[Have the Attitude of Christ] Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? Philippians 2:1 NLT
My heart goes out to the victims of the recent Oklahoma tragedy. Let us continue to pray for them, and for all who continue to lose lives and property every day in America and across the globe. In the midst of all of the tragedy, one can’t help wondering if there is a connection between what humans term “natural disasters” and something closer to the human heart; are these “signs of the times” occurring more and more frequently in order to turn our attention away from the media spins back to the plight of humanity?
A few days before the tornado, I received a sad call regarding the death of Malcom X’s grandson, Malcom Shabazz. I never met him personally, but was planning to sit down with him and talk with him and encourage him for his prolife stance. My failure to go to such a meeting with him was maybe a case of my thinking that I’d find time one day to speak with Mr. Shabazz because I considered his brave prolife position as bold and courageous. However, time ran out for me, and sadly for Mr. Shabazz. He was killed on a tour outside of the country. I just want to thank him in his earthly absence for having had the courage to stand up against the scourge of abortion.
Later on in the week, I was preparing to accept another opportunity that I almost turned down, because I thought I was “too busy” to take the time. I was invited to do a talk, Purpose: Be Fruitful and Multiply, at a Mother-Daughter brunch in Atlanta. The topic of the meeting was “Matters of the Heart.” The sponsor of the event encouraged me to speak candidly about my own post abortion testimony and to also exhort the listeners to have a change of heart. I remember thinking that day and then later on in the week after the terrible Oklahoma tornado that no matter what happens, those who remain behind after a tragic death have to go on with our lives. And it is important to pray and ask God to help us not miss out on opportunities that might make a difference in someone’s life if we only take the time.
I imagine that we can all agree that no matter what happens, life does go on. There is life after Oklahoma. There is life after Gosnell. At least there is life for the living; prayerfully there is life after death for all of the innocent victims. Surely, there is life after death for everyone, but the question will have to be answered sooner or later. WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY?
CONTACT:
Heather Gims, Director of Communications
Phone: 513.729.3600
Email: heather.gims@lifeissues.org
The recent trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell has brought attention to the issue of race and abortion. He was convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies and of involuntary manslaughter in the death of a 41-year-old abortion patient. It is alleged that Gosnell preyed upon poor minority women at his late-term abortion mill. It raises the question, is targeting of minorities actually taking place in the abortion industry?
A statistic frequently quoted by the media is from a 2011 Guttmacher Institute study that states only 9% of abortion facilities are located in predominantly Black neighborhoods. However, new research from Protecting Black Life reveals that Guttmacher’s study does not tell the whole story.
The nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, does not follow that trend. In fact, an overwhelming majority of Planned Parenthood surgical abortion facilities are placed within walking distance of minority neighborhoods. This new research shows that 62% of Planned Parenthood surgical abortion facilities are located within walking distance of relatively high African American populations. And a staggering 79% of Planned Parenthood surgical abortion facilities are located within walking distance of African American and/or Hispanic communities.
While previous studies have typically looked at large geographical areas such as zip codes, Protecting Black Life’s research is considerably more thorough and reliable because it analyzes population data at a much closer level using 2010 Census tract data. The Census tract approach provides a very consistent, in-depth and detailed look at the demographics of the population landscape.
To demonstrate the research results, Protecting Black Life has created an illustrated map integrated with Google Maps functionality, including the ability to zoom down to the street level of each location. The interactive map gives an up close and personal view of just how many of these abortion facilities are located near minority neighborhoods. The full research results, map and accompanying resources are available at www.ProtectingBlackLife.org.
Arnold M. Culbreath, Director of Protecting Black Life says, “Minority neighborhoods are the #1 targets of Planned Parenthood. It’s no wonder abortion remains the leading cause of death among African Americans, higher than all other causes combined. Getting this information to as many people as possible is not only critical, it’s a matter of life and death for countless babies and oft times, as in the Gosnell case, even their mothers.”
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About Protecting Black Life: Protecting Black Life is an outreach of Life Issues Institute, with a primary objective of informing the African American community how we are being targeted by the abortion industry. It provides education, resources and assistance in the development and implementation of strategies to lower and eventually eliminate the problem of abortion in the Black community. For more information, visit the website: www.ProtectingBlackLife.org.
• If friends or family are interested in receiving future Protecting Black Life e-blasts please have them send a brief note to us at info@ProtectingBlackLife.org.
