Colorado

MEDIA ADVISORY, April 12, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ — Dr. Cora Aguilar and Personhood USA have announced the new website www.filipinofamilyvalues.com, where Filipino-Americans can sign an online petition and send a strong message of opposition to the “Reproductive Health” law to the governments of the U.S. and the Philippines.

Under the guise of reducing poverty, the “Reproductive Health” law would in fact take away limited government funds from many high priority medical and food needs, transferring them to fund harmful and deadly abortifacient and anti-family programs, open the door to abortion on demand, increase teenage pregnancy, and force public and private institutions under penalty of law to teach “sex education” in a manner that violates the deeply rooted cultural, social, and religious norms of the Filipino people.

The Filipino-American community does not support such a law, and neither do the People of the Philippines, who when informed of the actual provisions and penalties of the “Reproductive Health,” law rejected it by a staggering 92%.

Article II of the 1987 Philippine Constitution says, in part, “Section 12. The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. It shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”

“As Filipino-Americans we are saddened that the United States is leveraging its foreign aid to undermine the fundamental beliefs enshrined in the constitution of the Philippines,” explained Dr. Cora Aguilar, who is behind the effort.

“We recognize that ‘universal access to reproductive health services’ is a euphemism for tax payer funded abortion on demand,” continued Dr. Aguilar. “We believe that more education and better jobs, and not the extermination of the poor, is the proper way to fight poverty in the Philippines.”

The Filipino-American community stands united in opposition to the “Reproductive Health” law, and to the highly unethical and coercive use by the current administration of tax payer funds to undermine Filipino culture, to undermine the constitution of the Philippines, and to undermine the deeply held religious beliefs of the overwhelming majority of Filipinos.

Thank you so much!

Because of your sacrifice and support, we have moved closer to protecting every child by love and by law.

Amendment 62 did not pass, but we increased the vote by 3%! Indeed this is a baby step towards protecting all babies in Colorado. I am still excited!

We have conducted the biggest pro-life educational outreach in Colorado’s recent history.

Over 850,000 pieces of literature have gone out, including 580,000 of the powerful full color Personhood Newspaper which helped save at least one child’s life!

Taking time to think of how many we have reached in this campaign is so rewarding!!

How many girls have seen this information, and had their hearts changed toward life? We will likely never know the full extent of the life saving impact we have had here, until we reach heaven.

You faithfully defended the preborn in word and deed!

You treated “the least of these” with dignity and respect, as for the rest of Colorado, there is a message for them: “And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’ Matthew 25:45

But because of your help we were able to make over 1,500,000 calls 1,000 radio ads in Colorado advocating for prenatal Personhood!

We all should be very encouraged by this vote, because it shows that we are on the right path.
And our path is not completely uncharted. We only have to look to the suffragette movement in South Dakota to realize that our current path is leading us to victory.

Pro-life advocates are not the first to try to build, or re-build, a movement through the initiative process.

From 1890 to 1918, women in South Dakota mounted campaign after campaign to try to gain the right to vote. At first, the state constitutional amendment was badly defeated, but the suffragettes would not give up that easily.

Republicans didn’t support the suffragettes, and neither did Democrats. The wealthy elites looked down their noses at them, and their constitutional amendments failed to pass not once, not twice, but six times before on the seventh try, they triumphed and won the right to vote.

The lesson to learn from South Dakota women is that movements take time to build, but that persistence in the initiative process pays out huge dividends.

Every year the suffragettes came back on the ballot their ranks grew. Every year they were able to educate more people, to build more networks, to advance their position, to make new alliances.

The pro-life movement has much to learn from this. Research shows that out of several dozen pro-life initiatives, only two were ever attempted more than once. Amendment 62 is one of them, and the fruits of perseverance are already beginning to show.

In only two years the personhood movement in Colorado has gone from simply getting on the ballot in 2008, to getting on the ballot in 2010 and literally touching millions of Coloradans through their churches, the media, the mail, telephone, and most importantly during face to face conversations with our growing list of volunteers.

Plain and simple, when we start a Personhood Campaign, we set out to CHANGE THE CULTURE AROUND US!

Now we look forward to continuing the momentum for personhood around the country.

At the beginning of next year many states will introduce personhood legislation.

And even now we are preparing for an epic battle in the most pro-life State in America. Mississippi will vote on Personhood next November, so it is time to get back to work!

Thank you for continuing the fight for the rights of the preborn child.

Together, we must not rest until every child is protected by LOVE and By LAW.

In His Service

Keith Mason
Personhood USA

SO MUCH has been going on for Amendment 62 this week!

