Tag: New York abortion

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No, I won’t stay down

Earlier this week, Anne Susan DiPrizio was arrested in the Alabama House of Representatives for spraying the glass separating visitors from legislators with green paint and repeatedly yelling, “Dumb, dumb, dumb.” She “swung and threw paint on” security guards as they were arresting her.

DiPrizio was protesting the Alabama House’s passage of a bill that would ban almost all abortions in the state.

New York and other states are passing laws expanding abortion and refusing to protect children who survive abortion and are born alive.

Some states are going out of their way to make sure that the smallest abortion victims do not live to speak up later on. Others, like Alabama, are doing everything possible to protect the unborn.

America is gearing up for a showdown on Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton the 1973 Supreme Court decisions that eradicated every abortion law in all 50 states.

Forty-six years later, it’s an issue that just won’t go away.

Every year since 1974, the March for Life has brought hundreds of thousands of protesters to Washington, DC, to mark the anniversary of Roe and Doe.

America has seen attacks on abortion facilities. “Fanatics resort to violence on both extremes of the pro-choice/pro-life spectrum,” writes Feminist for Life Serrin M. Foster (emphasis Foster’s).

More recently, it was in San Francisco during the 40 Days for Life–before Easter this year–when a young attacker assaulted an 85-year-old pro-life man praying outside a Planned Parenthood clinic.

The attacker knocked “Ron” down and said, “Stay down, old man–Stay on the ground–unless you want to get hurt.”

While on the ground, Ron wouldn’t let go of the pro-life banner the attacker was trying to steal. So the attacker kicked him several times. But Ron came back the next day. He had committed to a certain number of hours–and he came back to fulfill that commitment.

In response to the attack, he said, “No, I won’t stay down.”

So Ron returned to his post where he stood and prayed quietly. The 40 Days for Life philosophy asks participants to always respond “with love and charity”–no matter what they see, hear, or experience.

Forty Days for Life credits Ron’s efforts with saving the lives of three babies.

Many Americans don’t realize that laws like New York’s–laws legalizing abortion until birth–simply restore Roe and Doe in their original form. Abortion for any reason at any time in pregnancy.

But today when legislatures pass laws allowing abortion until birth and allowing the neglect until death of children who manage to live through the abortion process, Americans see that as extreme.

Most of America–even those who call themselves pro-choice–do not support abortion until birth. In fact, only 13 percent do.

Perhaps America has turned the tide on Roe and Doe. Perhaps the strategies of 40 Days and Ron can win the day.

If the side of life is the side of reason–and the side against life is a violent man kicking a peaceful elder and a screaming woman splattering paint on security guards, we will win.

But we must be like Ron to win. We must peacefully pray and stay at our posts–even if we are bruised.

Peace and prayer will win this, the battle of our lifetime. They are the greatest tools. If we use them and them alone.

The lives of many depend are depending on us.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. Restoring the Shattered is published through Morgan James Publishing with whom I do share a material connection. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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The Quiet Voice for Life

“Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push—in just the right place—it can be tipped.”  Malcolm Gladwell

When police came to arrest him, he didn’t understand what the big deal was. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He had only been helping people.

Kermit Gosnell would later be convicted for performing late-term abortions, killing aborted babies born alive, and causing the death of a woman who had undergone an abortion. He believed that, eventually, society would exonerate him because we would come to see that what he did had not been wrong after all.

“I continue to feel optimistic of the eventual outcome…the vindication of what I’ve done, why I’ve done it and how [it] will become accepted within my lifetime.”

In January, the state of New York decriminalized every crime Gosnell committed. Had he been convicted in that state instead of Pennsylvania, he would have grounds to be pardoned and immediately released, perhaps with an apology from the state.

The woman who had an abortion and died later, had received medications at the hands of untrained employees acting on Gosnell’s orders in his absence.

And a baby weighing six pounds died after being born alive–after exiting his mother’s body–after he had begun breathing on his own. Gosnell stuck scissors in the back of his neck and cut his spinal cord.

That baby was not the only living, breathing child Gosnell and his co-workers “snipped”.

The state of New York has chosen to side with such an approach to death–death inflicted by the trained and untrained–death for the already born.

New York speaks death over those with no voice.

Yet, there is another voice today–a quieter but growing one. It’s a voice that understands the there is “an American consensus … implying that there are truths that we hold in common, and a natural law that makes known to all of us the structure of the moral universe in such wise that all of us are bound to it by common obedience.” George Weigel

We who understand the power of the one behind this natural law must raise our voices now.

