LifeSiteNews.com Life, Family and Culture News

SAN FRANCISCO, April 19, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) –  Although a legal loophole has long allowed the process, a California legislator has proposed a bill to formally allow non-physicians – including midwives – to perform abortions. Now a state pro-life group wants to know who has been anonymously paying for and conducting an existing training program.

State Senator Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, introduced a bill allowing non-physicians, such as midwives and nurse practitioners, to perform suction abortions after receiving training through a state project.

“I think it endangers women’s health,” Dana Cody, president and executive director of Life Legal Defense Foundation (LLDF), told LifeSiteNews.com. “They’ll get more medical information if they get plastic surgery than they will if they undergo an abortion.”

The bill is sponsored by Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, NARAL Pro-Choice California, the American Civil Liberties Union of California, and California Latinas for Reproductive Justice. It is supported by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

(Click “like” if you want to end abortion! )

The measure, S.B. 1338, codifies an existing loophole. Cody said California state law allows certain staff personnel to perform medical procedures, and the law does not specifically preclude abortion.

The University of California-San Francisco began offering the Health Workforce Pilot Project #171 (HWPP) to teach the abortion techniques to lower level medical staff in 2007. An estimated 40 people have completed the course.

However, much remains secret about the training.

Cody said $3.5 million of the funding for HWPP comes from an undisclosed private foundation. The names and records of the trainers and graduates were also missing.

LLDF petitioned UC-San Francisco for this information in late January. After ignoring the petition for more than a month, the university has yet to furnish all the public documents LLDF sought – so last Friday the legal rights group filed a Writ of Mandate to compel administrators to turn over these records.

“The purpose of the writ was to get information subject to public record, since it’s a University of California regent program, to see where the funding’s coming from and who’s doing the training. Do they have any reports against them?” Cody asked. “I think the public is entitled to know that.”

From the incomplete information officials have turned over, Cody said LLDF has learned “the agencies doing the training are Planned Parenthood and Women’s Health Services, which is a Sacramento-area clinic with a terrible history.”

“Is this just another way to get money for clinics?” she asked.

Increasing abortion and opening a lethal procedure to less qualified medical personnel are bad ideas under any circumstances, she said – but especially while so many unanswered questions remain.

“It just seems like with this issue of abortion, they have a free pass on so many levels,” Cody told LifeSiteNews.

LLDF will get its day in court on May 10 in the Superior Court in Alameda County.

A hearing on S.B. 1338 is scheduled for Thursday, April 26 before the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee.

Cody said concerned persons can contract their assembly member, and members of the committee, by visiting www.leginfo.ca.gov.

WASHINGTON, April 19, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Obama administration’s attacks on faith-based groups represent a political power grab that, by attempting to control even the definition of religious expression, are an unprecedented danger to America’s tradition of liberty, according to the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus.

Carl Anderson, the head of the world’s largest Catholic fraternal organization, published the remarks on National Review Online on Thursday, the same day he gave remarks at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. The prayer breakfast follows on the heels of the announcement of a new HHS mandate forcing religious groups to pay for abortifacient drugs, sterilizations, and other forms of birth control.

The Knight of Columbus recalled the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, who warned against the Communist’s ideological manipulation of history that caused “a closing, a locking up, of the national heart”: “even though compatriots apparently speak the same language, they suddenly cease to understand one another.”

“Religion has long been a key component in America’s national life. But today it is increasingly marginalized and erased,” said Anderson. “Today we find a new hostility to the role of religious institutions in American life, while the role of government is expanding in unprecedented ways.”

Anderson pointed to the Obama administration’s assault on religious institutions, both through the HHS mandate and the recent Supreme Court battle Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, as signs of a dangerous turning point in the government’s perspective of its relationship with religion. “The administration’s logic is shockingly consistent on these matters: Faith-based groups may function only if their ‘faith and mission’ are acceptable to the government,” he said.

“There is now, a new and unprecedented government intolerance of religion.”

Now, Anderson notes, religious leaders speaking out on moral issues in the public square are criticized for breaching the “separation of church and state” by “government officials who use their power to refashion church identity according to their own design.”

The very concept of the separation of church and state, he notes, has been corrupted to bring about precisely the “political use of religion at the service of the state” it was intended to prevent.

“I think Jefferson would have been the first to agree that if America amputates religion from American public life, liberty will soon vanish as well,” wrote Anderson.

Read Anderson’s full column on NRO here.

MOSCOW, April 19, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A proposal to outlaw propaganda from the homosexualist movement, particularly that aimed at children, has met with overwhelming approval from the Russian public. A poll conducted by state-run pollster VTsIOM, showed 86 percent of 1,600 respondents nationwide said they supported a ban on the promotion of homosexual relationships.

Recently, the Russian Federation delegation at the G8 Summit refused to endorse a joint statement by foreign ministers that included “lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender” people in its affirmation of human rights. A footnote to the statement read, “The Russian Federation disassociates itself from this language given the absence of any explicit definition or provision relating to such a group or such persons as separate rights holders under international human rights law.”

Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister said that “under the pretext of protecting so-called sexual minorities, in effect there’s aggressive propaganda and the imposition of certain behavior and values that may insult the majority of the society.”

Join a Facebook page to defend marriage here. 

However, eighty-five percent of respondents in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and 96 percent in rural areas - 94 percent overall - said they had never seen any “gay propaganda.” The poll found that the main source of the materials is television, which accounts for 57 per cent of all instances. Eight per cent of respondents referred to a ubiquitous “cult of homosexuality” in the media.

In March, the city government of St. Petersburg garnered outrage when it passed a law banning promotion of homosexual relations and pedophilia to minors. Foreign and home-grown homosexualist activists called for the boycotting of travel to St. Petersburg, a popular tourist destination. A similar bill has since been introduced in the federal parliament, and a Moscow city official said this week that the capital is also considering a ban on the promotion of sodomy, RIA Novosti news service reports.

Washington Post reporter Michael Birnbaum says that during the recent national elections, anti-western sentiment, including heavy criticism of the homosexual culture and its widespread acceptance, featured prominently in campaign rhetoric.

