With the presidential election just 40 days away, many Roman Catholic bishops and parish leaders are working aggressively to highlight the church’s opposition to abortion.
In Chicago, the archdiocese’s Respect Life office and five other anti-abortion groups are holding a round-the clock prayer vigil for the next 40 days outside a medical clinic on the city’s North Side that performs abortions. On Wednesday, the first night of the vigil outside Family Planning Associates, more than 100 people gathered, many holding white candles and rosary beads, staring at the clinic as they prayed. No mention was made of either Sens. John McCain or Barack Obama, but apprehension about the election was in the night air.
“The purpose of the vigil is to end abortion,” said Mary Louise Kurey, director of the Respect Life office. “But the election is definitely one of our intentions as we are praying together.”
So what do you do with the Abortion clinic with the 13 month backlog?
See the video.
So, Br Michael are you implying people are booking abortions 13 months in advance?
jon R
The Roman Catholic Church is opposed to abortion?! Why didn’t anyone tell me?
The greatest act of terrorism is attacking a child that CANNOT escape because it is trapped in the womb. Many decry the killing of innocent Iraqis or Afghanis in our “war on terror”….my question is what about the INNOCENTS of the womb?…are they just collateral damage in our ego centric, selfish and hedonistic secular world? Pray for the INNOCENTS! BTW…did not Obama vote to withhold medical aid from babies that survived the abortion procedure when he was a state senator? I understand that those babies were to be placed in a chilled environment until they died. I guess the detainees at Gitmo have it good compared to babies at Planned Parenthood clinics! Pray for this nation. Pray that God will spare a people with such hardness of heart. May God have mercy on us all.
#4, you’re better informed than a lot of Catholics! 😉
#5: What you understand about what would happen to a baby born alive during an abortion procedure is false–at least, it is in Illinois. There’s quite a bit of information about this issue on the non-partisan site factcheck.org, including this information about the law that had already been in place in Illinois (since 1975) for late-term abortions:
[blockquote]And Illinois law has long stated that if an abortion is performed when the fetus is deemed to be viable, the doctor must:
– Choose the method of abortion least likely to harm the fetus.
– Have in attendance a second doctor who can immediately take over care of the child if it’s born alive.
– Use every available means to keep any born-alive child living and healthy.
To do otherwise constitutes a Class 3 felony, which carries a sentence of two to five years in prison. That’s been the law in Illinois since 1975, two years before Jessen was born. [/blockquote]
In fact, the 1975 law would also trigger a ban on all abortions except to save the mother’s life–the minute the Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade.
Obama voted against the “Born Alive” legislation in Illinois because a similar law was already on the books and because the new law would have taken a further step towards overturning Roe v Wade. I imagine Obama’s vote would still be anathema to you–even with this new information. But I just wanted to set the record straight: allowing an infant born alive during an abortion procedure to die [b]is and has been[/b] a felony in Illinois since 1975, and Obama’s vote against the bill did not change that fact.
Ladytenor (#7),
Thanks for the clarification. Obama’s record on life issues is bad enough without resorting to misguided attempts to make it appear even worse.
But the fact remains that 35 years after the DISASTROUS and infamous Roe vs. Wade decision, and 50 million abortions later, we still have a lot of unfinished business ahead of us if that dreadful and abominable decision is to be overturned.
But in the end, my concern is primarily with how to help the Church of Jesus Christ be the Church and act like the Body of Christ. I don’t expect a secular, pluralistic, post-Christendom society to act like a nation of Christians. But I get really upset when Christians don’t act like Christians.
And for those of us in TEC, that means working to overturn the scandalous and inexcusable support of TEC for the RCRC, the notorious Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. Let us clean up our own house first and take out the log from our own eye, before we try to set the secular nation’s house in order.
MsAnderson (#2),
Thanks for the link to that CatholicVote.com video clip. It was marvelous. Just splendid.
David Handy+