Boston Mayor Marty Walsh joined mayors from across Massachusetts, October 1st, at the Massachusetts State House, to declare support of legislation removing basic standards of medical care for women and newly born infants. SB 1209/HB 3320, the "ROE Act," abolishes parental consent, eliminates every meaningful constraint on any abortion up until birth (while simultaneously making such abortions even more unsafe by canceling the current requirement that abortions after the first trimester be performed in hospitals), and removes the current requirement that life-supporting medical equipment be on-hand during late-term abortions—in case a child survives the abortion attempt.

The event included Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera, Cambridge Mayor Marc McGovern, Framingham Mayor Yvonne Spicer, Newburyport Mayor Donna Holaday, and Easthampton Mayor Nicole LaChapelle.

If any one of these officials is your mayor, call them today to express your deep disappointment in their judgment.

Boston - Marty Walsh - Phone: 617-635-4500

Cambridge - Marc McGovern - Phone: (617) 349-4321

Easthampton - Nicole LaChapelle - Phone: (413) 529-1400 ext. 470

Framingham - Yvonne Spicer - Phone: 508-532-5400

Newburyport - Donna Holaday - Phone: (978) 465-4413

by C.J. Williams

Summer is over, and the Fall has brought back the bill that's as problematic for pro-lifers as for those who are pro-choice. This is not the time to give in to apathy or distraction. S.1209 (the "R.O.E." Act) has not been dismissed by the Joint Committee on the Judiciary. The members of the committee are still taking testimony, still counting the numbers of calls they receive, and still undecided on what to do with this bill, whose provisions would radically reduce our medical standards of care for women, endanger our 12 and 13 year old  girls, and slash legal protection for infants born during botched abortions.

Neither pro-life nor pro-choice, S,1209 deserves a resounding no from voters, and our legislators.

But those legislators need to hear your voice, because the abortion business lobby is pressuring them fiercely.

Here's your brief update, and 3 action items. Put them on your calendar with a permanent marker.

S.1209 has not been changed, nor has it been approved and sent on to a vote in our legislature.

S.1209's provisions which abolish adult supervision for underage girls entering abortion facilities, and the removal of the requirement that late-term 2nd or 3rd trimester abortions be performed in hospitals continue to cause even our most pro-abortion representatives to waver on this bill.

S.1209 will not be heard again in public, which makes your contacting the committee in-person, via mail, email, and phone essential to educating them on the bill's dangers, and driving home the message you sent when you showed up in the hundreds at the June hearing.  

So TAKE 3 THIS WEEK: Completing this list will make a concrete difference in whether Massachusetts promotes abortion even over women's safety, and legalizes the passive killing of infants.

1. If you've already submitted testimony, follow up by contacting Chair Claire Cronin and Vice-Chair Michael Day of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary. 
2. If you have not submitted testimony, submit your statement today.
3. Commit to calling each member of the committee one day this week and/or next during our Mobile Callbank (September 25 through October 9).

BONUS: Visit the the offices of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary this week or next. 

For easy reference:

Chair Rep. Claire Cronin

Claire.Cronin@mahouse.gov

Don't walk, run. There is nothing more critical to shelving this deadly bill than your non-stop vocal opposition.

Share the opportunity to reach our legislators with your friends, family, and neighbors, pro-life or pro-choice!

RESOURCES FOR EFFECTIVE ACTION BELOW:

GUIDELINES FOR TESTIFYING

ROE ACT FACT SHEET WITH CITATION OF CURRENT LAW AND CHANGES

SUPPORTING MEDICAL OPINION: SCIENCE SUPPORTS A NO TO S.1209

MCFL ON WGBH HEAD TO HEAD WITH NARAL

Abortion rates have declined in the state of Massachusetts by 24% (2011-2018). 

While abortion proponents, including Planned Parenthood's research arm, the Guttmacher Institute, propose various reasons for the steep decline, one obvious foundation for a drop in abortion is left out.

Women are receiving the support they need, and thus don't feel coerced into terminating a child.

This record-breaking drop in abortion could also be related to the growth and expansion of pregnancy resource centers, as well as a wider spread cultural shift that has more and more access to positive media, visual aids to the what humans look like, developing in-utero, and a millennial ethos that shies away from violence.

Massachusetts has opened 3-6 new pregnancy resource centers since this study began, including ClearWay Clinics in Worcester and Springfield.

TAKE ACTION NOW

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right.

