Abortion

The Call that Saved the Life of a Football Prodigy

April 21, 2021By

You can’t win if you don’t play.

And you can’t play if you’ve never been born.

Micah Parsons plays well. Very well. But the NFL top-draft pick from Harrisburg, PA was almost denied the chance.

As he reveals for the first time in an April 20, 2021 PennLive article by Brian Linder, Parson’s mom, Sherese, seriously considered an abortion.  “My mom already had two kids when she got pregnant with me. She just didn’t know if she could afford it.”

At one point, his mother told his father, “I think I’m going to the clinic.’’

As Linder explains, no one knew about the pregnancy so it was surprising when a church friend called to say hello and sensed something was wrong.  Eventually, the truth emerged and a conversation took place.

The woman who simply called to check in and say hello ended up saving Micah Parsons’ life.

 “She talked my mom out of it,” Micah said. “I think that is why (my mom) was always like, ‘God looks over you, son, and you should continue to keep doing good things in your life and give back to God…’”

Believing divine intervention came through the hands and heart of another human being, Sherese calls Micah her “biggest blessing.”

The life-saving caller could not possibly have known that the child in her friend’s womb would one day become a celebrated athlete on the verge of a multimillion dollar professional sports career.

But what he would or would not become didn’t matter. The caller recognized a precious, unrepeatable gift of life growing within her friend. A life worth saving, unconditionally.

In fact, no one can predict the path that any one life may take. No one can foresee the full potential inherent in a tiny human life.  No one can forecast the lasting impact that any one person may have.

And we shouldn’t try.  History is replete with people overcoming incredibly difficult circumstances to make unique and impressive contributions to society, leaving a legacy that has eternal ramifications.

Micah’s life has already had an amazing impact. Not just on his family, his hometown, and on the game of football.  He has a son, a child who would not be here if Micah were not.  Ending a life through abortion has a generational consequence.

Through compassionate support and encouragement that came through a phone call, Micah’s mom chose to give him life.

And he doesn’t take that lightly. Micah aims to maximize that gift. “It’s always seemed like I was brought into this world to do something bigger than just play football.”

By sharing his story, Micah Parsons already has.

His story may inspire couples to welcome a child even amidst obstacles, and may motivate more people to lovingly reach out to abortion-vulnerable women.

His story exemplifies what could be when we give life a chance.

And his story shows the difference that one phone call, one conversation, one person can make.

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Pro-Life

Vaccine Information

April 14, 2021By

Many people have reached out to us to ask about the use of aborted fetal cell lines in the testing, development, or production of COVID-19 vaccines. A good resource that maintains updated information is the Charlotte Lozier Institute. You can find their information on vaccines and comparison charts by clicking HERE.

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Abortion

Following the Actual Science

April 7, 2021By

While the celestial heavens and the deepest pockets of the ocean remain mysterious to us on many levels, modern technology has made them less so, providing new and fascinating insights that we once lacked.

The same is true of another once baffling frontier: the womb.

Although it is the origination point of every human being who has ever walked this earth, for the greater part of history we’ve known little about our first home and how we came to be.

It was only in the late 1800’s, for example, that scientists understood that the union of male and female sex cells creates another human being. But beyond that, much remained a mystery.

Without any means toglimpse into the gestational cosmos, scientists could only speculate as to whatoccurs during pregnancy.  Even well intothe 20th Century, we possessed surprisingly little information aboutprenatal development.

As late as the 1969 edition of the Cumulative Index Medicus, a massive book listing every article published in every medical journal in the world, had just five articles under the heading of “fetus, physiology and anatomy of.”

The void of facts madethe product of abortion-on-demand easier to market. After all, it (not he or she) was just a clump of cells.

The late Dr. Bernard Nathanson addressed this lack of empirical data on human development in his autobiography The Hand of God.  And he discussed the technological lightning bolt that struck him in the late 1970’s which led him to abandon his lucrative abortion practice and leadership role in the pro-abortion movement to become a staunch pro-life advocate.

