March 31, 2015 By Operation Rescue

Honolulu, HI — The University of Hawaii is recruiting patients as young as 14 for second-trimester abortions to determine how much they bleed during the procedure. The controversial study is already underway at the Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu, led by Bliss Kaneshiro, MD and Kate Whitehouse, DO.

In the randomized trial, researchers experiment by either providing or denying intravenous oxytocin to abortion patients. Oxytocin is commonly used to minimize blood loss and decrease the risk of hemorrhage. However, some doctors are concerned that denying oxytocin during surgery may put patients, especially teen girls, at risk.

“This study is reminiscent of Nazi concentration camp experiments. I pity the poor women who are being treated like lab rats, especially those who are denied the drug to reduce hemorrhaging,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. “I have read too many autopsy reports of women who bled to death during abortions to think this is anything but immoral and ghoulish.”

The abortion study is entitled “Effects of Oxytocin on Bleeding Outcomes During Dilation and Evacuation.” Abortion patients must be from 18-24 weeks gestation and from 14-50 years old. Researchers will measure how much each patient bleeds during her abortion, based on whether or not intravenous oxytocin is provided to her.

Dilation and evacuation abortions are grisly 2-3 day procedures that involve dismembering the pre-born baby with forceps and other instruments in order to remove him or her from the womb.

The study is still seeking up to 166 test subjects and is expected to conclude in July 2015. So far no study results have been released.

In a flyer recruiting a research associate to assist with the study, one of the “Factors for Success” in the position was “Comfort with observation of surgical procedures and abortion-related healthcare.” In other words, the applicant must be comfortable watching dismemberment abortions. (Click to view a dismemberment abortion. Warning, extremely graphic content.)

The University of Hawaii has done little to publicize the hospital-based abortions outside the medical community, perhaps fearing a public backlash. The Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children, where the abortion study is based, does not advertise abortions on its website.

“Abortionists are continually conducting abortion experimentation on women. That’s how the D&E abortion process and other abortion methods were invented, for example,” said Newman. “It is appalling to read the details of this particular experiment especially considering that they are using test subjects as young as 14 years old. It’s just heartbreaking.”

The study is being done by the University of Hawaii in collaboration with Society of Family Planning and the University of Washington.

The Society of Family Planning provides millions of dollars in grant money for abortion and contraception-related studies. Other example of studies funded by the Society of Family Planning include:

• Studying outcomes of very early surgical and medication abortions.
• Experimenting with the dosage of Misoprostol, a uterine contracting agent, prior to surgical abortions at 13-18 weeks.
• Exploring umbilical cord injections to produce fetal death prior to late-term abortions.
• A study called “Responding to Crisis” that evaluates how abortion providers are responding to abortion restrictions in their states.

“We completely oppose this gruesome abortion experimentation on women, especially minor girls who cannot legally give their consent,” said Newman. “Abortion experimentation is something that should have gone out with Josef Mengle. It has no place in a civilized, compassionate society. Those that really want to help women should put their efforts into ending abortion, not inventing new grisly ways to kill babies and exploit women.”

Bob Zyskowski | March 24, 2015

http://thecatholicspirit.com/

Ideas for observing Holy Week as a family adapted from the faith formation team of St. Edward in Bloomington.

General suggestions

• Give up technology from Good Friday until Easter Sunday morning.
• Sit down as a family (or group) each night of Holy Week and plan a spring party for April or May for those of all ages.
• Daily Bible study. (It’s easy for only one week!)
• Attend Triduum liturgies, going each day to a different parish.
• Check Pinterest and blogs for online ideas for crafts for each day and display (See crown of thorns bread recipe below.)

Holy Thursday

1. Host an at-home foot washing ceremony. It is really powerful to wash someone else’s feet, and especially for children to wash their parents’ feet and each other’s. Use the account of the Lord’s supper in John 13:1-11.

2. To connect with the Last Supper and Jesus’ blessing of bread and his offering it to the Apostles as his body, bake bread for Holy Thursday’s evening meal. Follow the simple recipe on this page. (Even though it contains a rising element — the baking powder — it does not contain yeast, the leavening agent, in accordance with the Passover.) The bread can be used in prayer or just as a snack with honey or butter.

Good Friday

1. Create your own crown of thorns. Use the same bread recipe, but instead of forming a loaf, cut the dough into three 18-inch ropes and braid them into a circle. Add toothpicks and bake per the recipe on this page. Use the crown of thorns as a centerpiece for prayer.

