- "the GOP will push for a Planned Parenthood repeal in a reconciliation vote this week – and avoid the same fight in a budget bill next week....One of the GOP aides had worse news for another top priority for pro-life advocates – defunding Planned Parenthood in a government funding bill that must be signed by President Obama by December 11 in order to avoid a partial government shutdown. The aide said that 'conservatives should not expect a PP defunding rider attached to the omnibus next week'" (LifeSiteNews, 12/2/15).
As per the Pro Life Coalition of Pennsylvania, "The leaders of the Pa. House Pro-Life Caucus, i.e., Rep. Kathy Rapp, Rep. Bryan Cutler and Rep. Bryan Barbin, have drafted legislation to amend Pa.'s current Abortion Control Act to ban abortions in Pa. after 20 weeks gestation and by dismemberment. This proposed legislation has the same exceptions as Pa.'s current Abortion Control Act....These pro-life leaders have also sent a memo to other Pa. House members that requests they co-sponsor this legislation....If your Pa. House member has a pro-life record and/or position, please encourage him or her to co-sponsor this legislation. The member can do so by contacting Rep. Rapp at 717-787-1367 or klrapp@pahousegop.com"
While the world may try to tell us otherwise, Christ and His Church tell us that human life and marriage/family are of inestimable value!"
Pro-Life
"The USCCB advocates for policies that protect and respect human life, with special concern for those who are unborn, disabled, or terminally ill. We seek to eliminate legalized abortion, ultimately through a constitutional amendment, and we support assistance for children and pregnant women while opposing public funding of abortion in domestic and foreign programs. We oppose legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia, while advocating improved pain management and other care for persons with disabilities and terminal illnesses. We support the protection of conscience rights for individuals and organizations with moral or religious objections to abortion and other practices that demean human life and the dignity of procreation. We support medical research that respects human life, while opposing unethical experimentation such as human cloning and harmful experiments on human embryos."- Protect Rights of Conscience and Religious Liberty: "The need for legislation protecting the rights of conscience and religious liberty has grown more pressing. The Obama Administration’s contraceptive/abortifacient mandate under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) began to be enforced against nonprofit religious schools, charities and health care providers on January 1, 2014. More recently the state of California started forcing all health insurers in the state to include elective abortions in the health plans they sell. These two problems are addressed by the Health Care Conscience Rights Act (H.R 940). This measure adds a long-overdue conscience clause to the ACA, and strengthens the Weldon amendment that forbids governmental bodies receiving federal Health and Human Services funds from discriminating against those who decline to take part in abortion or abortion coverage. Members should be urged to support and co-sponsor H.R. 940."
- Urge House Support for Women's Public Health and Safety Act (HR 3495), which "....will allow states to refuse Medicaid funding for providers that perform elective abortions such as Planned Parenthood clinics. In the wake of the release of undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood's willingness to perform late-term abortions and traffic in fetal organs, several states opted to reallocate Medicaid funds away from Planned Parenthood - only to be told by the Obama administration it sees their action as violating federal law. H.R. 3495 addresses this problem by enhancing 'State flexibility' with respect to funding providers involved in abortions through Medicaid. Please contact your Representative immediately to urge support for H.R. 3495!"
- Protect the Rights of Pro-Life Health Care Providers! (updated on 10/23/2015): "Now is the time to urge Congress to protect the right of conscientious objection to abortion. Please urge your elected representatives to support the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act (ANDA). This proposal is part of the Health Care Conscience Rights Act (HR 940), and is now included in the House's Labor/Health and Human Services appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2016 (HR 3020, secs. 530 (d) and (e)). Ask members to include this language in final must-pass funding legislation this year."
- Please Support the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act! (updated on 1/22/2015): "On January 22, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2015 (H.R. 7). The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act places in permanent law a consistent federal policy restricting the funding and promotion of abortion. The Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act requires qualified health plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to inform consumers about their abortion coverage and abortion payments. Focus now turns to the Senate."
"Use Tax Dollars for Life Not Death" (Pa House Bill 1623)
- "The well-funded lobbying group, Compassion and Choices, will be at the State House on Monday, December 7, 2015 with dozens of their paid volunteers to lobby Senators to pass the bill....Please join NJRTL and other members of the NJ Coalition Against Doctor Prescribed Suicide on Monday, December 7, 2015 to stand against this terribly dangerous and misguided legislation. We will hand out stickers and meet in the cafeteria at the State House at 10:00 a.m.")
Marriage and Family
"The USCCB stands firm in its support for marriage which is, and can only be, a faithful, exclusive, lifelong union of one man and one woman and must remain such in law. We oppose efforts to make any other personal relationship the equivalent of marriage in law, regulation, or any other public policy. We will oppose measures that seek to redefine or erode the meaning of marriage. The family—based on marriage between a man and a woman—is the first and fundamental unit of society and is a sanctuary for the creation and nurturing of children and it should be defended and strengthened. We will seek to reinforce respect for the family and to uphold the rights and responsibilities of mothers and fathers to care for their children.- State Marriage Defense Act of 2015: "The State Marriage Defense Act would require – consistent with a U.S. Supreme Court decision – the federal government to honor the state marriage laws where people are actually living when determining whether they are legally married for purposes of federal rights, benefits, and privileges. Presently, a number of federal agencies, when determining whether persons are validly married, are ignoring the state marriage laws where people reside. The State Marriage Defense Act of 2015 has been introduced in both the House of Representatives (H.R. 824) and the Senate (S. 435)."
