Voting Catholic! Are You Going The Way of Evil or The Way of Truth
By Fr. Richard Perozich (Written for the Church Bulletin) – Elections are coming up November 2, 2010. Catholics must engage in the political process to form a nation that reflects the values held by Christ’s followers.
Learn who you are and act like a Christian.
1 Peter 2. 9 But you are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may announce the praises” of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
Your job is to announce to the whole world that Jesus is the anointed King of God’s everlasting reign and to offer all men His salvation given by grace and received by faith.
One forum in which you do this is politics. Politics comes from the word pole and polarity. Poles are opposite ends of an idea, of a temporal structure, or of a force.
Catholics Have A Higher Calling
Catholics, even though we live in a country and are citizens of that country, have a higher calling and responsibility to God and to our neighbor to promote God’s truth even when others hate it, reject it, and hate us for proclaiming it.
We are citizens in an earthly realm, but more importantly we are citizens of the new kingdom of heaven with Jesus as the Lord, His laws as our prime way of life, and called to live them and to promote them even to unbelievers.
We live in a society where many people with power, possessions, and prestige are promoting ideas that are not founded in Christ.
In order to promote their ideas over ours, they tell us we must stay in our churches, keep our religion to ourselves, and that their idea of separation of the church from the state (which does not exist in our American constitution as they say it does) trumps any ideas we might have, so we have to shut up. And Catholics sheepishly keep quiet and vote for men and women who promote evil.
In chapter 3 of Galatians, St. Paul, frustrated with the Galatians allowing non believers to silence the truth even to the point of the Galatians returning to pagan or evil ways chastises them saying, “O stupid Galatians. Who has bewitched you?”
“O Stupid Catholics, who has bewitched you?”
It can be said of us in America in the year 2010, “O Stupid Catholics, who has bewitched you?” We easily go over to pagan ideas, putting aside our faith, our truth, in order to accommodate the evil of people who will not accommodate us! To promote their ideas they attack us personally calling us the far right, ultra conservative, bigoted, homophobic, hate mongers, holy rollers, and other epithets. This silences many Catholics. It only emboldens me, and it should embolden you also to promote your faith.
In the fights in politics, all sides cannot win. It is either going to be the way of evil or the way of truth. You must engage it as an ambassador for Christ and not as an agent of the devil.
God is life. Jesus is King. Christians are citizens of the kingdom sharing in life, the mission of God to promote it constantly in every forum.
People are most concerned with their economic power to purchase, to live, to save. Their greatest fear is losing this, evident in how they voted in 2006 and 2008.
Our Greatest Concern Should Be With Life
For Christians our greatest concern should be with life, and we vote for those who promote it. You have heard the mantra, “I’m a fiscal conservative, but a social liberal.” Nonsense. The societal responsibilities come first, and from a sound society built on biblical principles flow the economic concerns.
In a healthy economy there will be rich people. I who earn $20,000.00 a year do not envy their wealth, their homes, their power to shape the economy. The people Americans put into office in 2006 and 2008 DO envy, and are using the economy to tear apart the entire social fabric of society to promote abortion here in our country and abroad; to kill new life in embryos; to kill the elderly and sick; to destroy the nature of gender and marriage; to allow sexually immature people to be predators of others to try to satisfy their lack of psychological development.
Here Are The Fundamental Issues
For us Catholics the basic issues are: Life from conception to natural death, that is protection of the unborn, those with life, and those who are sick; protection of new life in its most nascent form, the embryo; protection from cloning to farm body parts; protection from sexual deviance in the form of pederasty, homosexuality, adultery, fornication, prostitution.
An elite class has assumed power in the United States , transcending political parties. They claim to know more than the people the elites represent. They do not. Their interest is keeping their positions in which they earn upwards of $200,000.00 with a health plan that is not part of the new one passed for the rest of us. They plan the destruction of the military, the silence of the churches and free voices, the destruction of children, embryos. They simply cannot stay in power. I have voted for some of them despite their mixed policies.
