HeadlineBistro

Friday's must-read, and some lessons in the news

A must-read for your Friday would be Michele Nuzzo-Naglieri’s interview with Father Noel Gorgis, a Chaldean priest from Iraq who – a former soldier under Saddam Hussein’s regime – now leads a swelling parish of Iraqi Catholics in North Hollywood, California.

Conscription into Saddam’s army was mandatory when Father Gorgis finished seminary at the age of 22 – and there were no special privileges for a Catholic priest.

“Every day I kept fulfilling my duties and all that was expected of me but had difficulty accepting it,” he told Michele. “After the (Gulf War), I escaped the western desert and took refuge in a northern monastery. From there, I fled to Turkey because I felt strongly that fighting was not the answer.”

Super Bowl controversy

Tim Tebow may be the greatest college football player in history. Known for his rare combination of size, speed and strength, he quarterbacked the University of Florida to two national championships and won the 2007 Heisman Trophy. However, Tebow is making headlines this week not for his on-field prowess but for his public stance on abortion.

On Feb. 7, when tens of millions gather to watch Super Bowl XLIV , Tim Tebow will appear in a 30 second commercial sharing his personal testimony on the beauty of choosing life. CBS’s decision to air the commercial has led to an outcry by abortion supporters, but also provides further proof that the culture of life is penetrating the mass media.

Just last year NBC rejected a pro-life Super Bowl ad submitted by the Catholic organization CatholicVote.org. The commercial, which featured powerful images of a baby in the womb and ended with the message, “Life: Imagine the Potential” (in this case, the child growing up to be President Obama) was seen by millions on YouTube. Nonetheless, it was denied the national stage of the Super Bowl.

This year, however, CBS has broadcasting rights to the most watched program of the year, and they have revised their policy on advocacy ads, agreeing to air the inspirational story of Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam.

In 1987 Pam and her husband were serving as missionaries in the Philippines and praying for a fifth child.  Their prayers were answered when she became pregnant, but soon afterwards Pam contracted a dangerous intestinal infection endangering her pregnancy. Her doctors warned that the medications she needed were likely to cause severe deformities in her child. They advised an abortion. Citing her Christian faith, she refused. Pam nearly lost her baby on four different occasions during the turbulent pregnancy and spent the last two months before childbirth bedridden.  She nonetheless refused to reconsider the doctor’s advice.

In those difficult moments, she and her husband made a pledge to God: “If you will give us a son, we’ll name him ‘Timothy,’ and we’ll make him a preacher.”  In August, 1987, she gave birth to Tim – who, as evidenced by his rocket arm, square jawed good looks and body-builder’s physique, is anything but deformed. He is also a preacher, albeit a unique one. He routinely wears eye black that references Bible verses and has stated publicly that his is saving himself for marriage. The Bible verses on his eye black are the most often searched item on Google following a Florida Gator game. And on Super Bowl Sunday he will share with the world why he is thankful his mother chose life. That decision is angering many pro-abortion organizations, who are lobbying CBS to pull the spot.

A statement issued by the National Organization for Women (Now) said, “We…believe that this ad could potentially put women's health and lives at risk by promoting ideology over medicine.” NOW President Terry O’Neil called the planned ad “extraordinarily offensive and demeaning.”

The New York-based Women’s Media Center has launched a petition effort to have the ad removed from the Super Bowl lineup.  They are calling the Tebow commercial an “attack on choice” and an attempt to “dictate morality.”

Focus on the Family, the evangelical organization sponsoring the ad, defended their role.

“We understand that some people don’t think very highly of what we do,'” Gary Schneeberger, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, told the Associated Press. “We’re not trying to sell you a soft drink ... We’re trying to celebrate families.”

Dr. Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission accused NOW of directing “venom and hatred” at Tim Tebow, his mother and Focus on the Family.

“This backlash exposes the irrational hatred of NOW who apparently despises any hint of a positive Christian message. CBS is to be commended for their willingness to not censor a wonderful story of a mother’s courage and love,” Cass said.

When the media uproar over the ad commenced this week, Tebow was asked how the controversy might affect his standing in the upcoming NFL draft.