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s a challenge to actively be pro-life in Massachusetts. Particularly in Northampton, where I live, advocates for the preborn are few. Voices of abortion rights supporters drown out those of us who speak for the voiceless.

For many years, I responded with a relative non-response: silence born of intimidation. But gradually, my conscience awoke to the reality of the behavior that’s become “normal,” and smothered my fear.

Then I sprang into action born of love.

Love for women who get lies, when they most need support.

Love for fathers who never know, who are just as scared, or who buy the same lies.

Love for doctors whose sight fails them.

Love for politicians who trade lives for votes.

And aching love for innocent, lost members of our society, whose potential we will never know.

Meaningful action relieves the pain that abortion injects into our world.

Whereas sitting on the sidelines became increasingly uncomfortable for me, taking to the field energizes as no endorphin can do, especially when you play with a great team.

I know you love as I do.

So show your love in action. Join our team, advocate for the voiceless, and jump off the sidelines into a lifesaving game.

Join the Massachusetts March for Life this Sunday, June 2nd, on the Common at 1pm.  

Or donate to bring another into this freeing, life-saving demonstration.

This year’s theme: Love in Action.

Recruit friends, bring family, post photos with the #LoveInAction hashtag, and show others how to play the game—and win.

It may not be popular to be pro-life here. It may be esier to stay home and keep quiet. But to defend the lives and rights of our vulnerable citizens, whether preborn or born, requires us to listen to our conscience and actively, boldly love.

See you on the Common,

Myrna Maloney Flynn

Vice President, Massachusetts Citizens for Life

Northampton

P.S. - Support MCFL’s continued efforts by making a gift for life.

http://www.masscitizensforlife.org/

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 Bridget Fay, Board of Directors 

Two weeks ago, Georgia passed a landmark "Heartbeat Bill."  The law provides that an unborn child is a person once a heartbeat can be detected; in the words of the law, "[i]t shall be the policy of the State of Georgia to recognize unborn children as natural persons," and " [u]nborn child' means a member of the species Homo sapiens at any stage of development who is carried in the womb."  Such a person, therefore, is protected by the laws of Georgia. The law requires that a physician who is performing an abortion must first check for a fetal heartbeat; if such a heartbeat exists, the abortion cannot be performed absent a medical emergency, threat to the health of the mother, or rape.

Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey assert that a state does not have an interest in protecting unborn children before viability.  Georgia's law challenges Roe by providing an alternate point at which the state can protect preborn babies (i.e. the detection of a human heartbeat), which has the merits of being a clear indicator of human life, and being far more objective than the amorphous "viability" standard.  Roe's companion case, Doe v. Bolton, establishes a "health exception" for abortion, and absurdly broad contours for such an exception.  According to Doe, risks to both mental and physical health, even undiagnosable risks to mental health, are a justification for abortion. The result is that the "exception" overrides any limits a state may put on abortion.  The Heartbeat Bill squarely attacks that  intellectual dishonesty: it limits such an exception to the "substantial and irreversible physical impairment" of a pregnant woman's body.  That exception is clear, objective, and designed to balance the rights of pregnant women with the rights of their preborn children - exactly what Doe purports to do but obviously does not.

The Georgia law is revolutionary in both its recognition of unborn children as human beings and its confrontation of the culture of abortion.  It is not just a law that bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected; it is a law that expands child support to pregnant mothers.  It revises the child homicide laws so that parents may recover for the death of a reborn child, not just a child who has already been born.  It even changes the way Georgia handles taxes: expectant parents may list their preborn baby as a dependent minor.  The law provides protections for doctors, nurses, and pharmacists who treat pregnant women for unrelated medical problems, if such treatment inadvertently causes a miscarriage.   

When pro-lifers talk about creating a "culture of life," we mean an overhaul of the thousands of ways that our culture and laws assume that preborn children aren't people, expectant mothers aren't quite yet mothers, and women will solve their problems via abortion.  Georgia's comprehensive attack on the evils of abortion is something that other states can emulate, and its comprehensive reformation of its laws highlight how pervasive abortion has become.

By Anne Fox, President of Massachusetts Citizens for Life

Crux this week has an interview with M.T. Davila, an assistant professor of Christian ethics at Andover Newton Theological Seminary in Newton. The interviewer is Fordham Professor Charles Camosy author of Beyond the Abortion Wars. 

I have never reviewed the Camosy book because he claims to want to "draw people into conversation" with arguments that are offensive to the pro-life movement while giving great respect to those who want to make sure abortion remains legal. 

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.