of advertising and graphic artists that money can buy.

So, I ask the reader, where do you stand… will you be as committed as they are, with the meager financial resources we in the pro-life movement have? Can you spare some of your time for activism, to stand and be counted, to donate a few dollars from time to time to support your local pregnancy resource centers, to support https://LifeFirst.org and https://abortionsurvivors.org and other such organizations which stand on the front line?

One can see that the issues are grave, and we are all needed to be in the fray “with both feet.” Legalisms are one thing, but we have seen in the above links that laws are not enforced by the highest authorities in government if they support a position contrary to the law (and I have written much on how this is wrapped up in political power and self-enrichment). It is up to us to change the hearts and minds of the public through activism and education, and by providing women in need with everything they need to choose life for their baby. And, every last one of us is important to that cause.

Having caught you up to date on some of the most important recent events, I now present a few that are easier to digest.

The current National Catholic Register carries a front page story on the March for Life in Washington, D.C. with comments that hopes are running high for a Supreme Court “reversal” of Roe v. Wade. While I have commented on this issue quite a bit, let us be reminded that the Roe decision involved a cluster of findings and depended upon sentence fragments in various constitutional amendments to discern a new “right” for women to have an abortion. In their findings, they ignored the 10th Amendment, which leaves every matter not explicitly addressed in the constitution to the states.

Furthermore, those discussions in the decision that deal with medical aspects of pregnancy and abortion are antiquated and not relevant to any current review. As if not bad enough, the statement that the court did not know when human life begins and that nobody else did either, was blatantly and knowingly false at the time. Long prior to 1973, the medical community was in total agreement on the issue, and medical books worldwide reaffirmed that human life begins at the moment of conception.

Therefore, a more studious court without a political agenda must look at the Mississippi case and devise an entirely new set of findings, which must, of their nature, contradict the Roe findings. The most simple decision would be to find that the 10th Amendment leaves the matter to the individual states. Thus, the decisions in Roe, Doe, and Casey, as well as other cases which predicated their decisions on the above, would be entirely voided.

However, it is far from clear what the majority court will do. One thing that drove the court in 1973 (other than a desire to find some way to support abortion), was the issue that every state had its own laws and regulations, most of which were somewhat different or very different. The court wanted to get everyone on the same page.

However, the decisions arising out of that desire has led to a legal morass and has divided society along political and moral/ethical positions in a way that is unprecedented, and I dare say, even more divisive, with more far-reaching consequences for women and society in general, than slavery or prohibition of alcohol. We must note that nearly 70 million babies have died. The socioeconomic impact of the loss of such lives that were never born has been very damaging to our society. The topic is a bit hard to discuss, so I will not pursue it here, but I encourage the reader to study the issue. It is rarely discussed, but one needs to know about how it has affected the broader aspects of what we experience every day.

The NCR also carries the story of Aaron Oliver, the Democratic municipal chairman in his New Jersey hometown. Oliver is an openly homosexual episcopal priest and a New Jersey National Guard chaplain. Oliver declares himself to be a lifetime loyal Democrat. He also declares himself to be pro-life. That has put him on a collision course with Democratic leadership.

Publicly, some prominent Democrat leaders have voiced tolerance for pro-life democrats, but at the same time he is being pressured through back door channels to resign. He is an active participant with Democrats for Life of America, an organization led by women and dedicated to electing pro-life Democrats to office. Interestingly, Oliver observes that the pro-life movement is growing with more diversity across many metrics, and with topics under discussion other than abortion and including euthanasia and capital punishment, for example. He says that he has no intention of resigning and will continue to advocate that Democrats work on acceptance of the sanctity of human life in all its conditions and circumstances.

NCR also carries a story about Philip Nitschke, the Australian proponent of euthanasia, who is inventing new ways to kill oneself, cutting out issues of medicines, laws, doctors and family. One device is a “pod” that one gets into. Oxygen is pumped out and nitrogen is pumped in. The machine even films the death. I suppose that is for those who cannot get someone to press a pillow over the face until 5 minutes after all struggling has stopped. A second device that he is working on would be implantable and would trigger death at some time in the future. It is still “on the drawing board.”

The pro-euthanasia group Life Cycle (which openly describes Catholics as their enemy) objects to his methods as lacking “warmth.” You cannot make this stuff up.

In other news, an article points out some interesting events in 2021. A baby born at just 20 weeks gestation had his 1 year old birthday last June. Another born at 21 weeks also celebrated his 1 year birthday in 2021.

One of the amicus briefs to the Supreme Court in the Mississippi Dobbs case was submitted by the Catholic Association. It provided a “window into the womb,” detailed 3-D ultrasound imaging and photographs sucking their thumbs and moving about.

Responding to an alarming rate of false positive tests for Down syndrome in which mothers aborted a healthy baby, the state of Ohio banned abortion for that diagnosis. Iceland, on the other hand, has a policy of “Down syndrome eradication.”

In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Catholic Social Services who sued because they were excluded from foster care contracts with the City of Philadelphia when they would not agree to certify same-sex couples as foster parents. The Supreme Court unanimously cited the First Amendment in ruling in favor of CSS. This is haled as a victory for freedom of speech and freedom of religion, which have been increasingly under attack by the current administration and the same ruling political party in various states during 2021.

