Lila Rose Slams Hookup Culture

Pro-life leader Lila Rose caught the attention of millions of people online on May 9 when she defended abstinence until marriage & monogamy on “Whatever” a popular dating podcast. Rose, the president and founder of the pro-life organization Live Action, offered a number of compelling arguments about marriage and sex throughout the three hour podcast, despite some rough & crude language used by panelists. “That’s where the power of love comes in, a love that doesn’t leave, a love that isn’t based on feelings or desire, but a love that’s based on choice,” Rose said. “And I think deep down we’re all wired for that. … I think deep down we want a love that stays, a love that lasts, and it is possible for everyone.” [LifeNews, 5/17/23] 

Gender Confusion Everywhere

Is there a religious or ideological bias in those who promote the transgender idea? The American Medical Assoc., Amer. Academy of Pediatrics, Amer. Psychiatric Assoc., and Amer. Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry all have spoken out against state laws to restrict access to “gender-affirming medical care” for children, including both hormones and surgery. Yet none of these organizations object to restrictions of children’s rights to express their self identity in the form of permanent tattoos. Many, many states have absolute bans on tattoos for children, and others have strict parental notification and consent laws. Jim Riley of Innervision Tattoo (Nevada) says he wouldn’t tattoo a minor even with parental consent: “Of all the people I’ve tattooed in my 20+ year career, it’s very common to hear the phrase ‘I got this tattoo when I was 15 and now I hate it. Can you cover it up?’ Let’s face it, when we’re teenagers we don’t have the foresight to know what we will like when we are in our 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond.” [J. Sciortino, WSJ, 5/15/23]

The Department of Education under the current administration has proposed a new rule that would generally require sports programs to allow athletes to compete according to, not their sex, but their gender identity. Permitting any male to compete against females undermines the long-standing goals of equal opportunity for women & girls. [National Review, 5/1/23]

Transgender rights are among a slew of hot-button issues driving states in opposite directions. New proposals include bans on gender-affirming treatment for minors, limits on discussing gender identity in primary schools, and prohibitions on transgender students competing on school sports teams that align with their identified gender. [S. Armour, WSJ, 4/24/23]

The Archdiocese of Portland, OR, has adopted a model policy on dealing with transgender students: designations and pronouns should accord with biological sex; restrooms and locker rooms should be organized according to biological sex; no person should have on site or distribute medications for the purpose of gender transition; parents are the primary educators of their children and should be involved in any psychiatric or medical decisions regarding their children. [Catholic League, Catalyst, April 2023]

He Thought Abortion Was Good Medicine

Dr. John Bruchalski’s book Two Patients: My Conversion from Abortion to Life-Affirming Medicine (Oct. 2022) tells his pro-life story as an OB/GYN. At first, I adopted the mindset that abortion was good medicine for women. I grew up during the so-called “sexual revolution.” My faith journey outside of my family and parish in the 1970s and 1980s told me that my conscience was my supreme guide and the Church could not force me to change my mind. My journey into studying the scientific taught me that what my faith taught me was backward, dangerous and a curse on women and science and medicine.

The change came for me in early 1989. I was an OB/GYN resident practicing so-called “good medicine.” Cognitive dissidence was building up inside me. At night I was visiting a pregnancy resource center, getting to see the faith of an evangelical community rescuing women from abortion. During the day I was performing atrocities as an honorable and caring OB/GYN. Yet medical data in our journals were clearly indicating the
dangerous side effects of abortion and its association with mental illness, preterm birth, and breast cancer.
But with each abortion I performed my heart grew harder and harder, darker and darker.

Then an honest Catholic NICU doctor, Dr. Debbie Plumb, challenged me to stop treating her patients, these babies, as tumors to be cut out and discarded. I went to Medjougorie and became a redeemed sinner. I was touched in the sacred font of Divine Mercy through the assistance of His Blessed Mother. By 1994 I had
founded Tepeyac OB/GYN. My heart was exploding in fire to share what merciful, life-affirming medicine
could be with other practitioners and with patients.

