Hello Baby–3 D imagery

Incredible 3D scans allow parents to see foetus SMILING and MOVING in stunning detail | Mail Online.

  • The state-of-the-art software adds extra detail to 3D ultrasound scans
  • Software developed by Dr Bernard Benoit to help detect malformations
  • Expectant parents can see unborn baby smiling and kicking in the womb

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 06:23 EST, 29 March 2013 | UPDATED: 12:39 EST, 29 March 2013

A blurry blob on a hospital screen is the first view most expectant parents get of their child.

But new state-of-the-art imaging software is now able to map a foetus in incredible detail.

The software takes a conventional 3D ultrasound scan and adds colour, skin texture, lighting and shadows.

Scroll down to watch video

The incredibly detailed pictures of the foetus allow parents to see their baby's face before it is born

The incredibly detailed pictures of the foetus allow parents to see their baby’s face before it is born

The images are created by adding colour, skin texture and shadows to conventional 3D scans

The images are created by adding colour, skin texture and shadows to conventional 3D scans

The technology was developed by world renowned Dr Bernard Benoit known for his work on foetal scans

The technology was developed by world renowned Dr Bernard Benoit known for his work on foetal scans

The technology gives unparalleled clarity and allows parents to see the face of their child before it is born.

There is also a 4D version which means mothers and fathers are able to see their baby smiling and kicking in the womb in realtime.

They could even turn it into a DVD.

The software is allowing doctors to detect problems in a foetus much sooner than before.

It also removes background details that can often obscure the foetus.

Expectant parents can see their unborn baby move around on a DVD

Expectant parents can see their unborn baby move around on a DVD

The state-of-the-art technology shows unborn twins in unparallelled detail

The state-of-the-art technology shows unborn twins in unparalleled detail

The amazing pictures can even be taken when the foetus is very small

The amazing pictures can even be taken when the foetus is very small

It has been developed by Dr Bernard Benoit of the Princes Grace Hospital, Monaco.

He is known around the world for his focus on introducing innovative ultrasound technologies.

The keen photographer specialises in detecting malformations in a foetus within the first trimester.

The images are far more detailed than the grainy 2D images usually offered by the NHS.

Many hospitals offer paid-for 3D images but the NHS and the Health Protection Agency warned expectant parents against getting unnecessary scans simply to get the souvenir pictures.

The 3D images are far more detailed the grainy 2D scans that are normally provided by the NHS

The 3D images are far more detailed the grainy 2D scans that are normally provided by the NHS

The technology is allowing doctors to detect problems with a foetus much sooner than before

The technology is allowing doctors to detect problems with a foetus much sooner than before

This 3D ultrasound scan of a foetus is taken at just six weeks into the pregnancy

This 3D ultrasound scan of a foetus is taken at just six weeks into the pregnancy

30-week-old baby yawning for the camera

Happy 40th Anniversary, Baby–Creep Show Video

Reproductive rights celebrated in style.  How out of fashion can God and His creation be? How fall can we fall? How darkened and blind can our society become.  Just wait and see: 54,000,000 and countin”. Pray, pray, pray!!!

Happy 40th Anniversary, Baby.

Tough As Nails – Open Letter to God 

We are willing to discard the person for the part.

“We’ve made great strides”,  “…a long way, Baby.”

You and Your creation shall serve us.

Yes, that is our “Way”.

It makes perfect sense to us.

After all, You are invisible,

As invisible as a child within the womb,

That is, until the flesh is torn away.

We have the technology.

See, no cringing here. “Just do it!”

We’re tough as nails.

You are familiar with nails?

Yes, tough as nails.

In this world you have to be!

Hello.  Knock, knock.  Are You there?

…. See, He doesn’t care.

You hold Your anger, so we say,

“Where is this God of yours?”.

Our world crumbles,

Chaos all around.

Evidence of Your absence or Your ire?

It doesn’t matter.

You are the Past. We are Now!

If I pull Your beard, will You awaken.

Are You like us?

Will You take a poll

Or turn Your blind eyes?

In Your retirement or death,

We’ve found our voice. We’ve found our fist!

Not to worry. We’ve come a long way.

Crowned ourselves God!

©2010 Joann Nelander

Rosebud

Rose before dawn,
Nestled life in bud.
Sun of mother-love withdrawn.
Rose before dawn
Life, so sweet, soon gone.
Red flower, the color of blood.
Rose before dawn
Nestled life in bud.

Copyright Joann Nelander

When is the Argument Not Hypothetical

Pro-life…..Pro-choice…..Pro-life…..Pro-choice…..Pro-life…..Pro-choice…..Pro-life…..Pro-choice…..Pro-life…..Pro-choice…..Pro-life…..Pro-choice…..Pro-life…..Pro-choice…..Pro-life…..Pro-choice…..Pro-life…..Pro-choice…..Pro-life…..Pro-choice…..

Ready for the truth?   Google images: vacuum contents of abortion.

Must Read – Long before Becoming a Bishop

ARCHBISHOP AQUILA: 40 Years of the Culture of Death

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I went to college in 1968 with the idea of becoming a doctor, like my father. College campuses in the late ‘60’s and throughout the 70’s were places of turmoil. I didn’t practice my faith much in the first three years of college and I certainly never imagined that the Lord would one day make me a bishop.

I spent my first three years of college working as a hospital orderly and assisting in the emergency room, at a university student health center and in a hospital in California during summer break.

When I began the job, I hadn’t thought much about human suffering, or about human dignity.

