EmpowerShop Pro-life

Jan­u­ary 18th, 2010 by http://www.40daysforlife.com/blog/

Octo­ber 8th, 2009 by http://www.40daysforlife.com/blog/

In a direct attack on 40 Days for Life and the rights of local pro-life side­walk coun­selors, the Chicago city coun­cil on Wednes­day passed a new ordi­nance intended to crip­ple 40 Days for Life and silence pro-life free speech within a 50-foot “bub­ble zone” around abor­tion facil­i­ties.

The new city ordi­nance will not only block side­walk coun­sel­ing and pro-life signs within 50 feet of all entrances to an abor­tion facil­ity, it would also pre­vent any pro-lifer from being within eight feet of an abor­tion cus­tomer with­out get­ting that person’s per­mis­sion. Any­one found in vio­la­tion could be fined up to $500.

The law is such a clear vio­la­tion of First Amend­ment con­sti­tu­tional rights that even the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU) — no friend of the pro-life move­ment — sided with local pro-life inter­ests in oppos­ing aspects of the ordi­nance.

Accord­ing to observers at the coun­cil meet­ings, a Planned Par­ent­hood rep­re­sen­ta­tive tes­ti­fied that pro-life vig­ils make it dif­fi­cult for women to reach their “ser­vices,” while a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from a local late-term abor­tion facil­ity (that has seen busi­ness detri­men­tally affected by 40 Days for Life) directly men­tioned the 40 Days for Life prayer vigil as rea­son to pass the ordi­nance.

While this is a set­back for the Chicago 40 Days for Life, I want to empha­size that this is NOT merely a Chicago issue. Planned Par­ent­hood and the abor­tion indus­try are work­ing aggres­sively to imple­ment bub­ble zone laws like this across the coun­try.

That’s the bad news. But here’s the good news:

** WE CAN STILL DEFEAT THIS BUBBLE ZONE **

Before this bad law goes into effect, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has to approve it. We have a nar­row win­dow of time to con­vince the mayor to VETO the bub­ble zone ordi­nance.

PLEASE call Mayor Daley’s office imme­di­ately at 312 – 744-3300 to say: “Mayor Daley, please don’t restrict free­dom of speech in Chicago. VETO the bub­ble zone ordi­nance!”

So many calls have already been flood­ing into the mayor’s office that they’ve set up an auto­mated sys­tem for the pub­lic to speak out on the bub­ble zone. If you get the auto­mated sys­tem, here are the steps to fol­low:

1. CALL Mayor Daley’s office at 312 – 744-3300
2. PRESS 1 to sub­mit your opin­ion on the bub­ble zone ordi­nance
3. Then PRESS 2 to vote NO on the bub­ble zone

To send the mayor a fax instead: 312 – 744-8045

If we don’t push back hard against this clearly uncon­sti­tu­tional law, Planned Par­ent­hood and the rest of the abor­tion indus­try will feel empow­ered to tram­ple on the rights of pro-life free speech all across the coun­try.

Please act now — while there’s still time!

Here’s today’s devo­tional from Car­men Pate, co-host of the nation­ally syn­di­cated “Point of View” radio talk show…

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DAY 16 INTENTION
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Pray that as young cou­ples or sin­gle moms choose life for their child, the church will come along­side them phys­i­cally, emo­tion­ally, and spir­i­tu­ally to help bear their bur­dens.

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SCRIPTURE
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Brethren, if a man is over­taken in any tres­pass, you who are spir­i­tual restore such a one in a spirit of gen­tle­ness, con­sid­er­ing your­self lest you also be tempted. Bear one another’s bur­dens, and so ful­fill the law of Christ.

– Gala­tians 6:1 – 2

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REFLECTION by Car­men Pate, Point of View
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Restor­ing those who are bro­ken from sex­ual sin and who desire to live life dif­fer­ently — a life focused on Christ — is a bur­den the church must share. What an awe­some oppor­tu­nity for a spir­i­tu­ally mature woman to come along­side a sin­gle mom as a men­tor and friend.

A reg­u­lar time together pray­ing and study­ing God’s Word will help her mature in her walk with the Lord. Allow­ing her oppor­tu­nity to observe life as you live it — meal prepa­ra­tion, fam­ily time, and pro­vid­ing whole­some con­ver­sa­tion and wise coun­sel on a fre­quent basis — can pro­vide teach­ing moments that will ben­e­fit her for a life­time. Intro­duc­ing her to a small group or class in the church where she and her baby are wel­comed and plugged in will be vital to her restora­tion.

These are just a few exam­ples of things the body of Christ can do. Stay­ing con­nected with young cou­ples or sin­gle moms who have cho­sen life should con­tinue beyond the cel­e­bra­tion of the child’s birth if we truly desire to ful­fill the law of Christ in bear­ing one another’s bur­dens.

