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Dear friends,

It seems premature, but as I write this on 20th February I am wishing you all the Joys of the Easter Season! This edition follows so close on the heels of the Christmas 2007 edition because we are going to travel to Morocco, Turkey and Italy from Easter until the end of May. Please keep us in your prayers for a safe and enjoyable journey.

Day of the Unborn - Sunday 6 April 2008 For the first time in my memory, (I should remember because it’s my birthday!) 25th March occurs outside Lent, falling within the Octave of Easter. For this reason the Feast of the Annunciation has been transferred to April 6th. In Sydney the celebration of the Day of the Unborn Child will consist of 10:30am Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral, followed by the Procession and concluding with Benediction. What is your parish doing to mark the day? For those in Sydney, why not get a group together. Bring it to the attention of your parish priest to see if something special can be done to mark this great feast, when the Virgin Mary’s fiat, led to the Conception in her womb of our Divine Saviour, Who humbled Himself to take the form of a tiny unborn Child, imperceptible to the human eye but omnipotent and divine, nonetheless.

I find it so hard to choose from the great wealth of pro-life material just what to put in and what I must leave out. If you have desire information on a topic we are not covering just give me a coo-ee and I’ll do my best to fill the gap. On the other hand, I do not get a lot of feedback and so sometimes I wonder if you want it at all. There are those who keep in touch and those who don’t, and so I would value hearing from you, even if it is to say “stop sending”. Of course there are those who show such warm appreciation that I am en-couraged to keep going.

May we all grow in faith and hope this Easter

Nadir and Angela

PROTECT LIFE “Rescue those being led away to death” Proverbs 24:11 From Graham Preston www.protect-life.info prestonlife@optusnet.com.au

Please take a moment to consider the following: You are walking down a street when you come across a woman who is clearly intent upon beating a small boy to death. What would you do? Who of us would not immediately intervene to try and save the child’s life?

But what if someone said, “You must not intervene directly to try and stop the killing as that fails to show proper care and respect for the woman.” Should we take them seriously?

Surely we would quickly reply, “But the child is about to die – we must help him now. And it will do the woman no good either to allow her to go ahead and end the child’s life. Firstly we must prevent the child being killed, then we should do what we can to help the woman.”

While the need for direct intervention is obvious and uncontroversial in this scenario, when it comes to a situation of seeing a woman about to enter an abortion clinic (set up for the specific purpose of ending the lives of preborn children), many people suddenly abandon the idea that intervention to try and save the child’s life is right. Is this inconsistent? Can such inconsistency be justified?

We, at Protect Life, believe it is always right and necessary to intervene, whenever we are able, if someone is about to be unjustly killed. And we see no reason why this should be different if the one about to be killed is being carried in the womb.

For 6 years now our small group have been engaging in non-violent direct action (sit-ins) in front of the doors of abortion clinics in Brisbane. At the start of each year we send a brief report to the churches in the Brisbane area to keep you informed about what is happening.

We carried out just the one sit-in in 2007. I was arrested and charged with trespassing at the infamous Greenslopes abortion death-house. Because of my record I was refused bail and was held on remand for over 9 weeks until the hearing. A conviction would probably have resulted in some months further in jail, but to our surprise I was found to have no case to answer, on technical grounds, and was released. If you would like to receive our other occasional Protect Life Reports, please let us know. The date has been set for the next action: Tuesday, 4 March at Greenslopes abortion “clinic”, 687 Logan Road

It is interesting to note that the Court of Appeal in Michigan has held, in a case involving a pregnant woman who stabbed a man who tried to cause her to miscarry by punching her in the stomach, that she could argue a ‘defence of others’ defence because an individual may defend a fetus from such an assault. (We would point out that we completely reject the use of violence as we are endeavouring to see violence stopped, hence we are not prepared to resort to violence ourselves.) In our court cases we argue that we are coming to the defence of the unborn child but when it comes to abortion, because the woman wants the child to be killed, this defence is, we believe, completely unjustifiably rejected. We are always glad to respond to comments or questions about our actions. There are also quite a number of articles on www.protect-life.info

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Don’t Give Your Heart Away!

Today I went to the RTA to renew my driver’s licence. On the form was that seemingly innocuous question – “Would I like to donate my organs? Tick Yes or No. If Yes, would I like to donate…” and there followed a list of my body parts, some of which are essential to my life and wellbeing and cannot help anybody else unless they are still functioning. For example, if I were to tick “heart” then should the harvesters excise it, I would have to be given paralysing drugs, so that I would not protest too much and upset squeamish theatre staff.

Recently I came across a website http://www.initiative-kao.de/ KAO translates and expands to “Critical Information about Organ Transplantation” It is the initiative of parents who “consented to the organ removal of our children, after their serious accidents, without knowing then what organ removal means.” It features heartbreaking reports from mothers of organ donors.

