Tag: pro-life

Pro-life voters are now entirely free

For almost as long as I can remember, voters who understand the vital importance of the pro-life cause have had their consciences held captive by politics. Every election year, pro-lifers have been bullied, and have bullied each other, into voting for one candidate and shunning the other, with their very souls allegedly on the line.

People who more or less held the same views were invited or outright commanded to denounce each other as the enemy. But now that’s over. It’s done. We’re free.

Oh, folks on both sides are still arguing that it’s crystal clear we absolutely must vote this way or that way if we want to call ourselves pro-life. But now, neither party is willing to even fake an interest in actually being pro-life. The masks have come off entirely.

“But Simcha,” you may say. “I thought Trump and the Republicans were the pro-life party? Sure, Trump isn’t perfect but we’re looking for a politician, not a saint, and he’s clearly the only one who is willing to stand up to protect the unborn. At least compared to the alternative.”

Except that he just said into a reporter’s microphone that six weeks is “too short; there has to be more time … I want more weeks”; ie, the law should give women more time to decide whether or not to get an abortion (or, as often happens, more time to get pressured or coerced into an abortion). He said he would vote for just that in the upcoming Florida election.

Then, when people got upset, his campaign said he didn’t really mean it or really say anything and we’re just dumb for thinking he said anything.

He also said that, if he’s elected, his government will cover the cost of IVF for anyone who wants it, because “we want more babies.” IVF is intrinsically immoral because it replaces a sacred, creative act of love with a mechanised act of production in a lab. But even if that doesn’t bother you, IVF means millions of extra embryos are made, and then either imprisoned in a freezer indefinitely, or thrown away.

There is no IVF that is untainted by this wholesale murder of tiny humans. Babies are good; but cranking out babies like widgets and then throwing most of them away? That’s wrong.

This same Republican party absolutely lost their minds a few years ago when President Barack Obama said he was going to require Catholic employers to include contraception in their insurance coverage for employees. We were told this was a direct violation of religious freedom, and we must vote for Trump so he can liberate us from a government that would spend our tax dollars on the culture of death.

And now here we are. Maybe you will reply, “Well, this is all a shame, but you have to admit, he appointed judges to the supreme court who did what he promised, and they overturned Roe v Wade! Hard to argue with that as a pro-life win!”

Except that since this happened, the numbers of abortions have gone up. Yes, really. Why? My guess is this…

Read the rest of my latest (which I wrote before the debate, but nothing has changed) at The Catholic Weekly. 

Image: James Boast Creative Commons

Abby Johnson: Police will racially profile my biracial son; that’s smart

Abby Johnson felt the need to speak up about race.

In a June 25 YouTube video titled “My biracial boy,” the 39-year-old anti-abortion activist used her five-year-old adopted son as a jumping off point for a 15-minute manifesto on the roots of racial unrest in the United States. She made the video private a few hours after publishing it, but said she plans to make it viewable again soon. Other have reposted saved copies of her video.

Wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt printed with lyrics by Vanilla Ice,  Johnson said in the video that her son is now an “adorable, perpetually tan-looking little brown boy [but] one day he’s gonna grow up and he’s going to be a tall, probably sort of large, intimidating-looking, maybe, brown man.”

 Johnson said that while her four other sons “are probably gonna look like nerdy white guys,” her biracial son will likely be racially profiled by police when he grows up. 

“That doesn’t make me angry,” Johnson said. 

“I realized I’m gonna have to have a different conversation with [my son] than I do with my nerdy white kids,” she said. 
 
With the voices of her children audible in the background, Johnson explained that she knows black men are more likely to be incarcerated for crimes than white men, and because of this, a “smart” police officer will be more careful around her “brown” son than around her white ones. 
 
“I look at our prison population and I see that there is a disproportionately high number of African-American males in our prison population for crimes, particularly for violent crimes; so statistically, when a police officer sees a brown man like my [child’s name] walking down the road, as opposed to my white nerdy kids … these police officers know in their head … that statistically my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons. Okay. So the fact that, in his head, he would be more careful around my brown son than my white son, that doesn’t actually make me angry. That makes that police officer smart, because of statistics,” she said.
 
“I’m a researcher by nature,” Johnson said. 
 
 
Johnson said that, according to her research, high rates of incarceration of black men is caused by black fatherlessness. She then claimed that, according to her research, there is a push to make black fatherlessness culturally acceptable.
 
“There are studies out there that are trying to redefine black fatherhood. They are essentially saying that the seventy percent number is a lie because black fatherhood looks different than white fatherhood; that black fatherhood actually does look like a black man coming in and out of the home and not being a consistent presence in the home, and that version of fatherhood is equivalent to a white father being consistently in the home,” she said.
 