Enough!
But enough! I refuse to cast a vote for anyone who supports abortion, sexual confusion to be forced in the military, marriage, school curricula, or any other societal aspect, cloning, embryonic stem cell research, or euthanasia.
A Stand Must Be Made!
I am a Catholic. I am a citizen of the Kingdom of God and will promote that kingdom in all parts of my life.
To you politicians who promote non Catholic values, I will not vote for you just so your opponent will not get into office.
If you do not represent me, you do not have my vote. I don’t want your government money. I don’t want your ideas of equality, fairness, and justice. I don’t want your health care. I am not a prostitute who sells my vote for temporal benefits.
I am checking your voting records through various organizations which monitor your voting. If you do not promote life from the moment of conception to natural death, chastity and sexual distinctions, traditional marriage, respect for embryos in science, then you will not get my vote. You do not belong in political office. Teachers who sheepishly follow their corrupt unions do not belong in the classrooms. Clergy who follow non-Christian teaching do not belong in the pulpit.
True Change!
My hope rests in Jesus Christ and his salvation exactly FROM the very things these politicians are promoting. Change is repentance from sin, conversion to God, and reparation of the damage by following the commandments without relativizing them.
Hope and Change did not come in 2008. I’m going to do my part to see that it does in 2010.
Fr. Richard Perozich
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
ProLife Pogo


I remember a great man coming into my house, at Waltham, and seeing my children standing in the order of their age and stature, said "These are they that make rich men poor." But he straight received this answer, "Nay, my lord, these are they that make a poor man rich; for there is not one of these whom we would part with for all your wealth.Joseph Hall, 1574-1656;
From the title page of the book The Bible and Birth Control by Charles D. Provan
Welcome to ProLife Pogo!
I thought about making a website for these resources, but a blog seems faster and easier.
Feel free to contact me at rpoglitsh@live.com
Letters to the Times of Swaziland
http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
In September/October 2007, 71 aborted babies were found in plastic bags floating in a pond in Matsapha. A minor uproar erupted. The Family Life Association of Swaziland (FLAS, an affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation) took out a full-page advertisement in the Times of Swaziland, the major national newspaper, suggesting Swaziland rethink its prohibition against abortion. The ad was chock-full of the typical euphemistic language used to promote abortion around the world. I e-mailed a letter to the editor the same day I read the ad, and have been sending a letter a week (most weeks) to the paper since that time. Many, though not all, of the letters have been published. I slapped many of them into one blog when I first set up a blog for them; since sometime in 2010, they've been entered singly. Feel free to use them to work up your own pro-life thinking and letters.
Other prolife letters
http://www.priestsforlife.org/lte250.html
These letters are written by Mark Crutcher of Life Dynamics. They are pretty confrontational. They contain some good ideas, but again-rework them for your intended audience, and to make them really your own.
Websites
Making Abortion Rare: A Healing Strategy for a Divided Nation, by David Reardon
Visit http://www.afterabortion.org/FreeBook.htm to get the free serialized and abbreviated version of the book above.Dr. Reardon's approach is compelling to folks on both sides of the abortion debate, because it addresses the needs and health of women.
The Unchoice
Shows the damage abortion does to women. As innumerable pro-choice arguments are premised on protecting "the health of the woman", demonstrating abortion's devastating effects on women's health will neutralize that argument.
http://www.theunchoice.com
A fast and brief overview of abortion from a Christian perspective.
abortionfacts.com/literature/literature_9410CV.asp
Abortion in the Bible and Church History, by Randy Alcorn
www.epm.org/artman2/publish/prolife_the_bible_and_abortion/Abortion_in_the_Bible_and_Church_History.shtml
Another fast and illuminating article, exploring what the Bible and the early Church had to say about abortion.Abortion and the Early Christian Church, by F. J. Roos
http://www.godandscience.org/abortion/earlychristian.html#bPg6HcINs3ez
A third overview of what the early Christian Church said about abortion.
