How to End Abortion

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pentecostbaby

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Here’s my proposition:

We all talk about how bad abortion is. McCain voters, Obama voters, supporters of third-party candidates - we all agree that abortion is wrong. All faithful Catholic agree that it needs to end*.

Most of us are willing to say a prayer once in a while. Some of us are willing to go out to Planned Parenthood with signs. Most of us are willing to condemn it by word.

So what else can we do?

The American civil rights movement - and its precursor, the Gandhi’s concepts of satyagraha, were based on the principles of nonviolent resistance. Basically, it’s a spiritual sense of refusing to be moved: sit-ins, marches, peaceful protests. Adherents are willing to go to jail. They do not answer back, like Christ, when met with vitriol, spitting, fire hoses, arrest. They stand in witness to their cause knowing that, in faith, eventually right will prevail. The two times it’s been tried, on a mass scale, it worked.

What if all we Catholics who talk are willing to sit unmoved? What if we just sit there - refusing entry to Planned Parenthood? They can’t arrest us all. They can teargas us all, but we can come back. Others can take our place when we are jailed. If we act in Christ’s example, if we do not answer back, if we answer only with love, through God’s grace, it can work.

Would you be willing to do it? This requires a willingness to sacrifice, despite your job and family. Can we do it?
  • note: if you disagree, please take your discussion to another thread.
 
Some would say your idea is too altruistic. However, those same people would fail to mention the failed past and existing strategies of supporting politicians and others who claim to be pro-life but turn around and support certain “exceptions”.

Your idea deserves serious consideration and at the same time deserves serious prayer for courage for each of us individually to participate.

To be effective it must be done in mass. Would I or many, many others reading this have the courage to participate? In a small group, sadly, probably not. As part of a large group, perhaps yes.

There would also need to be a strong leader to build consensus. Prayer is the key. If we all prayed as we should then next week God would send us that leader. Keep praying and your idea will come to fruition.

Your idea is a good one and would certainly be more effective than what has been so far.
 
pentecostbaby said:
Here’s my proposition:

We all talk about how bad abortion is. McCain voters, Obama voters, supporters of third-party candidates - we all agree that abortion is wrong. All faithful Catholic agree that it needs to end*.

Most of us are willing to say a prayer once in a while. Some of us are willing to go out to Planned Parenthood with signs. Most of us are willing to condemn it by word.

So what else can we do?

The American civil rights movement - and its precursor, the Gandhi’s concepts of satyagraha, were based on the principles of nonviolent resistance. Basically, it’s a spiritual sense of refusing to be moved: sit-ins, marches, peaceful protests. Adherents are willing to go to jail. They do not answer back, like Christ, when met with vitriol, spitting, fire hoses, arrest. They stand in witness to their cause knowing that, in faith, eventually right will prevail. The two times it’s been tried, on a mass scale, it worked.

What if all we Catholics who talk are willing to sit unmoved? What if we just sit there - refusing entry to Planned Parenthood? They can’t arrest us all. They can teargas us all, but we can come back. Others can take our place when we are jailed. If we act in Christ’s example, if we do not answer back, if we answer only with love, through God’s grace, it can work.

Would you be willing to do it? This requires a willingness to sacrifice, despite your job and family. Can we do it?
  • note: if you disagree, please take your discussion to another thread.
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You know, California had the chance to speak against abortion, and we failed. We passed Proposition 4. And yet, I have not heard one person speak against it. It’s as if Catholic Christians have thrown up their hands in despair and given up the fight. It is as if the proposition has destroyed charity in the hearts of many.

I have yet to see a proposition to undo the damage Proposition 4 has done. I want to make such a proposition, but I don’t know where to start, and I don’t have a lot of money to do it. Still, I trust in God - He provides for those who do His Will. Glory be to God!

And it is our task, as Catholic Christians and as human beings, to pray and make sacrifices, and offer up everything for love of Jesus and for the conversion of sinners, that we might proclaim the gospel and spread the Kingdom of God, starting in our own hearts - through God, with God, and in God.
 
pentecostbaby said:
Here’s my proposition:

We all talk about how bad abortion is. McCain voters, Obama voters, supporters of third-party candidates - we all agree that abortion is wrong. All faithful Catholic agree that it needs to end*.

Most of us are willing to say a prayer once in a while. Some of us are willing to go out to Planned Parenthood with signs. Most of us are willing to condemn it by word.

So what else can we do?