You will find it is not a bur­den after all, but a tremen­dous bless­ing as your fam­ily line extends to include these pre­cious souls as part of your own.

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PRAYER
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Dear Lord, as our Shep­herd You so ten­derly care for us — pulling us from the miry pit, guid­ing and direct­ing us safely along the path of life, pro­tect­ing us from the dan­gers that are ahead and tak­ing us to pas­tures that are green.

Lord, use us as Your ves­sels to shep­herd these young men and women who have hon­ored you by choos­ing life for their child.

Give us wis­dom and dis­cern­ment along with Your love and com­pas­sion so that we are never a stum­bling block but rather a guide that always takes them to You, the true Shep­herd. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.

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PRINTABLE DEVOTIONAL
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To down­load today’s devo­tional as a for­mat­ted, print­able PDF to share with friends:

http://40daysforlife.com/docs/fall2009day16print.pdf

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For Life,

David Bereit
National Direc­tor
40 Days for Life

P.S.- Remem­ber, the uncon­sti­tu­tional bub­ble zone is not YET the law in Chicago. Mayor Daley has to sign it first. Call his office right now at 312 – 744-3300 and tell him to pro­tect free speech in Chicago and veto the bub­ble zone!
Posted in 09 Fall Cam­paign, 40 Days for Life, Devo­tion­als

Pre­vent Wash­ing­ton D.C. Bureau­crats and Abor­tion Indus­try Lob­by­ists from Forc­ing YOU to Pay for Abor­tions
What’s at stake right now:

• The cur­rent health care reform pro­pos­als, if enacted, would result in the biggest expan­sion of abor­tion since the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court deci­sion imposed abor­tion on Amer­ica in 1973
• Wash­ing­ton D.C. bureau­crats and abor­tion indus­try lob­by­ists are try­ing to force YOU to pay for abor­tions through your tax dol­lars as part of their pro­posed tril­lion dol­lar health­care takeover – even though recent polls show that 71% of Amer­i­cans oppose taxpayer-funded abor­tion
• This polit­i­cal power-grab is an effort to imple­ment one of the cor­ner­stones of the “Free­dom of Choice Act” (FOCA), and could lead to a mas­sive tax­payer sub­si­dized abor­tion indus­try bailout – some­thing that Amer­i­can fam­i­lies do not sup­port and can­not afford in these tough eco­nomic times
• Under the pro­posed health­care takeover, vir­tu­ally every Amer­i­can would be forced into a health plan that man­dates abor­tion cov­er­age; if the health­care reform law does not clearly state that abor­tion is excluded, abor­tion auto­mat­i­cally becomes a min­i­mum required ben­e­fit. Elected offi­cials must include lan­guage to explic­itly exclude abor­tion from any health­care reform pro­posal or bill – keep abor­tion out of health­care!

What YOU can do about it:

1. Pray
2. E-mail and write let­ters to your Rep­re­sen­ta­tive and two Sen­a­tors at: 
http://www.StopTheAbortionMandate.com/email
3. Call the Wash­ing­ton office and the local office of your Rep­re­sen­ta­tive and two Sen­a­tors; instruc­tions at: http://www.StopTheAbortionMandate.com/call
4. Spread the word! Dis­trib­ute this flyer to every­one you know and use Face­book, Twit­ter, and e-mail sam­ples at: http://www.StopTheAbortionMandate.com/share
5. Write a Let­ter to the Edi­tor of your local news­pa­per using sam­ples at: http://www.StopTheAbortionMandate.com/editor

www.StopTheAbortionMandate.com

Even as we get ready to open reg­is­tra­tions for the fall 40 Days for Life cam­paign this Wednes­day, July 22, an EMERGENCY sit­u­a­tion has arisen in our nation’s cap­i­tal that requires imme­di­ate action!

Pow­er­ful abor­tion indus­try lob­by­ists and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. bureau­crats have just launched a MASSIVE effort to man­date taxpayer-funded abor­tions as part of their pro­posed trillion-dollar health care takeover.

This abor­tion indus­try power-grab is attempt­ing to:

• Impose one of the cor­ner­stones of the “Free­dom of Choice Act” (FOCA) by stealth
• Force tax­pay­ers to fund a huge abor­tion indus­try bailout — some­thing the major­ity of Amer­i­cans oppose, and cer­tainly can­not afford in these tough eco­nomic times
• Man­date that vir­tu­ally every Amer­i­can be forced into a health plan that includes abor­tion cov­er­age
• Require hon­or­able med­ical providers to vio­late their con­sciences and per­form abor­tions — or risk los­ing their jobs

This morning’s New York Times fea­tures a promi­nent story con­firm­ing that an “admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial refused Sun­day to rule out the pos­si­bil­ity that fed­eral tax money might be used to pay for abor­tions under pro­posed health care leg­is­la­tion.”