But during my employment in hospitals, something changed. At that time, some states had approved abortion laws that I wasn’t even aware of. Because of those laws, when I was in college I witnessed the results of two abortions.

The first was in a surgical unit. I walked into an outer room and in the sink, unattended, was the body of small unborn child who had been aborted. I remember being stunned. I remember thinking that I had to baptize that child.

The second abortion was more shocking. A young woman came into the emergency room screaming. She explained that she had had an abortion already. When the doctor sent her home, he told her she would pass the remains naturally. She was bleeding as the doctor, her boyfriend, the nurse and I placed her on a table.

I held a basin as the doctor retrieved a tiny arm, a tiny leg and then the rest of the broken body of a tiny unborn child. I was shocked. I was saddened for the mother and child, for the doctor and the nurse. None of us would have participated in such a thing were it not an emergency. I witnessed a tiny human being destroyed by violence.

The memory haunts me. I will never forget that I stood witness to acts of unspeakable brutality. In the abortions I witnessed, powerful people made decisions that ended the lives of small, powerless, children. Through lies and manipulation, children were seen as objects. Women and families were convinced that ending a life would be painless, and forgettable. Experts made seemingly convincing arguments that the unborn were not people at all, that they could not feel pain, and were better off dead. Read more:

Great Atrocities Demand Remembrance and Hope

From Catholic Sistas:

The response to great atrocities, whether the Holocaust during World War II, the Rwandan massacres, or our own American Abortion Holocaust must be to remember. As Wiesel said, “We must remember the suffering…[and] struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope.” The stories, especially those of hope,  not only respect the victims of the past, they give courage to new generations fighting to overcome the darkness of the present.

Stolen name replaced by number,
Savaged soul and broken heart.
Hell, a people to encumber.

Blind eyes outside in darkness.
Dead souls dismissed the human face.
Stolen name replaced by number

Rising from the ashes,
Pledging nevermore.
Hell, a people to encumber

Yad VaShem, the vault of memory,
Yad VaShem, the ground of tears
Stolen name replaced by number

Shoah: families, children.
Here named, remembered, mourned
Hell, a people to encumber

Faces pictured in the silence.
Tears cried forevermore.
Stolen name replaced by number
Hell, a people to encumber

Copyright 2011 Joann Nelander

(experimental Villanelle)

Yad vashem

Rose before dawn,
Nestled life in bud.
Sun of mother-love withdrawn.
Rose before dawn
Life, so sweet, soon gone.
Red flower, the color of blood.
Rose before dawn
Nestled life in bud.

Copyright 2011 Joann Nelander

Life Begins – Science of the Womb

 

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/national-geographic-channel/all-videos/ngc-in-the-womb-1/

Four statements seem particularly interesting, but the entire video is worth watching:

“Once within the egg wall, the sperm’s nucleus is drawn toward the egg’s. The two cells gradually and gracefully become one. This is the moment of conception – when an individual’s unique set of DNA is created – a human signature that never existed before and will never be repeated.”

“The mother provides the shelter and the basics – food, water and oxygen. But the real star of the show is the fetus herself – building, dividing, growing according to an intricate set of plans created at the moment of conception.”

“The genes she’s [the girl shown in the womb] inherited already predetermine her looks and much of her character. Whether she’s stubborn or intelligent, a thrill-seeker or good at music and even her vulnerabilities to certain diseases like cancer, schizophrenia and diabetes. The exact course of her life will depend on such things as her friends, family and environment. But at the instant of fertilization, much of her future is predetermined.”

“Where it once seemed that the mental development of a baby began at birth, now it appears that birth could be a relatively insignificant event in developmental terms. She may have to support herself after birth, but as for the process of thinking, learning and remembering, she’s already been hard at it for three months [before birth]. And her brain will continue to grow at the same rate for the next year.”

 

Who?

“Who do you say I am?”
Jesus asked.
Who do you say I am?

The jars lined the walls.
Each one marked:
A weight and words,
“Products of conception.”

Parts, just parts!
Parts, just parts?
Who do you say I am?

©2012 Joann Nelander

Patrick Kennedy Called to Order

As the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops continues to lobby forcefully against including federal financing for abortion in the health care legislation, Bishop Tobin, takes the fight of the City of God to the world of the day-to-day and the politics that mask secular world views with phony compassion and outright attempts to blind the faithful with fancy verbal confusion and misrepresentation. We have all seen it and know it well.  Finally, a clarion call to fidelity and truth!

Bishop Thomas Tobin’s public rebuke of Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy continues to speak with Church authority and honest discretion, no mealy-mouthed kowtowing here:

Abby Goodnough of the New York Times writes:

Bishop Tobin stepped up his public rebuke of Mr. Kennedy, accusing him Wednesday of “false advertising” for describing himself as a Catholic and saying he should not receive holy communion because he supports using taxpayer money for abortions.

“If you freely choose to be a Catholic, it means you believe certain things, you do certain things,” Bishop Tobin said on WPRO, a Providence radio station. “If you cannot do all that in conscience, then you should perhaps feel free to go somewhere else.”

This Makes Obama Pro-Abort

Our President Obama has a way with words, but his actions make him a pro-abort President, a pro-abort Senator and a pro-abort inhumane being.

This from Steven Ertelt Life News. com:

November 5, 2008 – Obama selects pro-abortion Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his White House Chief of Staff. Emanuel has a 0% pro-life voting record according to National Right to Life.