The American civil rights movement - and its precursor, the Gandhi’s concepts of satyagraha, were based on the principles of nonviolent resistance. Basically, it’s a spiritual sense of refusing to be moved: sit-ins, marches, peaceful protests. Adherents are willing to go to jail. They do not answer back, like Christ, when met with vitriol, spitting, fire hoses, arrest. They stand in witness to their cause knowing that, in faith, eventually right will prevail. The two times it’s been tried, on a mass scale, it worked.

What if all we Catholics who talk are willing to sit unmoved? What if we just sit there - refusing entry to Planned Parenthood? They can’t arrest us all. They can teargas us all, but we can come back. Others can take our place when we are jailed. If we act in Christ’s example, if we do not answer back, if we answer only with love, through God’s grace, it can work.

Would you be willing to do it? This requires a willingness to sacrifice, despite your job and family. Can we do it?
  • note: if you disagree, please take your discussion to another thread.
Click to expand...
In theory it would work. The problem is that most Catholics would not go the distance. In fact I believe that more Catholics voted for the pro death candidate than the pro life one. I see it as a hard sell convincing those voters to go to jail to eliminate abortion.
 
Maybe 40 Days for Life will come to that. It seems to be building momentum.

I would like to know how the Civil rights movement people did it. What if you were a single parent with young children to support – I don’t recall that those people went to jail. Thats basically what would stop me - I’m the sole support of my family.
 
No, honestly, if enough people of faith (I know that there are evangelicals and others who would join this cause, so I purposely don’t just say Catholics), they can’t arrest us all. They didn’t arrest everyone at the Civil Rights rallies.

If they teargas me, I’ll come back the next day. I’m sure others would feel the same way. That would make me more stubborn, in fact 🙂 - and teargas is pretty bad, but it’s not getting beaten.

And if enough people joined in, it could work. We would just have to have a movement to sacrifice. People long to be called to sacrifice! They just haven’t been properly called - they just haven’t seen a real chance.

Some people, obviously, can’t be on the front lines - sole supporters of families were mentioned. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be there, or can’t be there to help. We would need a massive support structure (not just prayer, either, though prayer would certainly be most important) for this to work. Surely, they could and would be part of it.

I want to reiterate my question, though: would each person reading this consider it? If enough people were there - could you be brave enough?
 
I agree that something more drastic must be done… You can draw a very close analogy between we Catholics who fail to actively act against abortion and Germans who knew about the Holocaust but did nothing to stop it.

And I think there may be a key reason why neither we nor those Germans do/did anything: there’s no leadership. I think something of this type would have to be sparked and led by a particularly charismatic bishop, or maybe a priest. My faith in American bishops isn’t particularly strong, however, so I worry that there may not be ordained leadership for this cause. Maybe a lay movement? 🤷
 
OnlyAmbrose said:
Maybe a lay movement? 🤷
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Don’t ever shrug when someone’s life depends on you. Stand - face forward with your heart in God.

I’m not sure brute strength and numbers is the answer…not yet anyway. Does anyone have any idea how much money it would take to saturate the media with ads like this?
youtube.com/watch?v=V2CaBR3z85c
The answer could be as simple as Catholics putting out money. When I think of all the money that was wasted on various legal cases in recent years I cringe. What if a Catholic lay movement collected money that supersedes any ever given to the Catholic coffer? This money could be poured directly into a Catholic media giant. EWTN is a ground breaker for this sort of event. CAF isnt’ too shabby either. Look at the possibilities.
 
Furthermore, surely you all have noticed the shift in the way Americans get their news feeds these days. It is rarely from the ol’ black and white printed paper left on your doorstep. I happen to still get the daily metro paper but I’ll tell ya’ it is looking skinnier and skinnier these days. It is just enough to cover the bird cage floor each day. Recently the whole newspaper staff was required to take a week off from work. The advertisers in the papers are getting fewer and fewer as well. While it is true that these are bad economic times and even the media isn’t free from the dregs, we are still living in a new age of communication.
In the beginning was the Word. John l:1
And after that there have been nearly countless letters of communiqué from nearly countless saints throughout the ages.

We need to pray that someone steps forward and communicates in the way God wants to be heard by using modern tools of the trade.
 
Also - consider this.
We can view those familiar little ads everywhere - those ads depicting a flabby belly before and after picture. YOU know - the ads that promote weight loss with a lousy little acai berry and colon cleanser.
Why can’t we have pro-life ads everywhere on the internet?
 
