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Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Lent – 40 days for Life

Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.
 – 2 Corinthians 6:2
Today is Ash Wednesday. It is the beginning of Lent. It is also the beginning of a new "40 Days for Life" campaign.


The pro-Life movement has been gathering support and momentum over the past few months. Now comes a new opportunity to show our support for the unborn. 40 Days for Life is a campaign of 40 days of constant, peaceful vigil outside abortion centers and Planned Parenthood offices. The current campaign begins March 9 and runs through April 17, coinciding with the Christian season of Lent.

For more information please visit the 40 Days for Life website at:
www.40daysforlife.com

Planned Parenthood exposed

Planned Parenthood has been exposed for what it is – a radical population control group that was founded on the principles of racism and eugenics. Take a look at this statement from PP's 2008 tax filing:
THE PURPOSE OF THE FEDERATION IS:
(A) TO PROVIDE LEADERSHIP:
  • - IN MAKING EFFECTIVE MEANS OF VOLUNTARY FERTILITY REGULATION, INCLUDING CONTRACEPTION, ABORTION, STERILIZATION, AND INFERTILITY SERVICES, AVAILABLE AND FULLY ACCESSIBLE TO ALL AS A CENTRAL ELEMENT TO REPRODUCTIVE HEALTHCARE:
  • - IN ACHIEVING, THROUGH INFORMED INDIVIDUAL CHOICE, A U.S. POPULATION OF STABLE SIZE IN AN OPTIMUM ENVIRONMENT
  • - IN STIMULATING AND SPONSORING RELEVANT BIOMEDICAL, SOCIO-ECONOMIC, AND DEMOGRAPHIC RESEARCH;
  • - IN DEVELOPING APPROPRIATE INFORMATION, EDUCATION, AND TRAINING PROGRAMS.
(B) TO SUPPORT AND ASSIST EFFORTS TO ACHIEVE SIMILAR GOALS IN THE UNITED STATES AND THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
Their stated purpose is:
  • "Voluntary fertility regulation" through "contraception, abortion, sterilization, and infertility services".
  • Achieving a "stable" and "optimum" U.S. population through individual "choice".
  • And to propagate this same goal "throughout the world".
There is nothing in this description about providing general health services for women. And there is certainly nothing about helping children. Given their stated goal of achieving zero population growth, every child born above an unpublished quota is viewed by them as a failure to accomplish their mission.

This is very similar to the mission statement of an organization who's goal it is to control the population of stray cats through neutering and spaying. The only difference is that PP knows that it cannot force people in the U.S. to undergo sterilization like they do in China, so they have to rely on "individual choice" to accomplish their goal. And there is that word "choice" that abortion supporters like to use so much. The choices that PP offers are "contraception, abortion and sterilization". The goal of Planned Parenthood is to induce women to "choose" to use drugs and medical procedures to alter their bodies so that they cannot conceive a child.

This is a free country and anyone can express their views. If Planned Parenthood and its supporters believe strongly in a zero population growth strategy, then they are certainly entitled to that opinion and to engage in legal activities in support of that goal. However, they should be open about their goals and not hide their true purpose behind public relations campaigns that attempt to portray the purpose of their organization as helping poor and minority women. The exact opposite is true. They specifically target poor and minority women with their abortion clinics.

Planned Parenthood is deliberately duplicitous about its purpose. The only "help" that they offer to poor women is to render them infertile so that they cannot have children. And when that fails, then they offer to legally kill their unborn children while they are still in the mother's womb. PP performs over 300,000 abortions in the U.S. every year. Any other services that PP offers are just there to entice women to come into their centers so that they can gain their confidence and compel them to not have children through "contraception, abortion and sterilization" and other "infertility services".

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Here is Abby Johnson describing her conversion to pro-Life. She is the former director of the Planned Parenthood clinic in College Station, Texas – where 40 Days for Life first began.



The following are excerpts from the 40 Days for Life blog. It is an article that was written November 3rd, 2009 – just after Abby's decision to leave Planned Parenthood became public. It's titled "MIRACLE: Planned Parenthood director converts!"
Abby Johnson worked at Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas for eight years. She was there when the first-ever 40 Days for Life campaign was conducted outside of her workplace in the Bryan/College Station community in 2004.

