In a column published in today’s edition of L’Osservatore Romano, Italian historian and journalist Lucetta Scaraffia writes that President Barack Obama’s commitment to reduce abortions– as well as the Italian legislature’s approval of a resolution against abortion as a form of population control– are signs that the tide is turning against the “radical and feminist ideological propaganda” that has trumpeted abortion as a “sign of the liberation of women” since the 1970s. Scaraffia made her remarks in a review of psychoanalyst Claudio Risé’s La crisi del dono. La nascita e il no alla vita, in which the author posits that the decision to kill one’s child stems in part from a fear of change and transformation.

Risé, a student of Communion and Liberation founder Father Luigi Giussani in the 1950s, has also written on the centrality of fathers in family life.

Experts from both sides are waking up to what we all knew already – that is without specific exclusions, forcing taxpayers to fund abortions will become the norm under the current health care plans being discussed in Congress right now. The latest admission comes from White House budget director Peter Orszag, who yesterday told Fox News Sunday that the White House is not looking to remove abortion coverage under any government plan being discussed in Congress. Mr. Orszag’s comments came just two days after 20 pro-life Democrats sent a letter, headed up by Pro-Life Caucus chairman Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), to the House Democratic Leadership letting them know that the signatories “cannot support any health care reform proposal unless it explicitly excludes abortion from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan.”

With the House health care bill (H.R. 3200) getting more and more criticism from both sides of the aisle, every single vote will be important in this debate in helping to highlight the importance of the pro-life concerns in the bill. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) has highlighted in a letter to his colleagues the public comments of officials like President Barack Obama and pro-abortion groups, excited that the new health care plan will definitely cover abortion – unless we move to stop them. Seventy-one percent of Americans do not want to pay for abortion nor have their employers provide health care that pays for abortion, according to a November 2008 Zogby poll. Eighty-seven percent of American adults in an April survey by The Polling Company said it is important to “make sure that healthcare professionals in America are not forced to participate in procedures and practices to which they have moral objections.” Clearly, under its current form, health care legislation without specific exclusions would fund and mandate abortion coverage, trump state pro-life laws and undermine healthcare workers’ conscience rights.

Additional Resources
Rep. Chris Smith’s letter to colleagues
FRCA Let to Energy and Commerce for Health Care Markup
It’s Not An Option

The Marginalizing of Religion

President Obama has been very adept at selecting candidates for some high profile positions that acknowledge a formal association with the Christian faith, but hold unorthodox views. The latest is the President’s pick for Surgeon General, Regina M. Benjamin, a Roman Catholic who has had a notable career serving the underprivileged, much like Mother Teresa. Given her Catholic education and affiliation most would be tempted to think she holds orthodox views on the sanctity of human life. Yet, sadly, evidently she does not. According to a White House spokesman, she shares the views of President Obama on “reproductive health issues.” Benjamin is a shrewd political pick by the President, but the pick goes much further than just the politics of confirmation. David Satcher, former surgeon general under President Bill Clinton, unwittingly pointed to the bigger agenda – isolating one’s personal faith from their public policy. In an interview with the Washington Post, Satcher was quoted as saying, “We all have our religions, but when you speak as the Surgeon General to the American people, it’s not about your religion.” While that sounds nice and polite, it implies that in order to serve in a public capacity you have to check the guiding tenets of your faith at the door. It only stands to reason that if this is the standard expected of the nation’s top doctor, under a government healthcare system it would be expected of all. Christian doctors and healthcare workers would be forced to choose between living by the teachings of Scripture and abandoning their careers of service or agreeing to serve in a public health care system devoid of moral absolutes where abortion and euthanasia are simply policy decisions.

Of course, those who divorce their espoused moral convictions from public service are really only kidding themselves: We act in accordance with what we truly believe. Setting aside one’s faith and the moral convictions that flow from it only demonstrates how relatively unimportant that faith is to its adherent. And then what one really believes – that we have the authority to act ethically without God’s direction – takes over, often with chilling effect.

