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News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
The March 23 Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom was such a stunning success due in no small part to the tremendous outpouring of support from dozens of Catholic bishops—led by no less than Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York and the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Cardinal Dolan himself issued a letter of support that was read at the Rally for Religious Freedom held on Wall Street, in the heart of his Archdiocese.
The Cardinal’s Letter begins: [Continue reading ...]
Massive crowd at the Chicago Rally for Religious Freedom [Photo by John Jansen]
Not to be deterred by terrible weather, a crowd of 2,500 people of all ages descended on Chicago’s Federal Plaza today for the city’s Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally—the flagship location of the Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom’s 140 sites.
In the shadow of the building that formerly housed the transition team offices of President Barack Obama, enthusiastic crowds packed the Plaza in the pouring rain and received signs reading “Stand Up for Religious Freedom” and “Stop Obama’s HHS Mandate”, along with handheld American flags. By 11:45 a.m., it was clear that the crowd at the Rally — scheduled to start at noon — was going to far exceed our expectations. [Continue reading ...]
If you attend one of 140 Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom locations tomorrow, you’re sure to get questions from passersby like, “What are you guys doing here?” and “What is the HHS Mandate, anyway?”
That’s why we’ve prepared an HHS Mandate Fact Sheet [PDF] for organizers to distribute to the general public, which contains FAQ style questions and answers on the HHS Mandate, along with plus some practical action items for continuing the fight.
The Fact Sheet addresses the following questions:
We recommend that organizers print enough copies of the Fact Sheet to distribute to everyone who attends a Rally, and enough additional copies to give out to passersby who are interested in learning more about the HHS Mandate and its assault on religious freedom.
You can download the HHS Mandate Fact Sheet here [PDF]. Get informed, and spread the word!
When we first announced that the Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom would be held on Friday, March 23rd, 30 cities signed on immediately.
That number quickly grew to 60. Then 80.
Then it topped 100. Then it grew to 120, then earlier this week went up to 130, and now the number stands at over 140!
One of the newest sites, added just yesterday, is Boston, where a Rally will be held in Boston Common—the oldest park in the United States.
Earlier plans to hold a Rally there never materialized, so we were thrilled when a new Rally Captain stepped forward this week and volunteered to take on the significant legwork involved at this late day to make sure a Rally would be held in this historic American city.
Other Rally sites added just in the past few days include St. Louis, Missouri, Davenport, Iowa, Redding, California, and—wait for it—Las Vegas!
The complete list of Rally locations is here.
You don’t want to miss this opportunity to be a part of history—tomorrow, Friday, March 23, at noon, at a city near you. Be there!
The Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom continues to attract great media coverage.
Just this morning, a lengthy article appeared in the National Catholic Register:
The Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom is set to take place on Friday, March 23, in more than 100 cities across the country. From Hawaii to Maine, citizens are preparing to let their voices be heard on the value of religious freedom. Meeting places include historic sites, congressional offices and federal buildings. The theme for the rally is “Stand Up for Religious Freedom — Stop the HHS Mandate!”
The rallies, which are scheduled to take place on the second anniversary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly called Obamacare), are being organized by the Pro-Life Action League and by Citizens for a Pro-Life Society in response to the recent Department of Health and Human Services mandate requiring most employers’ health-insurance plans to provide co-pay-free sterilization, contraception and abortion-causing drugs.
The mandate is unacceptable to Eric Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League, who is spearheading the rallies. [Continue reading ...]
Last year, the Illinois Department of Public Health inspected the Women’s Aid Clinic abortion facility for the first time in 15 years.
Following the inspection, Women’s Aid — located in the northern Chicago suburb of Lincolnwood — was assessed a fine of $36,000 for “violations including the clinic’s failure to perform CPR on a patient who died after a procedure,” according to an AP article published January 21.
IDPH inspectors also discovered such violations as dusty equipment, lack of a supervising registered nurse, and “frozen TV dinners stored in a biohazard lab refrigerator that also held placental or fetal tissue.”
Following the inspection, the state issued an order on October 21, 2011 prohibiting Women’s Aid from performing surgical abortions.
But on January 25, I noted that the Women’s Aid website still indicates that it offers surgical abortions. Shortly thereafter, pro-life activists working with the Pro-Life Action League brought this false advertising to the attention of the IDPH.
And the IDPH took action, sending Women’s Aid a cease and desist letter regarding false advertising, and reminded the abortion facility that paying the $36,000 fine wasn’t optional: [Continue reading ...]
Survivors member Brianna Baxter is arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, March 6 [Photo via LifeSiteNews]
Kristina Garza and Brianna Baxter, two members of the Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust‘s unflinching Campus Life Team, were recently arrested and spent 24 hours in jail.
Their “crime”?
Peacefully conducting a pro-life demonstration on a public sidewalk outside a high school in Jackson, Mississippi.
Really?
Yes, really.
See for yourself: [Continue reading ...]
Last week the Pro-Life Action League highlighted a recent letter sent by Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), to his brother bishops.
Therein, Cardinal Dolan repeatedly underscored the fact that the HHS Mandate is first and foremost an assault on religious freedom, and that is how we need to frame this issue.
One of the the most striking passages in the letter reads as follows:
At a recent meeting between staff of the bishops’ conference and the White House staff, our staff members asked directly whether the broader concerns of religious freedom—that is, revisiting the straight-jacketing mandates, or broadening the maligned exemption—are all off the table. They were informed that they are. So much for “working out the wrinkles.” Instead, they advised the bishops’ conference that we should listen to the “enlightened” voices of accommodation, such as the recent, hardly surprising yet terribly unfortunate editorial in America. The White House seems to think we bishops simply do not know or understand Catholic teaching and so, taking a cue from its own definition of religious freedom, now has nominated its own handpicked official Catholic teachers.
The very first freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment is that of freedom of religion — which is most emphatically not limited merely to freedom of worship — and explicitly states that “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is a no-no. [Continue reading ...]
When a group of pro-life activists in Jacksonville, North Carolina applied for a permit to picket outside the Crist Clinic for Women abortion facility, the police denied their request.
Their rationale: the public property outside the abortion facility didn’t have sidewalks, and in the police department’s estimation, it was unsafe for public gatherings.
The pro-lifers found this an unacceptable violation of their First Amendment rights of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, and so they elicited the help of our attorneys at the Thomas More Society Pro-Life Law Center, and they sued.
This week, U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle ruled in their favor.
As a result, the City of Jacksonville will be required to change its local public assembly ordinance, which, incredibly, requires a police permit for protests involving as few as three (3) people. [Continue reading ...]
Martyrdom of the Maccabees by Antonio Ciseri
One of the more fascinating commentaries on the HHS Mandate that has appeared recently is that written by University of St. Thomas law professor Michael Stokes Paulsen, entitled “Obama’s Contraception Cram-down: The Pork Precedent.”
Paulsen’s use of the words “cram-down” was quite deliberate, calling it “a perfect term” to describe the HHS’s policy:
The whole point, it seems, is to override religious objections to such a policy to the maximum extent politically possible, out of an intense ideological commitment to contraception and abortion as ‘preventive health care.’ It is vital, the ideologues say, to prevail over religious objections precisely in order to advance, and permanently entrench, this particular ideology and, further, to vindicate the power of government to impose such policies on everyone. Religious objections must be overcome, in part for the sake of overcoming religious objections.
He goes on to say that the HHS Mandate calls to mind a story from the book of Fourth Maccabees, one of the books of the “Apocrypha.”
In the second century B.C., the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes decreed that all Jews would be forced to violate their consciences by eating pork and food sacrificed to idols. [Continue reading ...]