He said, “A team that doesn’t want that shouldn’t take me. Pro-life is very important to me. My mother listened to God late in her pregnancy, and if she had listened to others and terminated me, obviously I wouldn’t be here. If others don’t have the same belief, it’s OK. I understand. But I hope they respect that at least I have the courage to stand up for what I believe in.”

In her excellent CBS News blog, Joan Crawford exposes the hypocrisy behind the opposition to the Tebow ad. She points out all the gore, violent and sexually suggestive images that pervades prime time television and concludes that: “there’s no outrage over these ads that glorify death and violence, that depict women brutalized by crazed psychopaths on the run. No uproar. That’s reserved, instead, for ads that ‘Celebrate Life,’ while images of guts and gore continue to seep into our living rooms without protest.

Likewise, Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America observes that NOW has never protested “sexually graphic or misogynistic” content on CBS.

It’s ironic that those who celebrate “choice” above all else object to Pam Tebow’s celebration of her choice of life. It’s doubly ironic when controversy surrounds a family friendly ad – and not any number of questionable programs or commercials circulating TV airwaves.

However, what is starkly real is the fact that since 1973 nearly 50 million babies have been aborted legally in the United States. That is a number larger than the population of 200 countries. Abortion has stripped our nation of unknown numbers of great men and women – and their achievements. Florida Gators fans cannot imagine Saturday afternoons the past three years without the exploits of Tim Tebow. On Super Bowl Sunday, when a projected audience of 150 million watches Pam and Tim Tebow share their beautiful story of faith, hope and life, one can only hope that all Americans will imagine the great potential of human life.

-- David Naglieri

The Pope's Call to Webangelize

As per tradition, Pope Benedict released his message for the upcoming 44th World Communications Day on the eve of the Feast of Saint Francis de Sales. Building on his message from the previous year where he encouraged communications leaders to promote a culture of respect in the digital world, the Holy Father is now urging the clergy, in particular, to discover new possibilities for carrying out their ministry to and for the Word of God in the digital world. In other words, “go forth and blog” as headlines so aptly summarized.

Coinciding with the Year for Priests, the theme of this year’s World Communications Day is The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word.  Focusing on the urgency and challenge of making known the person and message of Jesus Christ amid today’s cultural shifts, the Holy Father stressed that this mission of the priest “necessarily involves using new communications technologies.” He adds:

Priests stand at the threshold of a new era: as new technologies create deeper forms of relationship across greater distances, they are called to respond pastorally … by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis.

In his message, the Pope also explains that it isn’t sufficient for priests to simply be ‘present’ on the web but to use it to exercise their proper role as leaders of communities that express themselves using the different means provided by the digital marketplace. Before concluding, he added an important reminder:

Priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart, their closeness to Christ. This will not only enliven their pastoral outreach, but also will give a “soul” to the fabric of communications that makes up the “Web”… God’s loving care for all people in Christ must be expressed in the digital world not simply as an artifact from the past, or a learned theory, but as something concrete, present and engaging. Our pastoral presence in that world must thus serve to show our contemporaries, especially the many people in our day who experience uncertainty and confusion, that God is near; that in Christ we all belong to one another.

Having already come across a number of multimedia projects , blogs and podcast launched by internet savvy priests in the last few years, it’s exciting to think of an explosion of ‘priestly online presence’ that could incur from the pope’s call to cyber action. Among the notable church prelates who have already begun to ‘lead the digital way’ is Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley OFM, Archbishop of Boston who was one of the first Cardinal’s to enter the blogosphere in order to reach the young church. In a 2007 episode of Catholic Focus (appropriately available in webcast format), Cardinal O’Malley explained that his Cardinal Seán’s Blog began with a trip he took to Rome during the feast of Padre Pio, an occasion for which his staff suggested he log his trip online for all to see. Once he learned that there were so many people tuning into the blog from the archdiocese and far beyond, he decided that it was important to keep it going: 

So many young people are on the internet and it’s the way that they communicate. Going around to the different schools and universities, everywhere I go students come up to me and say: “I read your blog, I like the blog” … I’m often touched by the faith of the people who communicate to us through the internet, through the blog. Many of them are truly searching for God. Reflections on the life of the church have at times been helpful to people to reconnect with the church community so I’m very grateful for that opportunity.

Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria is another prelate whose made himself accessible to the world via his podcast Arinze – Podcasting with a Vatican Official facilitated by the Disciples with Microphones network. He takes advantage of this tool (along with youtube webcasts) to teach the social doctrine of the church in small palatable doses. From breaking down the teachings of Papal encyclicals to helping us understand God’s will for our lives, Cardinal Arinze has captured audiences worldwide.

Sacred Space, a production of the Irish Jesuits that offers its readers daily spiritual reflections, receives around 500,000 worldwide visits a day and remains one of the most visited websites in Ireland. Many priests have followed suit and begun using a similar medium to convey their Sunday homilies or the latest news from their dioceses. Among the most popular are Word on Fire with Father Robert Barron of Chicago, which offers a 20 minute webcast reflection on the Sunday readings, Witness, also a webcast where Father Thomas Rosica, CSB of Toronto hosts a series of in-depth interviews with distinguished Church leaders (in addition to providing weekly scripture teachings on the Salt+Light Blog) and of course Busted Halo, an initiative of the Paulist brothers aimed at youth who are searching.

In the realm of radio podcasts with a wider reach, NPR is among those that offer a place of dialogue for people from all walks of life. On its This I Believe site, individuals are invited to share with listeners the personal philosophies and core values that guide their daily lives. In a similar way, Provoke Radio, by the Jesuits of Baltimore, invites ecumenical discussions on issues of social justice.

As the Pope’s invitation will begin to inspire the imaginations of many more of our pastors in the faith, there’s no reason to doubt that we’ll be tapping into more and more podcasts, blogs, webcasts and even tweets in order to find daily moments of prayer, spiritual insights and catholic perspectives on the contemporary issues and challenges of our time. After all, as Cardinal O’Malley once said: “I’m sure that if Saint Paul were alive today, he too would have a blog.”

Michèle Nuzzo-Naglieri

From Good Friday to Easter Sunday in Haiti

Archbishop Timothy Dolan, freshly returned from participating in the funeral Mass of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, spoke with reporters about his two-day visit to the country. As chairman of Catholic Relief Services' Board of directors, Archbishop Dolan was representing the American bishops at the request of the Church in Haiti.

Archbishop Dolan first took time to express his admiration for the Catholic workers present in the country. Far from being solely outside specialists and missionaries, “the good chunk of those over 300 Catholic relief workers are not Americans but Haitians, because that’s part of the genius of Catholic relief services, that we tap into the industry, strength, competence, the generosity of the local people,” he said. Many of these workers have lost their own homes and possession.

The Catholic Church in Haiti was dealt a severe blow, with not only Miot of Port-au-Prince perishing, but many priests and seminarians, according to the Catholic News Service. Archbishop Jose H. Gomez  of San Antonio, head of the USCCB Subcommittee on the Church in Latin America, detailed some of the tragic setbacks for the Church, including the destruction of major cathedrals in Port-au-Prince and Jacmel. Five other churches and two major seminaries were destroyed, as well as convents and some Catholic schools.

As for his own assessment of the situation on the ground for the Haitian people, Archbishop Dolan said he had experienced “profoundly, the sorrow, the darkness, tragedy, and death of Good Friday, and, the beginnings of the light, the radiance, the hope of Easter Sunday. My experience has been a bit of both.”  

Archbishop Dolan also described praying over the collapsed wreckage of a neonatal unit with grieving mothers.

As for signs of hope, the archbishop said he was touched by the great generosity of the American people, as well as the American military personnel. He noted in particular “the professionalism and downright tenderness of the American troops” distributing goods and protecting refugees. The New York Times has some excellent video of the Navy hospital ship the U.S.N.S. Comfort and its efforts to provide emergency medical help to Haitians, despite diplomatic hurdles with the Haitian government.

Slowly, Haiti is rising again. Banks have reopened. The larger supermarkets have begun to sell food again, and even cell phones stores are back in business as people try to reconnect with one another. Nails, generators, flashlights, (and of course alcohol) are in high demand as the country continues to rebuild, in many cases, from the ground up.

Archbishop Dolan pleaded for all Americans to remain generous and focused on the people of Haiti as the story will eventually fade from the limelight.

