. . . because action speaks louder than words.
League history, NOW v. Scheidler, Action News, Joe Scheidler, League staff
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Helping abortion-bound women choose life for their babies
Unmasking the truth about abortion in the public square
Our youth outreach, raising up a new generation of pro-life leaders
Abortion industry converts tell the inside story
News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
In the rapidly growing catalogue of Planned Parenthood scandals, thanks in great part to the ingenuity and persistence of Live Action President Lila Rose, the latest black mark is Planned Parenthood’s willingness to perform sex-selective abortions.
Live Action has discovered that Planned Parenthood will help a pregnant women who wants a boy, for instance, to get an ultrasound, and if she finds out the baby is a girl, they’re perfectly willing to abort the baby merely for being the “wrong” sex.
Added to Planned Parenthood’s willingness to cover up the sexual abuse of minor girls, arrange abortions for underage prostitutes, and accept donations specifically for aborting black babies, they now add sex-selective abortions.
What will Lila Rose discover next?
If you can’t believe it’s true, watch Live Action’s latest video, just released today. [Continue reading ...]
Father Norman Weslin offers Mass at the Pro-Life Action League office, circa 1992
Father Norman Weslin died Wednesday at the age of 81 at a retirement home in northern Michigan. He was a devoted friend of the Pro-Life Action League, and on multiple occasions offered Mass in our office and in the Scheidler home.
Before he was ordained, Father spent twenty years on active duty in the Army, earning the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. While in the Army he married and he and his wife, Mary, adopted two children.
In 1980, shortly after he was discharged, Mary was killed in an automobile accident.
Both of them had been ardent pro-lifers, and the tragic loss led Weslin to found the Mary Weslin Homes for Pregnant, Unwed Mothers. This home has served more than 300 single mothers and still operates in Omaha.
Following Mary’s death, Father entered the seminary and was ordained a priest of the Oblates of Wisdom in 1986. He gathered a group of activist pro-lifers in 1988 and founded The Lambs of Christ.
Although the Lambs peacefully prayed at abortion clinics, they were frequently arrested. As they were representing the unborn babies, they would not give their names when they were arrested, but knew each other by a chosen name beginning with “Baby.” [Continue reading ...]
During my 39 years in the pro-life movement, I have noticed that Good Friday has emerged as a particularly poignant day for pro-lifers.
Pro-lifers gather in front of many abortion facilities on Good Friday to pray the Stations of the Cross [PDF], to unite the sufferings of Christ with the sufferings of the unborn babies and of their mothers, and to pray for the end of abortion.
Much like Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and John, the Beloved Disciple, as well as His friend and follower, Mary Magdalene, all of whom stood at the foot of the Cross, we pro-lifers stand at the modern day cross: the abortion clinic. We witness to the dignity and value of the lives of those babies whose lives are sacrificed in the clinics.
In most cases we do not save the lives of these victims any more than the three beneath the Cross saved Jesus. But our witness is nonetheless efficacious.
Just as Our Lady, John and Mary Magdalene did not save Jesus’ life, neither did they abandon Him as so many of His other friends and followers did when He was making His great sacrifice. [Continue reading ...]
PLAL National Director Joe Scheidler greets attendees of the Hartford Rally for Religious Freedom March 23
When I accepted a speaking invitation from John McNamara, a seminarian studying at Holy Apostles Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut, we agreed that Friday morning, March 23, would work for both the seminary and for me.
So the date was set. I was to speak on “What Catholic Laymen Expect of their Priests.” The subject was to concern life issues, and in particular, abortion.
Then there arose the urgency of protesting the Obama Administration’s HHS Mandate that all insurance policies would have to include free contraception, sterilization and abortion-causing drugs.
This violation of the First Amendment’s right to religious freedom had to be addressed by pro-life activists and all those who saw the Mandate as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. The date selected for a national rally would be March 23, the last business day before the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25.
As plans for a massive rally developed, and rallies were eventually planned in 140 cities and town across the country, I felt a tinge of regret that I would not be in Chicago for the flagship event. [Continue reading ...]
Pro-Life Action League National Director Joe Scheilder with Camille Daub (left) and Elizabeth Purgahn (right) at Defenders of the Unborn banquet
When Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton came down from the U. S. Supreme Court in January, 1973, many of us realized these abortion rulings were cut from whole cloth, without any legal basis in the Constitution.
These twin decisions were clearly the most dangerous, destructive and outrageous ruling ever handed to the American people. They defied everything our nation stands for: the care and protection of its citizens by the government.
These decisions had to be reversed. But how?
We began looking for leadership in cities where pro-life organizations had already been formed. Chicago had its Illinois Right to Life Committee and Birthright.
Another city where the activist approach was in full swing was St. Louis, Missouri.
People like John Ryan, Sam Lee, and Joan Andrews were already out on the sidewalks and in front of the clinics and saving women from aborting their babies. [Continue reading ...]