2. Host a movie night. Watch “The Passion of the Christ” starring Jim Caviezel as Jesus.

3. With a group or family members, create “freeze-frame” Stations of the Cross. Form small groups and ask each to create a scene that illustrates a certain part of the Passion. Once groups are ready, have someone read the Passion narrative, allowing groups to do their freeze frame during the appropriate part of the story.

4. Have pretzels for dinner or snack and share the history of the symbolism of the pretzel as representing the Trinity.

5. Make a simple cross from two sticks gathered in the yard and tied with leather straps or twine and use for prayer.

Easter

1. Put religious items such as small books and gifts in the Easter basket, not just candy.

2. Read “The Legend of the Easter Egg” by Lori Walburg (Zondervan, 2011), which presents the egg as a symbol of new life and the resurrection.

3. Search online for activities, crafts and games that help children focus on the meaning of Easter.

Recipe for unleavened bread

1/2 cup of white flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/8 tsp salt
3/8 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp vegetable oil
3/8 cup warm water
2-3 tbsp honey

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Do not over stir.
Pat dough into a circle on a greased cookie sheet, about 3/8 inch thick, about 5 inches round.
Score top of loaf. (Cut lightly into eight sections, not all the way through.)
Bake about 15 minutes at 400 degrees.

Courtesy of Sue Fast, director of faith formation, St. Peter, Forest Lake

Jim Sedlak

March 27, 2015 (ALL.org) — March Madness! It’s that time of year again when college basketball teams are vying for the national title and almost everyone gets involved. Discussions turn to “brackets,” and the hype can be felt everywhere. Even the president of the United States created his own bracket and is following the action.

And urologists across the country are gearing up for the madness!

Wait a minute. Urologists? Why would this group of medical professionals care about an annual sporting event?

Newspapers and media stories have recently reported a disturbing trend—a trend that began with a urology clinic in Oregon. One of the major surgeries performed at the clinic is vasectomies—a permanent form of contraception, and a surgery performed on an estimated half-a-million men annually in the United States. According to bizjournals.com,

College basketball and vasectomies didn’t always go together, but an enterprising urology business in Oregon changed that in 2008.

That year, the Oregon Urology Institute ran a promotion encouraging men to get vasectomies during the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and within a matter of weeks the story had gained the clinic national attention.

If a college-basketball-loving man wants to get a vasectomy, why not schedule it for the Wednesday before the tournament begins, giving him an excuse to take a couple of sick days, lay [sic] on the couch . . . and watch basketball non-stop for the next four days?

Since that time, the number of men electing to get vasectomies has increased. In 2014, ESPN reported: “In the last several years, urologists across the country have reported increases of as much as 50 percent in the number of vasectomies scheduled in the days leading to the NCAA tournament.”

This discussion perfectly illustrates the total collapse of the culture in America. While no one is suggesting that these men are destroying their ability to have children just to watch a basketball game, it is clear that, once they’ve considered the decision to end their fertility, a simple basketball promotion can push them the final step.

Over the last century, there has been a concerted effort to convince the American public in general—and young people in particular—that babies are not to be wanted. In 1934, Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, wrote an article in the American Weekly Magazine. The article, “America’s Baby Code,” was a call to limit the number of babies being born—especially to those parents Sanger considered “unfit.” This was followed by decades of propaganda trying to convince poor people that the only reason they were poor was because they had too many children. In 1986, Planned Parenthood’s affiliate in Minnesota expanded that to everyone as it ran an advertisement proclaiming “Babies are loud, smelly and expensive. Unless you want one.”

In school, our young people have been bombarded with cutesy projects using Baby Think it Over® dolls and raw eggs with the specific intent of convincing them to look at children as a burden. Most who advocate these programs do so under a misguided attempt to convince teenagers not to get pregnant while they are in school. But what they fail to understand is that there is no magic switch thrown when the young people receive their diplomas. The mindset that has been driven into them by these exercises—to avoid having children—continues into adulthood.

The results are predictable and devastating. Americans are not having children. The latest statistics show that the fertility rate in the United States has fallen from 2.1 in 2007 to 1.86 in 2013. Since it is generally agreed that a fertility rate of at least 2.1 is needed for a country to replace itself, the United States has become a dying nation.

As long as our society continually portrays babies as burdens and advertises ways to be “free” of them, we have a long road ahead of us. Yet, not all of our youth are convinced that children are a totally bad thing. With education and a good example, these young people can come to the understanding that a child is never a burden and that they should always remain open to the beauty of life. But, we must set the example. To do this, we must first change the mindset. We must show these young people that all human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. We must cherish all human beings. And we must start being vocal champions for large families.

