Joint Parish Respect Life Committee

No Masks for the Unborn

7/22/2021

  Early Saturday morning we witness as members of the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants outside a Queens abortion facility on Queens Boulevard. As we pray and make an attempt to give women a pamphlet filled with helpful information, we observe an attractive young-looking grandmother wearing a mask as she escorts her 16-year-old attractive young mask-wearing daughter to kill her grandchild.

    One of the counselors managed to speak to the grandmother and she said that this was very hard for her because years ago she had aborted her baby at age 16 and she suffers with regret for doing that till this day. She wasn’t going to stop her daughter because she said it’s her choice!

    The counselor tried to tell her that you can redeem yourself by stopping your daughter from killing her unborn baby. He stated that you are only teaching your daughter to use abortion as a form of birth control and not to choose “Life” for the unborn person which would be your beautiful grandchild. The counselor quickly showed her pictures on his cell phone of a young mother with her beautiful child of six years old who was saved from abortion at this facility.

    Unfortunately, the masked young mother went into the abortion facility. It’s very hard to stand outside and peacefully pray for all that enter the chamber of death.

    We have been protecting ourselves by wearing masks, keeping the right distance and getting tested. Why aren’t we all concerned with protecting all the unborn infants from death? So many of us are upset about how Governor Cuomo handled the COVID-19 outbreak in nursing homes that killed a great number of senior residents. Why aren’t we all concerned that Governor Cuomo, a Catholic, is pro-choice – which is pro-abortion and pro-end of life/assisted suicide? Why do Catholics vote for him? Why aren’t there more advertisements about protecting the unborn, helping mothers to keep their babies of for them to consider adoption over abortion?

    Let us pray that while we protect ourselves and others, we should teach our young people to be concerned for all God’s precious creatures and our beautiful earth, but most of all to protect and save the unmasked pre-born infants from abortion.

Madeleine Santangelo-Palumbo

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Note to AISH -- Please Don't Be Blasé About Abortion

7/5/2021

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Imagine my horror and discomfort – coming so shortly after the collapse of a condominium in Miami where so many Jewish lives have been lost – at reading “My Choice” by Sara Shamansky (republished by the Jewish AISH from The Tablet) in which Shamansky, who claims to be an “Orthodox Jew” willingly goes through an abortion because her baby has been diagnosed as having a birth defect (by the way, she does not go into detail as to what that defect could specifically be – what matters to her is that her supposedly “much wanted child” would have problems which she simply cannot deal with – even if the problems could be corrected or lessened through post natal surgery.) She admits that, although she claims to be religious, that “It [abortion] wasn’t that I was against abortion per se . . . but now, suddenly, it was immediately relevant, part of my world.”

How “modern” – how “unorthodox”!

Yes, that is the solution to a baby who might have disabilities. Rather than reach into her heart for the love she claims she felt for her unborn child, she searched for a rabbi to tell her what she wanted to hear: one that would tell her that “it was our choice, it was our decision to make.” As for her husband, the father of the baby, he is spineless and actually tells her that IT IS HER DECISION TO MAKE! So much for the importance of fathers.

If you want to know why the world is upside down look at Sara Shamansky and her hapless husband: instead of seeking treatment for their baby, they took what they saw as the “humane” or “easy” way out. Shamansky actually writes that she was “afraid of hospital stays and surgeries . . . of never being free.” There you have it: a woman who claims to be religious who gives into her selfish instincts. She also claims that she “does not want to be judged”. Then why did she write this article? He who excuses himself, accuses himself as the French say. She nauseates me. And yes, I am being judgmental since she put it out there. And I think of the young woman with Downs Syndrome whom I heard speak at a conference sponsored by the Sister of Life and then I think of the Shamansky woman and the fraud that she is. As for AISH, which has published her article several times, they should change their name to “Tone Deaf”.

Read the article, My Choice, at https://www.aish.com/sp/so/My-Choice.html?.

Alice Lemos is a member of the Jewish Pro-Life Foundation board of directors, a staunch pro-lifer and activist, the mother of a marine veteran, and a cancer survivor. Contact Alice at alicelemos@jewishprolifefoundation.org.

This blog posting first appeared on the JPLF website and is being reprinted with the permission of the author.