Check out this week in Personhood News at www.personhoodusa.com/news, be encouraged, and take some friends with you to vote "YES" on Amendment 62 November 2nd! At the bottom of this message, find an easy way for your kids to be involved in helping to pass Amendment 62!

Abortionist Richard Grossman from Durango falsely claimed that Amendment 62 would be applied to a woman's ovaries - scare tactics at their worst. We responded, along with LifeGuard in Durango, and shortly after Planned Parenthood canceled Grossman's public speech against Amendment 62!

We released the Planned Parenthood group "Advocates for Choice" debate against Amendment 62, in which the Planned Parenthood group claimed that science wasn't important and a baby's heart doesn't start beating until 24 weeks.

Golden Globe and Emmy award-winning actor Michael Moriarty of "Law & Order" (circa 1990's) fame wrote an article called: America's Last Chance: Amendment 62, in which he stated "On election day, Tea Party Coloradans, be sure to vote yes for Amendment 62!", linking to our video!

Our "Prolife Tea Party" Video Continued to Make National News - including Glenn Beck and Breitbart.com .

The Planned Parenthood/ACLU evil alliance was dealt a major blow in Mississippi when their motion against the 2011 Personhood Mississippi Amendment was DENIED. Victory! We'll have the chance to protect every innocent person in Mississippi in 2011!

Fox News National listed us a measure that could "Upend (the) Status Quo". When the status quo is killing children, we are thrilled to upend it!

The Culture and Media Institute and American Life League came to our defense against the pro-abortion propaganda machine.

Pam Tebow, mother of Heisman Trophy winner and Denver Bronco Tim Tebow, endorsed Amendment 62.

PLUS, we released the list of leaders that say to vote YES on Amendment 62: Southern Baptist Convention, American Family Association, Joe Scheidler, Morton Blackwell, David Bereit, Focus on the Family, Human Life International, Rebecca Kiessling, Lila Rose, Summit Ministries, Alveda King, and many more!

Don't forget - Amendment 62 is the ONLY pro-life issue on the ballot anywhere in the U.S. Let's send a strong message to the nation - we will not tolerate child killing any longer! Make a commitment to encourage your friends and family to vote YES on Amendment 62!

One easy way to help pass Amendment 62 THIS WEEKEND is to minister on Halloween. Our good friends at LifeGuard had a great idea for October 31st. If you hand out candy, or attend a church Fall celebration this weekend, you might consider putting a label or taping a piece of paper on each piece of candy you hand out that says "Protect Children - vote YES on 62!" If your church supports Amendment 62 and is hosting a Fall Celebration, you can put a message on every piece of candy they distribute!  Most parents go through the candy at the end of the night, and that message might make a difference!

Remember that your vote counts, and we can't win without it! Tell your Colorado friends and family to join you in voting YES!

http://prolifeaction.org/hotline/2010/science/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpssl_ZfPCM&feature=player_embedded * ‘ The Inconvenient Truth of Prenatal Science Posted by John Jansen (October 28, 2010 at 12:23 pm)

I’ve often thought that one of the best things that could happen to the pro-life movement is for the “pro-choice” movement to get its own 24-hour cable channel.

Just give them a camera, give them a microphone, and let them talk. And talk. And talk some more.

The more they try to justify their position, the more bizarre their arguments become.

This is what went through my mind while I was watching video footage from a debate held October 20 at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado about Amendment 62, the state’s proposed Personhood Amendment.
“We Are Not Gonna Try to Use Science”

After the pro-life case was presented, members of the campus group Advocates for Choice — which is sponsored by Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains — responded. You really have to hear for yourself some of the statements they made:

I think that science overlooks a huge fact here. This is a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of beliefs, it’s a matter of morals, if you want to say. So, we are not gonna try to use science, or evidence. The fact of the matter is that this is opinion. We all have our own beliefs as far as when human life begins.

In other words: To heck with science, it’s all about me!

Science can not be applied to my body to force me to do something against my will.

Yes, because everyone knows that if one wants to levitate, all one has to do is jump, and sheer willpower will render the earth’s gravitational pull impotent. (I’ve previously addressed a variation on this argument on the Generations for Life blog.)

All of us women out there, we shed fertilized eggs pretty much every month.

Christina Dunigan walks us through the problems with this statement:

1. Humans are viviparous. We don’t lay eggs. So there’s no such thing as a “fertilized egg” in human biology. The term she should use is either zygote or blastocyst. 2. A woman would have to be sexually active in order to conceive and thus “shed” a zygote. So the “we” she refers to would only include women who were sexually active that month. 3. Sexually active women don’t conceive every month. There’d be a lot less infertility if they did. 4. Even if every sexually active woman did conceive every month, and the majority of those zygotes died natural deaths, we all die eventually. Using a high mortality rate to justify deliberate killing is a pretty slippery slope.

