That’s what they call us.

Oppose liberalism and modernism at its core, be up in arms against same sex marriage, contraception and abortion, sex education, and feminism, and you will be called a fundamentalist. A religious zealot.

Corrolary to this issue is the prevalent thought among liberals that religion and faith is against science and common sense, and therefore impede true progress. Liberals and freethinkers will be quick to make the connection between the “hypocrital” Catholic Church and the poverty of this nation. Try to visit comment boxes and internet forums and stand your ground against the liberal tide. As sure as the sun will rise will you be branded either of the following: bigot, hater, ignorant, intolerant, homophobic, backward, medieval, hypocrite, dim-witted, ‘slaves’ of bishops, fanatics, delusional, idiot, moralist, taliban.

More recently I was called a Catholic Taliban (a derogatory term which implies fundamentalism) for protecting the sanctity of marriage and upholding its ONLY definition: that it is between a man and a woman.

Liberal Irony

Contrary to popular belief, there is no conflict between religion and science, between faith and reason. God is not only the author of Truth but THE Truth itself, and so whatever we believe in faith can also be found in reason. Professor Thomas Woods, PhD, says that the Catholic Church was responsible for forging humanity into modern civilization as we know today. In fact, most laws in the civilized world can be taken from the commandments and the magisterium of the Catholic Church. This is very remote from the liberal thinking that the Church suppresses reason and scientific advancements and is anti-progress.

Many freethinkers support the LGBT crowd, thinking that supporting the homosexual agenda is to keep up with the times. Perhaps they don’t realize that in Ancient Rome, homosexuality was commonplace. We can go back further: Sodom and Gomorrah. And we all know what happened to them.

Those who think that women should be given a choice for abortion is being progressive have missed out on their history lessons, as Spartans threw their ‘unfit’ babies down a cliff, to be dashed to their deaths.

There is nothing progressive nor modern about the liberal agenda.

Light of the World

One of the most common complaints of people against us Catholics and Pro-Lifers  is that we should “live and let live”; in essence, what they are asking us to do is to remain quiet in the face of all this evil happening around. Why can’t we Catholics just turn a blind eye on all of these evil? It is because Jesus himself preached that we are the salt of the Earth, and light of the world. No one lights a lamp and hides it under cover. In the same way, we are called to share this light to the rest of the world that has gone half-mad with darkness, and so glorify our Father in Heaven.

Out of the darkness of Ancient Rome rose the light that was Christianity. Today, we Pro-Lifers shine bright in this darkness that the world has plunged itself into.

There is nothing wrong with being a “Catholic Taliban”. If it means preserving the dignity of life from conception to natural death, and bringing hope and comfort to those who have none, then so be it.

If it means being convinced of the true meaning of marriage, saving women from cancer-causing pills and preventing their objectification caused by the contraceptive mentality; If it means the preservation of morality and and upholding of natural law, then so be it.

True progress can only be achieved by a society that respects life at all stages. To give in to abortion, the contraceptive mentality, to the homosexual agenda, to euthanasia, and divorce is to give in to social and moral decline.

May 10, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A seven-minute video of a young mother who says she knows she did the right thing by not choosing to abort her handicapped son, has gone viral, spreading a powerful pro-life message across the internet.

The Right Choice – Inspirational Video

When Rebecca Downs, a pro-life activist who writes for LiveActionNews.com, saw the video on Youtube several days ago, she said it had 90,000 views: now it has over 260,000, and that number is climbing fast. Another version on Godtube has been viewed 62,000 times.

The mother’s name is Lacey Buchanan, who hails from Woodbury, Tennessee. In the low-key video Lacey hugs her sons, Christian, while holding up a series of written messages to the camera, which tell her and her baby’s story.

Lacey explains that a couple years after she got married at the age of 21, she learned she was expecting. But soon after her first ultrasound, she and her husband got a telephone call telling them that something was wrong with their baby.