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Pro-Life Champion: The Untold Story of Monsignor Philip J. Reilly and His Helpers of God's Precious Infants, by Frederick W. Marks

5/18/2021

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Stories, stories, stories. This is a book full of moving and delightful anecdotes as well as sober and moving thought.

If you will enter its world, you will learn new things. Dr. Marks gives here a picture of an extraordinary effort in the current culture of life. Like all good efforts, those in this book can seem to be beggars to those not open to truth, goodness and beauty—not their imitations—which are available free of charge.

The book’s many stories can draw you in. They come with keen insights into our daily life.

You will want to at least take a look at several things in the book that are worth the price paid of the time you spend reading them. I’m thinking first of all—at least for myself—of the help of Saint Anthony in getting Monsignor’s new idea for pro-life activity started (page 75)—an idea that would quite literally spread across the globe. Many of us have Saint Anthony stories. This one ranks right up there.

We are used to the false narratives and examples and conclusions put out by the pro-choice movement and its fellow travelers in media and government. We seldom see, in one place, the great refutations this book presents. We find here an encouragement and intelligence that can affect our own witness both in the movement and in daily life. Indeed, we will find things that we will want to add to our own daily conversations with family, friends and acquaintances.

A good place to see all of this is the chapter, “Marks of a Teacher” (pages 89-93). Marks (the author) tells us that “Cardinal Schönborn had it right when he told Bishop Daily that the Helpers “changed the face of Austria.”” And Marks adds, “Austria owes much of the change to a quality that I shall call “teacherliness,” for lack of a better word. It is one part communications skill, one part mastery of subject matter, and a third part appreciating the good qualities of one’s students. Monsignor qualifies on all counts.”

Monsignor gives us a compelling overview of how abortion took hold in the first place. The book also gives us a look at what Monsignor is trying to do to improve the quality of homilies. In his program, called “We Want To Teach, We Want To Be Taught,” he wants to replace the scripture review approach with a catechetical method.

The pro-choice movement is a compound of falsehoods, and it introduces these into its arguments, always substituting a different lie for the one that is being exposed. The ground keeps shifting. A good teacher—Monsignor Reilly—can keep the matter on track.

The book is, I think, a conscience-forming event. If you are an active pro-life person, I think this will encourage and improve what you do. And even if you have been a regular with Monsignor at vigils, I think you will find it a new benefit to have so much of Monsignor’s history in one place and in a continuous, memorable presentation. Whether you are a bishop or a beggar, I believe you will find yourself somewhere in the story.

This is a book we can go back to:

We can get a look at some of the history of New York that we may never have heard.
We learn who make the best shock troops in the movement.
The number of “turnarounds” at an abortion clinic is directly proportional to the number of persons in the praying group.
The three things that a woman will never learn from an abortionist.
Monsignor Reilly, who at one time was principal of Cathedral High School, became an unwelcome person there, because of the strong pro-life message he continually advanced.
How Monsignor was able to invigorate the pro-life movement after Operation Rescue began to run down.
Bishop Daily’s help in separating, as greatly more important, the pro-life movement from other issues, such as was being done by some of the clergy.
How Monsignor was able to successfully prevent the New York City Council in its attempts to deprive The Helpers of God’s Precious Infants of its First Amendment Rights.

As you read, you begin to see that because of the approach Monsignor takes, the stories frequently lead to what J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, called eucatastrophe—“the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears…”

For myself, this is something that can occur at a vigil in the presence of evil at an abortion clinic— the silent and powerful way goodness can seep into your soul—and into the souls of your fellow pray-ers and counselors. I think that if you would experience the wellsprings of hope, you may find them at Calvary, which is what Monsignor calls the abortion clinic.

Frank Drollinger

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Blessed Herman: Saint of the Unborn

5/14/2021

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Have you ever heard of Blessed Herman, known as the saint of the unborn? He came into the world with cerebral palsy and spina bifida in the eleventh century in southern Germany. At delivery, doctors gave him five years to live (five turned out to be forty-five).

If today’s parents knew of the ill health of such a child before birth, the poor fellow would likely be aborted, but Herman’s parents raised him for seven years, then turned him over to the Benedictine monks of Reichenaur Abbey where he was lovingly educated.