"Democrats, Obama, and Abortion: Turning Liberalism Incoherent" by Hadley Arkes
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2008/11/120
The subtitle says it all: "Can the Democratic Party’s awkward position on infanticide and abortion be regarded as simply a lesser matter in an ensemble of “other issues” of higher standing? Or does that position challenge the very coherence of everything else that a liberal party proclaims itself to be?"
www.godandscience.org/doctrine/stanek.html
Testimony of Jill L. Stanek, RN1
Hearing on H.R. 4292, the "Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2000"
House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution
July 20, 2000
Here's what the nurse who blew the whistle on live-birth abortions had to say about that procedure. US President Barack Obama went to great lengths to make sure the rules didn't change in order to prevent these atrocities (visit http://www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/Aug08/nv081808part3.html). Once he went to the US Senate, the Illinois Senate passed a bill to prevent any more live birth abortions.
ProLife Atheists
They do exist. Read this article by Nat Hentoff.
http://prolife.liberals.com/articles/hentoff.html
FORMER ABORTIONISTS' TESTIMONIES
These are accounts from people who used to do abortions. See what they have to say about it.
Joan Appleton was the head nurse at Commonwealth Women's Clinic in Wasthington, D.C., and an active member of NOW. Recognizing the harm that abortion does to women, she eventually got out of the abortion business.
http://www.prolifeaction.org/providers/appleton.htm
Former Abortion Clinic Owner Carol Everett
http://www.prolifeaction.org/providers/everett.htm
Former Abortionist Dr. Beverly McMillan
http://www.prolifeaction.org/providers/mcmillan.htm
Former Abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino
http://www.prolifeaction.org/providers/levatino.htm
PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/RusePBAonTrial.pdf
In 2007 Illinois Senator Barack Obama said "“I strongly disagree with today’s Supreme Court ruling" upholding the 2003 ban on partial birth abortion. Mr. Obama also said "I am extremely concerned that this ruling will embolden state legislatures to enact further measures to restrict a woman’s right to choose, and that the conservative Supreme Court
justices will look for other opportunities to erode Roe v. Wade, which is established federal law and a matter of equal rights for women.” Obama didn't indicate what things he wants women free to choose-but we know what he means. Read this description of the hearings on partial birth abortion in 2004 and decide for yourself if partial birth abortion is a "right" worth protecting.
AUDIO
Here you'll find a great speech about the pro-life effort by Alan Keyes. The link for the text is also here. It shows where the right to "choice" eventually leads for everyone-and it is not pretty.
Alan Keyes "A Woman's Friend" audio
http://www.keyesarchives.com/play.php?mp3=33
Alan Keyes "A Woman's Friend" text
http://www.keyesarchives.com/transcript.php?id=46
MORE RESOURCES
www.lifenews.com Site for thousands of short, informative, timely pro-life news articles.
www.nrlc.org website of the National Right to Life Committee. Will keep you abreast of political and legislative pro-life and anti-life activity.
www.jillstanek.com Website of the nurse who blew the whistle on live birth abortions in Chicago's Christ Hospital. Nurse Stanek's website has links to dozens of other pro-life websites and blogs.
www.pop.org The Population Research Institute. Incisive writing about anti-life activity around the world.
http://www.klannedparenthood.com Provides real photos of what abortion really is. I have read that sixtysomething percent, not 80% (as this site says), of Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority neighborhoods, but the photos are compelling.
www.dads.org Homepage of the Family Life Center, Steve Wood's organization offers resources on Catholic apologetics, fatherhood, faith and family, creation/evolution, and more difficult things like pornography and homosexuality. We know Mr. Wood personally and can vouch for him and his organization.
Contraception
A free-sex attitude fuels abortion's slaughter of the innocents. Contraception, of course, makes sex outside marriage lots easier. The general culture considers sexual activity outside marriage normal; witness the fact that 40% of children born are now born of unmarried parents. But just in case the contraception fails (which it does), abortion is there to "take care of the problem". A return to chastity is the best way to get at the root of the abortion debacle.
