Life Advocacy Briefing

September 5, 2016

Coming Back / In Their Faces / Please, Care to Love / Beautiful Redemption
They Never Meet a Crisis They Can’t Exploit
Indiana Suspends License of Notorious Abortion Doc / Noteworthy Quote
Wisdom of a Saint

Coming Back

CONGRESS RETURNS TO CAPITOL HILL this week, facing what should be a heavy agenda of spending bills and substantive measures, following an extended summer recess. Though the break from the heat and humidity of Washington, DC, usually begins with the month of August, this year the House and Senate started their breaks in mid-July, coinciding with the major parties’ national nominating conventions.

Pro-life “riders” are expected on various appropriations bills, including a renewed battle over defunding of Planned Parenthood. And the Senate has yet to take up substantive legislation passed by the House. We will attempt to alert our readers to coming votes if we can learn about them in time, and we will publish the roll calls after they happen. Once Congress breaks for the pre-election recess – probably in early October – we will publish our compilation of the voting records of the House and Senate from the two years of the 114th Congress.

 

In Their Faces

A BLATANT REMINDER OF THE NEED TO DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD will be lurking near Capitol Hill as our lawmakers return for business.

The abortion behemoth announced in late August it would open its new “flagship” abortuary in the nation’s capital imminently, as early as this week, drawing a prayer vigil outside the facility, reports Claire Chretien for LifeSiteNews.com. Last week’s prayer warriors included Monsignor Charles Pope, of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, and the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, a Protestant activist leader.

Construction of the megabortuary has been underway in the largely African-American northeast quadrant of Washington for more than a year. It occupies about half a city block and is located, reports Ms. Chretien, adjacent to a public charter school.

The soon-opening killing center was the site of a massive January prayer gathering, drawing peaceful protesters from around the country who had traveled to Washington for the annual March for Life, according to Ms. Chretien, who reported further that the Archdiocese of Washington had “hosted a pro-life Mass and rosary procession [in June] from a local parish to the construction site.” The site has also already seen two 40-Days-for-Life campaigns, notes LifeSiteNews.

 

Please, Care to Love

PREGNANCY CARE CENTERS IN THE BATON ROUGE AREA are among the victims of the horrific flooding from unprecedented rainfall in the Louisiana capital.

Not only are the Baton Rouge-area resource centers swamped with the challenge of helping expectant mothers who may be panicking over their pregnancies in the wake of destruction of their homes, some of these life-giving centers have experienced their own flood damage.

We are personally acquainted with Caring to Love Ministries, led by Dorothy Wallis, and personally witnessed the service Dorothy and her staff offered the storm refugees from the New Orleans area who had fled to the Baton Rouge area after Hurricane Katrina. And we recall the leadership Dorothy gave in determining which New Orleans-area pregnancy centers were still seeking to function and which had had to suspend operations, uniting them in a network of caring.

Now, after seeing a cry for help in a news story by Michael Haverluck on the news site OneNewsNow.com, we note a plea from Caring to Love, posted on the center’s Facebook page. We quote it here in hope that some among our readership might be equipped or at least inclined to help.

“Can you help us replenish medical supplies lost in the flood? If you have supplies like these available, we need your help! Please share with friends as well! 3 exam tables; 3 cases of exam table paper; 3 boxes each size of gloves – non-latex, vinyl, non-powdered; 500 pregnancy tests; 1 medical scale with weights; 1,000 urine specimen cups; ultrasound gel; T-spray for cleaning; 1,000 paper gowns; paper towels; antiseptic wipes; container for vaginal probe; pre-gelled vaginal probe covers; ultrasound photo paper; 3 distance lamps; 3 medical rolling stools; 3 blood pressure cuffs.”

We ask also that our readers consider sending a cash gift to this worthy organization in this hour of acute need: Caring to Love Ministries, 3813 N. Flannery Road, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70814.

 

Beautiful Redemption

THE SITE OF A SHUTTERED OHIO ABORTUARY IS BECOMING a memorial site for boys and girls whose lives have been cut short before birth, and a center to offer caring, life-saving services to expectant mothers in distress. What was Toledo’s notorious Center for Choice has given way to what will become Hope Park, at the hands of a coalition of pro-life organizations.

