Archive for the 'Babies' Category

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Our Lord Jesus in a few weeks, I’m also looking forward to one of my favorite Advent traditions: the Pro-Life Action League’s annual “Empty Manger” Christmas Caroling Day.

Each year on the Saturday before Christmas, we visit abortion clinics in Chicago to sing Christmas carols, gathered around a life-size “empty manger”, which symbolizes both the empty space
left behind by abortion and the hope born with every child, even in difficult circumstances.

This year’s Caroling Day is Saturday, December 19, and we’ll be conducting TWO different caroling tours — one in Chicago and one in west suburban DuPage County.

You can get all the details, including maps and schedules, here.

If you don’t live near Chicago, how about doing your own “Empty Manger” Caroling Day at abortion clinics or Planned Parenthood offices in YOUR area? Pro-life groups all over the country have taken up this idea, and babies have been saved when their mothers heard the caroling.

To make it easy, we’ve prepared a caroling song sheet [PDF] you can copy and pass out.

If you do your own Caroling Day, send us some pictures and let us know how it goes!

Check out this great ad:

Too bad it won’t be shown during the Super Bowl, because “NBC and the NFL are not interested in advertisements involving ‘political advocacy or issues.’”

This morning, a group of 50 pro-lifers of all ages—including members of the Rockford Teens for Life club—gathered outside the abortion clinic in Rockford, IL.

We just got an e-mail from one of the carolers, who told us:

In freezing weather and a blowing snowstorm an amazing group of 40-50 Christians gathered to pray and sing Christmas carols as an offering of love to God and hope for His children facing abortion.

The group sang and prayed for almost an hour. Ten minutes after most of the carolers left a young couple came out… They drove up quickly to the remaining pro-lifers because they wanted to share with them the joyful news: “We didn’t do it!” They told us they are going to have twins and wanted to share the news with the people singing.

The grace of God is an amazing thing. In Rockford at least one young family will have a Christmas to always remember and be thankful for. In an interesting note the young lady who organized our “empty manger” Christmas caroling just happens to be a twin. We are are all humbled and thankful because we know “with God all things are possible.”

Wow!

For years, many people who call themselves “pro-choice” have said that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare”.

Many pro-lifers have pointed out how strange it is that abortion advocates would want abortion to be “rare”, because, after all, if abortion is supposedly “safe”, and if it isn’t actually the killing of an innocent human person (and therefore is the moral equivalent of having a tooth pulled), why does it matter if abortion is “rare” or not?

Now, though, it turns out that many abortion supporters admit they really don’t care if abortion is rare—including people like Dr. Andre Lalonde, executive vice president of the Canadian Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, who “worries” [!] that Sarah Palin’s decision to give birth to her son Trig, who has Down syndrome, “may cause abortions in Canada to decline as other women there and elsewhere opt to follow suit”.

Worrying that fewer babies with Down syndrome will be killed?

The brutal honesty is very revealing.

Related

• McCain’s VP Pick
• More Down Syndrome Testing Will Lead to More Abortion

We in the pro-life movement are pretty excited about John McCain’s choice for a running mate - Sarah Palin.  She’s solidly pro-life and is loved by the people of Alaska whom she governs.  But that’s not all, folks.  She’s a pro-life witness to boot.

When Sarah was pregnant with her last child, Trig, she was told that he had Down Syndrome.  This sort of news alone can be difficult to embrace, but her doctors went on to encourage her to abort.  Sarah and her husband refused.  This is the quote we are seeing all over the media:

“We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed.”

God bless Sarah Palin and God bless America.  This continues to be an most interesting presidential race.

One of the speakers at our TeenSpeak 2008 conference was Scott Klusendorf, who is one of the best pro-life speakers I’ve ever heard.

The main reason why he’s so good is that he’s able to explain why abortion is wrong in a simple, convincing, and logical way by focusing on just one single question.

In an article titled “A Short Defense of the Pro-Life Position”, Scott writes:

Pro-life advocates contend that elective abortion unjustly takes the life of a defenseless human being. This simplifies the abortion debate by focusing public attention on just one question: Is the unborn a member of the human family? If so, killing him or her to benefit others is a serious moral wrong. Conversely, if the unborn are not human, elective abortion requires no more justification than having a tooth pulled.

This is not a debate about privacy or trusting women to make their own responsible choices. For example, does the right to make one’s own responsible choices include the rights of parents to abuse children in the privacy of the home? Therefore, if the unborn are human like other children…killing them in the name of privacy is a clear moral wrong. Hence, the abortion debate is really about one question: What is the unborn? Is he or she a member of the human family? Everything comes back to that one question.

(more…)

There was an article this weekend in a Los Angeles area newspaper about Korin Cuico, a San Pedro teenager and a highly recruited softball player who became pregnant and decided — at the last minute — against having an abortion.

Instead, Korin chose to let one of her cousins (who had just found out she was unable to have children) adopt her baby:

“In my mind, I was thinking about an abortion,” Cuico said. “But I didn’t want to because the baby was already moving in my stomach. I felt sad just thinking about an abortion. It was an emotional roller coaster for the next month….”

“I had a change of heart. If I had an abortion, I don’t know how I would’ve lived with myself.”