Consider some of these resources and decide for yourself is birth control is as great as we've been led to believe.
Contraception: Why Not?
Janet Smith, PhD uses statistics and common sense to explanation why birth control is poisonous to culture. This recording changed my mind about birth control. Last time I checked (July 31, 2008), www.OMSoul.com offered to send one copy for absolutely nothing (no charge for the cd or shipping/handling) anywhere in the world. What do you have to lose? Get your free copy at http://www.omsoul.com/catalog/index.php?target=products&product_id=531
The Vindication of Humanae Vitae-http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6262
Humanae Vitae is the document written by Pope Paul VI and released in July 1968. Prior to its release, conventional wisdom had it that the Roman Catholic church would change its teaching and call artificial birth control morally legitimate. Humanae Vitae upheld the traditional teaching, and voices inside and outside the church howled. The world continues to heap scorn on the Catholic Church for this teaching. Read this and see if Paul VI was right or not.
The Bible and Birth Control, by Charles D. Provan-Most folks, including Christians, think only the Catholic Church opposes artificial birth control. Read what John Calvin, Martin Luther, John and Charles Wesley, and other Reformer luminaries had to say about it.
Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions? by Randy Alcorn-Popular Evangelical Christian writer considers the way the birth control works, and the challenge this faces to Christians and pro-lifers.
Birth Control and Christian Discipleship, by John F. Kippley-Surveys the history of Christian perspective on birth control (all Christian churches considered artificial birth control a serious sin until the Anglican church changed its mind in 1930), the social consequences of the practice, what the Bible says about birth control, implications for Christian discipleship, and a better way to space the births of children-Natural Family Planning. Recommended for all, but especially Christians who oppose abortion but are unsure about abandoning artificial birth control. Available through www.ccli.org
Books
Here's a list of books to read. Thanks to internet booksellers, you can pick up used copies of these books cheap. In doing so you will be making a great investment.
Aborted Women, Silent No More by David Reardon-anything by David Reardon is worth reading. Visit www.afterabortion.org for more titles.
The Cost of "Choice": Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion, edited by Erika Bachiochi
Forbidden Grief: The Unspoken Pain of Abortion, by Theresa Burke-available from www.afterabortion.org
Women's Health After Abortion: The Medical and Psychological Evidence
by Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy and Ian Gentles
Summaries of scholarly studies on abortion's effects on women.
Blood Money: Getting Rich off A Woman's Right to Choose by Carol Everett with Jack Shaw
Want to see the compassion of the abortion industry from the inside? Read Ms. Everett's account. She used to run a string of abortion clinics. Read what she has to say about what happens in abortion clinics at http://www.prolifeaction.org/providers/everett.htm
ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments by Randy Alcorn-The Q & A format gets right to the issues. Alcorn is always clear and readable.
Who Broke the Baby? by Jean Staker Garton-A small and useful paperback.
Lime 5 by Mark Crutcher-True and revolting stories of how women get abused, injured, and killed in abortion clinics. Not for the weak-stomached. If someone says "Abortion is just a medical procedure", have this book on hand and ask them if abortion is no different than having a tooth pulled.
CHASTITY
Our world is filled with sexually transmitted diseases and broken hearts. The way to build a life of lasting love is not to "protect" ourselves with so-called "safe sex" but to engage a life of chastity-staying a virgin until marriage, and keeping sex only within marriage.
The following videos are targeted for junior high through college students, but parents should see them too.