She was there for the next 40 Days for Life effort as well — the one that helped to launch the first nationally coordinated 40 Days for Life campaign in the fall of 2007.

And she was there for the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that — and the one after that!

In fact, Abby was able to look out the window of Planned Parenthood and see 40 Days for Life campaigns on six different occasions — as well as the regular year-round prayer presence organized by the local Coalition for Life, under the leadership of our own 40 Days for Life campaign director Shawn Carney.

For all those years, people outside the clinic prayed for Abby.

And with all those prayers, Abby finally had a change of heart. She said, “Over the past few months I had seen a change in motivation regarding the financial impact of abortions,” she said, “and I reached my breaking point after witnessing a particular kind of abortion on an ultrasound.”

Abby finally saw the truth. The truth which Planned Parenthood often tries to hide — even from its very own management staff.

Abby’s amazing conversion demonstrates the importance of a constant, persistent, peaceful prayer presence in front of abortion facilities.

From that first campaign in 2004, we’ve prayed for Abby — and for all abortion workers — that they would come to see what abortion really is, and that they would leave the deadly business. In this case, those prayers have been answered.

We are so proud of Abby’s courage to leave the abortion industry and publicly announce her reasons for leaving.

And now a familiar face has been seen praying outside Planned Parenthood in Bryan/College Station during the final days of this fall’s 40 Days for Life — yes, Abby Johnson.

God can and will do amazing things — if only we ask!

We must continue to pray and fast for more conversions just like Abby’s.
At the time that Abby left Planned Parenthood she was still an advocate of artificial contraception. She belonged to a liberal Episcopalian church. Abby says that her family was "booted out" of her pro-choice Church after she left Planned Parenthood. Eventually she and her husband decided to become Catholic. Here is an extensive interview with Abby on EWTN's World Over Live that was broadcast on February 24, 2011. In the interview Abby discusses her experience as a Planned Parenthood director. She has recently published a book about her personal journey from pro-abortion to pro-life titled "unPlanned".
8:00 - Interview with Abby Johnson begins
8:30 - Abby describes ultrasound abortion that caused her to leave PP
12:00 - Abby discusses Planned Parenthood's "quota" for abortions
16:00 - Abby rebuts PP's assertions that abortion is not their main business
17:30 - Abby says PP does not provide mammograms
19:00 - Abby disputes the idea that contraception reduces abortions
21:00 - Abby discusses LiveAction exposé of Planned Parenthood
25:30 - Abby describes reaction to her book
27:00 - Abby discusses her prior impression of the pro-Life movement
31:00 - Abby describes how PP justifies abortion
32:30 - Abby discusses spiritual and moral aspects of abortion
34:00 - Abby discusses impact of federal funding for PP
36:30 - Abby describes her "exciting journey" to the Catholic Church
38:00 - Abby says she now works with "40 Days for Life" and LiveAction
39:00 - Abby describes importance of ultrasound legislation
40:00 - End of interview



Here is more information on Abby's conversion to Catholicism and her embrace of the Catholic teachings on contraception. She and her husband will enter the Church at Easter. Another pro-Life advocate that recently joined the Catholic Church is Lila Rose of LiveAction.
Johnson and her husband have grown in their faith during the past year, and are now preparing to enter the Catholic Church in the near future. She said that one of the final obstacles, in the course of her Catholic conversion, had been the Church's teaching on the immorality of all artificial methods of birth control.

Planned Parenthood's mentality toward contraception, as she explained, stuck with her for a period of time even after she rejected abortion. Even as she became interested in the Catholic Church, she clung to the notion that artificial birth control was an advance for women and society. But she kept an open mind, studying Pope John Paul II's “Theology of the Body” and other sources of Church teaching.

Abby Johnson's final decision to reject contraception, like her change of mind on abortion, occurred suddenly, and because of something she saw.

This time, however, the sight that changed her mind was not a child's death within the clinic walls, but quite the opposite. An experience in a Catholic church, she said, finally made her understand the fullness of the Church's teaching on sexuality.

This time, the vision of a child was not shocking, but profoundly life-affirming.

“One day, we were sitting in Mass … I was sitting behind this woman, who I don't know, and this little infant.” Gazing at that child, she finally understood the Church's insistence on marriages remaining open to new life.

“It was just clear to me, like a switch had gone off, that we had to stop contracepting.”
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