The St. Petersburg law can impose fines equivalent to $17,000 for spreading “propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality or transgenderism among minors.” This includes “information forming misrepresented conceptions of social equivalence of traditional and non-traditional marriage relations.”

Such laws are bound to be popular in a country where a 2010 poll found that 74 per cent of Russians said homosexuals are “morally dissolute or deficient” and believe that homosexuality is “an amoral mental deviation.”

April 19, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As homosexuals lobby for the prosecution of Bishop Juan Antonio Reig Pla of Alcala de Henares for teaching the Catholic Church’s position on homosexual acts, an international group of Catholic doctors has rushed to the Spanish Bishop’s defense, reports the CatholicNewsAgency (CNA).

Bishop Reig came under intense criticism after condemning homosexual acts in a Good Friday homily, and saying that persons with homosexual attractions can experience a kind of “hell” in their lives when they visit gay night clubs.

In a later interview with the Internet news service Religion en Libertad (Religion in Liberty), he reiterated that “the consequences for many people” of such behavior, are “coloquially speaking a ‘hell’ in their lives” and asserted that homosexual inclinations can be cured through therapy.

Join a Facebook page to defend marriage here. 

Responding to the controversy, the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals (FELGTB), with the Gay Collectives of Madrid, said that it plans to file charges against the Bishop for “inciting hate.” The organization also condemned outright the formal teachings of the Catholic Church, claiming that they “promote segregation and discrimination” and are not protected by the Spanish Constitution.

In an April 17th statement, the International Federation of Catholic Doctors Associations defended both Bishop Reig and the teachings of the Catholic Church. 

Reinforcing a distinction that Bishop Reig had already made, the Federation emphasized that Catholic doctors had “profound respect” for persons with homosexual inclinations, but reiterated the teaching of the Church against “the practice of homosexuality.”

The bishop had condemned discrimination against persons with homosexual inclinations in his interview with Religion en Libertad, but noted that the Catholic Church had always taught that it was “intrinsically evil” to act on those inclinations.

April 19, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The belief that living together before marriage helps to avoid divorce is “contradicted by experience,” says a New York Times Op-Ed by clinical psychologist Dr. Meg Jay, published this past Saturday.

Jay, a specialist in young adult development, professes to be “neither for or against” cohabitation, but offers a searing critique of the practice, which she says is becoming “a norm” among young adults. According to her article, the phenomenon has increased by more than 1500% since 1960, when there were about 450,000 unmarried couples living together. There are now over 7.5 million such couples.

Recent studies have indicated that there is a causal relationship between the rise in divorce that has accompanied the rise in cohabitation, says Jay. In the past, she notes, some researchers have rejected the suggestion that cohabiting can actually cause divorce, attributing the correlation between the two to “selection, or the idea that cohabitors were less conventional about marriage and thus more open to divorce.”

Drawing from research and from her own experience working with young adults, Jay argues that there is actually something internal to the practice of living together that can put a future marriage on shaky grounds.

The decision to live together is often one that couples “slide” into simply because it is economical or convenient, she says. After moving in, they feel “locked in” because of all the entanglements of living together, such as co-ownership of furniture or pets, which can in turn lead to a mentality of sliding unreflectively into marriage.

Jay cites the situation of one her clients, a 32-year-old woman she calls “Jennifer,” who lived together with her boyfriend for four years, married him, and was looking for a divorce lawyer less than a year later.

“I felt like I was on this multiyear, never-ending audition to be his wife,” Jennifer had told Jay. “We had all this furniture. We had our dogs and all the same friends. It just made it really, really difficult to break up. Then it was like we got married because we were living together once we got into our 30s.”

“I’ve had other clients who also wish they hadn’t sunk years of their 20s into relationships that would have lasted only months had they not been living together,” Jay writes. “Others want to feel committed to their partners, yet they are confused about whether they have consciously chosen their mates. Founding relationships on convenience or ambiguity can interfere with the process of claiming the people we love.”

Studies have also revealed that men and women tend to go into a cohabiting situation with different mentalities, she notes, with women seeing it as a “step towards marriage” and men often viewing it as “a way to test a relationship or postpone commitment.”

“This gender asymmetry is associated with negative interactions and lower levels of commitment even after the relationship progresses to marriage,” she says.

LONDON, April 19, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – While most medical ethics throughout the western world has adopted the primacy of patient autonomy as its guiding principle, the psychiatric and psychological professions in the UK are becoming increasingly authoritarian in matters of sexuality, according to one would-be therapist.

Recently published professional guidelines in the UK say it is an “ethical offense” to either offer to help a client overcome homosexual temptations and feelings, or to accede to a request to do so from a client.

“I would agree that the focus is no longer on autonomy” in ethics in psychotherapy, said Dr. Michael Davidson, PhD, Director of the Core Issues Trust. In Britain’s main psychotherapeutic organisations, “the person-centred approach is not being respected,” he said.

The Core Issues Trust is a Christian organisation that helps equip Christian ministers to help those with unwanted same-sex attraction and who want to leave the gay lifestyle.

Dr. Davidson told LifeSiteNews.com this week that he has fallen afoul of a “politically motivated” shift within the counselling and psychotherapeutic professional organisations, one that he says is betraying the real needs of clients and patients, and their freedom to make choices.

“I started my training in 2009 with the UK Psychodrama Association, and was very open and explicit about my position, including about my own journey out of homosexuality,” he said.

Nonetheless, two years into his training to become a therapist, Davidson was suddenly presented with an “interim order” telling him he was a threat to “public safety” and was not allowed to practice any type of therapy or even to train and attend classes, pending the outcome of an investigation into his conduct.

Click “like” if you want to defend true marriage.

Since the publication last summer of the professional guidance, he said, the psychotherapeutic community has created a climate in which therapists who do not toe the official “gay affirming” line, daring to assert that homosexuality is not, or does not have to be a fixed condition, face severe censure, even the loss of their professional credentials.

Dr. Davidson said that the system overrules even the wishes of patients, telling them, in effect, that they must remain in the homosexual lifestyle, whether they want to or not.

The association that Davidson trained with, the UK Psychodrama Association, is affiliated with and accredited by the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). The recently published UKCP guidelines say, “It is exploitative for a psychotherapist to offer treatment that might ‘cure’ or ‘reduce’ same sex attraction as to do so would be offering a treatment for which there is no illness.