The pill. Freedom in a tablet. The cause célèbre of the women’s rights movement. Particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision in 2014 and the uncertain future of the Affordable Care Act, no other issue, perhaps barring campus sexual assault, has dominated the contemporary feminist agenda as much as birth control.

Despite this focus, the history of this relative freedom is something about which many advocates seem ignorant. More women (27.5%, according to recent data from the Guttmacher Institute) rely on the pill than any other type of contraception, yet public discourse suggests that most, on the pill or not, have no idea about its past anchored in eugenics, sexism and racism.

The irony of the pill is that it was tested on women, specifically women of color — many of whom were forced to undergo sterilization — before later being marketed predominately to white women in America as a symbol of independence.

“Controlling gender and race”: Contrary to some popular celebratory writings, such as Jonathan Eig’s recent The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution, the pill’s story should not necessarily be one of hero-worship.

“The pill has functioned as a technique not only for controlling reproduction but also for producing and controlling gender and race,” scholar Beatriz Preciado writes in her book about gender in the age of pharmacology, Testo Junkie. Indeed, Dr. Gregory Pincus and Dr. John Rock — two of Eig’s “crusaders,” funded by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger — effectively sterilized hundreds of women, from non-consenting psychiatric patients at the Worcester State Hospital to destitute Puerto Rican women living in the housing projects of Rio Piedras, by testing variations of the pill on them.

“Guinea pigs”: There were a handful of reasons why Puerto Rico became “the ideal setting for pill trials, which were the largest series of clinical tests ever performed,” Preciado writes. As PBS reports, government “officials supported birth control as a form of population control in the hopes that it would stem Puerto Rico’s endemic poverty.” In 1937, the passage of Law 136 legally sanctioned sterilization of Puerto Rican women for such purposes. What’s more, the pill trials that later began in Puerto Rico in the 1950s also expanded to other “pseudo-colonial locations” like Haiti and Mexico, Iris Ofelia López points out in her book Matters of Choice: Puerto Rican Women’s Struggle for Reproductive Freedom.

The real kicker? Women of color continued to be used as “guinea pigs” because the FDA, Preciado writes, “felt it threw doubt on the femininity of American women by suppressing their periods altogether.”

As a result “one-third of ever-married women aged 20-49 had been sterilized” in Puerto Rico by 1965, with “two-fifths of them before the age of 25,” according to an article by sociology professor Harriet B. Presser.

“Black genocide”: Sanger has been canonized as the founder of Planned Parenthood, but she also advocated for the creation of the pill because she believed in eugenics as an effective form of birth control. (To be fair, some contend that attention to Sanger’s championing of eugenics is perhaps exaggerated, and that eugenics was par for the course for those in the early 20th century concerned with population control. Then again, Sanger is on record as having given at least one speech to a KKK group in New Jersey.)

“Some African-American leaders were especially critical of the pill,” Megan Gibson writes in her concise history of birth control for Time, “claiming that it was being peddled in their community for the purpose of a ‘black genocide.'” The eugenics objective of the pill was thus arguably targeted at all non-white individuals who posed a threat to the (white) face of America.

Remembering our history: This history, though deeply troubling, seemed to be forgotten the moment the pill was marketed to women living in the continental U.S. Ads for the pill promoted the product by touting women’s liberation — already hot topic of discussion in the early 1960s, and which largely enabled the Sexual Revolution of that decade, as Nancy L. Cohen has pointed out at AlterNet. The pill remains statistically the most popular form of birth control for women to date. “Within five years [of the pill’s legalization in 1960], 6 million American women” were on it, Cohen notes. By 2012, that number had jumped to 10.6 million.

History in general isn’t pretty — and it’s no different for the pill. But by being cognizant of the pill’s past, advocates for reproductive justice and for women’s rights in general can form a more nuanced, and more ideologically diverse, politics for our collective future.

March 16, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new US study has found that a huge increase in Crohn’s disease cases in women in the past fifty years corresponds to the introduction and widespread use of oral contraceptive pills since the 1960s.

Crohn’s disease is an incurable ailment affecting the digestive system characterized by abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fever, fatigue, weight loss and malnutrition.

Harvard gastroenterologist Dr Hamed Kha’s study of 230,000 American women found that those who had used the pill for five years or more had a 300 percent higher risk of developing Crohn’s disease than those who had never used it.

Dr Kha explained that while oral contraceptive drugs do not directly cause Crohn’s disease, the synthetic hormones have side effects that contribute to the higher risk he identified.

