By:Father Nicolás Schwizer ( He is a Swiss Schoenstatt Father who worked for many years in the Schoenstatt Movement in Paraguay)
Original article: http://schoenstattofohio.org/category/fr-nicholas-group-reflections/

It is giving witness to Christ in our married and family life. It is transmitting the love we experience in our homes. It is an experience which we cannot and should not silence. And I believe many of us feel that need: We experience something so beautiful in our families that we have to proclaim it as Good News. We should proclaim the Gospel of the family, the Good News of Christian marriage, and the profound joy of married and family communion.

That experience we are having in our homes should give us the strength to not only speak, but also to strive that the world be more of a family: that other families are happy…..that there are laws which respect the rights of the family. But these great tasks can be accomplished only if they stem from a lived ideal, from a profound experience. And that experience we have to have with Christ in the Eucharist and –as an experience of human love –in our own home.

We, married couples, should transmit the ideal of family to the world. We have to feel that mission consciousness, because that fire which burns in our homes –if we transmit it well –is a fire which can transform the world. Our families are the basis for the renewal: renewal of the Church, society, and the world.

Man possessed by his mission.
I believe it is impossible to accomplish the objectives of helping to transform the world without a strong awareness of mission consciousness. It is a very large task. The present circumstances are extremely difficult. We, human instruments, are extremely fragile. Often, the awareness of mission consciousness is not enough. We have to be possessed (captivated, thoroughly aware) of the mission because he who is not “possessed” by God –by his mission –will be incapable of overcoming difficulties he has to face in a pluralistic society.
He who does not believe he has a divine mission, will succumb, he will not risk himself for God. I think we all still lack that irresistible push to bring our mission to fruition.

Lacking is the man who knows he is chosen and sent by God and who thus lives and vibrates for his mission. It is necessary to have awareness of mission consciousness in order to intervene in the history of our Church and our country, like the great Prophets and Saints. Are we possessed by our mission?

God calls us to transform the world. If we want to make Him present, we cannot stay tranquilly in our home, living there our Heaven. We have to strive so that our land can become a colony of Heaven. It means promoting a new Christian culture, a civilization of love, a new social order.

Heroism is necessary. It is daily heroism, heroism with daily and ordinary things: to do everything with the greatest love, surrender, and generosity. It is the heroism of married and family life: but not about poor surrender –
complaining and petty –but of a magnanimous surrender, faithful and without excuses, of a constant growth in love. The question is if we really want to escape lukewarmness, mediocrity and heroically journey toward sanctity. It is only our own personal and family decision if we want to gamble with life or if we want to risk life.

The opposite to all of this are the spectators for whom the world situation, society and the Church, are only seen as a commentary –like an external situation –and not like a “battlefield” where we have to shape our complete vision…..spirits on hold –in apathy and indifference –who are not disposed and who do not have the strength to take mortal leaps.

Questions for reflection
1. What do I do so that the world can be more like a family?
2. Am I aware that God entrusted a mission to me?
3. Am I grateful for what God has given me or am I a person who complains?

Translation: Carlos Cantú, Schoenstatt Family
Federation, La Feria, Texas USA 0113 2011

http://cmsms.schoenstatt.de/en/resources/periodicals/virtual-retreat.htm

Original article published on Catholic New World
For Dr. Robert Lawler, the decision to conform his obstetrics and gynecology practice to the teachings of the Catholic Church came down to one thing: “I want to get to heaven,” said Lawler.

Lawler and Dr. Anthony Caruso recently opened Downers Grove OB-GYN, 1121 Warren Ave., Ste. 200, in Downers Grove, with Dr. Anthony Caruso, a reproductive endocrinologist who also has forsworn procedures that conflict with church teaching.

Lawler, a parishioner at St. James-Sag Bridge, and Caruso, who attends St. John Cantius, both came to the realization that they needed to bring their professional lives into line with their beliefs after they started practicing medicine.

For Lawler, who went into practice about 15 years ago, the realization came with the help of urging by his wife and others.

“I was finding pamphlets about ‘Humanae Vitae’ (Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical confirming the church’s teaching against artificial contraception) in my golf bag,” he joked.

At first, he thought, not performing or referring patients for abortions was enough. As for prescribing birth control pills, he said, everybody did it, including Catholic doctors that he liked and respected.

“I thought, if they were doing it, it must be OK,” he said. “There’s not many of us who feel it’s important to be Catholic 24/7.”

Then he came to understand that whatever anybody else was doing, it was definitely not OK.

