Brave Souls Take Stand Against Contraception In Health Care Reform

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Bishops urge HHS not to mandate contraception, sterilization coverage

"Two officials of the U.S. bishops' Office of General Counsel have told the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that it should not mandate that group and individual health plans include coverage of contraception or sterilization as part of what the federal agency considers preventive care for women.

'These drugs, devices and procedures prevent not a disease condition, but the healthy condition known as fertility,' said Anthony Picarello and Michael Moses, who are general counsel and associate general counsel, respectively, at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops."

Click here for full article.

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image - http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/archive/2008/06/18/pro-life-pharmacy-won-t-sell-birth-control.aspx .

Planned Parenthood Clinic Closing in New Jersey

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Kudos to Governor Christie who cut state taxpayer funding to the abortion operation.

http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2010/September/NJ-Abortion-Clinic-Closes-After-State-Funding-Cut/

Be sure to watch the video clip.

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image - http://teresamerica.blogspot.com/2009/09/just-say-no-to-planned-parenthood.html
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Teresa Lewis Is Scheduled To Die Tonight - Yes, We're Talking Death Penalty Again

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I've spoken before about my opposition to the death penalty.  Click here.  How sad that another life will be taken tonight.  It is not an innocent life, like it is with abortion, but it is life nonetheless.  We have the means to contain people who do heinous acts.  Let's use them and let's let God do His work in His time.

Click here to read about the Teresa Lewis case, and, please, say a prayer for everyone involved.

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image - http://www.alterni-tee.com/t_DeathPenalty.htm
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Mourning My Loved Ones (con't)

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In my last post, I talked about the babies I know who were aborted.  It wasn't until today that I realized how many there were.  Five.  Five babies in my life were never given the chance to live outside the womb.  Five.

That is just in my circle, never mind those babies in the circles of others, and never mind all the babies we don't know about.  So this got my analytical brain going.

How many people have I been close with besides the ones mentioned in my previous post?

         - Nine close friends

         - Seven close cousins

         - Three siblings

         - Five close co-workers over the years

That puts the count at twenty-four.  How many aborted babies did they each know about?  I know five, but that is probably high, so let's pick two.  That is probably a reasonable figure, maybe even low.   24 people x 2 known aborted babies/person = 48 known aborted babies

This assumes that no two people know the same baby.  If they did, the result would be a little less.   

My point?  48 babies make enough people to start of a new village or a new research firm to cure cancer.  One by one, though, we eradicate them and wonder why our world is still in pain, not just from the lost opportunity, but from the blood on our hands too.

Please pray for all women and men facing crisis pregnancies, for their unborn children, for the doctors performing abortions, and for all mankind.

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image - http://www.hola-andorra.com/arinsal/english/cartripsgb.html

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Afterthought 09/23/10 - We can be more conservative and say each person knows of only one abortion.  The result would be 24 known abortions, an amount that is still quite significant. 
Come to think of it, if the whole group knew of only one abortion that occurred, that one would still be significant and would warrant societal change.  Even one human life is priceless.

These real-life statistics should leave you feeling unsettled.  Click here 
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Mourning My Loved Ones

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I am not talking about mourning my loved ones who had a chance at life on earth.  I am talking about mourning the babies in my life who never had a chance to begin with.  More specifically, I am talking about the never-born babies of my coworker, my two friends, and two of my relatives.  They were all aborted at some point, and today, I miss them.

Why today, I do not know, but I do know my grief was real.  I was overwhelmed with it in Daily Mass this morning.  A vision flashed before me.  My "niece" and "nephew" and the other "children" were playing in a field, laughing.  Tears literally came to my eyes.  I will never get to know them, and they will never get to know me, or anyone else, even their very own parents. 

Abortion is often close to home, as it is with me.  That is because it is so prevalent and cuts across all boundaries in society, e.g. poor, rich, black, white, younger, older.  It is one of the biggest kept secrets.  Of course, the genders are not really known, but they were in my vision.  Girl, girl, boy, girl, boy.  God touched me and I wept because they were not with us.

This is one of the less talked about effects of abortion.  Mourning, I mean.  Mourning.  Mourning like Mary mourned at the foot of the cross when Jesus was taken down dead.  It does not matter that the child was never born and never had a body like we all have.  The mourning still occurs.  I am witness to it, and I am not even closest to these children.  I can only imagine what their parents experience.

I doubt that abortion clinics tell the young women and men that they will mourn the loss of their aborted one some day, or that their relatives will mourn the loss as well.  No.  The aborted babies are not considered people.  They are not considered flesh and blood.  They are inconveniences and money makers to the abortion clinic.  Their loss, no, their murder, is job security for the staff.

I hope God continues to bring these visions to me.  I hope He overwhelms me again and again with grief like this.  It keeps me in touch with the horror of abortion, and it keeps my ProLife conviction alive.  It also brings compassion in my heart for all those involved, directly or indirectly.

If you or someone you know is mourning the loss of an aborted child, consider Project Rachel.  There is hope after an abortion.  "It's normal to grieve a pregnancy loss, including the loss of a child by abortion. It can form a hole in one's heart, a hole so deep that sometimes it seems nothing can fill the emptiness." 

Kathleen

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 image - http://www.christusrex.org/www1/citta/B1-Pieta.html 

* Edited on 9/22/10

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