Being Pro-Life 24/7

Bobbie Hallman was attempting to carry out a simple task — make a poster from an ultrasound image.

Bobbie Hallman, left, and her daughter, Annie, hold a poster of a 12 week unborn child – Photo Dave Hrbacek / The Catholic Spirit

She ended up saving the life of an unborn child.

... people standing in line nearby began to look at the ultrasound pictures, too. Eventually, the pictures found their way back into the hands of the pregnant employee.

“She looked at them individually again and she said, ‘I can’t abort this baby.’ ” Bobbie said. “She said, ‘I was thinking about aborting this baby. I thought it was just a tissue. And, look at this.’ She was pointing to the fingers and the eyes.”

And there's more! Read the rest here: TheCatholicSpirit.com - Poster for prayer service saves a life

h/t: Rose

Imagine the Potential

This new ad from CatholicVote has been making the rounds.



Wow! Ironic ... and brilliant!

A better solution

This is great! Pass it on!

A worried woman went to her ob/gyn and said:
'Doctor, I have a serious problem and desperately need your help! My baby is not even 1 yr. old and I'm pregnant again. I don't want kids so close together.'

So the doctor said: 'Ok, and what do you want me to do?'

She said: 'I want you to end my pregnancy, and I'm counting on your help with this.'

The doctor thought for a little, and after some silence he said to the woman: 'I think I have a better solution for your problem. It's less dangerous for you too.'

She smiled, thinking that the doctor was going to accept her request.

Then he continued: 'In order for you not to have to take care of two babies at the same time, let's kill the one in your arms. This way, you could rest some before the other one is born. If we're going to kill one of them, it doesn't matter which one it is. There would be no risk for your body if you chose the one in your arms.'

The woman was horrified and said: 'No doctor! How terrible! It's a crime to kill a child!'

'I agree,' the doctor replied. 'But you seemed to be ok with it, so I thought maybe that was the best solution.' The doctor smiled, realizing that he had made his point.

He convinced the mom that there is no difference in killing a child that's already been born and one that's still in the womb. The crime is the same!

h/t: Cary

"The Irony is Heartbreaking"

Writes Elizabeth Foss:

Back in February, my children rudely asked a woman we know how she had cast her ballot in the Virginia primary. She named a candidate who is adamantly pro-choice. They were horrified. “How can you vote for someone who is for abortion?” one of them blurted indignantly.

“I’m more concerned with the people who are already alive than the ones who aren’t yet,” came the steady reply.

Please go read the rest at her blog. She's a wonderful writer with a gift for putting her finger on the vital point.

H/t: Creative Minority Report

What do you say to: "Abortion needs to be legal so women don't die?"

The other day, my family was praying with a 40 Days for Life group outside a Planned Parenthood abortion site when a man walked by. He slowed down and I had that feeling ... you know, that feeling. Sure enough, he stopped, doubled back and said: "I think you're wrong. Abortion needs to be legal to protect women. If it weren't legal, women would die in illegal abortions."

One of the other women pointed out to this man that women still die from legal abortions, but that didn't really seem like an answer that satisfied any of us.

I thought of some retorts that might have won "debating points" but nothing that would actually have helped. So later on I went searching online for something to say should this happen again.

And I found Chp. 27 of Why Can't We Love Them Both?, an online book by Dr. and Mrs. Willke. There's great information on this page and throughout the e-book. Three things really struck me:
1. Legalization did not historically have any impact on improving women's safety from abortions.
2, The year before Roe, CA and NY had pretty permissive abortion laws already, and the number of women who died from legal abortion was pretty close to the number who died from illegal ones: 25 vs. 39. Considering that far less than 39% of the population lived in those two states combined, proportionally, more women died when abortion was legal.
3. They have an example of a country that has gone from permissive to restricted on abortion (Poland) showing that making abortion illegal makes women's lives safer.



Print this graph and be prepared for a situation where you have to answer the same question that I couldn't. Notice how the graph trendline for deaths from illegal abortions does not show any response to legalization. Cover up the labels showing when abortions were legalized and ask your interlocutor to guess from the graph when they were legalized. (Or you may want to use white out on all 4 labels showing legalization as well as the introduction of antibiotics).

Abortion and the Economy

Lots of people have lately been claiming that improving the economy will have the result of reducing the number of abortions; it is implied (sometimes stated) that this will be more effective than laws. Not surprisingly, this has become a mainstay of those "pro-life" persons who advocate voting for a pro-abortion candidate.

While I've seen a lot of responses to such arguments, what I haven't seen is the actual data. So, a few weeks back, I decided to make the attempt myself.

I downloaded GDP stats from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis and the abortion stats from the Guttmacher Institute over the period 1973-2005. (2005 is the latest year for which national abortion figures are available.) I then plotted them and calculated the correlation.

Here's the graph showing the two rates plotted against time. Note that I've used two Y-axes; the left is the scale for the abortion rate data while the right is the scale for the GDP growth data. Just looking at it reveals that there's really no relation between the two.


Nevertheless, in order to quantify the relationship, I calculated the correlation. What did I find? I find no correlation between real GDP growth and abortion rates.

Details: The calculted correlation coefficient ("r") is -0.02, practically zero. To be statistically significant, the correlation would have to be more than 0.344 (p=0.05).