[HT: JivinJ]

At a campaign stop in Johnstown, PA this Saturday, Barack Obama was asked, if he were elected president, how his administration would deal with HIV/AIDS and preventing STDs in young girls.

Obama responded:

– or we give them really expensive surgery and we don’t spend money on the front end keeping people healthy in the first place. So when it comes specifically to HIV/AIDS, the most important prevention is education, which should include — which should include abstinence education and teaching the children — teaching children, you know, that sex is not something casual. But it should also include — it should also include other, you know, information about contraception because, look, I’ve got two daughters, 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals.

But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at the age of 16. You know, so it doesn’t make sense to not give them information.

First, regarding this last part: If Obama really is interested in not withholding information from teenagers that will help them avoid getting an STD, what kind of information is he talking about? (more…)

I came across information on the show “Baby Borrowers” on Jill Stanek’s blog - a site which, by the way, I highly recommend. I don’t know how she keeps up on all of this stuff! She’s amazing.

“The ‘Baby Borrowers’ will be a “social experiment” involving 5 teenage couples who play round-the-clock parents and caretakers for 3 days each to a baby, toddler, pre-teen with pet, teenager, and senior citizen (”some with health issues”) in succession.” (more…)

I saw Juno the other night and really liked it. Has anyone else seen it? What did you think? I’d like to see it again, but I’ll have to wait until it comes out on video since I can’t really afford to go to the theater again.

I think Ellen Page did a great job, but so did everyone else, especially her boyfriend, Bleeker (Michael Cera).

I just wanted to get your thoughts on a few things. First, I was a little surprised by her choice of adopted parents given her personality. What were your thoughts on that?

Also, for those of you who have not seen the movie and don’t want to know the ending, stop reading here . . . (more…)

Every year on the Saturday before Christmas, we visit abortion clinics in Chicago to sing Christmas carols, gathered around a life-size empty manger, which symbolizes the hope every new life brings as well as the emptiness left behind when a child is killed by abortion.

This year’s Caroling Day is Saturday, December 22, and we’re going to conduct two different caroling tours at the same time — one in Chicago and one in west suburban DuPage County.

Join us for one of them if you can:

Chicago Caroling Tour

• 9:00 Planned Parenthood, 1200 N. La Salle Dr., Chicago map
• 10:00 Family Planning Associates, 659 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago map
• 11:00 American Women Medical Ctr., 2744 N. Western Ave., Chicago map
• 12:00 Albany Medical Surgical Ctr., 5086 N. Elston Ave., Chicago map

DuPage County Caroling Tour

• 9:00 ACU Health Center, 736 N. York Rd., Hinsdale map
• 10:00 Aanchor Health Center, 1186 Roosevelt Rd., Glen Ellyn map
• 11:00 Access Health Center, 1700 75th St., Downers Grove map
• 12:00 Planned Parenthood Aurora, 3051 E. New York St., Aurora map

Don’t live near Chicago? How about doing your own “Empty Manger” Caroling Day at nearby abortion clinics or Planned Parenthood offices?

Pro-life groups all over the country have taken up this idea, and babies have been saved when their mothers heard the caroling.

To make it easy, we’ve prepared a caroling song sheet [PDF] you can copy and pass out.

If you do your own Caroling Day, let us know how it goes.

There’s a beautiful article in today’s Chicago Tribune about Linda Sanchez, a Texas mom who has breast cancer and was treated with chemotherapy while pregnant. Her daughter, Isabella Marie, was born three days ago, weighing 5 pounds, 2 ounces.

From the article:

Isabella became the 70th baby born under a University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center program that once was controversial, but which last year formed the basis of the first national guidelines for the treatment of pregnant women with breast cancer. Until this program, women with cancer who learned they were pregnant were told to abort [emphasis added].

“Told to abort”? “Told to abort”? So much for “choice”…

That’s what Sanchez, 27, was told last spring after she learned in a span of a few days that she was pregnant and that she had breast cancer.

Good thing for Linda and Isabella that Mom got a second opinion. Our prayers are with them.

Read the whole thing.

Tough Questions for the Opposition is the title of one of the articles in our Pro-Life Curriculum.

It’s taken from an article written by Mark Crutcher of Life Dynamics, in which he lays out 15 very specific questions pro-lifers can should use when we find ourselves in a debate with someone who is “pro-choice”.

One of these questions is:

Why don’t we each look at the downside of our respective positions? Have you ever thought about the ramifications if you are wrong?

He then explains that we’re “better off taking the risk of being pro-life and wrong than pro-abortion and wrong.”

I thought of Mark’s article when I saw this video:

HT: Jill Stanek

Saturday’s Jericho March finale at the Aurora Planned Parenthood site was a great success, with an estimated 1,000 people walking, singing, playing instruments, and, most of all, praying for the “Abortion Fortress” not to open.

We got some good media coverage, too:

• See ABC News Channel 7 video here
• See Fox News Channel 32 video here
• See WGN News Channel 9 video here
• See the Chicago Tribune story here

Here are a couple of slide shows from the Jericho March finale: (more…)

Annie and her husband Robert are pleased to announce the birth of their new baby girl, Emma Jane Casselman!

Emma was born on August 17, weighing 5 pounds, 7 ounces. She and Annie are both doing well.

Annie and Robert would like to extend a big thank you to all of you who have been remembering their family in your prayers.