The Wonderful Yes

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Heroes in Our Neighbourhood

The poster (shown left) that Jim Pouillon was holding was an affirmation of Life. Mr. Pouillon held human life to be sacred, in even measure for everyone. He was a hero from our neighbourhood, someone known and respected for his persistent loving message of our own value. He valued us ALL. He quietly gave his life in the hope that we would value ourselves and each other. A neighbourhood Hero.



We all need to be 'neighbourhood heroes' in our own way. We need to know our own value and that of every other human life, and defend it. A great opportunity to do so is just around the corner with this season's '40 Days For Life'. This fall's campaign from Sept 23 - November ,will be carried our by 'neighbourhood heroes' in at least 212 cities internationally.

More than 200 cities in 45 American states, 5 Canadian provinces ... plus Denmark ... are poised to launch 40 Days for Life campaigns... [David Bereit, 40 Days for Life's national director] "Last fall's campaign was conducted in 177 cities. This shows that support for the pro-life message is spreading — and that 40 Days for Life continues to have a positive international impact."

Find a way to reaffirm the value of LIFE. EVERY life. ALWAYS.

What's Up?

Regular readers may have noticed I haven't been posting much lately. It's not for a lack of interesting things to post about! A lot is happening, everywhere - including here!

For the next month or so I will be mostly occupied with finishing the school year and traveling up to PEI for the summer season. Right now we are getting ready to drive up from Tampa, with a short stop in Panama City. We will be settled in Miscouche by June 8 and staying until about Sept 20, when we will begin our journey southward again!

You may have noticed the long column of links on the left. Try a few. Nothing helps the culture of life more than sharing our lives with others.


Here is a little fun sharing. Locals (in Cayman!) found an ambitious snake trying to swallow a green iguana. (I'm not sure how the snake convinced the iguana to crawl in there...)

Barely Human

I would like to call these people 'Not Quite Human', but I do believe in God the Creator and Christ's sacrificial act of redemption, so I therefore believe that they were conceived human, and have human potential. They are 'Barely Human' .


US News, PBS Media HostBonnie Erbe explains why increasing abortion numbers is a 'good' :

..."The recession is driving American demand for contraception and for abortions. The media have been riven this past week with stories about the rising number of couples and single mothers doing the math and deciding this is no time to bring a child into the world," Erbe writes.

"The media have also been rife with stories portraying this trend as something of a tragedy," she continues. "Let me propose a counter view: it is not"....

US PresidentBarack Obama has accumulated quite a list of God defying anti-life actions in a very short time:

...The following is a compilation of bill signings, speeches, appointments and other actions that President Barack Obama has engaged in that have promoted abortion before and during his presidency. While Obama has promised to reduce abortions and some of his supporters believe that will happen, this long list proves his only agenda is promoting more abortions....

Katherine Hancock Ragsdale Episcopalian minister, preaches 'Abortion is a Blessing':

...In her sermon, Ragsdale denied the assertions of some "progressive" clergy who call abortion a "tragedy," saying abortion is instead a "blessing." "When a woman finds herself pregnant due to violence and chooses an abortion," she said, "it is the violence that is the tragedy; the abortion is a blessing."

She described various situations in which "abortion is a blessing", including in cases of foetal "anomalies," rape or incest, material poverty and "lack of social support."

"When a woman becomes pregnant within a loving, supportive, respectful relationship; has every option open to her; decides she does not wish to bear a child; and has access to a safe, affordable abortion - there is not a tragedy in sight -- only blessing."...

Ludwig Minelli Dignitas founder, advocates 'assisted suicide' for the healthy:

...The founder of Dignitas, the pro-euthanasia group that operates the Switzerland-based euthanasia clinic, has revealed plans to kill a healthy woman in an assisted suicide. Backers of the practice claim they want suicides for terminally ill patients and the elderly, but they are pushing the envelope even further.

Ludwig Minelli calls killing a healthy patient a "marvelous opportunity" and says assisted suicide should no longer be reserved for the disabled or very ill patients...

Obviously not a complete list, but you get the idea.


To be truly and authentically human, we must be as God created us - in His image . Being truly human is possible only through Jesus, who is what Pope Benedict calls “the measure of true humanism.”

Those who deny God, by denying the inherent value of human life - the life He created in His own image - are barely human themselves.

