The 2012 March For Life in Washington DC was the largest by far. Crowd estimates exceed 400,000 participants, topping last year’s march by at least 50,000. This was a powerful election year message to members of congress who are well aware of the overwhelming success of pro-life candidates in the 2010 mid-terms.

There were numerous well attended pro-life events over the three day event. Especially noteworthy was the appearance of Father Frank Pavone, Director of Priests For Life, who typically heightened enthusiasm and brightened spirits wherever he showed up.

This was Father Frank’s first public appearance following his recall to the Diocese Of Amarillo, TX by Bishop Patrick Zurek last September. The “recall” involved alleged, and so far completely unsubstantiated, charges of financial malfeasance at Priests For Life.

During his eighteen years of tireless effort at Priests For Life, Father Frank has gradually become the defacto head, the Father figure if you will, of the pro-life movement and he has been greatly missed. The following video clips from the March For Life show why Father Frank inspires such love and ardor among committed pro-lifers of all religions and even pro-life atheists.

The first clip is a general overview of the January 23 March For Life. At the 0:30 mark, Father Frank addresses the aspect of abortion that feminists and the abortion industry turn a callous blind eye to – the hundreds of thousands of women who have suffered horrible emotional scaring arising from guilt and depression as the result of undergoing an abortion.

Father Frank pointedly refers to healing for these victims as “one of the most powerful aspects of this March For Life… what abortion is doing to the women who undergo the procedure”.

The Silent No More Awareness Campaign and Rachel’s Vineyard are abortion healing groups co-founded by Father Frank and are affiliated with Priests For Life

On Tuesday the 24th we relayed a Catholic World News report that though Father Frank had been given permission to attend this year’s March For Life, there will be no change in his restricted status and he will have to return to Amarillo.

Bishop Patrick Zurek told CWN that he is waiting for a disposition of Father Frank’s appeal to the Vatican – “There’s nothing new until Rome says something”. In the first interview below Father Frank conspicuously makes no mention of the standoff with Bishop Zurek.

Father Frank sounded notably more encouraging in the next interview with Life Site News – “My situation is improving… I expect the situation to be resolved relatively soon.”

But it is when Father Frank refers to his thousands of supporters who have expressed concern over Father Frank’s pain and frustration during his sequester in Amarillo, that Father Frank shows why he has become the heart and soul of the pro-life movement. “It is nothing compared to the pain I have each and every day from the destruction of these children by abortion.”

Over the last eighteen years thousands of babies have been rescued from the vacuum devices, surgical instruments and poisons of America’s abortion clinics, and thousands of women victimized by abortion have received healing, through Father Frank Pavone’s lifetime commitment to life.

As for Bishop Zurek’s seeming indifference to the potential damage to these efforts being done by his unexplained insistence to continue to confine Father Frank to Amarillo, TX…

Let’s just say it’s hard to understand the man’s “thinking”.

Maybe the pro-abortion bloggers on NARAL’s Blog For Choice Day list had such heavy wagers on yesterday’s NFL championship games that they were too engrossed to hit their keyboards. Or maybe a nasty flu bug ferreted out those on the list.

Or, most likely, NARAL’s whole tasteless call for a “celebration” in honor of the Roe v Wade decision, is continuing to fall flatter on it’s face year after year.

In any case, from what we saw, this year’s NARAL blog fest for abortion was a feeble effort at best. Pro-abortion bloggers were supposed to post on the question “what will you do to help elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?”. But many on NARAL’s blog list either didn’t exist, failed to post, or just babbled on about their reproductive systems and sexual organs.

The blog for choice flop simply underscores that fact that support for abortion is rapidly declining in America because abortion is impossible to defend.

We attempted to post variations of Jill Stanek’s brilliant counter question “What Do You Mean By Choice” to 14 pro-abortion blogs linked to from the NARAL website. Three brought up server error messages, one was an empty blog with no posts, three made no mention whatsoever of NARAL or Blog For Choice Day, and another, which simply posted “what’s to debate anyway” would not allow comments.