Washington, DC — Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, issued the following statement today:
“This week, Congressman Trent Franks (AZ-08) will hold a press conference on the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, announcing that its provisions, to protect children in the womb from 20 weeks of development forward, will apply nationwide. Moreover, a hearing regarding the bill will be held on Thursday.
“Priests for Life believes this is the most significant legislative effort to date in bringing protection to unborn children. We have therefore already alerted every parish in America to inform and mobilize its congregation in support of this bill. We are also calling upon pro-life organizations large and small to give it their full support.
“The team of Priests for Life has been instrumental in bringing attention to the case of Kermit Gosnell and in exposing other abortionists like him, and has been developing educational strategies related to late term abortion, such as our StopDandE.com campaign. We will redouble these efforts as a way of supporting passage of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.”
Priests for Life is the nation’s largest Catholic pro-life organization dedicated to ending abortion and euthanasia. For more information, visit www.priestsforlife.org.
Over fifty dead in the tragedy in Oklahoma, where a tornado struck yesterday. At least twenty of those struck down are little school children. Our hearts go out to all of the families who have experienced lost of loved ones in this tragedy.
A highly respected group of leaders gathered for prayer recently. It was determined during their time together that infighting was hurting the Body. We must exit the system of man, which elevates one over the other, causing self-importance to creep in. Let us go on to follow after the Lord.
Following are the remarks by one group member and response by another. May our hearts be open to receive and may we all be humble enough to precede and lead in love and humility.
“The precursor to God moving in the body is unity.”
“If we can’t get along as Christians and leaders, God will never entrust us with the Holy Spirit.”
“There should be significant prayer for unity. Where we have issues with one another, we may not always be able to work together because we may see things a little different, but we can still walk together in fellowship.”
“Backbiting and competitiveness that exists within the Body of Christ has to cease.”
“The key is to listen and obey the Holy Spirit.”
“Just because someone else doesn’t have the same calling as we do doesn’t give us a reason to criticize them.”
He has made it a policy to not talk about other Christian leaders in the press. He is also addressing not doing it privately and contacting other leaders that he has had differences within the past to make amends.
“Until we are striving for unity we will not have God’s moving in the Body.”
He personally hates the Presidential election stuff that divides us.
“We have got to keep short lists, short accounts of people that we have offended or have offended us and work through those relationships. When you hear a name and the back of your hair stands up, that is an indication you have a problem with another person that you need to work through with forgiveness.”
“We can’t walk with unforgiveness in our hearts. It leads to being wounded and that leads to bitterness and that takes us out of the game.”
“If we are calling for revival, the only thing that will save our nation, we have got to be in unity, humbling ourselves with our brothers and sisters.”
If we are truly desperate for God to move; we don’t want to be the ones responsible for God not moving. We must recognize that we are nothing apart from Christ. “If we really want to see God move we will obey Him.”
“Peter asked how many times he was to forgive people, and Jesus replied 70 times 7.”
“Even though we may not be able to work together, we can walk together.” (If we will obey God and serve Him and love each other; each preferring and regarding the other more highly than ourselves.)
As a movement DO WE HAVE ANY POWER or are we simply going through the motions?
“The Holy Spirit is not going to operate in unrepentant vessels.”
“The path forward is very difficult. We must have the power of the Holy Spirit. We’ve got to get ready.”
Let us recognize and admit there are people we personally need to go to and seek forgiveness of and reconciliation. If only we will begin this process we will surely experience God’s blessings on it.
“The path forward is very difficult. We must have the power of the Holy Spirit. We’ve got to get ready,” before we begin the work of determining God’s direction, to hear, know and obey what God is saying and follow His directions for this critical season.
1 Corinthians 12: 21-26 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice tog
Washington, DC – Fr. Frank Pavone and Priests for Life, the organization he leads, applauded today the announcement of Congressman Trent Franks (AZ-08) of a bill that would outlaw abortions nationwide after 20 weeks of development, when the scientific evidence is strongest that babies have the ability to feel pain.
“For the last few years, Priests for Life has strongly supported this type of legislation in the states, and has conducted an educational campaign called ‘Stop D and E’ (see StopDandE.com). ‘D and E’ refers to the Dilation and Evacuation procedure, that is, dismemberment abortion, which would be the most commonly used second trimester method of killing babies. With the introduction of this legislation, and building on the momentum of the state laws, the educational campaign, and the revelations of the Gosnell tragedy, we have more reason than ever to focus on this strategic goal, and more hope than ever that it will succeed,” Fr. Frank said.