The monks did so much for him that he became one of the world’s most brilliant and accomplished men — the leading religious poet of his age, fluent in Arabic, Greek and Latin, an expert on every subject under the sun and a builder of musical and astronomical equipment. On top of this, he is the author of the beautiful prayer, “Hail Holy Queen.” But the most striking thing about him may be the fact that, throughout his life, he seemed so very happy and was always smiling. Though he could hardly walk or talk and went blind in his thirties, he never wanted anyone to feel sorry for him, believing that suffering is a gift from God. What an inspiration for the pro-life cause, what a reason to keep on praying, fasting, and demonstrating for an end to abortion!

Frederick Marks, author of Pro-Life Champion: The Untold Story of Monsignor Philip J. Reilly and His Helpers of God’s Precious Infants.

May 10, 2021
Forest Hills, New York

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Planned Parenthood Gets Woke – But Not Enough

5/13/2021

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The President and CEO of Planned Parenthood, Alexis McGill Johnson, has announced that “My group, Planned Parenthood, is done making excuses for Margaret Sanger” and some of its affiliates will change their names from “Margaret Sanger Center” to something less controversial. There is already a move in NYC to change the name of “Margaret Sanger Square” where one of the abortion mills (referred to in PP propaganda as a “health center”) is located (thanks to the largess of New York City’s radical council and Mayor Mike Bloomberg) to something more“palatable”.

Why would Ms. McGill, who is black, suddenly turn on the founder of PP? Perhaps it is because Sanger had addressed a KKK rally in New Jersey, favored the United States eugenics programs (which the Nazis eagerly emulated in Germany with deadly results) and referred to children with birth defects as “weeds in the garden” that needed to be plucked out. However, PP, the largest provider of abortions in the United States will continue to target women of color in the United States and abroad.

Ms. Johnson concentrates her ire on the “whiteness” of Margaret Sanger and leaves it up to the reader to decide whether she was a“racist”. The fact that black women account for a disproportionate number of abortions in PP clinics apparently is not proof enough of the racism of said organization to Ms.McGill. As part of an initiative of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York called “Reviving Radical”, Karen Seltzer, the chair at PPGNY, believes that removing Sanger’s name from buildings does justice enough to her racist and eugenicist legacy. It does not.

As part of the Reviving Radical agenda, PP intends to “divest from and dismantle white dominant organizational cultural norms and values” – written with no sense of irony since it is mostly single white men who are the most in favor of abortions as it enables them to behave irresponsibly towards their women and children. PP of Greater New York also wishes to “build accountable relationships with communities of color”. It might begin by apologizing for the breakdown of the black family and again, the disproportionate number of abortions done on black women. PP might try to own up to the idea that they push the propaganda that poor women don’t love their children and should not breed – which of course, is eugenicist. Using their logic, an entire generation would have been destroyed during the Great Depression. Their idea of correcting “racial injustice” is to rename a few buildings and keep doing what they are doing: destroying minority lives.

Alice Lemos

Blogger Alice Lemos is a member of the Jewish Pro-Life Foundation board of directors, a staunch pro-lifer and activist, the mother of a marine veteran, and a cancer survivor. Contact Alice at alicelemos@jewishprolifefoundation.org.

This blog posting first appeared on the JPLF website and is being reprinted with the permission of the author.

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Planned Parenthood: The Handmaiden of Sex Trafficking

2/11/2021

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No sane person (not that there are many left) – supports sex trafficking. The victim of trafficking may be the young woman – or man – sitting next to you on the subway or entering a house on your block. She may be in a bodega on Roosevelt Avenue or on Main Street in Flushing. The victims of trafficking who are sold from pimp to pimp and moved across state lines – and through other countries as well – live among us and are invisible unless there is an arrest in progress. And even then, frequently they are handed back to their abusers for further abuse as there is no one there to “vouch for them”.

Per Michelle Sterlace of Feminists Choosing Life, and Laura Lederer of the Global Centurion Foundation, approximately 71.2% of these victims become pregnant at least once; 21.2% become pregnant five times or more; 55.2% have had at least one abortion; 29.9% have had multiple abortions and over half of the women interviewed stated that the trafficker forced them to abort – mostly in Planned Parenthood which remains the largest abortion provider in the United States. Rather than report the forced abortions and the abuse of the victims – many of whom suffer from STD’s, drug addiction, alcoholism, severe depression and even old gunshot wounds – PP enables the pimps to continue with their nefarious trade. Sometimes these women are even murdered by their pimps, commit suicide or die from drug overdoses. Even when they are rescued, many of them suffer from depression for many years.