So what will happen going forward, when the cameras leave, when the front pages return to health care coverage or the next big story, and the Anderson Coopers of the media have no more children to carry heroically through the streets?

Catholic Relief Services, as it has been doing since the 1950s when no one was looking, will continue its work in the largely Catholic country.

Obviously, an international effort will coalesce to resuscitate Haiti, and this has already been a source of controversy.

A donor conference occurred Monday in Montreal, with representatives from the EU and the U.S., including Secretary of State Clinton and 14 donor nations. An initial proposal set out a 10-year, $3 billion rebuilding plan. Many world leaders, Secretary Clinton included, urged caution, especially in light of what many viewed as the wasted efforts at foreign aid into Haiti in the past, a country which remains one of the poorest in the world. A formal needs-assessment will be commenced in the coming weeks by members of the World Bank, U.N., and Inter-American development bank, which will help shape the international response.

One can only hope that the assessment will be more nuanced than simply pinpointing the right dollar amount, but will instead focus on rebuilding the institutions of the society that will foster economic independence and prosperity, as well as government accountability. 

For some, the history of foreign aid has been fraught with misplaced incentives and corruption. Bret Stephens of the Wall St. Journal discusses some of the factors behind the complicated calculus of foreign aid in a piece on January 19th. He notes that:

For actual Haitians, however, just about every conceivable aid scheme beyond immediate humanitarian relief will lead to more poverty, more corruption and less institutional capacity. It will benefit the well-connected at the expense of the truly needy, divert resources from where they are needed most, and crowd out local enterprise. And it will foster the very culture of dependence the country so desperately needs to break.

 Debates over the shape of foreign aid however, can afford to wait. As Fr. Robert Sirico noted in a piece for the National Review, concerns over foreign aid are a bit premature with condition on the ground as they are, but at some point that serious debate over exactly what foreign aid is doing needs to occur:

We are a very long way from that, and this catastrophe has set Haiti back even further. However, this is an opportunity to build a society that is prosperous, industrious, virtuous, and free. The unromantic truth is that charity does not really ameliorate poverty. Rather, it provides a necessary and temporary fix for an unusual problem. What Haiti needs are the institutions that provide protection and cushioning in cases of emergency. Most of all, it needs to develop economically.

Right now, what is needed is emergency relief and prayer. As Haitian Bishop Pierre-Andre Dumas said this week in an article from Zenit:  

At the moment it's all about the emergency, but one day the questions will be about reconstruction. That doesn't mean rebuilding things as they were before; instead we have a chance to build a better Haiti in which people are at the heart of everything.

 

Paul Ciarcia

Photos Courtesy Catholic News Service

Newsweek gets it wrong

A Newsweek blog post has been getting hammered over the weekend for a rather desultory journalistic attempt to describe last Friday’s March for Life and the pro-life movement at large.

“Who’s missing at the ‘Roe v. Wade’ anniversary demonstrations? Young women,” Newsweek reporter Krista Gesaman posted in the site’s politics blog, The Gaggle ... five hours before the March commenced.

Most puzzling is Gesaman’s reliance for her thesis on the quote of one officer in the District police department’s planning unit:

“The organizers are getting older, and it’s more difficult for them to walk a long distance,” says Stanley Radzilowski, an officer in the planning unit for the Washington, D.C., police department. A majority of the participants are in their 60s and were the original pioneers either for or against the case, he says.

So this raises the question: where are the young, vibrant women supporting their pro-life or pro-choice positions? Likely, they’re at home.

Ironically, Gesaman’s assertion came the same day we released poll data showing that nearly six in 10 young Americans believe abortion to be morally wrong.

Either both Gesaman and her source at the police department have never been to the March for Life, or Newsweek just won itself the 2010 prize for most patently biased and untrue reporting on the event – and that’s beating out a long list of other nominations, as Stephen Greydanus bemoans at the National Catholic Register.

After all, when it comes to the March’s demographics – and judging whether or not, indeed, young women are staying home – the images speak for themselves. As nearly every contributor to the growing list of comments on Gesaman’s post notes incredulously, no one who witnesses the March – regardless of their position on abortion – can escape the fact that the crowd is overwhelmingly made up of youth and young adults.