Jill Stanek, vilified last week at MSNBC, is the Illinois nurse who exposed the practice of abandoning babies that survive abortions. She has tracked and reported on the career of Dr. Tiller for years at her blog.  When I asked her this week about her own safety in wake of the shooting, Stanek said that she, along with Troy Newman of Operation Rescue and Fr. Frank Pavone at Priests for Life, had been receiving credible threats from a “troubled man involved in the abortion industry.”  Jill said that this individual is the child of a pro-choice advocate/writer and his mother had aborted several of his siblings.  Following the Tiller shooting, the stalker emailed Stanek again.  Federal agents are currently monitoring his movements.

Pro-life leaders have uniformly been forced to increase security measures to address threats of violence.  In recent days Stanek has been placed under continuous police and federal protection following email threats to kill her at church or as she left her home

“Let me know which address is right, there’s a few I could post. Or I could just drive around the houses and wait to see which one you walk out of…. Don’t worry, I will find it.”

Stanek also stated that her local pastors have gotten emails calling for her murder at church services.

“the least you could do is offer to hold a rifle blessing service in her honor.”

When questioned about security, Fr. Frank Pavone, founder of Priests for Life, said that he needs armed escorts at speaking engagements to guard him against disruptive pro-abortion demonstrators.  Individuals from groups such as NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and Catholics for Choice are often bussed in to derail these presentations.  Even peaceful prayer vigils, so common to the pro-life movement, can be dangerous.  Fr. Pavone was leading a prayer service in Bellingham, WA when someone confronted him and spit in his face.  Prior to his appearances, local groups Fr. Pavone calls, “pro-abortion radicals and anarchists,” often signal their intent to lead violent demonstrations; but in recent days he says he’s gotten more serious messages.

Father Frank, It would make me very happy if someone were to respond to this by snuffing YOU. No fooling. Right-to-lifers, in my book, no longer have a right to life.

At the Priests for Life blog, another anonymous writer said: “Killing Father Frank will not be murder. It will be justifiable homicide.“

In November 2008, months before Dr. Tiller was murdered, Fr. Pavone received the following:

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR FATHER FRANK PAVONE

I am predicting that there will be more anti-abortion terror because of this election. I AM ALSO PREDICTING THAT THIS TIME IT WILL BE ANSWERED IN KIND BY PRO-CHOICE COUNTERTERRORISTS, who will mount similar terrorist attacks against well-known right-to-lifers. FATHER FRANK will be a natural target for pro-choice counterterrorists.

I therefore advise you, Fr Frank, if you read that there has been another abortion-clinic shooting or bombing, get out of town immediately. Take a vacation abroad. Go visit the Vatican. If there is another act of anti-abortion terror, your life will not be safe in the USA.

Good luck.

Visible anti-abortion figures in this country get regular threats on their lives and receive violent anti-social messages.  In 2008 UCLA undergrad Lila Rose garnered national attention for exposing illegal practices at Planned Parenthood clinics.  The menacing emails have continued since Rose went public with her investigations.

Columnist and mother of nine, Jenn Giroux is founder of the pro-life group, Women Influencing the Nation. Giroux was a leader in the grass roots effort to take legal action against Tiller and his clinic.   Following the shooting, she suspended her website, ChargeTiller.com, due to a barrage of profane and violent posts.

Pro-abortion aggression isn’t only a reality for movement leaders.  Judie Brown heads up the American Life League, a landmark organization founded after Roe v. Wade.  In response to our questions the league issued a statement.  It calls to mind the hostility pro-lifers face at every level as they, “stand in beautiful and striking contrast to both the violence inherent to the abortion mill and the street-side violence and drive-by intimidation of abortion supporters.”

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By Kathleen Gilbert

ENID, Oklahoma, June 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A former employee of Kansas late-term abortionist George Tiller has shared how her gruesome experiences at Tiller’s abortion facility drove her away from her pro-choice views and into a life of activism for the rights of the unborn.

Luhra Tivis, who was hired as a temp worker for Tiller and eventually became a full employee for one year, discussed her story Tuesday with the Enid News & Eagle in the wake of Tiller’s death May 31. Tiller was shot and killed while serving as an usher in his Lutheran church. His family has stated that Tiller’s Wichita abortion facility, Women’s Health Care Services, will not reopen.

In addition to normal secretarial work, Tivis told the Eagle that she “underwent some sales training” when she began work in 1988. In a separate testimony, published on the Pro-Life Action League’s website, Tivis explained: “I thought they were going to tell me how they want the information sheet filled out and how to keep the phone record and this and that.