November 19, 2008 – Obama picks pro-abortion former Sen. Tom Daschle as his Health and Human Services Secretary. Daschle has a long pro-abortion voting record according to National Right to Life.

November 20, 2008 – Obama chooses former NARAL legal director Dawn Johnsen to serve as a member of his Department of Justice Review Team. Later, he finalizes her appointment as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of the Legal Counsel in the Obama administration.

November 24, 2008 – Obama appoints Ellen Moran, the former director of the pro-abortion group Emily’s List as his White House communications director. Emily’s List only supported candidates who favored taxpayer funded abortions and opposed a partial-birth abortion ban.

November 24, 2008 – Obama puts former Emily’s List board member Melody Barnes in place as his director of the Domestic Policy Council.

November 30, 2008 – Obama named pro-abortion Sen. Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State. Clinton has an unblemished pro-abortion voting record and has supported making unlimited abortions an international right.

December 10, 2008 – Obama selects pro-abortion former Clinton administration official Jeanne Lambrew to become the deputy director of the White House Office of Health Reform. Planned Parenthood is “excited” about the selection.

December 10, 2008 – Obama transition team publishes memo from dozens of pro-abortion groups listing their laundry list of pro-abortions actions they want him to take.

Pro-Abortion Presidential Record – 2009

January 5, 2009 – Obama picks pro-abortion Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine as the chairman of the Democratic Party.

January 6, 2009 – Obama chooses Thomas Perrelli, the lawyer who represented Terri Schiavo’s husband Michael in his efforts to kill his disabled wife, as the third highest attorney in the Justice Department.

January 22, 2009 – Releases statement restating support for Roe v. Wade decision that allowed virtually unlimited abortions and has resulted in at least 50 million abortions since 1973.

January 23, 2009 – Forces taxpayers to fund pro-abortion groups that either promote or perform abortions in other nations. Decison to overturn Mexico City Policy sends part of $457 million to pro-abortion organizations.

January 26, 2009 – Obama nominee for Deputy Secretary of State, James B. Steinberg, tells members of the Senate that taxpayers should be forced to fund abortions. Nominee erroneously says limits on abortion funding are unconstitutional.

January 29, 2009 – President Obama nominates pro-abortion David Ogden as Deputy Attorney General.

February 12, 2009 – Obama nominates pro-abortion Elena Kagan to serve as Solicitor General.

February 27, 2009 – Starts the process of overturning pro-life conscience protections President Bush put in place to make sure medical staff and centers are not forced to do abortions.

February 28, 2009 – Barack Obama nominates pro-abortion Kathleen Sebelius to become Secretary of Health and Human Services.

March 5, 2009 – The Obama administration shut out pro-life groups from attending a White House-sponsored health care summit. Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business, made the invitation list as did other pro-abortion groups.

March 9, 2009 – President Barack Obama signed an executive order forcing taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research.

March 10, 2009 – Obama announces the creation of a new foreign policy position to focus on women’s issues. He names Melanne Verveer, an abortion advocate, to occupy the post.

March 10, 2009 – Reverses an executive order to press for more research into ways of obtaining embryonic stem cells without harming human life. The order Obama scrapped would have promoted new forms of stem cell research.

March 11, 2009 – Obama signed an executive order establishing a new agency within his administration known as the White House Council on Women and Girls. Obama’s director of public liaison at the White House, Tina Tchen, an abortion advocate, became director of it.

March 11, 2009 – Obama administration promotes an unlimited right to abortion at a United Nations meeting.

March 11, 2009 – Obama administration officials deny negative effects of abortion at United Nation’s meeting.

March 17, 2009 – President Barack Obama makes his first judicial appointment and names pro-abortion federal Judge David Hamilton to serve on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

March 26 – President Obama announced $50 million for the UNFPA, the UN population agency that has been criticized for promoting abortion and working closely with Chinese population control officials who use forced abortions and involuntary sterilizations.

April 7 – The Vatican has rejected three Obama ambassador nominees because of their positions in favor of abortions.

April 7 – Obama has named pro-abortion law professor Harold Hongju Koh as the top lawyer for the State Department.

April 7 – Put more abortion advocates on his White House advisory council for faith-based issues.

April 8 – Obama nominee for assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, Ron Weich, is pro-abortion.

April 14 – Obama administration releases document that claims pro-life people may engage in violence or extremism.

April 17 – Obama administration releases the proposed guidelines that implement his decision to allow taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research that involves the destruction of human life.

April 23 – Refused to appeal a ruling requiring the FDA to allow 17-year-old girls to purchase the morning after pill without either a doctor visit or parental involvement beforehand.

April 27 – Obama’s women’s ambassador Melanne Verveer touted Obama’s decision to send $50 million to the United Nation’s Population Fund.

May 5 – Details emerge about a terrorism dictionary the administration of President Barack Obama put together in March. The Domestic Extremism Lexicon calls pro-life advocates violent and claims they employ racist overtones in engaging in criminal actions.

May 8 – President Obama releases a new budget that allows the Legal Services Corporation to use tax dollars to pay for pro-abortion litigation.

May 8 – President Obama’s new budget calls for taxpayer funded abortions in the nation’s capital.

May 8 – President Obama’s budget eliminates all federal funding for abstinence-only education.

May 15 – Appointed pro-abortion New York City health commissioner Thomas Frieden as head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

May 17 – During his commencement speech at Notre Dame, Obama deceived listeners into thinking he wants a conscience clause, promoted embryonic stem cell research and misstated his pro-abortion record.