Rather than seeing fertility as something to be controlled and shut off and polluted with class one carcinogens,
fertility awareness is utilized fully. Rather than considering unborn children as sexually transmitted diseases, the unborn child is our second patient. Rather than treating embryos as property to be used, children and progeny are to be unconditionally loved and nurtured. Rather than seeing the underserved as someone else’s problem to be fixed and a waste of precious time, we do what we can to accompany our patients. Rather than pitting mom against her child in elective abortion, we collaborate with regional pregnancy centers. Rather than seeing a sick unborn child in the womb as a sump for pain and needless suffering and ending the life of the person/child with that illness, we offer perinatal hospice. It is the breaking of the unity of reason with faith that led to the sterilizing tables in the 1930s, the gas chambers in the 1940s, and now to the abortion mills and chemical abortions of today. In a post-Roe world, we must continue the political and the advocacy and the scientific inquiry. We must serve human flourishing, collaborate with fertility, and not treat our children as sexually transmitted diseases to be altered or eliminated. Through God’s grace, and in sacrificial relationship with others, we can provide a light in the darkness and show that the way of medicine going forward must be
toward care, healing and wholeness. [Zoe Romanowsky interview, 1/19/23, https://aleteia.org/]

Salt-N-Pepa Singer Rejected Abortion to Save Her Singing Career

Cheryl James of the hip-hop group Salt-N-Pepa said the entertainment industry tried to pressure her to abort her daughter. In an interview, James said her daughter was one of the best things that ever happened to her. James, the “Salt” of the group, and Sandra Denton, or “Pepa,” spoke about balancing their careers with raising their children even though many in the entertainment industry told them that they could not do both. “You just have to know that it’s something that you’re capable of handling if you want a kid and a career. And it’s definitely harder. Having my girls, besides finding Jesus, is the best thing that I’ve ever experienced, my kids,” she said.

Other celebrities have shared similar stories about the pressure female entertainers face to abort their unborn babies. Earlier this year, former Pussycat Dolls lead singer Kaya Jones told of the “train of trauma” she suffered after having three abortions as a young woman. Jones described the entertainment industry as almost like a sex trafficking ring that objectifies women and girls and, when they become pregnant, pressures them to abort their unborn babies. Later, Jones said she found forgiveness and healing in Christ. [M. Bilger, LifeNews.com, 5/9/23]

Mutilated Animals Left at Clinic

The FBI and local police opened an investigation after three mutilated animals were left on the property of a pro-life pregnancy center in Orlando, Florida. All of the clinic’s services are free and it mostly serves minority
women. The director Bob Perron thinks the clinic was targeted “because we don’t support or refer for abortions
because we know that that hurts women & their families. We are just a medical clinic trying to help moms.” A doorbell camera may have recorded part of the targeting. There have been more than 60 attacks on pro-life
pregnancy centers since May 2022 when it was reported that Roe v. Wade would be overturned. Yet, there have been only six reported arrests. Many Catholic churches, a maternity home, political organizations, billboards and ads, a political figure, and a memorial have all also come under pro-abortion attacks since last May. [Excerpt from Joe Bukuras, 5/16/23: © 2023 EWTN News, Inc. Reprinted with permission from CNA, www.catholicnewsagency.com]

Abortion Pill Safety The FDA only requires fatal complications from mifepristone to be reported. In other words, “if the woman has to go to the emergency room if she has excessive
bleeding, if she is in the ER on life support for days and days and days, if she recovers from that, the FDA says, ‘Don’t tell us about it. Only tell us if she dies,’” U.S. Sen. James Lankford said. And because of the lack of reporting, OB-GYN Dr. Donna Harrison said doctors cannot provide good information about its risks to their patients. Research indicates that emergency room doctors take care of more than half of abortion pill complications. [Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com, 5/10/23]

Three Parent Baby?

An English Catholic bishop has denounced the first reported births of “three-parent” babies in the UK as
“deeply concerning.” Auxiliary Bishop John Sherrington of Westminster said the creation of babies by mitochon- drial donation treatment (MDT) was unethical because the process involved the destruction of two embryos to
create a single new life. The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, the British regulator, has
permitted the creation of 30 babies by pronuclear transfer although “less than five” have been born.

