One Hundred Days

What can a President do in just 100 days?

Unfortunately, the answer is "plenty".

From FRC, this video summaries "100 Days of Change for the Family" ...


... and, from the Susan B. Anthony List, "just some of the items on the radical pro-abortion agenda that President Obama implemented or is in the process of implementing in his first 100 days."

• Repealed the pro-life Mexico City Policy, allowing your tax dollars to fund international abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.
• Removed important conscience protections for medical professionals who choose to follow their conscience and refuse to participate in abortion procedures.
• Increased Title X taxpayer funding – the slush fund for Planned Parenthood – to $307 million in 2009.
• Restored $50 million in funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA), which funds China's One-Child policy and other abortion providers around the world. Increased funding for International Family Planning by 19% for a total of $545 million.
• Nominated cabinet officials and judges like Kathleen Sebelius, Dawn Johnsen, and David Hamilton, who will do all they can to advance the pro-abortion agenda.

But, as the SBA List notes,

There are still many important pro-life laws still intact, like the Hyde Amendment, which restricts further funding of the abortion industry. We must keep up our fight to ensure that these pro-life protections remain in place.

"Just Look," says Cardinal Egan

The picture on this page is an untouched photograph of a being that has been within its mother for 20 weeks. Please do me the favor of looking at it carefully.



Have you any doubt that it is a human being?

If you do not have any such doubt, have you any doubt that it is an innocent human being?

If you have no doubt about this either, have you any doubt that the authorities in a civilized society are duty-bound to protect this innocent human being if anyone were to wish to kill it?

If your answer to this last query is negative, that is, if you have no doubt that the authorities in a civilized society would be duty-bound to protect this innocent human being if someone were to wish to kill it, I would suggest—even insist—that there is not a lot more to be said about the issue of abortion in our society. It is wrong, and it cannot—must not—be tolerated.

Thank you, Cardinal Egan, for an eloquent and powerful defense of life. Please read the whole thing at Catholic New York.

Hat-tip: Creative Minority Report

Burke: Democratic Party risks becoming "Party of Death"

In this ZENIT interview, Archbishop Burke says:

At this point, the Democratic Party risks transforming itself definitively into a 'party of death' due to its choices on bioethical issues, as Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in his book 'The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life.'

And I say this with a heavy heart, because we all know that the Democrats were the party that helped our Catholic immigrant parents and grandparents to better integrate into and prosper in American society. But it's not the same anymore.

Nonetheless, there are among Democrats some pro-lifers, but they are, unfortunately, rare.

God bless Archbishop Burke for his forthright comment, which I do consider another "sign of hope". My only issue with it is that he says the Democratic Party "risks" becoming the party of death while I think their current platform is already the platform of the Culture of Death -- that which offers the death of innocents as solutions to life's problems.

Viva Verastegui!

In this powerful video, actor and producer Eduardo Verastegui, of "Bella" fame, speaks the truth about the tragedy of abortion and Obama's promotion of it. This edited version from CNA does not contain the brief graphic images of the original video, which you can find at Dura Realidad (Hard Truth).

More on his conversion and pro-life work here.

Prenatal Testing for Down Syndrome Dangerous for All Babies

Prenatal Testing for Down Syndrome Dangerous for All Babies:

A study published by Down Syndrome Education International, a British charity organization, reports that invasive prenatal testing kills 400 healthy babies a year who had been identified as having the condition by false-positive blood tests, The Telegraph reported.

The testing also results in annual abortions of 660 British babies with Down syndrome who would have survived until birth if the pregnancies were allowed to progress, Frank Buckley and Sue Buckley wrote in the online version of Down Syndrome Research and Practice.

...
'When widespread prenatal whole genome screening becomes a possibility, many of the troubling issues raised by our experiences of screening for Down syndrome will be brought into sharper focus,' the Buckleys continued.

That's putting it mildly.

The NRLC article also cites another study showing that a shocking 92% of English and Welsh infants whose Down syndrome is identified in utero are aborted.

"We'll pay for you to die, but not for you to live"

The Culture of Death is alive and well in Oregon, where both doctor-assisted suicide and health-care rationing are practiced.

Oregon health plan covers assisted suicide, not drugs, for cancer patient:

An Oregon woman suffering from lung cancer was notified by the state-run Oregon Health Plan that their policy would not cover her life-extending cancer drug, telling her the health plan would cover doctor-assisted suicide instead.

Barbara Wagener discovered her lung cancer had recurred last month, the Register-Guard said. Her oncologist prescribed a drug called Tarceva, which could slow the cancer growth and extend her life.

The Oregon Health Plan notified Wagner that it would not cover the drug, but it would cover palliative care, which it said included assisted suicide.

“Treatment of advanced cancer that is meant to prolong life, or change the course of this disease, is not a covered benefit of the Oregon Health Plan,” said the letter Wagner received from LIPA, the Eugene company that administers the Oregon Health Plan in Lane County.

“I think it’s messed up,” Wagner said. She said she was particularly upset because the letter said doctor-assisted suicide would be covered.

“To say to someone, we’ll pay for you to die, but not pay for you to live, it’s cruel,” she said. “I get angry. Who do they think they are?”