Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Why we fight....

Those who know me, know of my involvement in the pro-life movement. Reported in the news in the last few weeks has been a case out of the US involving an abortion clinic and members of the staff who have been arrested and charged with various counts. Babies were born alive after their abortion and were murdered with scissors.

No one really wants to claim any responsibility, and we have the pro-choice movement blaming pro-lifers for what happened. Despite the fact it was they who ignored the laws regulating such clinics, and allowed the clinic to operate without any accountability.

This story, and others like it, describe what is all too-common in the abortion industry...and why it is necessary for a pro-life movement to promote a culture of life.
National Abortion Federation implicated in Gosnell case; failed to report illegalities to authorities

Posted By Jill Stanek On January 20, 2011 @ 12:59 pm

The National Abortion Federation touts itself [2] as “the professional association of abortion providers in North America.”

NAF claims to have a membership of 400 abortion mills [3]. There is a screening process [4] to join. which abortionist Kermit Gosnell attempted in November 2009, “apparently, and astonishingly, the day after Karnamaya Mongar died,” according to a Grand Jury report released on January 20, which charged Gosnell and 9 accomplices with 8 counts of murder, including Mongar’s.

Upon receiving Gosnell’s application, an unnamed NAF evaluator assessed his Philadelphia mill, Women’s Medical Society, on December 14 and 15, 2009. According to the Grand Jury report, “It was the worst abortion clinic she had ever inspected,” and NAF denied Gosnell’s application.

Although initially hiding the fact, Gosnell eventually told the inspector about Mangor’s death.

But, according to the report, the NAF inspector “just never told anyone in authority about all the horrible, dangerous things she had seen.”

I submit that more than that, the NAF inspector admitted observing profuse illegalities she never reported either, such as nonphysicians giving sedation and open defiance of Pennsylvania’s 24-hr waiting period. She also noted several unsafe practices, such as not monitoring mothers after their abortions and leaving them unattended – overnight.

I submit that along with several Pennsylvania state agencies, NAF should also face charges of some sort. Following are excerpts about NAF from the Grand Jury report:

Despite his various efforts to fool her, the evaluator from NAF readily noted that records were not properly kept, that risks were not explained, that patients were not monitored, that equipment was not available, that anesthesia was misused….

A NAF quality assurance evaluator testified before the Grand Jury. She stated that NAF’s mission is to ensure safe, legal, and acceptable abortion care, and to promote health and justice for women….

In preparation for NAF’s visit, Latosha Lewis said that Gosnell and his wife frantically cleaned the facility. The doctor bought new lounge chairs to replace the bloody ones that were there, although by February 18, 2010, they were filthy again.

Despite these efforts, the NAF review did not go well. The first thing the evaluator noted when she arrived at 3801 Lancaster Avenue was the lack of an effective security system. Although the door was locked, when she rang the bell, no one answered. Even though she could not gain entry by ringing, she was able to walk right in when a man exited the clinic. Once inside, she found that the facility was packed with so much “stuff, kind of crowded and piled all over the place,” that she couldn’t find a space to put her small overnight bag. She found the facility’s layout confusing, and was concerned that patients could not find their way around it or out of it….

Read all of it here.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Are you resolved?

Ouch.
I’ve been thinking about what I can resolve to do differently. There’s plenty I could name, but it’s the resolve that gets you, isn’t it? There’s a scene, towards the end of The Untouchables, when Jim Malone (Sean Connery), his body riddled with bullets, wheezes at Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) through blood bubbling up from his mouth: “What are you prepared to do?”

Malone doesn’t ask Ness what he feels like doing, or what he thinks he might do. He doesn’t care about emotions, or reasoned probabilities. He’s seeking resolve. What are you prepared to do?

It’s worth asking ourselves, each of us alone, in the lonely night’s dark when bluster and delusion have left us, when the hard truths of our lives press in close as shadows. What are you prepared to do?

There’s so much I need to do, and so little I feel prepared to do, but those sad truths are neither here nor there. The question isn’t about what we aim to accomplish, so much as it is about what we strive for with everything that’s good within us.

This is liberating, if you think about it. You can’t control outcomes, after all. You can’t make your son stop drinking or your husband stop cheating or your daughter stop cutting herself. You can’t make the boys in the upstairs office give you that promotion, or guarantee that all your hard-earned savings won’t get poured down the drain by some cabal of feckless politicians, all of them blaming one another while they look to you to replenish the till.

You can’t control outcomes, but you can control your actions. You can be kind to your mother even if she no longer recognizes your face. You can pray five times a day — ten if you need to, hour by hour if you’re like me — for a temporary release from the grip of self-centeredness. You can be sure to tell each of your children every day this year that you love him. Every day. Look him in the eyes and say it.

Nothing you or I do guarantees a happy ending. The world can take everything from us like that. But each of us decides what his next step will be, and the step after that.

What are you prepared to do?
A good read.

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Careful what you pray for

“You that cry out so loud for right and justice,
Do you mean justice? deed and word and thought
Judges in yourselves by one eternal measure
Of absolute and incorruptible right?
I do not think so. When you call for justice
You would make God your bailiff, to collect
Your legal dues; but not your almoner,
Still less your judge. Alas! you cannot bend
God to your service; yet He may hear prayers–
Sometimes His vengeance is a granted prayer,
When a corrupt heart gains its whole desire
And finds itself in Hell. Children, take heed,
And do not pray for justice; you might get it.”

Dorothy Sayers, “The Just Vengeance,” in Four Sacred Plays