The procedure assumes that the nucleus and the mitochondria can be transferred without any consequence. Yet Paul Knoefler, a researcher and professor of cell biology and human anatomy at the University of
California, Davis, writes that “there is strong evidence that the mitochondrial genome, for example, ‘talks to’ the nuclear genome, and has ‘pervasive effects on cellular and organismal functioning.’” Professor David Albert Jones, director of Anscombe, said: “This is a new and unnecessary technique that does not add to the safety of IVF involving an egg donor, but adds further risks.” [Simon Caldwell, Our Sunday Visitor, 5/15/23]

This free monthly newsletter is used by dozens of churches as a bulletin insert, and since 2013 has had over 30,000 readers. To receive each month’s issue in your inbox, email Frank Tinari, Ph.D. at tinarifr@shu.edu

Court Allows Abortion Pill – For Now

The Supreme Court blocked the effect of a lower-court order that was poised to limit access to the pill, which is used in more than half of U.S. abortions. The Court’s action was not a decision on the merits of the case; instead, the justices were deciding whether the pill could remain available during a law suit by medical associations and individual doctors. FDA-approved access to mifepristone would remain until litigation concludes in the lower courts and the Supreme Court itself has an opportunity to review those decisions—a time line that likely will take many months. 

New Orleans-based Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the FDA to reimpose a pre-2016 regimen for administering the drug. That included limiting its use to the earliest weeks of pregnancy, requiring three doctor visits, & precluding mailing pills to patients. Arguments in the case are set for mid-May. 

“The FDA must answer for the damage it has caused to the health of countless women and girls and the rule of law by failing to study how dangerous the chemical abortion drug regimen is,” said Erik Baptist, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the plaintiffs. “We look forward to a final outcome in this case that will hold the FDA accountable.” [Wall Street Journal, 4/22/23] 

How Safe is Mifepristone?

The Journal of Advanced Pharmaceutical Technology and Research:: about 0.01% of patients who receive penicillin will experience a true anaphylactic allergic reaction. A Canadian study of mass antibiotic prophylaxis with penicillin showed that, of 2,707 people receiving the drug, only 5 experienced what could be classified as a serious adverse event, a rate of 0.18%. According to pro-abortion sources, the abortion pill sends 6% of women who take it to the emergency room or urgent care for complications. This is a rate that is 33 times higher than that of penicillin. And it is 107 times greater than the rate for complications from acetaminophen/Tylenol.” [www.LiveActionNews.com] 

The Charlotte Lozier Institute found that the rate of abortion-related emergency room visits by women taking the abortion drug increased more than 500% between 2002 and 2015, resulting in the death of millions of unborn babies.

A 2009 study “Immediate Complications After Medical Compared With Surgical Termination of Pregnancy,” in Obstetrics and Gynecology found a complication rate of approximately 20% for the abortion drugs compared to 5.6% for surgical abortions. Hemorrhages and incomplete abortions were among the most common complications. 

For Working and Stay-at-Home Mothers

Chef, dietician, nurse, cosmologist, lawyer, physician, judge, spiritual director, moral compass; teacher of discernment, manners, temperance and modesty; life coach, home organizer, chauffeur, referee, head janitor, and example of faithfulness and respect to her husband. For all the mothers who read “Goodnight, Moon” twice a night for a year and then read it again, just one more time. Her calling, along with fatherhood, is the greatest and highest vocation on earth. 

Said Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty: “The most important person on earth is a mother: She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral. She has built something more magnificent than any cathedral, a dwelling for an immortal soul, the tiny perfection of her baby’s body. Mothers are closer to God the Creator than any other creature; God joins forces with mothers in performing this act of creation. What on God’s good earth is more glorious than this, to be a mother?” 

For all the mothers who run carpools and make cookies and sew Halloween costumes. And all the mothers who don’t. This is for mothers whose children have gone astray, who can’t find the words to reach them.  This is for the mother who gave birth to babies they’ll never see. And the mothers who took those babies and gave them homes. This is for the mothers whose priceless art collections are hanging on their refrigerator doors. [Christian Action News, 5/22] 

Doctor-Assisted Suicide on Steroids

Over the last few years, Canada’s doctor-assisted
suicide program was originally restricted to those facing
“reasonably foreseeable” natural death. In 2021 it was
expanded to those whose illnesses need not be terminal.
Now the government wants to cover ‘mature minors,”
including those as young as 12, who are deemed “fit” to
make an end-of-life decision. These policies are widely
popular. We should not be surprised. As Leila Mechoui
explains in Compact magazine: “State-administered
euthanasia on-demand is the logical endpoint of a society
built on secular humanism and utilitarianism. These
frameworks preclude any appeal to an absolute authority
beyond the individual. The ultimate expression is as a
state-protected ‘right’ to a ‘dignified’ death.” The future
of the West: a culture of death under the sign of choice.
[First Things, March 2023]

Recommended: Nefarious

The movie trailer, billboards & print ads seem to promote this movie as a horror film, but it is, according to one viewer, “amazing, with Catholic/ Christian themes.” And it has top quality production value.

