December 16, 2015 (LiveActionNews) -- Author Sue Hertz wrote the book Caught in the Crossfire: A Year on Abortion’s Front Line. She
interviewed both pro-lifers outside abortion facilities and abortion
facility workers and doctors. She also included her observations of
staff and abortion workers in the book. At one point, she observes a
first trimester abortion.
The abortion she describes was performed by suction and is known as
an aspiration (or suction) abortion. In this type of abortion, the
cervix is dilated with metal rods and a medical instrument called a
cannula attached to a tube is inserted into the womb. The tube is
attached on the other end to a suction machine, and when the machine
turns on, the preborn baby is pulled out in pieces.
The dismembered body parts are sucked into a jar which sometimes has a
cheesecloth sack to catch the fetal parts. The abortionist then scrapes
the lining of the uterus to get out any pieces of the baby or placenta
he may have missed. This is the most common abortion procedure in the
United States.
Hertz describes what the doctor did after the procedure she witnessed was complete. She says:
… [the doctor] removed from the glass jar the cheesecloth sack which
caught the fetal parts, dumping the parts into a basin at the end of the
table, between [the patient’s] feet. “Two legs, two arms, two fists, a
skull, a backbone, a placenta. “We’ve got it” he announced.
The doctor needs to carefully search through the parts to
make sure that every part of the baby has been removed. An arm or leg
left behind could cause a terrible infection. In very rare, but
horrifying cases, women have actually passed an arm or leg of their aborted child that was left inside them days after the abortion.
The diagram below illustrates an abortion by suction: This is how Planned Parenthood describes this type of abortion on their website:
A tube is inserted through the cervix into the uterus. Either a
hand-held suction device or a suction machine gently empties your
uterus. Sometimes, an instrument called a curette is used to remove any
remaining tissue that lines the uterus. It may also be used to check
that the uterus is empty.
This is the extent of the information Planned Parenthood wants it’s
patients to know. “Gently emptied” is a stunning euphemism. It is a
nice, sugarcoated way to describe a brutal procedure that tears apart a
baby. It reassures the woman considering abortion. What could be more
benign than a uterus “gently emptied” of “tissue”?
Planned Parenthood is struggling to convince us that there’s nothing
to see here, only “tissue” and a womb that is “gently emptied.” The fact
that this “gentle” emptying tears apart a baby limb from limb is
completely avoided. A woman reading this description would have no idea
about what abortion was going to do to her preborn baby.
Reading this description, it is not surprising that Planned
Parenthood fights so hard to close pregnancy resource centers and keep
their patients from going there. These centers tell women what the
abortion will do to their child – not to mention what the abortion can
do to the women themselves. Planned Parenthood doesn’t mention it, of
course, but abortion has risks for the mother. One in 10 women have complications. These may include:
hemorrhage
infection
ripped or perforated uterus
cervical injury
embolism
anesthesia complications
convulsions
chronic abdominal pain
cervical injury
endotoxic shock
Rh sensitization
More insidious are complications in future pregnancies. In these
cases, a woman may go through her abortion without detectable
complications and think that everything went fine. But damage to the
body can lead to infertility or inability to carry a baby to term.
The cervix is meant to open slowly over hours during labor, not to be
wrenched open in seconds by metal instruments. Dilation of the cervix in
an abortion clinic can cause cervical incompetence, in which the
cervix, which is supposed to hold the baby safely in the womb, gives way
too soon in a future pregnancy, possibly causing a stillbirth, miscarriage, or premature delivery. The scraping of the uterus can cause scar tissue to form, which can prevent a woman from getting pregnant at all, or even cause a tubal pregnancy, which can be fatal.
A suction abortion is a brutal procedure that kills a baby and can
scar a woman. Pro-choice groups and abortion providers like Planned
Parenthood sugarcoat the procedure and describe it in terms designed to
raise no red flags in a woman’s mind. There is a stark difference
between what actually goes on in a suction abortion and what Planned
Parenthood is prepared to reveal. Reprinted with permission from Live Action News.