America has been going down the path of death for decades–but not so far that we cannot turn back. A few states like New York are opting for more death. But the outcry for life is making itself heard in every state. People are speaking up.

A few weeks ago, a reader told me that she is praying about what she can do on behalf of the unborn.

Here are a few ideas.

Notify your legislators at the city, county, state, and federal levels about your conviction that the legalized killing of children born and unborn must end.

Talk to your neighbors, friends, and family. Most people don’t realize that Roe v. Wade and its companion case of Doe v. Bolton legalized abortion THROUGH THE ENTIRE NINE MONTHS OF PREGNANCY.

Attend or consider planning an event in your community to raise awareness about the plight of unborn children. Join your local pro-life group. Volunteer for/support your local crisis pregnancy facility.

Go see Unplanned, in theaters this week. The story of Abby Johnson who once managed a Planned Parenthood abortion facility but is now a voice for life–and who now mothers eight children–some of them by birth, others by adoption.

Pray. And then pray some more. Pray about what you should do. Pray for the mothers, the babies, the Abby Johnsons who still work at the clinics, and the Kermit Gosnells who just don’t get why unborn–and newly born–life really matters.

The laws opposing life are not immovable, implacable. Perhaps your effort–or our effort combined–will produce that slightest push to tip America back to the side of life.

Before it is too late.

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. Restoring the Shattered is published through Morgan James Publishing with whom I do share a material connection. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Photo Credit: Unsplash

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Down a Slippery Slope

When we think of pediatricians, we usually think of kindly people looking to care for infants, young children, tweens, and teens.

We tend not to call to mind the newly elected governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam. In a radio interview, Northam went beyond supporting abortion and beyond even supporting late term abortion. Northam espoused abortion after birth.

Northam’s comments came during a radio interview in which he supported an abortion proposal that would provide no restrictions until birth–clarifying that a woman could be in the throes of labor, preparing to give birth, and could still opt to terminate her child.

And that such a decision could even be made between a mother and her physician after the baby is born.

“If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

He made little mention of fathers being part of the decision.

After a great outcry over his comments, he complained that opponents were taking his comments out of context since such a situation would happen only in “the case of tragic or difficult circumstances . . . [such as] severe deformities.”

Essentially, the governor proposes infanticide–the intentional killing of a born child–because of medical issues the child would face.

Except the bill makes no mention of exceptions–of disabilities that would disqualify a child from life. The bill would allow abortion for any reason at any time.

Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska is one of those criticizing Northam’s stance. “In just a few years pro-abortion zealots went from ‘safe, legal, and rare’ to ‘keep the newborns comfortable while the doctor debates infanticide.’”

It’s been quite a slide from safe and rare to several states giving an official stamp of approval on late abortions. Yet the slide toward infanticide is not over in Virginia yet. CBSnews reports that a majority Republican committee has tabled the bill.

This time.

The winds of politics blow to and fro. And the next election cycle could produce a committee in lockstep with the governor’s views of life.

Abortion is a big issue right now. As a nation, we are bracing as the SCOTUS decisions that removed all barriers to abortion hang in the balance. Most Americans don’t realize that, in 1973, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton legalized abortion until birth.

In the wake of a more conservative court now–and in view of health problems the court’s oldest justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg suffers presently–some states are taking steps to put restrictions on abortion in place. Others, as New York has done and Virginia is considering, are moving to ensure that no restrictions exist in their states.

Should Roe and Doe die the death of the Dred Scott decision, in places where abortion will remain unrestrained, a culture against life will only continue to grow.

And even some doctors, whom we would expect to care for the welfare of children, will become those who ensure their doom. Doctors like Ralph Northam lead the vanguard of such a culture.

No civilization ever stands still. It moves upward toward a noble culture that values even the weak, or it turns downward into a morass of death.

The state of Virginia gave us Thomas Jefferson who crafted the Declaration of Independence and James Madison who developed the Bill of Rights.

Yet in tomorrow’s Virginia, life, liberty, and the ability to pursue happiness may belong only to the chosen. Virginia–and every other state who takes this path–will have fallen.

And the fall will be great indeed.

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered came out in paperback on January 22, 2019! Get your copy here!

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. Restoring the Shattered is published through Morgan James Publishing with whom I do share a material connection. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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