Adam and Eve After the Pill, Revisited

In a book of penetrating essays, Mary Eberstadt shines a light on the ideological extremism of our times. Since her 2012 book, we’ve seen the introduction of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, a further plunge in birth rates, a decline of the American life span, the rise of “revenge porn,” and the proliferation of dating apps. Beyond these is the sudden proliferation of gender clinics promising to “affirm” the gender identity of young people by feeding them off-label puberty blockers and scheduling surgeries that will make them infertile and in many cases incontinent. All this was accompanied by a ferocious surge in identity politics, a rising tide of intolerant secularism, levels of reported teen depression never before recorded, and a deadly opioid epidemic. 

 Writes Eberstadt: “Children today are considerably less likely to have siblings — and by extension, cousins, aunts, and uncles — than they were sixty years ago. Almost 30 percent of all households consist of just one person. Some 40 percent of all children lack a biological father in the home. A world of fewer and weaker family ties is one in which deprived people are furious about things they do not have or no longer know.” 

To put it starkly, in the name of human freedom, we have unwittingly created a society in which children on the whole experience less love and commitment in their lives than ever before. “The vast majority of incarce rated juveniles have grown up in fatherless homes,” she writes. “Teen and other mass murderers almost invariably have a filial rupture in their biographies. Absent fathers predict higher rates of truancy, psychiatric problems, criminality, promiscuity, drug use, rape, domestic violence, and other tragic outcomes.”

Clearly, the social contagion of nonbinary and trans identity among young girls on the verge of puberty is related not just to family breakdown but to the ubiquity of violent pornography, which makes female sexuality look like an occasion for male abuse and contempt.  Eberstadt’s arresting thesis is that the decline of family life — traceable in massive drops in general fertility — is a preview of defection from the Christian church, not the reverse. Religious families do not divorce as often, and they have more children. Those who are defecting from the family way of life, by not marrying and not experiencing the primordial shift of mind brought on by fatherhood and motherhood, have fewer reasons to turn to the church for encouragement and guidance. “Social science confirms that people who have robust social bonds are more likely to thrive than people who do not,” she writes. [book review by Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review, 3/2/23] 

Fewer In-Person Connections

Your editor received an email message from Prime Video saying that you can watch a movie alone but with your favorite people through a chat program. “It’s almost like watching side-by-side in real life, without having to share your popcorn.” What fun – all by myself!

A Tough Mother’s Day?

Your editor got a recent email message from, of all places, Ancestry.com. It started out by saying: “We realize that for some, Mother’s Day may be a tough time.  If you’d prefer not to receive emails about our 2023 Mother’s Day Sale, you can opt out below.” Maybe I should opt out of their entire site. 

No Wi-Fi in College Residence Halls?

How can a college produce graduates who build lasers, engineer software systems, launch their own metadata startups, and have successful technology careers? Thomas Aquinas College states that its Catholic liberal arts education does by helping students learn about reality, about nature and nature’s creator, about man and man’s relationship to the world, to other men, & ultimately to God. The college does not have Wi-Fi in its residence halls, prohibits electronic devices in the classroom, asks students to read ancient texts and contemplate the works of long-dead masters.

