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Washington D.C., May 24, 2019 / 12:26 am (CNA).- Shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump insisted that state pro-life laws should include exceptions for rape, incest, and threats to the mother’s life, a group of pro-life leaders invited the Rep… […]

Washington D.C., May 23, 2019 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Former students of Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School have published an open letter challenging a recent decision they say undermines the Catholic identity of the school.

“The false choice you have set up, between embracing the truth of Catholic teaching and loving our LGBTQ sisters and brothers, is already spreading a culture of fear” graduates of Visitation wrote May 23, in response to the school’s recent decision to announce the same-sex legal unions of graduates in its alumni magazine.

“If Visitation’s leaders will not affirm Catholic teaching, the school cannot promise to be a home for students and teachers who do.”  

Visitation’s policy change was announced earlier this month in an email sent to the school community by Sr. Mary Birchmans VHM, who is head of the Salesian monastery that runs the school and the past-president of Visitation.

The graduates’ letter was published on the website of First Things magazine, and addressed to Birchmans VHM.

“Above all else, we write with sadness,” the letter says, while outlining the alumnae’s concerns with the policy and the rationale offered for it.

Although Birchmans was the lone signatory of an email to the school community announcing the change in policy, a group of pro-LGBT former students indicated on a private Facebook group that they had been in contact with her and organized support for the decision.

In her May email to the school community, Birchmans said she had been “reflect[ing] upon what it means to Live Jesus in relationship with our LGBTQ alumnae.”

“The Church is clear in its teaching on same-sex marriages,” Birchmans wrote. “But, it is equally clear in its teaching that we are all children of God, that we each have dignity and are worthy of respect and love.”

The sister also wrote that she had been praying over what she called the “contradiction” between the Church’s perennial teachings on human sexuality and the Gospel imperative to love.

In their own letter, the alumnae affirmed that they “share [the] desire to ensure that Visitation is a welcoming and inclusive community,” but noted that even if the school is determined to share same-sex union news of former students “there are loving and faithful ways to do so.”

The alumnae letter said that Birchamns’ explanation of the school’s decision “signals a fundamental shift in the administration’s approach to Visitation’s Catholic identity and Salesian charism.”

The former students said that Birchmans’ communications suggested a false conflict between Church teaching on sexuality and loving one’s neighbor which “betrays a deep misunderstanding of Catholic sexual teaching.”

“For Catholic educators to suggest that Church teaching is in error is misguided and offensive,” the alumnae wrote.

“Sexual union in marriage is only one among many possible paths to a life full of love; human dignity does not depend on sexual expression, and it is perplexing to hear a professed religious sister insinuate otherwise.”

The open letter accused Birchmans of “a heartbreaking betrayal” of the Salesian order’s founder by using quotes from St. Francis de Sales in an argument which seemed to pit the Gospel imperative of love against the Church’s teaching on same-sex unions.

The alumnae said Birchmans implied that those who affirm Catholic teaching “act out of hate.”

That implication, they said, would be an indictment of Pope Francis, St. Francis de Sales, and millions of faithful Catholics around the world.

The letter’s four signatories said they had been overwhelmed with private messages of support from other recent Visitation graduates who shared their concerns but believed they would be “rejected and condemned” if they came forward publicly.

Before the open letter was published, CNA spoke to several parents of current students who voiced similar concerns. Those parents said they are concerned that the school’s decision to publish same-sex union announcements is part of a growing pro-LGBT agenda within a small section of the school community.

One father explained to CNA that he believes the new policy for the alumni magazine would serve as an example for other Catholic schools to break with Church teaching.

“This isn’t just being watched by the immediate community. I’ve spoken to parents from other schools concerned this could be the start of a national trend [by Catholic schools] away from the Church and towards a progressive agenda,” he said.

“This isn’t what we want for our daughters, we make sacrifices as a family to get them to a school where the faith will be taught and nurtured, not undercut but the administration.”