While doctors weren’t even sure if Christian would live until birth, he did survive: but things were even worse than they anticipated.

Christian, who was born in February 2011, suffered from Tessier cleft lip and palate, which prevented him from closing his mouth, as well as cleft eyes, meaning that he was completely blind. Lacey says the condition affects only 50 people in the world, and requires extensive surgery.

“We didn’t know what to do, or how to raise a child who couldn’t see,” she says.

But even worse, she continues, were the judgmental comments and stares that she received every time she brought her son out in public.

“One girl even told me I was a horrible person for not aborting Christian in utero,” she writes.

But, she explains, as Christian grew older he started to laugh and play and giggle. “When people would stare, Christian would start giggling. And they would giggle too,” she says.

As time passed, things have gotten a lot easier, she says. People who heard about Christian started reaching out to her. “People started telling me how Christian inspired them. And how beautiful he is.”

Now, she says, “Christian is growing and gealthy.”

Lacey writes on her blog that she has been completely taken aback by the attention her video has received.

“I’m absolutely blown away by the response that the video has had. I never imagined it would be this big,” she writes, “but I have definitely learned a lesson in not underestimating God’s ability to use people.”

“I’m humbled and awestruck with the fact that God is using my son to fulfill His purpose! I just can’t wait to see how He uses Christian in the future!”

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/i-did-the-right-thing-by-not-aborting-video-of-young-mom-with-disabled-baby

A few days from now, pop star Lady Gaga will be coming over for a concert. She is an artist that needs no introduction; but for those who are not aware, she is famous for her catchy tunes and has risen to fame for her even catchier persona, bordering on the scandalous and unconventional, to say the least.  Her music videos are all compelling and catchy, with scandalous outfits and occult imagery contributing much to her success as a pop icon. Needless to say, it is necessary to address some of the issues she brings with her in her concert.

Shock Value

Much of her success as an artists is due to her portrayal of herself, usually an exaggeratedly weird portrayal. She disregards the usual norm for beauty and goes for the shocking and ugly in order to bring out a totally different and unique persona onstage. This, in turn, gives her performance a certain edge over other artists, pegging herself unique from the rest who take a more conservative approach when it comes to their music and choice of wardrobe. On the other hand, to brand her as just ‘unique’ may be an understatement, for someone who wore raw meat as clothing.

If we Catholics were to look back on our heritage, we inherit a Church that has seen great pieces of art and music which we still see today. There are  great murals in churches and other catholic paintings and sculpture; there are the great cathedrals and churches whose aesthetic and engeneering values can leave one in awe, and there is Catholic music – aptly called Sacred Music, and all of these exude beauty. They are beautiful because they reflect the one, true source of beauty itself: God.

If the beauty of Catholic art and music reflect the majesty of God, what does Lady Gaga’s unflattering and shocking appearances reflect?

A Tree is Known by its Fruit

Many of her music videos are very graphic in nature, and contain obsceneties, partial nudity and blasphemy;  in her music video for the song Alejandro, she swallows a rosary, and on the same video, she wears an upside-down cross on her crotch. In Bad Romance, monsters crawl out of some sort of a coffin with a cross and the word MONSTER beneath it.  Her Born This Way is typically known to be in support of the homosexual agenda, among other things.  She employs so many occult symbols that are very incompatible to the Catholic faith, thus putting one’s soul in danger.  Scientific research has confirmed that these images are often carried over by the young to their adulthood. Are these the images we want our children to grow up with?

God is love. God is beauty, and God is life. Instead, Gaga sings, in Bad Romance: “I want your ugly, I want your disease…I want your love…” The question is, whose love?   Can one remain a faithful Catholic who loves the Church and at the same time condone the blasphemous acts and lyrics in her videos and watch her concert? We certainly do not think so.

A tree is always known by its fruits, and these are her fruits.