Summer Program for High Schoolers

Thomas Aquinas College offers a High School Great Books Program at both of its campuses. In New England, it is July 9-22; in California, it is July 16-29. The college says: “Ask the big questions and explore the answers, forging new friendships to last a lifetime.” [www.thomasaquinas.edu/summerprogram] 

School Choice

The President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) claims school choice starves “public schools of the funds they need to suc ceed.” Research has found, however, that school choice boosts per-student funding in public schools, and more than 20 high-quality studies have found neutral-to positive effects on students who remain in public schools subject to school choice. [www.JustFacts.com]

This free monthly newsletter is used by dozens of churches as a bulletin insert, and since 2013 has had over 30,000 readers. To receive each month’s issue in your inbox, email Frank Tinari, Ph.D. at tinarifr@shu.edu

Life Choices

Fallout from 50 Years of Roe

• We were told before Roe that with legal abortion, every child would be wanted and therefore child abuse would decline. But child abuse has skyrocketed since Roe. Saint Mother Teresa said: “If we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell others not to kill one another?”
• Abortion pills are marketed as safe. But the emotional and physical ramifications will be horrendous, as documented in other nations that have used these pills.
• Abortion has undermined the Hippocratic Oath that physicians “do no harm.” Our nation now has a scene of devastation with 64 million unborn babies dead.
• Millions of mothers have participated in the destruction of their own preborn babies. Some have been hardened in their hearts, other have felt terrible regret. [Christian Action News, 3/23]

Child Predators Make TikTok ‘Every Parent’s Nightmare’

This was the headline of a report in the Wall Street Journal (2/16/23) in which law-enforcement officials found that the platform has become a danger zone. Pre-teens and teens “spend more time there each day than on any other social-media platform. Billions of videos are uploaded to the site each month, many starring young people singing, dancing and talking about their personal lives.” Nothing prevents young users from falsifying their birth dates when registering, so they can get access to the full platform including private talk messages with others. Investigators have found many adult males follow children’s postings.

Abortion Pill Can Be Reversed

Nationwide chemical abortions account for more than 50% of all abortions. The method involves two steps: the first abortifacient drug (mifepristone or RU- 486) is given at the clinic or taken at home, killing or weakening the baby. The second, misoprostol, is taken usually at home 24-48 hours later, to expel the baby. But the first drug doesn’t always end the baby’s life.

The hearts of some women may change during the 24-48 hour period. They may profoundly regret taking
the first abortion pill. An Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) protocol is supported by the Amer. Assoc. of Pro-Life
Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Reversal can occur with multiple doses of natural hormone progesterone. To date over 4,000 babies have been born following use of the APR protocol. There are over 350 doctors & 40 pregnancy medical centers that offer APR. Any woman questioning her decision to terminate her baby’s life after taking the first pill should consult a physician immediately at the APR Hotline: 877-558-0333. [Nat. Right to Life, The State of Abortion in the U.S., 1/2023]

To Help Women Make An Actual Choice

When a woman finds the Sisters of Life, they don’t tell her not to have an abortion. They love her back into life and make an actual choice possible. The Sisters say that many young adult women have never had a birthday party thrown for them. Birthdays are a priority for the Sisters. If you don’t know your life is special, how are
you ever going to make room for another life?

Visiting one of their convents on any given day often will involve bumping into women who were long ago pregnant and now are picking up supplies or human support. The Sisters help with housing and job skills &
immigration applications. They are mothers to mothers, free to be self- sacrificial love to women who maybe never before saw what that looks like.

Now the Associated Press instructs writers to make clear that ministries and other places that provide pro-life pregnancy support must be labeled “anti-abortion counseling centers” to describe what many of us typically call pregnancy-resource centers or crisis-pregnancy centers. Yes, they exist to provide alternatives to abortion — parenting or choosing adoption. These places help facilitate actual choice. And women are free to leave and have an abortion.

Avail (NYC), Aid for Women (Chicago), Bella (Denver), Birth Choice (Dallas), Mary’s Shelter (Virginia), Mother Teresa Home (Buffalo), Good Counsel Homes (NJ & NY) are just a few examples of centers and networks that help and house and love women and their children for life. I have no objection to you knowing that the people who run these beacons of light in a culture of death are opposed to abortion. But AP’s description is as inaccurate as it is limiting. These resources save lives and not just of unborn children. [Kathryn Jean Lopez, Our Sunday Visitor, 2/19/2023]

In a Jan. 31 video, Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of
Winona-Rochester, Minn., reacted to a new state abortion law
that has been called “the most extreme bill in the country”: I
don’t know why abortion is really debated anymore in our
country, but this strikes me as just the worst kind of
barbarism. And in the name of, I don’t know, subjectivity,
and freedom, and choice and all this, we’re accepting this
kind of brutality.”

