SUNLIT UPLANDS: American Life League

The coalition working to reform the U.S Catholic bishops' anti-poverty organization, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, has sent each American bishop and diocesan pro-life director in the U.S., detailed reports on the continuing corrupt and radically leftist purposes of many CCHD grantees.

Compiled by Michael Hichborn of American Life League (ALL) and Robert Gasper of Bellarmine Veritas Ministry (BVM), the reports show that almost 50 grantees still receiving funds from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development remain involved in activities directly opposed to Catholic moral and social teachings.

"We wanted to make sure every bishop can review the facts for himself, because we still hear people saying that all of the problems with the CCHD have been fixed. But we can prove that such claims are not true," said Hichborn, ALL's senior researcher. "We believe that our bishops are doing the best they can with the information they have. We just want to make sure that they have the most up-to-date information as they go into their June meeting."

RCN noted that, during the U.S. bishops' upcoming meeting (June 11-13), the CCHD will be discussed in light of a report recently compiled by Bishop David Zubik of the Pittsburgh diocese.

"Good things have started to happen with the CCHD, and there appears to be momentum toward real reform," said Gasper, president of BVM. "It has become clear that the problems can't be solved merely by defunding individual groups that have been identified as opposing Church teaching. This is why we continue to respectfully call for a complete reform of the CCHD."

"We simply ask our bishops to prayerfully review the information presented, considering how such systemic problems occurred and what the most prudent way forward is for the CCHD," said Stephen Phelan, communications manager for RCN member Human Life International.

By Judie Brown

George Orwell once said, “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

It would appear, as recent events corroborate, that Orwell was on to something and that, in fact, the obvious becomes the obscene to those who want to carry on with the status quo regardless of the consequences. An examination of recent headlines makes the point far better than I.

“Abortion Rights Advocates, Foes Clash over Clinic” is a recent headline in Madison, Wisconsin. At the center of the “clash” is the planned opening of a late-term abortion clinic under the auspices of the Madison Surgery Center, a joint venture between University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation (managing partner), University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, and Meriter Hospital. As Pro-Life Wisconsin, the statewide organization leading the protests against this gruesome turn of events, is quick to point out on their dedicated web site, NoUWabortions.com, the rally which took place two days ago could be their last chance at stopping this facility from going into operation. But that’s not quite what the public is being told—though it must be pointed out that press coverage has been, for the most part, fair.

Having said that, it’s the language that creates the problem, not the reporting per se. For example, in sharing the ongoing struggle that surrounds the opening of this late term abortion mill, the Wisconsin State Journal reports,

Center officials have said most of the abortions — probably 100 to 125 a year — would be for women in their later second trimester of pregnancy, a relatively rare procedure covering patients 19 to 22 weeks along. Some doctors consider abortions after 20 weeks to be late-term abortions, although the definition varies and is controversial.

Supporters of these procedures say they are sometimes necessary to save the mother’s life. The service would replace the practice of Dr. Dennis Christensen, who performed abortions up to 22 weeks at a Madison Planned Parenthood clinic until retiring in late 2008. Planned Parenthood continues to offer abortions up to 19 weeks in Madison.

Note the verbal twists and turns that underlie descriptions that have, after nearly 40 years, become acceptable assertions even though the reality beneath the statements is quite different, at least from the preborn child’s perspective. How can it be controversial, for example, to stipulate that aborting a child at 20 weeks gestational age is at the very least late in that child’s term of growth prior to birth? After all, at 20 weeks of age, that preborn person has eyebrows and eyelashes, fingernails and toenails, is so active his mom can feel him moving and his heartbeat can be heard with a stethoscope.

That sounds an awful lot like a growing baby to me, not to mention the fact that, if left to his own resources, his arrival would confirm what most expectant moms instinctively understand: When one is pregnant, there is a baby growing within, not a problem—be it physical, social or otherwise.

Not only that, but as testimony after testimony has proven, there is never a situation in which a mother will lose her life if her preborn child is not murdered. As former U. S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop stated,

Protection of the life of the mother as an excuse for an abortion is a smoke screen. In my 36 years of pediatric surgery, I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother's life. If toward the end of the pregnancy complications arise that threaten the mother's health, the doctor will induce labor or perform a Caesarean section. His intention is to save the life of both the mother and the baby. The baby's life is never willfully destroyed because the mother's life is in danger.

Further, with allies like Planned Parenthood, there are even more reasons why those involved in abortion marketing have to couch every phrase in politically correct verbiage, as anything else such as the truth could curtail their income and permanently put them out of business. That, of course, would be perfectly acceptable to those of us who know, from the evidence, that every act of abortion kills a human being.

The ability to make money from a fundamental deception that has become accepted cultural fact should send most thinking people into a frenzy, working overtime to right the wrong. But when it comes to the sacred cow of abortion or “reproductive health” or whatever label suits the folks in control, then far be it from the genteel in our midst to make waves. While obviously ludicrous, the public perception is that the provision of abortion “services” is commonly accepted as an integral part of health care.

Such disjointed thinking reminds me of the situation in Toledo, Ohio, where a known abortion facility director lives a double life. Sue Postal is the chief executive at Toledo’s Center for Choice, an abortion facility that provides the killing “service” for expectant mothers through the 25th week of their child’s life. In addition, the center addresses fetal anomalies and other so-called high-risk situations, which one presumes means that they would kill or refer for killing even after the 25th week.

What is of interest is that Postal also involves herself in efforts to protect healthy puppies from being euthanized, as exemplified in a recent case involving a mother pit bull and her litter. Postal attended a hearing to protest a policy that would have resulted in the puppies’ untimely death.

Odd, is it not, that preborn human beings are of little consequence while puppies at risk bring out the best in this lady.

It brings to mind another of Orwell’s quotes, “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

Indeed, human persons are expendable; pit bull puppies are not. Go figure!

Further evidence of the eroding ability of Americans to think for themselves comes from the U.S. military where hospitals have been “ordered” to carry morning-after pills. Why? Because, according to pro-abort zealot Nancy Keenan of NARAL Pro-Choice America, "Women in the military serving overseas should be able to access [emergency contraception] the same way women stateside do. It's a tragedy that women in uniform have been denied such basic health care.”

“Health care” that is proven to kill people during their first week of life is simply another extension of the mentality that has, for four decades, blinded the minds and hearts of the population of a once ethical, just society. The fact is, self-satisfaction, not factual evidence, has become the measure by which all things pertaining to the human person are judged.

In the midst of all this wordplay, there are, in our midst, wise human beings who think well beyond their biological age and do so with great humility and commitment to the principles that ground a person in right thinking and a properly formed conscience. Such a person is 15-year-old Jace vanSteenberg, whose mom gave me permission to share his poem, “The Tip of Evil’s Finger.” These few moving lines sketch the outline of the rotting nation America has become:

I see America collapsing, the multifarious downfalls I observe,
I see the ruins of our government, their actions not just,
I see the dissolution of the family, their ties not secured,
I see the disintegration of the youth, their fragile minds not nurtured,
I see the decline of the elderly, their needs not met,
I see the demise of the unborn, their thirst for life not quenched,
Each downfall being a domino, tipping over tile after tile,
Concluding in a heap of fatality, coming to clattering end,
The entire heap initiated by the tip of evil’s finger.

Judie Brown is co-founder and president of the American Life League, a pro-life educational organization dedicated to the total protection of all innocent human beings from fertilization to natural death. ALL has over 300,000 families sponsoring their work.