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Michael O'Brien painting on the approaching nativity Michael O'Brien
Editor’s note: LifeSiteNews is pleased to
bring you this truly inspirational story of an artist who in his 20s
decided to give all his talents to serving God and the Church, at the
huge cost of being completely rejected and shunned by the world. It is a
profound story of faith, the kind that moves mountains. May our faith
in God’s providence over each and every one of us increase this Advent.
December 17, 2015 (LifeSiteNews)
– I was very successful as a young artist in my early 20s. For example,
the first exhibit of my work in a major gallery in Ottawa, paintings on
nature and on human scenes, no overtly religious matter, was a complete
success. There was a lot of media attention and promises of another
show to follow.
In a year or two following that, as I was working towards a new show,
it struck me in my heart, and my wife confirmed it, and was a moving
factor behind me considering this question, why not do the impossible
thing? Why not simply paint for Christ and his Church, without regard
for the consequences?
By that point we were expecting our first child and I said, "No, it's
a beautiful dream, but we're married now, we're expecting our first
baby, and we have to be responsible. I have to feed you."
And my wife said, "Do we or do we not believe in God? Do we or do we
not believe that the Lord of Providence is at work in our lives?" And I
said, "But of course we do." So,
on May 1, 1976, my wife and I went to our local parish in a little
village in the Rocky Mountains and we put my paintbrushes under the
altar — it was the feast of St. Joseph the Worker — and we made a prayer
on our knees before the Blessed Sacrament, asking St. Joseph to pray
for us, to take hold of this very, very fragile dream and very, very
small life and do whatever God decides. So we consecrated my work
entirely to the service of the Lord and his Church. And so began many
years, decades of incredible movements of providence and incredible
opposition. There are just too many stories to tell you.
‘Get Lost’
I had to travel around the country with my art because we were living
in such a remote area. When I went back to the old galleries that had
once seen me as the golden child or the cash cow and I showed them my
new explicitly Christian work, they said, "We love your style very much,
but you must understand that the art-buying public is no longer
interested in this worldview." Which was a nice way of saying, "Shape up
to the revolution or get lost."
So, I got lost for about two decades. I kept trying, kept applying
for shows at major galleries. They loved the technique in all my work,
but regarding the subject matter, their endless refrain was, in effect,
"If you would simply delete the Christian content, or adapt it to
contemporary tastes, we would be very happy to give you a show."
Michael O'Brien One
year there were 11 such galleries that conditionally offered me a show,
turned me down, offered me a show, cancelled the show. One gallery
closed permanently just before my show was to open, another's curator
was fired and the show cancelled, and at a third, the curator had a
nervous breakdown and the gallery shut down…..it went on and on, a
constant bizarre struggle. The net result was there was no exhibition of
my explicitly Christian work.
Finally I realized that this was going nowhere. So I just tried to
survive by painting commissions. A few years before this, I had received
something interiorly, a story that erupted in my imagination. Was it a
grace or was it just good old Irish imagination? I just didn't know, but
because it was so compelling, so powerful, it was becoming obsessive
and I had to get it out of my head. I wrote it down and it sat on a
shelf for about a year.
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Eventually I got the idea of sending it to a publisher in Canada. It
was the same situation: Publisher after publisher said, "We love your
writing style, love this story. However, the reading public is no longer
interested in this world view." By which they meant orthodox
Catholicism. The book was not heavy-handed didactic, nor were my later
books. They were just telling stories in which the reality of God's
presence, the reality of the mysterious movements of the providence in
human lives, was part of the story, as it is in reality. Its title was A Cry of Stone, but it wasn't published until more than twenty years later.
Then came about twenty years of collecting rejection letters for my
novels and from art galleries, all of them subtly offering success if I
would only adapt the faith dimension to a more "contemporary" worldview.