Put bluntly, these pro­posed mea­sures could lead to the largest abor­tion expan­sion since Roe v. Wade.

This abor­tion man­date must be STOPPED!

STOP THE ABORTION MANDATE

I was in meet­ings in Wash­ing­ton much of last week, and 40 Days for Life has been asked to orga­nize a gigan­tic nation­wide web­cast unit­ing the whole pro-life move­ment to stop this man­date.

You can learn what’s at stake — and dis­cover how YOU can help stop this abor­tion man­date by join­ing the one-time-only URGENT web­cast this Thurs­day, July 23, at 9 PM East­ern (8 PM Cen­tral, 7 PM Moun­tain, 6 PM Pacific.)

If you have access to the Inter­net — even with a dial-up con­nec­tion — you can lis­ten in on the live web­cast audio and sub­mit ques­tions at:

STOP THE ABORTION MANDATE

Dur­ing the event you will dis­cover:

• The shock­ing facts about the sweep­ing leg­is­la­tion that the polit­i­cal power bro­kers are try­ing to ram through before Con­gress goes on sum­mer recess…
• The dev­as­tat­ing impli­ca­tions of the pro­posed man­dates — facts the abor­tion indus­try doesn’t want Amer­i­cans to hear…
• Why respected lead­ers, national orga­ni­za­tions, and pro-life peo­ple are join­ing together in record num­bers to chal­lenge this attempted power-grab…
• The exact action steps YOU can take to make a dif­fer­ence at this cru­cial moment…
• …And much more!

Reg­is­ter for the web­cast at:

STOP THE ABORTION MANDATE

In all my years in the pro-life move­ment, I’ve never seen the degree of unity and col­lab­o­ra­tion that is form­ing around this vital issue. There’s a real chance to make a deci­sive impact over these next few days!

Dozens of lead­ing pro-life and pro-family groups are join­ing together for the Stop The Abor­tion Man­date web­cast (and you’ll surely be hear­ing from many of them over the next few days about this event.)

Dur­ing the web­cast, you will hear from nation­ally known and respected lead­ers includ­ing:

• TONY PERKINS, Fam­ily Research Coun­cil
• DR. CHARMAINE YOEST, Amer­i­cans United for Life
• FR. FRANK PAVONE, Priests for Life
• MARJORIE DANNENFELSER, Susan B. Anthony List
• DOUGLAS JOHNSON, National Right to Life Com­mit­tee
• TOM MINNERY, Focus on the Fam­ily
• WENDY WRIGHT, Con­cerned Women for Amer­ica
• CONGRESSMAN CHRIS SMITH, U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives
• KRISTIN HAWKINS, Stu­dents for Life of Amer­ica
• DR. RICHARD LAND, South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ties Com­mis­sion
• CONGRESSMAN JOE PITTS, U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives
• CARMEN PATE, Point of View Radio Show
• …And oth­ers yet to be announced!

The announce­ment of this impor­tant web­cast is being sent out to hun­dreds of thou­sands of pro-lifers across Amer­ica, and there is lim­ited space avail­able for the live event — so you are strongly encour­aged to reg­is­ter now!

To get on the web­cast, go to:

STOP THE ABORTION MANDATE

For LIFE,

David Bereit
National Direc­tor
40 Days for Life

P.S.- Even if you can’t par­tic­i­pate in the live web­cast, go ahead and reg­is­ter any­how, because the entire event will be recorded. Our sys­tem will auto­mat­i­cally allo­cate your spot to some­one else, and as soon as your record­ing is ready (prob­a­bly shortly after the end of the web­cast) we’ll notify you.

P.P.S– Please SPREAD THE WORD to every pro-lifer you know! We have a NARROW win­dow of time to stop this abor­tion man­date, so let’s pull out all the stops to get every pro-life Amer­i­can on this web­cast! For­ward this e-mail and encour­age them to visit:

STOP THE ABORTION MANDATE

Would you like to be treated with dig­nity?  We value self-esteem and our com­mon human­ity cries out to “save that life” when a child is in dan­ger.

In 1987, the world watched with prayers and bated breath for 2½ days as “Baby Jes­sica” was metic­u­lously res­cued after falling into an 8” pipe. She was the child of teen par­ents who have since divorced. They never even told her the story and she has no actual mem­o­ries of the inci­dent. She learned about it after watch­ing “Res­cue 911” three years later. Jes­sica has under­gone many surg­eries as a result of the ordeal, but there is a scar which she has cho­sen to keep because she says, “It shows who I am, and the fact that I am here and that I could have not been here,” she told Matt Lauer dur­ing an inter­view. She says, “I sur­vived it.” In fact, when she was res­cued, the world cheered and church bells rang out. We rejoiced that one life was saved.