The 2021 Super Bowl featured a pro-life commercial by Toyota (which I regret I did not see) featuring Paralympic swimmer Jessica Long, a 13-time gold medalist. She was adopted at age 13 months but had to have both of her legs amputated at age 18 months. She fell in love with swimming and the rest is history. Does anyone dare to suggest that her life does not matter. Yet, many people would have euthanized her at age 18 months. Such a proposition is still hugely unpopular, so politicians know not to discuss it, but that does not mean that they would not support it if they get a big enough political majority.

On December 6, President Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala said in an on line event that Guatemala “is a country of faith” and that government has a clear purpose “in respecting life from conception and the protection of family as the central axis of society.” A new public policy to that effect was passed by the country’s legislators last July. He went on to announce that Guatemala will be declared the “Ibero-American Pro-Life Capital” on March 9, 2022.

The Family Matters Association of Guatemala welcomed the announcement and commented “this is a reflection of the values of the Guatemalan society. Being pro-life is in our DNA as Guatemalans!”

In 2017, Planned Parenthood attempted to perform abortions on Guatemalan women by picking them up on shore and taking them to ships, but they were expelled from the country. It warms my heart to think that PP may have been listening. But, how sad it is that our country has not promoted life and family…. yet. The “yet” is up to us to remedy. In Guatemala, it took decades of consolidating the values into public policy. Perhaps one day…..

Those who have read parts #1 and #2 and clicked on the links will understand why I have had to devote a full day to catching up and why I broke it into multiple parts.

Now for Melissa Ohden and the Abortion Survivors Network. https://abortionsurvivors.org/ I just finished reading her book “You Carried Me” and it opened my eyes to an experience that is challenging to comprehend, so I do not claim that anyone can do more that be awed. But, I do now understand the depth of the confused and painful emotions of rejection, shame, and worthlessness experienced by those who survived an attempt by their mothers to end their life in the womb.

However, in lieu of being able to comprehend such emotions, one can easily realize that every unborn child, from the tiniest beginnings, is a real person, a unique individual, like no other who has ever lived. Or, as Melissa testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to the (pro-abortion) Women’s Health Protection Act, “You are just as much ‘you’ today as you were when you were developing in the womb.” She also challenged legislators to explain to her how she could have the right to an abortion while simultaneously she was denied the right to live.

Read her book in order to discover how she went from a 30-week old aborted fetus that was discarded into medical waste to overcome the horror of that knowledge and find love and forgiveness, then become a political activist and founder of Abortion Survivors Network.

Before she left for the March for Life in Washington, D.C., on January 21, she told me she was also attending the Students for Life Summit, meeting with Anglicans for Life, and having media events including interviews with EWTN and Dr. James Dodson, founder of Focus on the Family.

That was after ASN came off a weekend in which abortion survivor Michelle (in her first outing as a new speaker) presented herself at Front Range Alliance Church in Colorado Springs where she was welcomed with great interest in her experiences. Many people had questions, and others came up to talk with her afterward. She also reported emotionally impactful bonding experiences.

At another church she received a standing ovation after telling her story. She was also sponsored by Pikes Peak Citizens for life to speak at the Rocky Mountain March for Life rally where she gave what is described as a “fiery” speech. This event was attended by Congressman Doug Lamborn who is a strong pro-life supporter. See his picture with Michelle and people holding signs declaring that “Civil Rights Begin in the Womb.” https://lamborn.house.gov/media/press-releases/marching-life He took contact information in order to stay in touch with ASN.

For those who did not click the link above (yet), please note that there is much pro-life support in Congress, but it needs reinforcement in a time of such vitriolic attacks and hateful rhetoric aimed at pro-life activists and the Christian church, especially Catholics who have led the way in demanding respect for life and promoting an abhorrence for abortion.

Congressman Lamborn (with others) has introduced the Second Chance at Life Act, the Recognizing the Unborn Act, and the Child Tax Credit for Pregnant Moms Act. These “steps in the right direction” are, of course, vigorously opposed by the well-funded pro-abortion factions both in and out of Congress. There is no chance for legislative progress until Congress and the Presidency are on the same page. And, this must reflect the will of the people. That is why every pro-life event is important, and every individual attending is crucial to returning respect for life and individual dignity to the mainstream of society.

There is no greater statement to be made for the cause of protecting life in the womb than the testimony of abortion survivors. It is, indeed, hard for us to imagine the tiny life growing in the womb as an accomplished adult. But, those who have stepped into the light of day to declare that their lives matter are having an increasingly significant impact. The pro-abortion people are trying to ignore them, but more and more people are forced to envision the tiniest pieces of bloody tissue as the remains of a baby, a human person, and not just a piece of amorphous tissue, and “More than a Choice” (as ABN says in their logo).

One of the most important activities of ABN has been the outreach to abortion survivors, to provide support and healing. This is a process, not an event. It is very difficult for many people who have lived secretly with shame and horrifying knowledge, wondering why their mothers considered them so worthless as to be killed before they had a chance to live. The thought is so terrible that I even have difficulty writing the words. However, those who have been through the healing process with the support of those who came before them, the only persons who can understand, have experienced a new sense of being loved and accepted. Many of those have wished to speak out and have been trained to do so. One is Michelle who recently made her outing in Colorado Springs, another is Claire who spoke at the recent Texas Rally for Life, and yet another is Carrie who will kick off a 40 Days for Life campaign with LifeFirst.