“But what I was handed instead was a packet of information – materials to study – on how to be a high-pressure salesperson over the phone, like telemarketing: how to convince somebody to buy your product.”

Though Tivis says Tiller assured her at the outset that he only performed late-term abortions on “severely deformed” children or for a medical crisis, Tivis says she soon came to realize that Tiller’s words were not consistent with his practice.

“I was seeing eight- and nine-month pregnant women come in,” she said, “and out of those two dozen a week, only about 2 percent had medical deformities. I thought I was pro-choice back then, but week after week I kept seeing these women coming in with healthy babies and I saw all the records. I didn’t think that was right.”

Tivis’ testimony is congruent with the allegations of Operation Rescue, who had frequently denounced Tiller for killing perfectly healthy late-term babies. At the time of his death, Tiller was under investigation by the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts for performing illegal late-term abortions.

Discussing the typical abortion procedure, Tivis told the Pro-Life Action League in a previous interview: “[the mothers] have a sonogram, first thing and he tells them, ‘Oh, you’re not that far along.’ He’s very happy to take their money. Then the first thing he does to them is he kills that baby, because once that baby is dead, they can’t change their mind and get their money back.

“He uses the sonogram — a tool for life — to kill the baby. He uses that to guide the needle into the baby’s heart and he injects it with digoxin, which is a heart medication and it slows the baby’s heart down.

“The second day, the women come in and they have little group counseling sessions, but they don’t do any counseling until after that baby is already dead.”

Livis described the testimony of a Southwest Kansas woman who had written a letter to Tiller, which Tivis says the abortionist distributed to his staff to read, describing her third-trimester abortion there as “the most horrible experience of her life.”

“Although I was not down in the basement for any more than just a few seconds when those women were down there, I got a very vivid description of what actually went on down there from this woman,” said Tivis, referring to a room in the facility where women would give birth to their babies’ corpses following an abortion. ”She said that women were crying and screaming and there was blood everywhere – blood running down their legs and it was just horrible.”

One of the more disturbing aspects of the abortion process at Tiller’s clinic was the “memorial services” he openly offered, as published on his website, to parents after they had killed their child. Tiller even employed a chaplain at his clinic, where he offered baptisms, baptismal certificates, and mementos such as a lock of hair or “fetal footprints.”

The clinic also offered parents a chance to bond with the child’s corpse for a little while after the abortion, in a process Tiller described in a 1996 promotional video as an “identification and separation encounter.”

“We will bring the baby to you, either at the bedside, or we will go to our quiet room, and we will bring the baby to you there,” said the abortionist.

“During this encounter we will describe to you what’s right with your baby, we will identify what’s wrong with your baby. You may hold the baby. We can take pictures of you and the family holding the baby, if you wish, and that is not an uncommon request. … the identification/separation encounter may involve 2 or 3 hours of bonding with the baby - the identification that this is your baby and you have had a delivery.”

Tivis told the Eagle about one pivotal experience just before leaving the office: Tiller emerged from the surgery room with a cardboard box one day and asked her to open a door for him. Tivis saw his crematorium – where the babies’ remains are regularly incinerated.

“I realized that box was full of dead babies,” said Tivis. ”That freaked me out.”

She says Tiller fired her after an attorney she had applied for a position with told Tiller she was searching for jobs.

A Tiller spokeswoman later contradicted Tivis’ testimony at a meeting of the Senate State and Federal Affairs Committee, denying that Tiller performed abortions on healthy late-term babies and calling Tivis a “disgruntled employee whose credibility is lacking because of that,” according to a Wichita Eagle report.

Tivis has since then been active with Operation Rescue, and has spoken at pro-life rallies across the United States.

Regarding Tiller’s murder, Tivis said: “He wasn’t a bad guy. He didn’t deserve to be shot and killed.

“He wasn’t all bad. He was very kind to me on several occasions. He didn’t deserve what happened.”

Despite the sordidness of Tiller’s late-term abortion business, and the fact that he was under investigation for conducting illegal late-term abortions at the time of his death, the slain abortionist has been lifted up by the pro-abortion movement as a hero of the cause. In an e-mail shortly after his murder, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards described Tiller as “a hero to those seeking help in the most desperate of situations.”  “We honor the compassionate care he provided to so many,” said Planned Parenthood.