- First Amendment Defense Act: "The First Amendment Defense Act (H.R. 2802, S. 1598) would bar the federal government from discriminating against individuals and organizations based upon their religious beliefs or moral convictions that marriage is the union of one man and one woman or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage. The Act provides broad protections against adverse federal actions directed toward individuals and organizations that act on such beliefs. For instance, the Act would prohibit the federal government from denying or revoking a nonprofit entity’s tax-exempt status. It would also prohibit the federal government from denying or excluding an individual or organization from a federal grant, contract, or employment. The Act would also require the federal government to consider accredited any entity that failed to be accredited because of a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is the union of one man and one woman or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage."
- "Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act of 2015 (CWPIA)": "The Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act (CWPIA) protects the religious liberties of child welfare service providers, including adoption and foster care agencies. The Act would prohibit the federal government and any state that receives certain federal funding from discriminating against child welfare service providers on the basis that they decline to provide a child welfare service that conflicts with their sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions. The Inclusion Act is needed because child welfare service providers are being discriminated against because of their sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions. For example, certain religiously-affiliated charities in Massachusetts, Illinois, California, and the District of Columbia have had to stop adoption and foster care services because of requirements imposed upon them to place children in households headed by two persons of the same sex. Also, women and men who want to place their children for adoption should be free to choose from a diversity of adoption agencies, including those that share the parents’ religious beliefs and moral convictions. The Inclusion Act recognizes and respects this parental choice. The Inclusion Act has been introduced in both the House (H.R. 1299) and the Senate (S. 667)."
"Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Religious Liberty" (Pa House Bill 1510/Senate Bill 974)
"Alerts" from the following also deserve your consideration:
- Family Reseach Council Action Page
- National Organization for Marriage's Advocacy Center
- National Center on Sexual Exploitation (nee Morality in Media)
- PaFamily.Org
Newsworthy
- "'During election years, there may be many handouts and voter guides that are produced and distributed. We encourage Catholics to seek those resources authorized by their own bishops, their state Catholic conferences, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' (Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, paragraph 8, page 10). Heretofore, we have not been getting well served with election information from the Archdiocese or the Pa Catholic Conference" (12/1/15).
- "With 'Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States with Introductory Note,' our bishops have updated their guidance, 'to take account of recent developments in the United States in both domestic and foreign policy' (p. 6). 'This statement highlights the role of the Church in the formation of conscience and the corresponding moral responsibility of each Catholic to hear, receive, and act upon the Church's teaching in the lifelong task of forming his or her own conscience'....The document concludes with some very specific policy recommendations" (11/29/15)
- re: "Why are we not protecting married couples from the violence of contraception — the divorce of unitive and procreative aspects of the beautiful gift of sexuality? Why are we afraid of helping our brothers and sisters to live in truth, according to their dignity?" (11/22/15)
- "this beautiful, challenging, and refreshing document draws heavily from St Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body. Like a loving parent, it is incredibly pastoral, AS IT TELLS IT LIKE IT IS!....
....For the full document: http://www.usccb.org/issues-
and-action/human-life-and- dignity/pornography/upload/ Create-in-Me-a-Clean-Heart- Statement-on-Pornography.pdf (11/19/15)
- "the marriage act purged of impurities is the nearest thing to the beatific vision we can know....To offer the suffering of celibacy, temporary or permanent, to the Lord is to make use, in the best possible way, of man's greatest joy " (10/21/15)
- "....We stand with James Madison and Abraham
Lincoln in recognizing that the Constitution is not whatever a majority
of Supreme Court justices say it is.
We remind all officeholders in the United States that they are pledged to uphold the Constitution of the United States, not the will of five members of the Supreme Court.
We call on all federal and state officeholders:
To refuse to accept Obergefell as binding precedent for all but the specific plaintiffs in that case.
To recognize the authority of states to define marriage, and the right of federal and state officeholders to act in accordance with those definitions.
To pledge full and mutual legal and political assistance to anyone who refuses to follow Obergefell for constitutionally protected reasons.
To open forthwith a broad and honest conversation on the means by which Americans may constitutionally resist and overturn the judicial usurpations evident in Obergefell.
We emphasize that the course of action we are here advocating is neither extreme nor disrespectful of the rule of law. Lincoln regarded the claim of supremacy for the Supreme Court in matters of constitutional interpretation as incompatible with the republican principles of the Constitution. Our position is summed up in Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address:
I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by other departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.
The proper understanding and definition of marriage is self-evidently a vital question affecting the whole people. To treat as “settled” and “the law of the land” the decision of five Supreme Court justices who, by their own admission, can find no warrant for their ruling in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution, would indeed be to resign our government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. That is something that no citizen or statesman who wishes to sustain the great experiment in ordered liberty bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers should be willing to do" (American Principles Project, Statement Calling for Constitutional Resistance to Obergefell v. Hodges10/8/15).
- "the Sexual Revolution ushered in the scourge of abortion, pornography, and sexual abuse so rampant in recent decades. Instead of real and authentic love, this false 'liberty' offers cheap pleasures that mask a deeper loneliness and pain. Instead of the security of traditional family bonds, it leaves children longing for the stability of a mother’s and a father’s love.... Today’s attack on fatherhood, and by extension, motherhood, is multi-pronged and breathtakingly damaging. 41% of children are born into unmarried homes in our day, an increase of 700% from 1950" (Bishop Thomas Olmstead, 9/29/15).
- "the Church’s negative judgment in regard to Masonic association remains unchanged since their principles have always been considered irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Church and therefore membership in them remains forbidden. The faithful who enrol in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion. It is not within the competence of local ecclesiastical authorities to give a judgment on the nature of Masonic associations which would imply a derogation from what has been decided above" (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 11/26/83)
- "Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops, like bishops, and your religious act like religious" (Archbishop Sheen, June 1972).
Come 2016, our voices in defense of human life and marriage/family need to be MUCH better heard!
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