Friday, July 22, 2011

Lifeissues Newsletter #535

Lifeissues.net: clear thinking about crucial issues

Dear Friends For Life,

Imagine yourself a typical abortion doctor. You're a late middle-aged man who never gets to know your patients and doesn't care to. In the beginning you saw yourself as a hero in the fight for women's rights, but now years later, as you travel a circuit of clinics, your unknown patients lying prone on tables; the luster of your work has faded. Every day you walk through a phalanx of protestors praying for you to stop your work and trying to persuade your patients to walk away. A few doors away or across the street is a pregnancy help center that is a new threat. Further, among the women in the waiting rooms are undercover pro-lifers with hidden microphones recording clinic staffers saying things that will be publically aired later. Your landlord doesn't want you as a tenant. Legislators pass new laws every year that hurt your business. Your home phone is unlisted and your medical colleagues shun you. What a life. Note: This is actually the routine state of affairs in most of North America. Would that countries in the rest of the world follow this example.

God Bless,
Jerry Novotny, OMI

(A Thought) "Let us preach Jesus Christ with all the energy of our lives. And let us support each other - whatever the cost - so that when we make our accounting to the Lord, we will be numbered among the faithful and courageous, and not the cowardly or the evasive, or those who compromised until there was nothing left of their convictions; or those who were silent when they should have spoken the right word at the right time." - Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. CAP.
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For clear thinking about crucial issues, visit LifeIssues.net
(Due to volume of spam received, do not reply to this message but instead send all emails to jerry@shirt.ocn.ne.jp. Thank you!)


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Lifeissues.net Newsletter #535
July 24, 2011

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(TABLE OF CONTENTS):

1. Marriage, Same-Sex Relationships, and the Catholic Church
2. Australian stem cell regulations given OK
3. IVF child to have grandma, but no pa and no ma
4. Abortions Per Day: U.S.; 4,000 China; 35,000
5. Panel urges birth control coverage under health law
6. Contraception, Gateway to the Culture of Death
7. Moscow Demographic Summit Ends with Demand for Governments to Adopt a 'Pro-Family Demographic Policy'
8. New Video: More Blacks Die From Abortion Than Anything Else
9. Vatican bank president: Larger families are solution to economic crisis
10. Korea: Church decries expulsion plan
11. Asian alarm at deadly hepatitis spread
12. Visibility aids the fight against human trafficking


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(FOCUS ON ASIA): "Activists Press for Gender Equality in Forest Tenure Reforms" - Jul 13, 2011 (IPS) - A 1993 forest act gave back Nepal its green hills, many believe. Activists say the law was also a catalyst for positive change in an area not readily linked with it - women's rights in rural Nepal.

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ITEM #1: Marriage, Same-Sex Relationships, and the Catholic Church

Father John Harvey describes it this way: "But if one has a sexual-genital attraction to another person of the same sex, it can never lead to a morally good act between the two individuals, but rather it will always lead to an immoral act. That is why it is called an objective disorder."

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ITEM #2: Australian stem cell regulations given OK

Australian stem cell researchers can press on with destructive research on human embryos, says a government review committee.

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ITEM #3: IVF child to have grandma, but no pa and no ma

Marissa Evans, broken-hearted, watched her 21-year-old son die in hospital. When doctors told her it was time to turn off his life support, the 44-year-old chose to harvest his sperm - to try to accomplish his goal to have a son. This summer the divorced single woman hopes to satisfy her longing to have a grandson when a surrogate is impregnated with her son's sperm - and an egg from a donor she hand-picked.

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ITEM #4: Abortions Per Day: U.S.; 4,000 China; 35,000

As I get to know Reggie better and better, I’m more and more amazed with what this one woman is doing. Please share this post with everyone you know, these two videos tell the story.

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ITEM #5: Panel urges birth control coverage under health law

Some religious groups and conservatives have opposed the addition of birth control to preventive care. "I think it's dangerous for our society to view pregnancy and fertility as a disease that needs to be medicated or prevented in some way," said Beth Lauver, director of the Respect Life Apostolate of the Archdiocese of St. Louis. "They're not diseases; they're how our society naturally continues."