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Pop Singer Confesses Abortion Regret

Kaya Jones, a former singer for the Pussycat Dolls, said her past abortions still haunt her to this day. As someone with a public platform, she spoke out on Fox News, explaining “how she had her first abortion as a teen when her birth control medication failed.”

We’ve been saying for years that birth-control methods sometimes fail. When they do, women are set up for abortion. Contraception and abortion are fruits of the same tree. “The former singer also argued that abortion led to a breakdown in respect between men and women in the culture. What you’re showing men is that you
don’t value yourself or your seed or their seed, and in return they don’t value us as women because we’re willing to do these things to ourselves and to our children. Even if I become a mother tomorrow and happily married and all is well, I’m still going to regret the three children that I did not have.”

Millions of people have been harmed by the perverse dogmas of the sexual revolution – children of divorce; refugees from the hook-up culture and the LGBT subculture; people who regret their years of cohabitation; and women who regret their abortions. The Ruth Institute is one organization that helps victims of the sexual revolution recover from their experiences and become advocates for positive change. [Jennifer Roback Morse © 2023 EWTN News, Inc. Excerpt with permission from the National Catholic Register – www.ncregister.com]

During Lent, Devote an Hour a Week

During Lent, Devote an Hour a Week 40 Days for Life is an internationally coordinated 40-day campaign that aims to end abortion locally through prayer and fasting, community outreach, and a peaceful all-day vigil in front of abortion businesses.

The visible, public centerpiece of 40 Days for Life is a focused, 40-day, non-stop, round-the-clock prayer
vigil outside a single Planned Parenthood center or other abortion facility in your community. It is a peaceful and educational presence. Those who are called to stand witness during this 24-hour-a-day presence send a powerful message to the community about the tragic reality of abortion. It also serves as a call to repentance for those who work at the abortion center and those who patronize the facility. To find a local campaign near you, look up locations at https://www.40daysforlife.com/

Nazi Holocaust and Life

In Richard Hurowitz’s book In the Garden of the Righteous, we learn of many heroic acts of people who were not Jewish but willing to risk all to help save Jews from the Holocaust. The ten rescuers featured in the book were honored at Israel’s Holocaust memorial with the title Righteous Among the Nations. Religious belief and concern for humanity motivated them to act rather than stand by, as many others did, in silent complicity. The rescuers all shared the belief that every human being deserves respect. Similar arguments are made today by pro-lifers to end abortion and assisted suicide. Every human life from conception to natural death deserves respect and dignity as children of God.

Apply for Pro-Life Internship

“Before This Summer, I Never Even Considered Doing Pro-Life Work, Much Less Making It A Career. Now, Defending The Preborn Is What I Feel Called To Do With My Life.” Heidi Whaley 2020 Intern

Dear Student:

Tired of putting your heart and hard work into pro-life efforts that go largely ignored? Want to do something that ends abortion instead of just fighting it? Not sure how to be effective? CBR may be just the place for you! Our Summer 2023 Intern Program is from May 21 to August 11 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Final application deadline is March 29, 2023. (Must be 18 or older by May 21, 2023) to apply. Successful applicants will be notified of acceptance into the program by April 3rd. Visit: https://AbortionNo.org/intern

Hiding Students’ Decisions from Parents

USAID, which serves as the “world’s premier international development agency,” recently released a guide that promotes ways of integrating people who identify as LGBTQ into the American education system. The ninth principle has provoked a negative reaction from parents as it states education systems should “protect students’ privacy.”

This means that USAID is working to ensure that students have the ability and right to, as the agency says, “hide their sexual orientation or gender identity from family and close friends.” Students would not only be
encouraged to keep their “sexual orientation” to themselves, but intentionally hide it from the people they
are most connected to. “American parents are fighting every day against this outrageous principle that teachers know a child better than their parents,” said co-founders of Moms for Liberty Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich. [USAID Encourages Students to ‘Hide Their Sexual Identity’ from Parents, Abigail Olsson, The Washington Stand, 2/4/23]

This free monthly newsletter is used by dozens of churches as a bulletin insert, and since 2013 has had over 30,000 readers. To receive each month’s issue in your inbox, email Frank Tinari, Ph.D. at tinarifr@shu.edu

Issues We Face

Highlights from Fall 2022 issue of Human Life Review (www.humanlifereview.com):