“Okay, I don’t want to cuss on here, but that is B.S., and that is racist,” Johnson continued. 
 
“[B]lack fathers do not get a pass. Just because it is culturally different, just because black fathers don’t want to be in the home, and culturally it has been acceptable for them to be with multiple women,” she said.
 
Johnson did not specify which studies she read that attempt to redefine black fatherhood. 
 
Apparently referring to the ongoing racial unrest following the killing of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, Johnson said, “Yeah, we’ve got big issues right now in the black community, but at the root of it the root is not with bad cops. The root starts in the home.”
 
“It’s not because of bad cops, [but] because of bad dads,” she said.
 
The video’s settings were changed to “private” a few hours after it was published. 
 
 
 
I called Johnson on Thursday to ask some questions about the video. Here is our conversation:
 

SF: What were you hoping to achieve with this video?

AJ: I wanted to give my opinion and how I’m feeling about this whole situation. Particularly as a woman whose family is affected by this, because we do have a son who is biracial. We do recognize that we do have to have different conversations with our son. It’s not something we shy away from in our house. Race is not something we shy away from in our home. 

 
SF: What study were you referring to, when you said you read that black men aren’t expected to be monogamous or raise their children?
AJ: I’ve seen several of them. There’s quite a few out there that show basically redefining black fatherhood, sort of showing that black fatherhood expectations are different. The expectation is different in black homes than in white homes. That was surprising to me. For me, fatherhood is fatherhood. It was just interesting to see that people were trying to differentiate fatherhood based on race.
 
 I talked about that with some of my black friends, and they were really appalled by that. They were really outraged. I’ve had several discussions with one of my friends in particular about that. We both said this is something that needs to be addressed, by not just the black community but by everyone. 
 
SF: Do you think black people might see your video and start to think differently about fatherhood? 
 
AJ: I don’t know. Right now, tensions are very high, and I think in general, if you’re a white person and you’re not part of the Black Lives Matter movement, which I’m not, then your opinion is not valued. You’re seen as a racist. You’ve done a good job to paint me as that, anyway. I’m sure this article will do the same. 
 
I think if you’re not on this “social justice warrior woke” train of thought, you’re considered a racist. I don’t think that’s fair. I can’t remember a time in my life where I’ve ever discriminated against someone because of their race. I can’t remember a time when ever in my life I have acted on any sort of prejudice.
 
Of course we all have fleeting prejudiced thoughts that we all have to check. That’s something we all have. I just can’t ever recall a time in my life when I’ve actually been racist toward someone. But I think we’re living in times where it is the popular thing to call someone a racist. If your views don’t align with someone, you call them a racist, and if you disagree with what they say, you call them a racist. 
 
I took my video down for a moment. I wanted to talk to my husband. I’m gonna put it back up. My family was getting threats from the supposed Catholic community.
 
SF: Who was threatening you?
 
AJ: People who subscribe to you. It’ll get worse once you put this out. 
 

SF: What kind of threats are they making?

AJ:  People saying they’re gonna call CPS, they’re gonna do everything they can to remove this child from my home. That’s ridiculous. And, this probably wasn’t a Catholic person, but one man messaged and put up a comment that said I didn’t deserve to be a mom, and someone should shoot me and put me out of my misery?

 

SF: Did you screenshot that comment?

 

AJ: I immediately deleted it. I don’t want to look at that. 
 
This is the kind of hate that’s being spread right now. What you’re doing right now will only add fuel to the fire. That’s probably what you want. It’s just a very tense time, and it’s unfortunate people can’t share the things they want to share; they can’t share the things they discuss with their friends, with their family. They can’t talk about things without receiving threats, without being attacked from within the Catholic community. It’s a sad time. 
 
SF: If we could, I’d like to go back to those studies you read that showed that there’s a push to change notions about black fatherhood. You said there was more than one. Do you remember where you saw those studies?
 
AJ: It led me down a rabbit trail. I looked up fatherlessness in general in homes, and that led me to fatherlessness in the black community, not that it was seen as appropriate that they weren’t in the home, but it was saying: In black culture, it’s acceptable for black men to be regularly in and out of the home, and more often than white fathers. 
 
It did talk about black fathers being more likely to do more domestic things with their children, bathing their children, one study talked about that. Feeding their children, things of that nature. But there were other studies showing that fatherhood just looked different in the black community.
 
To me, it simply appeared they were trying really hard to justify the 70%, and to reduce the 70% number that’s been hanging out there for years and years. Instead of trying to get to the root cause of the problem, it seemed like they were trying to justify the number. 
 
SF: Are you aware of statistics that show that black men are more likely to be arrested more often for the same crimes that white people commit, and given harsher sentences when they are charged than white people who are charged with those same crimes?
 
AJ: I just simply looked at the statistics that were out there. Black men are disproportionately incarcerated. 
 