One mother told CNA that the alumni magazine decision had crystalized growing concerns among the wider school community.

“This isn’t about one or two or ten families taking issue with something in a newsletter,” she said.

“A lot of families – a lot of us – have been concerned for a while now about a real move away from a truly Catholic identity to something just ‘in the Catholic tradition,’ and that’s not what we signed up for.”

Several parents told CNA that they have been in touch with the Archdiocese of Washington asking for newly-installed Archbishop Wilton Gregory to review the situation. While the school is under the direct oversight of the Salesian Sisters and not the archdiocese, the local bishop has a general responsibility for ensuring that all Catholic schools are faithful to Church teaching.

On May 15, a spokesperson for Visitation told CNA that “I can’t speak for the archdiocese, but I can say we have been in touch with them and our goal is to work with them as we move forward and remain committed to our Catholic identity.”

An official spokesman for the archdiocese declined to comment on the situation.

CNA also confirmed that Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Va., had written to the school’s administrators expressing the concerns brought to him by Visitation parents living in his diocese.

Georgetown Visitation was founded in 1799, and is the oldest Catholic high school for girls in the United States. Tuition is $30,100. Approximately 500 students are enrolled in the school.

[…]

Washington D.C., May 23, 2019 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey recently signed the Human Life Protection Act into law. The legislation would make performing or attempting to perform an abortion a felony in the state.

The bill permits exceptions if the life of the mother is at risk, but controversially makes no exception for victims of rape or incest.

In an interview to air May 23 on EWTN Pro-Life Weekly, attorney and pro-life speaker Rebecca Kiessling said that she applauds Alabama for refusing to make such exceptions because they dehumanize people like her.

Kiessling is the founder and president of Save the 1, a pro-life advocacy group dedicated to supporting the rights of unborn children conceived in rape or incest, or with disabilities. She told Pro-Life Weekly host Catherine Hadro that she was conceived when her biological mother was abducted at knifepoint and raped, and that she owes her birth to abortion having been illegal at the time.

Adopted at birth, Kiessling met her biological mother for the first time when she was 19 years old. While her birth mother “was happy to meet me,” Kiessling said her mother told her that she would have had an abortion if the procedure had been legal at the time.

“She said, ‘it should have been my right,’” Kiessling said.

But, Kiessling said, her mother has since undergone a change of heart, and the pair are now both “thankful that we were protected by Michigan law at the time.”

Asked about the Alabama law and its lack of a rape exception, Kiessling said state Rep. Terri Collins, who introduced the bill, was defending the lives of people like her.

“He really went to bat for us,” Kiessling said, while noting that the rhetoric around the debate had been distressing for her and others like her.

“It really hurts when our people group are under attack,” Kiessling said, adding that Save the 1 has eight hundred members who were either conceived in rape or became mothers after rape.

Shortly after Gov. Ivey approved the bill, President Donald Trump opined on Twitter that although he considers himself “strongly Pro-Life,” he believes in “three exceptions – Rape, Incest and protecting the Life of the mother.” Trump did not name Alabama, although the tweet was widely interpreted as commentary on the bill.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>As most people know, and for those who would like to know, I am strongly Pro-Life, with the three exceptions – Rape, Incest and protecting the Life of the mother – the same position taken by Ronald Reagan. We have come very far in the last two years with 105 wonderful new…..</p>&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href=”https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1129954110747422720?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>May 19, 2019</a></blockquote>

<script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

Asked about the president’s tweet, Kiessling called Trump “the most pro-life president we’ve had by far,” but that this only made his comments about rape exceptions “hurt so much more.”

“You want somebody like that to be willing to defend you,” Kiessling said.

Asked how pro-life advocates can discuss such a sensitive topic, Kiessling said that it is important to “appreciate people’s concern for rape victims who become pregnant,” without dismissing the humanity of the unborn children involved.

Kiessling said pro-life advocates should “appeal to the sense of justice, that we do not punish innocent people for someone else’s crime.”