Pimps frequently fill them with Plan B or Depo Provera making it easier for the women to contract cancer and other diseases. When they go to emergency rooms because of botched abortions, frequently the doctors and nurses do not contact the police to report the abuse or the bad procedures, taking the word of the pimps that what happened was “just an accident” and that “she will be all right”. Sometimes the women abort in “homemade clinics” operated by relatives of the pimp.

Several years ago, Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe posed as a prostitute and a pimp, went to the offices of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) and asked if they could refer underage prostitutes from El Salvador for abortions! The ACORN staff stated that they could – another example of a non-profit willing to be involved in trafficking and forced abortions.

Lila Rose from Live Action has also caught Planned Parenthood employees in Perth Amboy, New Jersey telling a fake prostitute and pimp to have underaged girls lie about their age to avoid mandatory reporting laws! Yet PP continues to receive public funding and then United States Attorney General Eric Holder refused to prosecute PP. (Pregnant trafficked women, the victims of violence, cannot even seek redress in New York State thanks to New York’s Reproductive Health Act, if they are assaulted and lose the baby as there is no criminal penalty for the death of the unborn child.)

New York State if now likely to consider a bill which would decriminalize prostitution or “sex work” as it is euphemistically called. Who would benefit from this? Surely not the young women who are trafficked. The government would see this as a means to fill its coffers – not as a way to fix broken lives and hearts. What New York and other states need is vigorous prosecution of pimps and the customers as well as help for the victims and greater surveillance of abortion clinics, especially PP.

Alice Lemos

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Pro-Life Catholics

1/25/2021

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Now more than ever pro-life Catholics must stand firm in their belief.

In the recent past the Delaware State News trumpeted, "Biden Brings Solid Catholic Faith to the Presidency." The article stated how President Biden will work with Pope Francis on caring for the marginalized, address climate change, and welcome immigrants into our communities. It is an opportunity to promote the diversity of Catholic social teaching rather than seeing it through the preeminent singular lens of abortion.

All this talk of helping the marginalized is just empty rhetoric. Who are more marginalized than the innocents slaughtered?

As a Catholic, if the right to life starting at conception, a here and now issue -- the ending of millions of lives -- is not considered preeminent but merely an instance of "Catholic social teaching" subordinated to the above three quality of life issues, then the murder of over 60 million babies, and support and government funding of Planned Parenthood and abortion, up to and including birth, as Biden and Harris will allow, makes a mockery of the Catholic faith.

Madeleine Santangelo Palumbo

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Let Us Lift Up Our Hearts

1/15/2021

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With all the difficulties facing us as we embark upon the new year, it is well to remember something wonderful beyond imagining that occurred a few months ago. I am thinking of the nomination of pro-lifer Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court and her confirmation by a bitterly divided Senate.

This is oxygen for pro-life lungs. But the story doesn’t end here. Barrett is the first mother of young children ever to sit on the Court, and the size of her family speaks volumes. She and her husband have no less than seven children! Two of them were adopted, and the youngest of the biological brood has Down syndrome. Clearly they believe, as we do, that a child made in the image and likeness of God is something very special. They haven’t forgotten that God himself became a child!

The most remarkable part of the Barrett story may be simply stated. With four children under her wing and pregnant with a fifth, she was suddenly presented with the opportunity to undertake a second adoption. The decision was difficult given all that was already on her plate: a family and a professional life. She turned to prayer, and what is interesting is the place she chose for an important conversation with the Lord. She could have retired to her study, she could have gone to her bedroom, or even to a parish church where she might have knelt before the Blessed Sacrament. Instead, she opted for a cemetery where her feet would be firmly planted on the ground and her eyes fixed on the stars.

The Holy Spirit, hovering over the tombstones, swung immediately into action. She was soon reflecting not only on life’s difficulties, but also on how quickly life ends.