“I had visions of meeting the Lord at Judgment Day and him saying to me, ‘OK, Robert, what part of “intrinsically evil” did you not understand about contraception?'” Lawler said.

At the same time, he said, younger and younger girls were coming in, with their parents, and asking for contraceptives.

“I would no more hand them contraceptives than I would a pack of cigarettes,” he said. “People said they will do it anyway; I said how about a little less birth control and a little more self-control?”

So he stopped prescribing birth control and performing sterilizations, while remaining in a general OB-GYN practice where other doctors provided those services.

In the beginning, he said, it wasn’t easy.

“That first day when I told patients I would no longer be prescribing birth control was a very long day, and it was a very long year,” he said. “People weren’t shy about sharing what they thought of the Catholic Church or this Catholic doctor.”

But his resolve was bolstered by his belief that what he was doing was medically — as well as morally — right. Giving hormone pills to women to induce a state of false pregnancy, indefinitely, with no medical indication that there is anything wrong, makes no sense, he said. And giving them to women and girls to mask symptoms of other problems is even worse.

“Say a young girl comes in with terrible, painful periods,” Lawler said. “If she goes to a regular gynecologist, nine times out of 10, she’s going to leave with a prescription for the pill in her hand. But why does she have painful periods? Does she have endometriosis or is there something else going on? We are going to dig deeper. … I don’t consider oral contraceptives as a treatment for anything. It may suppress the symptoms, but you aren’t treating anything.”

Caruso, whose epiphany came a bit later, was supported by a friendship with Lawler that started when a priest suggested he contact the other doctor. But Caruso — a reproductive endocrinologist whose practice once included assisted reproduction technologies such as in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination — now can offer his expertise in endocrinology as well as general obstetrics and gynecology.

As part of their services, the doctors support women using all forms of natural family planning, but they encourage them to consider that there is no bad time for a baby once a couple is married. Having children earlier is often easier, avoiding fertility problems that increase with age.

On the other hand, they don’t suggest that there’s something wrong with women who conceive and bear children in their 40s.

That’s appreciated by Sue Zabilka, who first met Lawler because her children attended Everest Academy in Lemont with his, and later learned about the nature of his practice and became a patient. Zabilka has three sons, ages 17, 13 and 2, and she suffered two miscarriages.

She began seeing Lawler 10 or 11 years ago, she said, and she loves the new practice.

“I took a whole stack of business cards and I am giving them to everybody,” she said. “It’s such a welcoming, loving feeling.”

When she was pregnant with her youngest, she said, Lawler took the time to reassure her that women in their 40s can and do have healthy pregnancies, using the example of his own mother, who had her youngest child at 46.

“It just gave me such peace of mind,” Zabilka said.

Caruso, who has six children, said that after he was laid off from his university job, he worked as a hospitalist — a doctor who coordinates the care of patients in the hospital — for a few years, while he tried to get the idea of a center similar to the practice he and Lawler started off the ground. His idea was that it would be part of a Catholic hospital. The proposal came closest to fruition at Alexian Brothers hospital in Elk Grove Village, even becoming the topic of an article in the Chicago Tribune.

But when progress on that front snagged, the best course seemed to be to open a freestanding practice with Lawler, he said.

The two hope that it will become a regional center for patients who want care not only in accord with church teaching, but also with those who want to live a life as free of unnecessary chemicals as possible — those who seek out organic food, for example, and avoid other medications where possible.

“I believe that this kind of care is for everyone,” Caruso said. “It doesn’t put poison in female bodies. We try to get to the bottom of what the problem is and fix it at its source.”

Both doctors believe that the stakes for their new practice are higher than their own professional success.

“There are people out there rooting for us, and there are people out there hoping we crash and burn,” Lawler said. “But I think there are also some fence-sitters out there, Catholic doctors who would like to do this, but want so see if it will work.”

BY CALVIN FREIBURGER, Wed Aug 07, 2013

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/should-pro-life-affiliates-break-ties-over-gay-marriage?

(Life action news) Can’t we all just get along? Apparently not in Ohio, where LifeSiteNews reports that the National Right to Life Committee has cut the cord to Cleveland Right to Life because the latter has criticized pro-life Republican Sen. Rob Portman for supporting…same-sex marriage?