Of the six blogs were we able to comment on, only one actually addressed NARAL’s theme of electing pro-choice candidates. The others just trotted out well-worn feminist clichés and euphemisms about women’s health, reproductive choices and private ownership of the components of their female anatomy.

Only two had the courage of conviction to approve our comments, which was probably typical of those pro-abortion bloggers on NARAL’s list who actually existed or bothered to post.

Replies to our comments were typically nasty, relying on insults and more clichés, but never addressing the underlying reality of choice – a helpless pre-born baby girl or boy being dismembered, decapitated or poisoned, and the body (or pieces) thrown into a garbage pail.

NARAL’s bloggers may believe in abortion, but based upon Blog For Choice Day, they do not want to talk about the ugly truth of abortion, let alone try to promote or defend it.

Randall Terry, former head of the pro-life activist group Operation Rescue, is running for president as a democrat! And in doing so, candidate Terry is entitled to run a graphic anti-abortion political ad during the Super Bowl.

If anyone remembers, the Tebow family ran a pro-life ad during the 2010 Super Bowl which drew storms of protests from liberals. CBS reluctantly approved the ad which was really quite mild.

Well Randall did some research and learned that networks must accept, and run uncensored, any ads submitted by candidates for federal office during the 45 days preceding a primary election. Over the last year, Randall apparently has met whatever the necessary requirements are to run for president and raised enough money to air the following ad in 35 small markets during this year’s Super Bowl on NBC. And though these are considered small media markets, the ad will reach 35 million viewers.

The ad depicts graphic pictures of the remains of aborted babies, never to be born children who were the victims of the “choice” so many Christians support as a “right”. While the ad’s content seems overly harsh for the Super Bowl venue, and the rhetoric is not our style, there is no denying the simple truth that Christians who vote for the politicians who enable abortion in our country do aid and abet the merciless barbarities that take place every day in America’s abortion clinics.

To donate money to help Randall air the spots in more and larger markets visit Terry For President.

At least two other pro-life activists have taken up on this idea. Former registered nurse Angela Michael is running unopposed as a democrat in Illinois’ 15th Congressional district. Angela’s ad is similar to Terry’s and can be seen on her campaign website Angela Michael For Congress.

David Lewis is running as a republican against Speaker Of The House John Boehner in Ohio’s 8th district. David’s ad attacks the Speaker for his  failure to end federal funding to Planned Parenthood and can be seen at David Lewis For Congress. Frankly we disagree with David Lewis’ contention, as we detailed last April in Credit Boehner A Partial Victory vs Planned Parenthood.

Though we may disagree somewhat with the approach of these three ads, Randall Terry, Angela Michael and David Lewis have worked long and hard to be able to air the pro-life message on the truth of abortion during America’s most highly viewed television extravaganza of the year.

At least some hearts will be opened, some minds will be changed. And undoubtedly at least one person (and hopefully many more) will be watching the Super Bowl in 2032 who would have otherwise lost his or her life in an abortion mill if not for Randall, Angela and David.

And that is what the pro-life movement is all about.

]]> http://radiantcross.org/Right-To-Life/2012/01/19/randall-terry-to-run-anti-abortion-ad-during-super-bowl/feed/ 0 http://radiantcross.org/Right-To-Life/2012/01/17/alveda-king-on-the-greatest-civil-rights-issue-of-our-time/ http://radiantcross.org/Right-To-Life/2012/01/17/alveda-king-on-the-greatest-civil-rights-issue-of-our-time/#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:40:21 +0000 The Radiant Cross Staff http://radiantcross.org/Right-To-Life/?p=3602 "Abortion has done what the Klan only dreamed of" Feminists and the abortion industry have built the case for abortion on a foundation of lies, euphemisms and distractions. Abortion is just a women's rights issue, a women's health issue, a political issue, an obsession of Catholic and Evangelical crazies. At one time Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, was one of the millions of Christians who had been misled on abortion. Alveda aborted two of her children. "When I had my abortions, we were told that it was a blob of tissue and not a person.” Her pro-life conversion began when she met Father Frank Pavone of Priests For Life. Alveda King says she began to realize that “the fight for all human life, from conception until natural death, is the most pressing civil rights and human rights issue of our time". Baptist Minister Dr Alveda King is now the director of African-American Outreach for Priests for Life and during this interview on the day commemorating Martin Luther King's birthday, Alveda made it clear that were Dr King alive today he would certainly be pro-life.]]> “Abortion has done what the Klan only dreamed of”