May 26 – Appoints appeals court judge Sonia Sonotmayor as a Supreme Court nominee. Sotomayor agrees that the courts should make policy, such as the Roe v. Wade case. Sotomayor is later opposed by pro-life groups and supported by pro-abortion groups and those who know her say she will support abortion on the high court.

July 2- Calls for an unlimited right to abortion at a United Nation’s meeting.

July 7- The Obama administration admits it ignored the majority of Americans who opposed the proposed guidelines that would implement Obama’s decision to force taxpayers to fund embryonic stem cell research.

July 14 – Obama science czar nominee John Holdren is revealed to have written before that he favors forced abortions.

July 30 – Awards several pro-abortion activists with the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom.

July 31 – Tells the National Institutes of Health to adopt rules that allow embryonic stem cell research.

August 4 – Information becomes public that Ezekiel Emanuel, an Obama advisor at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research, supports rationing health care for disabled Americans that could lead to euthanasia.

August 6 – Obama criticized for asking for people to “snitch” on groups and people who oppose the pro-abortion health care bills in Congress.

August 13 – Obama wrongly said a senator backed the pro-euthanasia components of the health care bill.

August 23 – Said pro-life advocates were making “phony claims” about the health care bills. Also said the claims were false.

August 24 – Releases veterans guide promoting euthanasia.

September 13 – Misleads on the federal conscience clause in a health care speech and misleads on abortion funding.

September 13 – Obama waits two days to comment on shooting of pro-life advocate whereas he commented immediately on shooting of abortion practitioner.

September 15 – Senate confirms Obama’s new regulatory czar Cass Sunstein, who is pro-abortion.

October 5 – Selected pro-abortion lawyer and Georgetown University law professor Chai Feldblum for the EEOC.

October 5 – Announces he will give the keynote speech for pro-abortion group Human Rights Campaign

Go here for links: Steven Ertelt Life News. com:

What can we do?  PRAY for our President! Here is a powerful prayer from St. Gertrude the Great:

Jesus, Savior of the World, have mercy on me.  You to Whom nothing is impossible, bestow mercy to the wretched. O Christ, Who by Your Cross, hast redeemed the world, hear us.

The Lord is my strength and my glory; He is my salvation.

Hail Jesus, my loving Spouse.  I salute You in the ineffable joys of Your Divinity; I embrace You with the affection of all creatures, and I kiss the Sacred Wound of Your love.

Focus On Life – Audacious Hope

Michelle Malkin rightly and vociferously condemns the murder of Late-term abortion doctor George Tiller.  Malkin quotes Princeton University professor Robert P. George:

“Whoever murdered George Tiller has done a gravely wicked thing. The evil of this action is in no way diminished by the blood George Tiller had on his own hands. No private individual had the right to execute judgment against him. We are a nation of laws. Lawless violence breeds only more lawless violence.”

The area of abortion is already stained with the blood of millions of the unborn, adding to the bloodshed by taking any human life will not vindicate those lost to abortion or prevent the future from being likewise drenched in “little murders” as Archbishop Chaput of Denver writes.

Malkin realistically warns that pro-choice and pro-choice forces will use this sad event to muddy the waters with rhetoric.  Malkin knows from experience what lies ahead:

Prepare for the continuing redefinition of any and all sharp political disagreement as “hate” — a ruinous trend that inevitably comes back to haunt the hysterical accusers decrying “hate” the loudest.

“Prepare for whitewashed hagiographies of Tiller’s career as an abortionist.

Prepare for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s defenders to gloat about vindication.

Prepare for collective demonization of pro-lifers and Christians — and more gratuitous attempts to tar talk radio, Fox News, and the Tea Party movement as responsible for the heinous crime.

The only people is this country allowed to use “hate” speech on a regular basis is the Left when speaking of Christians, Pro-life advocates and any friend of Conservatism.  It is hard not to pick up the same brush and paint with flaming rhetoric.  However, ‘Life’ is at issue here.  It is precious whether possessed by the innocent and the heinous. Let’s not lose focus.

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” require self-knowledge and self-control.  They are goals and well worth suffering to achieve, not for one group, but for all.  Prayer comes before self-knowledge and self-control.  Pope Benedict XVI has and is working tirelessly with Peoples of all Faiths and all Nationalities to recognize and protect our common humanity. It is the work of a lifetime for all of us. Building a world of peace makes room for audacious hope in the true sense.  Hope lies in the human heart, and enables us to forgive the past to build a truly human future.

Our Lady of Guadalupe – Defection of Latin Heart

How the world has changed. The Hispanic community used to care about Life issues.  I’m lost as to what “empathy” actually means in today’s Obama-speak. The GOP wants to please Hispanics and Hispanics want to please Obama and swallow his policies and now SotoMayor because she’s a Hispanic.  What price integrity?

Hot Air covers the politics of it:

GOP officials say they realize the party needs to improve its standing among Hispanic voters in order to have any hope of winning a national election, and they admit that trashing the first Latina nominee to the court could cement stereotypes or further alienate minorities…

I’m trying to come to grips with the duplicity in the Latino community in regard to their recent voting history; their love affair with Obama to be concise.  How does the head come to be divided from the heart, or at least from who used to own their hearts.  People of Spanish decent in this nation have strongly held and loudly proclaimed devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe.  How this same people can live with that heart-set, while abiding a mind-set of choice and abortion flies in the face of integrity.  What has been the price of their defection?  Have they been won away from Our Lady of Guadalupe whose mantle they still claim as their own?

