40 Days for Life Kickoff Vigil + LATE BREAKING NEWS

They held the third annual kickoff candlelight vigil near the Miramar Family Planning Associates office tonight.  There was a turnout of around 50 to 60 people.  Speakers included Trippy Seelig, coordinator for San Diego/Miramar, and Roger Lopez, husband of Sue.  40 Days for Life of San Diego County now includes three areas, San Marcos, Miramar, and now the El Cajon clinic where we've had vigils on Fridays and Saturdays.  There were a couple of prayers to end abortion and for the closing of that abortion mill, and a rosary procession.  I was able to get a couple of sponsors for the upcoming Lifewalk October 29 at Mission Bay.  The next pro-life event will be the Life Chain.

BREAKING NEWS ITEM: 

A Congressional committee has taken the first steps in investigating the Planned Parenthood abortion business over abuses ranging from financial disparities to its compliance with federal regulations on taxpayer funding to concerns that it is covering up cases of sex trafficking.  See also here and here.

In a related vein state lawmakers in Pennsylvania have called for swift approval of two measures designed to increase oversight of abortion providers and limit taxpayer funding for these procedures.

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"Love can be seen as the answer, but nobody bleeds for the dancer"--Ronnie James Dio (1942-2010)

live births following abortion and experiments

In an earlier email and blog entry I mentioned that the salt poisoning method of abortion was still occasionally used.  This article suggests the method is more common overseas in the United Kingdom, which has about the highest abortion rate in Western Europe.

 

I saw the article on the Facebook page Pro Life Pagans, which I am one of the admins for.  I haven't studied paganism that much, and it's kind of a long story how I got involved with that page.  One of the other admins just put that article up along with a few other articles dealing with live births following abortion, and use of such babies for experimentation.  The articles are pretty horrific.  One even mentions using ova from aborted girls as part of in vitro fertilization.  

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"Love can be seen as the answer, but nobody bleeds for the dancer"--Ronnie James Dio (1942-2010)

Abortion and Fetal Pain

Lifenews has reported on two measures in Alabama and Idaho that would restrict abortions after 20 weeks on the basis that the unborn can feel pain at this point.  They are long overdue measures.

 

This is an often overlooked aspect of abortion.  Judging from the unborn child's response to stimuli at this point, abortions have often been quite painful, and they have almost certainly been more so in the past.  Years ago the leading method of late abortion involved injecting a caustic salt solution into the amniotic sac.  There's little in the way of a dead layer of skin to protect the baby at this point, so it would be like salt in an open wound.  It would take more than an hour to kill the baby this way, during which time nothing is being given for the pain, and there have even been instances where the baby has survived long enough to be born alive.  This procedure has largely been abandoned because of the risk to the mother's health, but there are still occasional instances of its use.

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"Love can be seen as the answer, but nobody bleeds for the dancer"--Ronnie James Dio (1942-2010)

This story is close to home

This story is quite close to home.   I lost my dad a couple of years ago to multiple system atrophy, a very severe form of Parkinson's disease that doesn't respond to the medication that Parkinson's disease normally responds to, and I've often had questions about the quality of care he was given near the end.

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"Love can be seen as the answer, but nobody bleeds for the dancer"--Ronnie James Dio (1942-2010)

Another Planned Parenthood worker becomes pro-life

It has just been reported in Live Action and Lifesitenews that another Planned Parenthood worker has crossed the lines into the pro-life movement.  Clinic manager Romona Trevino follows Abby Johnson and Jewels Green--and before them the late Dr. Nathanson--away from the death clinics into a culture of life.  Abby Johnson has stated that this may very well be the Achilles's heel for Planned Parenthood, which performed more than a quarter of all abortions from mid-2008 to mid-2009.

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"Love can be seen as the answer, but nobody bleeds for the dancer"--Ronnie James Dio (1942-2010)

No good deed goes unpunished.

File this one under "No good deed goes unpunished."

It has just been reported in Live Action that the Department of Justice is prosecuting a 79-year-old man who has saved nearly 350 babies from abortion through sidewalk counseling.  Ironically this could drive pro-life to a more extreme stance, and at this moment I'm wondering if that isn't the objective.

About ten years ago the pro-life pickets near San Diego area clinics involved holding graphic pictures of aborted babies.  A devout Christian named Sue Lopez changed this, insisting that vigils should take the form of quiet prayer, and that harassing the women was counterproductive. While her views on matters other than abortion were at odds with some of the pro-lifers I've come to know on Facebook, she was quite helpful in helping me get back into pro-life after far too long an absence. Whether it's the administration's intention or not, it's the legacy of Sue and others that's being threatened by its actions against Retta.

Life Report links to this entry.

An update--someone from Atheist/Agnostic Pro Life League has provided a link to a court document on this case.  If this is accurate, the man may have been harassing the women who went into the clinic.
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"Love can be seen as the answer, but nobody bleeds for the dancer"--Ronnie James Dio (1942-2010)

Today's Mother-of-Life conference

I managed to get to the Mother of Life Conference today.  They had a number of speakers, among them Alveda King, niece of slain civil-rights leader Martin Luther King.  I didn't attend any of the lectures, partly because the seats looked uncomfortable, partly because I didn't think I could stay for the whole day anyway.  I did see a number of booths from various pro-life groups there; it was like a giant version of the Del Mar fair booths.   Life Perspectives, the people I do the Life walk with, was there.    I'd gotten a sponsor pledge form the day before and was able to secure a few pledges from people I know there.  One of the people I ran into was Tim Houze, someone I knew from San Diego State's pro-life group more than thirty years ago.  He updated me on how others in the group were doing, and I got him to sign the pledge.  His wife had rheumatoid arthritis more than thirty years ago, and over the years has gotten worse, now apparently in a wheelchair.

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"Love can be seen as the answer, but nobody bleeds for the dancer"--Ronnie James Dio (1942-2010)