Planned Parenthood’s Lies are Exposed

Posted on March 5, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

Oh my. Planned Parenthood is finally being exposed. First by Abby Johnson, then Lila  Rose, and now a liberal writer for the Daily Beast (H/T  Kathryn Jean Lopez) .   Kirsten Powers has done her homework. She has proven what many of us knew intuitively: Access to contraception does not reduce abortions.

This comes at a time when Planned Parenthood is desperate to keep their federal funding.

Excerpt:

Over this time period, the U.S. government has funneled billions of dollars to Planned Parenthood, in large part because the organization claims to provide services to avoid unplanned pregnancies – a laudable goal. Yet despite a robust budget—Planned Parenthood reported a total annual revenue of $1.1 billion in its last financial filing—the organization has done absolutely nothing to change the fundamental dynamics of the United States’ abortion rate.

Asked about the “Contraception” study, the Guttmacher numbers and why no women were saying they got abortions due to lack of access to contraception, a Planned Parenthood spokesman emailed this Orwellian response: “I think the biggest barrier is access to affordable contraception.”  Huh?

Excerpt:

To preserve its federal subsidy, Planned Parenthood continues to claim that without its contraception services the abortion rate will go up. This deception smacks of a fleecing of taxpayers in an effort to promote an ideological agenda, rather than a sincere effort to help women plan families.

What is that ideology, exactly? To find out, you have to dig through Planned Parenthood’s tax forms because the group certainly isn’t going to tell you. According to its most recent tax filing, the purpose of Planned Parenthood Federation of America is to provide leadership in “[a]chieving, through informed individual choice, a U.S. population of stable size in an optimum environment; in stimulating and sponsoring relevant biomedical, socio-economic, and demographic research.”

So it is, in reality, a population-control organization. Funny, this was never mentioned in the gauzy $200,000 advertising campaign launched last week. It also doesn’t make it into the “About Us” section of the group’s website, which repeatedly claims its mission is to protect women’s health, when in fact the real mission is to keep the birth rate at whatever level the leaders believe it should be.

To hear Planned Parenthood and their supporters, they exist only to provide Pap smears or breast exams or prenatal services. In fact, President Cecile Richards has gone so far as to erroneously imply that they provide mammograms. (A spokesperson for the group confirmed to me that this is untrue.)

Planned Parenthood officials are allowed to believe whatever they want and to pursue whatever goals they choose. But their dishonesty in how they present their organization to the public, along with ignoring basic statistics about their area of expertise, makes you wonder what else they are hiding. It’s also hard to deny that they are at core a blindly ideological organization, not a run-of-the-mill charitable nonprofit.

Whatever you think of abortion rights, this is not the kind of organization that taxpayers should be funding.

Read the article here.

Posted in Abortion | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Before I die, I want to…

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

Well how would you answer that question?

An artist has provided space for people to do just that. H/T Deacon Greg.

The deacon’s wife would like to see my kids and grandkids. It has been far too long. Before I die, I want to be ready to, gulp, meet Jesus face to face.

I remember being asked that question by a teacher in high school. Somehow it didn’t really register. Teenagers think that they will live forever.

So folks, how do you answer the question?

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Fast and pray to fight porn addiction

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

Porn addiction is becoming increasingly prevalent in our sex saturated culture.  Active Catholics—including seminarians—are not immune from the allure of pornography.  The problem is that it can be hard to avoid.  It arrives, unsolicited, in our email in boxes.

The Catholic Herald has a feature article, Satan should hold a party when we die, about one man’s struggle against pornography. Matthew Frad discovered pornography when he was just eight years old.  He has overcome his addiction and now helps others to win the battle. But it isn’t an easy one to win.

Excerpt:

“From his own experience struggling against pornography Fradd recommends fasting and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament as well praying the rosary.

“If I can’t say no to that next slice of pizza or that next cup of coffee, how on earth will I say no to a temptation to look at pornography?”

He adds: “Prayer without fasting is like boxing with one hand tied behind your back, and fasting without prayer – well, we call that dieting.”

Fradd is a riveting, charismatic speaker, even on the phone. But he also seems quite sensible and down to earth: he is careful not to hold himself up as a model of virtue, and is scrupulously humble about his efforts.

Essentially, he says, the point is not about looking, or not looking, at pornography; it’s about trying to be holy.