Counting on Our Lady’s for favor, love and protection under the mantle of her Son, while secretly voting with the Enemy whose head she will crush defies both logic and presumes a certain gullibility on God’s and Our Lady’s part. Here’s the crux of the matter.  Our Lady of Guadalupe is the pregnant Mother of God.  Have Latinos abandoned her for politico advantage, monetary benefit, educational expediency, life style convenience, a “good” life apart from the heart of this very pregnant Virgin.  For under her heart is the womb and nesting place of Jesus.

They have abandoned the heart of their Mother?  What else is one to think, when, while still blessing their homes and churches with her image, they none-the-less carry Obama’s torch and wave the banner of Choice.  Should her name be invoked as “Our Lady of Choice” or “Our Lady of Abortion,” for either of these, ‘choice’ or ‘abortion’ rank, by the hispanic vote, higher than the Infant she carried to term and into Life?  Poorly formed, ignored or silenced consciences, do not speak well for the once Christian people. In name only, may replace ‘In God We Trust’  as the banner over this proud inheritance.

As God’s eyes watched over the Babe in Our Lady of Guadalupe’s womb, they now watch over choices we make in life and in death.  God’s eyes watch over the womb of our Nation, which is 1/3 empty.   Should Our Lady of Guadalupe, now the patroness of the Americas and Life, not look to the Latino as her particular people, having chosen them to announce her under that title?  She has carried them.  Will they no longer claim her by their actions, affiliations and votes. The choice they now make and live, they will carry into life, death and the hereafter, as all life’s choices tend toward eternity.

Michelle Malkin cares about jurisprudence is anyone listening?

Fruit of Notre Dame Outcry & Demonstration

Listening on Ave Marie Radio to Teresa Tomeo proved encouraging.  Tomeo and her guest, Dr. Monica Miller, one of those arrested to pro-life demonstration on the Notre Dame campus, had very positive outlooks on how the outcry against Notre Dame’s  invitation to pro-choice, abortion-supporter, President Obama would bear fruit .   Dr. Miller said a corner has been turned as a hundred or more, bishops voiced their opposition to the event, and young people turned out in great numbers to protest President Obama being honored at this Catholic University. The scutiny with which Catholic parents choose a university to prepare their children has been elevated  and made a primary concern for those wanting a Catholic identity and moral stance.

A caller to the show noted that while President Obama wouldn’t deny the Holocaust, yet here is a Holocaust of even greater magnitude which he does, indeed, deny or, otherwise, willfully endorses. Has he not seen the pictures  of abortion or videos of life in the womb?

Listen here.

Gallop Poll – Pro-life exceeds Pro-Abort

The truth of the value of one human life does not rest on a poll, but as a sign of hope in a very dark time for our country it does show movement in the direction of the law written on the heart. HotAir reports the good news with the results of the latest Gallop Poll:

“May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves “pro-life” on the issue of abortion and 42% “pro-choice.” This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.”

“The new results, obtained from Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey, represent a significant shift from a year ago, when 50% were pro-choice and 44% pro-life. Prior to now, the highest percentage identifying as pro-life was 46%, in both August 2001 and May 2002.

The May 2009 survey documents comparable changes in public views about the legality of abortion. In answer to a question providing three options for the extent to which abortion should be legal, about as many Americans now say the procedure should be illegal in all circumstances (23%) as say it should be legal under any circumstances (22%). This contrasts with the last four years, when Gallup found a strong tilt of public attitudes in favor of unrestricted abortion.”

Opposition to Abortion Growing

Light on the horizon?….Michael Novak amazed at the numbers in the latest Pew Research survey showing opposition to legal abortion in growing.

The latest Pew Research survey (April 30) shows an amazing drop in support for legal abortion since August 2008, and a corresponding jump in numbers of those who now hold that abortion should be made illegal in most or all cases. This trend shows an astonishing rise in resistance to abortion among people of all ages, and an eye-catching jump in opposition to abortion among moderate and liberal Republicans.

Read the entire report here.

Civil Rights At the Heart Of Abortion

A question of truth, a question of conversion; the Anchoress asks can Obama be converted on abortion?  I ask, and I think posterity will ask, how can this black man, who knows the Black Man’s pain of Slavery, the history of popular resistance to change, who knows the history of  a Stephen Douglas ignoring an Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln who finally pricked Douglas into debate by clubbing him verbally, until, as Edward T. Oakes, S.J. says, “Douglas finally had to take notice of Lincoln’s ceaseless hammering away at Douglas’ ‘pro-choice’ platform (which said, in effect, ‘I’m personally opposed to slavery but can’t impose my choice on other states, including other Norther states.’),” not only ignore but side against so utterly defenseless a part of American humanity? ” How can such a man, now President of a country, founded on the principal that all men are created equal, now consent in his heart of hearts to  discriminate against the obviously created human person growing from day to day, as all men grow, just because he/she is still under the protection of a mother’s womb.

How can this President, the citizen of the greatest free nation, ever, be content while people conspire to deprive the weakest most dependent members of their civil rights; when to steal or negate life, black,white, red,yellow, male, female,old or young, is intrinsically evil and morally wrong?  How can this be-gifted man standby, a blind, deaf, and mute creature, while this glaring, screaming, appealing and appalling issue of Civil Rights is left to cry in the arms of Lady Justice?