SF: Is it possible that they don’t actually commit more crimes, but that they’re incarcerated more often anyway?
 
AJ: I don’t know. I’d have to look at numbers showing that. I don’t have that data in front of me. I think it’s possible. I think we just have to look at data as it comes. I’m always interested in looking at data. I can say that I am a person who, in general, appreciates data over emotion.
 
SF: If black fatherlessness is at the root of black incarceration rates, what is at the root of black fatherlessness? What do you think is the cause for that?
 
AJ: I’m not sure. I’m not a historian. I don’t have all the answers to everything that ails us in our society. I think there has to be something at the root of that. I think Alveda King has talked about that a little bit. Cultural expectations are different for various reasons. I don’t know all those reasons. I’m not a sociologist. 
 
Why is breastfeeding different in the black community? That goes back to the time of slavery. I know there is something there that causes the stats to be the way they are. [fact check: there are modern, ongoing causes of racial disparities in breastfeeding] Why are serial killers 95% white? I don’t know. [fact check: the racial diversity of serial killers mirrors the general population] I don’t have the answer for that, either. Why are the majority of white collar crimes committed by white men? 
 
SF: If you know police officers are more likely to see your son as more of a threat than your white sons, do you discipline him in different ways from your white sons?
 

AJ: No, that’s a disgusting question.

SF: You said it would be smart for a policeman to treat them differently, so wouldn’t it be smart for you to treat them differently?

 
AJ: That’s a disgusting question. For you to think I would treat my children differently. The fact that you can’t see the difference is disgusting. 
 

SF: Does the pro-life movement have a racism problem?

AJ: I think racism exists, yes.

 
SF: Do you think this video will help?
 
AJ: I didn’t create this video to extinguish racism. I created it to share my thoughts. 
 

SF: You said you took the video down, but you’re going to put it up again. Why is that? Will there be a disclaimer or an explanation when you put it up?

AJ: I don’t need an explanation. 

 
Here are some useful links for further reading. I will continue to add to this list. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A person’s a person, no matter how famous: The use and abuse of Norma McCorvey

What do we really know about Norma McCorvey? A new documentary premiering Friday about the pro-life celebrity includes some bombshells from what she called her “deathbed confession”: that her pro-life convictions and possibly even her conversion to Christianity were all an act, performed for money.

“I was the big fish. I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they’d put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say,” Ms. McCorvey said in previews of “AKA Jane Roe.”

Ms. McCorvey, the anonymous plaintiff “Jane Roe” of the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, was initially a pro-choice activist, but after her baptism in 1995, she became a celebrity for the pro-life cause. According to the documentary, she received over $400,000 in “benevolent gifts” from various pro-life organizations. Does her history prove that she only pretended to be pro-life because of the money and fame it brought? Or does it prove that she was only pretending to be pro-choice because that, too, brought her attention and cash?

I suspect the answer is: both, or neither.

“It was all an act. I did it well, too. I am a good actress. Of course, I’m not acting now,” Ms. McCorvey said in the documentary, apparently without irony.

Ms. McCorvey is the classic unreliable narrator, and those who have followed her story are not surprised that this new narrative is emerging three years after her death. She said she was pro-life, but she supported first-trimester abortions; she said she renounced her L.G.B.T. lifestyle but lived with a female companion for decades. She gave varying accounts of how she came to be pregnant with the baby whose abortion she tried and failed to procure, claiming at various times that she was raped, then that she had lied about being raped. She wrote a book called Won By Love, but she was often harsh and aggressive toward her own supporters. Her behavior was erratic, her speech often rambling.

The Catholic author and journalist Dawn Eden Goldstein, who says she met Ms. McCorvey in 2007 at a “40 Days for Life” dinner, recently shared a note she sent to their mutual booking agent, urging him to find her a “minder” who could protect her from fans who plied her with drinks even after she told them she was an alcoholic.

And she was used, consistently, tragically, all her life. She was abused, perhaps raped, uprooted, deceived and manipulated, as well as wined, dined, feted and mythologized by both sides. The fact that she became immortalized by the anonymous name “Jane Roe” is tragically apt. Here is someone who was never allowed to be …Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Image: Norma McCorvey in front of the Supreme Court in 1989

‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’: A searing but flawed film about abortion

I suppose America asked me to review “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” because I am pro-life but critical of the mainstream pro-life movement. I especially reject pro-lifers who demonize women and make excuses for men, and who refuse to understand why abortion feels like the only choice for some women. Things are slowly changing, but much of pro-life culture is still propaganda. I abhor propaganda, even when I agree with the message it delivers. If I’m watching a movie, I want a work of art, not a wheelbarrow for dumping a message at my feet.

“Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” written and directed by Eliza Hittman, is no wheelbarrow. It is a deft, delicate and sometimes searingly painful and realistic portrayal of two teenage cousins, Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) and Skylar (Talia Ryder), who travel from their rural Pennsylvania town to New York City, where Autumn can get an abortion without parental consent. For a longish film, it is short on plot and dialogue, relying heavily and successfully on glances, murmurs and laconic comments. The script and acting are superb, flawless. This film never tells, only shows, and it does it so well.

Maybe too well. Read the rest of my review for America Magazine.

Veronica among the pro-lifers

My mother, at her best moments, was Veronica.

When she could still write and speak, she was wonderfully articulate, even brilliant. She cannot speak now. But here I am, learning from her how to be a Catholic—not so much from what she said but from what she did and what it showed me.

My parents were pro-life activists. As adult converts, they had already spent several years among evangelicals, some more earnest than others. They had encountered true holiness and Christian simplicity; and they had also encountered people like their landlord, who preached the Gospel and then told my mother she must hang her hand-washed cloth diapers up to dry in her tiny kitchen all winter because wet clothes on the porch just looked too poor. Blessed are the classy, for their property value will not depreciate.

Eventually, they made their way into the church, and once their Howard Johnson swimming pool baptism was conditionally repeated, they waded ashore as Catholics around 1978—right in the thick of liturgical silly season. I remember a Snoopy-themed catechism, altar balloons and some of the most Caucasian dancing known to mankind. My mother, praying in her makeshift chapel in the darkened back stairs, would wrestle with the homoousion late into Saturday night and then wake up early for Sunday Mass, which turned out to have clowns. And sometimes actual heresy.

I was young and only dimly aware of what my parents faced as they tried to anchor their spiritual boat in such choppy waters. They did try. My mother wrote about some of her efforts in this short, hilarious essay, “How I Wrecked Two Parish Ministries,” that you will skip at your peril. As I remember it, she struggled to keep her own massive hunger for truth in proportion with the equally urgent mandate to treat other human beings with love. Yes, even those who sneered and raged at her for giving up everything to follow Christ. Yes, even those who said they loved him and then told lies in his name. In all her many spiritual incarnations, my mother was always a personalist, long before I knew there was a name for it.

She was, as I say, a pro-life activist, which took many different forms. She prayed peacefully outside abortion facilities. She wrote letters to the editor. Shy as she was, she manned the booth at community health fairs and showed teenagers accurate models of fetal development. I think she tried sidewalk counseling but decided it was not right for her, so instead worked with agencies that helped new mothers with clothing, housing and food. She fielded her share of profanity and abuse from abortion activists. And she irritated her conservative friends by insisting we acknowledge the chastity of Jesus, not just the purity of Mary. She knew what so many of her fellow Catholics seemed to have forgotten: That Jesus was a real man, a virgin, and that how he behaved in his actual human life meant something.

She believed that you could touch his face.

Our minivan had a bumper sticker that said, “One abortion: One dead, one wounded.” My mother especially liked this message because it was not about society or politics, but it reminded us that every single abortion represents a massive failure toward some particular woman.

One day on the highway, we passed another car, and my mother thought she saw a short vignette play out: A woman saw the bumper sticker and began to cry, and the man at the wheel tried to comfort her as he drove.

Who knows what really happened. But as soon as she got home, my mother peeled the bumper sticker off the car. The last thing she wanted was to wound someone. That was the whole point: It does not matter how right you are. What you do has to be about the human person. You cannot just go around wounding people who are already wounded and call it “Christian.” It is our job to heal, not to wound.

My mother was so socially baffled at all times. She could talk about ideas, but petty chit-chat left her stymied. As if they realized this, the needy and disabled who were too weird and smelly for everyone else were drawn to her in droves. I always imagined her in paradise, followed, like Sarah Smith in The Great Divorce, by an adoring, jabbering crowd of all the hapless, gormless outcasts she awkwardly welcomed and comforted, fed, clothed. Social pretensions she understood not at all, but a person in need or a person in pain claimed her entirely. It was always about the human person, the real human person. When no one else would touch their faces, she would.

My mother had a drawer where she kept her pro-life materials—her posters, her pamphlets, her reams of purple mimeographed facts and resources. In the back of the drawer was a box, and in the box was an envelope. This was where she kept some photos of aborted babies . . .

Continue reading the rest of my latest for America.

Image: Holy Hill Station VI: Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus, photo by Sharon Mollerus via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Graphic abortion images have their place, but they don’t belong at the March for Life

Are you going to the March for Life, either in DC or in your state?  If so, are you planning to display graphic photos or videos of aborted babies?

If so, I’m begging you to reconsider.

