Press Releases
8/30
Last week we told you: Now, after three long years, almost to the day, Rapin Osathanond, the abortionist involved in her death, will finally go on trial for manslaughter.
This is a landmark case in Massachusetts - the first trial of an abortionist in the death of a mother.
The trial will start on Sept 7th with jury selection and continue for 1 1/2 - 3 1/2 weeks at the Barnstable County Court House.
Well, the trial has been put off again (for the umpteenth time).
Ironically, it is scheduled for Monday, September 13 - exactly three years, to the day, since Laura's tragic death at the hands of abortionistRapin Osathanond. Maybe that is fitting, but how cruel for Laura's family!
I am reminded of what Eileen Smith wrote a year ago on the occasion of Senator Kennedy's death:
I would like to share with you again this poignant email from Eileen Smith and felt you would want to read it:
Laura died on the wrong side of Kennedy's Politics
My daughter, Laura Hope Smith died from a botched abortion in a doctor's office in Hyannis, MA on September 13th, 2007, down the street from the Kennedy Compound. I raised my family on Cape Cod near the medical Mecca of the world (Boston) with a false sense of security. Surely all our medical needs would be taken care of with the latest of technologies and the best of the best of doctors. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined my daughter would die at the hands of a Harvard Fellow doctor who practiced 3rd world medicine in our midst.
Laura died from the same drug that killed Michael Jackson, Propofol. Laura died for the same reason: carelessness, criminal negligence and recklessness. I was told the drs. criminal trail may start in February of 2010.
In January, a few months after my daughter's death, I knew I had to contact Senator Kennedy, the head of the US Senate Health Committee. Surely he would want to know what was happening in his own back yard in Hyannis. He certainly would not stand for such "abortions". I had visions of him personally closing down the office in righteous indignation. I had not followed Kennedy's political career and did not know he left his Catholic moorings of "Respect for Life" and joined the "Choice" group. I was totally unaware of Life politics at the time. I thought all Catholics were for Life. It was a given. After all, the Pope was watching!
I made a personal visit to the Senator's Washington DC office at the Senate by appointment and met with one of his aides. We spoke for almost an hour; she was polite, listened and took notes. She assured me I would hear back from her or someone else. One month went by. I called her, reminded her who I was and refreshed her on my story. Again I was assured I would hear something. I never did. Never got a call back. Never an ounce of concern came from Senator Ted Kennedy or his office regarding my daughter, whose life was snuffed short, carelessly, by the Harvard Fellow. To this day I cannot dignify him with the title of doctor. I refer to him by his first name, Rapin. Ironic isn't it? Rapin? I feel my daughter's life was raped from her along with my grandchild's.
The "Lion of the Senate", the Champion of the Little People and the overseer of Health Care in America was noticeably absent in the outcry after Laura's death. Also absent were all the organizations that are for "safe and legal" abortions. No, the lion didn't roar.
Much later I heard that Kennedy came down with brain cancer. I am sure he had the best of care by the highest caliber of doctors. But in the end it didn't matter, it was terminal. At least his family knew his end was near and could say goodbye. Laura and I never had that chance.
8/16
Laura died on September 13, 2007.
Now, after three long years, almost to the day, Rapin Osathanond, the abortionist involved in her death, will finally go on trial for manslaughter.
This is a landmark case in Massachusetts - the first trial of an abortionist in the death of a mother.
The trial will start on Sept 7th with jury selection and continue for 1 1/2 - 3 1/2 weeks at the Barnstable County Court House. Yes, I think it is open to the public. We'll have more news as the time approaches.
Not only is it almost exactly three years since Laura died, but the trial will be going on at the time of the primary elections here in Massachusetts. Let us hope it will remind people of the scourge of abortion when they vote.
We can expect that the media will down-play this important trial as much as possible. Please make very effort to write letters to the editor, call radio shows, and do whatever else you can to generate public awareness.
People need to know about this!
Thanks, Anne
8/7
The voters in Missouri voted yesterday 71% against Obamacare. Even though they had hotly contested primaries, many people turned out simply to vote against Obamacare!
We do not have Obamacare on the ballot, but our MCFL Repeal Obamacare Petitions will send the same message. Bring the petitions with you wherever you go, stand in front of the supermarket or the post office, get 5 or 10 or 15 friends to do the same. Completed petitions are piling up at the MCFL office!
Reply to this email or call 617-242-4199. Let us know your name, address, the number of petitions you need, and the number of "push cards" which document the problems with Obamacare and MCFL proposals for ethical affordable health care.
You can make as much of a difference as the voters in Missouri. Thank you!