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"Choose Life" in Virginia - UPDATE

UPDATE Gov. Kaine Blocks Use of State Funds For Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine signs bill allowing "Choose Life" license plates

dailypress:

....Under state law, more than 350 people must sign up for a plate before Department of Motor Vehicles can produce it.

Republican Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, who added the "Choose Life" proposal onto a bill creating license plates promoting the Northern Neck and Shenandoah National Park Trust, said at least 450 people had prepaid for the plate.

"It's a simple way to advance the cause of life at no cost to Virginia taxpayers," Cuccinelli said.

After the first 1,000 plates are sold, $15 of the $25 annual fee would go to crisis pregnancy centers.

Each year, the money generated would go to Heartbeat International, a Christian pregnancy resource organization, to be distributed to nonprofit centers in Virginia that meet the organization's "Commitment of Care" standards. According to the group's Web site, those include giving "honest and open answers" and not offering, recommending or referring clients for abortions.

Cuccinelli said about 40 of the 75 pregnancy centers in Virginia meet those standards and would be eligible for funding....

..."The fact that the governor and the General Assembly wasted time and resources debating whether or not to fund deceptive non-medical establishments is shameful," said Jessica Honke, director of public policy for The Virginia League for Planned Parenthood, which receives some state funding.

Kaine said if the groups felt strongly about it they should seek a specialty plate of their own.

"I believe the Constitution would require the state to approve that plate to protect against any viewpoint discrimination," he said.

Planned Parenthood and NARAL said they had no plans to do so at this time....

Hard to believe someone could rationalize opposing "Choose Life" plates that help fund crisis pregnancy clinics. Kind of puts Planned Parenhood motivations in perspective when they react as if charitable help for pregnant women is competition for their business.


I wonder what a Planned Parenthood license plate would read? "Ignorance Is Bliss"?, "Kill The Deficit"?, "You First"?...

"I Am That Exception"

FEMINISTS FOR LIFE


Angelica Rosales tells her story, that of a child whose mother had a serious health risk in pregnancy, yet ignored doctor's advice.


Noone wants a mother to die in childbirth or pregnancy. Fortunately, actual instances of risk are infrequent. A 'life' position and a Catholic position , is to try to maintain the health and life of both patients. If the child should die in the circumstance of trying to save the mother's life, that is not the same as deliberately killing the child to 'save' the mother.

We have an obligation to do all that we can. We cannot do more. Nor can we makes ourselves the arbiters of life and death.

That is God's domain.

Letter To The President

From the Bioethics Defense Fund

Dear President Obama:


Congratulations on your historic inauguration.

We'd like to introduce ourselves. We are pro-life Americans.

You will be hearing from us so we'd like to share our motivations.

Like you, we are motivated by faith; we have faith in God in whose image we are created.

Like you, we are motivated by hope; we encourage the kind of hope that is personified by one person reaching out to another in difficult situations like crisis pregnancies, and the experience of suffering from disease.

Like you, we are motivated most of all by love.

We have a deep love for the unique and unrepeatable beauty of every unborn child targeted for abortion, and for that child's mother and father who will be deprived of their child's transforming love.

We have a deep love for the young women of our nation who live in a culture that exploits them as sex objects due to the easy availability of abortion.

We have a deep love for our friends and family who suffer from disease and who deserve medical research and treatment that does not burden their conscience with knowing that human lives were destroyed in the name of science.

We have a deep love for those at the end of life who deserve true care and concern, not the false compassion of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide.

On this historic occasion that vindicates the rights of human beings who were once considered to be property in American law, we invite you, Mr. President, to lead our nation with policies that respect the dignity and human rights of every human life, from beginning to end.

Sincerely,

(go to BDF to sign letter)

UN Petition Presented

LifeSiteNews

December 10th, two Members of the European Parliament, Anna Záborská and Carlo Casini held a press conference in the European Parliament to announce that 5.4 million families had sent a petition to the UN, calling for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to be interpreted as protecting the unborn child and the family.

The Familiokratos coalition, established one year ago on the 10 December 2007, gathers leaders from pro-family and pro-life movements (See: http://familiokratosen.blogspot.com/). It has presented the petition to the Gabon ambassador, to the Holy See, Firmin Mboutsou, as well as to other UN ambassadors in order to be distributed among UN delegates.

The group was formed in order to remind the world of the Universal Declaration and to uphold the Declaration in all international instruments. Currently the 60th anniversary of the Declaration is being celebrated, and Familiokratos said that the recognition of the family should be recognized as the bedrock of the UDHR.