“It is exploitative to offer treatment to reduce same sex attraction when various studies bring into question whether such treatments change a person’s sexuality.”

Citing a single research paper, the guidance says, “Research has shown that offering, or agreeing to the client’s request for, therapy for the reduction of same sex attraction is not in a client’s best interests.”

Dr. Davidson’s troubles started with an interview on BBC radio in which he “expressed the idea that therapeutic support should be made available to those who want to move away from homosexuality.” The result was that his membership and trainee status were revoked by the British Psychodrama Organisation. His future remains in question.

Davidson adamantly denies being a Christian fundamentalist. “I’m not into ‘praying away the gay,’” he said. “I do come from a faith background, but I believe that the psychotherapeutic literature [supporting the idea that homosexuality is a form of pathology] goes way back.”

The scientific literature, he said, “indicates consistent attempts to document the fact that people can and do change. Some to full heterosexuality, others to celibacy. Some cannot be helped at all.”

Although the possibility of helping clients leave homosexuality is accepted by some in the U.S., the current thinking in the UK is more rigid, and the hostility within the organisations precludes even making the case. Despite a long history of examining the issue in the professional literature, Davidson says, the British Royal college of Pscychiatrists will accept nothing less than “gold standard research,” that is, randomised, double-blind controlled trials, which Davidson says are almost impossible to produce while protecting clients.

In effect, the result has been not only a “closing down of critical debate,” he said, but the adoption of a “scientistic point of view.”

“This is a dogmatic use of science to say that we should never again look at this issue.”

He called it a “very worrying” trend, and one that can back both clients and therapists into impossible corners, while research into the possible physical and neurological sources of sexuality is halted due to political bias.

“The more I look at the stuff coming out of neural science, the more I see indications that there are biological sources to the role of motherhood, fatherhood, femaleness, maleness.” But these cannot be investigated under this climate, he said.

“Radical feminism has taken us into a context in which the only difference between the sexes is the genitalia, not paying attention to what neural science is telling us about the brain and hormones.”

Davidson cited the well-documented case of a man who had a head injury and “woke up gay.” He entered the homosexual lifestyle, but if he had chosen another route and asked for help, the current rules would have prevented it.

“It’s anti-scientific,” he said. “That’s not to say that I think the science is black and white. I don’t think we know very much about human sexuality, its plasticity, the fluidity of sexuality, but I think this old binary model of gay and straight is not working.”

“I think we are doing damage when we make these categories something that are so fixed. So if a nine year old boy has homosexual thoughts we have to tell him to take on a gay identity. It’s an appalling abuse of freedom.”

“I think it’s a political motivation,” he continued, “favouring a sexual liberation. I think Judeo Christian values are being challenged, that there seems to be a move for an extreme individualism, that puts the rights of adults above needs of children, privileging adult sexuality.”

VATICAN CITY, April 19, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The announcement yesterday by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) that one of the most notoriously liberal radical feminist organizations in the American Catholic Church is to be the subject of a major reform effort has been met with surprise from the group and condemnation from some of its members. 

An initial statement from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) leadership says they are “stunned” by the critical comments made by the CDF in their doctrinal assessment. The CDF had specifically criticized the organization for its refusal to accept Catholic teaching on abortion, human sexuality and women’s ordination.

“Because the leadership of LCWR has the custom of meeting annually with the staff of CDF in Rome and because the conference follows canonically-approved statutes, we were taken by surprise,” the LCWR said in a statement. The leadership will meet in the next month to consider a comprehensive response.

Individual members, however, have been prompt in condemning the Vatican’s interest. Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, a lobbying group of U.S. Catholic nuns cited as problematic in the CDF’s report, told the Washington Post, “It’s painfully obvious that the leadership of the church is not used to having educated women form thoughtful opinions and engage in dialogue.”

Benedictine sister Joan Chittister, a prolific author and the unofficial spokesman of the extreme feminist left among Catholic women religious, told the National Catholic Reporter, “When you set out to reform a people, a group, who have done nothing wrong, you have to have an intention, a motivation that is not only not morally based, but actually immoral.”

Chittister called the CDF’s proposals an attempt “to control people for one thing and one thing only – and that is for thinking, for being willing to discuss the issues of the age.”

“If we stop thinking, if we stop demanding the divine right to think, and to see that as a Catholic gift, then we are betraying the church no matter what the powers of the church see as an inconvenient truth in their own times.”

In an interview with LifeSiteNews.com in 2010, Chittister had said that while she is personally “against” abortion, “I would never condemn a woman who finds herself in the position where she believes that, or her doctor believes that, abortion is the only answer for her at that moment.”  She also criticized the Catholic Church as being based “on a patriarchal system” and described her admitted divergence from Catholic teaching as a “position of query, of theological and scriptural commitment and search.”

Click ‘like’ if you want to END ABORTION!

While the LCWR leadership and supporters say they are surprised, others have noted that reform of the religious life has been a prominent feature of Pope Benedict’s papacy. Among his earliest acts as pope was the launching of a reforming investigation into the wealthy and influential Legion of Christ, founded by the now-disgraced, late Marcial Maciel, after years of accusations of misconduct.

One Vatican source told LifeSiteNews.com that while some may consider this action against LCWR typical of an “ultra-conservative” pope acting to suppress the liberal factions, “It should be remembered that Benedict’s first target was the Legionaries and Maciel, then the darlings of the conservative end of the Church.”

LCWR was founded in 1956 and approved by the Vatican as an umbrella organization representing sisters and nuns in the U.S. Its 1500 members are members of congregations representing over 80 percent of the 59,000 Catholic women religious in the United States. Since the 1960s, however, the LCWR has become the de facto representative of the far left in the U.S. Catholic Church, with its membership dedicated to, in the words of the CDF, “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith,” and “policies of corporate dissent,” from Catholic teaching.

CDF prefect Cardinal Levada said he had received many letters from women religious in the U.S. complaining about Catholic teaching. “The terms of the letters,” he wrote, “suggest that these sisters collectively take a position not in agreement with the Church’s teaching on human sexuality.

