press conference and annual State House Celebration of Life this Wednesday

Massachusetts Citizens for Life and partner organizations to illustrate dangerous impact of proposed ROE Act.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - BOSTON, MA - 28 October, 2019 - During the Celebration of Life, an annual lobby day that highlights holistic and life-affirming resources for women and children, Massachusetts Citizens for Life invites media to a press conference at noon on Wednesday, October 30th. National experts from a broad spectrum of political backgrounds, including abortion survivor, Claire Culwell, will speak on the impact of provisions in the ROE ACT(S.1209/H.3320). 

Great Hall, Massachusetts State House

Press Conference: 12:00 noon - 1:00pm

Celebration of Life Event: 10:00am - 3:00pm

C.J. Williams, Director of Community Engagement, MCFL:  "Massachusetts can do much better than a bill that ditches basic standards of medical care in favor of a burnt-earth push for abortion access over women's safety. In no other medical procedure do we reduce regulations and safety- it's backward. In this case, it uniquely discriminates against women."

Regarding a weeklong campaign launched by MassNARAL that claims, "Massachusetts can do better," MCFL President Myrna Maloney Flynn said, "I agree 100% with NARAL. Massachusetts can do better. But the so-called ROE Act wi make things worse. Instead, let's start talking about prevention, about the facts of fetal development, the effect abortion has on a woman's long-term mental health, adoption, and, especially, universal childcare programs like the one Senator Warren proposes," she said. "That's doing better."

Bill Gilmeister, executive director of RenewMass, said, regarding the showcasing of resource centers, "Pregnancy health centers offer a positive response to pregnant women in difficult circumstances. They provide the resources women need when experiencing tough pregnancies. They are willing to come alongside in support. This is in stark contrast to the abortion businesses that seek to profit from women in need.”

New Mexico attorney Mike Seibel will speak to reporters in the Great Hall Wednesday. Siebel is currently prosecuting the outpatient abortion facility on behalf of his client, mother of Keisha Atkins, who was killed by the deregulation of late-term abortion procedures in New Mexico, the same kind of provision that "R.O.E.” would permit in Massachusetts.

Seibel said,  "Massachusetts may take late-term abortion out of hospitals and away from life-saving medical equipment. Let [New Mexico] be a lesson for Massachusetts. You pass that bill, and there will be transports to hospitals for uncontrolled bleeding, uterine rupture, sepsis . . . just like here in New Mexico. Massachusetts will devolve from its first-class status in healthcare to substandard care. There will be deaths just like those in New Mexico."

Depositions, testimony, and other legal documents will be available to press following the speakers’ statements, as will activist and abortion survivor Claire Culwell.

CONTACT

C.J. Williams

Director of Community Engagement

Massachusetts Citizens for Life

857 302 0466

cj@masscitizensforlife.org

Are you a concerned citizen or MCFL member? Do you have the resource, but maybe not the ability or energy to spend time or travel to engage in the activism and education MCFL facilitates?

You can still support our work.

To support our digital and local action campaigns to shelve this anti-life bill, you can donate now. Just click through our secure links here: Donate to MCFL.

Are you wondering: Why go walk for life Saturday? 

During the Civil Rights era, walking was the walk, and talk came after. Love is the only answer to the lie that women need violence to obtain equality.  Killing is not care. So what is? 

Love is a positive, not a negative reaction; and not just a label of pro-life that I pin on my sleeve.

 In his speech, "Walk for Freedom", Martin Luther King Jr. stated, "Love must be at the forefront of our movement if it is to be a successful movement. And when we speak of love, we speak of understanding, good will toward all men. We speak of a creative, a redemptive sort of love, so that as we look at the problem, we see that the real tension is not between the Negro citizens and the white citizens of Montgomery, but it is a conflict between justice and injustice [...]"

Our real tension is not between the people who label themselves pro-life or pro-choice. Our real tension lies in the conflict between commitment to love, or commitment to fear and violence, and the cycle of abuse.

So why walk this Saturday?

Because the power of presence is a power greater than any statement of fact, and any argument. It's the power of presence -- not argument or counseling -- that makes Planned Parenthood's no-show rate skyrocket to 70%+ when someone is simply standing on the sidewalk during abortion hours. Because presence is love. I'm here for you, is a statement that your life matters and has dignity. And that can only be acted; it cannot just be talked.

When I go out to walk for life, or to sidewalk counsel, I often speak to a fellow millennial who is pro-choice.