The Outrageous Keith Deltano, video by Keith Deltano
https://www.visionvideo.com/detail.taf?_function=detail&a_product_id=31186&refurl=/search_by_text.taf?%5Ffunction%3Dtext%5Flist%26keyword%3DDeltano%26submit%2Ex%3D12%26submit%2Ey%3D8
Former Army Airborne and elementary school teacher Keith Deltano delivers the chastity message with high-energy humor and straight talk. Though he keeps the teens and parents in stitches during most of his presentation, you can hear a pin drop when he tells the young men it is their responsibility to keep the girls they date pure. Includes a valuable talk to parents, an interview with Deltano, and portions of his chastity book. Available through http://www.visionvideo.com
Sex Has a Price Tag, video by Pam Stenzel-www.pamstenzel.com
Former crisis pregnancy counselor and national speaker Pam Stenzel tells a packed auditorium of high schoolers the risks of pre-marital sex. Stenzel delivers a powerful wake-up call to a culture which thinks sex is just another contact sport. The circumstances of Stenzel's conception and childhood are especially moving. Available through www.pamstenzel.com
Sex and Love: What's a Teenager to Do?, video by Mary Beth Bonacci
Popular Catholic chastity promoter Mary Beth Bonacci presents a compelling, positive vision of sexuality to a group of young adults. Available through http://www.visionvideo.com/
I strongly suggest that parents, youth workers in churches and schools, and young people who want to avoid the calamitous pitfalls of sexual sin and build a life of love and happiness get all three videos. Taken together, these presentations powerfully explain the hazards of pre-marital sex and the dividends of a life of sexual purity.
Barack Obama
Easily the most pro-abortion president in US history. Here's what he's done since his election.
http://www.lifenews.com/obamaabortionrecord.html
Here's an article written just before he was elected. These bad dreams have come true.
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/viewarticle.php?selectedarticle=2008.10.14_George_Robert_Obama's%20Abortion%20Extremism_.xml
Here's the skinny on the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act he blocked during his time as an Illinois Senator.
http://www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/Aug08/nv081808part3.html
Lila Rose and Live Action
Read what this brave and creative 20 something has done.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/09/fighting-for-life
Fighting for Life
For four years, twenty-two-year-old Lila Rose has waged war against Planned Parenthood
For four years, twenty-two-year-old Lila Rose has waged war against Planned Parenthood
One cold, wet day in San Jose, California, I was stuck inside my childhood home, looking for a book to read. Because I was homeschooled, the daughter of passionate book lovers, and one of eight children, our home was full of books of all kinds. It was my goal, at the age of nine, to read all of them. On the bottom shelf of a bookcase, I found something called the Handbook on Abortion by Dr. and Mrs. J.C. Willke. Curious, I opened it. And there they were: pictures. In shock, I quickly shut the book and pushed it away. And then I opened it slowly and looked again. I was looking directly at the picture of a tiny child, maybe ten weeks old, with tiny arms and legs, who had been the victim of an abortion.
Right then I knew it was ugly and wrong. But over the next decade I grew in my understanding of the gravity and urgency of this holocaust of unborn children, of our duty to protect them, and of my desire to help.
When I was thirteen I wrote in my journal, “God, it’s time I actually do something about abortion.” I began to research online and think about what I could do to tell other people about this terrible crime being committed even in our own neighborhoods. A friend and I wrote a letter to the community of Almaden, where we lived, exhorting people to vote only for pro-life candidates. We put up copies of the letter around the local shopping center. When I was fourteen I began planning a “Pro-Life Club.” Within months it became Live Action. It began in my parents’ living room, with a meeting of about a dozen of my closest friends, all whom I had convinced to come.
I had little idea then that within a few years I would be leading undercover investigations of the abortion industry, founding a pro-life nonprofit, editing a national pro-life magazine, and serving as a spokesperson for the pro-life cause.
I launched my first investigation four years ago, as a college freshman at UCLA, with my friend James O’Keefe. I had met James months earlier at a training session for student publications, and our shared interest in bold activism made us instant colleagues. We soon were working together on projects to “wake up” the UCLA campus to the reality of abortion and the lack of pregnancy services for students. James helped me start a pro-life student magazine that January. That magazine—the Advocate—is now published nationally and has a distribution of over 100,000 copies per issue.
“UCLA doesn’t support women who are pregnant,” I was told by the head nurse at my campus student health center in the fall of 2006, when I posed as a pregnant student seeking pregnancy counseling. She instead gave me information about two local abortionists to contact.