But always there was an inner thread in me that said, "No, I'm not
going to play by the world’s rules. This is how they are corrupting
nearly everything. The lie controls most of contemporary culture, and
I'm not going to cooperate." Michael giving this talk to invited guests in home of LifeSite board member. Steve Jalsevac/LifeSiteThe
temptation to compromises can come in many different forms, and so they
did for me. But in the end, I always felt profound disgust at what was
being done to us, the tyranny of the lie that covers the whole Western
world. And I said to myself, “If I am never published I have done my
best. I was here. It cannot be said that Christian culture was not
present. It was here. And it was rejected. It was ghettoized. But we
spoke the word that was given to us, and we lived it, in season and out
of season.”
Part of coming to terms with this insane impossible life was to face,
as a husband and father, the pain of being a failure. To be unable to
provide security for my family, and throughout most of those 40 years,
even comfort. We lived very simply. We still try to live very simply.
‘Trusting in God's hands’
But this material poverty is only the surface of things. The deeper
work that God does in all of us, regardless of our circumstances in
life, is to take us to a more profound level of dependence on him. It
can lead us to a condition of spiritual childhood, to become very little
and trusting in God's hands, to do our part and to let him do the
rest.
Eighteen years after writing my first unpublished novel, the general
manager of Ignatius Press called me up one day because he had seen my
collection of paintings on the Rosary, which my wife and I had
self-published, and were distributing almost by hand. Ignatius Press had
come across the book and had decided to distribute it.
In our phone conversation, the manager asked me if I had written anything else. And I said, "Well, yes, but you wouldn't be interested in it."
At this point I had written my novel Father Elijah. I was so
discouraged about the whole thing, even though I knew I would never
give up, never stop painting or writing according to what I was inspired
to write or paint, I had come to believe that my work would never find
an outlet. It would never find a place in the mainstream or anywhere in
culture. So you can hear how the demon of discouragement, as St. Francis
of Assisi would call it, had worked on me for many years.
I didn't want to waste anymore time building up false hopes. Ignatius
Press, this dazzling star of orthodoxy in the U.S. was doing a
phenomenal work, yes, but they didn't publish fiction at that time.
However, the manager said, "Well, we might be interested. Why don't you
try us? Send us the manuscript."
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I said, "I have to be frank: I'm going to send you the manuscript,
and you are going to reject it. And I am going to lose $10 for postage
that I do not have to spare." He said, "Send us the manuscript and we’ll
send you the $10," which he promptly forgot to do. I should add that
years later he slapped a ten dollar bill in my hand with a grin, and we
both had a good laugh.
A few months after submitting my manuscript of Father Elijah,
Ignatius Press sent me a contract for the publication of the book,
which appeared in 1996. Since then my other novels have been published,
and also my nonfiction.
‘We must never lose hope’
It was a very important lesson for me, looking back in hindsight, to
see that we must never lose hope, and that if we are given a particular
grace or calling, we must be willing to persist through, at times, very
dark waters, understanding that there will come temptation for false
relief from trials.
Some temptations are obvious. But there will come an alternative kind
of temptation—to simply pursue a good life, a good faithful Catholic
life, but to leave unfulfilled the particular calling and path that God
has given you. Technically, no sins have been committed, but something
is lost, some fruitfulness for souls is lost to the world. We cannot
measure — this we must keep in mind always — we cannot measure what the
success or failure of our efforts is. It is not our task to measure
them. That is God's business.
Our task is to be faithful to the inspirations, guided by reason and
discernment always, but at the core is going forth in the face of the
culture of death, in a dark time, with the light of Christ within us, in
Christian hope. That willingness, the Lord can work with. That, the
Lord can make fruitful, if we would only trust. I'm not talking about
feelings of trust. Feelings of trust come and go. But the choice
to trust, to put one step in front of another, as we cross the desert
of the modern age. There, in the desert, many surprises await us.