• Vicki Thorn was the founder of Project Rachel in 1984 in her Milwaukee archdiocese to console and heal women mourning their aborted children, a process that could take years for some. Today, Project Rachel is a nationwide ministry of the Catholic Church. Vicki, who died in 2022, is a hero to countless women (and men) who have repaired abortion-damaged lives
• Christopher Reeve (film’s Superman) and Michael J. Fox both promoted embryonic stem cell research, which has had little to show for its promises. A Nobel Prize-winning
  discovery revealed that adult stem cells could be used in place of stem cells from human embryos that are killed. “Healing born bodies need not be done at the expense of unborn human lives.”
• Regarding gender reassignment surgery: “If our pet dog leaped from our second-story window under the delusion it was a bird, we would not benignly endorse its choice of identity … Why don’t we react to our fellow deluded humans with similar seriousness?”
• Murchison, in “Farewell Roe,” says: “We seem as a nation, as a people, to desire a little of this and a little of that: not wholesale permission to abort and not a wholesale prohibition either.” States can now each make their own policies. “But in a moral debate, you need moral premises.” A vote or referendum won’t get the job done. “A multitude of women, over the past half-century, have grown accustomed, thank you, to the opportunities of deciding this or that ….” But at the same time, “moral codes binding on persons of both sexes have eroded.” Hence, it is okay, even a “right,” to abort a developing human being. “The pro-life cause in the 21st century consists in continuing, against hardship and rebuke to proclaim the moral worthiness of life yet unborn. We are not there, when it comes to abortion, nor anyplace close. Not yet.”

That is what the pro-life movement is about. We are not simply anti-abortion as we are so often painted to be. We are pro-life, pro the mystery of life, pro the wonder of life, pro the joy of life. And we are impelled to share this message with everyone. We need to bring the Gospel of Life
to the heart of every man and women and to make it penetrate every part of society.
John Cardinal O’Connor (1920-2000)

Caregiving is Pro-Life

The encyclical Gospel of Life recognizes the full range
of threats against human life… war, poverty, life….
“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was
thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you
welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and
you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.”
Matthew 25:34-36

How do you feed the hungry? You shop for your mother and stock her cupboard with nutritious food, take her out to lunch, or cook for her. You visit her in the nursing home, sit with her and her friends in the dining room, assisting those who need help by cutting their meat or spoon-feeding the weak.

How do you help the thirsty? You take your father out for a cup of coffee at his favorite coffee shop or split a beer with him while you watch Sunday football together. You give him ice chips to relieve the awful dryness, and swab his mouth when he cannot swallow.

You welcome a stranger by visiting with your beloved aunt who has forgotten who she is and who you are, reintroducing yourself every time. You clothe the naked when you do your uncle’s laundry. You care for the sick every time you accompany your mom to visit the doctor, bathe her feverish head, hold her in your arms to comfort her, change her diaper, and in a hundred other
gentle ways. You visit the imprisoned when he is a shut-in, unable to go where he wants to go. You keep him company and play Rummy or Checkers to pass the long hours.

You may not be able to add days to the life of a loved one, but you can add life to their days. [The Healthcare Advocacy and Leadership Organization (halovoice.org)]

Take a Pill, Kill a Baby

After consulting with a doctor who is not pro-life, a woman can be prescribed chemical abortion, that is, abortion by two pills, which now accounts for more than 50% of all abortions in the USA. New York is now an official “sanctuary state” for abortion, offering abortion pills free to anyone. New Jersey Governor Murphy is also pushing this, as are several other states. Walgreens, CVS & Rite Aide will provide them over the counter.

Such pills put a woman at serious risk as they force her body to go into labor and expel the baby. The abortion is done in her home, in her bathroom, and sadly she will witness all that happens there. These pills can only be taken within the first 10 weeks after conception but no ultrasound is required before they are given. Because women no longer have to take the first dose of the abortion pills in the presence of a physician, it is impossible to know no whether they actually take the drugs or not – or whether abortions are forced on them without their consent.

Imagine the fallout for women as they deliver their dead baby alone without any follow up. What about women who are past the 10-week period? Who will be there if they see the remains and how will they process that? What if there are complications? The Life Legal Defense Foundation is currently involved in two malpractice lawsuits involving young women who were seriously injured by abortion drugs. When taken in the second trimester, abortion pills can cause uterine rupture, excessive bleeding, and other life-threatening injuries.