“Make no mistake: the abortion industry and their cheerleaders do not want us talking about D and E abortions. They would much prefer we talk about abortions in the earliest stages of pregnancy. With these new developments, they should feel more uncomfortable than ever. The focus now is going to be late-term abortion, until it is ended in this country,” Fr. Frank concluded.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, announced this afternoon that Priests for Life has launched a project to expose Texas abortionist Douglas Karpen, and the evidence that he is killing babies born alive, and violating numerous other laws. We are calling for a full-scale investigation by Texas state authorities.
“The Harris County, Texas, District Attorney has already opened an investigation; we are sending out an action alert to the Attorney General to take swift and thorough action until this abortionist is stopped,” Fr. Frank explained.
“As we have said, Kermit Gosnell is not the exception in the abortion industry; he is the norm. As we have seen countless cases in the past, we expect to see many more in the future. And each of them should prompt us all to action.
“Priests for Life is working in partnership with Life Dynamics and Operation Rescue on highlighting the atrocities being committed in Karpen’s clinic and elsewhere. We have set up the web site TexasGosnell.com to provide vital information about the ongoing investigation and how people can support it.”
The investigation was prompted by video testimony from three of Karpen’s former employees, who describe the truly horrific conditions at the clinic and the brutal murders of newborn babies there.
Priests for Life is the nation’s largest Catholic pro-life organization dedicated to ending abortion and euthanasia. For more information, visit www.priestsforlife.org.
If the Gosnell and Castro sagas teach us anything, and there are lessons to be learned, please let us remember that the lives of human beings are hanging in the balance of what comes next.
In a letter from the Apostle Paul, the Bible tells us this:
“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.”
It’s the interests of those who are unwanted, unseen, and forgotten that we must learn to look out for. It’s the command to love our neighbors as we love ourselves that we must learn to obey.
Agape Love can ultimately redeem America and restore life. We just have to get past human depravity, such as has been depicted with Gosnell and Castro. Through their horrible and heinous deeds, we learn that humankind’s deprived nature is saturated in selfishness.
Selfishness blocks out love. It causes people to serve their own desires without consideration for others. It causes people to see others not as equals, but as useful pawns or obstacles to be eliminated.
A look at this week’s news tells us that mankind is capable of all kinds of rationalizations for treating others as less than human.
Castro is accused of using his fists to abort his own children. Gosnell ripped and snipped away the lives of thousands of babies, and even caused unspeakable pain and in some cases death to women.
These men not only regarded women as disposable chattel, and in Castro as his slaves; they also dehumanized their victims in unimaginable ways. One child Castro allowed to grow up bound in a dungeon; his other babies he killed by beating their mother and causing miscarriages.
America is being challenged to learn that situations like abortion and human trafficking are all part of a greater over-arching problem that’s been plaguing our world since the beginning of time – our selfish tendency to dehumanize those whose humanity is in the way of what we want.
In my lifetime, I have seen how our culture embraces dehumanization in various forms. I see very plainly that there are common threads in these manifestations.
When I was growing up, some of my schoolmates were killed by a bomb blast. Some white folk thought that people like me and my friends were somehow less than fully human.
My house was firebombed because my daddy worked for the basic human rights that were denied to people because of the color of their skin. My daddy, the Reverend A.D. King, later died under very suspicious circumstances – and many believe he died because of his civil rights leadership.
My uncle, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated because he refused to accept the dehumanization of African Americans.
Countless others were beaten with pipes and baseball bats, fire hosed, jailed, and lynched just for the color of their skin.
African Americans were regarded as inferior because we had been treated as less than human for hundreds of years.
When you’re treated as less than human, it’s easy to appear that way in people’s eyes. If people see you being abused for decade after decade, your mistreatment becomes, in a sense, the natural order of things.
All of this makes human mistreatment somehow palatable if not acceptable; and thereby the lives of those who oppress the most vulnerable easier. If the American public learns to accept everyone from natural conception or fertilization to natural death as brothers and sisters, the exploitation of all human beings would become much more difficult to justify.
Those who exploit and oppress fellow human beings under the cloak of racism, reproductive genocide or human trafficking are motivated by selfishness, greed, hunger for power, and the plain old bigotry that comes from pride and fear. All too many people take cover in denial that these problems exist, not wanting to look or care. Out of sight, out of mind is a much too familiar mantra.
Friends, we are dealing with a three headed monster; one that devours the weakest of our society. The thing about such a beast is that you must sever its source of power by eliminating all three heads; racism, reproductive genocide which breeds abortion and sexual perversion which breeds human trafficking. Cut off the heads and the monster will die.
