Waiting for 60 Minutes to Help Us “See” the Unborn Child

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National Catholic Register

by Michael Forrest 03/10/2016

(Image Credit: The Peabody Awards, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

(Image Credit: The Peabody Awards, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

I agree with 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley. And I hope he eventually thinks through all the ramifications of what he stated last year in an important interview about his decision to air what CBS has characterized as the program’s “most disturbing footage in its 47-year history” related to the mass killing of Syrian men, women and children with sarin gas.

Pelley stated:

We wanted the world to see what this was, in all of its ugliness. They killed more than a thousand people, 400 children! You can read about that all day, but if you don’t see it, I don’t believe the impact truly hits you…Our hope was to put together all of the available evidence in one place, in one story, so people could truly understand the magnitude of what happened.

He then went on to say:

I think we have entered a new era of human rights that are in some way safeguarded and guaranteed by the fact that everybody has a video camera and a way to publish that video. We’ve never seen anything like these…attacks in Damascus.  And I use the word ‘seen’ with great emphasis.

The CBS interviewer responded intently, “It doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. We just haven’t seen it.” To which Pelley replied, “Yes, these things have happened and they keep happening because we don’t see it.”

This is certainly true. Some people can be moved to action by words, as we witnessed in regard to slavery with “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. But others will be far more effectively moved to action by pictures and video, as we saw in the fight against segregation.

I hope and pray for the day when Pelley or someone like him in the mainstream media cares enough to similarly show the world the heart-breaking reality of the 3,000 children a day, 1.2 million a year, who are killed by abortion in this country. Because each child is hidden from view in his or her mother’s womb and the killing is hidden behind closed doors in a “doctor’s office”, many of us remain detached from and unmoved by this tragedy of epic proportions. But today, thanks to technology, we can and do see inside the womb. We even perform operations on children in utero. We also certainly have more than enough pictures and video of the terrible reality of abortion and medically precise presentations by abortionists. The documentary evidence is already there. It just needs to be presented to the world with the sort of passion and expertise that Mr. Pelley and 60 minutes demonstrated for the poor Syrian children who have been killed by sarin gas.

Let’s pray that people like Scott Pelley will soon step forward “so people could truly understand the magnitude” of what is happening to children in the womb. Perhaps then, we will finally decide once and for all that we are a people who care for and defend the most innocent and vulnerable among us rather than viewing them as a problem to be disposed of.

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Northern Chautauqua Community Receives Pro Vita Award

Prolife Committee of Chautauqua County Posted on by

pro-vita-crop

The Northern Chautauqua Community received the Diocese of Buffalo “Religious” Pro Vita Award on Saturday January 16th. These awards are intended to recognize people who have labored tirelessly for the pro-life cause and to give them strength, encouragement, and support.

Pat Morelle accepted the award on behalf of the Northern Chautauqua Community involvement and support of Pro-Life Activities including St. Gianna Pregnancy Outreach Center and Burial of Baby Jesse. There are so many individuals, churches, societies and organizations to recognize so may we say thanks to all who have given of themselves to make the St. Gianna Pregnancy Outreach Center a reality in our area.

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Pro Life advocate shares testimony to help others

Prolife Committee of Chautauqua County Posted on by

by RICK FRANUSIAK
Fri, Feb 19th 2016 04:00 pm
Managing Editor
WNY Catholic News

20160211 - Jacquie Stalker is the keynote speaker at the fifth annual benefit banquet for St. Gianna Molla Pregnancy Outreach Center. (Patrick McPartland/Staff Photographer)

20160211 – Jacquie Stalker is the keynote speaker at the fifth annual benefit banquet for St. Gianna Molla Pregnancy Outreach Center.
(Patrick McPartland/Staff Photographer)

Jacquie Stalnaker is one of those special people who not only have managed to overcome the very difficult situations in her life, but managed to use them for good and to help others.

Stalnaker was the featured speaker at the benefit for the St. Gianna Molla Pregnancy Outreach Center on Feb. 11 at Classis V in Amherst. She shared her personal testimony which has led her to do lobbying and be a strong voice against abortion.

Stalnaker grew up in a small town in West Virginia. Encouraged by her parents, she went on to pursue her dream of competing in the Miss America Pageant. She did win the Miss West Virginia competition and then became an ambassador for the American Heart Association.

“I remember telling my mother I’m going to have a career, family and success and everything will be great,” Stalnaker said. “The only thing missing was the right guy.”

Stalnaker met a guy, fell in love and found out she was pregnant about three weeks before she was to be married.

“The first thing he said to me after I told him I was pregnant was to get an abortion,” Stalnaker said. “He said abortion was the only answer.”

Four days later, Stalnaker woke up with a gun to her ribs and her fiancé saying it was her or the baby. With the gun still in her back, she walked up the stairs of a facility to have the abortion. Once inside, the gun disappeared and she was taken away. When what she described as a rough experience was over, she came out to find her fiancé was gone.

Stalnaker struggled after the abortion and tried to get help. It took her a long time before she could tell her parents. She finally spoke with some priests and went on a healing retreat.