“It is a serious matter when these Leadership Teams are not providing effective leadership and example to their communities, but place themselves outside the Church’s teaching.”

The document from the CDF outlines the Vatican’s plan to spend the next five years reforming the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).

Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain has been appointed to oversee the reform of the organization, which will involve revising its statutes, creating new programs, reviewing and offering guidance on liturgy and reviewing LCWR’s affiliations with other organizations, citing specifically NETWORK and the Resource Center for Religious Institutes.

The announcement comes at a delicate time in the relations between the US Catholic Church and LCWR, with the latter endorsing the Obama administration’s health care plans and former leading a fight against the administration’s plans to impose birth control coverage on Catholic institutions and fund abortion in the health reform law. This conflict of interest seems to be in the mind of the CDF, which has an American, William Levada, as cardinal prefect. The document noted, “occasional public statements by the LCWR that disagree with or challenge positions taken by the Bishops, who are the Church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals, are not compatible with its purpose.”

The CDF said that the sisters represented by the LCWR, 80 percent of the remaining female Catholic religious in the US, are “in crisis.” They have moved away from the fundamental purpose of their existence as Catholic religious and are suffering from “a diminution of the fundamental Christological center and focus of religious consecration,” it said.

“While there has been a great deal of work on the part of LCWR promoting issues of social justice in harmony with the Church’s social doctrine, it is silent on the right to life from conception to natural death, a question that is part of the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States,” the document said.

If the LCWR leadership says it is “stunned” by the outcome of the CDF’s investigation, the reaction is possibly the result of statements previously coming from the Vatican itself. Following several negative reactions from LCWR sisters after the investigation was announced, the recently appointed Secretary of the Congregation for Religious, Archbishop Joseph Tobin, said that he anticipated no censure from Rome as a result.

“I can say that I would be very surprised if anybody would purport to give any punitive or overly prescriptive norms as a result of this visitation,” he said. “If the visitors, in dialogue with the sisters, have identified some specific issues that need to be dealt with, okay. But forcing people into habits or something like that? That’s not what this is about.”

Tobin also said that strong actions against American women’s religious orders “would be really disrespectful of what women religious in America have accomplished,” and that the “depth of anger and hurt that exists among the sisters ... can’t be ignored.”

Archbishop Tobin had previously told journalists that the animosity between the US religious orders and the Vatican is the Vatican’s fault. The real problem, he said, was the presence of “unscrupulous canonical advisers” in the Vatican.

Two years after Archbishop Tobin reassured LCWR, Mother Clare Millea, the sister appointed in 2008 by the Vatican to coordinate the Apostolic Visitation of all the U.S. active religious orders, issued a statement saying, “Although there are concerns in religious life that warrant support and attention, the enduring reality is one of fidelity, joy, and hope.”

She told Catholic journalist Ann Carey in January this year, “The dialogue promoted by the apostolic visitation is just a beginning of new vitality in religious life. I am confident that much more will unfold with the passing of time and that the Holy Spirit will continue to work in and through women religious to strengthen unity within the Church and further the saving mission of Christ.”

“As I learned of and observed firsthand the perseverance of the religious in the United States in their vocations, in their ministries and in their faith … I have been both inspired and humbled,” she added.

The situation of the Catholic sisterhoods in the U.S. has been in flux since the closing of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 ushered in a maelstrom of change. This change, while frequently lauded as “prophetic” by the LCWR sisters themselves, has seen the near-total collapse of the Catholic religious life, and after 40 years, the closure or effective secularization of hundreds, if not thousands, of schools, nursing homes, hospitals, colleges and other Catholic charitable institutions, including convents.

In the intervening decades, while new vocations became more rare, the religious orders turned their attention largely to political interests, with the sisters themselves focusing on an array of left-liberal and secular causes. Meanwhile, the average median age of women in LCWR institutes is now 74, and many of the LCWR-represented congregations are no longer accepting applicants, choosing instead to merge with other orders or shut down their operations entirely.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 19, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In the wake of a new study that indicates that unborn girls are being targeted for abortion by certain immigrant groups in Canada, evidence has surfaced that sex selective in vitro fertilization (IVF) is being regularly advertised in Canadian news papers.

A fertility clinic in Washington state has been targeting Indo-Canadians in British Columbia with an ad encouraging them to “create the family you want: Boy or Girl.” The ad features a picture of an ethnic boy and girl attired in traditional Indian garb. 

A website address in the ad directs parents interested in sex-selection to the Washington Center for Reproductive Medicine where they learn that preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is the clinic’s preferred method for “selecting an embryo of known gender facilitating family balancing”.

Sabrina Atwal, project director for the Indo-Canadian Women’s Association in Edmonton said she was “appalled” by the ad and that it was indicative of the devaluation faced by women and girls in Indo-Canadian communities.

“Girls are fighting for their lives before they’re even born,” she said.

Click ‘like’ if you want to END ABORTION!

According to the clinic’s explanation of the sex selection process, after the artificial joining of numerous sperms and eggs, the clinic performs biopsies on the newly created human beings to identify the ones the bear XX (female) or XY (male) chromosomes. With the PGD method, the clinic “virtually guarantee[s] successful gender selection.”

In IVF embryos that are not implanted are typically destroyed or frozen for later use, or scientific research.

In an op-ed that appeared yesterday in the National Post, Kelly McParland chided Canadians who might be appalled by current practices such as sex selection in what he called the country’s “free-for-all baby market”.

With no law on abortion in the country, McParland pointed out that the sex selection clinic would be “perfectly justified” in going even further.

“Why not be specific, with a two-for-one special on male twins? Crude? You bet. Barbaric? Some would say that, but certainly not feminists, who support sex selection as another legitimate choice for women to make, and which is none of our business.”

McParland pointed out the colossal logical conundrum faced by pro-abortion feminists who have built an empire on the ideology of ‘abortion on demand for any reason’ and who are now even willing to sacrifice their own sisters’ blood by defending sex selection for the sake of holding fast to their ideology.

“Sex selection … puts feminists in the odd position of defending the right of women to decide against female babies on the basis that females aren’t as valuable or desirable as males.”

“How much more discriminatory can you get than advocating the inherent value of one sex over the other?”