In June, CRTL announced that they were expanding their mission to include the defense of marriage, arguing that the move was necessary in order to cultivate an enduring culture of life:

“The prolife movement must recognize that without this inclusion the efforts to protect human life are diminished.  If we are to hasten the end of the culture of death in America we must recognize the role of a stable family that has at its core; committed parents.”  said Cleveland Right to Life board member, Jerry Cirino.  Social and scientific studies continue to support the role of both mother and father in children’s lives.  In a recent report by the Census Bureau the negative impact of single parent households on society is enormous and while CRTL affirms their commitment to support for all children in the womb, the organization also recognizes that single gender parenting should be recognized for what it is – a less then perfect situation for the child.

The NRLC was not persuaded, writing on July 17:

Recently, Cleveland Right to Life announced that it has embraced an advocacy agenda that includes issues beyond the right to life. Moreover, it promptly issued public criticisms of and implicit political threats against a U.S. Senator who has supported the right-to-life position on every vote that has come before the Senate, and who is a sponsor of major NRLC-backed bills – because the chapter disagrees with his position on a non-right-to-life issue.

By these actions, Cleveland Right to Life has violated National Right to Life policy, causing the chapter to disaffiliate itself from NRLC.

We respectfully insist that you remove from your website the claim that you are affiliated with NRLC, and from this point forward, cease and desist from any representation that “Cleveland Right to Life” is affiliated with the National Right to Life Committee.

According to LSN, CRTL “has never had a direct affiliation with NRTL, only a tiered relationship that is maintained through the state organization, Ohio Right to Life,” with whom CRTL remains in good standing.

As a conservative, I happen to strongly agree with CRTL’s thesis that marriage protection is essential to a comprehensive view of a healthy society, and if CRTL wanted to reinvent themselves into a general social conservative organization, more power to them. That groups like Family Research Council and the Heritage Foundation tackle multiple issues doesn’t prevent them from working with pro-lifers.

However, their name remains Cleveland Right to Life, and as much overlap as there is between the pro-life and pro-marriage communities, any issue-based organization’s members and supporters have a right to expect an agenda focused on that issue. Branching out into separate causes carries the potential for distraction, confusion, and roadblocks to building as broad a coalition as possible for unborn rights—an area where our movement could sometimes use some work. You can’t blame NRLC for wanting their affiliates to keep their eye on the ball.

Then again, publicly severing all ties to CRTL seems a little extreme, no? Admittedly, I don’t presume to know what behind-the-scenes communications took place prior to NRLC’s letter, but it certainly doesn’t read like it’s interested in meeting the Cleveland group halfway, or like it was in reaction to further slights by them—it makes pretty clear that CRTL’s marriage advocacy and criticism of Portman were sufficient deal-breakers all on their own.

Stray from right-to-life issues though CRTL did, they’re still dedicated to fighting for the unborn, and even if their criticism of Portman ever expanded to full-blown opposition, it’s not as if they would advocate replacing him with a Senator who’s less pro-life. If working together to end the scourge of abortion requires pro-lifers to set aside their differences on other issues, then such a magnanimous spirit of commitment to the big picture should cut both ways.

A young journalism student has written a candid account revealing that she eventually gave up using birth after after she developed life-threatening blood clots in her legs and lungs after just four months’ use of the birth control pill.

“I started taking birth control pills in January 2011. By May of that year, my doctor discovered that a blood clot had developed in my right leg and spread to my lungs,” wrote Jamie Hergenrader in an article published in the Huffington Post.

“The pain in my hip, the swelling of my entire right leg and the breathing difficulty I experienced should’ve scared me enough to check it out,” she remarked, but she rationalized away her symptoms. “It wasn’t until my mother dragged me into the doctor,” Hergenrader wrote, “that I learned something was really wrong.”

The 19-year-old, studying journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia, had developed deep vein thrombosis – a blood clot in a vein, usually in the leg, that becomes fatal when it migrates to other parts of the body such as the lungs, a condition known as a pulmonary embolism.

Although the clot took only four months to develop, “Recovery was a seven-month process of ER trips, doctor visits three to four times a week and a few blood-thinning medications consisting of shots injected in my abdomen and a daily pill,” Hergenrader explained. “I became severely anemic and had to go to the ER, where they considered giving me a blood transfusion.”

Hergenrader stated that before she started using the pill she was made aware of the side effects but dismissed them as unlikely to affect her. “Why would I worry? I had been perfectly healthy for 19 years. With the exception of one broken bone and a case of strep throat, sickness and injury were not a part of my past. I had no reason to worry because I had no idea what kind of damage birth control could cause,” she wrote.