Quite so.

Another “choice” quote:

There’s people on this side, for their researchers say that the heart beats in — 21 days. There’s people on our side, researchers, that says that the heart doesn’t beat until 24 weeks.

To which we ought to justly reply: Oh? Name one.

A video that included portions of the pro-life presentation along with comments from members of Advocates for Choice is no longer available on YouTube, but there’s a short version of the highlights here:

What Does Planned Parenthood Say about When Life Begins?

Lest anyone watching this video footage think that the members of Advocates for Choice must have simply forgotten to brush up on their Pro-Choice Talking Points before the debate started, it’s worth pointing out that some of their remarks actually do correspond quite well to the responses Planned Parenthood gives in the Q & A section on its website.

Here’s how Planned Parenthood deals with the question of when life begins:

My friend says that life begins when the egg and sperm join together. I say that it begins when a baby takes its first breath. Which of us is right? All kinds of people — theologians, philosophers, scientists, lawyers, legislators, and many others — hold very different views about when life begins. In fact, both the egg and the sperm are living things before they meet and join. There’s no real argument there. The really hot question is, “When does being a person begin?” Most medical authorities and Planned Parenthood agree that it starts when a baby takes its first breath. Some of our oldest religions have changed their views about this question many times over the centuries. Today, some people sincerely believe that being a person begins when the egg is fertilized. Some, just as sincerely, believe that it begins with birth. And lots of others believe it begins somewhere in between. What we are all sure about is that a pregnant woman is a person. We know for sure that she has morals, feelings, human needs, and a conscience. Because of this, we know that she is the only one able to make a decision about her pregnancy options. She does it based on her own needs, ethics, and religious belief about when being a person begins. It would be wrong to force her to observe someone else’s religious belief.

Interesting, isn’t it, how Planned Parenthood completely avoids answering the question about when life begins?

And then, how they shift the discussion to “the really hot question” of personhood, which they claim “most medical authorities” agree begins when a “baby takes its first breath”? (One wonders if any of these unnamed “medical authorities” also say the heart doesn’t beat until 24 weeks from conception?)

This also prompts the question: Since, by Planned Parenthood’s definition, a newborn baby who is completely outside of her mother’s body but who has not yet taken her first breath is not a person, is it morally permissible to kill her?
Sowing Confusion

Oddly enough, Planned Parenthood’s own publications years ago actually said that “abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun”. But now, in response to the question of when life begins, they want people to come away so confused as to believe that no one could ever possibly know, with certainty, when life begins. And therefore — contra the Precautionary Principle — they see nothing wrong whatsoever with abortion.

Toeing the company line, Planned Parenthood’s own employees who have spoken out publicly on the matter of when life or personhood begins have likewise given decidedly un-scientific responses.

For instance, Jill Meadows, medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, believes “life begins, not at conception, but when it becomes meaningful” — whatever that means.

Or consider these remarks from Durango abortionist Richard Grossman:

When a woman says a fetus is a person, I think it is one. I believe the woman empowers the fetus.

Forget the fact that a baby in the womb is a genetically distinct, whole human being with its own DNA. If a child’s mother says it’s not a person, then it isn’t, according to Grossman.

Incidentally, Grossman also wrote earlier this week in an op-ed against Amendment 62:

If Amendment 62 passes, it would make removing a diseased ovary illegal. Worse, a doctor who performs such a lifesaving surgery would be punished for murder. Here is what the proposed Amendment 62 says: “Person defined. As used in sections 3, 6, and 25 of Article II of the state constitution, the term ‘person’ shall apply to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.” Anyone who graduated from an eighth-grade health class knows that the start of the biological development is the human egg, and girls are born with all the eggs that their ovaries will ever contain. So removing an ovary - even if diseased - would mean the removal of thousands of “persons.”

How does one even begin to address the insanity of these words?
An Inconvenient Truth

Because the “pro-choice” side doesn’t have a scientific leg to stand on to support their position, it shouldn’t surprise us that they would effectively throw science under the bus by giving voice to statements like those made Grossman, Meadows, and the Fort Lewis Advocates for Choice.

But considering how often their side tars our side with the “anti-science” label, the irony is breathtaking.
Related

For an excellent treatment of the question, “When Does Human Life Begin?” read this white paper by Dr. Maureen Condic, professor of neurobiology at the University of Utah.