Anne
8/3/10 MCFL
Last Friday, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D, NJ) introduced an amendment to the foreign appropriations bill that would make permanent President Obama's overturning of the Mexico City Policy. which stops tax dollars from going to groups that promote and perform abortions overseas.
During his first week in office Obama overturned the policy, first enacted by President Reagan, and opened the door to abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood receiving a share of $457 million designed to help impoverished nations. The Appropriations Committee voted to make Obama's pro-abortion decision permanent.
If the bill becomes law with the Lautenberg provision attached, a pro-life president would not be able to reinstate the Mexico City Policy and protect taxpayers from funding abortions and abortion promotion. Congress would have to go back and pass a bill repealing the Lautenberg provision and a president would have to sign that bill into law.
The Senate State, Foreign Operations Appropriations bill also has another concern for pro-life advocates.
The legislation funnels millions more taxpayer dollars to groups like the United Nations Family Planning Fund (UNFPA), which has worked hand-in-hand with the population control officials in China to enforce the nation's one-child policy with forced abortions and other human rights abuses.
On top of the $55 million to UNFPA, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would get a $24 million raise. The USAID is currently funding (probably illegally) lobbying efforts to legalize abortion in Kenya's constitution.
Please call Senators Kerry (202-224-2742) and Brown (202) 224-4543 to urge strong opposition to the Lautenberg Amendment against the Mexico City Policy. We expect them to remove the amendment from the Senate State. Foreign Operations Appropriations bill and to vote against the bill if it is not removed.
Call immediately! The general public is heavily on our side on this one!
Thank you everybody! Anne
Friday, July 16, 2010, National Review Online
The Obamacare Abortion Lie Is Up [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Douglas Johnson from the National Right to Life Committee points out this afternoon that the federally funded Maryland high-risk pool was going to use federal funds for abortion coverage in their new Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP), too. Just like in Pennsylvania and New Mexico.
(National Right to Life Committee has looked through five states' documentation, and an abortion-funding siren has gone off in three of them.)
After NRLC, NR, the House Republican leader, and others highlighted this from the Pennsylvania and New Mexico plans this week, the Department of Health and Human Services finally issued a release yesterday assuring that they will, in fact, issue guidelines forbidding abortion coverage in the Obamacare federally funded PCIP state programs.
And today, the National Women's Law Center, among others, are upset with the administration for saying they'll do such a thing.
Which means the lie is up: Obamcare never prohibited abortion funding. It's a matter of administrative discretion.
The Obama administration and other Democrats have been hawking the myths that
a) there is some kind of global Hyde amendment that forbids all federally funded abortions and b) the executive order solves all problems.
If a and b were true, how were any state plans approved that were covering abortions?
The truth of the matter is that news today that Maryland was planning on funding abortions in their high-risk pool is but the tip of the iceberg. Don't be surprised if another story drops. And if it's not a high-risk pool. And the administration will have to provide a new myth or actually act as HHS is saying it plans to to prohibit that which is not currently prohibited.
But don't expect them to admit they've been lying to us all this time.
States are attempting to sneak in abortion any way they can and we have to stop it piecemeal. We need a law!
Congressman Joe Pitts (R, Pa) and Dan Lipinski (D, Ill) have filed HR5111, "Protect Life Act", which would amend Obamacare to restrict the several different ways in which the measure funds abortions. HR 5111 restores the Stupak language to ObamaCare. There are 115 co-sponsors.
So far no Massachusetts Congressmen have co-sponsored the bill. Certainly Congressmen Lynch and Neal, who voted for original language in Stupak, are logical co-sponsors.
Please call your own Congressman urging him or her to co-sponsor HR 5111, the Protect Life Act. Then please contact someone you know who lives in the Lynch or Neal district and make sure that person calls also.
John W. Olver (D-01), 202-225-5335
Richard E. Neal (D-02), 202-225-5601
James P. McGovern (D-03), 202-225-6101
Barney Frank (D-04), 202-225-5931
Niki Tsongas (D-05), Phone: (202)225-3411
John F. Tierney (D-06), 202-225-8020
Edward J. Markey (D-07, 202-225-2836
Michael Capuano (D-08), 202-225-5111
Stephen F. Lynch (D-09), 202-225-8273
William D. Delahunt (D-10), 202-225-3111
You know how important this is! Thank you, Anne
Health Care Reform
10/1/09
We have had very positive feed back on the ad. People are very grateful that someone is actively opposing the proposed plans.
A few weeks ago, we had "saturation" (that is playing an ad enough times to be sure that everyone hears the ad often enough to get the points) on WTAG in Worcester and WHYN in Springfield. Right now we are running this ad in Boston on WRKO. The market in Boston is much more expensive than Worcester or Springfield. We have not yet been able to purchase enough time to reach "saturation" on WRKO.