Hergenrader said the contraceptive pill she had been taking contained drospirenone, a synthetic version of the female hormone progesterone used in newer generation birth control pills that has a higher risk of producing blood clots than older forms of synthetic progestins.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) noted in a 2011 public announcement that it was conducting a safety review of birth control products containing drospirenone, that “all birth control pills pose a risk of blood clots,” but two studies published in the British Medical Journal contended that the contraceptives containing drospirenone posed two to three times a greater risk than other contraceptives containing the older form of progestin called levonorgestrel.

However, users of the older generations of contraceptive pills are also subject to a much higher risk of blood clots than women who don’t use contraception. The dangers of the older generations of contraceptive pills are outlined in the Physicians Desk Reference (PDR), which states that users of birth control are three times more likely to develop superficial venous thrombosis, and have a 4 to 11 times greater risk for deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism than non-users. The risk is even higher for those who are genetically predisposed to blood clots.

The French National Agency for the Safety of Drugs and Health Products (ANSM) found that between 2000 and 2011, contraceptive pills were linked to an average of 2,529 annual cases of venous thromboembolism (blood clots). The health watchdog also found that the newer generation pills caused more than twice as many deaths as the earlier pills. The ANSM’s study estimated that 14 of the 20 annual deaths of French women attributed to birth control pill use were caused by the third and fourth generation pills which contain drospirenone.

The drug is produced and marketed by Bayer Pharmaceuticals under such trade names as Yaz, Beyaz, Yasmin, and Safyral, as well as other brand names such as Ocella, Syeda, Zarah, Gianvi and Loryna.

Hergenrader noted that in the course of her research into the drug that had almost killed her she met other women who had similar experiences. She related that Kaitlin Schroeder of Boulder, Colorado, told her she developed a portal vein thrombosis (the vein that carries blood from the stomach to the liver) as a side-effect of the NuvaRing, a flexible ring inserted once a month, when she was 22.

Jaimie Kuchar, a 22-year-old from Minnesota, told her she also had a deep vein thrombosis in her leg from a three-month estrogen pill, Gilessa. “Talking with other women who shared the same experience really sparked my interest in the dangers of birth control,” Hergenrader recalled.

“Jaimie, Kaitlin, and I are lucky to have caught ours early enough,” Hergenrader wrote. “About half of people who have blood clots show no symptoms, making it much harder to diagnose, and therefore, possibly fatal. Even those who survive might have life-long health problems. Kaitlin must take blood thinners indefinitely. Jaimie suffered from a blood infection.”

“I’m fortunate that my parents forced me to go to the doctor when I thought I had just pulled a muscle,” she wrote.

Today, the young journalism student is happier – and wiser – for having given up birth control. After trying another form of contraception, she gave it up altogether. Hergenrader stated that her experience with birth control pills resulted in a decision to reject birth control, but it has also left her anxious about her future health.

“After overcoming something life-threatening, I’m constantly in fear something can and will go wrong again. Every time I feel a twinge in my leg, I get scared. Every time I feel a shortness of breath, my heart races,” she said.

 

Baby declared dead ‘comes back to life’ after being placed on chapel altar

BY JOHN JALSEVAC, Wed Jul 17, 2013

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/baby-declared-dead-comes-back-to-life-after-being-placed-on-chapel-altar

Family members and medical personnel at a hospital in Lindrina, Brazil, say they are stunned after a baby declared dead apparently came back to life after being placed on the altar in the hospital’s chapel.

According to local news sources, Yasmin Gomes was born premature earlier this month, and almost immediately stopped breathing. Doctors attempted for nearly an hour to revive the girl, who weighed only 2.6 pounds, but after their attempts failed they declared the baby dead and issued a death certificate.

Yasmin’s mother, Jenifer Gomes da Silva, 22, told Brazil’s Tanosite that when she was told her daughter had died, “My world crashed down right then. It was the most desperate moment when all my dreams were snatched away.”

However, Nurse Ana Claudia Oliveira asked that instead of being sent to the morgue, the body of the child be placed in a box and put on the altar in the chapel.

“She’s a little angel, a child. I just couldn’t face the thought of her being sent down to the morgue,” she told Globo G1.

The nurse testified that in every possible way, the baby appeared to be dead.

“I can assure you, the child was dead. Her pupils didn’t respond to light. All her signs pointed to the complete absence of life,” she said.

“I saw it with my own eyes. She was blue all over, completely dead,” she added.

 

Three hours later, the baby’s grandmother went to fetch the baby with a mortician. But what they saw left them weeping tears of joy, instead of sadness.