One of the defining moments of the Civil Rights movement came when national newspapers and magazines showed pictures of peaceful demonstrators being clubbed and beaten. For the first time for many white people, racial discrimination and oppression were not just concepts. Americans in every part of the country saw segregation as the dehumanizing force that it was.
They saw the faces of its victims.
Surely the Kermit Gosnell trial, which is a tip of the iceberg by the way, is a defining moment in the 21st Century civil rights movement to defend the humanity of unborn babies and the dignity of their mothers. Because Gosnell did his killing outside the womb instead of inside it, America, at least that part of America that has seen news reports about the Gosnell case, has now seen some of the victims of abortion.
The rescue of the three girls in Cleveland who just escaped their prison of depravity is another tip of the iceberg situation, reminding America that young and vulnerable women are at risk of being secreted away in broad daylight to become abused and misused in a form of human trafficking in their own communities. This too is a defining moment where we can charge ahead with awareness campaigns to stop this inhumane victimization.
We cannot save the victims of abortion or human trafficking or prevent innocents from becoming new victims of other nefarious deeds without public awareness. Public awareness only happens if the public cares. And the public will only care when it loves the unwanted.
With love, children are adopted, not aborted. With love, children are cherished, not abused. With love, there is less room for the human trafficker because his hunting grounds are smaller.
There is much to be done to set the captives of human trafficking free. But if we can help create a culture that values others, we will have begun to break the captives’ chains. We must learn this lesson, then we will win this battle to redeem America using the weapons of truth and love because truth liberates and love never fails!
Today, Life Dynamics Inc. a national pro-life organization located in Denton, Texas, has released an interview with three former abortion clinic workers which prove the Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, recently convicted of murder, is not an anomaly.
The interview was conducted on May 3, 2013 with clinic employees located in a different state.
Mark Crutcher, President of Life Dynamics: “While the pro-life movement claims that abortion takes the life of a living human being, nobody on earth knows that better than the people who work at abortion clinics. The lofty rhetoric of “choice” may insulate those who work in the political and public relations arena, but the day-to-day reality for those who provide those “choices” is to deal with the corpses and parts of corpses they pull out of their customers’ bodies.“
Abortion clinic employee, “I thought, well, it’s an abortion you know, that’s what he does, but I wasn’t aware that it was illegal…Most of the time we would see him where the fetus would come completely out and of course, the fetus would still be alive..”
“He does a lot of huge abortions. A lot of the times, we would bring the big fetus that were over age, we would re-open the bag and just look at it and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so big!’”
“Sometimes he couldn’t get the fetus out. He would yank pieces – piece by piece – when they were oversize. And I’m talking about the whole floor dirty. I’m talking about me drenched in blood.”
What we have witnessed in the Gosnell case and here in our video is the nature of the beast.
Simply put, this is Abortion!
Crutcher continues, “During Gosnell’s trial, it became clear that organizations like Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Federation, and others within the pro-choice community were fully aware of what Gosnell was doing. But they kept quiet because this was a rock they did not want the public looking under. What they knew, and wanted to keep hidden, was that everything being done at this abortion clinic was within the standard operating procedures for every other abortion clinic in the country. So they, and their lapdogs in the media, started whistling past the graveyard.”
Life Dynamics was founded as a non-profit pro-life organization in 1992 by Mark Crutcher. Life Dynamics has gained a trusted reputation for ongoing research into the abortion industry.
Nothing beats working with a team of prayerful, committed, and hardworking, focused Christians. Let me tell you about two star team players.
First there’s Fr. Frank Pavone whom I admire and respect so much. In the midst of fighting to end abortion in America and around the world he had the presence of mind to ask the judge and medical examiner for the bodies of the 45 babies that were found at Kermit Gosnell’s West Philadelphia abortion facility during the raid so that they can be given proper burials.
Also, there’s Bryan Kemper, Director of Youth Outreach, who was among the first to suggest praying for Gosnell’s soul when others wanted revenge for what he had done. Bryan launched a Facebook page in order to get people to pray for the soul of Kermit Gosnell. As he says with his first post, “I want to start a revolution of praying for the soul of Kermit Gosnell instead of crying for his death. I want him to find the hope I found in Jesus.”
Prayer can move mountains if we but have faith. In Matthew 17:20, Jesus answers His disciples when they ask Him why they were not able to cast out the demons from a little boy,
He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Faith like that is hard to achieve. But praying is something that we can all do and we must if we are to win victory over death.
In some translations of the Bible it also says in Matthew 17:21, [speaking about the demons] “But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”
Prayer and fasting is how evil is conquered and it is what we must do.