More often than not, we agree: Violence isn't how you solve problems. Equality can't be based in violence. Freedom can't be based in violence.

Abortion is violently dangerous to women subjected to it; and terminally dangerous on every level to the in-utero child subjected to it. But violence you don't see, or know about, is hard to oppose. That's why dialogue, and walks, make a difference.

Walks provide us, and our communities, with three integral ingredients for success in saving lives and changing society:

-- Break from isolation: Every movement for justice has had to unite at a massive level to oppose and expose systemic violence and injustice.

-- Break into the wider community: Every movement for human rights has had to reach, re-educate, and relate to the community at large.

-- Break the chain: Every movement for truth and restoration has had to break an entrenched system of thought and action rooted in a lie, and replace it with bonds of freedom and love. Your walk is a concrete way to re-forge relationships on the basis of love, not violence; openness, not fear; hope, not despair.

This weekend, do something that...

1. Connects you with a like-minded community that puts love in action into action for the preborn, women, the vulnerable and marginalized
2. Introduces you to the positive resources in your region for women facing unexpected or difficult pregnancies
3. Demonstrates to the wider area and state the massive, loving, visible presence of the movement for human rights in the womb, and out of it, defying stereotypes

Walk with me in Western Mass.

For the preborn.

For the women.

For yourself.

Because we all suffer in a society based in violence; and we all deserve a world built in love and justice, free from violence.

Details:

Our president reflects on the attitude and actions we to need to create a culture based in relationship, valuing the humanity of the other, no matter the cost. Foundational to ending violence is a proactive personal commitment to generosity and peace.

by Myrna Maloney Flynn, MCFL President

How is it they live in such harmony, the billions of stars, when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their minds? ― Thomas Aquinas

I spent the summer before my senior year of high school as an exchange student in Japan. When I arrived, my host family gave me a choice between two weekend destinations that we could visit at the end of my stay: the beach or Hiroshima. 

Now, if you’ve spent each of your 17 years in Minnesota, with its countless, albeit beautiful, lakes, hanging out on the exotic sands of Okinawa is a no brainer. After all, I reasoned, I was on vacation; I preferred the thought of lounging comfortably. Plus, the prospect of being an American in Hiroshima wasuncomfortable. 

Yet as my return trip to the U.S. approached, I changed my mind. I’d find comfort back home soon enough, I thought. So the week before I left, we embarked on a road trip to Hiroshima: my non English-speaking host parents, their teenage daughter, and me.

When you think of lobbying, you probably think of State House halls, formal letters, or official meetings scheduled in offices or quiet restaurants. But what you may not know is that nearly every one of your legislators now has an active presence on social media, and their Facebook and Twitter accounts are as valid and impactful a meeting ground as their offices.

In fact, sometimes, social media causes a greater impact than a formal letter these days, because on social media, one message may not just reach your representative or senator. One message may reach your entire district.

And that kind of reach is a reality every politician watches like a hawk.

Here are the easy steps to finding, reaching, and engaging your legislator online. Double your lobbying efforts by reaching out via social media, bring your fellow state citizens to the conversation, and raise awareness of the laws and proposed laws threatening or supporting human lives in Massachusetts.

1. Do you know who your representatives are? Who your senator is? If not, start here: Plug in Your Address and Receive Your Legislators' Full Contact Information (click here to search).

2. Do you have FaceBook? If so, take the names of your representatives to your FaceBook toolbar, and type them in. 

It should look like this in your browser.

3. Do you have Twitter? If so, take the names of your senator or representatives and type them into the search bar on your Twitter feed.

If your senator or representative has an account, it should show up like this in your browser:

Click on the name in the search results, then select follow. Now, you can either tweet at them, or send them a direct message.

“We Have a Dream”
2019 Mass. March for Life rally speech

We have had our dreams.

All our lives. And when we’ve dreamed best, we’ve dreamed more love and more life: for ourselves and for those we love.

And now we join here this day to dream together more life and love for every human.

Today is my youngest child’s birthday. She’s six now. My oldest will turn eighteen in a month. There are four children in between.

Like the song says: “The years just flow by, like a broken down dam.” First sacraments, last recitals, graduations, Little League, the little heartaches and the unencompassable ones. Inexorable. Beautiful and heartbreaking. You know what I mean.

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on. And our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

What dreams have I had for them! What dreams have died. What dreams survive. The only dreams worthy of a child are intimations from a source far worthier than me, a source of perfect self-surrendering love. Such dreams are not private fantasies. They are facets of the one great dream of this world: that every substance and rhythm of creation, every action and interaction, converge and rise in a new form of common life, more perfect than the one we now endure.