Feminists and the abortion industry have built the case for abortion on a foundation of lies, euphemisms and distractions. Abortion is just a women’s rights issue, a women’s health issue, a political issue, an obsession of Catholic and Evangelical crazies.

At one time Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, was one of the millions of Christians who had been misled on abortion. Alveda aborted two of her children. “When I had my abortions, we were told that it was a blob of tissue and not a person.”

Her pro-life conversion began when she met Father Frank Pavone of Priests For Life. Alveda King says she began to realize that “the fight for all human life, from conception until natural death, is the most pressing civil rights and human rights issue of our time”.

Baptist Minister Dr Alveda King is now the director of African-American Outreach for Priests for Life and during this interview on the day commemorating Martin Luther King’s birthday, Alveda made it clear that were Dr King alive today he would certainly be pro-life.

Liberals have co-opted the legacy of Martin Luther King, asserting that as a civil rights leader he was necessarily the liberal fore-runner of Barack Obama, and as such a committed supporter of “abortion rights”.

Dr King’s commitment to justice indicates quite the opposite however. As Alveda King told Life Site News. “My uncle Martin would agree that we cannot end poverty, hunger, or suffering by killing those who might suffer,” she explained. “We cannot claim to guarantee equal rights if we deny the rights of the helpless. And we cannot feign ignorance of the fact that those who are torn apart, crushed, or left to die on an abortionist’s table are just as human as we are.”

And, as Alveda King pointed out, African American babies comprise the majority of  those helpless victims. “Abortion has done what the Klan only dreamed of”.

Abortion is indeed nothing less than the civil rights/social justice issue of our time. And as a minister, were Dr Martin Luther King alive today, he would undoubtedly be at the head of the January 23 March For Life in Washington DC proclaiming his dream for justice for his preborn brothers and sisters in Christ.

As Dr Alveda King so succinctly summed up in the FOX interview, “A woman has the right to choose what she does with her body. The baby is not her body”.

How hard is that to understand?

In 2006, pro-abortion lobby group NARAL Pro-Choice initiated a Blog for Choice Day on January 22 as part of their annual “celebration” of the anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision. The idea of this tasteless bit of pro-abortion effrontery is to make sure “the blogosphere is flooded with pro-choice blog posts and we keep choice in the spotlight”.

Last year pro-life power blogger Jill Stanek decided to throw a wrench into NARAL’s annual blog fest honoring the killing of 50 million+ helpless pre-born boys and girls with a brilliant counter effort – Ask Them What They Mean By “Choice” Blog Day.

The idea was for pro-lifers to respond to every pro-choice blog post, Facebook entry, or Tweet with a reply asking the poster to explain in detail what they mean by “choice”. Radiant Cross Right To Life participated and the results were beautiful, heaven sent one might say.

As Jill reported “99 pro-life bloggers and countless activists overwhelmed 90 pro-abortion bloggers to the point NARAL had to abandon its Twitter hashtag mid-morning because we took it over.”

We’ll be goin’ after ‘em again this year and we encourage all of our RadiantCross.org members and visitors to join in and hit pro-abortion bloggers and social media members with the question they fear the most.