I don’t mind talking to myself :o - really.
  1. Time Warner Inc.
  2. Walt Disney Company
  3. Viacom Inc.
  4. News Corporation
  5. CBS Corporation
  6. Cox Enterprises
  7. NBC Universal
  8. Gannett Company, Inc.
  9. Clear Channel Communications Inc.
  10. Advance Publications, Inc.
  11. Tribune Company
  12. McGraw-Hill Companies
  13. Hearst Corporation
  14. Washington Post Company
  15. The New York Times Company
  16. E.W. Scripps Co.
  17. McClatchy Company
  18. Thomson Corporation
  19. Freedom Communications, Inc.
  20. A&E Television Networks
This list shows the giants in the media world.

Remember the story of David and Goliath? It didn’t take brute strength for David to whip Goliath. And remember that is was in the softness of long hair that Samson found his.

Check out this addition to youtube : youtube.com/vatican
 
A couple years ago I read of a group that rented some office space next door to or in the same building where an abortion mill was located. The strategy was this: offer Mass in that office at least once every day and staff it with volunteers throughout the day who would come in shifts to pray constantly throughout the day. By following that strategy religiously I believe the abortion mill shut down in six or nine months.

Does anybody remember reading of that? I don’t recall where it was except that it was in the middle part of the country somewhere.
 
dcrowmik said:
A couple years ago I read of a group that rented some office space next door to or in the same building where an abortion mill was located. The strategy was this: offer Mass in that office at least once every day and staff it with volunteers throughout the day who would come in shifts to pray constantly throughout the day. By following that strategy religiously I believe the abortion mill shut down in six or nine months.

Does anybody remember reading of that? I don’t recall where it was except that it was in the middle part of the country somewhere.
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I heard of that.

There have been many Eucharistic miracles throughout history.

How often is money brought to Planned Parenthood?
How often is the Eucharist brought to abortion mills?
 
Prayer is good. I love the rented space concept. And ads all over the Web and billboards would be cool, too. A huge sloganwear fashion drive would help; does anyone have a connection in the sportswear trade, someone who knows a designer? They need to be on runways. A kids’ cartoon. More movies, of course. Documentaries. A documentary festival can be fourwalled anywhere space is cheap.
 
survive said:
Prayer is good. I love the rented space concept. And ads all over the Web and billboards would be cool, too. A huge sloganwear fashion drive would help; does anyone have a connection in the sportswear trade, someone who knows a designer? They need to be on runways. A kids’ cartoon. More movies, of course. Documentaries. A documentary festival can be fourwalled anywhere space is cheap.
Click to expand...
I like the rented space idea.
The sloganwear fashion drive idea is good. Five years ago my children ( then - in their senior year of highschool) wore pro-life t-shirts on a designated day. A sprinkling of students actually wore them. My children wore them and did not understand why one student was pointed out for punishment. That one student was told to remove her shirt or face detention or something like that. I don’t remember if she removed her shirt. My kids wore their shirts the full day. We should all wear the pro-life slogan everyday!
 
Early in the morning of April 6, after prayers, he went to the beach and picked up a little lump of salt left by the waves. This simple act was immediately followed by a nation-wide defiance of the law. Men and women, simple villagers and sophisticated city folk, marched in thousands to invite arrest, police lathi charges and even shooting in many cases. Gandhi himself was arrested on May 4, soon after midnight. Within a few weeks about a hundred thousand men and women were in jail, throwing mighty machinery of the British Government out of gear.
Click to expand...
source

A hundred thousand is a big number.
 
pentecostbaby said:
Here’s my proposition:

We all talk about how bad abortion is. McCain voters, Obama voters, supporters of third-party candidates - we all agree that abortion is wrong. All faithful Catholic agree that it needs to end*.

Most of us are willing to say a prayer once in a while. Some of us are willing to go out to Planned Parenthood with signs. Most of us are willing to condemn it by word.

So what else can we do?

The American civil rights movement - and its precursor, the Gandhi’s concepts of satyagraha, were based on the principles of nonviolent resistance. Basically, it’s a spiritual sense of refusing to be moved: sit-ins, marches, peaceful protests. Adherents are willing to go to jail. They do not answer back, like Christ, when met with vitriol, spitting, fire hoses, arrest. They stand in witness to their cause knowing that, in faith, eventually right will prevail. The two times it’s been tried, on a mass scale, it worked.

What if all we Catholics who talk are willing to sit unmoved? What if we just sit there - refusing entry to Planned Parenthood? They can’t arrest us all. They can teargas us all, but we can come back. Others can take our place when we are jailed. If we act in Christ’s example, if we do not answer back, if we answer only with love, through God’s grace, it can work.

Would you be willing to do it? This requires a willingness to sacrifice, despite your job and family. Can we do it?
  • note: if you disagree, please take your discussion to another thread.
Click to expand...
Being that 54% of catholics put tax cuts ahead of the unborn I doubt if you will have much sucess with this.
 
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