By Dr. David Franks, Chairman of Massachusetts Citizens for Life

We have forgotten how to live together. 

Either there will be civic reconciliation in America, or this nation will end. It has always been my conviction that the pro-life movement must be the vanguard of social progress. It is on us to know more and love more, or there will be no American future. 

A hearing on S.1225/H.1194 the Massachusetts End of Life Options Act, which would legalize doctor-prescribed suicide despite the will of the votes expressed in the defeat of Question 2 in 2012, is scheduled for Tuesday, September 26, 10:30am, at the State House in Room A 1-2. All pro-lifers are urgently requested to attend to show the Legislature's Joint Committee on Public Health that Massachusetts still rejects DPS.

The following article originally appeared in the Fall 2017 issue of the MCFL News magazine, a perk of membership mailed out quarterly to all members.

Coalition forces are gearing up to present testimony before the Joint Committee on Public Health at hearings at the State House on Sept. 26 against bill S1225/ H1194, the End of Life Options Act, which would legalize doctor-prescribed suicide. The bill's primary sponsors are Rep. Louis Kafka of Stoughton and Sen. Barbara L’Italien of Andover. MCFL asks members and supporters to attend the hearings en masse to show their opposition.

By Anne Fox, President of Massachusetts Citizens for Life

I just saw an article about the wedding last weekend of one of President Kennedy's granddaughters at Red Gate Farm, a 377-acre estate on Martha's Vineyard that is completely inaccessible to the press. The newspaper claimed that the Farm is worth in the "mid-nine figures,” which seems astonishing but would be somewhere near $500 million. Being pro-life, when I hear $500 million, I immediately think of Planned Parenthood, which gets that much of our tax dollars every year. 

So here we have one of the pricier estates in the country, which is worth a huge amount and which was purchased by Jackie Kennedy in 1978, yet every year Planned Parenthood gets that much of our money. Kind of puts it in perspective.

Has Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation, had a massive change of heart and conversion to the pro-life cause? In an email to supporters she said, “Here at Planned Parenthood, we firmly believe that every person has the right to live, work, and raise a family freely and without the threat of deportation or separation… We believe in every person’s right to control their own destiny and their own body.”

By Nancy Valko

“People with decision-making capacity have the right to stop eating and drinking as a means of hastening death.”

and

“There is an extensive knowledge base to help manage the burden of most physical symptoms (of voluntary stopping of eating and drinking). Symptom control is imperative.”

With these quotes from its recent position statement “Nutrition and Hydration at the End of Life”, the American Nurses Association (ANA) effectively gives up the principle of opposing doctor-prescribed suicide.

With as many as 62% of post abortive women reporting that they felt forced into making the abortion decision, Massachusetts Citizens for Life’s legislative agenda for 2017 includes bill H.3119, the Protect Women from Coercion Act. This bill would require facilities performing abortions to inform a pregnant woman seeking an abortion that no one can force her to have an abortion against her will. It requires both verbal notification and the posting of a sign in the abortion facility notifying patients of these rights. Failure to post the required sign carries a fine. An individual injured by the failure to post the sign or to provide verbal notification to the pregnant woman may bring a civil action for damages.

Rep. Elizabeth Poirier, R-North Attleboro, is the bill's primary sponsor. It has been assigned to the Joint Committee on the Judiciary.

This article from the MCFL member’s magazine from Fall 2017 highlights one woman's experience of coerced abortion.

Saturday,  September 9, 2017 was the National Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children. Pro-life Americans throughout the country gathered at the grave sites of aborted babies and other memorial sites dedicated in their honor to remember the more than 59 million children who have lost their lives to legal abortion since 1973, and to remind our society of the humanity of the unborn child.

Some of the locations in Massachusetts included: Needham, Malden, Arlington, North Attleboro, Franklin, and Norwood. 

As we know: "Pray as if it is all up to God.  Work as if it is all up to you"

Photo caption: St. Mary's Cemetery in Needham. Memorial to the Unborn, dedicated by the Knights of Columbus Needham Council.

Massachusetts Citizens for Life’s Summer Academy brings pro-life high school students together for workshops and seminars that equip them to become pro-life ambassadors in their schools and communities. Part of the experience is learning to get up in public and speak about life issues and so we’ll be bringing you some of the speeches that the 2017 participants gave this summer.

By Eddie Flanagan

Many people think abortion is helping control the population. But the truth is we are not even close to being overpopulated. For example, every person in the world could live in the state of Texas and have one acre of land. If we added all the essentials, humans would probably take up only the United States, leaving plenty of room for growth into the rest of the world. Then in terms of the environment, the solution is that humans be less wasteful and more environmentally friendly. The solution is not trying to cut down our population. Thus, abortion is not helping the human race.

Not only is abortion not helping, but abortion is hurting the human race. Imagine if George Washington, Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein, or (even worse) Tom Brady had never been born. We would be in trouble. Abortion could be killing a hero of the future right now. The discoverer of a cure to cancer could have just been killed. The odds of a future hero being killed are high. One out of every five babies are aborted. There is a story of a conversation between Hillary Clinton and Mother Teresa. Hillary Clinton asked Mother Teresa, “Why do you think America has not had a female president yet?” Mother Teresa replied, “Because she has probably been aborted.” My point is made.

The solution to this is quite clear. America needs to stop helping women to abort their children and start helping women to raise their children.

Eddie is 15 and lives in Needham.

By Nancy Valko

When I first read the article “Planned Parenthood’s New Low: Teaching Transgender Ideology to 4-Year-Olds”, I was skeptical.

Although I have long had no illusions about Planned Parenthood since the 1973 Roe v. Wade US Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, its promotion  of “comprehensive sex education” in schools, its fight against the partial-birth abortion ban and the most recent scandal of selling body parts of aborted babies for “research”, I was surprised by this new development.