Towards a Culture of Beauty and Godliness

Our neighboring countries, namely South Korea and Indonesia, have expressed their outrage over Lady Gaga’s concert in their countries. While we do not call for the same action here in our country, we ask our Catholic brethren to be true to their faith, to practice better judgment, and to be more discriminating when it comes to their choice of music. This is a call for our Catholic faithful to listen to music that points toward the glory of God, or at the very least allude to the inherent dignity of man. For these are the songs that foster culture and beauty, and a culture of beauty and of Godliness.

Sincerely,

Concerned Catholics

In February of 2012, a pair of left-wing “philosophers” wrote a paper that claimed that babies aren’t human until they can become cognizant of themselves, aware that if they were to be “aborted” or killed they’d be losing something valuable, their lives.

This, they claimed, justified abortion as well as post birth infanticide. Naturally they had elaborate justifications for their stance and what they wrote is chilling indeed, for it essentially states that only people that think like them are really worth the status of “human,” worth having their lives considered sacrosanct.

The pair, Alberto Giubilini of Milan, Italy, and Francesca Minerva of Australia, held as a central thesis that since abortion is so commonly accepted there had to be a more expansive use for it. That use, the pair decided, should be to cover killing babies born with developmental problems. After all, they said, neither fetuses or newborns “have the same moral status as actual persons,” so this certainly must mean that newborns with catastrophic birth defects could be killed without any moral reservations.

Here is how they justified the non-human status of both a fetus and a born baby.

The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.

Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’. We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her. This means that many non-human animals and mentally retarded human individuals are persons, but that all the individuals who are not in the condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons. Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life. Indeed, many humans are not considered subjects of a right to life: spare embryos where research on embryo stem cells is permitted, fetuses where abortion is permitted, criminals where capital punishment is legal.

This is chilling for its cold approach to life, but worse for its vagueness.

Let’s examine the main point of what makes someone a worthy human in these liberal’s minds. They feel that unless someone can understand the “basic value” of their own life, then they don’t count for personhood.

This is so entirely ague that anyone can qualify for elimination in a large number of situations.

The pair mentions that mentally retarded people can qualify for elimination, that they aren’t cognizant of the value of their own lives. But are you aware of yourself when you are in a coma from an accident? Are you any longer aware of yourself if you have Alzheimer’s? How about if you have devolved to infantile status at the end of your life? Should your children have the right to just kill you instead of keeping you alive in that case?

How far does this “thought” criteria go? Can these “philosophers” decide that if you are happy drinking beer, working as a car mechanic, and watching reality TV that this isn’t enough cognition to qualify to be self-aware? Could they decide that unless you think exactly like them, why, you aren’t properly a human? Of course they could because they would be in charge of deciding what “thought” qualifies as enough to make you a real person.

Imagine what this means? It means that the left is leaving behind its reliance on “science” and alighting on “thought” to serve as a basis to assess who is worth what. No longer is mere biology something worth considering. That long-held justification for abortion using the unviable cells argument is now out. Instead we will henceforth set out to determine if people are thinking properly to ascertain if they are worth keeping alive.

Chilling, no?

Worse, imagine how much more dangerous these ideas will become when governments decide to use them as a basis for policy! We will have governments determining who is “worth” being called a human based on how the person being judged thinks.

Extremely chilling, indeed.

LifeNews.com Note: Warner Todd Huston is an editorial columnist whose work is featured on numerous web sites. He has also written for several history magazines, and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture.”

http://www.lifenews.com/2012/05/07/professors-babies-dont-know-theyre-killed-in-abortions/

Those are words I never thought I would say to my children. In fact, I was never going to tell them. I didn’t want to explain what abortion was much less tell them that their own mother had made such a terrible, sinful choice… TWICE.

When I was asked to be a spokesperson for the Silent No More Awareness Campaign toward the end of 2010, they wanted to be sure that my immediate family knew my past before I began traveling the country talking about it. Of course my husband knew most of the details (although more things surface as time goes on), but how was I going to tell my kids that I killed two of their siblings?