That transformative tool was ultrasound which provided a window that revealed the miraculous process of human development. These scientific advancements, along with those arising from the study of genetics, sparked an abundance of research into life in utero.

Nathanson credits ultrasound with helping us “to learnmore about the fetus since its advent than in almost all the history of medicinebefore that time.”

By 1979, he accounted for twenty-eight hundred articles on fetology in the Index Medicus, and by 1994 close to five thousand. Now, almost 30 years later, how much more research has been done and articles written on human life in its earliest stages?

How little we knew then;how much more we know now.

It might be easier to understand someone’s support of abortion back in the “Dark Ages” when so little of fetology was known.

But how can anyone today, especially those who seemingly espouse science as their barometer of all things true, justify abortion?

They would have to be blind to facts. Deaf to a heartbeat. Indifferent to an innocent life moving right before their eyes. Numb to dismemberment. Desensitized to a violent death.

Callous to the crude disposal of human life.

They would be and, infact, are the ultimate science-deniers.

So let us be relentless messengers of the beautiful biological truths we have learned in the last halfcentury.

Let us incessantly proclaim the fact that every human life begins at the moment of fertilization.

Let us truly follow the science to build a culture of life.

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Abortion

A Film Too Important to Not See

March 12, 2021By

Where were you in 1973?

Perhaps you remember it well. Perhaps you weren’t evenborn.

I was five years old, blissfully unaware of thevolatile changes occurring in our culture.

It would be many years before I would know what Roe v. Wade was. By that time, an abortion narrative had been carefully crafted and a misleading lexicon taken hold, phrases like “pro-choice”, “reproductive rights”, and even “access to health care.”

Which is why the movie Roe v Wade is so fascinating and so very relevant. It offers a fast-paced, fact-checked depiction of events leading to the most controversial court case of our time, a historical moment that preceded many Americans alive today.

For those familiar with the history of abortion inthis country, this movie smoothly ties together main players and events, helpingthe viewer to see the big picture. For others, the film will expose how the truestory of Roe has been omitted from decadesof abortion propaganda.

Told through the lens of Dr. Bernard Nathanson (played by co-producer Nick Loeb), the movie captures his evolving relationship with abortion: from paying for a girlfriend’s abortion to co-founding the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) to becoming New York’s busiest abortionist. With over 70,000 deaths attributed to his practice, he became known as “The  King of Abortion” and “The Scraper.” But as the film depicts, Nathanson experiences a heart-wrenching epiphany that leads him to abandon his lucrative work and become an outspoken pro-life activist.

As Nathanson narrates his journey, we meet hissidekick Lader, who has authored a book called Abortion. He recruits friend and feminist Betty Friedan to theabortion cause. Reluctant to make abortion the focus of the women’s rightsmovement, Friedan does ultimately bring the National Organization for Women(NOW) into the fight, but observes, “You boys are only in favor of abortionbecause it’s cheaper than child support.”

For Larry Lader allies are not enough. He believesevery cause has to identify an enemy, and for the abortion movement, he shrewdlychooses the biggest defender of the unborn, the Catholic Church. A master mediamanipulator, Lader is able to vilify the Church while promoting his newly-coinedterm “pro-choice” and his “abortion-on-demand” agenda in major publications.

Today’s viewers may be shocked to see the dominant role that men, not women, actually played in legalizing abortion.  In addition, to Nathanson and Lader, the Supreme Court at that time was all male, none of whom could have ever felt the flutter of life in their belly or witnessed an ultrasound image of that life.  The movie reveals that two justices, Potter Stewart and Harry Blackmun, actually had family members who volunteered at Planned Parenthood while Roe was in the courts, yet they didn’t recuse themselves.

A little-known fact explained in the movie is thatarguments for Roe were heard twice,once in 1971 and then again in 1973. Justice Warren Burger (played by JohnVoight) insisted on the second hearing since two seats on the Court had been vacantthe first time around. With a case as controversial as Roe, he felt a decision shouldbe made by a full court. Tragically, in the time between oral arguments, Burgerand Blackmun would switch their votes to be in favor of Roe, likely a result ofmedia and family pressure.