“People respect that answer,” she said. “And I did not deserve the death penalty for the crime of my biological father.”

Kiessling said Save the 1 has “made a lot of progress” in working to terminate the parental rights of rapists.

“I tell people, look if you really care about rape victims who become pregnant, please, protect them from the rapist and the abortion,” she said. “The baby is not the scary enemy.”

Kiessling’s full interview will air Thursday at 10:00 PM Eastern.

Kate Scanlon is a producer for EWTN Pro-Life Weekly

[…]

Washington D.C., May 23, 2019 / 12:19 pm (CNA).- While the number of abortions procured in the US has steadily declined in recent decades, recent data indicate that this decline may be slowing as the use of chemical abortions rises.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony List, issued a report this month that analyzed the 2017 abortion figures released by 37 states.

Chuck Donovan, president of Charlotte Lozier Institute, told CNA that 2018 data from six states indicate a continuance of the increasing use of chemical abortions.

“What we may be seeing is that, through the promotion of chemical abortions and increasing the range of distribution … the long-term climb could be coming to an end,” he said.

The reported stated that in 2017 more than 470,000 abortions occurred in 37 states and that 39% of these were chemically induced. Out of 31 states, it highlighted an increased tendency to procure chemical abortions, and, out of 25 states, it mapped the trend of these chemical procedures from 2008 to 2017.

“Since 2008, total abortions among these 25 states have declined by 23 percent, while chemical abortions have increased by 68 percent. Between 2015 and 2017, total abortions fell by three percent, while chemical abortions rose by almost 20 percent,” the report stated.

As opposed to surgical abortions, chemical procedures induce termination through a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration loosened restrictions on in 2000 and 2016. Since these have become more available, chemical abortions have widely increased.

Abortions have been decreasing since the ’90s, but the decline has slowed in recent years, even showing a slight increase in abortions in some states. Out of 30 states that reported on both abortions and chemical abortions in the past two years, 14 of them saw an escalation in abortions, according to the report.

Donovan said the trend follows the abortion industry’s push for telemedicine. He said chemical abortives have a wider range of distribution than a medical associate at a physical clinic.

“When you get to chemical abortions, then one or two doctors with telemedicine or things like that can cover a wider area, and we see the abortion industry moving to make the distribution of chemical abortions available through every pharmacy in the country…as well as through the mail,” he said.

“Conceivably, a doctor could reach a 15, 20 county area and dispense the drugs without ever seeing the patent. Telemedicine and chemical abortions will be that much more aggressively marketed and reach a wider range of people.”

According to the report, there is an underestimation of abortions in the U.S. both in its numbers and potential dangers, especially some of the risks for chemical abortions. Ohio issued a report on the adverse effects of chemical abortives, noting that women are having increased difficulties as a result of mifepristone.

“Chemical abortions have a much higher complication rate than surgical abortions performed at the same point in pregnancy and result in more frequent visits to the emergency room,” the report read.

A major concern, the reported added, is the lack of information on abortion statistics from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Among other issues, some states do not report their abortion numbers or problems, and some states only report on residents who received abortions.

For example, California, Maryland, and New Hampshire do not disclose their abortion information to the CDC, though together they account for 20% of all abortions in the U.S., the report stated. Ohio is also one of the only states to require abortion complications to be disclosed to the government. The FDA only tracks abortions that have resulted in a woman’s death.

“The lack of accurate chemical abortion data at the national level means that adverse events caused by chemically induced abortions may be much more common than researchers realize,” the reported stated.

Donovan said the CDC will receive real time information on a state’s births and deaths, but abortion numbers are about two years behind. To keep women better educated on the dangers, he said, the government should be more determined to use modern technology to track these statistics.

“These reports are not giving us a true picture of the harm that chemical abortions do, but that harm is higher than surgical abortions done at the same stage of pregnency. We should be on top of this, women should be warned of the heightened risk of using these drugs and it should be tracked by the medical monitory system. That’s not happening,” he said.

