Mother May I … Be Born?

NARAL Pro-Choice America snubbed their old pal, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.  The abortion advocacy group endorsed her rival for the Democratic candidacy, BarackObama, for president.

One prominent abortion rights activist was not pleased with NARAL’s tactics in aborting its support for Hillary and choosing Barack, the Star Tribune (via the Associated Press) reports:

Ellen Malcolm, president of EMILY’s List, which helps elect female candidates who favor abortion rights, harshly criticized the endorsement.

“I think it is tremendously disrespectful to Senator Clinton — who held up the nomination of an FDA commissioner in order to force approval of Plan B and who spoke so eloquently during the Supreme Court nomination about the importance of protecting Roe v. Wade — to not give her the courtesy to finish the final three weeks of the primary process,” Malcolm said in a statement. “It certainly must be disconcerting for elected leaders who stand up for reproductive rights and expect the choice community will stand with them.”

Aborted Americans had no say on the matter of NARAL’s choice. 

(c) 2008  Marybeth T. Hagan

The global warming issue leaves me cold.   

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m all for conservation, recycling and such. 

But what’s the point of preserving the earth and its greenness for future inhabitants if humanity does not have the right to be born? 

When did plant life grow to be more important than people?

Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain’s new campaign advertisement “There’s a Better Way,” here on YouTube, touts his global warming credentials.  (Fortunately McCain also has decent pro-life credentials unlike either of his possible opponents, Democratic Senators Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.)

“We have an obligation to future generations to take action and fix it [global warming],” says McCain in the closing of his new ad. 

Still, we have a more pressing obligation to future generations.  First, we must fight for humanity’s right to be born.   

(c) 2008  Marybeth T. Hagan

Carl Landwehr, founder and president of the Vitae Caring Foundation, saw a need for a way to reach more people concerning abortion.  So he filled it with his foundation. 

“You’ve got to tell the story,” Landwehr said to a group of pro-life supporters in West Chester, Pa., last Saturday evening.  The mass media was a natural fit, he said, because “advertising changes the way people think and the way people behave.” 

To ensure effective — life saving — advertising,  the Vitae Caring Foundation invested in research that helped group members “learn how to speak to pregnant women,” said Landwehr.  They also realized that ”one message does not fit all,” that addressing abortion “was more complicated than sharing information.”

The group’s goal is to encourage pregnant women with unplanned pregnancies, who ”feel alone and desperate,” to turn to pregnancy centers for help, Landwehr said.  There’s no “finger pointing, no relying for help from legislators or the president,” simply a Vitae bottom line that says “I saved a life.”

Vitae takes its ads into the toughest markets, places with skyrocketing abortion rates.  It counts successes, saved lives or lower abortion rates, in New York City, Dallas and Atlanta, among other areas, said Landwehr.

The powerful, award-winning ads, here, speak for themselves.

Advertising is expensive.  In order to keep those commercials coming, the Vitae Caring Foundation would welcome your support.

(c) 2008  Marybeth T. Hagan

The Vitae Caring Foundation’s fundraiser at the Iron Horse Farm in West Chester, Pa. this past Saturday night lived up to the group’s name.  It was a lively and lovely affair.

(Vitae puts the mass media to good use by educating the public via well-researched, effective advertising that promotes respect for human life.  Look for more on the foundation here on Thursday.)

Fox News’ analyst Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, Vitae’s guest speaker, told several stories sprinkled with humor.  Yet, there was no joking in the judge’s lesson on the mindset that enabled passage of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. 

Founding Fathers James Madison and Thomas Jefferson emphasized “natural rights” drawn from our humanity, Napolitano said, ”through God who gives us this gift.”  Alexander Hamilton and John Adams believed that rights came from government, which is”positivism,” he said.  Under positivism, “whatever government is in power determines rights.”

The Roe decision on January 22, 1973 “was the triumph of postivism over natural law,” said Napolitano.   

This led to our “culture of death, which must be battled at every turn,” said the judge before offering these tips on battling: 

1. Accept every challenge from pro-choicers who are “pro-abortion”
2. Don’t accept the “proportionality argument,” i.e. that other issues, like the war, are more important than the issue of abortion
3. Pray for our enemies and forgive them
4. Keep a sense of humor while battling

Both the Vitae Caring Foundation and Napolitano inspired the pro-life men and women in attendance to keep up the good fight. 

(c) 2008  Marybeth T. Hagan

I post this item on a personal note of sadness.

My friend and perhaps yours, Pennsylvanians for Human Life’s Executive Director Martha [Cushwa] Short lost her dad, Dave Cushwa, yesterday.  Martha’s mother, Martha Cushwa, helped to lay the foundation for PHL, an effective pro-life educational group.   

Dave Cushwa suffered a massive stroke while enroute to visiting his son and his son’s family in Chicago.  Immediate family members were with him when he passed away.  This was a sudden death in a family that has done so much for the cause of life.

May Dave Cushwa rest in peace and his wife, children and grandchildren find some serenity in their fond memories of him. 

(c) 2008  Marybeth T. Hagan    

The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today’s James Taranto pointed to an unusual use of the words “miscarriage” and ”abortion” by civil rights activist Al Sharpton.

With his astute sense of irony and tongue-in-cheek commentary, Taranto headlines his remarks yesterday on Sharpton’s comment ”Antiabortion Al?” (Scroll down to last item.)