My daughter was 14 and my son was 8 at the time. I didn’t want them to be disappointed in me. I didn’t want them to hate me. I didn’t want them to feel about me the way I felt about myself.

I sat the kids down on the couch and took a deep breath. I asked them if they knew what abortion was. My daughter said she had heard the word before but wasn’t sure what it was. My son was clueless. As I began to explain it, the horror was all over their faces. “How could anyone do that?” my son asked. He kept asking questions, but my daughter’s silence told me that she knew there was a reason I was talking to them about abortion.

I began to cry and said, “Mommy had two abortions 10 years ago. You have 2 siblings in heaven.”

I am crying now thinking about the shock and the disappointment on their little faces. It felt like the Mommy they knew wasn’t who they thought she was. I wonder about all of the questions that raced through their heads during those few seconds…all of the things that they may be able to articulate years from now, but can’t process in their young minds now.

My daughter scooted closer to me and threw her arms around me. “I forgive you, Mom…it’s ok”, she said. “I do too”, my son said, “and when I get older I’m NEVER going to let my wife do that.” We all cried to gether.

I went on to tell them about praying and asking God if the babies were boys or girls and what He would like me to name them. I told them about how God said they were both girls and we had named them Goodness and Mercy. “Like the Bible verse!” my son shouted.

Kelly’s children, who stand for LIFE with their mom and dad.

That was almost 2 years ago, and they’ve heard Mommy talk about Goodness and Mercy a lot now. Anytime we hear a song with Psalm 23 in it or someone reads that scripture, my son will proudly announce, “Those are my sisters!” Abortion is a common topic around our dinner table. I joined the fight for LIFE by myself, but we now fight together as a family.

As Mother’s Day approaches, many feel the sting of loss, but along with the sti ng, I feel the guilt. I will have 2 Mother’s Day cards missing…my breakfast in bed will be prepared by 2 children instead of 4. There is a void that will not be filled until I see Jesus face to face, but until then my hope remains in this: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…”

LifeNews.com Note:  Kelly Clinger is a pro-life advocate who is a former background vocalist for Britney Spears  and had two abortions before becoming a Christian at age 25. She now is married to Matt Clinger and has two children, Evin (age 15) and Logan (age 9). Clinger is a spokeswoman for the Silent No More Awareness Campaign.

http://www.lifenews.com/2012/05/08/mommy-had-an-abortion-how-i-apologized-to-my-children/

True to their promise that their voice will never be silenced, the youth sector has come out and came in droves of hundreds, attending the resumption of Congress after its summer break.

Hundreds of young people from different organizations and parishes attended the opening day of Congress in order to show their support for Pro-Life solons, especially the 9YL or 9 Young Legislators.

Even more young people attended the RH Forum which was held simultaneously at St. Peter’s Church at nearby Commonwealth Avenue, with many of them proceeding to the Congress after the said event.

Youth Manifesto

Earlier that day, a press conference was held at the CBCP conference hall by representatives from the youth sector: present to give their respective group’s position papers on the RH bill were : Kiboy Sagrada (UP for Life), Raymond Ibarrientos (Singles for Christ – Youth for Christ), Eilleen Esteban (Youth Pinoy!), Lea Dasigan (Federation of Nat’l Youth Orgs), Allen Guballa (Columbian Squires), Peter Pardo (NCR Youth Ministry).

Later on, they would sign the historic Youth Manifesto, which enjoins all young people to embrace the culture of life and to reject the RH bill. In effect, they have also declared that they will not vote for anti-life legislators.

“The youth, in defense of our welfare, can and will invest our support in legislators who know how to genuinely invest in us. In solidarity, we declare our opposition to the RH Bill. This is our voice. This is our vote.”

“We are opposing the bill as young people because it is us who will be directly and severely affected by the RH bill, not the congressmen who push it” adds Eileen Esteban of Youth Pinoy!