Two studies have found that chemical abortions have four times the complication rate as surgical abortions. One study used comprehensive data from the California Medicaid program from 2009 to 2010. Another analyzed 42,000 Finnish women who obtained abortions between
2000 and 2006. Loosening the regulations on chemical abortions will only increase those risks. [Michael New, LifeNews.com, 1/13/23]

The 2023 label removes the requirements for pill dispensers to advise patients that, should they require emergency care after taking the drug, they ought to let the emergency department healthcare providers know that they are undergoing a medication abortion.

With the government’s elimination of common-sense restrictions on dispensing abortion drugs, data on abortion rates and complications are unreliable at best. According to the pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute, only 28 states require abortionists to report post-abortion
complications. This is exactly what Planned Parenthood and other abortionists want: zero factual reporting, zero accountability. It is clear what the federal administration leadership really wants. Thankfully, a lawsuit has been filed against the FDA. One of the plaintiffs is the American Assoc. of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Motherhood must be treated as a great end and a great task
in itself. For with it is connected the mother’s work in giving
birth, in feeding, and in rearing. No one can take her place.
Nothing can take the place of the heart of a mother always
present. True respect for work brings with it a proper esteem
for motherhood. It cannot be otherwise. The moral health of
the whole of society depends on it.
Pope St. John Paul II

Actor Who Plays Jesus in The Chosen

“Today, we are under an assault on our sense of virtue, enduring an affront to the innate holiness that we are all called to, an attack on the family structure, and the sacredness of the gift of life.
As followers of Jesus, we are charged to be the standard bearers who defend & preserve
the dignity of every human, but especially the most vulnerable which begins with the initial
stages of life, and continues over life’s stages. You are here today for the noblest and worthiest of causes: to allow the unborn to enter into the world.” [March for Life 2023: speech of Jonathan
Roumie, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYY2-wf-cl0]

Monetary Value of Marriage

Today, young Americans are delaying marriage while they wait for career success. Nearly 60% of them live together without the commitment of marriage. Yet cohabitating couples have only 25% of the net worth that married couples have in the same age group. (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2019, for the ages 25-34.) It seems that the emotional commitment in the marriage vow is a driver of success. Marriage actually means “for richer for richer”; it is the unmarried couples who get the “for poorer” part. Plus, many other riches, in addition to money, come with marriage.

Those in successful marriages know that their bond with another person is far more important than any career goal. All of society suffers from instability when marriage rates drop. Maybe the hard reality of cold cash can reverse this troubling culture that undervalues the
beauty of marriage. [Anne Schlafly Cori, EagleForum.org, 11/13/22]

For High School Students

• Students who will be entering their senior year of high school in the fall of 2023 are invited to apply for the 2023 summer program sessions. This will mark the 25th year of this wildly popular program, “The Best Week Ever,” which boasts close to 4,000 alumni since 1999. Each year, hundreds of high school students spend a week on campus, described as one of the best weeks of their lives, ranking it on average 4.8 out of 5. Applicants can choose any one of five weeks offered. This is the most popular, well-attended, highly-ranked pre-college summer program of its kind. Attendance is competitive, and with a waiting list each year, students should not delay applying at www.christendom.edu
• Teens and college students displayed creative signs at January’s March for Life. “Human rights begin in the womb” was one; another quoted Dr. Seuss’s “Horton Hears a Who;” “Unborn Lives Matter” another. See all: https://www.lifenews.com/2023/01/20/28-of-the-best-m
  arch-for-life-signs/

Pornography Addiction

Plenty of bad stuff comes from our computer, smart phone or tablet. Any addiction to gambling, videogames or porn drives our brains to want more and with more intensity, causing us to ignore more important aspects of our lives such as work, family, school. Parents of students should be alert and make use of programs such as
Covenant Eyes (forwards screen shots to a designated accountability partner) or Accountable2You.

This free monthly newsletter is used by dozens of churches as a bulletin insert, and since 2013 has had over 30,000 readers. To receive each month’s issue in your inbox, email Frank Tinari, Ph.D. at tinarifr@shu.edu