Melissa also shared with me the ABN 2021-2022 Policy Impact statement, noting that “abortion survivors have never had a seat at the table when discussing the policies and laws that directly impact them…until now!” In the publication are pictures of Melissa and others with such notables as President Trump in the Oval Office, Congressman Steve Scalise, Senator Ted Cruz, Mike Pompeo, and a number of Congressmen and Congresswomen. The pro-life gala of 2021in Washington, D.C., is remembered, and an astonishing list of media interviews, quotes, comments, and appearances, as well as a stunning list of planned events for 2022 are annotated. To emphasize their political activism, there is a list of legislation supported and opposed, some of the latter being attempts to codify unregulated abortion in various ways.

In a few months, Melissa’s second book will be available: “More than a Choice: Abortion Survivors Break Their Silence.” September 28, 2022, will be the inaugural “Day of Remembrance for Abortion Survivors,” and a ribbon cutting ceremony will be held at the new Memorial for Abortion Survivors (which will be near the Supreme Court). The year 2022 will also premier a new professionally developed documentary on abortion survivors.

I found Abortion Survivors Network while doing research for my book shortly after Melissa founded ABN. Now, in such a short period of time, the awareness of abortion survivors is making news on so many fronts that people are wanting to know more. Melissa and her team are devoted to making that easier and easier. More and more abortion survivors have made themselves known and have requested help with healing, no longer feeling alone in their terrible experiences, often graduating to become speakers, who are much in demand.

All of this requires financial resources, while opposition forces pour hundreds of millions of dollars into promoting denigration of human life and individual dignity. Let us step up to be counted and provide whatever financial help we can to support ABN. Public support for them, and the impact they are having on public attitude, are the most feared things the pro-abortion people face. Let us give them even more to worry about.

In this part of my updates, I will focus on things closer to home (that is, in the greater Houston area).

First, continuing the theme of activism, Teresa Strack, executive director of LifeFirst https://lifefirst.org , informs me that LifeFirst participated in the national March for Life and the Texas Rally for Life, and they also sponsored a booth at the Austin Pro-Life Expo with about 60 other pro-life organizations.

LifeFirst has monthly meetings, the last Thursday PM of each month (except November and December) with inspirational and informative speakers. The next meeting is actually tonight January 27 (sorry for the late notice…I guess it would be tactless to make excuses). Please see the link https://lifefirst.org/2021/12/pro-life-sanctuary-citiessaving-lives-shaping-law/ . Note that the speaker is Mark Lee Dickson, director of Right to Life East Texas and founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn initiative. He will speak on “Pro-Life Sanctuary Cities: Saving Lives, Shaping Laws.” If you cannot attend, you owe it to yourself to read the page on the link.

The next meeting is February 24, and also deserves your attention. The speaker will be Julie Posey, whose story is as astonishing as any that you will ever hear, and the topic of “How Legal Abortion Serves Sexual Predators” is not to be missed. https://lifefirst.org/2022/01/how-legal-abortion-serves-sexual-predators/ You may have heard some of the stories that emerged from her experiences. I first became aware of her when researching for my book “Building a Culture of Life” (still in final stages of publishing) and I included her story as part of the scurrilous activities in which Planned Parenthood engages. I am now planning a follow-on book on the history of human trafficking and especially human sex trafficking to separate fact from much of the fiction promulgated in modern culture.

In addition to participating in pro-life events and rallies and scheduling such informative personalities, Teresa has been at the helm as LifeFirst sponsors student contests such as: Poster Art with a theme that “Every Human Life is Beautiful;” an Essay Contest on “Why Are You Pro-Life;” a Fine Art Contest on “When Does Human Life Begin;” a Video Contest with the goal to affirm the value of life in a creative way; and the (dreaded) Oratory Contest in which high school students can compete on such topics as abortion, euthanasia, infanticide, and human embryonic stem cell research. https://lifefirst.org/student-contests/ LifeFirst also offers scholarships at Lone Star College to students who start or maintain a pro-life club on campus.

Is that enough? But wait, there’s more. LifeFirst is also involved with 40 Days for Life and is sponsoring a campaign vigil at an abortion clinic (details to follow). The speaker for the kick-off event will be Carrie Fischer with Abortion Survivor’s Network (yeah, they are everywhere also!). You must watch this video: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=carrie+fisher+abortion+survivor&docid=608048025056061772&mid=227F3970A78BC01D71B3227F3970A78BC01D71B3&view=detail&FORM=VIRE

Now, ask yourself… does every human life have value…does every life matter? Or, should some lives be aborted…should some be allowed to die after birth….should some be euthanized? If you do not know the answer, if you do not care enough to be motivated to activism, then someone else will make the decision for you…when you are deemed to be of no further value to society.

By the way, it takes your donations to carry out these activities.

Stay tuned for Part #3

In preparing this update, the first since December 28, I was a bit overwhelmed by the vast amount of new material that I hope may be of interest to subscribers. So, I am reminded of the proposition of how to eat an elephant…one bite at a time. In order not to overwhelm the reader, I have broken my report into numbered updates with targeted topics, of which this is the first.

The most obvious topic is the March for Life in Washington, D.C. on January 21, which had the theme that “Equity begins in the womb.” Whereas it is not feasible to even scratch the surface in commenting on all of the peripheral activities associated with this event. I will note a few things.

First of all, be encouraged by the momentum of the pro-life movement. More people than ever before now realize that a developing baby is a person, and they are concerned that this life must be protected and that pregnant women must receive every kind of support so that abortion is not a reflex choice. Organizers for the event obtained a permit based on 50,000 people attending. The weather was harsh and concerns for COVID-19 have restricted many people from travel. However, a very determined 150,000 people came to have their voices heard.