“Don’t ask me, ask the feminists. It’s their position, not mine,” concludes McParland.

See related LSN coverage:

New study indicates baby girls targeted for abortion in Ontario

Sex-selective abortion of girls is ‘evil’ and must stop: Canadian doc in leading medical journal

Woman-killing in the name of women’s rights

LONDON, UK, April 19, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a strongly-worded statement submitted to the European Court of Human Rights, former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord George Carey has said that Christians in Britain are being “vilified” by the courts and “driven underground” with the same kind of persecution once directed at homosexuals.

In particular Carey pointed the finger at the British judiciary’s use of equality law to marginalize Christianity.

“In a country where Christians can be sacked for manifesting their faith, are vilified by State bodies, are in fear of reprisal or even arrest for expressing their views on sexual ethics, something is very wrong,” Lord Carey wrote.

“It affects the moral and ethical compass of the United Kingdom. Christians are excluded from many sectors of employment simply because of their beliefs; beliefs which are not contrary to the public good.”

Lord Carey’s comments were made in anticipation of a case on religious freedom to be heard by the ECHR in Strasbourg on September 4.

Click “like” if you want to defend true marriage.

The case was launched by four UK Christians who charge that the country’s courts failed to protect their religious freedom.

The plaintiffs include Lillian Ladele, a marriage registrar who refused to perform same-sex civil partnerships, Gary McFarlane, a relationships counselor who was sacked for refusing to give homosexual sex advice, and two women, Nadia Eweida and Shirley Chaplin, who were fired for wearing a cross at work.

Lord Carey stated that British courts have “consistently applied equality law to discriminate against Christians” and have treated individuals who openly express their faith as “bigots.”

“It is now Christians who are persecuted,” Lord Carey wrote, “often sought out and framed by homosexual activists.”

Noting that British courts have failed to protect Christian beliefs in “case after case” under a new “secular conformity of belief and conduct,” the former Archbishop of Canterbury decried that “Christians are driven underground.”

“There appears to be a clear animus to the Christian faith and to Judaeo-Christian values. Clearly the courts of the United Kingdom require guidance,” Lord Carey concluded.

Reacting to Lord Carey’s submission to the ECHR, the executive director of the UK’s National Secular Society, Keith Porteous-Wood, told the Daily Mail, “The idea that there is any kind of suppression of religion in Britain is ridiculous. Even in the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to religious freedom is not absolute – it is not a licence to trample on the rights of others. That seems to be what Lord Carey wants to do.”

However, in his Easter Sunday homily, Britain’s highest Catholic prelate, Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien of Edinburgh, also acknowledged the growing “marginalization of religion” in the UK, and called on the faithful to wear a cross “each and every day of their lives” as a sign of the Christian’s desire to imitate Christ.

“Whether on a simple chain or pinned to a lapel, the cross identifies us as disciples of Christ and we should wear it with pride,” Cardinal O’Brien stated.

OTTAWA, April 19, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - “This year’s March is just around the corner, which means that Campaign Life Coalition Youth is holding another March for Life Viral Video Challenge!” says Campaign Life Coalition Youth coordinator Alissa Golob.

CLC Youth has created its own video to promote the ‘March 4 Life Viral Video Challenge’ and inspire young artists to new heights of creativity in the cause of life.

“Everyone has a different story to tell, and since the March for Life has so much to offer people of all ages, this contest is a great way to communicate and spread the pro-life message,” Alissa observed.

“All you have to do is show the March for Life through your eyes for a chance to win some amazing prizes!”

CLC Youth is offering prizes for the two best videos.

“First prize is the latest version of Apple’s iPod Touch (click here for details) AND your very own featured article on LifeSiteNews, Canada’s largest pro-life news source,” Alissa told LifeSiteNews.

Second prize is a $100 gift certificate to the Apple Store. “The Apple Store has hundreds of different top-of-the-line products including laptops, iphones, and ipads, not to mention a variety of accessories to accompany these products. This is a prize you don’t want to miss!” Alissa said.

Contest entry is simple:

1) Create a video about your experience at the March for Life and/or any other March for Life festivities happening over the course of the weekend, in a creative short video.

2) Upload it to YouTube

3) Email Campaign Life Coalition (youth@campaignlifecoalition.com) the link.

The deadline for submissions is Thursday, May 31st, 2012.

Last year’s winning video was created by Peter Hayden from Madawaska Valley District High School in Barry’s Bay, Ontario.

Peter said that today’s youth have a great grasp of digital technology so creating a video is almost second nature to many.

“The teenage generation spends most of its time working on computers, surfing the Internet, checking their Facebook etc … we are the first generation to grow up in an era where digital technology is involved in almost all aspects of life and work,” said Hayden.

“Most mainstream news networks will not put pro-life videos on their stations, so we must use the internet, where these videos and news items become viewable by everyone. It is getting easier to spread the pro-life message to the world.”

To see last year’s second place video, click here.

Contest entry deadline is Thursday, May 31st, 2012.

Email your YouTube video link to: youth@campaignlifecoalition.com

For more information visit the Campaign Life Coalition Youth website, or call 416-204-9749 (Toll free: 1-800-730-5358)

L’VIV – BRIUKHOVYCHI, Ukraine, April 19, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a strongly worded statement aimed at the government of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has highlighted the evil of abortion and has called upon the government to make the killing procedure illegal.

“We call upon the Government of Ukraine to make legal reforms that both guarantee the right to life of the pre-born human being and make abortion illegal,” the statement said. “Inasmuch as women feel coerced into abortion due to difficult material and social predicaments, we exhort Ukrainian society to construct effective mechanisms for the protection of mothers.”

The statement made in March by Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the Head and Father of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, has gained national attention, with many in the media accusing the Church of sparking a needless abortion debate.

LifeSiteNews recently reported how feminists and pro-aborts in Ukraine staged an obscene protest against the Church’s pro-life call-to-action and demanded that the Church abandon politics.

Fr. Jeffrey Stephaniuk, who blogs for Saskatchewan Pro-Life Association and who translated the Patriarch’s letter in English, noted that the Patriarch is “making a name for himself as a tremendous defender of pre-natal human life.”