Although there is a concern for the future, Donovan expressed gratitude that there has still been a decline in abortions, noting that the pro-life movement and increase in pregnancy centers have likely impacted the decrease in abortions and changes in attitude toward unexpected pregnancies.

“Women are more inclined to keep an unexpected pregnancy than they were a couple of decades ago. Things like ultrasounds, more services, and, possibly, expanded health care coverage for women; those things have been beneficial,” he said.

“We don’t want to discount all of the decline, we are just concerned that it may be coming to an end and we should know why and be prepared to the health impacts of that.”

[…]

Washington D.C., May 23, 2019 / 10:00 am (CNA).- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has condemned the recent passage of pro-life laws in several states and accused pro-life lawmakers of being afraid of women.

“This is about lack of respect… […]

Washington D.C., May 23, 2019 / 04:00 am (CNA).- Elise Amez-Droz’s journey to the Catholic Church began in a place well known for religious fervor, but not exactly known for Catholicism: Salt Lake City, Utah.

While at a conference in Salt Lake City, Amez-Droz, 24, met someone who was converting to Catholicism, which surprised her, she said. A native of Switzerland, Amez-Droz said the only Catholics she knew in her home country were not very devout.

“I was shocked that, clearly, he loved Christ, and I could see it,” she said. “But it just puzzled me that he was joining what I thought was a dead faith.”

Amez-Droz was raised an Evangelical Christian, and said that in her youth she had no thoughts of leaving her childhood faith.

But in gradute school, she struggled.

“I started really wondering about the purpose of life. It was a really rough time for me,” said Amez-Droz. She started to feel as though her life was suddenly without purpose, she said.

In Salt Lake City, she decided to join her new friend for Mass – the first Catholic Mass she had ever attended.

“My first thought was ‘well, it’s not as heretical as I thought it was [going to be],’” she said.

She kept in touch with her friend, and asked him questions about converting and why he was becoming Catholic. After she moved to Washington, DC, she made many Catholic friends, and noticed “how good all these people were,” and that they practiced virtue, “without having an incentive to do it.”

She initially found their virtue “annoying,” and was “really struggling” with how nice her new friends seemed to be.

Still, she decided to learn more about the Catholic faith. In 2018, she entered RCIA. But before committing to an RCIA program, she checked out RCIA at several different parishes in the Washington, DC area.

“I was like, ‘this is a long process. I’m signing up for something that’s going to last seven, eight months,’” she said, describing her relatively unusual approach to RCIA.

“I wanted to make sure I could connect well with the leader of it and that I was going to be learning the true doctrine of the Church,” she added.

After a few weeks, she narrowed it down to two parishes, before deciding on St. Peter’s in Washington, DC. She said she was intrigued by the Dominican friars who taught RCIA at the parish.

Amez-Droz also appreciated the approach the parish took to RCIA, which was to include past participants who had already been received into the Church.

“I knew every Tuesday night that there would be a group of people who were going to be there every time,” said Amez-Droz. “That really made a big difference for me, because it showed me that people were still learning and they wanted to do that journey with us.”

Still, even though she had put in that much effort to find the right RCIA fit, Amez-Droz still was not entirely sold on entering the Church until just a few months before Easter Vigil.

She told CNA that she was convinced after a period of intense study and reading.

“It became more clear to me that I could never go back to my Protestant faith, just having read too much history,” she said. She also was particularly taken by Augustine’s “Confessions,” and she was intrigued by “The Benedict Option.”

“I thought [The Benedict Option] was really interesting. I think it really warmed me up to tradition, considering what community life looks like,” she said. Another huge influence on her conversion was Christopher West’s “Theology of the Body For Beginners.”

“That theology made so much sense,” she said. “I was like, this is one of the most compelling things I’ve ever heard, and it’s from a pope. So that’s what made me think.”