While protesting the acquittal of three New York City detectives in the 2006 shooting death of bridegroom Sean Bell, (reported here by WCBS-TV), Sharpton said:

“We intend to pursue this case with all deliberate speed and determination. This verdict is one round down, but the fight is far from over,” he said. “What we saw in court today was not a miscarraige [sic] of justice, this was an abortion of justice. Justice was aborted.”

Sharpton’s choice of words are telling, indeed.  

(c) 2008  Marybeth T. Hagan

Planned Parenthood has just taken hits from two heavy hitters.   

Writer and actor Ben Stein lets his audience know that Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger was a firm believer in eugenics during his clever, God-friendly, new film Expelled. 

And, nationally syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher asks the question “Is Planned Parenthood Above the Law?” in her April 22 column (here in Philadelphia’s The Bulletin, where I first read it, or here on Townhall.com). 

Gallager notes this recent expose on PPFA:

Planned Parenthood’s latest trouble began when a feisty pro-life student magazine called Planned Parenthood offices in seven states, posing as an openly racist donor seeking to make sure his check could be earmarked to abort “a black baby.” The resulting phone conversations are horrifying listening. (Judge for yourself at www.youtube.com./watch?v=zwif0VMW3c4.)  

The columnist also reminds readers of a previous sting operation exposing PPFA’s willingness to allow a minor with an older boyfriend to lie about her age in order to acquire an abortion. 

Gallagher writes “Help pedophiles and racists? For too many Planned Parenthood employees, it’s apparently all in a day’s work.” 

Apparently.

(c) 2008  Marybeth T. Hagan

This Pennsylvania Primary Day, political science Professor Paul Kengor points to a larger question that both abortion-friendly Democratic presidential hopefuls consistently avoid answering.

In “Conceiving Conception at Messiah,” Kengor writes of Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s evasive responses to the question of when human life begins during the candidates’ “Compassion Forum” at Messiah College on April 13.  (Kengor’s commentary was posted on Grove City College’s  The Center for Vision and Values website and published in Philadelphia’s The Bulletin today.) 

As Kengor noted, Clinton stated that “the potential for life begins at conception,” then added: 

But for me, it is also not only about a potential life…. And, therefore, I have concluded, after great, you know, concern and searching my own mind and heart over many years, that our task should be, in this pluralistic, diverse life of ours in this nation, that individuals must be entrusted to make this profound decision…. I think abortion should remain legal. 

“Even more ambiguous,” wrote Kengor, was Obama’s response:

This is something that I have not, I think, come to a firm resolution on. I think it’s very hard to know what that means, when life begins. Is it when a cell separates? Is it when the soul stirs? So, I don’t presume to know the answer to that question. What I know, as I’ve said before, is that there is something extraordinarily powerful about potential life and that has a moral weight to it that we take into consideration when we’re having these debates.

I hear an echo.  Clinton’s and Obama’s evasiveness in answering a critical question concerning abortion reminds me of another abortion-friendly voice that I noted in my book Abortion: A Mother’s Plea for Maternity and the Unborn (Liguori Publications). 

 ”We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.” wrote Justice Harry Blackmun in his Opinion of the Court on the Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion across the nation in 1973.

There’s only one word to describe the mindset that would dare to legalize abortion, or defend the right to abortion, without answering “the difficult question of when life begins.”

Audacity!

God help us if such audacity keeps passing for leadership. 

(c) 2008  Marybeth T. Hagan

At least two great minds suggest that the news of a Yale University student, whose art exhibit will feature her self-induced abortions after artificial inseminations, is questionable. 

“Please let this be a hoax,” begins bioethics expert Wesley Smith’s post, ”Abortion as ‘Art,’” today on Secondhand Smoke.   

On Best of the Web Today, The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto wrote, “The Yale Daily News reports today on what can only be described as a sick joke.” under a heading “Blood and Ivy.” 

Here’s a bit of the Yale Daily News’ story, “For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse,” about art major Aliza Shvarts’ self-expression: 

The display of Schvarts’ project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts’ self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathroom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

The project speaks for itself. 

Here’s hoping that Smith and Taranto are on to something about Schvarts’ twisted creativity for her sake and ours. 

(c) 2008  Marybeth T. Hagan  

Thought a few additions to my website might be worth mentioning.

My fellow blogger and technical wiz, Peter, kindly added two features to Mother May I…Be Born?  Please note regularly updated “Pro-Life Action Calls” to the right on my homepage and the specially designed logo/link “ProLifeBlogs 2008.” 

FYI, Peter juggles other websites that might be of interest.   His sites include: ProLifeUnity, MonthlyCallForLife.com and Multimedia Pro-Life News.  Peter also helps out his mutually helpful friend Tim with ProLifeBlogs, which often publishes my posts on its homepage.  

Tim and Peter also co-founded the Blogs4Life conference.   This year’s Blogs4Life gathering was held on the anniversary of Roe at the Family Research Council’s headquarters in Washington D.C.     

Another lovely, thoughtfully-written and spirtually-based site, Reflections of a Paralytic, has been added to my blogroll. 

And, a commentary on pro-life blogs worth reading could only be complete with mention of Jill Stanek’s fresh and informative Pro-Life pulse, which was added to my blogroll a while back. 

Hope that you find this information to be helpful. 

As Peter says, “United we stand - Divided they die - Pass it on.”

(c) 2008  Marybeth T. Hagan