The Center for ‘Choice’ committed “more than 50,000 abortions between 1983 and 2013,” reports LifeSiteNews.com, citing Ohio Right to Life as source. And then, in 2013, the killing center underwent a state inspection in which “state health inspectors,” reports LifeSiteNews, “found the Center for Choice’s equipment covered with mold and rust,” resulting in a recommendation of a $25,000 fine and the facility’s closure. The abortion shop had also “failed to comply with a state law which required abortion facilities to have a transfer agreement with a local hospital in the case of a botched abortion;” that violation had lasted three years.

The pro-life coalition “stepped in,” reports LifeSiteNews, “and purchased the building in October 2014 with the intention to transform the former abortion facility into a pro-life center.” An Internet website at www.hopepark.org declares the new center, reports LifeSiteNews, “‘will be a place that affirms the value, dignity and beauty of every human life as precious and valuable.’” Praise the Lord!

 

They Never Meet a Crisis They Can’t Exploit

PLANNED PARENTHOOD IS SENDING CANVASSERS INTO THE STREETS of Miami to find women who are troubled by the Zika-virus epidemic and to alarm those who are not yet aware of the potential for birth defects in a baby carried by an infected mom.

“‘This is a natural extension of the work we do with reproductive health care and sexually transmitted infections,’ Planned Parenthood’s chief medical officer Dr. Christopher Estes told National Public Radio,” writes Claire Chretien for LifeSiteNews.com. “‘It just made sense.’” Dollars and cents, no doubt.

“If pregnant Floridians contract Zika,” writes Ms. Chretien, “Planned Parenthood will be there to abort their babies, lest they have a birth defect! If Floridians need low-grade condoms,” continues Ms. Chretien, “Planned Parenthood will be there to supply them! If Floridians need inaccurate information about women’s health,” Ms. Chretien declares, “Planned Parenthood will be there to educate them!

“It’s hard to imagine how Planned Parenthood could help solve a public health crisis,” the LifeSiteNews writer concludes, “when the abortion chain itself is a public health crisis.”

And she warns, “Be careful, Florida women: Planned Parenthood wants your money, and they don’t care if in the process they expose you to filthy medical equipment, sketchy abortionists and permanent physical harm. To Planned Parenthood,” she cautions, “each woman is a potential abortion client and their babies’ body parts are a potential profit.”

 

Indiana Suspends License of Notorious Abortion Doc

INDIANA’s MEDICAL LICENSING BOARD LAST WEEK SUSPENDED the license of abortionist Ulrich Klopfer for six months, reports Niki Kelly for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. For the 71-year-old to regain his medical license, he would have to apply for reinstatement six months from now and would have to complete “a laundry list of evaluations, continuing medical education credits and child abuse training,” notes Ms. Kelly, who adds, “He was also fined $3,000.”

The suspension order came, writes Ms. Kelly, “after 12 hours of testimony and thousands of exhibits” leading the board to rule the South Bend “doctor,” who lives in Illinois, had “fail[ed] to exercise reasonable care and violat[ed] several notice and documentation requirements.”

For all the testimony and inspection documentation, “it was a story that [Mr.] Klopfer told himself that struck a nerve with members of the board,” writes Ms. Kelly. “He spoke of a 10-year-old girl, raped by her uncle, who he performed an abortion on in an Illinois hospital but didn’t notify police about the child abuse,” though Indiana law requires such notification when the aborted minor is an Indiana resident. “Instead,” writes Ms. Kelly, “he let her go home with her parents, who knew of the rape and refused to prosecute.”

That episode “wasn’t part of the complaint filed by the Indiana Attorney General’s Office,” notes Ms. Kelly, “but [it] appeared to shift the case, with several members of the board bringing it up during final discussion.” The Attorney General’s complaint, notes St. Joseph County Right to Life in a report published by National Right to Life News Today, did cite “more than 1,800 alleged abortion-related violations committed by [Mr.] Klopfer and his staff.”

Remarked board member Rebecca Moredock-Mueller, quoted by Ms. Kelly, “‘the thing that bothered me most was his professional incompetence.’” Um, well, that should bother a medical licensing board member!

Notably, the Journal Gazette went on to describe Mr. Klopfer as “likely Indiana’s most prolific abortion doctor in history, with numbers going into the tens of thousands of procedures in multiple counties over several decades.

“Testimony during Thursday’s hearing,” writes Ms. Kelly, “showed a man who was essentially using the same abortion and sedation procedures from the 1970s and 1980s. …The board specifically was bothered,” notes the Journal Gazette writer, “that he didn’t give pain medication to all women – only those under 16 and those who could pay extra. And when he did sedate women,” she adds, “he didn’t have qualified staff to monitor them and didn’t follow best practices for administration of the drugs and emergency procedures.