I understand why people use them. Many Americans are still somehow ignorant about what abortion really is — what it really does to real babies.  They believe the lies about a “clump of cells” or “fetal pole activity,” or let themselves get confused in a cloud of euphemisms about “choice.” Many pro-lifers remember seeing those bloody images for the first time, and can recall being shaken out of a vague, fuzzy support for the pro-life cause into the realization that this is a life-and-death struggle — real life, and real death.

These images have their uses.

But a public place is not the place to use these images — ever, I’m convinced.  These images are like a terrible weapon which should be used with fear and trembling, and only as a last resort.  Ideally, they should only be used in the context of a relationship. Why?

Those are real babies.  Christians are almost alone in affirming the dignity of the human person.  The human body is sacred and always worthy of respect.  When we use pictures of real babies as a tactic or a tool, we are allowing ourselves to forget that these are children with an immortal soul, and who have a name that only their Father knows.  They have already been killed.  Let us treat their poor bodies with respect.

There will be children at the march.  Do you let your little kids watch slasher films or play gory video games?  No?  Well, those things show us actors with fake blood, pretending to be tortured and killed, or computer-generated images.  It’s bad enough when it’s fake. Why would you let your kids see the real thing?  The pro-life cause is about protecting innocent life, and that includes protecting the innocence of young children.  Violent images stay with us for a lifetime, and they damage us.

There will be post-abortive women at the march.  Imagine their courage in being there at all.  Then imagine what it does to them to see, once again, the dark thing that keeps them from sleeping at night — the thing that often keeps them in decades-long cycles of self-loathing and despair.  We don’t ask victims of rape to look at videos of rape in progress.  We don’t ask holocaust victims to look at huge banners showing the piles of emaciated bodies.  As pro-lifers, we must remember that every abortion has two victims:  the child and the mother.  We must never be on the side that hurts mothers.  Never.

Women who have miscarried will be there.  Thousands of the women at the March are mothers — mothers who have already given birth, mothers who are pregnant as they march, and mothers who have miscarried, delivered dead babies.  For many of them, the grief over a miscarriage never goes away entirely.  Many women stay away from any public march for fear of being subjected to these images so similar to the thing that caused them so much pain.  Motherhood makes a woman’s heart tender.  The pro-life movement should be a shelter that protects that tenderness — because the world needs it desperately.

Public image matters.  Some people’s only contact with obvious pro-lifers is with people who shout and condemn and terrify.  It’s just basic psychology:  if you want people to listen to you and have sympathy for your cause, don’t come across as a lunatic.  You’re not a lunatic — but to people who don’t already agree with you, you sure look that way if you’re out in public with an oversized photo of gore flapping in the wind.  Yes, your cause is worthy.  No, you’re not helping it.

They’re not an unanswerable argument that pro-lifers imagine, because people see what they want to see.  When the apostles begged the Lord to send the dead to persuade people to repent, He said that if they didn’t listen to the prophets, then they wouldn’t be impressed by the dead coming back to life, either.  Many pro-choicers speak as if it’s a foregone conclusion that pro-lifers use photoshopped images — that the tiny, mutilated feet and hands and heads are a hoax that’s been thoroughly debunked.  It’s a lie, of course.  But people believe it all the same, because they want to (and pro-lifers don’t help their cause by being sloppy about things like identifying gestational age on photos).

Desensitization is a real danger — even among pro-lifers.  It’s just how humans are made:  see something too often, and you stop really seeing it.  I thank and bless those who work so tirelessly for the pro-life cause, including those who had to spend time up close with the heart-rending remains of babies, rescuing them from dumpsters and photographing them.

But to those who use these images routinely everywhere, indiscriminately, I beg that they to stop and consider that, like policemen or like soldiers, they are human, and are in danger of becoming hardened out of self-preservation. People who have become hardened must never be the public face of the pro-life cause.  If you, as a pro-life activist, see a bloody image and you don’t flinch, then it’s time to take a break — move into a different segment of the ministry, perhaps one that emphasizes prayer and reparation.

*****

These are all arguments against using graphic images indiscriminately, in a public place. Does this mean they should never be used?

Absolutely not.  Bloody and shocking images have their place.  Pro-life activists are right when they say abortion depends on silence and darkness, and that truth must be exposed.  Too many people who are pro-choice because they somehow still don’t know what fetuses actually look like, or what happens to them when they are aborted– or because they’ve simply slipped into a comfortable shelter of euphemisms.  These lies, this comfort must be stripped away.

So when should you use graphic images?  When a teenager shrugs and says, “My health teacher says it’s not a person until 25 weeks.”  When someone who works in the front office of a clinic says she’s doing a gentle, compassionate work of mercy.  When your boyfriend wants you to get rid of “it” before it becomes a real baby.  When a college girl likens unborn babies to tumors or parasites.  Then you can respond to the actual situation, to the actual person.  Then you can take out the picture and say, “Is this what you’re talking about?” And let the poor, dead child speak for you. 