One of the biggest ideological hurdles for Amez-Droz was accepting the authority of the Church. Once she did, however, it was relatively smooth sailing from there.

“As a convert, it comes down to ‘do I accept the authority of the Church?’ If I do, then everything else is true,” she said, and one must embrace the Church’s teachings.

Amez-Droz chose St. Therese of Lisieux as her confirmation saint, after first learning about her at a retreat.

She told CNA that she appreciated that St. Therese “emphasizes being great by being small,” and that she admired her humility. She also found it interesting that St. Therese died at age 24, the same age Amez-Droz would be when she entered the Church.

Additionally, Amez-Droz spoke French as her first language, the same as St. Therese.

The Eucharist was another major factor for Amez-Droz, and was the reason she decided to stick with Catholicism even amid the “summer of scandal” that plagued the Church.

She also said that she appreciated that the Catholics she knew were open and willing to discuss the scandals, particularly those concerning former Archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick.

“It helped me understand how Catholics were taking it,” said Amez-Droz. “It’s true that every time I would hear ‘but where else would we go? The Eucharist is only in this Church,’ and I thought that was true.”

She explained that the scandals themselves did not impact her decision to join the Church, but did help her discern where to attend RCIA.

“I don’t expect the Church to be perfect going forward, either. Ultimately, it didn’t really affect my decision,” she said.

“I think the biggest impact it had for me was choosing an RCIA, because I wanted to make sure the priest wasn’t involved with scandals himself.”

Amez-Droz received the Eucharist for the first time on April 21, 2019 at the Easter Vigil.

She almost immediately broke down in tears.

She explained to CNA that she had spent the day with her best friend, and watched “The Passion of the Christ.” The movie, she said, made her feel as though she was “totally not worthy” of receiving communion.

“At the Easter Vigil, I was really happy and I was super-excited to get confirmed, but when it came to communion, it was like ‘this is what it’s all about,’” she said.

“I was just overwhelmed that I could share in God’s very person in such a close way, even though I’m totally unworthy,” she said.
 
While she has only been a confirmed Catholic for a few weeks, Amez-Droz told CNA that she feels entirely supported by her parish, and that she is fond of the structure provided by Mass, and the requirement that Catholics attend Mass each Sunday.

“There’s so many ways that Christ exposes himself to you in life. It’s not like you finding him, it’s like ‘this is part of your schedule,”” she said.

“It’s making me a lot closer to God.”

This story is part of “The New Catholics Project,” a CNA series profiling new converts to the Catholic faith. Look for additional profiles to come.

[…]

New York City, N.Y., May 22, 2019 / 04:51 pm (CNA).- Following an op-ed in the New York Times claiming that all pregnancies are life-threatening, a Catholic doctor emphasized that pregnancy is a natural and healthy condition, and that complications which may arise can be treated without abortion.

“[Pregnancy] is not a serious health risk to the vast majority of women in this country. And unless these women have some underlying medical problems to begin with, most pregnancies are perfectly normal by any means,” said Dr. Mary Jo O’Sullivan, a high-risk obstetrician and Professor Emeritus of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Miami.

“There are pregnancies that are complicated by diabetes, hypertension, previous Caesarean sections, some of those things that he mentioned. But they are uncommon, and with good medical care there is no reason why a woman who is desirous of continuing her pregnancy cannot do so,” she told CNA.

In an op-ed published Tuesday in the New York Times, a Colorado-based late-term abortion doctor argued that because women are more likely to die in childbirth than from complications related to an abortion, “pregnancy is dangerous; abortion can be lifesaving.”

“Pregnancy is a life-threatening condition. Women die from being pregnant. We have known that for thousands of years,” abortion doctor Warren Hern wrote May 21.

Hern wrote the piece in response to recent developments related to abortion in Alabama, where the governor recently signed a near-total abortion ban into law. In Alabama last year, nearly six out of every 100,000 white women who gave birth died as a result of their pregnancy. Among black women, it was 27.6, he said.

