When a woman is pregnant, people often say she is “expecting a child” or is “going to have a baby” or is “going to be a mother.” We all use these expressions from force of habit, and using them has no reflection on the strength of our pro-life convictions.

Nevertheless, may I suggest that we no longer use these phrases. They do not accurately describe what is happening.

A woman who is pregnant is not “expecting” a child. She already has one. The child exists and is living and growing in her womb. She is not about to bring the child “into the world.” The child is already in the world. The mother’s womb is as much in the world as the mother herself.

The pregnant woman is not “going to be” a mother. She already is a mother. By saying she is “going to be” a mother, we inadvertently reinforce the notion that motherhood begins at birth. This reinforces the idea that the child really is a child only at birth.

A pregnant woman is fully a mother. She does not have “half” a child, or a child “on the way.” (“On the way” from where? to where?) The child is here, already in the world, fully unique and in possession of the same dignity as every other person.

If our language reflects this reality, we will help the world to understand that children in the womb are indeed members of the human family-right here and now!

People will then be able to ask the right question about abortion.

The reasons many people give in support of abortion, and the reasons many women obtain abortions, focus on the question “Should she have another child?” Issues such as partner support, maturity, and resources are discussed. When we say, “No abortion,” they hear us saying, “Have a child no matter what.” They conclude that we are unrealistic or insensitive to the real-life plight of the woman.

But the question here is not “Should she have another child?” Our answer to that question can sometimes be “no.” There can be circumstances–medical, financial, and social–in which a person should avoid having another child. (See Vatican II, The Church in the Modern World, Section 50.)

If, however, a woman is pregnant, she already has a child. There is no longer a question about whether this child will come into existence. The only honest question or choice left at this point is “Will this child be cared for or will this child be killed?” While we can sometimes say that circumstances dictate not having another child, we can never say that circumstances dictate killing a child.

Unless people distinguish the question of “having a child” from the question of “killing a child you have,” they will not even begin honestly evaluating abortion, and will argue past each other.

We are in fact very sensitive to circumstances such as immaturity, or lack of resources to raise a child. Were the child born, however, would the problems of immaturity or lack of resources disappear the day after birth? Yet on that day, just about everyone can see that killing the child is not justified. What makes abortion different? What is the difference between killing the child before or after birth to solve the problems? It’s the same woman, the same problems, the same child. There is no difference in reality. There is only a different question.

http://www.priestsforlife.org/brochures/correct.html

I’m fervently waving goodbye to the first trimester, and I literally awoke on Wednesday (the day I turned 13 weeks) expecting a magic switch to have jolted me into the sex crazed, energy laden, second tri chick I adore.  Here it is Friday, Friday people, and still nothing!  I’m tired, in a “I really can’t drag myself off the couch” tired kinda way.  I’m still stuck eating disgusting food, and drinking Ginger Ale by the case load.  Around week 7 I started to get exceptionally nauseous, literally almost throwing up a few times.  I couldn’t stomach RAW foods any longer, the thought of fresh Graperfruit Juice turned my stomach, fresh veggies, forget about it.  I was craving meat smothered in cheese.  Normally, I hate meat, mind you.  I’m a RAW foodie, I love juicing and dehydrating and Smoothies.  Fast forward to today and, sadly I’m not as nauseous as the excessive nausea was due to a twin, that didn’t grow or thrive or ??.  Truth be told, I’m struggling with this.  I’m not sure how to feel.  I felt at once grief and relief at the fact that I had a baby who was living and thriving within my womb.  Who am I to look God’s gracious gift and ask for more?  But at the same time, there was another baby who by 9 weeks was being expelled from my body.  What does that mean?  How should one feel?  But recently the nausea has subsided, however, not the utter distaste for all that is healthy.