Nevertheless, there remains bitter opposition to those efforts to protect life, educate women, and offer support and alternatives.

On January 22, President Joe Biden pledged to defend the “fundamental right” to unrestricted abortion and reaffirmed his commitment to spreading widely unrestricted and unregulated abortion. Despite not being something new in our time, it is still unsettling to see a national leader denigrate life and promote the death of the most innocent and vulnerable. It is equally perplexing to see a leader of his stature embrace the violence perpetrated on women by abortion and promote restrictions on education of women and any support mechanisms that would allow her to choose life for her baby. One might think that responsible persons would find abortion a most regrettable option and encourage every alternative. One could still support the choice of abortion while finding it the least desirable outcome in a pregnancy. What is he (and others like him) thinking!?

Vice President Harris also spoke in support of expanded access to abortion, equating it to a civil right and health care for women. She (and most democrat leaders, with the support of most lay democrats) are promoting a bill in Congress to make unrestricted and unregulated access to abortion on the demand of the mother a statutory right under national law as a way to circumvent any decision by the Supreme Court which might return the right to regulate abortion to the individual states.

The Women’s Health Protection Act (if it becomes law) will accomplish that and explicitly eliminate waiting periods, ultrasounds, requirements for education, and any discussion of alternatives and community resources, such as is currently required by laws in various states. Again, the lust to destroy incipient life and prevent a woman’s access to support so she can have a healthy baby is hard to comprehend. It is equally difficult to understand why all women do not clearly see such efforts as depriving women of access to every kind of support so that she has a choice and does not feel hopeless and abandoned with no viable option. Pro-life is the real pro-choice.

Concurrently, thousands of people from across the state attended the Texas Rally for Life in Austin on January 22. Political leaders and representatives from pro-life organizations addressed the crowds. About 60 pro-life organizations also provided booths at the Pro-Life Expo. There was a great amount of enthusiasm and hope for an end to the wanton taking of life that is advocated by pro-abortion groups.

Among those speaking was Claire Culwell, a survivor of an attempted abortion. Nothing speaks more loudly to the issue of the unborn being real people than a person whose life was not ended by abortion, a person who can assert that they had a right to be born and that their life matters.

As more and more pro-life groups become better organized and cooperate together, the assertion that all life has value will be progressively harder to refute with any credibility. Those who promote abortion as a right and the most desirable solution to an unplanned pregnancy under difficult circumstances will be discredited, finding themselves on the wrong side of the evolving values of society.

As 2021 draws to a close, we have much to reflect on. I will not add to the lengthy list of events we lament in this post, but rather I report an uplifting message in the struggle to protect life and individual dignity.

At the close of church services recently, a priest remarked about the conspicuous dignity of the unborn child. The use of the word conspicuous in that context grabbed my ear. More and more people in societies around the world do see the unborn child as a person entitled to life and having the right to be treated with dignity. Those rights are becoming conspicuous, standing out so as to be clearly visible to more and more people.

One of the most important demonstrations to support that fact are those who have survived attempted abortion. Many of their stories are found on the website of the Abortion Survivors Network https://abortionsurvivors.org/ Those helpless unborn individuals survived an attempt to end their lives in the womb. As adults they inform us that they were real people even when in the womb, that they wanted to live, and that their lives matter.

Shawn Carney has made an end of year report on the 2021 worldwide 40 Days for Life campaign which further inspires us. “More people prayed, fasted, and stood in peaceful vigil in 2021 than any previous year,” he reports. He further reports that 2,260 women (that they have confirmed) chose life for their baby as a result of these prayer vigils at abortion clinics, more than twice as many as in 2020 (which was influenced heavily in all respects by the pandemic).

In addition, 18 more abortion workers converted to the pro-life movement and 7 more abortion facilities closed in 2021. From its inception, 20,368 mothers have chosen not to have an abortion, 229 abortion workers have converted, and 114 abortion facilities have closed.

In the United States, education of the public and efforts to provide for every need of the expectant mother is reaching deeper into communities where at-risk women live. However, there is also a powerful pro-abortion faction in the US with aggressive support from the highest officials in the current federal government. Those people have promised to make more federal tax money available to pay for abortion on demand for any reason. And, they propose to make it a violation of federal law for any entity (essentially religious organizations) to refuse to prescribe contraception or provide abortion as part of health insurance benefits. In an equally troubling move, they promise to criminalize refusal by a health care worker to perform an abortion, or assist in performing an abortion based, on religious beliefs.

On a worldwide scale, the current administration has acted to reverse former US policy and has released huge amounts of money to foreign entities to encourage and support abortion. Impoverished and poorly educated women in countries with few resources are easy victims of a system designed to generate profit in US dollars for the abortionists, who are eager to get a piece of the pie.

Planned Parenthood has long been the most visible head of the abortion industry, performing 40% of abortions in the US. They have much support from prominent people and powerful politicians. They publicly proclaim their political position and donate tens of millions of dollars to elect people to public office who with reinforce their profit stream from doing abortions. They have earned special attention, but there are the other 60% that we must not forget about.

I did promise to be uplifting in this post, but we needed first to understand that our success against the evil which is represented by wanton abortion of unborn people is not without fierce and well-funded opposition. Leaders in the highest offices in the land take money from the abortion industry and have promised to criminalize opposition to abortion.

Just like “freedom is not free,” the right to life comes with a price tag. It is not guaranteed to persist, even for us, much less with the opportunity to extend that right to the unborn, unless we take action to make it so.

