We Are at War webcast - listen to the replay here

September 27, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The battle to create a Culture of Life cannot be viewed narrowly as a fight simply to end abortion, as important as that is, but as a conflict that encompasses a broad number of interconnected issues that must be tackled from an international perspective. That, at least, was the argument laid out last night by LifeSiteNews.com’s (LSN) senior staff at our inaugural webcast. (Listen to the replay here.)

There are many fronts in the culture wars, explained LSN Managing Director Steve Jalsevac, and they include not just abortion, but also contraception, euthanasia, the attacks on the natural family, and population control. These issues, he said, are part of a comprehensive anti-life agenda that is being pushed by various organizations in a coordinated way at the international level.

Jalsevac explained that LSN first became aware of the international nature of the conflict after Pope John Paul II issued a plea for pro-life people to go to the United Nations. At the time Jalsevac was working for a Canadian pro-life organization called Campaign Life Coalition, which responded to the pope’s appeal by sending representatives to the UN.

“There were so few of us, and we were green as the hills,” recalled Jalsevac. “We knew nothing of what were doing. But we had the truth. And we handed this out to delegates and it completely disrupted the entire United Nations, and in particular these NGOs and nations that were trying to push these very bad agendas.” 

Jalsevac also highlighted the declassification of the United States government document NSSM 200 as a watershed moment that opened the eyes of many pro-life activists to the scope of the opposition they faced.

NSSM 200, penned under the direction of Henry Kissinger during the Ford administration, explicitly laid out a government-supported program to arrest the population growth of various developing nations as part of an effort to protect US national security interests. This depopulation agenda has been accomplished through the widespread marketing, and sometimes forcible imposition, of contraception, sterillization, abortion, euthanasia and an anti-family ideology. 

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LSN editor-in-chief John-Henry Westen next explained, with examples, how LSN’s understanding of the international and multi-issue nature of the culture wars has allowed LSN to present the “big picture” to our readers, and to exert influence around the globe. 

Westen cited in particular one memorable case where LSN forced the New York Times to correct a story claiming that a woman in El Salvador had been jailed for ten years for getting an abortion. Thanks to its contacts in South America, however, LSN had learned that the woman was in fact jailed for strangling her child after birth, and not for an abortion. 

John Jalsevac, LSN’s managing editor, next focused on two key areas that he said should be of increasing concern to pro-life and pro-family activists: the push for euthanasia, which he described as “the fruit of the abortion and contraception culture,” and the attacks on the freedom of those who hold to traditional values. In particular he highlighted the HHS mandate in the United States, the growing trend of censorship against those who oppose the homosexual agenda, and attacks on crisis pregnancy centers.

Jalsevac ended his presentation with a quotation from Cardinal Francis George in 2010. “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square,” the cardinal had said. But, said Jalsevac, while this is a “dire” prediction, “it’s only a prediction. It doesn’t have to be true. If pro-life and pro-family people all around the world band together, we can stop the culture of death. We can protect the unborn. We can protect the elderly, the sick, the disabled. We can protect our freedoms.”

David Bereit of 40 Days for Life rounded off the webcast by sharing the success that his organization has had in mobilizing grassroots activists to take a stand in their own local communities, and gave concrete advice of how listeners on the webcast could create a culture of life, where they live. In particular he urged the centrality of prayer and fasting in any pro-life effort.

He encouraged listeners to educate themselves: “Go to LifeSiteNews, devour the information there, find out what is happening, and how can I make a difference in it.” After that, he said, “put it into action, and that will most likely be right in your own back yard.”   

“I believe that we truly are at a tipping point,” he said. “Yes we face a lot of challenges. But we are making more progress than we have ever made. Record numbers of abortion facilities closing. Record numbers of people that are self-identifying as pro-life. … We see more young people getting involved in the pro-life movement. … We’re seeing pregnancy centers proliferate all across our nations.” 

“We are at what I believe is a tipping point that history will remember as the beginning of the end of abortion.” 

After taking questions from listeners, Steve Jalsevac said that LifeSiteNews hopes to host future webcasts to discuss a broad variety of topics.