In the letter, Patriarch Shevchuk gave various reasons for why the “destruction of human life, conceived and beginning to develop, though pre-born, is impermissible.”

From theology, the Patriarch pointed out that each human being is the “fruit of God’s love and the bearer of God’s image and likeness”. He argued from this that the “prohibition of abortion throughout the entire pregnancy is inherent in the meaning of this sacred transmission of life.”

Based on philosophical anthropology the Patriarch argued that abortion is the destruction of a human being who is a person.

“As a person, a human being is radically exceptional among the created world: it is impossible for an evolution into personhood to occur in a being that was not already endowed with such a characteristic from the beginning.” He argued that as a person, an unborn baby “possesses an inalienable right to life from the very beginning of one’s existence, namely conception, which remains an integral attribute until one’s natural, biological death.”

Arguing from biological facts, which the Patriarch says “conclusively indicates that human life begins at the moment of conception,” the Patriarch made the case that “during every stage of prenatal development, this unique human individual already possesses, even as an embryo, all of the properties of a human being.”

From this he argued that there is “no fundamental difference between causing the intentional homicide of a pre-born human being compared with a person already born.”

Turning to the Ukrainian Constitution, the Patriarch pointed out that abortion is a “corruption of guarantees written in the Constitution of Ukraine, namely, ‘the right to life of every person’”. From this he concluded that abortion is “comparable to the crime of manslaughter, and revisions need to be made to the Criminal Code regarding punishment based on these similarities.”

The Patriarch called politicians to accountability who may be ‘personally opposed’ to abortion but who religiously follow the status quo doctrine of “choice,” understood as autonomy without responsibility.

“If the government agrees with the evil and legalizes the activity, justifying their actions by stating that it is so widespread that resistance is futile, what has in fact happened is an identification with that evil, not neutrality but advocacy, an action which de-legitimizes the mandate of the government.”

Not afraid of standing out as a sign of contradiction in a world that has largely jettisoned divine revelation as the foundation for human flourishing, the bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine declared what they called their “responsibility” to “awaken within the consciences of Christians the serious moral warning that those who consider abortion to be an acceptable solution to a difficult situation are wrong.”

“We pray that our ever-merciful Lord extend to all of us a hand of assistance, and greatly bless our efforts, focused on eliminating the terrible phenomenon that is the homicide of children in their pre-natal stage of development,” concluded the letter.

The fearlessly pro-life Patriarch has plans for a visitation to Canada this summer, according to Fr. Jeffrey Sephaniuk. The Ukrainian Catholic Church’s top cleric will visit Alberta in June, followed by Saskatchewan and Manitoba in September.

Read entire letter here

Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.

The closing prayer of the Divine Mercy Chaplet was on my mind when I read about Charles D. Snelling and his wife Adrienne. The Snellings were deeply devoted to each other for over sixty years of marriage. They were blessed with five children and eleven grandchildren. They were both well educated and came from socially prominent families. Yet on March 29, 2012, Charles Snelling killed his wife and then took his own life. According to the Washington Post, Adrienne Snelling had Alzheimer’s disease and did not want to live after all hope of a “good life” was over.

She wrote to her children:

All of our lives, Dad and I have talked over our end of life beliefs. We are both in agreement that neither one of us wants to live after all reasonable hope for a good life is over. … We have had such a great life together and with all of you.

The portrayal of this murder-suicide as understandable, reasonable and even desirable is perhaps more distressing than the deaths themselves. Many of the online comments posted in response to the Washington Post article label the murder of Mrs. Snelling as euthanasia and declare it a work of mercy. They applaud the Snellings for seeking “death with dignity.”

But there is nothing dignified about either euthanasia or suicide, for each declares that life is utterly undignified and disposable. The value of the person is reduced to an arbitrary metric of productivity or pleasure. This utilitarian perspective holds that suffering diminishes the value of life and finds it is better to end life when suffering cannot be abolished.

Yet suffering is part of our human condition. In Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI states:

We can try to limit suffering, to fight against it, but we cannot eliminate it. It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater.

The word compassion actually comes from Latin, and means “to suffer together.” We show authentic compassion when we suffer with someone, not when we get rid of him because his suffering makes us uncomfortable. There is no doubt that it is agony for a husband to watch the woman he married fade before his eyes due to physical or mental disease. This infirm woman is far different from the woman he married. Yet this suffering provides an opportunity for heroic generosity. Offering love to this woman who can no longer reciprocate imitates the love of Christ who took our suffering, weaknesses and sins upon His shoulders when He carried the Cross. Christian charity calls us to embrace opportunities to selflessly care for the weak and vulnerable even though they may never repay our love and kindness.

Likewise, the afflicted must not view their declining self-sufficiency as a diminishment of their worth. Admittedly, it is both humbling and frightening to envision oneself with an addled mind, foul breath, unkempt hair and the most intimate details of daily hygiene being beyond our capabilities. Yet, such images should not drive us to despair. Rather, we should see this as a transition from doing to being: our purpose in life at that point is to be the recipient of compassion, generosity and love. Our disabilities can be the occasion for another’s sanctity.

What greater cause can we serve than enabling holiness in others? How sad if we reject this calling out of either pride or fear.

It would be unfair to minimize the challenges posed by both authentically compassionate care and the humble acceptance of dependency and blithely say, “Offer it up.” But Christ did assure us that whatever we do for the least of our brothers, we do for Him. Whenever we pick up our cross and suffer with the sick and disabled or we allow others to care for us in our own infirmity, it is as if we are Simon of Cyrene and sharing Christ’s cross on the road to Calvary.

Blessed Pope John Paul II expounded beautifully upon this in his Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris:

Following the parable of the Gospel, we could say that suffering, which is present under so many different forms in our human world, is also present in order to unleash love in the human person, that unselfish gift of one’s “I” on behalf of other people, especially those who suffer. The world of human suffering unceasingly calls for, so to speak, another world: the world of human love; and in a certain sense man owes to suffering that unselfish love which stirs in his heart and actions.

Again looking at the words of Pope Benedict in Spe Salvi we see that authentic compassion, or suffering with another is not just an option to be encouraged, but rather our Christian duty:

The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer. This holds true both for the individual and for society. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through “com-passion” is a cruel and inhuman society.