"The family is a cultural anchor universal to all cultures," Said Záborská. "The family is where we learn that the authentic role of the state is to serve its people; and not to reinvent humanity along the lines of some artificial ideology: the first and last sign of the approach of totalitarianism is the collapse of the family. Finally, we promote the family because it is the primary repository of love in our society."

The Falimiliokratos petition in favour of the dignity of life and the human family asserts that the rights presented in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are inherent to every human being. Governmental representatives, politicians, and all other decision-makers must interpret the UDHR so as to reaffirm the right to life to all members of the human family, including the unborn child. The petition also calls on governments to: protect the family "as the fundamental group unit of society," give special assistance to motherhood and childhood and promote the rights of parents. (UDHR articles 3, 16, 25 and 26).

Today,(appropriately on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe) we have the Vatican's release of their new instruction on bioethics - 'Dignitatis Personae'.

BigBlueWave has some good highlights and commentary.

Tragedie Quebecois

MES AIEUX



This protest song had me in tears.( Well, I'm getting old!) My Grandpere Jules Chabot and my Grandmere Rose Beaudoin had 13 children. They moved from St.Justin to Marie Reine, north of Peace River, Alberta, to homestead when my mother (the eldest) was 10.
I am grateful for their sacrifices, and their strong Catholic faith - passed on to my mother, who bore 10 children. I am grateful for my Dad and his strong pioneer roots. I am grateful for my husband, and his parents, for their generosity and love. I am grateful for my own eight children.I am grateful.

And I cry when I think of all that has been lost in Quebec.


(h/t first things)

Youth In Action : "Volition"

LifeSiteNews:

... Tim and Matthew Morgan have somehow produced a first-class short film that masterfully deals with the taboo issue of abortion despite working with a budget that would pay for approximately thirty seconds of a Hollywood blockbuster. "Volition," first created for a short film competition, is as yet unknown, but will soon, I predict, become very well known indeed, as it very well should.

Indeed, Volition is an astonishing achievement. The film itself is not made any greater by the fact that Tim Morgan, who directed it, is only 23-years-old, and that his brother, who composed all of the music, is only 20-years-old, but the ages of the brothers does help put the scope of their accomplishment into even greater relief.

Volition places its central character, who goes unnamed, in the historical contexts of what the filmmakers clearly believe to be three of the greatest human rights violations in history: the holocaust, slavery, and abortion. In each of these situations the protagonist is placed in a position of some authority, with the promise of more to come: in the first, he is a Nazi who is being considered for a promotion; in the second, he is a respected American physician who has travelled to Africa and studied the blacks; and in the third, he is a promising medical student on scholarship whose girlfriend is pregnant.

The premise is as clever and well-executed as it is effective. It purpose is clear: by placing the same figure, presumably with the same sort of upbringing, and the same genetic and temperamental predispositions, into the crucible of extreme historical times that demand a response, we may observe his choices, or, in other words, we may try his “volition.”...

Watch The Independent Film "Volition"

When Is "Dead"?

NCR :

A case now before a court in Washington, D.C., involves a 12-year-old boy whose brain has stopped functioning completely, according to doctors, but whose body is being kept alive by drugs and a respirator. The boy’s Orthodox Jewish parents reject their son’s medical diagnosis of death, asserting that the teachings of their faith about the end of life should take precedence over the determination of doctors...

This reminds me of the struggle of the Golubchuk family in Winnipeg last year. The 'Grace'Hospital and the CMA fought the family for THE RIGHT to determine that Samuel Golubchuk's life was over - the EXCLUSIVE right. The Golubchuk family, also Orthodox Jews, succeeded in getting a court order to sustain life, and Mr. Golubchuk recovered somewhat before eventually dying naturally (i.e. not starving).


DO NOT GIVE DOCTORS AN INCH. The medical associations are itching to 'be the ones' that have the EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to determine a 'rubric of human value', from which NONE of us will be safe. Yesterday our unborn, today our grandfathers, tomorrow our accident victims, the next day our chronically ill, and later...people who enter the hospital but don't have really great lives.

The Dead Zone

LifeSiteNews

The Australian Parliamentary Group on Population and Development has been slammed by Queensland Senator Ron Boswell for holding to Nazi-style eugenic ideology on the abortion of disabled children.