The questions continue, nagging and still unanswered.  How can a professor, a teacher, a sworn defender of the Constitution, forget the cries of these similarly beleaguered, disenfranchised, these who endure discrimination, these forgotten and forbidden human beings? Is it simply that they have no power, but the power to be, while Obama,  himself, who knows the benefits of life, and the gifts of God and has sworn an oath in the Creator’s Name, forsake his power refusing just consideration? Could he not use his powers of rhetoric to acknowledge our posterity and his power of intellect to comprehend their potential? How can such a man claim his “pay grade” justifies the “choice” not to chose life or engage his own reason and heart and soul?

The buck Mr. President not only stops here but demands you at least use the means you possess; ears, eyes and brain to watch a simple, state of the art and science, video of life in the womb. The thumb-sucking, kicking, jumping, hiccupping creature you see before you may well declare the reality; “I am here, now.  I am alive, unless you allow my life to come to naught.”

What price freedom; what price honesty? History begs you not to hide behind polls and politics.  Don’t ask people with vested interests in the abortion industry, or who purchase human parts for research, who like slave owners count it lose if right prevails. Ask Martin Luther King, Jr. when you should stand for the civil right SIMPLY TO BE!

Obama's First 100 Days Counter to Glendon's Life Work

Elizabeth Lev, daughter of Mary Ann Glendon has responded to this written by Kaitlyn Riely at Politics Daily.  Riely,speaking of Mary Ann Glendon, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, says:

“But Glendon has been trained in diplomacy. Shouldn’t being in the same place and engaging someone of an opposing view be right up her alley? Wouldn’t the better decision be to use her platform — or at least her proximity — to persuade Obama to change his views? Her diplomatic style seems to be less suited for U.S.-Vatican relations and more for U.S.-Cuba relations.”

Reponse by Elizabeth Lev, Mary Ann Glendon’s daughter:

“The Laetare Medal is the highest honor conferred on Catholics in the United States. For a Catholic, it has greater prestige than a Nobel Prize for a scientist or an Academy Award for an actor, as the award is given for career-long achievement, for “staying the course” in the words of St. Paul. It doesn’t just showcase a single discovery or film role.


To renounce it, therefore, is not the lightest of matters. Professor Glendon has spent a month thinking, consulting, and given her deep faith, praying about this decision. (This, for those of you who don’t know, means asking God to help one put aside one’s own personal concerns and act in the way that will produce the greatest good). (Kaitlyn) Riely’s dismissive “thanks, no thanks” rendering of her decision, while pithy, is reductive.

Professor Glendon was to have been honored for not only for her scholarship, but for her second career, her pro-bono work — ranging from the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the great civil rights issues of the present day — namely, the defense of human life from conception to natural death. Her concerns range from the aging and dying population to the unborn to the well-being and dignity of every life, regardless of race, religion, or economic status. Her outstanding work in this field has earned her the respect of the most brilliant minds of the international community, regardless of whether they agree with her position. So again, to see her merely as “strongly anti-abortion” instead of as a tireless defender of the dignity of life, is to reveal not only a lack of understanding of the subject’s work, but also the writer’s real interest in this question.

Furthermore, during his first 100 days in office, President Obama has worked tirelessly to undermine Professor Glendon’s lifetime of work; he is funding abortion out of the bailout package and planning to suppress the protection of conscience for health care workers.

Your notion that her “training in diplomacy” might somehow ease this situation does not take into account that she has a five-minute acceptance speech and he will have a lengthy commencement speech. There is no “engaging” here. Diplomacy generally teaches that if you have a rapier and your opponent has a missile launcher, try not to engage.

That Professor Glendon “did not like that Notre Dame was claiming her speech would serve to balance the event” is again facile and simplistic. What is there to like in being the deflector screen for inviting a profoundly divisive figure to give the commencement speech? What is likeable about a Catholic University named for the most important woman in Christianity exploiting a woman who has already dedicated her life to protecting the Church’s teaching by turning her into a warm-up act for a grotesque twist on a reality show?

Finally, after 50 Catholic bishops condemned the university for its direct defiance in honoring a man in open conflict with the Church’s teaching, it is right that Professor Glendon let her silence speak louder than her five-minute allotment of words would have.
Readers might be wondering how I know all this. Well, for one I am her daughter, but more to the point, I read her letter with the careful consideration it deserves.”

Elizabeth Lev is an art historian and writer based in Rome, where all of her three children were born… more

Michelle Malkin sums up Obama’s first 100

Liberals Want to See Shameful Photographs

Our President seems bent on shaming America before the world with pictures.  Not for the faint of heart, but here are the pictures that should shame the President and the world.

Priests for Life reports:

Baby Body Parts

Priests for Life has known for some time of the grisly trade in baby parts taking place in abortion facilities throughout the nation. Through the efforts of our friends at Life Dynamics, Inc., the details of this trade have come to light. You may obtain from Life Dynamics (1-800-401-6494) copies of the actual order forms used. Some of the forms request that there be no abnormalities. Many mistakenly think that abortions in later stages of pregnancy are performed only in cases of fetal abnormality.

Fetal tissue wholesalers are companies which place employees in abortion clinics to harvest tissue, limbs, organs, etc. from aborted babies. This material is then shipped to researchers working for universities, pharmaceutical companies and government agencies. Although it is against federal law to sell human tissue or body parts, these organizations have devised a system to circumvent this restriction. Technically, all fetal material they harvest is “donated” to them by the clinics. However, they do pay a “site fee” to the clinics for the right to access the tissue. The tissue is then “donated” to the researchers who in turn pay the wholesalers for the cost of retrieval. Profit is realized by the wholesalers’ ability to set their own retrieval fees.