It is clear that a Culture of Life welcomes those who suffer. While we seek to alleviate suffering when we can, we recognize that sometimes suffering is inevitable. We are called to respond to those who suffer with generosity, empathy, holiness, and love. May the poignant prayer of the Divine Mercy Chaplet be answered, and may the despair of all those who suffer be replaced with hope.

Click ‘like’ if you want to END ABORTION!

Denise Hunnell, MD, is a Fellow of HLI America, an educational initiative of Human Life International. She writes for HLI America’s Truth and Charity Forum, where this article originally appeared.

April 19, 2012 (UnmaskingChoice.ca) - Today, my husband James and I had a life-changing experience. For the first time, we witnessed first-hand the visual presence of our precious baby (let’s call him or her “Juth”) in my womb.

As someone who has been actively involved in the pro-life movement for several years, the experience I had today has drastically altered my perception of pre-born children (including my own child), and of the power of visual technology when talking about pregnancy and abortion.

As James and I progressed through our forty minute ultrasound appointment, the technician proceeded to tell us which parts of Juth we were looking at- his or her face, hands, feet, fibulas, ankles, spine, on and on. Not only did she identify the body parts, but she measured the shape, and position of many of Juth’s body parts in order to ensure that all of them were developing ‘normally.’

Upon leaving the appointment, two things really struck me:

#1: Juth is a unique human being.

Beyond providing a healthy uterus and good nutrition, I have done nothing to facilitate his or her growth- this is not much different than providing a safe house and good food for your born children. How many times have I explained this concept while training pro-lifers and challenging abortion-minded folk? So many times!

I always knew that I was speaking the truth because it logically and scientifically made sense. But when you actually get to see these body parts developing inside of you, it makes the truth reality. In this sense, it became even more clear to me that I don’t own Juth, that Juth is not a part of me. Rather, he/she is a developing human being that has been entrusted to me. How is this any different than a parent raising a born child and ensuring that their child is safe and taken care of?

Click ‘like’ if you want to END ABORTION!

Upon seeing the ultrasound pictures of Juth, a friend asked me if I felt more connected to the baby after seeing him or her. After thinking about it, I realized that my connection to Juth was now clarified- Juth and I are two distinct persons. Seeing my child and having his or her body parts described to me helped me realize that my role, starting in the womb and onwards, is one of support. From fertilization onwards until our baby is born, James and I are the people cultivating an environment for our child to be healthy in—we are providing an environment in which he/she can grow and develop mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. From the moment Juth was conceived, I had little control over how he/she grew and now moves… (this was made real to me when I begged Juth to kick so that James could feel it and nothing happened.)

So do I feel connected to Juth? Absolutely, yes. But ultimately, I have come to more fully realize our child’s internal potential for greatness that has already begun that I witnessed through seeing his/her self-sufficiency in my womb. This mentality is much more freeing than how I felt-before- which is that I was the author of all things related to Juth.

#2: The power of visuals

As many people know, the work that I do with the Canadian Center for Bioethical Reform is often considered to be controversial because of our constant use of imagery, both of fetal development and abortion. We have often been accused of making women feel guilty about their abortions and have been encouraged to use slogans instead of pictures as though there is no greater merit to using the latter.

As someone who has been using CCBR’s methods for a few years, I first became convicted of their effectiveness while doing pro-life activism on campus. But, once again, the overall effectiveness of imagery was clarified for me when I saw photos of our baby up close.

I now more fully understand why ultrasound technicians are less likely to show abortion-minded women ultrasound imagery before their abortion. There is no way that a woman could in good conscience choose to kill her child after seeing his/her spine, legs, head, eyes, and mouth and after each body part is described to her in detail. There is no way she could justifiably continue to say that her child is just a blob, or a cancerous growth, or simply an extension of herself. Ultrasound imagery shatters the pro-choice perspective of pre-born children into a million pieces.

I have always known what babies in the womb look like and I am able to articulate parts of their in-utero development. But after seeing pictures close up of my own child and having his/her body parts described to me, I can say with full confidence that there are no words that could have fully done justice to what I saw. How do you describe to someone the delicacy of a pre-born child’s beautiful spine? Or the way in which he/she spins around during an ultrasound, or curls up in the corner? There are no accurate words, only pictures.

In the same way that I have more deeply come to know the intrinsic and indescribable beauty of pre-born children, I have also become more deeply horrified and disturbed by abortion, and abortion imagery. Fully understanding how beautiful pre-born children are must walk hand in hand with understanding how horrific abortion is. The reason I can appreciate the beauty of my child is because I accept and believe Juth to be a valuable human being, and it was amplified after seeing him or her. For this reason, I find abortion to be horrific. Because our culture does not affirm the humanity of pre-born children in the womb, it can justify abortion. How does one accurately describe the bloody, liquidation of a human child in the womb? There are no words, only pictures.

Have you ever seen a beautiful painting destroyed? Doesn’t it hurt to look at it, especially if you know it’s former beauty? That is what seeing ultrasound imagery is like next to abortion imagery. The latter hurts to look at because we are in awe of the former’s beauty and capabilities. We cannot convince our culture of the horrors of abortion if they do not see it and feel pain as a result. They feel pain because they know intrinsically that that humanity is beautiful (starting in the womb), and they can’t stand to see something destroy it.

By showing our culture the destruction of humanity in the womb while affirming the dignity and beauty of pre-born human beings, we clarify for them what it means to be valued, and discarded. We will continue to shatter their ideologies: We will EndtheKilling.

Reprinted with permission from UnmaskingChoice.ca

April 29, 2012 (Unmaskingchoice.ca) - Member of Parliament Stephen Woodworth’s bid to examine the biology of the pre-born, Motion 312, has terrified Canada’s abortion advocates like a mirror terrifies a vampire.

Leading pro-abortion activist Joyce Arthur insisted so loudly that asserting the humanity of the pre-born child is “begging the question” that she couldn’t hear the scientific consensus of embryologists and medical professionals. (She may believe that humans can give birth to the offspring of other species. Further research required.) Jane Cawthorne, the author of the “Abortion Monologues,” obliviously asked, “How can two persons reside in one body?” while asserting that it was wrong to enforce “moral beliefs” on someone else. As long as they’re born, of course.