Space prohibits my publishing the full report about the “death” of 15 year old Christian, by his mother, http://www.initiative-kao.de/KAO-Renate_Greinerts_report.htm My heart goes out to her and to all parents who have to live with the decision that they made in a time of fear, shock and ignorance. Something of the horror of “brain death” organ “donation” comes across in Renate’s writing:

I thought that all the treatment was meant to help my child. But I was wrong. The doctors tried to keep him alive in order to save other people's lives with his living organs. He was not being treated for his own benefit but for the benefit of others. They had prevented him from dying because only living organs can be transplanted successfully. The abundance of infusions, they had to give him in the beginning to prevent him from dying on the way to the hospital, had to be irrigated so that they would not harm the organ recipients. The doctors’ biggest worry was to prevent him from dying before the organ retrieval. …… The world stood still for me. The past was gone, the present moment unbearable, there was no future.

The doctor urged us to consent as there were other parents as desperate as we sitting at the bedside of their children but we were able to help them! I didn't want anyone to die neither my child nor any other children. I was unable to answer. My husband decided the matter. We were separated from our child, could not hold him and had to let go of him. We had to say goodbye to him forever while he was still treated, while he was warm, while the monitors were on and while he was given infusions. I failed to see that he was "dead", but believed in what the doctors said and trusted them. ….. What had we given our consent to? ….. I learned that they had retrieved his heart, liver, kidneys, and eyes, and they had even removed his pelvic bones and sold them. Our consent to the removal of one organ had been changed into a multi-organ removal without asking us. But there was something else that worried me afterwards. How could it be that my son was dead while he looked alive and was treated as a living patient? Neither he nor his treatment had changed. In his medical report I found three different death notices: the first, when they diagnosed his brain death they declared as death. The second death notice was documented after the retrieval operation, and the third one a day after. How often can a human being die, how many deaths can he die? I thought there is only one death. ….. What a traumatic death he had to suffer after the transplant surgeons had broken him up! My son was a human being, an individual - and no object and even less recycling material.

How many strong young men must die, because of ignorance about the fabrication called “brain death”? This horror is taking place in hospitals in Australia and all over the world. How many tax dollars are being spent on advertising the “Gift of Life”? How indeed can a person give a “gift of life” if they are not alive? The person, who “gives” an unpaired organ such as the heart is alive, even if doctors have “diagnosed” “brain death”.

Recently British PM Gordon Brown has endorsed allowing hospitals to take organs from dead patients WITHOUT their consent (LifeNews.com Jan13, 2008)......In a Sunday Telegraph editorial he said that a facility that could process taking organs from dead patients could potentially save thousands of lives. He hopes to start such a program this year. Under his proposal, doctors would simply presume that a dead patient would have wanted their organs used to help others instead of asking a patient to sign a consent form beforehand. Brown indicated he would start the program next week and said the government would pressure physicians and nurses to begin identifying patients that could be potential organ donors.

Brown is not happy with “the limits imposed by our current system of consent."

Patients' rights groups are strongly opposed to the idea. "They call it presumed consent, but it is no consent at all. They are relying on inertia and ignorance to get the results that they want." said Joyce Robin, from the watchdog Patient Concern.

"This could get ugly," said U.S bioethics watchdog, Wesley J. Smith, "If every patient were deemed by law a probable organ donor, the temptation--particularly given the increased influence of utilitarian bioethics--would be to view the sickest patients as so many organ systems whose primary worth would be to help other people," he said.

Could get ugly?!! Seems to me that it is already too ugly! But it may be that folk are feeling uneasy about the issue of organ donation as the following abstract from the Journal of Medical Ethics article, Death, Dying and Donation: Organ Transplantation and the Diagnosis of Death http://jme.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/28/2/89?ck=nck (my emphases)

“Refusal of organ donation is common, and becoming more frequent. In Australia refusal by families occurred in 56% of cases in 1995 in NSW, and had risen to 82% in 1999, becoming the most important determinant of the country's very low organ donation rate (8.9/million in 1999). Leading causes of refusal, identified in many studies, include the lack of understanding by families of brain death and its implications, and subsequent reluctance to relegate the body to purely instrumental status. It is an interesting paradox that surveys of the public continue to show considerable support for organ donation programs—in theory we will, in practice we won't (and don't). In this paper we propose that the Australian community may, for good reason, distrust the concept of and criteria for "whole brain death", and the equation of this new concept with death of the human being. We suggest that irreversible loss of circulation should be reinstated as the major defining characteristic of death, but that brain-dead, heart-beating entities remain suitable organ donors despite being alive by this criterion. This presents a major challenge to the "dead donor rule", and would require review of current transplantation legislation. Brain dead entities are suitable donors because of irreversible loss of personhood, accurately and robustly defined by the current brain stem criteria.

Batten down the hatches – We are in for a stormy ride!

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From Carolyn Mongan, Canberra, ACT

There is one statement in your post that is incorrect. You said, “Remember: Victoria will be a test case. If Victoria goes, we may all go!” Victoria is not the ‘test case’. Abortion was decriminalised in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) by the evil Stanhope Labor government in August 2002. Your readers need to know this.

This ‘government’ has also given us same sex adoption; and has removed the words: Mother, Father, husband, wife and spouse from all legislation in the ACT. We are now parents, and domestic partners! This means that we should be transporting all that will go, to Victoria to stand on the steps of Parliament to protest by prayer. In the Federal Parliament, Senator Bob Brown has already introduced a Bill which, if it passes, will legalise Euthanasia in the ACT and the Northern Territory.