We are winning the battle, for now, but victory is not assured, and will not be achieved until we have changed the hearts and minds of the people. To this end, I have encouraged you in prior posts concerning current events which are being carried out by people like you and me, people deeply concerned, who have stepped up to take action and be counted.

I now ask you to join with them and with me. Let us stand to be counted; let us volunteer to help when we can; let us donate financially to organizations in our communities and also to those who are active on a national level.

The future belongs not only to us, but to our children. This frightful attack on life, dignity, and individual freedoms must be strongly opposed, and every single person is important to preservation of these basic human values. Let 2022 be the year !

I am breaking with my usual theme for this Special Christmas Edition from the Building a Culture of Life web site. Typically, I am reporting on current events in the cause of respect for life and individual dignity, especially for protection of the unborn, thus reporting on the struggle over unrestricted abortion, as well as commenting on the things we can do to provide everything a woman needs to have a healthy baby.

Before going on, however, I urge you to support a couple of my favorite activists as we close out the year with much competition for your resources. Please visit https://abortionsurvivors.org and become acquainted with their activities. Watch the video at https://www.webcastsuccess.com/survivors-event and your life will be changed. There is nothing more powerful that the attestation by an abortion survivor asserting “Look at me! Before I was born, I was a real person! My life matters!” Also visit https://lifefirst.org , see all that they do, and be amazed. It takes money to do all of these things, so please make a donation. No matter how insignificant it seems to you, it will be highly valued, blessed by God, and used well to change lives.

Now, on to the news. I am drawing on the National Catholic Register Dec 19–Jan 1 for this communication. If you do not yet subscribe, I do recommend that you do so NCR@sfsdayton.com .

Everyone must know by now that the Supreme Court has completed hearing arguments in the Dobbs case. If you have not read it yet, I refer you to my post dated Dec 5 which will appear below this one on the Current Events page. NCR has an article “Experts Say Roe’s Days Are Numbered.” They report that both pro-life and pro-abortion advocates believe that “the days of adhering to the framework laid out in 1973 Roe v Wade …are likely at an end.” I have commented on this previously and will only summarize a few facts below.

The Roe decision has baffled legal scholars for 50 years. The court (described as “liberal activists” by many) decided that sentence fragments in various constitutional amendments implied that a woman had a right to “privacy” and thus (with a giant leap in “logic”) she had a “right” to an abortion. They then set about to decide what a trimester system for pregnancy meant for development of a growing baby (that they denigrated to a lesser entity), and when fetal “viability” outside the womb occurred.

They even declared, in contradiction to what was accepted by doctors and taught in medical books around the world…that the life of a new person begins at the moment of conception, saying there was no such agreement, and that the court would not make such a decision for the purpose of deciding when a woman has a right to an abortion. They had to say that. Otherwise they would be deciding that abortion is murder. They also had to declare that an unborn baby is not a “person” under the constitution and thus not entitled to life.

It may well be that the constitution says nothing about when a growing baby becomes a person. In fact, the constitution says absolutely nothing about a developing baby or abortion. What the constitution does say, absolutely and irrefutably, in the simplest of terms, is that any matter not explicitly delegated to the United States by the constitution or forbidden to it in the constitution is delegated to the individual states. Period. SCOTUS totally ignored this 10th amendment in the Roe decision, making no comment on why this amendment should not be applied to the case.

Many legal scholars have said from the beginning that the court should never have heard the Roe case in the first place because the constitution de facto states clearly that the individual states have the right to make laws regulating abortion. The majority justices were clearly influenced to make the decision to expand abortion in the manner written, not because of the constitution, but because of their personal values and ideology while under extreme political pressure from like-minded political activists.

I have written a great deal more in my book Building a Culture of Life about the political climate that was developing over the previous 100 years, as well as what ensured over nearly 50 years after the Roe decision. Now, people are much better informed and communicate rapidly. The attitude toward abortion has shifted significantly as people have learned that a new life of a very real person begins at conception. They have also seen on ultrasound the images of babies, and they have then seen them being killed. Science has also solidly debunked the writings in the Roe decision.

In the current court, 4 justices (as required) voted to hear the Dobbs case, and 5 justices voted not to interfere with the right of Texas to enact the “fetal heartbeat law.” Pro-abortion activists heavily lobbied to keep the court from taking the Dobbs case, knowing how weak is the argument in support of Roe. Experts in law, based upon what we know about the sitting justices, believe that the court will completely revise Roe (essentially overturning it and Doe and Casey), bringing the science up to date, and returning the right to regulate abortion to the states, by a 5-4 or even a 6-3 decision.

It is expected that, while returning regulation of abortion to the individual states, that some reinforcement of the rights of women will also be forthcoming. The state has an interest in the rights and health of both the unborn child and the pregnant woman. It will be very interesting to read how the court threads that needle.

Moving on to other news (before the reader falls asleep trying to keep all this complexity in the head), the NCR also reminds us to keep Christ in Christmas, and declares “O Come Let Us Adore Him” while extolling the magnificent nativity exhibitions by the Knights of Columbus in New Haven, Conn. We are also reminded that, after nearly 8 years of restoration of the ancient stone Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the task is nearly complete.

And, the “Church Awaits Canonization of India’s First Lay Martyr Saint.” Devasahayam was martyred in 1752 during Hindu persecution of Christians. He will be canonized May 15, 2022.