Evidently, on my own campus, vulnerable, pregnant girls my age were being hustled off to the abortion mills, with no other choice offered. After such startling discoveries at the campus health center, James and I were eager to expose the abortion giant—Planned Parenthood.
Our idea—to investigate the abortion industry at the ground level—wasn’t new. In 2002 Mark Crutcher, of the pro-life group Life Dynamics, ran a study that surveyed over eight hundred Planned Parenthood clinics and National Abortion Federation affiliates. An actor posing as a thirteen-year-old girl impregnated by a much older man—a rapist—called the facilities. As Life Dynamics recorded these conversations, the group found that over 90 percent of the clinics promised to cover up the rape the girl had suffered and to provide her with an illegal abortion—a plan and procedure unreported to either police or parents. For reasons difficult for most people to fathom, the abortionists took it on themselves to perpetuate the vicious cycle of sexual abuse.
James and I wanted to find our own way to expose this corruption and bloodshed. Months after our first investigation of the UCLA health center, we went undercover to two Los Angeles Planned Parenthood clinics.
I posed as a young, scared, pregnant girl, fifteen years old, the victim of a twenty-three-year-old statutory rapist. The Planned Parenthood staff told me, into our hidden cameras: “Figure out a birth date that works.” Lie about your age on the paperwork. Say you are older than you really are. We will give you a secret abortion, and no one will ever know.
The YouTube videos we made of our tapes went viral. Planned Parenthood threatened to sue me—an eighteen-year-old college freshman. I remember returning to my dorm room to find a personal email from the California director of Planned Parenthood, informing me that if I did not “relinquish the tapes” of my investigation to the organization, it would sue me for privacy violations of its employees. With less than $200 in my bank account, threats to sue me for “$5,000 for each offense” might have seemed daunting if I had not had a deep sense that God, as he always does, would use this only for good.
And, of course, he did. Because of the threat of the lawsuit and the added media attention, I had my first O’Reilly Factor interview—and, after the bad press, Planned Parenthood did not pursue the threat of the lawsuit. This inspired me to think even more carefully and work even harder to come up with more projects to expose the dark heart of the abortion industry.
My summer vacations turned into summer research projects—undercover investigations into abortion clinics across the country. In the summer of 2007, we investigated six different Planned Parenthood development departments, talking with directors of development and other staff to see whether rumors of Planned Parenthood’s racism were true.
Planned Parenthood has historic ties to the now-discredited eugenics movement in the United States. More recently, abortionists have worked hard to reach out to minorities. This is reflected in skyrocketing abortion rates among minority women. African-American women account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population but submit to nearly 37 percent of all abortions. Approximately 80 percent of abortion clinics are located in minority neighborhoods. Although most people in our country do not know it, such a heavy abortion rate among minorities was planned and desired by the founders of Planned Parenthood, particularly by founder Margaret Sanger, an open racist and eugenicist.
Sanger is still revered by pro-abortionists. Are her policies still in circulation? We decided to investigate.
By phone, James posed as a racist asking whether he could donate to Planned Parenthood for the abortion of a black baby. Like the racism that James acted out, the response to these proposed race-based donations was horrific. No Planned Parenthood employee hung up the phone. All agreed to accept the donation or find a way to do so, and some made understanding remarks about the racism or showed excitement about the race-based donation. In one conversation with a Planned Parenthood office in Idaho, when James said there were “way too many blacks,” the development director laughed and said, “Understandable, understand-able.”
It was clear that Planned Parenthood had much to hide. The investigation by Life Dynamics was inspiring, but no videos to corroborated Mark Crutcher’s version of events. Moreover, that investigation was six years old.
I began to dream: A multistate inquiry to investigate child sexual abuse cover-up. Once the investigation was completed, a series of video releases, on the local level, to stir up controversy in each city or community as the overall national story built. With help from two close friends and my always-supportive parents, I prepared a budget and a project plan.