We have Labor governments throughout and abortion, cloning, embryo experimentation and euthanasia will be universal in a short time unless we act. We are God’s instruments, He needs us to do His work on Earth, and we cannot do anything without Him. Write to your representatives, spread the word among the faithful, do what you can and pray, pray, pray. We need to call for 40 Hours of Adoration in all possible locations.

From Nancy Evers, Tucson, Arizona

Dear Friends in Christ,

Needless to say, Theology of the Body (TOB) and Christopher West are often on my mind, and none of this is without stress! When I came out of two hours of Exposition/Adoration yesterday, the following thought struck me: “Regaining virginity (or secondary virginity, as it is sometimes called) is a false concept--physically and theologically.” Yet, it does seem to me to fit nicely into the modernist thinking of our dissident theologians who do not believe in Mary's perpetual virginity. Thus the false sense of regaining virginity (or secondary virginity) is an attack on the very teachings of Christ and His Church!

When someone has been widowed, and as a husband and wife had engaged in the marital act according to God's plan, but has chosen now to live a chaste and pure life, let me assure you, this man or woman cannot and will not ever become a "virgin", no matter how the dissidents try to package it.

Do you know if John Paul II had ever mentioned the modernist concept of regaining virginity in his weekly talks on TOB? If not, from where did this idea develop? From Christopher West?

Once again, we see the philosophy of Freemasonry and the "Cult of Man" opposing the teachings of Christ. If one really wants to believe in TOB, then one must adhere to all His teachings on chastity and purity, with our example being His Blessed Mother. In today's "enlightened" society, one is to build "self-esteem", another false and damaging concept.

In the same way, we have charlatans and deceivers writing and speaking today on John Paul II's so-called "Theology of the Body”, while literally denying some of the teachings of Christ and His Church. It's absurd! Oh, they may quote Scripture, and other genuine theologians, yet that, too, is only deceptive. Do they condemn immoral practices, such as, sodomy (oral and anal sex)? Not as yet! It reminds me of the New Creation Series sex-ed program for children. It, too, quoted Scripture, while at the same time insidiously destroying the innocence of the little children.

The indifferentism in the world today, which Pope Benedict XVI mentions often, actually denies the existence of a moral creed based on the Ten Commandments that distinguishes between right and wrong, truth and error, and good and evil. It, too, is an abomination, but the "enlightened" have embraced it.

Once again, the very idea of regaining virginity (or secondary virginity) is nothing more than an attack on the perpetual virginity of Our Lady. If Pope John Paul II believed in this notion of "regaining" virginity, it's totally and completely misleading.

When Monica Ashour MTS, a teacher of TOB, can say, "Think about Mass. We use our bodies to glorify God and be in a deeper union and communion with Him and the whole Church", and also say that Pope John Paul II says "marital intercourse, next to the Mass, is the most powerful way to combat the devil", we have in our midst a liar and a deceiver. Unfortunately, the whole aspect of TOB, as presented by the latest sex-ed gurus, most especially Christopher West, does nothing more than promote the sacramentalization of sex. It's ludicrous!

Again, it would be good if those who espouse TOB (as it is now presented by some "teachers" in today's Catholic Church) could be more virtuous in both speech and in their writings. Perhaps they should also delve more deeply into learning more about the "Theology of the Soul"...

This letter was also published in The Remnant. An answer to Nancy’s article/letter is at http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/archive-2008-theology_of_the_body.htm

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Catholic Officer Denied Exemption for injection derived from aborted baby http://www.alliancedefensefund.org/news/pressrelease.aspx?cid=4348

Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of a U.S. Coast Guard officer told he must be injected with a vaccine derived from an aborted child, even though it conflicts with his Catholic beliefs. The U.S. Coast Guard refused to grant an exemption for Officer Joseph J. Healy, even though it allows exemptions based on other religious beliefs.

"Those who lay their life on the line to defend our shores are entitled to the same religious freedoms as anyone else," said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. "Members of the U.S. military should never be forced to make an unconstitutional choice between honoring their country and honoring their faith."

In May 2006, the Coast Guard, which requires its personnel to be vaccinated against a variety of diseases, ordered all active-duty personnel to receive one of two vaccines against Hepatitis A or show proof of immunity. The vaccines are derived from cells taken from the lung tissue of a child who was electively aborted at 14 weeks gestation and then dissected. The U.S. Coast Guard allows religious exemptions for those who hold a "religious tenet or belief contrary to immunization."

In compliance with Coast Guard requirements, Healy submitted a memo requesting religious exemption based on his Catholic faith and strong opposition to abortion. In response, Capt. Brent Pennington denied the request because he disagreed with Healy’s theology, claiming that Catholic teaching "does not state that these immunizations are against the religious tenets of the Catholic Church."

Because of the denial, Healy may be forced, under threat of severe penalty, to receive the immunization against his will. ADF attorneys have filed a motion along with the lawsuit asking the court to prevent that from happening while the case moves forward in court.

amartello@apostlesforlifesite.org