Visit Jill’s blog for more details

The biggest problem for abortion advocates has always been the ugly “A” word itself. NARAL is a perfect example. Founded as The National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, the organization has continually been forced to reinvent itself, first into the softer sounding National Abortion & Reproductive Rights Action League, and now NARAL Pro-Choice America.

We went through the NARAL website and found almost no use of the word abortion. “Choice”, choice, choice. Just another choice. Red wine or white Madam? Pro-lifers and any common sense, common decency legal restriction on aborting a child’s life are referred to as “anti-choice”.

So on January 22 put the question to NARAL’s “choice” bloggers, Facebook members and Tweeters: “What do you mean when you say ‘choice’?”

Make a point of asking they explain it in detail and you might consider posting a link to our Bringing Christians Home On Abortion video page – http://radiantcross.org/radiant-cross-home-on-abortion-videos.htm – on which we have posted Father Frank Pavone’s graphic demonstrations of the three most common abortion procedures which expose the brutal, heartless realities of “choice”.

Here is a link to a page listing the pro-abortion bloggers participating in NARAL’s Blog For Choice Day. And here is Father Frank demonstrating Dismemberment Abortion, the “choice” NARAL’s bloggers will be honoring January 22.

What God must think of a country in which this is a “choice”

Based upon the successes of 2011, the year 2012 offers great hope for the pro-life movement.

Though ultimately Roe v Wade will have to be overcome through political and legislative victories, prayer is the means by which we will be able build the momentum to achieve those victories.

The killing of our preborn children has been insidiously cloaked as a freedom by Satan, the “father of liars”, and thereby become embedded in our culture. Evil of such depth, Jesus tells us, “does not come out except by prayer and fasting”.

The effects of this evil reach far beyond the act of killing a helpless infant.

Guilt and despair have driven thousands of women, and men, to addictions and even suicide. As the killing of babies flourished into a billion dollar business, greed began corrupting the medical profession and our government officials. The politics of abortion, and the lies perpetrated by feminists and the abortion industry, have misled millions of Christians away from the tenets of the Bible.

Our Radiant Cross Prayer To Overcome Abortion implores Almighty God’s help in combating all of these aspects of the evil that is abortion.

The reference to the Virgin Mary merely asks God to utilize her, as the Mother of Jesus, to guide the misled to the truth on abortion. Hopefully all Christians can agree that Mary’s soul is in heaven, and that God can continue to use Mary to accomplish His will. If this runs contrary to some Protestant beliefs, it can certainly be omitted.

Prayer is our most under utilized resource. Prayer offers us access to the power of Almighty God. The power of prayer, therefore, is infinite.

Abortions continue at the rate of  3,500 – 4,000 per day. While we cannot all participate in pro-life rallies and vigils before abortion clinics, every member of the pro-life movement has access to our ultimate weapon against abortion – prayer.

Whether it be our Radiant Cross prayer or one of your own composition, make a commitment to daily prayer to end this horrific evil. Ask God that through your prayers at least one despairing woman turn from abortion and give life to her child.

Your own personal prayer vigil for overcoming abortion – one baby at a time.

“Right to choose” is the euphemism used to cloak abortion as a women’s rights and political issue. But for anyone willing to look closely, that cloak is glaringly transparent.

While many good people have been misled on the truth of abortion, many pro-choice Christians are only too willing to use the cloak to shield themselves from the truth. Hearts closed by political ideology, they refuse to follow “choice” to it’s logical conclusion – the right to choose what?

There is nothing political or academic about the answer. A Registered Nurse, who early in her career witnessed an abortion, described her experience to us.

Maria was shortly out of Nursing School and working in a Florida hospital. Ordered to take a shift in Obstetrics, she looked forward to prepping mothers and aiding in deliveries. The doctor she was assigned to told her that instead she would be assisting in an abortion. Maria wondered if the abortion was some type of emergency.

No emergency. The doctor dismissed the procedure as a routine elective D & X. Maria wasn’t familiar with the term, but found the doctor’s nonchalance over performing an abortion unsettling.