Miraculously, all the needs for the project were met. We scheduled it for the summer of 2008, one week after my school got out, and began to assemble the team. As I took my final exams, I juggled last-minute meetings with donors and interviews with potential investigative team members. A dear childhood friend named Jackie agreed to be my fellow investigator. We were joined by a videographer and a trip planner. Less than a handful of people knew about any of our plans, and even fewer knew details—all to preserve our ability to operate covertly. A lawyer filed pro bono for our tax-exempt status. A generous donor team transferred $30,000 to our bank account. Our research team—three friends who had been involved in past Live Action projects—worked to chart out the investigation and develop briefs on every clinic and state. I researched and purchased police-quality undercover equipment and began training.
We were about to begin my most ambitious investigation—a probe deep inside the closed doors of Planned Parenthood called the Mona Lisa Project.
For this investigation I had to disguise myself by bleaching my hair platinum blonde because Planned Parenthood had put up warning posters—showing me as a natural brunette—in many of its clinics nationwide. There seemed to be one reason Planned Parenthood might give the police a call: Apparently, to Planned Parenthood, I was a more dangerous criminal than the group’s pedophile clientele.
I was nineteen years old, leading a team of other young people to travel nationwide in twenty-one days and go undercover into clinics posing as sex-abuse victims. I began each morning and ended each night in a hotel room, on my knees in prayer. There were so many unknowns and variables on this project. And my weaknesses were always before me as I tried to be the best investigator I could, inspire the others, lead them, and know what to do myself—all with little outside help. A prayer team of close friends and donors was formed. They didn’t know what we were doing or where, but they signed on to intercede for this “special project.” And my parents were always on call to encourage and give advice. With such a support network and the Holy Spirit leading us, we had great confidence. We also witnessed literal miracles on the trip, including one where our team prayed in a car outside a clinic that our metal-strapped investigators would get through the clinic’s metal detectors without any cause for suspicion—and, miraculously, we did.
Soon afterward I was sitting in the waiting room of a Planned Parenthood clinic, posing as a thirteen-year-old girl named Brianna. Even though I was in character, I wanted to talk to a woman sitting a few chairs away from me. The woman was with her sister, who had two little daughters, maybe five and seven. The little girls were playing on the floor with the brightly colored toys that this Planned Parenthood surgical abortion mill had placed in its waiting room for women who arrived with born children.
The woman looked sad and stared at the floor. She was just beginning to show that she was pregnant.
“What are you here for? Abortion?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, and looked away. She didn’t want to talk about it. I felt helpless. Suddenly, her sister’s little daughter, the five-year-old, started jumping up and down, demanding attention and asking for a cup of water. Then, just as suddenly, she went over to her aunt. Pulling on her aunt’s pants leg, she climbed into her lap and cuddled close to her abdomen.
I remember seeing that and not being able to look away. I knew I was looking at the meeting of two cousins separated by just inches of flesh—and one of them, a little boy or a little girl, would be violently killed by abortion that very day. It reminded me of another meeting, one between two unborn cousins, when Mary, the Madonna, visited her cousin Elizabeth. And how could it not? We had named the Mona Lisa Project after these two women.
A year after the Mona Lisa Project finished, I began another multistate traveling investigation called the Rosa Acuna Project. From 2009 to 2010 our team has been inside dozens of clinics in many states. I have sat through counseling sessions, seen women with blood on their clothes, and heard the harsh words of abortion workers who cannot help but taste the evil of their work. “I don’t want to go work in the OR room,” one of them said to our undercover actors; “I don’t like getting too close.”
I’ve become an expert on what everyday abortion workers say to women because I’ve heard it firsthand and have trained and briefed investigators who go in and collect the evidence firsthand. In clinics nationwide, Planned Parenthood employees have said the heartbeat starts at eleven weeks, at twenty weeks, or when the baby is born. They have said that hands and feet don’t form until right before the baby is born. They call the unborn child’s heart just an electrical flicker, and they call the unborn child fetal matter, an alien, a tadpole, a cup of coleslaw—any number of dehumanizing names. The Rosa Acuna Project has documented these lies in a series of public video releases.