When they went to pick up the baby, she kicked.

“At first I couldn’t believe it; we couldn’t accept that it could happen,” said grandmother Elza Silva. “Then we saw she was breathing. We hugged each other and started to shout, ‘She’s alive. She’s alive.’ It was a miracle.”

One of the doctors who fought to save the baby’s life is as stunned as the family.

“In 20 years of medicine, I have never witnessed anything like this,” said Dr. Aurelius Filipak. When asked if the event was a miracle, however, the physician said he would not speculate.

The family, on the other hand, is less circumspect.

“Miracles have no explanation. Everything happens as God wants. If it was God’s will that our daughter left, we would accept [it], but there must be some greater purpose in all this,” said the mother.

Tanosite reports, however, that the baby is still in serious condition in the hospital. The family is asking for continued prayers.

 

World leaders should unite to end anti-Christian persecution, Vladimir Putin says
By Hilary White, Thu Aug 01, 2013
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/world-leaders-should-unite-to-end-anti-christian-persecution-vladimir-putin
MOSCOW, August 1, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Vladimir Putin has urged the world’s political leaders to stop the violent persecutions against Christians that have erupted in many Middle Eastern countries.
Speaking at a meeting with Orthodox Christian leaders in Moscow last week, the Russian President said he noted “with alarm” that “in many of the world’s regions, especially in the Middle East and in North Africa inter-confessional tensions are mounting, and the rights of religious minorities are infringed, including Christians and Orthodox Christians.”
“This pressing problem should be a subject of close attention for the entire international community,” Putin said. “It is especially important today to make efforts to prevent intercultural and interreligious conflicts, which are fraught with the most serious upheavals.”
Putin praised the growth of cooperation between the Orthodox Churches and the Russian state, saying, “We act as genuine partners and colleagues to solve the most pressing domestic and international tasks, to implement joint initiatives for the benefit of our country and people.”
The Russian Federation recently passed legislation making it illegal to promote homosexuality as normal, a move that, while condemned by many European leaders, was strongly supported by the Orthodox Church.
Putin added Thursday that the Church was giving Russians a moral compass when so many were looking for help. “Today when people are once again searching for moral support, millions of our compatriots see it in religion,” he said. “They trust the wise, pastoral word of the Russian Orthodox Church.”
He added that it was the Church that was ultimately responsible for the development and rise of “culture and education” in Russia over the last 1,000 years. “The adoption of Christianity became a turning point in the fate of our fatherland, made it an inseparable part of the Christian civilization and helped it turn into one of the largest world powers,” Putin said.
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, said at the same meeting that the attempts to push Christians out of Syria would lead to a “civilization catastrophe.” Kirill and other Orthodox leaders have been critical of the lack of response to the crisis facing Christians in the Middle East by US and other Western leaders.
The meeting was held with the leaders of all 15 Orthodox Churches to commemorate the 1,025th anniversary of the “Baptism of Russia” – the official adoption of Christianity and establishment of the Russian Orthodox Church in Kievan Rus by Prince Vladimir in 988 A.D.
Orthodox leaders at the meeting also condemned the growing secularist suppression of Christian freedoms in non-Muslim countries like Britain, where “gay marriage” has just been created.
Metropolitan Hilarion, the Russian Orthodox Church’s chief ecumenical officer, said “secularization in disguise of democratization” is leading Western nations toward totalitarianism. He spoke of a “powerful energy today [that] strives to finally break with Christianity, which controlled its totalitarian impulses during 17 centuries.”
Metropolitan Hilarion said, “Eventually, it unconsciously strives to set up an absolute dictatorship that demands total control over each member of society. Don’t we move to it when ‘for the sake of security’ we agree to obligatory electronic passports, dactyloscopy [fingerprint identification] for everyone, and photo cameras occurring everywhere?”
He highlighted the attempt to create same-sex “marriage” in France, which he called an attempt to make “immorality normal,” saying, that the French government has “consciously and demonstratively ignored demands of people and used tear gas to disperse them.”
Later, at a reception in Kiev, Putin and Patriarch Kirill took part in a prayer service with Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych. He urged the leaders of Ukraine to turn towards a greater unity with Russia, and away from its overtures to the European Union, citing a natural cultural and spiritual relationship that is not present with the heavily secularist EU.
Patriarch Kirill added that it is the Orthodox religion that creates genuine unity between Slavic peoples. “Our ancestors adopted the Christian faith and, together with it, a system of values and morals…that no historical upheavals were able to destroy,” he said. Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians have a shared spiritual foundation that unites them more than their national boundaries divide them.
Patriarch Kirill said of the same-sex “marriage” fad sweeping the Western world, “This is a very dangerous apocalyptic symptom, and we must do everything so that sin is never validated by the laws of the state in the lands of Holy Rus, because this would mean that the people are starting on the path of self-destruction.”
Today, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, blasted the Russian government for its law banning gay propaganda, calling it “hateful.”
Baird said that the Canadian delegation was among those governments that tried to dissuade the Russian leadership not to adopt the law that outlaws all attempts to normalize homosexuality or other forms of non-traditional sexuality, especially to children.
“This mean-spirited and hateful law will affect all Russians 365 days of the year, every year. It is an incitement to intolerance, which breeds hate. And intolerance and hate breed violence,” Baird told the Canadian Press today.
The comments follow an announcement by Russia’s sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, who said the law would be enforced against athletes and visitors to Russia during next year’s winter Olympic games.

