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News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
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September 2, 1989—The League launches a statewide project aimed at enlisting Catholic priests to demand Christian leadership from elected officials. Many priests respond favorably, indicating they will give homilies on abortion and will pray for women and unborn children on a regular basis in the prayers of the faithful at Mass.
Will the Commonwealth of Virginia be placing new regulations on abortion? Will these regulations make abortion safer, or just rarer?
President Bill Clinton became known for his mantra, that he wanted abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare.” Many, including the Guttmacher Institute [pdf] picked up on this quote, agreeing that most in the abortion-rights crowd want this—they’re not “pro-abortion” because they want it to be both safe and rare, but always legal.
So I’m perplexed when laws are introduced that would make abortion safer—even if it potentially also makes abortion rarer—(all while keeping it 100% legal) that some groups get so up in arms.
To begin, abortion is not safe. This should make the abortion-rights crowd angry in my mind.
A second police officer consults with Officer Stevens (sitting in the car) while pro-lifers (left) pray outside of Planned Parenthood in Chicago.
Just when things might be looking up for pro-lifers facing Bubble Zones everywhere, since Pastor Walter Hoye’s Bubble Zone arrest was overturned last week, Officer Stevens of the Chicago Police Department reminds us that it’s not over until the law is gone.
Officer Stevens was the first on the scene on Saturday, August 28th. I still don’t know why he was even there.
There were two sidewalk counselors down the street, outside of the fifty foot bubble, and I was standing, motionless, 8-10 feet from the door of the clinic.
Perhaps it’s because several women took the literature I gave them, since the inexperienced “deathscort” standing alone at the doorway wasn’t as quick at pushing the girls through the entrance as some of the others are. Planned Parenthood doesn’t like when the girls carry copies of the lawsuits that have been filed against them into the clinic, I suppose.
In the current issue of First Things, editor Joseph Bottum highlights some remarks by Mitch Daniels, the Republican governor of Indiana and presidential candidate, who has made the news by keeping Indiana out of the oceans of the debt that have swamped other states.
But, Daniels says, all of us should put our disagreements aside for the time being and all get together to solve the economic crisis. He has been strongly criticized by family values groups and even rival Republican candidates like Mike Huckabee.
Will any true pro-lifer take a time-out on fighting abortion because someone thinks a truce on this and other social issues should be called? [Continue reading ...]
August 30, 1995—League Director Joe Scheidler heads to South Africa with Fr. Paul Marx and Brian Clowes of Human Life International and Rev. Johnny Hunter of the Life, Education and Resource Network (LEARN) to help persuade the South African Parliament not to pass an extremely liberal abortion law opposed by a majority of the people.
Walter Hoye (right) with Ann and Joe Scheidler in Hawaii last year
In Oakland, California, Pastor Walter Hoye started praying at an abortion clinic when two elderly women asked him to join them because most of the clinic’s clients were African-American.
A quiet, devout man, Hoye began to counsel the women coming to that clinic. And he saved babies. So, in short order, the City of Oakland passed a bubble zone ordinance to try to keep Pastor Hoye and the two older women from reaching out to women and offering them a real choice.
Pastor Hoye was arrested under the ordinance, in spite of the fact that he actually abided by the stipulation not to reach into the 8-foot floating bubble around the abortion clinic clients. He refused to pay a fine and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. [Continue reading ...]
August 29, 1996—After a week of pro-life activities across the City of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention at the United Center, pro-life activists line both sides of Ogden Avenue with large graphic abortion signs. Delegates heading to the United Center for convention’s final day—including President Bill Clinton and his motorcade—drive right past the display.
August 28, 2007—Hundreds of pro-lifers from across the western suburbs of Chicago back an Aurora City Council meeting to express their opposition to a huge new abortuary being build in the city by Planned Parenthood. The community had learned about the nearly-completed construction only weeks before, when the press uncovered Planned Parenthood’s deliberate scheme of secrecy. Over 100 speak out against the new abortuary, but only 4 in favor. Mayor Tom Weisner agrees to launch an investigation into possible fraud by Planned Parenthood.
Speaking at a Canon Law symposium in Slovakia this week, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput gave voice to some sobering thoughts on what the future holds for Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular, which he called “the most compelling and dangerous heretic of the world’s new order.”
In his address, Chaput spoke of the dangers inherent in moral relativism, which inevitably results in such “foundational injustices” as abortion, which he called “the crucial issue of our age.”
He went on to make some eye-opening statements about human rights and the nature of government: [Continue reading ...]
On Wednesday the Ms. Magazine Blog reported, “Yesterday, the Alaskan primary ballot included a measure to institute a parental notification law for minors seeking abortions. Unfortunately, the law passed.”
That last sentence sums up the attitude of radical feminists, Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and others who seek the breakdown of the traditional family.
Rather than see parental involvement in an adolescent’s health care — in this case, surgery or drugs to kill her unborn baby — as a positive influence in a young girl’s life, they view a parent’s role as intrusive, if not downright abusive. [Continue reading ...]