Alan Nelles popped up one day — it must have been some time in the mid 1990s — at the Albany Medical Surgical Center abortion mill, unknown and unannounced. He wanted to know what he could do to stop abortion. We told him to pray with us.
He didn’t have a rosary so we gave him a cheap plastic one — which he seemed delighted with. He didn’t want to lead any Mysteries, but joined in answering the prayers. He seemed to like the songs we sang out of the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants prayer book.
I assumed he was Catholic, so I was surprised when I asked him what church he went to and it turned out he was Lutheran. Whenever I’d tell him he was more Catholic than many nuns I had met, he’d always say “We’re all Christians,” and that would be that. [Continue reading ...]
Despite the current war on Christmas, with futile efforts like trying to substitute “Happy Holidays” for “Merry Christmas” and the rampant commercialization even in an economic downturn, what it all comes down to is that a baby was born 2,000 years ago, that that baby is mankind’s Savior and only hope for happiness. Period.
Some of us recognize with no shade of doubt that this birth in the central event in history — that Christmas celebrates the birth of mankind’s one and only hope, while for others it is just another day off.
Those who don’t know the purpose of this feast will discover it some day, that everyone from Adam on eventually comes to realize that this birthday determines each person’s eternity — those who celebrate it, those who ignore it, those who hate it, those who mock it — everyone will come to know its meaning.
The coming of Christ to earth is what it is all about, what our lives are all about. How we accept or reject Him is all that really matters in life. There is nothing else that counts. [Continue reading ...]
When abortion became the law of the land in 1973 with a fiat from the U.S. Supreme Court, the first thing I did was go to the library and look through the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature.
I checked out most of the magazines and secular journals to find what they had been saying about abortion during the past decade or so, and I found that the stories were almost always slanted toward the legalization of abortion.
Coverage of events such as Sherry Finkbine’s highly publicized abortion in 1962 was mostly pro-abortion. Finkbine, hostess of the then popular Romper Room, had taken thalidomide—which could cause fetal defects—and Finkbine feared that she would have a deformed baby.
When her story went public and she was denied an abortion in Phoenix, she went to Sweden for an abortion. The media took her side, and abortion for fetal defect became “reasonable.”
More stories followed and the secular media had set its course.
We could cite hundreds of such stories, always with a pro-abortion slant or outright support. The secular media cheered Roe v. Wade in 1973 and has never steered away from this course.
There were occasional articles pointing out this bias, even by writers in the secular press, but while they were noted, they were mostly ignored. The abortion bias continues to this day.
A recent example appears in a Newsweek article by Nancy Hass. [Continue reading ...]
Pro-abortion IL Governor Pat Quinn
Following the League’s protest of Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn at Personal PAC’s luncheon November 17 at the Chicago Hilton and Towers, our longtime friend Jim Finnegan — who was part of our protest that day &mdadsh; read a Chicago Sun-Times story that explained what had gone on inside.
The article so inflamed Finnegan that he wrote in high dudgeon a rebuttal to the Sun-Times:
Disturbing to read the remarks from Personal Pac Executive Terry Cosgrove to Gov. Quinn at the event at the Hilton Towers. You can safely say “it got my Irish up.”
Cosgrove was just getting warmed up when he yelled down to Quinn, “Governor, I think that’s the Irish Catholic in us, isn’t it?”
That’s as disgusting as it gets. Both of these lightweights are total sellouts to their ancestral and faith beliefs.
Canon laws 1398 and 1329 of our Catholic Church clearly state that those who by their assistance allow abortions are automatically excommunicated from the Church that both Quinn and Cosgrove membership within.
I must admit, as I was one of the 61 standing in the cold in front of the Hilton Towers, I thought that without a sincere confession from both of these so called “Irishmen,” the cold might be the least of their worries when their earthly journey is over.
Jim’s letter to the editor was the lead in Sunday’s Sun-Times letters page, under the headline, “Gov. Quinn’s a Catholic sellout.” He signed his letter, James Patrick McManus Finnegan. How Irish can you get!
Pro-Life Anderson with League National Director Joe Scheidler in the 1980s
I knew Charles F. Anderson even before he had his first name officially changed to “Pro-Life.”
Pro-Life Andy was so tired of never seeing the word “pro-life” used in news stories — but always the weasel-word, “anti-choice”—that he went to court and had his name changed so the press would have to use “pro-life” whenever he did something newsworthy—which was often.
In fact, when Collins Publishers sent out 200 photographers to capture “A Day in the Life of America,” the day being May 2, 1986, they did a two page spread on Andy praying in his front yard. He was surrounded by six large pro-life signs leaning against his house and car, as he held a crucified doll in one hand and his rosary in the other.
In the photograph he is wearing his trademark white cowboy hat with the red badge on the front reading, “Protect Life.” The caption explains that Andy goes to church every morning at 7:30 and then hits the streets of Reno to campaign against abortion. [Continue reading ...]