Tag Archives: Abortion

By Bonnie Finnerty, Education Director

To teach is to touch the future.

So true.  My former students are now coding software, engineering structures, managing businesses, and dispensing prescriptions.  They are mothers, fathers, consumers, and citizens active in my community and in many others.  An occasional chance meeting allows me to learn where one of my middle schoolers of the 90’s has landed.  Sometimes I am quite surprised.

For several years I got to play a small role in the development of today’s younger adults. Like other educators, it was a desire to nurture the hidden potential within each child that prompted me to become a teacher.

And it was precisely because of that desire that I quit the teachers’ union.

When I learned that the National Education Association, the largest union in the nation with almost 3 million members, supported “reproductive rights”, I could no longer pay the required dues.  How could I support an educational organization that was complicit in eliminating our very clientele?  If teachers were called to see the potential in every child, how could we ignore the potential of the pre-born and advocate for their termination? The irony shocked me, the hypocrisy plagued me, and I ultimately quit the union, hoping that one day things would change.

Sadly, the NEA has since instead doubled-down on their support for abortion.  While identifying themselves as the nation’s leading advocate for children, they recently added Business Item 56 to their agenda, which states that the union “vigorously opposes all attacks on the right to choose and stands on the fundamental right to abortion under Roe v. Wade.”

I continue to be mystified. Why does an educational organization whose mission of improving public schools take a position on this issue?  How about sticking to negotiating fair salaries and lobbying for lower student-teacher ratios in the classroom?  How about promoting strategies for greater parental involvement and supporting successful inclusion practices for all children?  There are a plethora of issues to address but abortion shouldn’t be one of them.

When I refused to join the union at my second teaching job, I was paid a visit by the president of the local affiliate.  She said I could be sued by a student and would not have union advocacy and legal protection.  It’s interesting that fear, which is almost always at the root of abortion, was being used to persuade me to join the union.

When that didn’t work, she told me I was ruining the 100% union membership of which the school had boasted for several years.  I was able to direct her attention to a poster I had just hung in my classroom. “Stand up for what is right, even if you are standing alone.”  That poster wasn’t there for just my students, it was a much-needed reminder to me as well.

Exasperated, she left my classroom with the promise to send another teacher and union member who was pro-life to speak to me.  I nervously awaited his visit.

When he stopped by the next day, we sat and had a good, honest, and lengthy talk. In the end, he decided he could no longer support a union that supported abortion. I was grateful for his courageous change of heart. If the two of us refused membership on the basis of abortion, would others join us?  Could we at least get people thinking and talking about this issue rather than simply accepting the NEA’s misguided position?

No teacher should have to pay several hundred dollars annually to an organization that lobbies for the abortion of future students.  There is nothing pro-child, pro-teacher, or pro-education about that.  Teaching should be about touching the future, not killing it.

🔊 Play By Maria Gallagher, Legislative Director

It is all the more fascinating in the re-telling.

I am talking about the unprecedented drama that surrounded the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court

Justice on Trial: the Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court provides a brilliant analysis of the behind-the-scenes power struggle that accompanied the most contentious Supreme Court fight in modern history.

Authors Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino expertly demonstrate how a process that should be dignified and exemplary devolved into character assassination of a man who had sought to bring honor to the courts his entire professional life.

Hemingway and Severino recount this cautionary tale in vivid detail. Kavanaugh’s emotional pain during the confirmation hearings literally leaps off the page.

“Throughout my life, I’ve devoted huge efforts to encouraging and promoting the careers of women. I will put my record up against anyone’s male or female,” Kavanaugh said during his contentious hearing.

“I love coaching more than anything I’ve ever done in my whole life, but thanks to what some of you on this side of the committee have unleashed, I may never be able to coach again.”

What pro-abortion Democrats had unleashed were a series of sensational, unsubstantiated allegations accusing the judge of sexual assault when he was a teenager. The most publicized of the claims was that of Christine Blasey Ford, who charged that Kavanaugh had attempted to rape her at a teenage house party. None of the people who Ford said had been present at the party could corroborate her claims.

Addressing Ford’s claims during a dramatic Capitol Hill hearing, Kavanaugh stated, “The other night (my wife) Ashley and my daughter Liza said their prayers, and little Liza—all of ten years old—said to Ashley, ‘We should pray for the woman.’ That’s a lot of wisdom from a ten-year-old. We mean no ill will.”

Hemingway and Severino identify abortion as being a key issue at the heart of the controversy surrounding the Supreme Court appointment. They point out that, as soon as Justice Anthony Kennedy, considered a swing vote on abortion, announced his retirement, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin tweeted, “Abortion will be illegal in twenty states in 18 months.”