It’s always interesting when the advocates for a point of view are completely terrified of an inquiry—not a law, not a referendum, not even a statement—an inquiry. It would seem to indicate that they know they’ve been blatantly lying, and that they’re quite afraid everyone else will know it shortly as well.

Click ‘like’ if you want to END ABORTION!

But aside from the regular tired tripe about patriarchy and people being obsessed with women’s sexuality, the one point that abortion advocates have been constantly trotting out is that the pre-born child is completely dependent upon the mother, and therefore can be killed for any or no reason. Which brings up an interesting question: In what other situation is this “logic” applied?

We all would agree that the pre-born child is completely dependent upon the mother. It is also obvious to anyone of cognitive function that the reason he or she is completely dependent upon the mother is because for our species, at that age, that is the way things should be. We could also point out that a newborn child is completely dependent upon others for survival and so on.

But isn’t it true that in our society, the dependency of one human being actually correspondingly heightens the responsibility of those around her? For example, I’m twenty-three. I could go to my parent’s house and ask for supper, and they would be completely within their rights to refuse me for any number of reasons. But what if my little eight-year-old sister was refused meals by my parents? Now suddenly the government would step in—because my parents have a legal obligation to their dependents.

You see, in a compassionate society, we do not refer to those who are dependent upon others as “disposable,” but as “dependents.” An enormous number of laws and regulations ensure that those who need more care—the young, the disabled, the elderly—are provided with that care by those of us who are capable of providing it. Ironically, when the abortion crowd loudly points out the dependency of the pre-born child, they’re making our case, not theirs.

But at least the fallacy-ridden Jane Cawthorne made one excellent point in a recent interview. “These people never give up,” she told the Calgary Journal, “and they’ll never give up until abortion’s completely recriminalized, because that’s their ultimate goal.”

Amen, sister.

Reprinted with permission from Unmaskingchoice.ca

Note: Julia has provided a second painting, Fetal Sacred Heart, since this article was originally posted on April 4. See photo below and larger photo here.

April 4, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - What does beautiful art have to do with the pro-life movement? Plenty, if you are Julia Holcomb, former girlfriend of rockstar Steven Tyler from Aerosmith.

“Art plays a very important role in the culture of life,” said Holcomb to LifeSiteNews.

“The culture of life is under attack. All around us is a culture of death that is pushed on us. It’s really evident when you study sociology and see the ideas of contraception, abortion, divorce, and homosexuality being forced on our culture through mass media. Art is a kind of antidote to that mass media, especially high art in the classical realistic style.”

Julia was 17 when she found herself 5 months pregnant with Tyler’s first child. At that time she was engaged to marry him. One day, while Tyler was touring with his band, their apartment caught fire and Julia barely survived. While in the hospital recovering from smoke inhalation, she was coerced into a horrific saline abortion. (Find more about Holcomb’s relationship with Tyler and the traumatic abortion here.)

The now-Catholic wife and mother of 7 children has continued her love of painting ever since her high school years. She recently finished a course at the Toronto Academy of Realist Art and has plans to spend 6 weeks this summer in Florence at the prestigious Michael John Angel Academy.

Holcomb’s latest stunning work is Our Lady of the Roses, a piece that will be auctioned at the upcoming gala dinner for LifeSiteNews (LSN), which is celebrating 15 years of covering the stories that define the pro-life, pro-family movements worldwide.

Our Lady of the Roses immediately strikes the viewer as a work of genuine artistry for its beautiful and deeply symbolic meaning. The medium is oil on linen and measures 24 by 30 inches.

The beautiful Virgin Mother wrapped in a stunning ultramarine robe holds the Christ child in her arm, fixing her eyes reverently on him as the cause of her joy. She holds a red rose in her left hand.

Christ, about age 5, gazes invitingly towards the viewer. He reaches out to embrace the rose, which is symbolic of his life and his passion. The gesture of the young child suggests his intention to share the rose with the viewer.

The viewer may be delighted to discover an awakening desire to share in the joy of the intimate communion between the holy mother and her child. All the viewer must do is accept the rose.

Holcomb told LSN that she has a “special love for Our Lady” and that she felt that it would be appropriate to paint a Marian icon for the April 28 gala dinner in Washington that she and her husband Brad will attend.

Our Lady of the Roses was painted in the tradition of eastern iconography. The halos around the virgin and child are leafed in 24 carat gold. Holcomb painted the image in an atmosphere of silence, prayer, and contemplation. The symbols masterfully woven into the image were chosen for their Catholic meaning in the tradition of the icon.

See a larger image of Our Lady of the Roses painting here.

Holcomb explained the meaning behind the symbols to LSN.

The rose is a universal symbol of Mary and Jesus. “The bloom specifically refers to Christ as the rose of Sharon while Mary is the stem from which the bloom bursts forth,” she said.

The painting’s background consists in a pattern of sweetbriar roses. The five petals of the Sweetbriar are symbolic of the five wounds of Christ.

A magnificent peacock at the top left of the painting dually signifies the Holy Spirit and the human soul adorned with the fruits of the Spirit.

A vibrant pomegranate on the bottom right symbolizes Mary’s fruitfulness while an embellished M on the bottoms left is a monogram of the first letter of her name.

A small angel on the top right of the painting reminds the viewer of the mystery of the Annunciation and the Incarnation.

“Painting is something that inspires me,” said Holcomb. “When we present an idea in image form, we can take it all in at a glance. A picture paints a thousand words. Iconic language is something we understand at a subconscious level.”

Holcomb believes that art is “very powerful” at conveying spiritual truth. It is one of the main reasons she loves to paint.

“I think that art is a very silent contemplative way of communicating to people a spiritual vision,” she said.

Holcomb executed a similar painting recently for the benefit of her son’s law school that was auctioned for $10,000.

Julia Holcomb’s magnificent Our Lady of the Roses will be included with a number of other works by notable pro-life artists to be auctioned at the April 29 Gala.

Find out more about LifeSiteNews’ Gala Celebration.

See official list of distinguished pro-life leaders who have committed to attend the event.