These side effects include thinning of the lining of the gut making it less able to properly hold in digestive waste, a reduction of beneficial intestinal bacteria, and a negative effect on the immune system.

“What’s very clear is that Crohn’s is not caused by oral contraceptive use by itself. It’s a combination of oral contraceptive use among individuals with a strong genetic predisposition to Crohn’s,” Kha told the Daily Mail.

“It’s an interaction between these two that significantly increases the risk of an individual developing it,” he said.

Dr Kha added that his study did not look at users of the so-called morning-after pill, but he expected that super-doses of the same types of drugs used in normal oral contraceptives would increase the risk of Crohn’s disease even further.

He said that genetic screening could dissuade women who have a genetic predisposition to Crohn’s from using the drugs.

The widespread availability of the morning-after pill, over the counter and without any medical consultation, could put many more women at risk.

The US Food and Drug Administration allowed non-prescription sales of the morning-after pill in 2006.

When the FDA approved the “Ella” brand of morning after pill in 2010 it allowed the drug to be marketed as an “occasional” emergency contraception, to be taken by a woman up to five days after sexual intercourse.

The FDA warned, however, that it was unsafe for women to use Ella more than occasionally, as they had no data on its safety over the long term.

Twenty years ago this month, on the solemnity of the Annunciation, St. John Paul II published Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life).  It was the 17th year of his pontificate.  He was 75 years old.

The idea for an encyclical on the dignity of human life was first suggested to the pope after a consistory of cardinals convened in Rome in 1991 to discuss threats to human life in the modern world.  The cardinals urged him to “reaffirm with the authority of the Successor of Peter” the Church’s well-trod teaching on human life.  A discussion ensued at the Vatican as to whether its development should mirror the process used in the development of his influential Familiaris Consortio on the family published a decade earlier: namely, convene a Synod of Bishops on the topic, and then develop an Apostolic Exhortation from the Synodal Statement.  John Paul II decided against the idea of a synod.  He chose to use the authority of his own office—what George Weigel refers to as “the world’s most authoritative pulpit”—to publish a more doctrinally-weighty document, an encyclical.  After consulting in writing every bishop in the world for input on its preparation, he drafted Evangelium Vitae (EV).  Although theological experts usually assist in the drafting of papal documents, EV so clearly bears the imprint of the saint’s personality and set of concerns, that it’s likely he drafted the encyclical himself.  Five years after its publication, he said that EV was “central to the whole Magisterium of my Pontificate.”

The Random House edition subtitles the document: “The encyclical letter on abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty in today’s world.”  But the official Vatican subtitle, “On the value and inviolability of human life,” tells us more about the working thesis of the text.  Whether addressing the connection between contraception and abortion (no. 13), in vitro fertilization, prenatal diagnosis, embryo destruction and infanticide (no. 14), threats to the incurably ill and dying (no. 15), or anti-birth policies imposed on developing nations (no. 16), the pope insists that the inviolability of human life, and the rights to which it gives rise, must be the basis of our moral analysis.  The concepts are especially active in the encyclical’s three solemn condemnations: the intentional killing of the innocent, abortion and euthanasia, respectively (see nos. 57, 62, 65).

But EV’s most novel comments are reserved for the death penalty.  The document reconceives the killing in capital punishment as a kind of societal self-defense.  While, the practical implications of such have been felt the last twenty years in the Church’s worldwide turn towards abolition, the doctrinal implications are yet to be unpacked.  By conceiving the killing of criminals in terms of norms traditionally limiting lawful killing in self-defense, we see that what the pope defends in cases of “absolute necessity” is no longer retributive killing, but death as an unintended side effect of a proportionate act of self defense aimed at rendering aggressors incapable of causing harm.

George Weigel suggests that EV should be read as the “third panel” in a “triptych” of encyclicals, together with Centesimus Annus (1991) and Veritatis Splendor (1993), all concerned with the moral foundations of a free and virtuous society (Witness to Hope, p. 757).  And it’s true that the message of EV can be seen as an extended urgent warning that “democracy stands or falls” with the values it embodies and that “without an objective moral grounding” it will be incapable of ensuring a stable peace (no. 70).

But EV should also be read in conjunction with Ut Unum Sint, published two months after the encyclical (in May 2005), on the imperative of Christian unity.  Those who have witnessed the advance of the culture of death since EV’s publication have experienced first hand the fearsome truth of what Pope Benedict XVI repeated so often, namely, that outside the context of faith, morality “weakens and then dies” (Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, 71).  All believers in revealed religion, therefore, and especially in the Gospel of Life, must tirelessly strive for unity if we are to give the strongest witness possible to the dignity of human life.