We named the Rosa Acuna Project for a young New Jersey woman who sought an abortion. She was deeply troubled about her decision and spoke to the doctor.
“Is it a baby?” She asked him. “Am I killing a baby?”
“Don’t be stupid,” the abortionist told Rosa. “It’s a blood clot. It’s a bunch of cells.”
He performed the abortion. Back at home, bleeding profusely, Rosa went to the emergency room. The nurse told her she had the remains of her baby inside her and would need an operation to extract it from her uterus. That’s when Rosa realized her first trimester “pregnancy matter” was not a blood clot or a bunch of cells. It was a human baby.
In fewer than four decades, America has permitted the slaughter of more than 50 million tiny children. There has never been another slaughter as unjust and widespread as abortion because never has a human
society destroyed so many of its young.
It is the dehumanization of the unborn child that allows the slaughter to continue. The once pro-life Rev. Jesse Jackson said: “Those advocates of taking life prior to birth do not call it killing or murder, they call it abortion. [They say] ‘fetus’ [because fetus] sounds less than human and therefore abortion can be justified.”
People do not see the unborn as human beings equal in worth to ourselves or others—to a two-year-old toddler, for example. After all, fetuses and embryos cannot demand protection from us. They do not cry in front of us, or wail as a two-year-old might if he or she senses danger in a clinic waiting room. Their tiny vocal cords are hardly developed. We do not have to watch them hold out their tiny, newly developed hands. They are hidden in the bodies of their mothers. Because the unborn cannot beg us for mercy, many Americans may think that abortion is a tragedy, but a necessary one at times. Or many may think that abortion is a tragedy, but not their main concern.
We who know better must proclaim that the value of our unborn brothers and sisters is not based on what they give to society. It is based solely on the mysterious worth of their humanity, that mysterious imprint of the divine. To be human is enough. To be human should grant you a place of love and dignity in any family, any society, any nation.
America’s public schools are either neutral or favorable toward abortion. The entertainment media are the same. Traditional news media fail to grasp the reality of abortion and often take positions leaning toward it. Young people live with a stifling din of pro-abortion instruction; we are urged to be morally transgressive and politically conformed to the culture of death. A word of truth, an image, a video comes like a fresh breeze.
Live Action’s mission is to educate the public with the truth about abortion and the dignity of the human person by using the power of creative new media. All of Live Action’s projects are designed to work within traditional systems to reach young people with the truth and inspire them to join us in leading the pro-life culture.
Most people do not see clearly the evils of their own century, their own age. It is the history makers, the revolutionaries, and the visionaries who identify the failings, injustices, and opportunities of their century and work tirelessly to address them. Thanks to the revolution in media through blogs, Facebook, Twitter, webcams, and cell phones, everyone can create and distribute media. Like many other organizations, Live Action is seizing this opportunity to talk past the pro-abortion gatekeepers of previous decades and show the world the truth about abortion. Today, I aspire to do my part. I pray that many more, young and old, will join.
Now that I have graduated from college, I am grateful for the experiences I have been blessed with so far. I am moving forward with a wonderful team of talented and committed young people to continue our projects and undertake new and more ambitious ones. The investigative and educational work is far from over. Thousands more people must realize the gravity and urgency of abortion’s injustice, must reject the murder of our unborn brothers and sisters, must repent of the indifference and hopelessness that allows this, and must recommit to a beautiful and life-giving vision of our life together in America. These thousands must be awakened to the truth so they can inspire and lead more thousands to reject abortion, stop the killing, and restore peace. I believe with my whole heart we will be victorious, just as I pray and believe in the Kingdom of God and that we can do God’s will on earth. We have a perfect loving God who inspires and authors our work. If we lay down our lives, we cannot fail.
Lila Rose, who graduated from UCLA in June, is president and founder of Live Action, a nonprofit educational group.
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