Today, all I can stomach is Pepperoni Pizza.  The cheese must be hot and melted and the Pepperoni must be crisp on the sides.  No-other meat, veggie, fruit, nothing is permitted to reside on my piece of pizza.  I eat pizza everyda, drink ginger ale and down my Pre-Natal Vitamins, which I loved during Lent because they are gummy vits covered in sugar, but now they are repulsive.  The end result of this diet is that the scale and I are not on speaking terms, in fact I may have broken it when I threw it at the ground.  This could get ugly if I don’t get my mojo back, get into the river, get moving in my running shoes and start eating some healthy foods.  However, the glory of being pregnant is it’s truly the new black.  The bigger your stomach gets, the smaller the rest of you seems.  Golden!

I’ve also begun the obsession of seeking a dr who will do a vbac after 2 C-sections!  Exciting.  My previous dr told me I’d never find anyone in the entire US who would do this, but I have an appt May 11 with a dr a mere 1.5 hours away who makes the decision on a case by case basis!   Those of you who followed us back in 2010 when I was pregnant with Elly will know the agony, not an overly dramatic word in this case, I put myself through regarding VBAC.  I had a dr who seemed somewhat ok with the idea.  However, the hospital had a 100% zero tolerance policy for vbac’s.  So, the scenario I was looking at was that I could not arrive at the hospital before I was actively in the final stages of labor and I had to demand my dr perform a vbac.  She said I’d have to sign my life (and that of my baby’s) away with a gazillion forms and she wouldn’t be able to really stand up for me except to say, I must do what my patient wants me to do.  This sounded fine at 6 months, but at 8.5 months, I was freaked, especially when she told me that if a problem did arise there was a 99% chance the hospital would not be able to save the baby.  They simply were not equipped.  I threw in the towel and had a repeat C.

Now, C-section’s are not the end of the world, people.  They aren’t terribly painful, you can get up within the first 5-6 hours and walk around and you can see your baby immediately after.  My only reason for craving a vbac is the excitement, the unknowing of when your baby will be born.  With a C-section, the due date is planned, and I’m not a planner, planning goes against my grain!  Hence, I enjoy the chaos of the inevitable, is this labor?  Is THIS labor and I’m truly one of those freaks that loves being in labor, the anticipation is out of this world!

And talking about obsession, I’m obsessed with baby names.  This is a fun obsession, though!  We have a boys name should we be blessed with a boy, the middle name is up in the air, but we do have the First Name, and no, I’m not telling you!  The girls name is quite a different story.  We are in trouble should God choose to bless us with a baby girl, primarily because we have perameters.  The name must be 3-syllables and end in “n”.   I love the name Gianna (St. Gianna Beretta the Patron Saint of Life and the St I prayed fervently to when I thought I was miscarrying), and this will be our baby’s middle name should we have a girl.  But that’s where it ends.  I’ll give you an idea of how desperate I feel, here’s a list of names that struck me as possibilities when I first heard them:  Maelen, Adelyn, Gabriellen, Hadrien, Evangeline, Briallen (I still like this one), Camelyn, Rhiannon, Belen, Arielyn (pretty still), Cymbelin, Magdalen, Gwendolyn, Eadlen.  Pretty stinking desperate!  We will definitely take suggestions, but it’s gotta sound good with Gianna.

So that’s where we are (I am).   Dan’s not involved at the moment other than to say, “I hate it.”  to every name I throw out there.  He’ll get on board about 1 month ahead though, he always does!!  As for me, I don’t rush pregnancy, I absolutely love being pregnant as I would expect one would have to in order to be pregnant for the 12th time!  That blows my mind.  I am going to have 1 dozen children.  18 years ago, who would have ever thought?  Who would have thought that the  college drop-out and his stay-at-home wife could make a go at a life and make it such a fantastic, amazing,  joyous, adventurous and  blessed life at that?   Oct 24, 2012 is our due date and I can’t wait for all the firsts that I will experience with this pregnancy, but then again, I can.  God Bless, have a wonderful weekend!!

Find the original post here:  http://www.kelloggshow.com/2012/04/pregnancy-the-new-black/

When President Clinton presented the Presidential Citizen’s Medal in 2001 to one of NETWORK’s founders, he praised the “national Catholic lobby that has mobilized thousands of nuns and lay people to fight for social progress in South Africa, for women’s rights and for economic justice.”