Among the innumerable fruitful initiatives surrounding, and proceeding from, the publication of the great encyclical, two in particular stand out.

A year before EV’s publication, Saint John Paul erected the Pontifical Academy for Life and installed at its helm the heroic French Catholic geneticist Jérôme Lejeune.  EV can be seen as the unofficial mission statement and manifesto of the august new Academy.

And exactly two years after its publication, in March of 1997, the Culture of Life Foundation was formed, receiving the direct apostolic blessing of the pope.

Jennifer Brinker | jbrinker@archstl.org | twitter: @jenniferbrinker

A bill proposed in the Missouri House would prohibit health care facilities and others from withholding life-sustaining procedures from a minor patient without the written consent of a parent or legal guardian.

Sponsored by Rep. Bill Kidd, R-Kansas City, HB 113 also would require health care facilities, nursing homes and physicians to disclose in writing any policies that relate to a patient’s care, including life-sustaining or non-beneficial treatments.

The bill is nicknamed “Simon’s Law” after Simon Crosier, who was born in 2010 with Trisomy 18, a genetic disorder that includes an extra chromosome 18. Simon lived three months.

His mother, Sheryl Crosier, a member of Annunciation Parish in Webster Groves, wrote a book in 2012, called “I am Not a Syndrome — My Name is Simon.” In the early stages of her research, Crosier was going through Simon’s medical records and discovered that doctors had placed a “do not resuscitate” order in her son’s records without her knowledge, she said. He also was ordered to receive nutrition as a comfort measure only. Turns out, the hospital had in place a futility policy, which allows physicians to withdraw medical treatments deemed to be “futile.”

“They took the road they wanted to go,” said Sheryl Crosier. “They started taking away, stripping him of everything. They would say, things like ‘not for Simon,’ or ‘incompatible with life.’ It was very dehumanizing.”

In 2013, the Crosiers met with a film producer who was working on a documentary on families with children who have special needs. The Crosiers discovered they were not alone. Several others families shared stories of not being informed whether the hospital had a futility policy and what rights they had as parents in making decisions for their children.

Last fall, Crosier shared her story at a Missouri Right to Life event in Kansas City. There, she met Kidd, who was moved by her story.

“This should not even occur,” said Kidd. “Removing life-sustaining treatment (without permission) is punishable by law, but it’s being done and off the books, from my understanding. Morally and ethically they should inform the parents and that’s not always happening. This is about parental rights. If treatment is going to be withheld, then the parents have to have it in writing.”

The bill has been assigned to the Health and Mental Health Policy Committee; a hearing has not yet been scheduled.

Dr. Peter Morrow, president of the Catholic Medical Association, noted that not all health care facilities have futility policies in place, and there isn’t a uniform application among those that do. A 2007 position paper by the CMA noted that the concept of medical “futility” emerged in the 1990s, when medical and bioethics began promoting the idea connected to cases where patients or family members insisted on treatment over the objections of physicians and/or health care institutions.

The CMA, which does not endorse the concept of “medical futility,” included in its position paper a Catholic framework for addressing claims by families of inappropriate treatment. While not all health care facilities have futility policies, most have ethics committees, said Morrow, which also address issues related to patient care.

Crosier urges people to contact legislators in support of the bill. “If people feel strongly about their parental rights … it’s very important to have this law,” she said. “If we had Simon’s Law, this would not have happened, because we would have been the ones making the decisions — even if it would have been to put the DNR, we would have been the ones making the decision.”

To read more about Simon Crosier’s life, visit www.simonismyname.com.

What is medical futility?

• Futility policies have been adopted in several cities and states that rely on procedural grounds rather than widely accepted definitions of “futility.” These policies permit unilateral decisions by physicians/hospitals to withdraw medical treatment deemed to be “futile.”

• Beginning in the 1990s, the concept of medical “futility” was advanced in the medical and bioethics literature in connection with cases in which patients or family members insisted on treatment over the objections of physicians and/or health care institutions.

• Over the next ten years, a variety of definitions and categories (e.g., quantitative and qualitative) of “futility” were proposed; none achieved widespread support. Rather, there was general agreement that consensus on definitions and on individual cases was unlikely, if not impossible.

• There has been widespread agreement that the development and implementation of futility policies is fraught with dangers — that conflicts between patients/families and physicians/hospitals are best avoided in the first place or addressed in a non-confrontational manner once they arise.

From “Guidelines on Resolving Conflicts About Treatment Deemed ‘Futile,'” Catholic Medical Association, 2007.