“When you lose a child there are 22 stages of grieving,” Stalnaker said. “I was counseled so much at the retreat.”

After the retreat, Stalnaker felt a calling to speak against abortion and the effects she personally experienced. She shares about her daughter, Lily Gabrielle, whom she said is with her all the time. Since relocating to Birmingham, Ala., her efforts have helped pass six laws in five years and shut down two abortuaries.

“It is what I am called to do,” Stalnaker said.

She continues to share her testimony wherever she can. She has spoken on the steps of the Supreme Court and at the March for Life in Washington, D.C.

“I’m doing this to honor my daughter,” Stalnaker said. “I doing this to honor all the children this has happened to for me and for all who can’t speak up like grandparents and siblings who have lost someone. I’m doing this for our society.”

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Pro-Woman is Pro-Life, and Pro-Life is Pro-Woman

Prolife Committee of Chautauqua County Posted on by

From: The National Catholic Register

by Fr. Frank Pavone 01/22/2016

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Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), “Sleepy Baby”

Almost a year ago, I had the honor of meeting a young woman named Andrea. Months earlier, on learning she was pregnant, she had taken the first drug in the RU-486 abortion regimen, and immediately regretted her decision. Racing against the clock, she found a doctor about an hour away from her home in New Jersey who would immediately begin a reversal protocol that stops the starvation of the baby. Her son Gabriel was born healthy on Dec. 31, 2014.

Andrea and her boyfriend are not married. Andrea was in nursing school when their unexpected pregnancy propelled her to Planned Parenthood. She worried that the baby’s birth would spell the end of her dreams.

How does she feel now? You only have to look at her Facebook posts to find out.

Dec. 17: I love this little boy more than words could ever describe. Thank you God.

Dec. 23: Working my third twelve-hour shift in a row. I’m pooped! But can’t wait to have the rest of the week off to spend with my little man.

Dec. 24: The best Christmas gift I could ever ask for was the beautiful gift I was given, my baby boy Gabriel.

The doctor who handed Andrea the abortion drugs may have thought he was “serving the health of women” and “respecting their freedom of choice.” But did he really help this frightened mother, who was not motivated by “freedom of choice” but rather by the conviction that she had no freedom and no choice?

Is dispensing abortion drugs the “pro-woman” thing to do?

And are the efforts of pro-life people to intervene to give better choices to women like Andrea fairly described as a war on women’s rights, freedom, and health care?

The real difference between those in the pro-life movement and those in the “abortion rights” movement is not that we love the baby and they love the mother.

The real difference is that they say you can separate the two and we say you can’t.

We love them both. And we are convinced that you cannot serve the mother while destroying her child, and that you cannot save the child without helping the mother.

Moreover, we who reject abortion do not reject those who have had abortions. Rather, we reach out to them with compassion and mercy.

The family of another young woman contacted Priests for Life on New Year’s Day in 2015. Twenty-year-old Emily was headed from her home in the U.K. to New Mexico to abort her baby at 30 weeks. Emily was healthy, her baby was healthy and yet the abortion was legal thanks to Doe v. Bolton, the companion decision to Roe v. Wade that removed all restrictions on abortion.

Father Stephen Imbarrato, our pastoral associate in Albuquerque, got involved immediately, as did many pro-lifers active in the late-term abortion capital of the nation. Families were found who were willing to adopt her baby, but Emily began the multi-day abortion procedure by having her baby’s heart fatally injected with digoxin.

The clinic collected $8,000 to $12,000 for this abortion—far more than a live delivery would have cost. Then they delivered her dead baby and sent her home, estranged from much of her family. The clinic may even have harvested the baby’s organs. Again, it’s a fair question: is this really a pro-woman approach to take?

Pregnancy resource centers, on the other hand, are the definition of pro-woman and in fact offer women facing unplanned pregnancies real choices. I can say unequivocally that in my decades in the pro-life movement, I have encountered few things more inspiring than the generous and even heroic work of those who serve the approximately 3,000 pregnancy resource centers around the country. There are five times as many of these centers as there are abortion mills. Yet the pregnancy centers receive little, if any, government funding as they offer financial, medical, legal, and emotional support to help mothers avoid the temptation to abort. These centers offer the kind of choice that so many of these mothers thought they didn’t have.

Programs for healing after abortion are also are pro-woman. Counselors, clergy and volunteers involved with Rachel’s Vineyard—of which I am privileged to serve as the worldwide Pastoral Director—are not interested in condemning or punishing women for making the irrevocable choice to end their child’s life. Rather, they want them to know that healing is possible, that God forgives them and that they can be at peace with themselves. Once healed, women can be part of initiatives like our Silent No More Awareness Campaign to reach out to other women—those still hurting from abortion, and those who might still be spared that tragedy.

Abortion is a massive industry that exists only to kill children and has no regard for their mothers. The pro-life movement exists only to save those children and their mothers. As we at Priests for Life have preached for years, and this year’s March for Life theme proclaims, pro-life and pro-woman do go hand in hand.

 

 

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