Scripture says the Lord is a God of surprises. And he certainly has been
so in my life.
Anyway, I could go on and on and on. I would say, above all else, we
must trust in the Lord in all circumstances. Trust in him absolutely.
Entrust your whole life to him in prayer. And trust especially when
there seems very little reason, on a human level, to trust. For that is
often when he is doing his greatest work: On the cross. That is often,
perhaps always, the very place from which fruitfulness comes. Born in Ottawa in 1948, Michael O’Brien is the author of
twenty-eight books, notably the novel Father Elijah and eleven other
novels, which have been published in fourteen languages and widely
reviewed in both secular and religious media in North America and
Europe. His essays on faith and culture have appeared in international
journals such as Communio, Catholic World Report, Catholic Dossier,
Inside the Vatican, The Chesterton Review, LifeSite and others. For
seven years he was the editor of the Catholic family magazine, Nazareth
Journal. He lives with his wife Sheila in Barry’s Bay, Ontario. This story is based on a video recorded talk given by Michael
O’Brien on May 28, 2015 in Fort Worth, Texas. Corrections to the text
have been made by Michael O’Brien. Michael became a member of the
LifeSite board of directors this year. Read and see the beginning 18 minutes of this talk by Micheal here
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 17, 2015 (LifeSiteNews)
– Not enough teenagers are being taught about condoms, artificial birth
control, and other "skills" "needed to avoid HIV, other STDs, and
unintended pregnancy," says a new government report.
Every other year, the CDC surveys the nation's high schools and
middle schools. Last Wednesday, it released the results of the 2014
School Health Profiles Survey at the National HIV Prevention Conference.
The results covered a wide variety of health behaviors, including a
section on sexual education.
The sexual education results were unsatisfactory, said a press
release, which noted that "fewer than half of high schools and only a
fifth of middle schools teach all 16 topics recommended by ... [the CDC]
as essential components of sexual health education."
Those topics include, but are not limited to, "benefits of being
sexually abstinent" and how important it is to use "condoms consistently
and correctly," as well as using condoms "at the same time as another
... [form of] contraception" and the "importance of limiting the number
of sexual partners."
Students from 6th through 12th grades should also be receiving
education on "how HIV and other STDs are transmitted"; the "health
consequences of HIV, other STDs, and pregnancy"; and the "efficacy of
condoms," as well as how to gain access to, and "how to correctly use,"
condoms, according to the CDC.
The study examined the percentage of schools in each state that
taught each recommended area of sexual education, then took the median
of each state for its national assessment.
The benefits of abstinence were most often taught to middle-school
students, with a median of 77 percent of the middle schools surveyed. A
median of 75 percent of schools taught "[h]ow to create and sustain
healthy and respectful relationships," while education on how HIV and
other STDs are transmitted and "health consequences of HIV, other STDs,
and pregnancy" were taught 75 percent of the time.
Schools least often taught "how to obtain" and "how to correctly use"
condoms, at 27 percent and 23 percent. Seventeen percent of middle
schools taught all 16 recommended aspects of sexual education.
For high school students, STD prevention topped the list, with 95
percent of schools teaching "[h]ow HIV and other STDs are transmitted"
and about the "[h]ealth consequences of HIV, other STDs, and
pregnancy." Abstinence was next at 94 percent.
Sixty percent of high schools taught "[h]ow to obtain condoms," and
54 percent taught "[h]ow to correctly use a condom," the two
lowest-taught areas of the 16 CDC-recommended areas of education.
Forty-six percent of high schools taught all 16 aspects of sexual
education.
The CDC also assessed what percentage of schools taught high school
students to use seven contraceptives, including the IUD and others that
double as abortifacients. Sixty-six percent taught how to "the pill," 61
percent the "patch," 58 percent the "ring," 61 percent the "shot," 55
percent implants, 60 percent the IUD, and 49 percent emergency
contraception.