As much as pro-lifers wish the tragedy of legal abortion would end today, we realize we are in this struggle for the long haul. We do not know when the Supreme Court will right a profound wrong and restore legal protection for preborn children.

One thing we do know—the vitriol and fury unleashed against any Supreme Court nominee President Donald Trump would make coarsen our culture and wound our society.

As President Trump stated, “On behalf of our nation, I want to apologize to Brett and the entire Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure. Those who step forward to serve our country deserve a fair and dignified evaluation, not a campaign of political and personal destruction based on lies and deception.

“What happened to the Kavanaugh family violates every notion of fairness, decency, and due process,” the President said.

And, one could add, fairness, decency, and due process are also all violated under the abortion regime created by the High Court.

🔊 Play By Maria Gallagher, Legislative Director

The arguments made by pro-abortion advocates can melt away quicker than a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream on a sweltering July day.

Take, for instance, the defense of legal abortion posed by cable television commentator Tomi Lahren.

In her book Never Play Dead, Lahren dismisses the pro-life point of view as a merely religious objection to the practice of abortion.

Speaking of those who would like to see the U.S. Supreme Court overturn the tragic U.S. Supreme Court ruling known as Roe v. Wade, Lahren claims they are engaging in an enterprise that would be “unconstitutional” “because we don’t legislate morality. We don’t nominate people to that position (Supreme Court Justice) just to carry out our religion.”

But in truth, the life issues cannot be narrowly defined as being a question of religion. Atheists can be pro-life. The case against abortion can be made on many legitimate grounds: scientific, Constitutional, and legal.

It does not take a divinity degree to recognize the fact that life begins at conception, that the moment of fertilization is a life-giving act which merits legal protection for the unique individual created.

You do not have to belong to a place of worship to understand that a person’s heart starts beating 24 days after conception and brain waves can be detected 44 days post-conception.

It is an act of intellectual engagement, not religious fervor, to argue that our founding fathers saw the right to life as a pillar of a stable society.

This is not to say that religion cannot be a motivator in seeking justice—certainly it was for modern day heroes such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But it is simply wrong to claim that people who recognize the inherent rights of children in the womb are somehow forcing their religion on other people.

Lahren rails against putting justices on the High Court to “interpret your religion.” That is not the position of the mainstream pro-life movement. Pro-lifers advocate an interpretation of the Constitution which is based on what that sacred document actually says, rather than what pro-abortion zealots wish it said.

Reason and common sense are key planks of the pro-life platform. They were back before Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, and they continue to be today. And that is why the pro-life case is so persuasive, generation after generation.

by Jessica Resuta

Our guest blogger is a junior journalism major at Franciscan University of Steubenville and a past winner of the PA Pro-Life Federation’s Oratory Contest.

A recent New York Times article claims that the term “pro-life” is purely a marketing term and that “Whatever the anti-abortion crusaders call themselves, they don’t care what happens to an unwanted child — not after the child is born — and they’ve never cared about the mother.”

The author also says that “The anti-abortion cause didn’t promote itself as ‘pro-life’ until the more punitive-sounding ‘anti-abortion’ label failed.” What this article misses is that the term ”pro-life” means exactly what it says, supporting and cherishing all human life, and if anything is punitive it’s abortion. 

Abortion does not aid or help a woman feel safe because it is the intentional destruction of a human life that brings a woman pressure, heartbreak, regret, and a deadly quick-fix disguised as healthcare.  Pregnancy may be difficult but it is not a punishment. It is a normal, natural opportunity to give, love and respect life. Those who choose to love and sacrifice when it’s hard are those who do the most good in the world.  There are also others who tenderly care and are open to help with the difficulties that arise with an unexpected or crisis pregnancy. 

Being pro-life acknowledges the humanity and uniqueness of all life at every stage, and that includes protecting as precious both the unborn child and his/her mother.  The overused argument that pro-life only equals pro-birth is completely unfounded because it is those who support life who are actually giving a mother a choice, and not just a choice, but one that will help rather than hurt her.  

Many women choose abortion because they feel they have no choice. Abortion is portrayed as the only solution to an unplanned or difficult pregnancy, but telling women their primary option is to either pay a substantial amount of money or have the taxpayers pay to have their child killed is no way to make a woman or her child feel safe. 

These are not just words or ideals, there truly are other and better options for pregnant women, loving and helpful options.  In Pennsylvania alone, there are hundreds of pregnancy care centers all across the state, not to mention countless churches, families and pro-life communities who are willing to give a woman and her child the love and care they need at a critical time.  

The Pro-Life mission is one that treats all life with the dignity belonging to all humans, born and unborn.  Women need to know that there really is loving assistance and the life-giving options that they deserve.