I believe that everyone should see an image of an aborted baby once in their lifetime.  And I believe that, like any traumatic image, it will stay with you.  Once or twice in a lifetime is enough. 

Abortion is violent.  Abortion is cruel.  Abortion inflicts trauma and pain on the vulnerable.  Abortion is dehumanizing to mother and child. As pro-lifers, we should have no part in any of that.  Let use those graphic images with care and respect, as a weapon of last resort. 

***
Photo used with kind permission of the photographer, Matthew Lomanno, from his photo documentary of the March for Life 2014.

 

Pro-life spotlight: Who wants a discount code for the REHUMANIZE INTERNATIONAL conference?

I’ve been putting off featuring Rehumanize International for my pro-life spotlight, because I love them so much and wanted to do them justice. 
 
However, I just got my hot little hands on a discount code for their upcoming conference, so today’s the day!  The conference is at at Loyola in New Orleans, and it’s from Oct. 18-20. Details below.
If I were anywhere in the area, I would absolutely be there. You know I reject the whole “vote GOP or the baby gets it” mode of being pro-life, but I also get frustrated with “whole life” thinking that’s so open-ended, it doesn’t have time for cheesy stuff like protecting the unborn. Left and right, pro-lifers and pro-choicers both so often descend into dehumanizing someone, all for the sake of the cause.
 
REHUMANIZE INTERNATIONAL never does this. Rehumanize International is the antidote. All of their work is marked with a genuine concern for the life and dignity of all human persons. 
 
Lately, I’m especially impressed by Rehumanize International’s dedication to featuring the voices of pro-life people of color, including a former abortion clinic worker who’ll be speaking at the conference. (They also have kickass swag.) 
 
Use the code RUSH to get $20 off any ticket purchased. This code is only valid for this week. This is an amazing freaking deal, as you’ll see if you look at the tremendous line-up they’re offering. If you can’t make it, share the code! Here’s the details about the conference:
 
***
 

The lineup of speakers is extraordinary, the wide-ranging depth of the presentations will enlighten and engage you, and the community of attendees will become fast friends. This year’s conference will include talks by abortion survivors and a death row survivor… as well as a session with a veteran for peace, a former abortion clinic worker who works for life, and a former state executioner who now works to end the death penalty. We feature the voices of grassroots advocates and experts on topics ranging from war and peacemaking to embryonic stem cell research and affirming life.

We at Rehumanize International embrace a philosophy called the Consistent Life Ethic, and we know that y’all would benefit immensely from the edifying talks that will engage and equip you for your work for human dignity.

You really don’t want to miss this phenomenal event!

Regular General Admission passes are so affordable: Adult tickets are $75, and Student tickets are only $50! 

You can register now: www.rehumanizeintl.org/conference

BUT WAIT!!! — The Rehumanize team doesn’t want finances to be an obstacle to attendance — if you and your friends and followers want to come, but the cost is just not doable right now, send us an email (aimee@rehumanizeintl.org) and we’ll work out a scholarship, discount, or fee waiver option for you! We don’t want finances to get in the way of folks hearing these vital messages of our inherent human worth.

Here’s a rundown of what this year’s conference will include:

Friday, October 18

2:00 PM – 4:00 PM — 40 Days for Life Vigil outside local abortion clinic

5:30 PM – 9:00 PM — Create | Encounter art show

Saturday, October 19

8:00 AM — Registration opens

9:15 – 10:00 AM — Keynote 1: On Dehumanizing Language

Herb Geraghty, Rehumanize International

10:15 – 11:45 AM — Workshop 1: ISO Secular Abortion Recovery Resources

Kelsey Hazzard, Secular Pro-Life

Michaelene Fredenburg, Abortion Changes You

10:15 – 11:00 AM — Breakout Session 1

A: Where Did I Leave My Shield? (on suicide prevention)

Kara Wiggins

B: A Post-Abortive Sibling’s Testimony

Krista Corbello, Rehumanize International

C: Literary Device as Defense for the Indigenous

Jennifer Reeser

FORUM: Alternatives to Violence

Lisa Stiller, Consistent Life Network

11:15 – 12:00 PM — Breakout Session 2

D: Building a Whole Life Culture in Louisiana

Rep. Katrina Jackson (D) – LA state representative

E: Grassroots Organizing 101

Greta Zarro, World Beyond War

F: Accompanying Survivors of Sexual Violence

Aimee Murphy, Rehumanize International

FORUM: Preventing Burnout: Self-Care for Activists

Alex Lucas, Wolf Pack for Life

12:00 – 1:00 PM — LUNCH & service project

Lunch Sponsor TBD

1:00 – 2:00 PM — Keynote 2: Leaving Violent Institutions

Thad Crouch, Veterans for Peace

Jerry Givens, former VA executioner

Toni Turner, former abortion clinic worker

2:15 – 3:10 PM — Workshop 2: Equipping the Church to Uphold Life

NOLA Embrace Grace

2:15 – 3:00 PM — Breakout Session 3

G: Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress, Moral Injury, and the CLE