“This revisiting of eugenics principles is repugnant to a society that prides itself on the contribution of all,” Boswell said.

The pro-abortion group had made a submission, signed by 41 Australian MPs, to the parliamentary committee that is examining the issue of abortion in Australia. The group said paying women a Medicare rebate for second-trimester abortions would save the government about $180,000 a year, due to the high costs of caring for handicapped babies who are allowed to be born.

Removing the abortion rebate, the group said, would place “emotional, physical, mental, and financial stress on families, denying women and couples the right to decide if they are equipped to raise a child with disabilities.”

According to Christian Today, so far 7 of the MPs whose names were affixed to the submission have disowned its statements about abortion and handicapped children.

Boswell heavily criticised the submission, saying that its “underlying premise” is based on eugenic principles that governments should prefer to kill the disabled rather than support them. He said it holds that “some lives are worth less than others because they will cost too much to support.”

“This is the kind of thinking that was typical of the Hitler regime. They set themselves up as judge of who deserved to live and who deserves to die.”

In the period leading up to the Second World War, the Nazi government of Germany began to implement its eugenics policies, meant to “cleanse” the German people of undesirable “racial traits.” This meant in practice the killing of those children, and later, adults, considered by the state to be genetically defective. Thousands of children and adults who suffered from mental and physical disabilities were starved and gassed to death and killed by lethal injection.

More recently, the utilitarian eugenics movement has gained popularity in scientific circles that propose to eliminate undesirable traits by killing those unborn babies, and, increasingly, newborns, who are found to be genetically deficient. Utilitarian philosophers and bioethicists like Princeton University’s Peter Singer, openly advocate for the killing of disabled children in the womb and as newborns.

Currently the abortion rate for babies with Down syndrome is estimated to be as high as 95% in many Western countries, indicating that modern utilitarian eugenics is already being implemented on a widespread scale.

(Is it that the original settlers were condemned criminals and they're trying to keep the genetics 'pure'....or do they just want to keep most of the Australian land mass totally unpopulated?)

Round-Up

MONKEYING AROUND WITH LIFE

KILLING SUCCESS

CATHOLIC TUITION BACKFIRES

AMERICA THE NEW ROME

CHALLENGING OBAMA

Real Medicine

LifeSiteNews:

Eastern Washington’s largest hospital system, Providence Health Care, has said assisted suicide will not be permitted in its hospitals.

The owners of Sacred Heart Medical Center and Holy Family Hospital, a branch of Providence Health Care, said, “Providence will not support physician-assisted suicide within its ministries. This position is grounded in our basic values of respect for the sacredness of life, compassionate care of dying and vulnerable persons, and respect for the integrity of medical, nursing, and allied health professions. We do not believe health care providers should ever be put in a position of aiding a patient in taking his or her own life.”

The statement follows the deeply controversial passage of the ballot measure, I-1000, which on November 4th legalized assisted suicide in Washington State.

Author and bioethicist Wesley Smith commented on Providence’s resolve: “This is important. Medical professionals must resist turning killing … into a medical treatment.”

“None can be forced (yet) to participate,” he says, adding, “Of course, eventually the ideologues will try and force people to participate or be complicit in the killing.”...

"Life Will Not Go On"

Jill Stanek at WorldNetDaily:

....For 35 years, the pro-life movement has been doing its best. We educate. We help mothers in crisis pregnancies. We stand along streets with our signs. We try to elect solid pro-life public officials and defeat dastardly pro-aborts. We introduce pro-life legislation and thwart anti-life bills. We go so far as to stand on sidewalks by abortion mill doors begging mothers to reconsider in a last-ditch effort.

But the pro-life movement is hobbled. We can get up after being knocked down as we were Tuesday, and we can walk, but we do so with a limp. We have been able to accomplish some things but never as they should be. On our own we'll never be vigorous, muscular, vibrant.

The collective Christian church in America must wake up and finally take responsibility for abortion. That's what Election Day 2008 showed.

The pro-life movement was actually born of necessity by a void in church teaching, and now the church is almost completely reliant on our para-church organizations and the government to handle the gravest human atrocity in all of history.

Find another genocide or catastrophe or war or famine or plague to match 1 billion people systematically killed in just a 20 year span, the number who have been murdered by abortion worldwide just in the past two decades according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, research arm of Planned Parenthood.