Please listen to the ad, consider how important it is for everyone to hear and understand. Then, please, make a contribution. We must reach the "saturation" point for this ad!
Thank you,
Anne Fox, President
National Right to Life sent out this explanation on how abortion is faring in the Senate bills - very badly from our point of view. Their press release is below if you want to know what is really going on in Washington. Thanks again!
WASHINGTON (September 30, 2009) -- Events this week in Congress provide fresh proof that top Democratic leaders in Congress are pushing forward with plans to establish massive new programs that would pay for elective abortions and subsidize insurance coverage of abortions -- which, if achieved, would break from decades of federal policy.
"Bills currently advancing in Congress would establish direct federal funding of elective abortion, and tax subsidies for private insurance that covers elective abortions -- both drastic breaks from longstanding federal policy," commented Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of right-to-life organizations in all 50 states. "Ongoing events on Capitol Hill demonstrate the hollowness of President Obama's public assurances that he does not seek government funding of abortion."
The Senate Finance Committee today continued a series of meetings to amend the "America's Healthy Future Act," a health care restructuring bill proposed by Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mt.). The bill has a number of major abortion-related problems. Most of today's abortion-related debate in the committee focused on a proposed new program that would use tax money to help purchase private health insurance for about 19 million Americans. The bill specifically authorizes the use of these federal funds to pay premiums on private plans that cover elective abortions -- a departure from longstanding federal policy.
Pro-life Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) pointed out that federal subsidies for coverage of elective abortions are not currently allowed under Medicaid, the Federal Employees Health Benefits program, or other federal health programs. Hatch offered an amendment, backed by NRLC, that would have prohibited federal funds from subsidizing plans that cover elective abortions, but would have allowed insurers to sell abortion coverage through separate supplemental policies not subsidized by federal funds. The Hatch Amendment failed, 10-13. Baucus and all other Democrats on the committee opposed the Hatch Amendment, except for Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), who supported it. All of the Republicans on the committee supported the Hatch Amendment, except for Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who opposed it.
By an identical roll call, the committee also rejected another Hatch Amendment that would have codified the Hyde-Weldon Amendment, which is a temporary law prohibiting any level of government from discriminating against health-care providers that do not wish to participate in providing abortions.
On July 15, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee approved a different health care bill (S. 1679), which also contains provisions that would result in sweeping pro-abortion mandates and government subsidies for elective abortion. NRLC's Johnson commented, "Today's Finance Committee votes mean that the combined bill that will reach the Senate floor in a few weeks surely will contain provisions that would result in both pro-abortion federal mandates and huge federal abortion subsidies. However, the full Senate must vote on the pro-abortion subsidies, and other pro-abortion components as well."
Meanwhile, in the House, Reps. Bart Stupak (D-Mi.), Joseph Pitts (R-Pa.), and 181 other members of the U.S. House on September 28 sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.), pointing out that the health care bill approved in the House Energy and Commerce Committee (H.R. 3200), including an amendment offered by Rep. Lois Capps (D-Ca.), "radically departs from the current federal government policy of not paying for elective abortion or subsidizing plans that cover abortion." The letter notes, among other things, that the Capps language "explicitly authorizes the federal government (the Department of Health and Human Services) to directly fund elective abortions, with federal (public) funds drawn on a federal Treasury account," through the proposed "public plan."
The signers -- 25 Democrats and 158 Republicans -- urged Pelosi to allow a vote on the Stupak-Pitts Amendment to prohibit coverage of elective abortions by the public plan and subsidies for private plans that cover elective abortions. Seven other House Democrats have sent Pelosi similar letters in recent days, for a total of 32 Democrats.
In response, on September 29 Rep. Capps sent Pelosi a letter in which she argued that the proposed public plan really would not be paying for abortions because "money is transmitted to a private contractor who then reimburses physicians." Johnson called Capps' argument "truly laughable -- it is like arguing that it is not the government paying for the abortions if the government sends the payment via the Internet."
In reality, Johnson said, "The proposed public plan will be entirely a branch of the federal government, all of its funds will be federal funds, and when it pays for abortions, that will be direct government funding of abortion."
Johnson also noted that the nearly united opposition to the Hatch Amendment by Senate Finance Committee Democrats, and the continued resistance by the House Democratic leadership to allowing a vote on the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, "support our theory that President Obama is misleading the public when he says he does not want federal dollars used for abortion. In an attempt to keep his 2007 promises to Planned Parenthood, the President is trying to smuggle sweeping pro-abortion policies into law behind smokescreens of contrived language, verbal misdirection, and outright misrepresentation."