Rachel MacNair, Consistent Life Network

H: The Secular Case Against Abortion

Kelsey Hazzard, Secular Pro-Life

I: Rehumanizing Immigrants & Refugees

Martin Gutierrez, Catholic Charities of New Orleans

FORUM: Voting & Politics

Alex Seghers, Louisiana Right to Life

3:15 – 4:15 PM — Keynote 3: I Survived Abortion

Claire Culwell, abortion survivor

Josiah Presley, abortion survivor

4:15 – 4:40 PM — Networking break

4:45 – 5:30 PM — Keynote 4: I Survived Death Row

Death Row Exoneree, Witness to Innocence

5:45 – 8:00 PM — Dinner on your own

8:30 – 9:00 PM — Vigil for Victims of Ableism (for Disability Rights)

Sunday, October 20

8:30 AM – Registration opens

9:30 -10:30 AM — Keynote 5: Countering Ableism in Medicine

Sarah Terzo, Consistent Life Network & PLAGAL

Sophie Trist, Wolf Pack for Life

Jamie Duplechine, Ms. Wheelchair Louisiana USA 2016-17

John “Frank” Stephens, Former global messenger with Special Olympics

10:45 – 11:45 AM — Workshop 3: Working w/ Incarcerated People for Justice Reform

Miea Walker, Forward Justice

Shareef Cousin, Witness to Innocence

10:45 – 11:30 AM — Breakout Session 4

J: Restorative Justice After Abortion

Catherine Glenn Foster, Americans United for Life

Aimee Murphy, Rehumanize International

K: Choosing Life After Rape

Jennifer Christie, Love Louder

L: Ending Violence Against LGBT People

Alice Lee, LGBT advocate

FORUM: Disability Inclusion

Sophie Trist, Wolfpack for Life

11:30 AM – 12:50 PM — LUNCH on your own

11:45 AM – 12:45 PM — Rehumanize Baton Rouge/NOLA Meetup

1:00 – 2:00 PM — Keynote 6: Restorative Justice After Slavery

Ismail Smith-Wade-El

2:15 – 3:45 PM — Workshop 4: Rehumanizing Art

Maria Oswalt, Rehumanize International

2:15 – 3:00 PM — Breakout Session 5

M: Overlooked: Women and Incarceration

Miea Walker, Forward Justice

N: The Revolution: 100 Years of Pro-Life Feminism

Deanna Wallace

O: Guantanamo & History of US Torture

Marie Meza, Witness Against Torture

FORUM:  Protests, Marches, and Nonviolent Actions

TJ Burgess, National Men for Life

3:15 – 4:00 PM — Breakout Session 6

P: Apocalypse Never: Why We Must Reject Nuclear Weapons

John Whitehead, Consistent Life Network

Q: Embryo Rights Beyond Abortion

Herb Geraghty, Rehumanize International

R: Assisted Suicide & Ableism

Diane Coleman, Not Dead Yet

FORUM: Women in the Movement

Madison Tuck & Sophie Trist, Wolf Pack for Life

We hope that you can see how valuable of an event this would be to you and your friends, and that y’all will join us in the Big Easy in a couple weeks — we promise that you will learn so much, you will be truly edified and strengthened in your activism to rehumanize the world! Please share this opportunity with your colleagues, volunteers, and anyone else who you think might be interested.

Use the code RUSH to get $20 off any ticket purchased. This code is only valid for this week.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Fr. Pavone cashes in on dead babies again

You will remember when Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life dragged the naked corpse of a baby onto a consecrated altar, in order to bully Americans into voting for Trump. I guess he wasn’t quick enough to snag the thousands of fetal remains recently discovered in the house of a late-term abortionist; but he’s doing the next best thing: Name the Aborted Babies is up and running on the PFL site:

“Along with bestowing a name . . . ” What gives anyone that right? Are these babies pandas at the zoo, to be “adopted” by critter-loving fans? Or maybe Pavone will offer a certificate of authenticity for only $29.99, so you can proudly display the name of your very own aborted baby in beautiful calligraphy. Suitable for framing, great as a Christmas present. 

This is grotesque. The grotesquerie never ends. 

Naming is an act either of authority, or of ownership — the act of a parent, or of an owner. You don’t get to name a baby unless you’re the parent; and you don’t get to name anything else unless it’s something that can be owned. So what does this mean, for strangers to name unborn babies they’ve never met, who do have parents? Who gave them that right? The abortionist who collected their little bodies apparently saw them as trophies, as something to collect. And now the second wave of vultures descends to squabble over their bodies again.