Yet, it was during the debate over Obamacare when NETWORK attracted national attention. As NETWORK describes proudly on its web site: “….during the 2010 health care reform struggle, NETWORK Executive Director Simone Campbell, SSS, wrote the “nuns’ letter” supporting the bill and got 59 signers on the letter, including LCWR. She was thanked by President Obama and invited to the ceremony celebrating its being signed into law.”

That the Leadership Conference of Women’s Religious (LCWR) had signed on to a letter supporting health care legislation with federal funding for abortion — and opposed the position of the U.S. bishops — was stunning news and provided the Obama administration Catholic cover in its attempt to overcome the resistance from Catholic Democrats in the House who were opposing the legislation. Then Speaker Nancy Pelosi was handed a powerful tool to strong-arm recalcitrant Catholic Democrats who were not towing the line. In the end, all but one — Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois — voted for the bill.

The bishops were furious, and Cardinal George of Chicago, then USCCB president, tried to set the record straight by issuing a statement that groups like NETWORK, LCWR, and the Catholic Health Association did not speak officially for the Catholic Church. But it was too late, the media battle had been waged and won.

Many Catholics have wondered whether or not NETWORK, LCWR, and Sr. Carol Keehan, head of the Catholic Health Association, would ever be held accountable for their scandalous support of health care legislation containing federal funding for abortion.  Yesterday’s announcement from the Vatican provided an answer regarding NETWORK and LCWR, but Sr. Carol Keehan and her trade association of Catholic hospitals were not mentioned.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Faith issued an eight-page “doctrinal assessment” leading to the conclusion that “the current doctrinal and pastoral situation of LCWR is grave and a matter of serious concern, also given the influence the LCWR exercises on religious congregation in other parts of the world.” An investigation of LCWR, including its ties to NETWORK, described as its “social justice lobby,” and the Resource Center for Religious Institutes will be headed by Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle, WA, assisted by Bishop Leonard P. Blair of Toledo, OH, and Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Springfield, IL.

The Vatican’s statement specifically mentioned LCWR’s silence on the right to life issue and its explicit opposition to the U.S. bishops in some of its public statements. The Congregation observed that on “issues of crucial importance in the life of the Church and society, such as the Church’s biblical view of family life and human sexuality, are not part of the LCWR agenda in a way that promotes Church teaching.”

The ongoing investigation will make it very difficult for NETWORK to play much of a role in the 2012 election cycle. The Congregation’s announcement also serves as a shot over the bow to any Catholic leader, like Sister Carol Keehan, or any organization that explicitly contradicts the position of the U.S. bishops on a settled issue like abortion and marriage.  Prudential matters give Catholics significant leeway when it comes to differences of opinion, but when it comes to an intrinsic evil like abortion it was only a matter of time before the Vatican intervened.

By Deal W. Hudson, Chairman of Catholic Advocate

Find the original article here: http://www.catholicadvocate.com/2012/04/vatican-tell-nuns-enough-is-enough/

Corruption seeks approval by deception when its safely guarded secrets are exposed. Corruptions’ apologists do that and more as they vilify the whistleblowers in blind obedience to the god of denial.

Since Planned Parenthood has become synonymous with womens’ battle cry for ‘reproductive rights’, and as we continue to bankroll this billion dollar baby, if Planned Parenthood were a ‘she’, we whistleblowers would simply say she looks more like an aging harlot, despite the fan club, despite the coerced funding of her operation, despite her come-hither title, and despite the orchestrated and sympathetic cliched sound bites so necessary to her survival.

Take the “it’s just 3%” claim that her operation involves only a small amount of human sacrifice. She places such services as condoms one-to-one beside her signature product, abortion. What she fails to disclose is that 91.1% of all pregnant women under her care receive abortions under her watchful eye.

She continues to allow the deception, once declared true by her own national spokeswoman and president, that they offer mammograms. They do not.