“The board found him guilty of five of nine charges,” reports Ms. Kelly. “One of the charges related to not reporting performing an abortion on two girls under the age of 14 within the three-day required timeline. Two referenced sedation and medical practices; two others,” she writes, “were whether he followed state law requiring informed consent 18 hours before the procedure on a handful of women.”

Though the medical board’s action seems long in coming, the suspension of 43-year abortion veteran Ulrich Klopfer even now demonstrates not only the importance of a governor appointing objective, above-board individuals to a state’s medical licensing board but also the value of enacting seemingly minor regulations on the practice of abortion, pending the US Supreme Court coming to its senses and comprehending the foundational principles of our nation.

 

Noteworthy Quote

Roman Catholic Cardinal Raymond Burke, quoted by LifeSiteNews.com from an Aug. 29, 2016, teleconference announcing his new book Hope for the World: “The fundamental question has to be the question of human life itself, the respect for the inviolable dignity of human life and of its cradle, its source, in the union of a man and woman in marriage, which, according to God’s plan, is the place where new human life is welcomed and nurtured. … We have to give the first priority to the respect for human life and for the family in order to have the right orientation in addressing all of the other questions which are involved with poverty and immigration, the many challenges that any human being faces in life. … It doesn’t make any sense at all to be concerned about immigration or poverty if human life itself is not protected in society. It’s an absolute contradiction. The first justice accorded to any human being is to respect the gift of life itself, which is received from God. And so, that the unborn should be protected and at the same time those whose lives are burdened either by advanced years or special needs or some grave illness, their lives also are to be equally protected.”

 

Wisdom of a Saint

Excerpts from Feb. 3, 1994, National Prayer Breakfast Speech by Mother Teresa, now canonized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, delivered in the presence of President and Mrs. Bill Clinton, transcribed by Priests for Life (full transcript at www.priestsforlife.org/brochures/mtspeech.html)

On the last day, Jesus will say to those on His right hand, “Come, enter the Kingdom. For I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me drink, I was sick and you visited Me.” Then Jesus will turn to those on His left hand and say, “Depart from Me because I was hungry and you did not feed Me, I was thirsty and you did not give Me drink, I was sick and you did not visit Me.” These will ask Him, “When did we see You hungry or thirsty or sick and did not come to your help?” And Jesus will answer them, “Whatever you neglected to do unto one of the least of these, you neglected to do unto Me!” . . .

I can never forget the experience I had in visiting a home where they kept all these old parents of sons and daughters who had just put them into an institution and forgotten them – maybe. I saw that in that home, these old people had everything – good food, comfortable place, television, everything – but everyone was looking toward the door. And I did not see a single one with a smile on the face. I turned to Sister, and I asked, “Why do these people who have every comfort here, why are they all looking toward the door? Why are they not smiling?” I am so used to seeing the smiles on our people; even the dying ones smile. And Sister said, “This is the way it is nearly every day. They are expecting, they are hoping that a son or daughter will come to visit them. They are hurt because they are forgotten.”

And see, this neglect to love brings spiritual poverty. Maybe in our own family we have somebody who is feeling lonely, who is feeling sick, who is feeling worried. Are we there? Are we there to be with them or do we merely put them in the care of others? Are we willing to give until it hurts in order to be with our families, or do we put our own interests first? These are the questions we must ask ourselves … . We must remember that love begins at home, and we must also remember that “the future of humanity passes through the family.”

I was surprised in the West to see so many young boys and girls given to drugs. And I tried to find out why. Why is it like that, when those in the West have so many more things than those in the East? And the answer was: “Because there is no one in the family to receive them.” Our children depend on us for everything – their health, their security, their coming to know and love God. For all of this, they look to us with trust, hope and expectation. But often father and mother are so busy they have no time for their children, or perhaps they are not even married or have given up on their marriage. So the children go to the streets and get involved in drugs or other things We are talking of love of the child, which is where love and peace must begin. These are the things that break peace.

But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love, and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So the mother who is thinking of abortion should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion.

Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use any violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion. …

If we remember that God loves us and that we can love others as He loves us, then America can become a sign of peace for the world. From here, a sign of care for the weakest of the weak – the unborn child – must go out to the world. If you become a burning light of justice and peace in the world, then really you will be true to what the founders of this country stood for. God bless you!