D & X stands for Dilation And Extraction Abortion, a procedure generally used for third term abortions. Maria had pictured abortion as described by feminists and the abortion industry – the disposal of a tissue mass. When she saw a woman easily in her sixth month reclining on the table, feet in stirrups, her heart began to sink.

The woman had already been dilated (cervix and birth canal expanded). The doctor came to the table and Maria watched as the doctor reached in and grabbed a small but fully formed baby and rotated it until the child was face down in his left hand.

The baby made an audible noise and grasped the doctor’s finger in its tiny hand. Maria was horrified and froze when the doctor asked for a scalpel. Another nurse provided the scalpel which the doctor used to pierce the soft tissue at the base of the baby’s skull. Maria could not remember if the baby cried out. The incision was expanded and a vacuum tube was inserted to extract the baby’s brain in order to collapse the skull and begin extracting the body.

The doctor had to remove the baby’s clenched hand from his finger before he severed the arm to further facilitate extraction.

Maria left the room and quit her job on the spot.

Based upon this experience, Maria made a commitment to God to spend her career as a nurse prolonging life. She specialized in Oncology, dedicating herself to caring for cancer patients in another hospital in a different city.

Maria is not the nurse’s real name, she understandably fears professional repercussions and personal harassment. But she asks Christians who maintain a pro-choice or neutral position on abortion to reflect upon the implications of dismissing abortion as just another “choice”.

Maria likened her experience as to being in a “butcher shop”. “People need to face the truth about so-called ‘choice’. They need to go to one of these clinics and see exactly what it is they are so proud of supporting.”

Here is Father Frank Pavone demonstrating the type of procedure Maria witnessed. This is the “choice” Christians enable when they support the pro-abortion politicians who enable abortion in America.

Pro-choice brothers and sisters, in reading Maria’s testimony and watching Father Frank demonstrate the procedure she witnessed, you cannot in your hearts believe that Almighty God is indifferent to what happens daily in America’s abortion clinics.

He is waiting on His people to act in His name to end the merciless inhumanity that “choice” perpetrates on our helpless pre-born brothers and sisters in Christ. Come home to Him on life.

Life is often referred to as the “miracle” of life.

The term miracle is generally used to refer to a Divine occurrence – something than could only be accomplished by the hand of God. And as technological advances continue to reveal the incredible complexities involved in the development of a human being from conception to birth, it is becoming difficult to use any other word than “miracle” – by the hand of God – to describe the process.

Alexander Tsiaras, Chief of Scientific Visualization in the department of Medicine at Yale University, has come to that conclusion after using micro-magnetic resonance imaging to document the development of a baby from fertilized egg to birth.

In this video of the process, Mr Tsiaras indeed looks and sounds like an overwhelmed first time parent when he exclaims that “It’s a mystery, it’s magic, it’s divinity”.

Alexander Tsiaras has been utilizing new visualization technologies to detail the human body. This video was created using 3D photography, detailed down to cell level, coupled with MRI, CT and electron microscope scans.

In discussing the project Tsiaras says that “when you actually start working on this data, its pretty spectacular”. That almost seems a bit of an understatement. The video documents the sperm cell penetrating the egg. From there we witness cellular division progress from the rate of every 12 – 15 hours to one million cells per second.

This creation of a human being from two simple cells Mr Tsiaras refers to as “unbelievable machinery”, the “magic of you and me”.

“The magic of the mechanisms inside each genetic structure saying exactly where that nerve cell should go — the complexities of these — the mathematical models on how these things are indeed done are beyond human comprehension, even though I am a mathematician.”

In the end, Alexander Tsiaras could only conclude that fetal development is “so perfectly organized a structure that it was hard not to attribute divinity to it.”

Who, then, are we to destroy it?

Today is Terri Schindler’s (we refuse to call her Schiavo) 48th birthday and this is our second annual birthday tribute to Terri’s memory.