We now know they offer breast ‘exams’. Somehow she would have us believe that poor women are unable to self-exam and need that special ‘touch’ which somehow justifies taxpayer forced funds of $400M a year (not to mention funding here at the county level which has become a standard and defiant practice.)

Many in our community have stated there are no abortions performed at our Planned Parenthood clinic. Not so. We now have information of where and what kind of abortions are offered across the U.S.A., including here at home. The choices are chemical, surgical, and/or medical abortions. There is even an “Express” facility in CO for women on the go. Check out http://www.stopp.org and see how vast are the growing offerings across the American landscape.

Thanks to a now global 40 Days For Life semi-annual campaign, the conversation about abortion (4,000 daily in the U.S.) has changed. We’re finally starting to see the truth behind the industry’s worn-out and deceptive cliches and practices.

I would like to see a no-kill Planned Parenthood. Why do we want to save every cat and dog and kill our own children before they are born?

Let’s cut all tax dollars for Planned Parenthood until it becomes a no-kill Planned Parenthood.

Please contact Planned Parenthood, and the U.S. Senate and Congress. Tell them you would like a no-kill Planned Parenthood.

John Lepkowski

New Castle

In a frank interview with the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and is increasingly being billed as America’s leading Catholic cleric, says the Church has failed to communicate its moral teachings in the area of sexuality.  He says further that the fault lies with Church leaders.

“We have gotten gun-shy . . . in speaking with any amount of cogency on chastity and sexual morality,” he added.

The Church’s own failure to communicate its teachings on contraception has been one of the leading tools used against it in its fight against Obama’s mandate, with critics repeatedly pointing out that the majority of Catholic women are using some form of contraception.

The Cardinal told Taranto that the problem arose in the “the mid- and late ‘60s, when the whole world seemed to be caving in, and where Catholics in general got the impression that what the Second Vatican Council taught, first and foremost, is that we should be chums with the world, and that the best thing the church can do is become more and more like everybody else.”

The “flash point,” he said, was Humanae vitae, Pope Paul VI’s prophetic 1968 encyclical reiterating the Church’s opposition to contraception.

Humanae vitae “brought such a tsunami of dissent, departure, disapproval of the church, that I think most of us—and I’m using the first-person plural intentionally, including myself—kind of subconsciously said, ‘Whoa. We’d better never talk about that, because it’s just too hot to handle.’,” said Dolan.

“We forfeited the chance to be a coherent moral voice when it comes to one of the more burning issues of the day,” he added.

Dolan went to explain that the sex abuse scandal “intensified our laryngitis over speaking about issues of chastity and sexual morality, because we almost thought, ‘I’ll blush if I do. . . . After what some priests and some bishops, albeit a tiny minority, have done, how will I have any credibility in speaking on that?’”

But he said the youth are now demanding that the Church speak authoritatively on issues of sexuality. “They will be quick to say, ‘By the way, we want you to know that we might not be able to obey it. . . . But we want to hear it. And in justice, you as our pastors need to tell us, and you need to challenge us.’”

In the interview, published on Saturday, Cardinal Dolan described his meeting with President Obama in November, at which the president promised to protect religious freedom.

The Cardinal says President Obama told him in November that he has great respect for the Church’s work in health care, education, and charity, and had no desire to impede it. The president, he said, asked him to communicate that to the nation’s bishops.

“So you can imagine the chagrin,” said Dolan, “when he called me at the end of January to say that the mandates remain in place and that there would be no substantive change, and that the only thing that he could offer me was that we would have until August.”

“I said, ‘Mr. President, I appreciate the call. Are you saying now that we have until August to introduce to you continual concerns that might trigger a substantive mitigation in these mandates?’ He said, ‘No, the mandates remain. We’re more or less giving you this time to find out how you’re going to be able to comply.’ I said, ‘Well, sir, we don’t need the [extra time]. I can tell you now we’re unable to comply.’”

Then, on February 10th, the president called him the morning he announced the modified mandate, which purports to have insurance companies pay the cost of the abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations, and contraception, rather than employers.