The church must stop abdicating responsibility to stop abortion to the pro-life movement and politicians. God's people are commissioned.

But since we are uneducated and compromised on the issue of sexual relations and abortion ourselves, it's no wonder our culture is uneducated and compromised.

It is your responsibility, pastor and church leaders, to teach your people that abortion is abominable, and before that to teach chaste living. And before that, at the risk of making my Protestant friends flip, to teach that the contraceptive/sterilization mentality, which considers children bad, not blessings, is also a component of the sexual demise of our country....

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Chesterton Sets The Tone For Catholic Response

At Pro Ecclesia Jay Anderson reminds us of our Hope and Help with an excerpt from G.K, and suggests an appropriate response to the election results:

(1) Pray for President-elect Obama....

(2) Hold those Catholic proponents of President-elect Obama accountable for his record....

(3) Never stop fighting for a culture of life....

(4) Above all, have joy even when there seems to be no cause for such; have faith even when there seems to be no hope.

AMEN

Marriage Wins, Life Loses

CNA:

Voters in South Dakota and California rejected proposals that would have limited abortions, but all propositions aimed at declaring marriage as between one man and one woman passed, even in California, where an unprecedented amount of money was spent by homosexual advocates to oppose the pro-marriage Proposition 8....

National Black Pro-Life Union

Day Gardner:

Obama says he is a "Christian" yet, he supports abortion--all abortion! He says women have a right to kill their own children if they choose to do so. But GOD says that is a lie!

GOD says children are a gift. Psalm 127:3, says: Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward. In Jeremiah 1:5, GOD says "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou came forth out of the womb I sanctified thee..."

Psalm 139:13-16 - For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made... my substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret... Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written...

Regarding abortionists and those who kill unborn children, Exodus 21:22-25 states: If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished... and goes on to say: And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Here's what God also says if anyone kills a fatherless child. Exodus 22:22-24 – If thou afflict them in any wise and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry; and my wrath shall wax hot...

So what God does Obama worship?...

"Just One Judge"

(h/t prowoman prolife)

Some of us know who the JUDGE is, and He's rooting for the babies.

Morose Musings

(Anton Casta via e-mail)


"And now, a lighter topic to take people's minds off the U.S. elections -- cannibalism. The issue came up today over brunch with the kids. Don't ask. Okay, ask. Discussion flowed from a historical work on the Templars, to the novel Alive (both penned by the steady hand of Piers Paul Reid), to the Church's teaching on cannibalism.

I managed to find this pithy and clear argument within an American Life League document on Medical Cannibals: the moral implications of fetal tissue vaccines:

Neither analysis considers a more closely-related example: enforced cannibalism. The use of tissue to generate vaccines which may save other's lives is a kind of cannibalism. On October 13, 1972, a plane with 40 people aboard, all Catholic, crashed in the Andes. Due to the total lack of food in the snowy wasteland, the survivors of the crash were forced to eat the bodies of those who had died in order to maintain their own life. The Church ruled the cannibalism to be acceptable in this instance, because the bodies of the slain were treated with great reverence and the need for sustenance was life-threatening. While it is true that most of those whose bodies were eaten had not given their consent, it is also true that none were murdered; their deaths were unforeseen and unpreventable. By removing the issue of will, this example better corresponds to the abortion event, while simultaneously highlighting the moral problem: the manner of death and the reverence due the human body in death must be considered.

'If I were a healthy Argentine soccer player frozen in the Andean snow and you were starving , (dear wife), I argued, 'I'd like you to eat my legs. They'd be my best part'. She winced and after a brief pause replied, 'I'd rather die'.

So much for self sacrificial agape love, I thought. So much for chivalry and steel toed armour. It's time to go jogging and work on those calves and quads :-)

If you're a United Statesian teetering on the precipice of exercising the pinnacle of your freedom in a liberal democracy -- putting card stock into a wooden box, the morality of cannibalism and the surrounding issues touched on by the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), and Mr. Obama's promise as executive to sign it wholeheartedly, is very much an "alive" topic. As a friend in Wyoming said recently, "as a Catholic, one simply cannot vote for Obama...Now, a debatable question is whether one is morally permitted not to vote for McCain. I think one is. One may vote for McCain or not, or not even vote (at this point, it does seem prudent to vote for McCain, but I am still uncomfortable about it).

Mea culpa. That political vortex drew me in again."

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(Those Canadians!)

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