Sadly, not all news is positive. Catholic school officials are objecting to Biden’s proposed “Build Back Better” bill, saying that its provisions will force Catholic schools to pull out of preschool and child care. This is associated with an article titled “As Culture Continues to Unravel, Religious Freedom Becomes More Vital.” Mary Rice Hasson, head of the Catholic Women’s Forum at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington has co-authored (with her sister Theresa Fornan) a book entitled Get Out Now: Why You Should Pull Your Child From Public School Before It Is Too Late. They describe the “morally, intellectually and politically toxic environment found in many of our schools.”

The Supreme Court also heard arguments on December 8 in the case of Carson v Makin. A school-choice tuition assisted program in Maine discriminates against Catholic and other Christian parents. “Progressive” lobbyists heavily lobbied against the court hearing this case as well. “According to the Supreme Court, the First Amendment guards against excessive government entanglement with religion,” the NCR reports. The Maine law is so blatantly unconstitutional that the court is fully expected to end that practice.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis has called for greater unity between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. In Athens, he addressed His Beatitude Ieronymos II, archbishop of Athens and All Greece, apologizing in most contrite terms “for the ways Catholics have contributed to division with Orthodox Christians.” When the Pope first arrived, an Orthodox cleric shouted at him, “Pope you are a heretic.” I have written extensively on this schism in my book “A Timeline Of the Journey of Humankind.” It is a frustrating story of things that did not have to be that way, and there is quite enough blame over hundreds of years to spread around to many involved individuals and factions.

Back to more hopeful news, there are a couple of long articles in NCR on the problem of unsafe water in Kenya. “Families struggling to survive” are turning to Catholic missions and donations from the US for help. Cross Catholic Outreach was founded nearly 20 years ago just for this purpose, to work with Catholic priests and religious sisters in such missions to help the poor.

And finally, how could it be Christmas without viewing the 1946 movie It’s a Wonderful Life. The movie was directed by Frank Capra, a Catholic who reached maturity saying, “My films must let every man, woman, and child know that God loves them, and that peace and salvation will become a reality only when they all learn to love each other.”

That just about says it all. Merry Christmas !!

Dobbs… the MIssissippi abortion law that is now before the Supreme Court. The Court has completed hearing arguments in the case and is likely to rule on the case in June 2022. At issue is whether the state of Mississippi has the right to prohibit abortion after 15 weeks gestation. However, there are much broader issues at stake, and I elaborate on some of those below.

The Supreme Court ruling in Roe v Wade in 1973 (and in the concurrent ruling in Doe) found that a woman has a “right of privacy” arising from the 14th amendment “concept of personal liberty” and that the 9th amendment’s “reservation of rights to the people” combine to “encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” However, that right was not absolute, and the Court went on to discuss the interest of the state in the welfare of both mother and child, the trimester system, and fetal viability. The Court also ruled that there was no agreement on when life began and that the constitution did not recognize the unborn child as a “person” having the right to life.

Furthermore (in Doe), the Court ruled that a woman could get an abortion at any stage of pregnancy for a number of reasons, especially in matters threatening her health, and that being nervous and anxious over the pregnancy could seriously affect a woman’s health. Whereas fetal viability was a threshold in Roe, the ruling in Doe opened the door for abortion up to the moment of going into labor for virtually any reason at all.

Those decisions, as we all know, immediately led to controversy in many areas of the ruling, and it has had broad and long-lasting ramifications. Legal scholars were perplexed at the time and have written much about the new “rights” of women found in the constitution. Those who wrote the amendments and advocated for them in writing and spoke aloud in favor of them never found any such implications in those amendments. The Court, it is said, simply fabricated the new “right” to abortion and then set about to justify it,

Furthermore, the 10th amendment to the constitution says (in its simplicity) that decisions on any matter not explicitly given to the United States (eg, the elected officials in congress) by the constitution are relegated to the individual states (eg the elected officials in those states). Therefore, scholars assert that the Court should never have taken the Roe and Doe cases in the first place. The Court, when ruling in Roe and Doe, said nothing about the 10th amendment, making no attempt to explain why the 10th amendment was not valid in those cases.

There are several other things that were controversial then and which have become even more so since 1973. Well before 1973, it was uniformly accepted by biologists and medical doctors, and it was written in books all over the world, that human life begins at the moment of conception. The fertilized egg contains at that moment all of the DNA it will ever have to develop into a baby, a child, and an adult, and that DNA is unique and distinct from the mother and father. Yet, the Court ruled otherwise. The issue of the new life being a “person,” and thus having the right to life under the constitution, is asserted on the basis of established science, but it was ignored by the Court.

The Court also linked the trimester system to fetal viability (ability to live outside the womb) and the interests of the states in the welfare of the mother and the unborn child. But, the time of viability is a bit different in any pregnancy (which is nominally 40 weeks duration). Advances in medical science have now given a 24 week old baby a 50% chance of surviving. However, babies born earlier have survived against all odds.

And, abortion survivors (see my earlier posts referring to the Abortion Survivors Network…now with over 350 members) strongly assert that they are not a piece of tissue to be discarded as trash. They tell us that they are people and that their lives matter. It has become increasingly hard for the Court to ignore the fact that an abortion is the taking of a human life, causing the death of a human person.

I will not discuss the details of the1992 Court ruling in Casey in this setting. However, it was in that case that the Court acknowledged the (limited) right of the states to further regulate abortion. That led to hundreds of new laws in various states (many of which are under injunction pending the outcome of the Court ruling in Dobbs). But, without Casey, the MIssissippi legislation regulating abortion would never have become law.