“We are not only the hope of tomorrow,” says Lea Dasigan of FNYO, “we are also the hope of today.

These youth leaders, along with their groups, would  go to join more young people at the Congress later that day.

RH Forum

While the session in congress was going on, there was a forum on the RH bill held at St. Peter’s Church in Commonwealth Avenue. More than a hundred youth from the Singles for Christ and the Diocese of Novaliches attended the forum.

The Speakers were Atty. Marwil Llasos, OP, Anna Cosio, RN, and Dr. Rene Bullecer, MD, of Human Life International. They all spoke against the RH bill from the point of view of their expertise, Dr. Bullecer and Anna Cosio being medical professionals, and Atty. Llasos being an impeccable lawyer and an outstanding theologian as well.

Young Hearts, Tomorrow’s Heroes

Coming together in order to oppose the RH Bill and proposing concrete solutions, the youth leaders and their respective members deserve much of our respect and admiration. Young as they are, they have shown that they are indeed the worthy inheritors of the torch that is about to be passed on to them in the next few years.

They have all vowed to vote wisely and to vote Pro-Life. They have all vowed to preserve the culture of life. They have all shown their desire to eradicate poverty the right way and not just resort to shortcuts. There is fire in the collective gut of these young people, a fire which may have been long-extinguished inside our anti-life congressmen, who seem to be more into buying contraceptives instead of providing for the basic necessities of the poor like food, housing, and education. The likes of them should never be elected into office again.

Much of our future lies in what we do today, and if our young turn out to be citizens unworthy of her country’s proud heritage, then the blame lies solely on us who failed to raise them properly. Therefore we educate the young not only to oppose the RH bill, but to embrace the culture of life.

Patriotism used to exclusively mean dying for the country. Nowadays, to live one’s life defending life and protecting the small, the helpless, and the weak – that is patriotism, too.

I had been looking forward to my post-abortion healing retreat weekend for months. Years, in fact. The grief and crushing guilt after my abortion 23 years ago nearly cost me my life. My check for the nominal fee was cashed, and the Herculean logistics of childcare and shuttling my three sons to and from activities while mommy was away was complete. As a firm non-believer in GPS, I wrote out my driving directions using the markers from the kids’ art table and set off on my 40-mile journey to closure.

Located atop a hill, surrounded by fields and trees, the retreat house was perfectly bucolic and remote. Including me, there were eight retreatants, seven staff members (including the lead facilitator, a nurse, and a certified counselor), and – although it was conducted as an interdenominational Christian retreat – a priest.

I checked into my room and found a welcome packet filled with inspirational pamphlets and a gift arrangement that included a journal, a coffee mug filled with candy, and prayer cards. Then I headed back downstairs to sup on the homemade minestrone soup that was waiting for us in a crock pot upon arrival and enjoyed small talk with the others about how far we’d each traveled to get there, the traffic, and the beautiful weather.

The formal “work” of the retreat was to take place in a large, carpeted room with big comfy chairs arranged in a circle. Each chair had a lovingly handmade donated afghan on it, a box of tissues, and a tiny trash can. It looked eerily like the recovery room of the abortion clinic where I had worked. One of our first spiritual exercises after briefly introducing ourselves was to pick a rock to carry around with us throughout the weekend as a physical reminder of the weight of our own personal burdens of guilt, grief, regret, anger, shame, and sadness associated with our abortions.

The first “grief stone” I chose was the only rectangular one among the circle of rocks around the low table in the center of the room. I thought that that was somehow appropriate, given my additional guilt and shame of working in an abortion clinic for years piled on top of the devastation of my own abortion.

A few unexpected surprises of the retreat led me to see that first stone as a weapon, not as a physical manifestation and representation of the heavy psychic burden I carried. I was almost immediately plunged into a vivid daydream of using the sharpest edge (which admittedly, wasn’t very sharp at all) to scrape at my forearms. The same way I used to when I would cut myself for release to ease the maelstrom of emotional fury so many, many years ago.