As to the harsh realities of keeping our country safe, the Gateway Pundit says Fox reports:

The release of the photos along with Obama’s decision last week to release CIA memos has federal agents feeling dispirited.
Jake Tapper reported:

Calling the ACLU push to release the photographs “prurient” and “reprehensible,” Dr. Mark M. Lowenthal, former Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production, tells ABC News that the Obama administration should have taken the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

“They should have fought it all the way; if they lost, they lost,” Lowenthal said. “There’s nothing to be gained from it. There’s no substantive reason why those photos have to be released.”

Lowenthal said the president’s moves in the last week have left many in the CIA dispirited, based on “the undercurrent I’ve been getting from colleagues still in the building, or colleagues who have left not that long ago.”

“We ask these people to do extremely dangerous things, things they’ve been ordered to do by legal authorities, with the understanding that they will get top cover if something goes wrong,” Lowenthal says. “They don’t believe they have that cover anymore.” Releasing the photographs “will make it much worse,” he said.

Along the same lines of disclosures that hurt our country, Michelle Malkin points to the Rasmussen report in her, “Public to White House”:

Results from the latest Rasmussen poll show a public more in tune with Dick Cheney than George Soros:

Fifty-eight percent (58%) believe the Obama administration’s recent release of CIA memos about the harsh interrogation methods used on terrorism suspects endangers the national security of the United States. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 28% believe the release of the memos helps America’s image abroad.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) of voters now believe the U.S. legal system worries too much about protecting individual rights when national security is at stake. But 21% say the legal system is too concerned about protecting national security. Thirty-three percent (33%) say the balance between the two is about right.

This reflects a significant shift over the past couple of years. In several surveys conducted during 2008, Americans were fairly evenly divided as to whether our legal system worried too much about individual rights or too much about protecting national security…

…Forty-six percent (46%) of voters disagree with Obama’s decision to close the prison camp for terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, while 36% agree with the president’s action. Support for the decision has fallen since the president announced it in January.

Ed Morrissey says more:

Instead of the headlines being about what the Bush administration sanctioned, they became about Nancy Pelosi’s denial and then non-denial of her knowledge on waterboarding interrogations, the success of the interrogations in preventing an attack, and Obama’s lack of testicular fortitude in sticking with his original position to let sleeping dogs lie. Small wonder that he began backtracking in earnest yesterday when meeting with Congressional leaders.

Now we have confirmation that Obama planned this all along as a political attack against a man who hardly matters on the national political scene any longer – or at least he didn’t until Obama decided to pick a fight with him. Just as with his strange attack on Rush

Teresa Tomeo's Exchange With a Pro-Abortion Listener

Teresa Tomeo of Ave Maria Radio took time to answer this pro-choice/pro-life Catholic educator. She’d really like it shared.

Here is the initial letter Kathy wrote to Teresa.

Dear Ms. Tomeo,
I was discouraged and even angered at your comments about President Obama. He is one of the most inspirational figures of recent times. As a Catholic educator for over 30 years, I am proud that we gave each student a book about Barack Obama on Inauguration Day. Most teachers have his picture in our Catholic classrooms and talk about his thoughtful, open, and integrity‐based life. He cares about LIFE ‐ education and health care are life issues, how we handle war and the economy are life issues. How we talk with people in dialogue is a life issue. Measuring all life issues through the lens of abortion is outrageous to say the least. Obama’s commitment to prevent abortion and to support healthy life for all is a critical moral issue. God created us to be able to choose. It is our job in churches to help form conscience so that we may choose life.
Working on his campaign in the fall, and the Catholics for Obama campaign, was one of the most important times I have experienced in my 55 years of life.
It is clearly deeply Christian to be PRO‐LIFE and PRO‐CHOICE both.
It is offensive to promote such negativity toward the president of the United States.
Peace and grace,
Kathy.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Hi Kathy. Thanks for writing. I hope you will take the time to read this e mail and really pray and think about what I am laying out before you. I will be discussing this e mail exchange on my radio show this week so I hope you tune in and even call in if possible. I have attached an article that is coming out this week on a major Catholic web site regarding the Obama administration. As a woman I thought you would be interested in this and this will help you understand why I
feel so strongly about this issue. I was so disappointed to see that you call yourself a “Catholic educator” and a “proud member” of the Catholic Church and yet you express only emotion and no fact to back up your claims that it is okay for Christians to be both pro life and pro choice as well as your claims that the
president is “for life” as you put it. As the old Wendy’s commercial use to say “where’s the beef?” I normally don’t spend this much time on e mails but the Holy Spirit is prompting me to reach out to you in hopes that you will really re‐consider and really truly study what our Church and the Bible have to say about abortion. I am also very concerned because you are in a position to influence young people.

From your note I get the sense that you have very little awareness of the fallout from abortion on women, men, families, the economy, increased rates of drug abuse, the connection to abortion and breast cancer, increased suicide attempts with post abortive women etc. and most importantly the loss of life with 50 million babies lost in this country (17 million of whom are African Americans) yes Barack Obama’s own people have suffered the greatest causalities since the legalization of abortion in this country.