To what point? Death by dehydration and starvation of the cognitively disabled continues as routine medical practice. This despite the fact that over the last year new methods of testing are confirming that many patients diagnosed as being in a Persistent Vegetative State (PVS), as Terri was, experience a much higher degree of consciousness and perception than previously thought.

Despite the insistence of Terri’s husband, Terri was anything but a “vegetable”. She exhibited emotions, especially displays of happiness with her parents. She was responsive, as we see this in this video in which Terri responds to a request to open her eyes, which she does with obvious emphasis.

Watching Terri, she is obviously conscious of someone speaking to her. She clearly begins processing the request and, with effort, wills herself to respond in a manner that seems intended to convey a message – “look, I’m here”.

Terri was clearly perceptive of her surroundings and exhibited an ability to communicate. And there is no doubt she could feel physical and emotional pain.

Yet because she was unable to speak or feed herself, a Florida Circuit Judge agreed with her husband, who was living with another woman and had a financial interest in her death, that Terri had no “quality of life”. And in the culture of death that has enveloped America, that translates into “no right to life”.

On March 24, 2005 the judge ordered that Terri’s feeding tube be removed and that she be left to die of dehydration and starvation. This was not the painless, dignified death Michael Schiavo’s attorney portrayed to the media. Father Frank Pavone was present throughout the seven days it took Terri to die and has testified that Terri died in agony as would anyone by dehydration and starvation. Armed guards stood watch to prevent her family from even moistening her cracked lips. Based upon the above video, it is easy imagine Terri looking helplessly at those around her and asking herself “why”.

This is the road that Roe v Wade has taken us down. Only in a nation dehumanized through 38 years of abortion – 52 million baby boys and girls dismembered, decapitated or poisoned and their bodies thrown into dumpsters as medical refuse – would the innocent woman seen in this video be denied water and food.

Some of the advances of the last 6 years are summarized in these articles – Rediscovering Consciousness in People Diagnosed as “Vegetative”, Cracks Start To Show In ‘Vegetative State’ Diagnosis,  and Technique Spots Patients Misdiagnosed As Being In ‘Vegetative State’. On this basis new therapies are being developed which show promise for at least partial recovery of patients whose disabilities are more severe that Terri’s.

The time is long past due for the pro-life movement to begin aggressively lobbying congress to halt these barbaric extra-judicial medical executions of the cognitively disabled who have become the forgotten victims of America’s culture of death. Please let your representatives in Washington hear from you.

The Terri Schindler Schiavo Life and Hope Network is dedicated to defending the right to life of the severally and cognitively disabled. Please consider contributing to this humane and loving cause in Terri’s memory.

Though Father Frank Pavone remains in the Diocese Of Amarillo, TX at the request of his Bishop, Father Frank continues to preach the Gospel Of Life on the Virtual Road of social media.

At the beginning of this Advent season of preparation and renewal, Father Frank encourages his fellow priests, deacons and seminarians to proclaim the culture of life as we proclaim the coming of Christ.

This is an important message for all Christians to reflect upon. As a country which has acquiesced to the government sanctioned killing of 3,500 – 4000 helpless preborn children a day in our abortion clinics, America as a nation can no longer claim to welcome the coming of the Christ child.

As Jesus made plain in the Gospels, whatever we do to the least of our brethren we do unto Him.

Entering Advent Season we ask pro-choice Christians to reflect upon Jesus’ admonition and that what America permits to be done during an abortion – the dismemberment, decapitation or poisoning of a helpless baby boy or girl – is therefore also done onto Jesus.

Not much of a welcome

God of Life, we rejoice in the promise of Your coming
You have sent your Son, born in Bethlehem
He is the Prince of Peace
And the One in Whose name all oppression shall cease

May we welcome His coming each day
And prepare for His coming at the end of time
May we build a culture that welcomes Him
By welcoming every child, born and unborn

We pray through the same Christ our Lord
Amen

Father Frank Pavone