I hadn’t tried to deliberately hurt myself in decades. Something was wrong. I approached the retreat’s counselor and confessed that I could not be trusted with a pointy rock, so I traded it in for a smooth stone. I held my new smooth gray grief stone in the palm of my hand and felt its heft. He was very dusty, so I took him to the sink in the bathroom and scrubbed him off. There, on the surface, I noticed a crack…in the shape of a cross. I had the right stone now.

Part of the retreat rules are that participants are to carry their grief stone with us at all times – to the bathroom, the shower, the breakfast table – until we are ready to lay down our burden. Each retreatant chooses the time to relieve oneself of the burden, sets the stone down somewhere at the retreat house, and then shares with the assembled mourners and staff why it was time to stop carrying the weight around.

The intended purpose of the relinquishing of one’s heavy rock of grief is meant to symbolize relief from the burden of grief, anger, and guilt. I’d thought this was not all that dissimilar from the Jewish tradition of leaving a “stone of remembrance” upon the grave marker of a loved one. But those grieving Jews have a cemetery to visit, a physical place to leave their tangible representation of memorial and grief. We who mourn children lost to abortion have no such monument to our dead.

After a morning prayer service and breakfast, it was time to divide the group in half to share our own personal abortion stories. Although I’ve written about my abortion and working in an abortion clinic, spoken publicly about it, and even been interviewed for radio broadcasts, I simply did not feel safe enough in this place to share my history in mixed-gender company. Admittedly, I was still harboring anger and resentment about not knowing that men would be present at the retreat. I fully acknowledge the very real grief of post-abortive men and agree that they too deserve assistance on the road to forgiveness, spiritual healing, and reconciliation – I just wrongly assumed that this retreat was for women only (with the exception of the priest, of course) and that men were provided a separate therapeutic experience tailored to their role in the abortion decision. Clearly, his experience is fundamentally different from that of the pregnant woman who physically endures the pregnancy and the violence that ends it.

So I left the retreat early = with my smooth cross-stone. During my hour-long drive home, I felt warmer and calmer and more at peace the more distance I put between me and my failed attempt at scripted healing. I drove under an overpass with a large street sign bearing the name I’d chosen for my child while he was still alive, still growing inside me. I was going in the right direction. I wasn’t leaving my dead child behind, but I was bringing home a memorial to him as I kept driving – away from the retreat and toward my three living children, my home, my husband, and my future.

I lifted my stone out of the car but hesitated at the door to my home. I would not bring him inside. His stone has a place in the garden, a part of my family’s surroundings. My stone is no longer a burden – it is a memorial. Now I have a place to visit. Now he has a place to be remembered.

Ministries that provide counseling and spiritual healing services provide invaluable assistance to the thousands of women and men grieving after abortion. The dedicated staff, volunteers, pastors, and priests provide comfort and solace to help so many bridge the chasm of unspoken sorrow in their souls with a forgiveness that helps them reach the stability of the shore where true healing happens, and the future can unfold unencumbered by the weight of the past.

My own journey was (and still is) intensely personal and could not have happened any other way.

There is no such thing as one-size-fits all healing.

Author’s Note: If you or someone you love is suffering from unresolved emotions stemming from a past abortion, please contact any (or all) of the following remarkable organizations dedicated to helping heal those wounded by the violence of abortion. Find what works for you – don’t give up. You’re worth it.

-Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries (Be sure to inquire about whether or not the retreat time and location you choose is co-ed or women-only.)

-AfterAbortion.com

-The National Office for Post Abortion Reconciliation & Healing

-Project Rachel

LifeNews.com Note: Jewels Green writes for Live Action, an organization that uses non-religious arguments to promote the pro-life perspective, and this column is reprinted with permission. She formerly worked at an abortion facility before becoming pro-life. This views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of LifeNews.com.

http://www.lifenews.com/2012/04/25/finding-healing-after-abortion-nearly-took-my-life/

The real war against women has nothing to do with the morning-after pill or insurance coverage.  This war transcends the debate between pro-life and pro-choice.  It is not even being waged on U.S. soil.