An outstanding woman in the film is the poised and brilliant Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School. Recognizing that abortion violates the Hippocratic Oath she took, she decides she cannot sit on the sidelines.  “Life begins at conception. As a physician, I know this.” She goes on to become President of the newly formed National Right to Life Committee, now the oldest and largest pro-life organization in our country.

Although dense with people, events, and information, the movie flows easily, thanks to Nathanson’s retrospective voice framing the story. The extensive, detailed research that underscores the film is impressive, making this an excellent educational tool not only for today but for generations to come.

Many scenes will give the viewer pause: the arrest of clergy involved in a secret abortion-referral network, Planned Parenthood fundraising at the Playboy Mansion, Nathanson’s overseas training in “assembly-line” abortion methods, the emotional recitation of the diary of the unborn, and the stirring closing argument offered by Robert Flowers.

Many of the lines are thought-provoking. Throughout the film, Constitutional law professor Robert M. Byrn offers bits of wisdom, quotations from historical figures like Benjamin Franklin and John Marshall.

But perhaps it is his own words to his students that should resonate with us long after viewing the movie, impelling us to never stop advocating for the innocent, vulnerable child in the womb.

“Don’t you think someone’s hopelessness should motivate us to protect them, not destroy them?”

(For $12.99 plus tax, you can stream Roe v Wade to any device by clicking here.)

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Pro-Life

Her Restless Heart Finds Healing At Last

March 10, 2021By

Growing up in a small town, Sue Ellen Browder longedto one day find success in a big bustling city. So landing in Hollywood as an alreadyaccomplished writer may have seemed like a dream come true.

As she details in the final chapters of her memoir Subverted:How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement, Hollywood,however, was just another alluring mirage that would give way to stark reality.

Despite Browder’s prolific and principled husband pouring his heart into one screenplay after another, he faced a steady stream of rejection.

When Browder, renowned for her articles in Cosmopolitan and other publications, appearedon the highly-rated Oprah show, she is left deflated by the experience.  “Fame, like glamour, had become for me justanother sick illusion.”

The hardships piled up. Unexpected health issues, never-endingfinancial worries, and rising marital tension. Depressed and at times, evensuicidal, Browder felt like there was nothing that could ease her angst.

Her newly emptied nest magnified her despair. When her daughter returned to college one semester, she had a breakdown. Unloading the dishwasher she deliberately smashed every plate on the tile floor.  Later, she realized this outburst was fueled “at least in part from my unresolved grief over the abortion” decades before.

Miraculously, in the midst of this dark emotionalchaos, a light appeared.

Her husband began to read again and was captivated by St. Augustine’s Confessions. Browder saw a newfound sense hope growing in him that she envied.

In an effort to find greater peace and beauty in life,the couple resettled in a home nestled in the magnificent Redwood forest. Herethey would find what they were looking for and more. Their desire to know“God’s reality,” an unchanging truth, led them to the Catholic faith.

Just moments into their first meeting with a priest, Browder’s husband blurted out that they had an abortion. The priest simply nodded, but Browder herself was shocked.

“I had no idea Walter considered the abortion ‘ours.’ Ithad never occurred to me that all these years he had been silently grievingright along with me.” Theirs, like that of many couples, had been a hushedmourning, with a profound grief simmering under the surface.

As part of her journey into the Catholic Church, Browder received the Sacrament of Reconciliation in which sins are forgiven. She thought she would finally find healing. But even after her first confession she suffered in silence, unable to let go of self-blame.  “I feared if I ever started talking about the abortion, I would never stop crying.”

Her post-abortion trauma led her back to theconfessional. She began to trust in God’s endless mercy. “After a quartercentury of unspoken grief over the abortion, I at last begin to be healed. TheChurch, in her all-forgiving love, is so beautiful that I feel as if I’m livinginside a two-thousand-year-old poem.”

It is from this long-sought place of serenity that Browdercan look back at her life’s journey and at the women’s movement she oncerevered to see where she and we have gone wrong.