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Forty-three percent of schools taught all seven methods of birth control.
Nineteen large urban communities were also sampled, though New York
City was notably excluded. While the urban communities' median numbers
were often within five percent of the national median, both middle
schools and high schools were far more likely to teach students about
condoms.
In a press release, the director of the CDC's National Center for
HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention said, "We
need to do a better job of giving our young people the skills and
knowledge they need to protect their own health. It's important to teach
students about healthy relationships and how to reduce sexual risk before they start to have sex."
The press release cites condoms and other forms of artificial birth
control – including abortifacients – as "essential topics in HIV, STDs,
pregnancy prevention, and other health subjects," calling them
"age-appropriate topics for middle and high schools based on the
scientific evidence for what helps young people avoid risk."
A CDC media spokesperson did not provide LifeSiteNews information on
whether the CDC recommends informing students of the side-effects of
contraception or the abortifacient potential of some contraceptives.
However, LifeSiteNews was told that the "CDC does not recommend the
selection of a specific curriculum, but recognizes the authority of
local school districts to make sexual health education curriculum
decisions."
"CDC emphasizes that all sexual health education should be medically
accurate and consistent with scientific evidence. It should allow
students to develop and demonstrate developmentally appropriate sexual
health-related knowledge, attitudes, skills, and practices. It should
also be consistent with community values, and developed with the active
involvement of parents.
"What is critical is that our students get age-appropriate
instruction across key areas of sexual health in both middle and high
school in order to develop the skills they need to be healthy in
adulthood."
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Cardinal Peter Turkson speaks at a Vatican press conference Lisa Bourne / LifeSiteNews
December 17, 2015 (LifeSiteNews)
– After sparking controversy during a BBC interview outside the UN
climate change talks in Paris last week, Cardinal Peter Turkson is
regretting use of the term “birth control” when what he meant was
spacing of births or “responsible parenthood.” Speaking to Aleteia’s Diane Montagna,
Cardinal Turkson said, “When I used the phrase ‘birth control,’ what I
had in mind was the Church’s own traditional teaching about responsible
parenthood. So wherever anyone reads ‘birth control’ in the BBC
interview, they should understand it as meaning ‘responsible
parenthood.’”
During the BBC interview,
Turkson, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and
Peace, said that “birth control” could “offer a solution” to the impacts
of climate change. "This has been talked about," he said, "and the Holy
Father on his trip back from the Philippines also invited people to
some form of birth control, because the church has never been against
birth control and people spacing out births and all of that. So yes, it
can offer a solution."
Cardinal Turkson explained to Aleteia that the BBC reporter had used
the expression “birth control” and he was responding in kind, but “my
intention was to present the Church as not inimical or opposed to the
idea of spacing births,” he said.
Another controversial aspect of the BBC interview was the cardinal’s
suggestion that Pope Francis himself had called for “control of birth.”
Speaking of difficulties such as water and food shortages that are said
to come from overpopulation and climate change, he added, “The amount
of population that is critical for the realisation of this is still
something we need to discover, yet the Holy Father has also called for a
certain amount of control of birth."
The cardinal was referencing Pope Francis’ in-flight interview on the
return from Manila where the pope urged “responsible parenthood,” and
chastised a woman as irresponsible for having seven children by
C-section. The pope said Catholics should not breed “like rabbits.”
Addressing this point with Montagna, Cardinal Turkson called the
pope’s use of the expression ‘breeding like rabbits’ “unfortunate”.
Those “unfortunate” remarks of the pope received some of the most
severe backlash from Catholics and resulted in Pope Francis’ first
public walkback of his statement. In comments to the Italian bishops’
newspaper Avvenire shortly after the pope’s in-flight interview, Vatican
Archbishop Giovanni Becciu said,
“The Pope is truly sorry” that his remarks about large families “caused
such disorientation.” Archbishop Becciu said the pope “absolutely did
not want to disregard the beauty and the value of large families.”
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