“We want to be the kind of men that, when we’re dead, Satan throws a party. He says: ‘Thank God he has gone, he caused my kingdom too much damage.’ That’s the kind of man I want to be. And I think that’s the kind of man most men want to be.” Read more here.



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Saint of the Day: St. Casimir

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

“St. Casimir was born in 1458 and was the son of the King of Poland. At an early age he saw through the superficiality and corruption of court life. Throughout his short life—he died of consumption at the age of 26—he dedicated himself wholly to the service of God and of his fellow-men. His love for the poor was immense. He was also renowned for his devotion to the Eucharist and to the Blessed Virgin.” Read more here.


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Saint of the Day: St. Katharine Drexel

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

H/T Catholic Culture

“Katharine Drexel was born in Philadelphia in 1858. She had an excellent education and traveled widely. As a rich girl, she had a grand debut into society. But when she nursed her stepmother through a three-year terminal illness, she saw that all the Drexel money could not buy safety from pain or death, and her life took a profound turn.

She had always been interested in the plight of the Indians, having been appalled by reading Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor. While on a European tour, she met Pope Leo XIII and asked him to send more missionaries to Wyoming for her friend Bishop James O’Connor. The pope replied, “Why don’t you become a missionary?” His answer shocked her into considering new possibilities.

Back home, she visited the Dakotas, met the Sioux leader Red Cloud and began her systematic aid to Native American missions.

She could easily have married. But after much discussion with Bishop O’Connor, she wrote in 1889, “The feast of Saint Joseph brought me the grace to give the remainder of my life to the Indians and the Colored.” Newspaper headlines screamed “Gives Up Seven Million!” Continue reading here.

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Pro Life means Pro Life

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

(Reuters) – Philadelphia prosecutors paved the way in court on Wednesday toward seeking the death penalty for a doctor accused of killing live, viable babies at his abortion clinic.

Prosecutors filed notice that the case against Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who faces multiple charges of first-degree murder, meets the standards of a death penalty case, said assistant District Attorney Christine Wechsler outside Common Pleas court.

Gosnell, his wife Pearl and eight employees of the west Philadelphia abortion clinic known as the Women’s Medical Society are accused in the deaths of seven babies and also the 2009 death of a woman given too much anesthesia.

Gosnell has committed unspeakable evil acts. But I agree with The Anchoress:

Nevertheless, I would defend this man’s right to live his life out in prison, rather than watch the state take his life. His life is not anyone else’s to take. For pro-lifers, this is a no-brainer.

And he may need many years and much time, in order to understand the enormity of what he has done, and allow his heart to be turned. He may need time for conversion and salvation.

As John Paul II wrote on the death penalty:

A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary. (Pope John Paul II, St. Louis, MO, January 1999)

Read more from the Anchoress here.

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Are you ready for Lent?

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

I can’t believe that Lent is only a week away. It is later this year than it has been in years, yet it seems as if Christmas was yesterday.

Lent is the time in the Church year when the Church invites us to turn our hearts back to the Lord. Christians are called to be Holy—to be Saints. But as St. Paul reminds us we all fall short of the glory of God. We all sin; we live in a broken world.    That is why Christian life is a journey of continual conversion and transformation.

In the Season of Lent the Church calls us to take a long hard look at ourselves. Each of us is called to examine our lives to determine if we are living the teachings of the Gospel. Lent is a wake up call to transform our hearts so that we can live share in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The problem is that most of us begin Lent with the intention to “do a good lent”, but we often fall short as we get caught up in our hectic 24/7 world.  We need to prepare our hearts and ask God for help so that this Lent we can become truly transformed.

In order to prepare our hearts we have to let go of the attachments which distance ourselves from God.  We are all attached to a particular sin. Most of us fail to love at least some of the time.

Lent is a time for an attitude adjustment.

Here is handout on preparing for lent that I wrote last year.

Preparation for lent b

Posted in Liturgical Year | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Mind Someone Else’s Business

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, over at Patheos asks: “Is there a middle path we can  steer between a silence imposed by relativism, and a voice that others see as  narrow and strident?”

He begins:

You Jews hate all the rest of us—and I can prove it!” A colleague of mine was quite taken aback by this challenge from an otherwise reasonable young Muslim. Prudently, my colleague simply asked him to explain himself.