The bishops and pro-life leaders have rejected this “accommodation,” however, saying it merely repackages the original mandate because insurance companies will simply up the employers’ fees to cover the “free” contraceptive coverage.

On the phone that morning on February 10th, when Cardinal Dolan asked the president if he was open to his input, the president told him the modified mandate was set in stone.

In his interview with Taranto, Cardinal Dolan insisted again that the bishops main concern is religious freedom rather than contraception.

“We find it completely unswallowable, both as Catholics and mostly as Americans, that a bureau of the American government would take it upon itself to define ‘ministry,’” he said. “We would find that to be—we’ve used the words ‘radical,’ ‘unprecedented’ and ‘dramatically intrusive.’”

http://lifesite.net/news/ny-cardinal-dolan-says-church-failed-to-teach-doctrine-on-contraception

First, we don’t need or seek Mr. Bosco’s approval in our decision to bring our family, including children, to the vigil. We are practicing Catholics and, therefore, are pro-life. One can’t be a Catholic or a Christian and be pro-abortion. Neither can a person stand idly by as a spectator of the single greatest crime in American history.

My question to Mr. Bosco is: “What’s so bad about abortion that it’s inappropriate for children?” This isn’t a rhetorical question; Mr. Bosco touts abortion as a vehicle to equality, yet children can’t be near the facility? What gives?

It’s hypocritical that Mr. Bosco hails choice, yet judges us because we choose to bring our children to a prayer vigil. We’re simply teaching them our faith. Those on the left are for tolerance and acceptance as long as it’s in line with what they believe.

I find it astonishing that anyone still thinks of Planned Parenthood as an organization that actually serves the health interests of the poor, women in particular. While that’s a nice hook to hang your hat, it’s just not true. Planned Parenthood isn’t interested in the health and welfare of all Americans, but prefers to discriminate against those who reside in their mothers’ wombs.

Those who are so inclined can find the truth. It’s just that most people enjoy the comfort of oblivion. Most wouldn’t bother to show up for a vigil, regardless of the cause.

Finally, as for Mr. Bosco’s inference that our goal is to intimidate, he’s greatly uninformed. We stand in solidarity, on behalf of the women and children Planned Parenthood destroys. In fact, we’ve been accosted by Planned Parenthood employees.

Last Saturday we were packing up and a woman came out of Planned Parenthood, her finger jabbing. She was out of control. She pounded her finger in my friend’s face, hollering, “I’m not for God, and I’m not for what you’re doing.”

The battle lines are drawn. You’re either for God or not.

How many babies have been saved during the campaign? What are the numbers? How many abortions took place inside Planned Parenthood during those very hours we prayed? What were the numbers?

I know that nationwide, Planned Parenthood’s own numbers boast 329,445 abortions were performed in 2010, and I had a hard time wrapping my mind around that number.

I left Glenwood Springs, population 9,614, I drove through Carbondale, population 6,427, Basalt, population 3,857, Snowmass Village, population 2,826, arriving in Aspen, population 6,658. My journey of about 40 miles in about one hour, adds up to a population of 29,382 people. (U.S. Census 2010)

Let’s say, one day, all 29,282 people were killed — poisoned? Burned chemically? Hacked to death with surgical tools? Left to die — disposed of in the trash.

Using that far-fetched fictitious scenario of wiping out the entire Roaring Fork Valley population, the numbers become more than numbers. The 329,445 abortions performed per year by Planned Parenthood becomes chilling in its reality, because we would have to destroy every man, woman and child from Glenwood Springs to Aspen 11.25 times to equal the work Planned Parenthood accomplishes in one year.

And speaking of numbers, minority women make up 13 percent of the female population ages 15-44, yet underwent 36 percent of American abortions. On average, 1,876 black babies are aborted every day. (Source: blackgenocide.org)

When we do the math of all of the numbers above, civilization should weep.

Ramona Klinger

Carbondale

The words on the t-shirt:

“Planned Parenthood SUCKS the life out of a womb”