If I were shar­ing this post as a speech, I would ask the fol­low­ing:

“So, let’s play a lit­tle game that I call “Oppo­sites and Oxy­morons.” I’ll say a word and each of you shout out the antonym.” It would go some­thing like this:

High/Low
Good/Bad
Light/Darkness
Short/Long
Free/Slave
Correct/Incorrect
True/False
Right/Wrong
Life/Death

How­ever, I would have to stop and say that in Amer­ica, the oppo­site of Life is Choice, because for the unborn, Choice is equal to Death.

“Polit­i­cally Cor­rect” is an oxy­moron. Every­body believes that politi­cians are pro­fes­sional at speak­ing out of both sides of their mouths. How can con­tra­dic­tory state­ments both be cor­rect?

As Amer­i­cans, we value life. Yet, appar­ently, we value free­dom of choice more. So, it was a stroke of genius when the abor­tion indus­try decided not to admit that they were pro-death (although their state­ments and arti­cles prove this out). Instead, they said that they are pro-choice. And pro-Life Amer­i­cans who were (and still are) in major­ity sud­denly said, “Oh, I never thought about it like that” and stuck their heads back in the sand.

Accord­ing to LifeIs­sues org., Supreme Court nom­i­nee, Sonia Sotomayor, had an inter­est­ing, yet alarm­ing con­ver­sa­tion with Sen­a­tor Jim DeMint. She’s been mak­ing the rounds with sen­a­tors, try­ing to get on their good sides because the sen­ate has to con­firm her appoint­ment. Sen­a­tor DeMint asked her if an unborn child has any rights what­so­ever. Her response shocked him. Judge Sotomayor said she had “never thought about” the rights of unborn chil­dren. The sen­a­tor says this goes beyond abor­tion and raises seri­ous ques­tions about her respect for human life at all stages. Sen­a­tor DeMint said, “Those who serve on the high­est court in Amer­ica must have an unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion and equal jus­tice for all Amer­i­cans.” He believes this should include unborn babies.

What do you think? What will you do about it?

Dawn Johnsen has been appointed by Pres­i­dent Obama to serve as Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­eral, Office of Legal Coun­sel in the Depart­ment of Jus­tice. The Office of Legal Coun­sel advises the fed­eral gov­ern­ment on how to inter­pret pol­icy, law, and reg­u­la­tions in light of the Con­sti­tu­tion. Dawn Johnsen will deter­mine the legal course of the entire Admin­is­tra­tion, decid­ing what is or isn’t Con­sti­tu­tional. Here is just a brief sum­mary of Dawn Johnsen’s pro-abortion cred­i­ten­tials: Dawn Johnsen has worked for the ACLU’s Repro­duc­tive Free­dom Project and she was the legal direc­tor for the National Abor­tion Rights Action League (NARAL). Johnsen has com­pared preg­nancy to slav­ery. In 1989, she wrote that abor­tion restric­tions such as the partial-birth abor­tion ban and parental noti­fi­ca­tion laws result in “forced preg­nan­cies”, which she claimed amounts to “invol­un­tary servi­tude”. She has argued that the gov­ern­ment should strip the Catholic Church and other reli­gious denom­i­na­tions of their tax exempt sta­tus because of their pro-life advo­cacy. She believes that a pre-born child has no sep­a­rate exis­tence apart from the mother and a women’s right to bod­ily auton­omy always over­rides the pre-born child’s devel­op­ment and health. She has com­pared pro-life pro­test­ers to the Ku Klux Klan. She was heav­ily involved in the author­ship of the Free­dom of Choice Act (FOCA), which would repeal every state and fed­eral restric­tion on abor­tion and fur­ther enshrine abor­tion as the law of the land. In a paper given to mark the 35th anniver­sary of the Roe v. Wade deci­sion she said the first pri­or­ity of the pro­gres­sive agenda was to “focus on the courts as the vehi­cle of desired change”. Johnsen has a long track record of intol­er­ance to posi­tions con­flict­ing with her own pro-abortion agenda. Write your Sen­a­tors today and stop Dawn Johnsen’s nom­i­na­tion to the Office of Legal Coun­sel.

Take Action via Susan B Anthony List

Abor­tion groups have sub­mit­ted their 50 page pro­posal to the Obama-Biden tran­si­tion team. At the top of the list? More tax­payer dol­lars for abor­tion orga­ni­za­tions like Planned Par­ent­hood. How much more? Over 1.5 bil­lion dol­lars more!

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

Send a let­ter to your Sen­a­tors today demand­ing that they keep your tax dol­lars out of the pock­ets of abor­tion providers.