The real war against women is forced abortion and gendercide in China.

As the U.S. debates Obamacare and the contraceptive mandate, Chinese women are being dragged out of their homes, strapped down to tables and forced to abort babies that they want, up to the ninth month of pregnancy.  Sometimes the women themselves die, along with their full term babies. Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, no one supports forced abortion, because it’s not a choice. Watch this 4-minute video to learn the brutal truth about forced abortion in China.

See You Tube Video Stop Forced Abortion- China’s One Child Policy…

http://youtu.be/JjtuBcJUsjY

Equally appalling, baby girls are being selected for termination.  According to one UN estimate, up to 200 million women are missing in the world today due to gendercide, the sex-selective abortion of baby girls, mostly in China and India.  Anyone who cares about women’s rights must be heartbroken and incensed by this massive attack against females.

China’s One Child Policy causes more violence against women and girls than any other official policy on earth.  It is systematic, institutionalized violence against women:

• Forced abortion is violent.  It is official government rape.
• Forced sterilization is often done without anesthesia and may cause infection, which can ruin a woman’s reproductive and general health.
• Infanticide – the killing of newborns – is a human rights atrocity.  Read “Best Practices – Infanticide” here. http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/index.php?nav=congressional
• Because of gendercide, there are now approximately 37 million more males living in China than women.
• This gender imbalance is driving sexual slavery not only within China, but from the surrounding countries as well.
• China has the highest female suicide rate of any nation in the world.  An estimated 500 women a day end their lives in China.

The women of China cannot fight this war, or they risk being imprisoned, tortured and denied medical treatment, like blind forced abortion opponent, Chen Guangcheng.

Martin Luther King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  Stand with our sisters in China.  Sign a petition to end forced abortion in China.

LifeNews.com Note: Reggie Littlejohn serves as an expert on China’s One-Child Policy for Human Rights Without Frontiers, in Belgium, as well as the China Aid Association. Littlejohn is the Founder and President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.

http://www.lifenews.com/2012/04/27/the-real-war-against-women-forced-abortion-gendercide/

The documentary titled “The Philippines: Preserving a Culture of Life,” is one of the 240 entries submitted to Life Fest, and on May 5, the awards on Cinematography, Sound Design, Story/Writing, Overall Audience Favorite, Best Actress, and Best Actor will be up for grabs through live and online voting.

Released in 2011, the documentary tackles the Philippines in its current situation of fighting against the culture of death. It also underscores one of the most dramatic social and political struggles for life and family in the world.

“This is a truly powerful film that not only sheds light on this specific example of combating the Culture of Death in the Philippines, but which we hope inspires all of those fighting for life around the world,” said HLI President Fr. Shenan J. Boquet.

The film captures remarkable scenes and heartfelt interviews with Filipino pro-lifers leading the charge against the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill threatening life and family in the Philippines.

“The Philippines: Preserving a Culture of Life” was debuted on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) in the United States, Canada, and the Philippines August last year. It is scheduled to be re-aired on EWTN on May 9 to 11.

Based on the 1987 Philippine Constitution, the State, according to Article II Section 11, “values the dignity of every human person and guarantees full respect for human rights.” Furthermore, Section 12 notes that “…[i]t shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”

Based on these Constitutional protections, the RH Bill would be a violation of the fundamental law of the land by imposing government mandates that would be harmful to the Filipino family and to the society. (CBCP for Life)

http://cbcpforlife.com/?p=6978

In 1994, Dr. Charles Cleeland authored a study that found that 42% of cancer patients with pain were receiving inadequate therapy for their pain. This led to the Health and Human Services (HHS) guidelines for more aggressive pain management and the ubiquitous question about your level of pain “on a scale of 1 to 10” every time you visit the doctor for any reason.