Rise into a city magnificent, beneficent, whose only currency is love. We might call it the city of peace: a New Jerusalem.

To dream such a city: is that for the night, or for the day? If dreaming means surrender to an inspiration that is not yours or mine, something too large to have arisen from our small capacity: then it is to create a day that escapes all nights.

We pro-lifers have gathered here today to dream this great dream together. It is, in part, the dream we have for America. It is, in part, what America wants to dream through us.

One dream has always animated this country: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Every single human is created equal.

It has always been a dream. It has never been fully realized in the light of day. We dreamt the dream—yet consigned the slave to nightmare. We dreamt the dream—yet leave women too much in the grip of private tyrannies.

That essential figure of our Founding, Abigail Adams, had written to husband John Adams, “Remember the ladies!” And we still have so much to do to make that dream real.

Our opponents ask: but do we honor the liberty of women? And I say, if asked of all of us in American society, that is a just question. And every pro-lifer must answer it well by our lives. There are many who, in all good conscience, really want America to remember the ladies, and think that to do so requires that we remove every single limitation on abortion.

Some in less good faith have concocted this ROE Act pending under that gold dome, which is far more radical in aim and effect than even Roe v. Wade. The 1973 decision was extreme enough, but it explicitly denied an absolute right to abortion: in the interests of the abortion-minded mother’s health, and in the interests of what the men in black unscientifically and unphilosophically termed “potential human life,” the state may at various points regulate abortion—according to Roe v. Wade.

The ROE Act is not some prophylactic attempt to enshrine Roe v. Wade before it is, please God, overturned by the Supreme Court. The ROE Act presents and would enshrine a right to unrestricted abortion. That is a new thing. And it is a very dark thing.

What would this legislation do?

1) No abortion could be bad enough for this abortion-industry drafted law to merit the intervention of the state.

It eliminates all criminal penalties for the performance of any abortion—whether coerced, sex-selective, eugenic, incompetently executed, performed by a non-physician, inflicted on a victim of sex trafficking, statutory rape, or other sexual abuse. Literally no abortion could be performed in Massachusetts that might become a matter for state law enforcement.

Is this the dream we dream for our Commonwealth?

2) The ROE Act would eliminate parental consent for all minors. Is that the dream we should dream for our children? That if they are victims of predatory men, that no parent, and even no judge, should stand between that child and the will of the predator to “fix his problem”? Is that our dream for children? Are we not sick of abuse?

3) The ROE Act eliminates any provision for the life of a viable child who survives an abortion attempt. You would think that the very least modern times would reject is the barbarism of exposure. But with abortion, we indeed grapple with the very limits of civilization. Are we to dream of exposure for children?

4) The ROE Act would eliminate the hospitalization requirement for abortions after the first trimester. Is that the dream we should dream for women? Whose dream is that but that of the abortion industry, which profits from killing?

5) The ROE Act would expand tax-payer funding of abortion and would do so, perversely, under Healthy Start, a program designed to lower infant mortality. Is that what we dream from good government?

6) In this proposed law, any reference to women is eliminated, as is any reference to another human being in this whole tortured question of abortion. Is the dream of this Commonwealth to forget the actual flesh and blood mothers and children whose destinies are being weighed in the balance? Justice may be blind, but justice must not be stupid.

If many fellow citizens are convinced of the hard necessity of abortion in certain cases, that is one thing. It is one thing to say that the liberty interest of a mother overrides the life interest of her unborn child in difficult-enough circumstances. It’s quite another thing, a delusional thing, to pretend that this hard choice isn’t hard at all by pretending as if modern embryology and developmental biology do not exist.

Our dream is a dream for the transformation of reality, and so it must be rooted in reality. Ignoring how abortion is a tool for rapacious men is not being rooted in reality.

The principle of the ROE Act is simple: no abortion a bad abortion.

But how many pro-choicers, even, believe that? What kind of male fantasy world would a person have to live in to overlook the fact that this serves the convenience of the man who, though not wanting to be a father, nevertheless wants to keep using women and girls?

Abortion makes the inequality of women worse. It allows men to escape their responsibility to both women and children, and it allows our narcissistic society to escape our responsibility to care.

No abortion a bad abortion? How about this: some seeming solutions are not solutions at all.

Do we need to secure more equality for women in society? You better believe it. Can equality, can the equality of some, be secured at the expense of the equality of others? The ones selling that are always the unequal ones who sit above us all and who confuse their needs with reality. And I’ll say it to the shame of our sex: most of these narcissists are men.