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ITEM #6: Contraception, Gateway to the Culture of Death

Contraception is the "gateway" to the culture of death. It is so because it is an anti-life kind of act whose acceptance is rooted in a dualistic anthropology separating the consciously experiencing subject from his or her body and in a proportionalistic, consequentialistic moral approach repudiating the notion of intrinsically evil acts. Utterly opposed to contraception is "recourse to the rhythm of the cycle," whose concept of the human person and of human sexuality is, the Holy Father affirmed, "irreconcilable" with that of contraception. It thus seems to me that respect for the "rhythm of the cycle" - which is simply a way of referring to the periodic abstinence required in natural family planning - can be regarded as the "gateway" to the culture of life precisely because its concept of the human person and of human sexuality rests upon solid anthropological and moral foundations.

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ITEM #7 Moscow Demographic Summit Ends with Demand for Governments to Adopt a 'Pro-Family Demographic Policy'

"We are alarmed by the fact that the family institution is in a state of grave social crisis which consists in the destruction of universal family, conjugal and parental roles based on traditional family values; in the disruption of the reproductive function of the family; in an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, caused by the imposition of contraceptive thinking (in terms of safe sex) and destructive premarital and extramarital sex patterns; in widespread divorce; in the spreading of cohabitation without marriage; in increasing numbers of single-parent families; a wave of social deviations (abortions, homosexuality, pedophilia, drug addiction, refusal of marriage and childbearing (the child-free phenomenon), prostitution, pornography, etc.); disruption of the process of socialization of young generations; cutting of ties among relatives and alienation of different generations within one family, etc."

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ITEM #8: New Video: More Blacks Die From Abortion Than Anything Else

A national coalition of pro-life African-American groups and leaders is back with a new video touching on the racial overtones of abortion and following up to their first video address abortion in the context of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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ITEM #9: Vatican bank president: Larger families are solution to economic crisis

The aging population of the United States and European nations is the "true origin of the current economic crisis," according to the president of the Vatican Bank. "Faced with this reality, it is indispensable to have the courage to address the theme of births and aging."

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ITEM #10: Korea: Church decries expulsion plan

Up to 300 homless people staying in Seoul rail station will have nowhere to go, it says.

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ITEM #11: Asian alarm at deadly hepatitis spread

More than five million people in South and Southeast Asia will die from viral hepatitis over the next decade as experts warn of a rampant epidemic that has already taken more lives than malaria, dengue and HIV/AIDS combined in the past 10 years.

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ITEM #12: Visibility aids the fight against human trafficking

Olivares says he doesn't think that trafficking is becoming more prevalent, but rather more people are aware of the problem. "Whereas before it was almost completely invisible; now it's only half-invisible," he said. "So if someone goes to a restaurant and notices that the busboys and busgirls are changing every two weeks and they look afraid and they have marks on them, someone will report that to someone, whereas before they wouldn't have even thought twice about looking at them."

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YOU CAN CHANGE SOCIETY:

1. BE INFORMED: "My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge." Hosea 4:6. Visit Lifeissues.net Website for insights into current Life Issues www.lifeissues.net. Access to all prior Newsletters is located in the Archives on main page.

2. PRAY DAILY: for the courage to be God's presence in society and to strongly support those who are deemed "unworthy of life". "If My people who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." 2 Chronicles 7:14

3. BECOME INVOLVED: Several years ago Fr. Jerry created a project entitled, "Journey for Life into the Heart of Asia". The project appeals for donations to help finance plane travel for lectures and seminars to developing countries in Asia. Strong focus is centered on reaching Asian Catholic Major Seminaries, Universities, Parishes, Hospitals and Family/Pro Life related groups. The lectures place emphasis on "The Asian Family at Crossroads: Life Issues, Trends and Challenges".

For information about no-cost Pro Life Talks to your group in Asia: contact Fr. Jerry at jerry@shirt.ocn.ne.jp.

To become a supportive Missionary participant for this Asian project, kindly send your donations to:

** Fr. Jerry Novotny, OMI

** LifeIssues.net, Editor

** Akebono-cho 1-15-9

** Kochi City, Japan, 780-8072

(or transfer donation directly to ProLife bank account: Jerome Novotny, Shikoku Bank, Asakura Branch, No. 102-1-0080824)

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Contact EDITOR:

Jerry Novotny, OMI

Akebono-cho 1-15-9

Kochi City, Japan, 780-8072

[tel/fax: 088-843-0406]

[email: jerry@shirt.ocn.ne.jp]

["Due to volume of spam received, we're asking you not to reply to this message but instead send all correspondence to jerry@shirt.ocn.ne.jp. Thank you! Editor"]

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Websites by Editor:

English LifeIssues Site: http://www.lifeissues.net,

Japanese LifeIssues Site: http://www.japan-lifeissues.net,

OMI Site: http://www.omijapankorea.net/index.html