The National Right to Life Committee, the nation's largest pro-life group is a federation of affiliates in all 50 states and 3,000 local chapters nationwide. National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect those threatened by abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Join Mass Citizens
For Immediate Release: For More Information:
March 9, 2009 Marie Sturgis (617) 242-4199
President Obama Provides No Hope, No Change, No Help for Human Embryos
Boston- President Obama in another radical move has signed an order today that authorizes funds for destructive research on human embryos which was prohibited under the Bush Administration. All appropriations for this must originate in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In response to the President’s change of policy, Massachusetts Citizens for Life President, Anne Fox stated “This is a miscarriage of justice and a denial of the truth. The President’s policy has opened the floodgates to allow scientists to experiment with countless, tiny human beings. He has literally put into the hands of scientists the precious gift of life with no boundaries of sanity and ethics. The drumbeat for massive human embryo farming is within hearing distance.”
She further stated, “It is a well known fact that cures and advancements continue to come with lightening speed from adult stem cells or from iPS cells, which can turn into any cell in the human body. Make no mistake – these miracles or cures were not derived from any cells taken from human embryos. The truth is that many of those treated with embryonic stem cells have developed life threatening cancerous tumors. Researchers in China, a country that has few restrictions, if any on this type of research reported these bizarre findings sometime ago.
American citizens and their embryonic brethren cannot be asked to give their lives or taxpayer dollars to empower an industry that will devour human lives and money on an epic scale that will be bigger than any or all the wars we could ever engage in”.
Conscience Rights for Medical Professionals Must be Upheld
Boston- “Freedom of conscience for medical professionals is in jeopardy if President Barack Obama’s proposed initiative is allowed to go through,” said Anne Fox, President of Massachusetts Citizens for Life.
He has been a critic of the protective regulations concerning medical professionals who oppose abortion. Officials in the Obama Administration have indicated that the President may rescind these regulations. The measures were put in place by the Bush
Administration to protect and uphold conscience rights for doctors, nurses and health care professionals.
Fox further stated, “This is an outrage and not only goes against the inherent constitutional rights of medical people, but it would affect us all. This would be nothing short of tyranny by using government force and coercion to carry out government policies that are contrary to an individual’s belief. The role of government is to protect its citizens and their right of freedom of conscience, which is the foundation of our nation. I would urge all citizens to voice their loud opposition to such an anti-American move. We are additionally concerned because this appears to be a backdoor implementation of the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)* in a piecemeal fashion.”
# # #
*The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) has elicited strong opposition across the country.
For Immediate Release: For More Information:
March 6, 2009 Anne Fox, President
(781-449-1774)
Statement by Massachusetts Citizens for Life
Massachusetts Citizens for Life sent a letter on Thursday to the President and CEO of Caritas Christi, Dr. Ralph de la Torre, requesting a meeting as soon as possible to address the concerns members of the organization have about the Caritas Christi joint venture with Centene Corporation that offers insurance through the Commonwealth Care Health Plan.
Caritas Christi has said it will provide a full range of family planning services. The public has learned that this terminology is code for abortion and abortion-related services. Mass. Citizens sought the meeting to give Caritas Christi the chance to refute these assumptions and to assure the general public that it would not be providing such services.
Since we have not heard from Dr. de la Torre, Mass. Citizens must regretfully assume that, in fact, Caritas Christi would abandon its twenty-three year commitment to protecting the lives of unborn babies and their mothers.
Our members will be contacting the offices of Caritas individually to express their outrage that Caritas would take this anti-life position.
.
# # #
Massachusetts Citizens For Life was incorporated in 1973 and is the Commonwealth's largest pro-life organization. MCFL, which is non-sectarian, is an affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee.
Mass Citizens for Life, Schrafft Center 529 Main St., Charlestown, MA 02129-1100. www.masscitizensforlife.org
Governor’s Life Science Industry set up, loss ofAbstinence Funds, Could Save $1 Billion plus
Taxpayer Dollars for Massachusetts
For Immediate Release: For More Information:
October 15, 2008 Marie Sturgis (617) 242-4199 Ext.227
Cell (617) 291-2093
Boston-The state budgetis$1.4 billion out of balance and Governor Patrick is struggling to put things back in order. Mass Citizens for Life President, Anne Fox, stated, “One solution in the offing that would bring some sensibility to the out of control spending would be to stop the flow of further funds of $1 billion dollars that the Governor promised to the Life Science Industry.” She continued, “It is appalling to think that Governor Patrick promised this amount of money given the economic backdrop we have on the state and national levels. In addition, he vetoed funds for abstinence programs which would have significantly offset taxpayer dollars for education in the public schools. Clearly, his actions show a lack of fiscal responsibility”.
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