Regarding all the above issues here are some web sites for you‐www.afterabortion.org , www.abortionbreastcancer.com and one of the best of course www.priestsforlife.org Are you aware that most abortion centers are unregulated and that there have been many cases, several recently, of statutory rape that have gone unreported by these abortion centers? Are you also
aware that the majority of women having abortions say they feel they are being forced to do so and that there was little “choice” involved but threats and coercion? A great amount of research has been done in all of these areas although it rarely gets any attention. Have you ever heard of the Silent No More Awareness campaign? www.silentnomoreawareness.org where women and men tell their painful post abortive stories?

Go here for the rest of the article.

Abortion Package – the Price of Death

The moves and monies against Life have come fast and furiously, since President Obama took office and turned his attention to the most defenseless of this Nation.  Calling it “health” millions will die with the help of American dollars. With Planned Parenthood at the top of the list, ” Abortion groups have submitted their 50 page proposal to the Obama-Biden Administration.”

From Susan B. Anthony List:

The Abortion Bailout Package:

  • $1 BILLION dollars in taxpayer funding for International Abortion Groups
  • $700 million in taxpayer funding for “Title X” Health Clinics (aka your local Planned Parenthood affiliate)
  • $65 million for the UNFPA, an international aid organization connected to coercive abortion as part of China’s coercive one-child policy
  • Repeal the Hyde Amendment – Vastly expanding federal taxpayer funding for abortions
  • Include Abortion coverage in any taxpayer-subsidized national health care program
  • Expand taxpayer-funded abortions on military bases
  • Expand taxpayer-funded abortions through the Peace Corps program
  • Expand taxpayer-funded abortions for federal prisoners

For action alerts check here as well.

Anti-Abortion Online Success

As the liberal media and liberal government close ranks, and embed abortion and anti-life laws and philosophies into American Culture, hope springs eternal. On-line you can find the alternative to the Culture of Death, as Pope John Paul II dubbed it.

For pro-life bloggers, and the likes of Priests for Life, Catholic Vote.org, Jill Stanek, the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter.  The demons press on, indoctrinating our children in the classroom, and all strata of our citizenry in higher education, from Hollywood to the doctors office and health department, through glossy magazines, pop-culture etc. Light, however, finds a way! It’s the candle in the darkness thing at work. I’m new to blogging but those who’ve been doing this for a while like the Anchoress writing about miracles and little Faith and Brutally Honest declaring God alive, delight me with the persistent signs of hope I need to see.

Today is a good day for that kind of hope.  The Wall Street Journal had good news for pro-life advocates and all those asking questions about life and wanting the truth.

Stephanie Simon reports:

“Mr. Obama supports legal abortion. Yet this video by CatholicVote.org — viewed nearly 1.8 million times on YouTube since it was posted in January — has turned his life story into an advertisement for the antiabortion movement.”

“The White House declined to comment. The producers describe their 40-second video as a strategic triumph that can help chart a new course for their movement as abortion opponents face a hostile climate in Washington, with Democrats controlling Congress and the White House.”

“So CatholicVote.org plans a series of biographical videos along the lines of the Obama video. The goal is to get people thinking about what the world would be missing if musicians, athletes and other luminaries with hard-luck life stories had been aborted.”

“Ms. Doan said ultrasound images circulating online have been especially helpful to abortion opponents, because they humanize the fetus. “I’ve seen a marked change in how people talk about abortion,” especially young adults, Ms. Doan said. “It’s much more favorable to the pro-life movement.”

“We’re able to reach people directly,” said Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life. He stars in a series of matter-of-fact videos that explain how abortions are performed, with a plastic model of a fetus as a prop. The clip describing a first-trimester abortion has been viewed more than 680,000 times on YouTube. “TV networks would never show this type of video,” Father Pavone said, “but now that doesn’t matter.”

Religion and Morality Are Indispensable Supports of Democracy

The Left would like to place marriage, decisions regarding life and end-of-life, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and quite possibly cloning, outside of religious proscriptions. They would like to forget, or rather, re-write history. It is the Church’s message that is the foundational structure of our liberty, our National conscience, our democracy and our human rights. In fact, it is the message of Christianity that is the bench-mark of Western Civilization.

George Washington’s in his Farewell Address emphatically states, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.”

John Adams, who followed Washington in the Presidency writes, “Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand…. The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a greater measure, than they have it now, they may change their rulers, and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty. They will only exchange tyrants and tyrannies.”

Issues of marriage, decisions regarding life and end-of-life, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and cloning are precisely where separation of church and state have meaning. Said another way, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” The Left would like to isolate the message of the Church, have us believe it speaks to practicing members alone. However, it is God who speaks through His Church, and God speaks from Eternity. He breaks into Time, all time, lighting up every Age. The Church’s commission obligates it to announce Truth to all peoples of all times. Their message is the stuff of a true humanity.

Expansion of Human Embryo Experimentation.

Thoughts of the Great Unwashed point  here for a read on the label given Obama as the “abortion president”:

One of the most outspoken abortion opponents in Congress labeled President Obama the “abortion president” on Friday in response to news that Obama intended to sign an executive order Monday lifting restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., accused Obama of launching two attacks on pro-life measures. In addition to lifting President Bush’s stem cell restrictions, Obama intends to lift regulations from the Bush administration that allow health care providers and institutions to refuse to participate in abortions on grounds of conscience.

“Why does the president persist in the dehumanizing of nascent human life when better alternatives exist? Human embryo-destroying stem cell research is not only unethical, unworkable and unreliable- it is now, demonstrably unnecessary,” Smith said.Smith labeled Obama’s stem cell policy an expansion of “human embryo experimentation.”