Hern claimed from this data that a ban on abortion would disproportionately harm black women, citing data suggesting an abortion procedure is much less risky than giving birth. He offered a list of potential complications that can result from pregnancy, as well as risk factors that can make pregnancy, in his view, especially dangerous.

O’Sullivan argued, however, that the op-ed was “bombastic” and employed scare tactics. She reiterated that although any pregnancy carries some risk, it is not a “serious” threat to a woman’s health, especially in the United States. The United States has a higher maternal death rate than Europe, for example, but maternal deaths are still very rare, even in rural areas.

“She doesn’t have a 50/50 chance of dying, unless she has some very serious cardiac problems. So I really think that this is scare tactics to prevent women from getting pregnant at all.”

O’Sullivan acknowledged that maternal death rates are higher in black women, especially those of lower socioeconomic status. She pointed out that these women also have a higher risk of hypertension, obesity, diabetes, poor nutrition, and previous Caesarean sections, all of which are risk factors for maternal death.

Better medical care to address these issues is what is needed, she said, especially for women who are at risk for conditions like hypertension, who should seek medical care earlier rather than later in their pregnancy.

For the United States overall, the maternal mortality ratio was 20.7 in 2018, meaning that about 20 mothers die for every 100,000 live births. The rate of death for mothers in Sierra Leone, with the highest maternal mortality ratio in the world, is seventy times that.

In his piece, Hern argued, “Pregnancy itself poses a ‘serious health risk’ — including the risk of dying and losing all bodily functions.” He said that “A woman’s life and health are at risk from the moment that a pregnancy exists in her body, whether she wants to be pregnant or not.”

O’Sullivan expressed doubt that the statistics Hern quotes were entirely accurate.

“There are still issues with proper recording of maternal deaths,” she said. “We’re getting better, but we’re very poor at that in the United States. And also, what we call a ‘maternal death’ might be a different definition than other countries may use. So we have to be careful with that too.”

In addition, the statistics Hern used to demonstrate the “safety” of abortion procedures did not include adequate follow-ups on the women it studied, she added, meaning there may have been deaths or complications later on that the study missed.

O’Sullivan pointed out that throughout her medical career, she has aided women through many difficult pregnancies, and had never once had to perform an abortion.

“Abortion is not absolutely indicated under any circumstances,” she said.

There are occasions, she clarified, when a lifesaving procedure for a mother may indirectly result in a child’s death, but this is not the same as an abortion. An example, she said, could be the situation of a severe hemorrhage in a mother’s placenta, known as Disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC).

“In that case, we have to deliver the placenta,” she explained.

“The secondary thing that’s going to happen is that that baby is not going to survive…the intent is not to kill the baby, but the intention is to remove the placenta. So in that case, yes, if you do not deliver her, [the mother] could well die.”

Even a situation like DIC is extremely rare, she reiterated.

“The most important thing is that pregnancy is generally followed by a very good, healthy outcome for both mother and baby,” she concluded. “And with good medical care, even better.”

Users who left comments on the New York Times website argued that all successful abortion procedures, even if they may be “safer” for the mother, result in the death of the unborn child.

“Every child has a right to life. Every child,” O’Sullivan said.

[…]

Steubenville, Ohio, May 22, 2019 / 04:40 pm (CNA).- Franciscan University of Steubenville announced Wednesday the appointment of Fr. David Pivonka, TOR, as the university’s seventh president. Several prominent Catholic alumni of Franciscan said P… […]

Salt Lake City, Utah, May 22, 2019 / 03:35 pm (CNA).- An actor who has been featured in dozens of homosexual pornographic films has announced his exit from the industry and his entrance into the anti-porn movement.

Markie More, a porn star of six year… […]

Washington D.C., May 22, 2019 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Joe Biden would support federal laws protecting abortion rights, “should it become necessary.” The former vice president is the current frontrunner in the race for the Democratic presidential… […]