“Love for God and others, including love for thelittle person in the womb, is what gives meaning to life, even in the midst ofpain and suffering.  This is the unseendimension of women’s lives that the Mere Fifty-Seven overlooked…when theycreated a pro-abortion political agenda….”

Brower’s memoir is a lesson to us all, generouslyoffered by way of her own pain and redemption, skillfully crafted by her talentas a writer.  We would be wise to keep itwithin reach and explore its pages from time to time.

Quotable Quotes

“As strong, independent women, we need to be speakingout loudly and clearly about the truth that ‘success’ in life isn’t just aboutcareers, sex, power, and money.  Allthese trappings are nothing without love.” (p.148)

“If every Christian in America had stood firmly withthe smallest, weakest, and poorest in our society-that is, if each and everyChristian had stood firmly with the innocent preborn child nailed to thecross-we would have far fewer abortions than we do in the United States and theworld today.” (p. 180)

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Abortion

The Difference a Law Can Make

March 4, 2021By

A happily married woman who delights in her twochildren may not seem like someone who would get an abortion.

Yet, Sue Ellen Browder did.  In her book Subverted: How I Helped theSexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement, she reveals the mindset thatled her to a decision she would later regret.

It’s a mindset that, decades later, still lures womento abort. At its core is the universal emotion of fear.

Browder feared that she and her husband, struggling writers working temp jobs to keep the lights on, could not afford another child. The 1970’s Cosmo culture in which she was steeped validated that fear and gave her “permission” to act on it. “In my mind, abortion was an integral part of the women’s movement, a right as fundamental as equal pay for equal work,” she writes. As “watered-down Christians,” she says her husband even tried to find justification for abortion in the Bible.

But Browder admits that she would never have considered abortion were it not legal in 1974. “Looking up some sleazy criminal abortionist in a back alley would be too hideous a prospect for words.” An important admission that we need to bear in mind today as we seek to change laws to protect life.

Getting a legal abortion in the “bright, clean hospital” where she had already given birth, however, gave it an air of legitimacy, as though it were just like any other medical procedure. “I didn’t think of myself as killing a child. I thought of myself as solving a problem.”

The abortion was excruciatingly painful, both physicallyand emotionally. In an act of self-preservation, Browder blocked much of thedetails from her mind, rendering the memory a blur.

Afterward, she numbly returned to work. “I have justsnuffed out a tiny life over my lunch hour. I have betrayed the bond of love that holds the universe together. Andno one I work with seems any the wiser.”

To prevent any possible feelings from surfacing, Browderburied herself in distractions. She blamed the persistent angst and depression shefelt on the couple’s continually volatile finances.  Her husband struggled emotionally as well, andthey chose to stifle their pain by never speaking of the abortion.

One day, however, Browder found herself offering a gestureof atonement. She spontaneously purchased a brand new wooden crib and mattressand donated it to a pro-life center for “some struggling mother who, despiteher poverty, had chosen to keep her baby and to reach out humbly to others forhelp.” Something she wished she had done.

Browder’s thinking shifted and she questioned the fauxfeminism that portrayed abortion as the great liberator. She recognized thatshe herself was deceived by the very propaganda she helped disseminate as awriter for Cosmopolitan.

Her entry into the Episcopal Church, coinciding with herwork on a book about human interactions, resulted in a new understanding of personhood.She realized an interconnectedness between all humans, especially mother andchild.

It gradually became clear to Browder that the women’smovement embodied by Betty Friedan and the National Organization for Women wasrooted in flawed thinking that “falsely isolates a woman from God, from a truerelationship of love with a man, and even from the dance of life in her ownbody.”

Browder had succumbed to fear in getting her abortion, but she would no longer succumb to the lies that pitted women against their children.

Her journey was taking a new turn, one that would leadher to a surprising place.

(Please join us in reading Chapter 13-18 and theEpilogue for next week.)

Quotable quotes:

“It’s not only a tiny little life who dies on thisgurney. Part of my heart dies along with him.” (p. 105)

“Men, stripped of the maturity than comes withresponsible fatherhood, were becoming self-absorbed Peter Pans who couldn’tgrow up.” (p. 122)

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