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Today is the last Sunday before the Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom.
As we attend our services today, let’s all offer prayers for the success of the over 100 Rallies that will take place this week and for the defeat of the HHS Mandate.
And let’s all join together today in praying Day 5 of the Novena to Reverse the HHS Mandate.
Lord God,
You are Light, and in You there is no darkness.
You sent Your Son Jesus Christ
as the Light of the World,
and You sent Your Holy Spirit
to enlighten the hearts and minds of all.
Lord, we pray today
that we may always experience
the light of Your truth,
informing our conscience
of what is right and what is wrong.
We pray that this light
will reach all of our fellow citizens,
that they may recognize the dangers of evil
which are often hidden along their path.
Open the eyes and minds of all
to the threats that currently exist
to our religious freedom,
to the health and well-being of women,
and to the good of our nation.
Give us the grace not only to recognize evil,
but also to reject it with the unwavering strength
that comes from you.
We pray through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Patrick brought the gospel to Ireland in the same way we are bringing the message of religious freedom to our own culture.
Today, amid the celebration, let’s remember to lift our nation up in prayer that our nation would uphold the principles of religious freedom that have made it so great.
Let’s join in prayer today with day 4 of the Novena to Reverse the HHS Mandate.
Lord Jesus Christ,
Ruler of all nations,
You gave Your apostles the command
to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth,
and promised that You would be with them all days,
even until the end of the world.
After Your Ascension,
they went forth to preach Your word
and You confirmed with signs and wonders
that You were working through them.
When they were told by the authorities of their day
not to speak Your name anymore,
and were even arrested and scourged,
they boldly declared,
“We must obey God rather than men!”
Lord Jesus,
You continue to proclaim Your Word
in Your Church today.
Give us the same clarity, courage, and determination
that Your apostles had,
that we may not allow any obstacle or earthly power
to intimidate us into silence or compromise.
Grant that our highest loyalty may always and only be to you,
Who live and reign forever and ever. Amen.
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 ...]
Prayer is the foundation of all our efforts to fight President Obama’s HHS Mandate, which forces all employer health plans to provide free contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, without regard to objections of conscience.
Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life has composed a Novena for this intention, which we are inviting all to pray in the days leading up to the big Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom. Here is the Novena for Day 2: [Continue reading ...]
Joe Scheidler speaks to reporters outside the U.S. Supreme Court following oral arguments in NOW v. Scheidler, Nov. 30, 2005 [Photo by EJS]
For everyone who thought the NOW v. Scheidler RICO case ended with the second U. S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of Pro-Life Action League National Director Joe Scheidler on February 28, 2006, here’s an update.
Over the course of the lawsuit, the Pro-Life Action League incurred thousands of dollars of expenses, not counting attorneys’ fees. As the ultimate victors in the case, the League is entitled to recover these costs from the plaintiffs, the National Organization for Women.
Thus, shortly after the case was returned to Chicago’s Federal Court for a final ruling, Judge David Coar removed his nationwide injunction and financial judgment, which originally had mandated that the Pro-Life Action League and Joe Scheidler pay to two abortion clinics the sum of $257,780.76. [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 ...]
From right: League Vice President Ann Scheidler, League National Director Joe Scheidler, and their state representative, John D’Amico [Photo by John Jansen]
Over 75 Chicago area pro-lifers climbed aboard two buses sponsored by the SpeakOut Illinois coalition to head to the State Capitol in Springfield on Thursday, March 8.
Designated as Life Advocacy Day, these pro-life voters visited their representatives and state senators to urge them to support, and even co-sponsor two pieces of legislation that have the potential to save the lives of women and unborn babies.
The Ultrasound Opportunity Act (HB4085) would require abortion facilities that already have ultrasound equipment to offer the pregnant woman a chance to view an ultrasound image of her unborn child an hour before having an abortion.
The pro-woman argument in favor of the Ultrasound Opportunity Act is that women considering abortion are often under pressure from a boyfriend, husband or parent. They may also feel they are under a time constraint and must make a quick decision. The abortion clinic “counselor” may also be applying pressure, highlighting the challenges she faces in an unexpected pregnancy.
The ultrasound image provides the woman with a simple scientific piece of information that she is entitled to before she makes a permanent decision about her baby. Yet, many legislators are misinformed about the provisions of the proposed law. [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 ...]