You cannot restore dignity to unborn babies by treating them like objects, or like trophies, or pets, or mascots, or props. You don’t treat them like objects when you want to kill them, and you don’t treat them like objects when you want to show how pro-life you are. You don’t treat them like objects, because they are human. That’s all there is to it.

But Fr. Pavone, who never met these children and has no idea who they are, will offer you the chance to name them, and all you have to give him in exchange is your email address. No doubt a respectful 24 hours will pass before you start getting appeals for money to reelect Trump in the name of your very own dead baby. 

With our evening prayers, we recite the prayer written by Fulton Sheen: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I love you very much. I beg you to spare the life of the unborn baby I have spiritually adopted who is in danger of abortion.” It’s a little chewier than I normally get in prayer, but I do it as a tiny act of penance, for the sake of all those unborn babies. “Spiritually adopting” an unborn baby means pledging to pray for him; and praying for a child means turning him over to the Holy Spirit.

So pray, yes, pray for these poor babies. Pray for them as individuals, known and cherished by their Father in Heaven. And pray for their parents. Pray for the mothers — some of whom have surely repented and named their own babies themselves.

But do not dare to let yourself think of these children as something you can have, something you can get a piece of while this story is still hot on social media. They are not yours. They are real people, not gimmicks to inflate a political mailing list. It is grotesque.  

I don’t fault well-meaning pro-lifers who are in agony thinking of those poor children held captive by a ghoul. They read about an outrage, and they want to do something, and this feels like doing something. I don’t fault people looking for something meaningful to do in the face of evil. 

But I do fault Fr. Pavone, and everyone who works with him. His work is a lucrative, scandalous scam. and he should be forced to retreat from the public eye. He is grotesque. 

***

Related reading: The Scandal of the cross, and the scandal of Fr. Pavone

Graphic images have their place, but not at the March for Life

For my series covering pro-lifers actually serving the vulnerable, see:

“Our humanity doesn’t begin at birth, and it doesn’t end at the border.”

St. Joseph’s House and Isaiah’s Promise offer support, respite, and joy to families of the disabled

We Dignify

Gadbois mission trip to Bulgarian orphanage

Mary’s Shelter in VA

China Little Flower

Immigrant Families Together

Rio Grande Valley Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center

photo via Wikipedia (public domain)

Skip the semantics.The Jeffrey Epstein case is about victimizing girls, not “young women”

Cui bono? Who benefits from squeezing language until it bleeds jargon? The guilty, of course.

But another important question is: Cui plagalis? Who stands to lose? Whose suffering is likely to be minimized if normally careless people suddenly become very careful about their word choice?

Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Image: by Linnaea Mallette  CC0 Public Domain

Pro-life spotlight Vol. 8: “Our humanity doesn’t begin at birth, and it doesn’t end at the border.”

The border, the border, the border. It’s so heavy to think about. Children are, by definition, innocent. We are, by definition, obligated to help the innocent. There’s no “but we have to teach their parents a lesson” clause or “they should never have come” loophole or “my grandparents did it the right way” excuse note. Children are innocent. We are obligated to help the innocent. 

People are aching to give detained kids food and blankets, diapers, toys, and anything to make them feel like someone cares about them; but they are not accepting donations at detention centers. 

So you help where you can. When migrants are released from detainment, often after tireless legal intercession by groups like Immigrant Families Together, they are in desperate need. Respite centers, where migrants go when they are released, are accepting donations. 

New Wave Feminists, a secular pro-life group founded by the irrepressible Destiny Herndon De La Rosa, has organized a massive pro-life effort, with over fifty pro-life sponsors from across the political spectrum, to bring supplies and funds to the people on the ground ministering to people in dire need. 

“Our humanity doesn’t begin at birth, and it doesn’t end at the border,” it says on NWF’s donation page. They will pass all donations until July 13th along to help families at the border.

“We should be able to stand with the vulnerable wherever they are,” Herndon-De La Rosa said, “and that extends beyond the womb.”

They have reached the capacity of how many physical goods they can haul to respite centers, but they are still gratefully accepting donations, which they will pass along to two respite centers and a legal aid fund that works to reunite families by helping them through the legal system and posting their bails. 

***

Previous volumes of Pro-life Spotlight:

We Dignify

Gadbois mission trip to Bulgarian orphanage

Mary’s Shelter in VA

China Little Flower

Immigrant Families Together

Rio Grande Valley Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center

If you know or have worked with an organization that works to build a culture that cherishes human life, please drop me a line at simchafisher at gmail dot com with “pro-life spotlight” in the title.