By Mary L Davenport, MD, FACOG

Dear friends,
Three women physicians—Donna Harrison, Mary Davenport and Martha Shuping—were invited months ago to give lectures on complications of abortion for the MWIA, the Medical Women’s International in Seoul, South Korea.
Donna Harrison’s presentation demonstrated that nations with laws protective of mothers and unborn babies have excellent [low] maternal mortality statistics. Mary Davenport had a talk about abortion as a risk factor for preterm birth, the cause of 15 million neonatal deaths each year internationally. Martha Shuping had a presentation that included two case reports of women who suffered severe psychological harm from abortion, even though they had obvious risk factors that were not discussed in the informed consent process. These risk factors were actually quoted from an abortion provider textbook endorsed by the National Abortion Federation!
This was valuable information for physicians to hear, especially those from developing nations who are under tremendous pressure to legalize abortion due to the false belief that legalized abortion is a panacea for maternal mortality.
However, our presentations were cancelled at the last minute. This was not a total shock to us, because many physicians and scientists have long been hampered in attempts to inform the scientific community and patient about risks of abortion. Very important information has been suppressed and even lied about. With the cancellation of our talks, our host Anna Choi, head of a group of 680 Korean ob/gyn physicians who stopped doing abortions, had decided to set up a radio and newspaper interview for us during the time that we were supposed to present.
When we got to the “radio” interview that Anna had set up, we found that it was actually a television interview, and the newspaper reporter was there also.
They put the three of us up front like a “panel” discussion, and the reporters started asking us questions about our presentation, allowing us an opportunity to talk about what we came to present. About 20 minutes into the interview, the Secretary General of MIWA, a Canadian, burst into the room (I kid you not…and all of this is on camera), and came up to the table and said “What presentation is this? Donna Harrison said “it’s not a presentation”. So she snarled, “Why are you being interviewed?” At that point, the answers were left to Anna, our host. Anna said that this was a requested interview by the press.
The SecGen then said, “Who gave you permission to interview these people?” And the reporters said, “We are the press, we don’t need anyone’s permission. We have freedom of the press”. And the Sec Gen snarled at Anna and said, “Did you arrange this? Did you talk to the organizing committee?” And Anna said, “I am on the organizing committee. I don’t need to talk to anyone.” And the Sec Gen stood in front of the camera, and refused to move, and said, “The interview is over.” Then the reporters said, “You can’t do this. We have the freedom of the press. You are interfering with the freedom of the press.” But the Sec Gen would not move and said, “The interview is over.”
We exited to the hall, and a Belgian and German woman waiting. They started to make fun of the Korean translator, and to snap pictures in her face. And she said, “You can’t do this. This is my country. I will call the police.” They actually grabbed at her, and then one of the Korean reporters put a huge camera in the Belgian woman’s face and started taking photos of her. A fist fight almost ensued between the women, but another of the Koreans stepped in and kept any contact from happening. All of this was on camera. Then our Korean hosts ushered us down the hall, and down the elevator, along with the reporters and camera crew, and we resumed the interview in the commons area downstairs by the trash cans and the bathroom. We were able to complete the entire interview. Now, instead of our audience being a few women doctors from the conference, we have an audience of probably a few thousand. [We can make it many millions!]
It was an incredible display of arrogance on the part of the Canadian, US and European physicians at the MWIA, who initiated preventing us from speaking. It will be interesting to see what press picks this up. I just wish it would go viral; it’s such a glaring example of exactly what we were saying about suppression of information.

You will be able to access the banned presentations at: www.aaplog.org