By Anne Fox, President of Massachusetts Citizens for Life

We all want people to be happy and productive in their lives. It seems to be folk wisdom (promulgated by anti-life groups and media) that women will have their lives ruined if they are not allowed to have abortions and that, of course, abortions solve their problems.

But according to this study published by Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons:

• roughly 60 percent of the women said they had abortions to make others happy,
• 75 percent said there was pressure from others to abort, and
• 30 percent aborted out of fear of losing their partner if they kept the child.

About 50 percent said they believed the fetus was a human being when they aborted, and 65 percent said they knew aborting was a mistake. 

What a sad indictment of our society which produces two victims of every abortion!

The Massachusetts Caucus will take place, as it does every year, before the 2018 March for Life in Washington, DC. The caucus is an opportunity to hear from compelling pro-life speakers on topics of the day, as well as to lobby your representatives in Congress. This year, the caucus will take place in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room SD-106, on Friday, January 19, 9:30-11am.

Professor Dwight Duncan will tell us about the amicus brief he is filing on behalf of Mass. Citizens for Life in the US Supreme Court case which will decide whether California can force Pregnancy Resource Centers to advertise for abortion. The case has many implications for all special exceptions made in made in many unfair laws that give special treatment to abortion and everything and everyone connected to it. We are thrilled to be filing the brief!

Last year, Professor Michael Pakaluk was a big hit. He will speak again this year.

Professor Michael New will tell us what the latest statistics and studies really mean nstead of the what the press and Planned Parenthood try to say they mean.

Karen Cross, Chair of the National Right to Life PAC, will talk about the importance of the 2018 elections, especially the implications for the US Senate race in Massachusetts.

Richard Doerflinger, former Director of Pro-Life Activities for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, will speak on doctor-prescribed suicide.

If you are attending the March for Life this month, we hope you will have a chance to stop in, get warm and get something warm to drink, hear some excellent speakers, and maybe let some of your congressmen know where you stand on life. See you there!

Photo of Dirksen Senate Office Building: The Architect of the Capitol/Wikimedia Commons. US Government work.

by Nancy Valko

It has been twenty years since Oregon’s doctor-prescribed suicide law took effect after a public referendum. Since then, four other states have legalized doctor-prescribed suicide.

Polls seem to show strong public support for doctor-prescribed suicide. They ask questions like this one from a 2017 Gallup poll: “When a person has a disease that cannot be cured and is living in severe pain, do you think doctors should or should not be allowed by law to assist the patient to commit suicide if the patient requests it?”

Unfortunately, most people have only a vague idea about what such laws actually say and do. Here are six things you must know before you decide whether to support or oppose doctor-prescribed suicide.

By Anne Fox, President of Massachusetts Citizens for Life

I found this study very interesting and, actually, quite intuitive. Doctors say they think doctor-prescribed suicide is a good idea - until it becomes a reality. Then they re-think and come down on the side of life.

Remember, in Oregon, only 1% of doctors will actually prescribe lethal doses. In this study, 48% of doctors in this city in Québec initially said they would be willing to cause the death of a patient, but after Canada’s law took effect and they saw the full implications of what they were being asked to, 77% were opposed.

On the one hand, there is an absolutely instinctive and universal human horror and avoidance of death. And although many doctors have learned to work with dying people, the thought of actually killing someone takes suppression of natural instincts to a whole new level.

And on the other hand, we have a political fantasy that doctors (being told euthanasia has been redefined as a benign “medical treatment”) will suddenly be at ease with killing people. 

This is good information to keep at your fingertips.

The Trump Justice Department is once again trying to block a taxpayer-funded abortion for a teenage illegal alien who had been raped in her country. Justice Department lawyers argued that it would only beget more violence.

The courts recently forced the government to facilitate an abortion on a teenage illegal immigrant who was in government custody. At the time concerns were expressed that pregnant women would enter the country simply to procure abortions. Of course, the media assured us this would never happen.

In the current case, will see the Justice Department makes some excellent pro-life points.

By Nancy Valko

When I first started out as a nurse in the late 1960s, I saw several patients admitted to determine why they had “mental status changes”, such as confusion. One of my first duties on admission was to make a list of medications the patient was taking.

I was alarmed to find some of these patients, usually elderly, were taking a large number of medications and some were similar and/or had potential interactions with other medications. When I first brought this to the attention of a doctor, he was skeptical until he read one of the patients’ lists.

The result was that he reevaluated every medication and temporarily stopped all medications that were not crucial. When the patient rapidly improved and went home with a much reduced list of medications, he and I shared this with other doctors and many other such patients then rapidly improved.

However, according to a December 12, 2017 article from Kaiser Health News titled “An Overlooked Epidemic: Older Americans Taking Too Many Unneeded Drugs”, such problems with medications continue to exist in our fast-paced health care system and older people continue to be especially at risk.

By Nancy Valko

In 1980, the Hemlock Society (now known as Compassion and Choices) was formed to  work for the legalization of doctor-prescribed suicide by proposing state legislative bills, voter initiatives and public advocacy.

These efforts failed until finally in May 1994, the Oregon Medical Association changed its position opposing doctor-prescribed suicide to  neutrality. 

Six months later, Oregon voters approved the very first US doctor-prescribed suicide law 51% to 49%.

Not surprisingly, now the Oregon Medical Association “supports the position that ‘death with dignity’ (aka physician-assisted suicide) is part of the doctor-patient relationship”.

Obviously, the neutrality of the medical association was a big factor in getting the first doctor-prescribed suicide law passed in the U.S. as well as its eventual integration into Oregon’s health care system.

By Anne Fox, President of Massachusetts Citizens for Life

Here is a beautiful picture! A missionary nun spoke at my church yesterday.  She told a story of the earthquake in Haiti. The orphanage building was shaking. No one paid any attention. The buildings were so flimsy they would shake when a truck drove by.

One of the sisters had experienced an earthquake in another country and recognized the signs. She organized a "bucket brigade". They lifted the babies from their cribs, passed them along from person to person, and laid them on the ground.

Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston, died in Rome on Wednesday. 

Even the Boston Globe has acknowledged, after his resignation, Law devoted considerable energy to the pro-life movement, as part of his work against the culture of death. In 1984, during his first appearance at Boston's Cathedral of the Holy Cross, the Globe said “he called abortion a ‘national disgrace’ and the ‘primordial evil of our time, the cloud that shrouds the conscience of our world.’ A year later, he referred to abortion as “the critical issue of the moment” and criticized US Representative Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1984, for her support of abortion rights.”

He appeared annually at the March for Life in Washington, DC, and the Respect Life March in Boston, as well as heading a bishops' committee on abortion issues.

By Anne Fox, President of Massachusetts Citizens for Life

In the summer of 2015 David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Pogress released the earthshaking videos documenting Planned Parenthood selling baby parts from babies they aborted by various methods designed to keep intact the organs which had been pre-ordered. We saw price lists and an employee planning on buying a Lamborghini.