“You Jews have been around longer as a religion than the rest of us. You believe you received the word of G-d. So why aren’t you converting the rest of the world? Why would you deny them the gifts of Heaven and eternity, unless you hate them so much that you don’t care about them?”

He concludes:

….. Many of us find it uncomfortable to speak up about important moral and ethical issues because we know we will encounter much pushback on the other side. By doing this, however, we abdicate moral responsibility, and give the impression that what we believe in simply “works for us,” but is not part of a G-d given system of right and wrong. Our own silence empowers the wrong people.

We could have the best of both worlds by using a depersonalized approach to remonstrance and rebuke. First of all, those of us in the Judeo-Christian world need to speak up more in the public forum, especially in general media. We need to convey our positions on moral issues to people outside our communities, not just the captive audiences in our churches and synagogues. We must do more than assert that our positions are moral and just, and develop the arguments with which we can win over the minds of others. Broadcasting reasoned arguments, rather than debating individuals, is a form of rebuke that is depersonalized and non-offensive.

Secondly, we should be more forthcoming to others about our core values. When we try to address front-burner issues like abortion, or end-of-life care, or immigration, we will encounter resistance, whatever side we are on. It might be more prudent to speak about the values behind the key issues of the day, such as the blessing of life itself, the closeness of G-d to Man, imitating G-d through giving. If we can influence people regarding those values, they will express themselves at the proper time in regard to specific issues.

It is certain, however, that silence is not an option. If we believe in Divinely defined right and wrong and we are not indifferent to other people, then much of the business of others has to be our business as well. Read the bits in between here.

Posted in Church and the Public Square, Truth | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Women against mothers

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

I don’t know who Mary Elizabeth Williams is, but her world view is tragic. She  writes:

Is motherhood Natalie Portman’s “greatest role”?

In her acceptance speech, the “Black Swan” star suggests that pregnancy trumps a career. She’s wrong. Continue reading if you have the stomach for it.

Wow.  Just wow. Some women are just plain hostile to motherhood. All that we can do is pray for a culture that nurtures such attitudes.

Oh and for the record motherhood and fatherhood does trump a career.

H/T New Advent

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How do we work for the end of abortion?

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

In some ways, for me, this is an easy question to answer on a personal level. Work to  covert hearts. Love even the most vitriolic pro abortion activist.

Do, for example, pray respectfully and softly outside of abortion clinics.

Don’t shout or hurl accusations at clinic employees and volunteers.

Do offer women seeking abortions help and lots of love. Most women who turn to abortionists do not feel that they have a choice. Let them know that they do.  There are many groups and individuals who offer help.

Don’t force your pro life stance on anyone. Just pray and love them no matter what. Recognize that every person, including the mother, is a child of God.

Please leave signs with pictures of aborted babies at home. They do more harm than good. Abby Johnson, the former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic turned pro life activist, makes it clear that such tactics served to harden her heart.  What began to change her was the Pro life protesters who prayed, and cried, and who addressed her with love and kindness.

But how do we fight for life in the political arena?  I don’t know. On the one hand there are very good and sincere people who think that we should work to reduce abortions. The Iowa Catholic Conference, for example, is working to push through a bill in the legislature that would prohibit abortions after viability.

There are several such initiatives being considered in other states.

It is, perhaps, a good short term strategy. But is it an effective strategy for the long term?

I don’t know. On the one hand it is pragmatic, and reducing abortions is a good thing. But are we conceding too much?

Francis Kissling,of the group Catholics for Choice (yes the name of the group is an oxymoron) has written an article for the Washington Post. She argues that the pro abortion movement is losing and, therefore, needs to change tactics.  Kissling makes the following point (H/T Jimmy Akin):

“We can no longer pretend the fetus is invisible. We can no longer seek to banish the state from our lives, but rather need to engage its power to improve women’s lives. We must end the fiction that an abortion at 26 weeks is no different from one at six weeks.”

Her last sentence in that quote is what is causing me pause. In supporting legislation which prohibits abortions at a certain week, are we giving ammunition to the argument that there is a moral difference between a first trimester abortions and second and third trimester abortions?

Catholics, and most pro lifers, do believe that human life is sacred from the moment of conception until natural death. There is no moral difference.

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