The interest in pain management was actually a response to the push for legalized assisted suicide. Advocates of assisted suicide claimed that uncontrolled pain justified aiding cancer patients to end their lives. At the time, there were proclamations by medical experts that 90% of pain could be easily treated and there was no risk of addiction for those who were actually in pain.

So where are we nearly two decades later? A new study just published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology finds that while pain management has improved, a significant number of cancer patients are still suffering. Dr. Michael Fisch and his colleagues looked at over three thousand patients with breast, lung, prostate, or colorectal cancer. Of the two thousand patients who complained of pain, roughly one-third were receiving inadequate therapy for their pain. The reasons for this failure to adequately alleviate pain are varied and complex. Physicians cited concerns about raising red flags for excessive use of pain relievers monitored by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) as a reason for using suboptimal doses of opiod analgesics. Patients resisted the use of pain medicine, fearing these powerful drugs would adversely affect their level of functioning. Some patients had a cultural stoicism that made it difficult for them to admit they had pain and needed medication. Many patients did not speak English well and had a difficult time communicating their need for pain relief to their physicians. In 50% of all patients with inadequate pain relief, oncologists treating the patient did not deem the pain to be related to cancer and therefore, did not aggressively pursue therapy to alleviate the pain.

Those who promote assisted suicide and euthanasia no longer limit their justifications to simply dealing with chronic pain; they now include depression and other mental illnesses, loss of cognitive abilities, and loss of independence as reasons for ending life. In light of this recent study, however, one wonders if these purveyors of death were correct twenty years ago to claim that intractable pain in cancer patients made life not worth living and gave rise to the need for legalization of assisted suicide?

Clearly, the Fisch study is not an indictment of life with cancer. The presence of suffering does not make death preferable to life. What this study does tell us is that in a significant number of patients with cancer, relief of pain is not a simple issue. Both physicians and patients create obstacles to optimal pain therapy. The answer is not to get rid of the patients in order to get rid of the pain: The answer is to address the impediments that hinder successful pain management.

Even more importantly, this study tells us is that in spite of the best efforts of medicine, there are still people among us who are suffering. Seeing others who are ill or hurting often makes us uncomfortable because it brings our own mortality to the forefront of our consciousness. Yet as Christians, we are called to suffer with those who are in pain – literally, to be compassionate. Someone you know may very well be hurting. He needs you to comfort him, listen to him, pray with him, or at least pray for him.

I remember the first time I got sick after leaving home to go to medical school. I was alone in my apartment. The fever, the aches, and the general misery were magnified by my isolation. My mother was not there to offer a cool cloth for my brow or soothing words to help me sleep. While it is important to offer and utilize medical treatments that ease suffering, no pill will ever replace the consolation provided by human presence.

Turning to assisted suicide or euthanasia as a solution for suffering says that we as a society cannot be bothered with authentic compassion. It says that we want what is easy and expedient rather than what requires effort and time. It says the healthy and powerful can decide whether the weak and vulnerable live or die. Therefore, legislative efforts to protect the disabled, the sick and the suffering from becoming victims – particularly given certain ominous elements of the Affordable Care Act – are necessary. But legislation alone will not build a culture of life.

Each of us must take the time to recognize the pain and suffering of our child, our spouse, our neighbor, and even the strangers who momentarily cross our paths each day. Compassion may mean sitting at a bedside. It may mean an unrushed conversation over coffee or taking a casserole to the family next door. It may just mean a kind word or a smile for someone who looks like they are having a bad day. Each of these small acts affirms that we are a community instead of just a collection of individuals. An authentically compassionate community desires that no one ever suffers alone, and does not seek death as the solution to pain.

LifeNews Note: Denise Hunnell, MD, is a Fellow of HLI America, an educational initiative of Human Life International. She writes for HLI America’s Truth and Charity Forum.