MADISON — From now until Sunday, Nov. 2, for 24 hours a day, at least two people at a time will be praying for an end to abortion in Madison.
The annual 40 Days for Life campaign kicked off on Wednesday, Sept. 24. The campaign has a vision to access God’s power through prayer, fasting, and peaceful vigil to end abortion.
On February 25 of this year, the Madison city council passed a new ordinance requiring a 160-foot “buffer zone” around any healthcare clinic in the city.
A modified version of the ordinance was passed in March, narrowing the zone to 100 feet from a medical facility’s entrance and 30 feet from its driveway.
This ordinance was proposed primarily in response to the presence of pro-life “sidewalk counselors” who have kept up a regular presence outside the Planned Parenthood Clinic on Madison’s east side for 10 years.
The Madison ordinance could now be in jeopardy after the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling on June 26 that struck down buffer zones at abortion clinics. The Supreme Court decision reversed an appellate court decision upholding a 2007 Massachusetts law that made it a crime for anyone other than clinic workers to stand within 35 feet from the entrances of Planned Parenthood clinics in Boston, Springfield, and Worcester, Mass.
MADISON — After traveling 40,000 miles through 24 European nations, the icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa, already viewed by millions and venerated by hundreds of thousands of Christians, landed on the shores of America in August 2013 for the next leg of an historic pilgrimage in the movement to build a Culture of Life.
The Black Madonna, a replica of the original in Jasna Gora Monastery in Poland, was received at a ceremony on Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013, on St. Clement’s Island, Md. — the exact site of the first landing of Catholic pilgrims in the American British colonies of the 17th century. Tradition holds that the original icon of the Black Madonna was painted by St. Luke on a cypress table used by the Holy Family.
The Human Life International-sponsored “Ocean to Ocean Pilgrimage in Defense of Life” will visit Madison on Thursday, June 19, 2014. The Black Madonna will be on the sidewalk outside of Planned Parenthood on Orin Rd. for a 3 p.m. prayer vigil, and at 7 p.m., there will be Mass with Fr. Peter West of Human Life International as celebrant at Immaculate Heart of Mary, Monona.
Details and a short video about the pilgrimage can be found at www.hli.org/oceantoocean
Last fall, a couple leaving the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Madison stopped at the driveway to tell the sidewalk counselor with Vigil for Life that they were going to keep their baby.
Vigil for Life volunteers didn’t know if this couple had come to the clinic for a pregnancy test or for an appointment for an abortion. In any case, these parents chose life for their baby.
In an email named “Baby Saved,” sent to volunteers after that incident, Bette Weisshaar, then director of Vigil for Life-Madison, said, “That’s why we’re out there — to pray for a change of heart, for God’s graces to show them a way other than abortion. Our prayers on the sidewalk are offered for parents, that they will choose life for their babies . . . and that’s exactly what happened today! Praise God!”
To the editor:
Personhood is the fundamental civil rights issue of our time. The pro-life movement is founded on the bedrock principle that all human beings, at all stages of development, deserve full protection under the law.
Our nation’s history of civil rights progress has been fueled by this principle. But one injustice remains: the legal discrimination against pre-born babies, who can be freely mutilated and killed throughout all nine months of pregnancy.
The Wisconsin Personhood campaign seeks to pass an amendment to the state constitution legally recognizing that all preborn human beings are “persons” whose unalienable right to life is protected by the state.
Private foundations and non-profit groups are frequently involved in advocating for particular causes, ranging from cancer research to protecting the environment. Some of these foundations rely almost exclusively on charitable donations to carry out their promotional work.
Potential donors seeking to support these causes face the challenge of exercising “due diligence,” so that their funds are properly utilized and not misdirected or otherwise targeted by the organization to support immoral projects.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, “I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child — a direct killing of the innocent child — murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”
The world was shocked to learn that hundreds of people — many of them women and children — were killed in Syria on August 21 reportedly by the use of sarin gas. In the past two years, it has been reported that over 70,000 people have been killed in Syria’s civil war — and that might be an underestimate.
However, in comparison, there have been over 56 million unborn babies killed in the United States by induced abortions since 1973, when the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in this country.
So far in 2013, there have been over 828,000 abortions performed in the U.S., including almost 44,000 after 16 weeks of gestation (www.numberofabortions.com). According to the Guttmacher Institute’s report as of July 2013, about four in 10 pregnancies have been terminated by abortion in our country.
MADISON — Since it opened in January of 2012, the Women’s Care Center-Madison (WCCM) has affected the lives of over 435 families, including at least 50 who had a change of heart and chose life for their baby.
WCCM is located at 3711 Orin Rd. on Madison’s east side, right across the street from the Planned Parenthood abortion facility. A dedicated group of volunteers purchased the property for the WCCM, hoping to provide an alternative for those seeking an abortion.
MADISON — A federal judge in Madison has extended a preliminary injunction blocking part of a new Wisconsin law, Wisconsin Act 37, that requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of an abortion clinic.
The order, issued August 2 by U.S. District Judge William Conley, stems from a lawsuit that Planned Parenthood and Affiliated Medical Services filed last month. The groups claim the law would shut two of the state’s four abortion clinics because providers at those facilities, in Appleton and Milwaukee, lack admitting privileges.
Conley issued a temporary restraining order July 8. This injunction blocks the requirement through a trial about the law’s constitutionality, which is set to begin November 25. Until Conley’s final ruling, the two clinics currently without admitting privileges can remain open.
MADISON — Madison-based Vigil for Life has reported a dramatic increase in the number of babies saved from abortion at the local Planned Parenthood over the last few months.
The organization has held a public vigil to end abortion in front of Planned Parenthood every business day since January of 2011.