For the above reasons, it is hoped by Pro-Life advocates that the Court will rule that the basis for the ruling in Roe was flawed and that references to the beginning of human life and the issue of when the growing fetus becomes a person and achieves viability outside the womb are antiquated and were wrongly stated even in 1973.

The Court required at least 4 of the 9 Justices to approve taking up the Dobbs case. There was a lot of external pressure on the Court by special interest groups not to even think about the case. All of the above problems with the old rulings are well known to Pro-Abortion advocates. They fear that the Court will overturn Roe in its entirety, and that regulation of abortion will be returned to the states, according to the 10th amendment.

The National Catholic Register (Vol 97, No. 26), points out that the permissiveness of US abortion laws is among the most extreme in the world. Of 198 countries, only 59 countries permit elective abortions. Forty-five of the 59 countries limit elective abortions up to 12 weeks. Six countries limit elective abortions between 12 and 20 weeks. And, only 7 countries permit elective abortions after 20 weeks: China, Vietnam, North Korea, Singapore, Netherlands, Canada…and the United States. It is argued that the Mississippi ban on abortion after 15 weeks is not extreme, but rather it is the permitting of elective abortions after 12 weeks which is extreme.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 not to block the Texas Fetal Heartbeat law from taking effect. In a twist that confounds attempts to sue the State of Texas and thus prevent the state from enforcing the law, the state is prevented from enforcing the law by the wording of the law itself. The law permits private citizens to sue those who perform abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected on ultrasound. An ultrasound is required before an abortion is legal in Texas. The Court ruled that nobody had been harmed by the law, and those bringing the case before the Court made no claim that anyone was in imminent danger of being harmed. Yet, 3 Justices who are described as “liberal” voted to keep Texas from enforcing the law…whereas the law itself prevents Texas from enforcing the law.

This has given Pro-Life advocates reason to believe that 5-6 Justices will vote to overturn Roe and return the right to regulate abortion to the states, according to the values of the voters in those states. In Casey, the Court did bring up the issue of not placing an “undue burden” on women seeking an abortion under the rulings in Roe and Doe. The Court will have to address that issue as well. However, the issues in Casey were a consequence of Roe, and so should fall with Roe, if regulation of abortion is returned to the states. Abortion, of course, is not mentioned anywhere in the constitution, and thus its regulation is relegated to the states by the 10th amendment. However, with all of these conflicting interests, it is by no means certain how the Court will rule in Dobbs.

….other than Happy Thanksgiving ! And, there is much to be thankful for !

Shawn Carney, founder of 40 Days for Life, is reporting that 850 babies were saved during the most recent campaign. Data is still coming in, but the count since the movement started is now over 20,000 babies saved when mothers listened to sidewalk counselors and decided life for their child. And, another abortion worker has quit and converted to the pro-life position that every pregnant woman deserves a real choice…not just an abortion.

LifeFirst is taking a break from meetings in November and December, but Teresa Stark has exciting plans which will resume in January. In the meantime, the associated pregnancy resource centers are busily providing all the help needed by pregnant women in distress so they can have a healthy baby.

There is also exciting news out of the Abortion Survivors Network. An ad will appear on Fox News next week which is designed to draw attention to abortion survivors and force listeners to realize that the unborn are real people.

In the ad Amy Miles says, “As somebody who survived an abortion, I want to tell the Supreme Court that my life mattered.” The Supreme Court will soon hear oral arguments in the Mississippi case referred to as Dobbs (see previous posts). The Court will also hear the case concerning the Texas fetal heartbeat law. The Abortion Survivors Network has filed an amicus brief in the Dobbs case.

Melissa Ohden provided a statement to Fox News in which she said, “Isn’t something wrong in our society when Amy, myself and other abortion survivors are only alive today because an abortion failed to take our lives, and our government failed to protect us?”

Ohden has also said that abortion supporters “fail to convince me how I have a right to an abortion but I was denied the basic right to live when I was aborted and accidentally born alive. I am more than a choice.” Read the story:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/abortion-survivor-ad-dobbs

Melissa Ohden is a very busy lady, indeed ! She will be with other pro-life leaders in Washington on December 1 for a rally before the Supreme Court building. She is writing a book on abortion survivors to be published in 2022, and she leaves us with a teaser about a “ground-breaking event about abortion survivors coming in early December.” https://abortionsurvivors.org/

National Review (November 22, 2021) published an article titled “Science Has Strengthened the Pro-Life Case.” The author, Tara Sander Lee (PhD), writes that, “Fifty years ago science had firmly established the dynamics of developing human life in the womb,” and that “science already knew about the humanity of the unborn child.” She goes on to explain that even 50 years ago it had been demonstrated that a new life began at conception, that the fertilized egg had all the DNA it would ever have to develop into a baby and then an adult.

She further explains that, in 1973, when Roe v Wade was decided, biologists had already accepted a standard (the Carnegie Stages) for development through the first 8 weeks of human life. Stage 1a marks the beginning of human life with the first stage of fertilization. Stage 23 concludes in the 8th week when the child has developed 90% of his or her bodily structures. Beyond that time, further development is very rapid.

She goes on to discuss the fascinating progress made with ultrasound diagnosis of condition in the developing child, use of anesthesia on the patient, and surgeries in the womb. She notes how her students’ eyes glazed over during such discussions until the moment when she showed them a modern ultrasound image of the face of a child in the womb. To read the article and see such an ultrasound image:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/science-has-strengthened-the-pro-life-case/

In other news, it is being reported that the annual rate of abortions in the US has risen about 1-2% yearly since a low point in 2017, and that 18% of all pregnancies in the US end in abortion.