The outcome of the graveyard conversation is well known. She chose adoption, much as the Virgin Mary chose motherhood two thousand years ago when she gave her fiat to the angel Gabriel: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy will.” We are fortunate to have the gist of the message Barrett received from on high because she publicized it for all to hear: “If life’s really hard, at least it’s short . . . What greater thing can you do than raise children? That’s where you have the greatest impact on the world.”

Barrett’s selfless choice, along with her courageous testimony, invigorated the pro-life cause in 2020. May it embolden us this year as we continue to make the Lord smile with prayer, fasting, and loving witness to the truth.

Frederick W. Marks, January 15, 2021
Marks is the author of Pro-Life Champion: The Untold Story of Monsignor Philip J. Reilly and His Helpers of God’s Precious Infants.

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Those Without Voices Are the Least Protected

12/2/2020

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Dear Editor:

With all due respect I found your editorial to be sadly, representative of the confusing rhetoric coming from the very ones who should be, at this crucial time, speaking only the truth (“Why We Don’t Endorse Presidential Candidates,” Editorial, Oct. 31). Too many who identify as Catholics, do not know Church teaching.

I do not, nor ever will, understand the reluctance by those who have the ability to reach vast numbers of Catholics, to speak this truth. We are facing a very real threat, a threat that we have been warned about many times by Our Lady at Fatima. This election is not a time for any Catholic shepherd or journalist to be more concerned about “offending” someone, then speaking the truth to them. This election should not be a “difficult decision” for anyone who is a faithful Catholic.

To knowingly vote for a candidate or political party that is in favor of, or promotes the murder of the most innocent is a grievous sin. Those very same politicians believe that crushing a fully developed child’s skull in order to accommodate the convenience of its mother (who will carry the wounds of abortion forever in her heart) is acceptable. How could anyone actually believe that such a candidate, could possibly care about human life at any stage?

As Catholics, we are called to protect God’s Creation, from the moment of fertilization. We are called to protect the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman. This is not an opinion, this is the objective truth. We should be very skeptical of anyone, whether clergy or otherwise, who tells us differently. It is irresponsible for a publication that calls itself Catholic, to not clearly emphasize the differences in the candidates’ platforms, and which of those candidates would better protect our deeply held religious convictions as Catholics. We cite the numbers of deaths from this “pandemic,” yet the numbers of the unborn are 350,000 a year (that we know of).

The deaths of 20,000 elderly in nursing homes occured on the watch of New York’s Democratic governor. Those without voices are the least protected. May God have mercy on us.

Pamela Menera
Douglaston

Tablet Editor’s note: Based on reports from the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion organization, there were more than 800,000 abortions in the U.S. in 2019.

[Published in The Tablet, November 5, 2020.]

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Catholics Need to be Informed and Defend Life

10/22/2020

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Dear Editor:

God bless Father Michael W. Panicali (The Tablet, Oct. 3, 2020) for stating that a properly formed conscience can make the right determination and defend life by not voting for a pro-legalized abortion candidate. He also stated that it is "imperative that [the] Catholic hierarchy and media form consciences that place the defense of life and the eradication of legalized murder in its appropriately preeminent place."

All Catholics, lay and religious, should be obliged by their informed consciences to vote for the party that stands up for life and religious freedom. All Lives Matter from the womb to the tomb.

Father Panicali gave a wonderfully informative lecture on all Pro-Life issues including end-of-life (allowing assisted suicide) on May 5, 2019, at Holy Family Parish. This program was sponsored by the Joint Parish Respect Life Committee. I am on the board of the New York State Right to Life Committee, Inc.

Madeleine Santangelo-Palumbo
Sea Cliff, NY

Note: This letter was submitted to the editor of The Tablet but never published.

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No Masks for the Unborn

Note to AISH -- Please Don't Be Blasé About Abortion

Pro-Life Champion: The Untold Story of Monsignor Philip J. Reilly and His Helpers of God's Precious Infants, by Frederick W. Marks

Blessed Herman: Saint of the Unborn

Planned Parenthood Gets Woke – But Not Enough

Planned Parenthood: The Handmaiden of Sex Trafficking

Pro-Life Catholics

Let Us Lift Up Our Hearts

Those Without Voices Are the Least Protected

Catholics Need to be Informed and Defend Life

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