We pro-lifers agree that the ladies must be remembered. What we deny, is that we can rightly remember any one human by killing another human.

We would remember all the victims, not just some—and thereby blow up the whole sorry system of entitlement that enslaves us all. Do you want revolution? THAT is revolution.

Let us dream with Walt Whitman:

I DREAM’D in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;
I dream’d that was the new City of Friends;
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love—it led the rest;
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
And in all their looks and words.

What has Walt described but what we dream for America: to show us something of the New Jerusalem.

If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.

The city of our dreams, that New Jerusalem, cannot come upon those who forget the dead, who forget the victims.

We must not forget how racial minorities suffer. We must not forget how women suffer. We must not forget how the smallest humans suffer.

Let me not forget thee, city of my dreams, city of life for all and of death for none.

Let me not forget thee, city of true love and of friendship we never betray, never fail.

Let us dream the impossible possibility of America once again.

What did our great captain say:

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

When Lincoln says that every political sentiment he’s had derives from the Declaration of Independence, he explains that he means the principles of equal dignity and liberty.

We all agree on the words. What do they mean?

Our team was interviewed by Boston Globe reporter, Deanna Pan. The article, focused on the women standing on the frontlines of the groundswell movement for authentic human rights in Massachusetts, spans the entire lifetime of MCFL.

Quoting longtime (now retired) board member, Fran Hogan, and reviewing the history of abortion in our state from the beginning, it closes on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood with our team.

Read it in its entirety here: For Women in Massachusetts...Dismantling Roe v. Wade.

Then join us and support our continued campaign for human rights in Massachusetts.

Women are leading this movement, because we know that an assault on one vulnerable class of human beings is an assault on every class of human beings.

And that's not progress.

“I think Roe v. Wade is going to be obsolete whether it’s overturned or not,” she said. “It’s against science; it’s against progress; it’s against human rights; it’s against women.”

by C.J. Williams, Director of Community Engagement, MCFL

A religious faith is not necessary to the individual position that abortion is wrong. But the Christian tenet that human lives are inimitable, imago dei, and irrepeatably precious, certainly seems like a good faith-based foundation for it. 

So what are many good apparently faith-rooted ministers doing opposing pro-life laws, and speaking out in favor of taking a vulnerable human life?

This is one great puzzle our Board Chairman explores in his recent article published in The Society of Saint Sebastian.

Today, The Ruth Institute, founded to aid those damaged and isolated by the sexual revolution's objectification of human lives, released this statement regarding the recent genetic manipulation experiment completed in China. 

“This is appalling,” Morse, founder of the Ruth Institute, said. “Supposedly, the gene editing will make these twin girls resistant to the AIDS virus. Whether or not that’s true, it opens the door to all sorts of manipulation. Will gene-editing eventually be used to create a class of genetically-enhanced super humans?”

What about the long-range consequences? “Obviously, the changes are made without the consent of the subjects. The altered genes will be passed on to any offspring."

Quoted as well, is Chinese genetic scientist, He Jiankui...

If you've been following the story of the Hispanic migrant caravan, you know that nearly 7,000 human beings are now trapped between Mexico and the U.S. Controversy surrounds their treatment. Reports pour in of tear gas. Members of the government have labeled them an invasion. They are seeking a life -- and many may be losing their lives, labeled "undesirable" or "subhuman".

One fact that no news source is covering is that the abortion industry, targeting minorities, has killed nearly three times as many Hispanics in New York alone than the entire caravan combined. That's right. Targeted and killed.

Those seeking asylum near the Tijuana/California Border. (image courtesy Getty Images)

By C.J. Williams, Director of Community Engagement

A recent "general comment" by The Human Rights Council on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights has tried to define abortion, and doctor-prescribed death, as universal human rights.

This council, based in Geneva was founded to promote and protect human rights around the world. For background, a "general comment" is a UN agency’s interpretation of the provisions of the treaties to which it is a party.

"The UN Human Rights Committee has no power to create human rights,” remarks Mary Anne Glendon.

It cannot be said more forcefully: claiming abortion and suicide are “fundamental human rights" is preposterous. Ed Morrissey has rightly noted that the use of "the right to life" clause as grounds for this anti-life stance is wickedly repugnant. The going's-on of international committees often gets ignored. But this kind of push by our governing officials, nationally and internationally, should never be permitted to fly under the radar.