Pro-Life advocates of every demographic, Catholics and Protestants, Blacks, and Whites, Democrats and Republicans, will gather in a few days at a church in Mississippi to pray that the Supreme Court will respect the sanctity of human life. A representative of the Abortion Survivors Network will attend to assert that he survived an abortion, he deserved to live, and that his life matters.

One hundred lawmakers in Congress are introducing a bill to protect the rights of conscience of healthcare providers who do not want to participate in abortions. The HHS under the Biden administration has been acting to remove protection from prosecution of healthcare providers who object to participating in abortions as a matter of conscience.

Biden’s policies have attempted to reverse every aspect of protections implemented under the Trump administration, both Domestically and internationally. It has also become a matter of great concern that Biden’s current budget proposal does not contain the Hyde Amendment which, since 1976, has prevented the use of taxpayer money to be used to provide abortions on request. If the budget becomes law without the Hyde Amendment, every woman in Medicaid and other government health care plans would have access to abortions paid for by the US Treasury.

A new study released by the Charlotte Lozier Institute reveals that chemical abortions (eg the use of abortion pills) is causing an alarming increase in the rate of emergency room visits after taking the pills. The technique has become increasingly popular in recent years and is a favorite of Planned Parenthood. In 2020, the abortion pills were used in 50% of US abortions.

The authors report that ER visits after taking the pills rose by 507% between 2002 and 2015. At the same time, the rate of ER visits following surgical abortions rose 315%. Planned Parenthood maintains a hotline so that women can call in for a prescription and have the pills delivered the next day. Texas and Louisiana passed state laws requiring abortion providers to have hospital privileges due to the frequency of such complications, but federal courts have prevented the laws from taking place. The FDA is considering a rule requiring prescription for the abortion pills to be in person. It is not clear that such a rule would prevent complications, or that doctors will be held accountable by licensing agencies for the morbidity and mortality suffered by their patients.

In a few other blurbs (with apologies for not providing details): “Human Rights Begin in the Womb”; Pro-Abortion advocates vandalize a memorial to aborted babies and yell obscenities at the pro-life people who made it; the constitution dictates that regulation of abortion should be left to the states; abortion advocates will not answer when asked if abortion takes a human life; Oklahoma Supreme Court blocks 3 anti-abortion laws [Courts throughout the country have been holding back such laws due to prior SCOTUS decisions on the subject..like Roe and Casey and the 10th amendment argument that the states have all rights not explicitly given to Congress in the constitution. That is why the Dobbs case is so important.]; DC police officers were told they must have an abortion to keep their jobs;

And, finally: Billie Eilish held a concert in Texas recently and used the stage to demonstrate her character and limited vocabulary, possibly breaking the record for most use of the “f-word” in a public venue, while denouncing the new Texas fetal heartbeat law…and concluding with “my body, my f-ing choice !” To which Abby Johnson replied (on Instagram), “if it has a separate heartbeat and DNA from you, it’s NOT.YOUR.BODY !” Gotta love Abby.

So many “whistles” have been “blown” to call attention to the illegal activities and unconscionable business practices of Planned Parenthood, that it is increasingly becoming a virtual full orchestra!

The latest woman to describe her experiences at PP appears in an article by the Catholic News Agency and printed in the National Catholic Register. Mayra Rodriguez worked for PP for 17 years and managed 3 facilities during her career.

Rodriguez is a Mexican national and was in the US on a tourist visa when she was hired anyway by PP to work at a clinic where no abortions were performed. She was later sent to an abortion clinic and was told that she would lose her job if she did not go to work there.

Rodriguez put her talents to work and rose rapidly in the organization. She was so good at her job that she received much recognition and become the Employee of the Year in 2016. However, working conditions changed and she began to feel the pressure to actively sell abortion to increase profits. Women were told that the procedure is “easy,” she says, and that it is the best solution to an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy in the circumstances of their lives. However, she noticed that when women were given a true option, they very often chose not to have an abortion.

She began to be troubled by that, but her observations then turned to the discovery that doctors were falsifying medical records to conceal adverse incidents and complications of abortions. She noted that complications occurred much more often than were reported. Many were reported incorrectly, or not at all.

In one case, she noted that a doctor botched an abortion and then falsified the report. In another case, the doctor left the head of a14 week old fetus inside the mother and placed an IUD inside her before he realized the mistake. She was shocked when the doctor referred to the head of a child he had just killed as if it were a piece of garbage to be discarded.

She reported the incident to her supervisor, saying “I am not going to do this anymore,” and stated that she was going to report the incident and the falsification of medical records. In response, PP accused Rodriguez of concealing narcotics in her office and reported that she was working illegally, demanding that she be deported. She was then fired.

However, Rodriguez was incensed at the injustice and fought a prolonged legal battle for wrongful termination, which she won in 2019, with a punishing award of $3 million imposed on PP.

Rodriguez became enlightened about all of the issues surrounding abortion during this time and coordinated that education with her own experiences to become a strong pro-life advocate in the Hispanic community , reminding one of the journey of Abby Johnson to a similar conclusion.

Rodriguez now warns women that abortion leaves women “undone,” without peace, and saddled with emotional and mental health issues. She urges them to choose life for their babies.