Tag: President Trump

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Youth on the March

“Young people are the heart of the March for Life. And it’s your generation that is making America the pro-family, pro-life nation.” President Donald Trump

Young people truly were the heart of this year’s March. And there is a great strength of character to be found among the crowd.

Notably this year, Nick Sandmann came back with fellow students from Covington Catholic. You may remember that last year a radical liberal accosted Sandmann trying to engage him. But he stood silently, working to appear pleasant, working not to provide a negative reaction.

Yet the media lambasted the teen. Remember that; he was a teen, a high-schooler. Sandmann and his family received death threats because of broadcast media assumptions about his “smirk”.

Just days before this year’s March, CNN settled with him over their misrepresentation of his reaction to the opposing protester. Other media outlets have yet to settle or be called to Sandmann’s day in court.

Days before this year’s March, Sandmann tweeted that he would not be bullied or surrender. He came.

Others came too.

Darlene Pawlik was one of them who manned a booth at the EXPO, one of the pre-March events. She had been conceived in rape–which sounds like enough of a story for anyone. But then she spent years being trafficked across several states in the Northeast.

Darlene’s website explains her ministry of loving the traumatized. “[V]ictims and survivors of abuse have trouble with trust,  it’s hard for us to develop relationships. Recidivism happens when trauma bonds with abusers are stronger than healthy, nurturing ones.”

Darlene helps us understand how to help the traumatized. She speaks up on behalf of the one percent–those conceived in rape who are subject to a death sentence in the womb because of the circumstances of their conception. Circumstances beyond their control.

She spent hours on her feet baring her soul to help others avoid the torture she endured for years. Young girls often surrounded her.

This year’s March for Life was historic because it’s the first one a president attended in 47 years. But the legacy of the event will emanate from the Nick Sandmanns and the Darlene Pawliks.

Perhaps someday there will still be a March for Life that only reminds us of the days of legalized killing.

If that day comes to pass, we will owe praise to God–and to the Sandmanns and Pawliks who came and spoke their hearts in action.

Photo Credit: Penny Starr, Breitbart

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. 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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Freedom Beyond the Church Doors

In Lois Lowry’s The Giver, Jonas is a young boy who realizes that his father intends to kill his younger brother. Jonas makes this realization even as his father seems oblivious to the results of his own actions.

Lowry paints an “ideal” society where drugs eliminate sexual desires and the social order arranges marriages and provides children to selected parents. The society chooses everyone’s family, everyone’s vocation, and instills everyone’s socially acceptable thoughts into their minds. Almost everyone’s.

The society chooses one person in every generation to receive the truth–to carry it–but never to divulge it. For his generation, that chosen person is Jonah.

But the society had failed to obliterate Jonah’s conscience. Some current societies are trying to do the same thing in a very significant way.

Last year, a Canadian court ruled that a patient’s desire to be euthaniized (a medical suicide) “trumps a doctor’s conscientious objection.”

Wesley J. Smith provides background to the case:

“In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada conjured a right to lethal-injection euthanasia for anyone with a medically diagnosable condition that causes irremediable suffering—as defined by the patient. No matter if palliative interventions could significantly reduce painful symptoms, if the patient would rather die, it’s the patient’s right to be killed. Parliament then kowtowed to the court and legalized euthanasia across Canada. Since each province administers the country’s socialized single-payer health-care system within its bounds, each provincial parliament also passed laws to accommodate euthanasia’s legalization.”

Canada isn’t alone in requiring medical personnel to violate their consciences. Victoria, Australia, requires physicians to perform abortions when requested–or to find someone for the patient who will.

What Canada and Australia have become, America may soon also be. Sam Sawyer, SJ, in response to New York’s recently enacted abortion law:

“The R.H.A. [Reproductive Health Act] does not contain any explicit provision requiring anyone to perform or provide abortions, but neither does it explicitly provide any exemption for conscientious objection by health care professionals regarding abortion.”

So this issue is one that remains for the legislature and/or courts to determine.

The radical nature of New York’s law–removing the requirement that doctor’s perform abortions rather than other medical personnel–and removing all protections from children who survive abortion and are born alive–does not bode well for conscientious objection against taking a life.

In the meantime, because abortion can now occur via prescription medication–because assisted suicide often happens via a lethal prescription–and because some contraceptives act as an abortifacient after conception (they kill embryos instead of preventing them–pharmacists are now at risk of violating their consciences too.

Only six states in the US provide a conscience clause, not requiring the pharmacist to either fill the prescription or help the patient receive the requested service through another outlet.

So it was an answer to prayer last Thursday–the National Day of Prayer–when President Trump announced new federal protections for an array of medical providers:

“We finalized new protections of conscience rights for physicians, pharmacists, nurses, teachers, students, and faith-based charities.”

As with other such rules, this one is subject to change in the winds of any election.

But for those who support life in the medical field–and those who wish to in the future–the news is only good.

Let’s keep working for life to make this change one that lasts for generations. Otherwise, we risk becoming like the people of Lowry’s The Giver–having our consciences obliterated.

Because as James Madison noted, “Conscience is the most sacred of all property.”

Photo Credit: Unsplash

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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