But perhaps the best response to Gesaman’s reporting – and her condescending description of pro-life leaders, for whom the supposed complacency of modern young women “might be hard ... to understand” – comes from a Washington Post columnist who actually did attend the March for Life and witness the demographics in question.

Written from the viewpoint of a Roe v. Wade support, the column is a must-read in its entirety:

I went to the March for Life rally Friday on the Mall expecting to write about its irrelevance. Isn't it quaint, I thought, that these abortion protesters show up each year on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, even though the decision still stands after 37 years. What's more, with a Democrat in the White House likely to appoint justices who support abortion rights, surely the Supreme Court isn't going to overturn Roe in the foreseeable future.

How wrong I was. The antiabortion movement feels it's gaining strength, even if it's not yet ready to predict ultimate triumph, and Roe supporters (including me) are justifiably nervous.

“... I was especially struck by the large number of young people among the tens of thousands at the march,” Robert McCartney writes. “It suggests that the battle over abortion will endure for a long time to come.”

Does complacency exist in regards to the abortion issue? Yes, McCartney writes – but on the other side.

“Activists who support abortion rights conceded that there’s less energy among young people on their side of the debate,” McCartney reports, going on to quote 20-year-old Amanda Pelletier, co-director of the abortion rights group at American University.

“Unfortunately, I feel my generation is a little complacent,” Pelletier said. “It just doesn’t seem to be a very hip issue.”

Pelletier, McCartney notes, was one of the fewer than 100 protesters in support of Roe v. Wade who turned out in front of the Supreme Court that day.

McCartney’s insights plow Gesaman’s assumptions into the ground. The abortion issue is losing relevance for young women today, the Newsweek post suggests. The emotional arguments that propelled Roe v. Wade belonged to an earlier generation. McCartney, on the other hand, describes an encounter with a female, Catholic youth minister in Pennsylvania whose mother underwent an abortion prior to having her. She still “can’t listen to a vacuum cleaner without shuddering,” the interviewee said.  

According to Planned Parenthood’s own research arm, nearly a quarter of all U.S. pregnancies end in abortion. Half of all women seeking abortions are younger than age 25. With that kind of rate, you’d better believe that young women today know someone who has been affected by abortion.

 “When feelings run that raw, this issue could stir controversy for 37 years more,” McCartney concludes.

At the March, signs proclaiming “We Are the Pro-Life Generation” waved proudly on Constitution Avenue. The KofC-Marist poll gives credence to that claim.

That might be news to those who would rather believe that the moral issue of abortion is at a deadlock, if not irrelevant today. But we know differently.   

-- Elizabeth Hansen, Headline Bistro editor

 

Millenials: A pro-life generation

Released on the eve of the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a new poll reveals that the majority of Americans consider abortion to be morally wrong. The poll’s findings offer real signs of hope for the tens of thousands of pro-lifers from across the country who are gathered in Washington, D.C. today for the annual March for Life.

Over the past year, we’ve been highlighting poll after poll depicting America as becoming an increasingly pro-life country. (In one of her recent columns for Headline Bistro, attorney Margaret Datiles compiles no fewer than five such national surveys from the past four months). And so to anyone who’s been following the trend, at least one finding from yesterday’s Knights of Columbus-Marist poll shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise: that 56% of Americans think abortion is morally wrong.

Breaking that percentage down by generations, however, one gets incredible results.

As the pro-life tide rises to historic heights across the country, it is swelling especially among our youth. 58% of Millenials (18-29 years old) said abortion is morally wrong – even more so than their Baby Boomer parents (51%), many of whom experienced as adults the immediate, cultural aftermath of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Weighing Brown's win

The description “game-changer” has been heard frequently since this week’s upset in Massachusetts.

Providing Senate Republicans with the 41st vote necessary to filibuster legislation, the most immediate effect of Scott Brown’s win is the GOP’s ability to bring the health care bill to a screeching halt.

Politico sums up the situation in one headline – “Dazed Democrats Rethink Entire Strategy.”

Mere days since the White House hosted grueling marathon talks with Democratic lawmakers in order to push the bill through Congress, President Obama is now exercising caution and calling for restrain, lest the entire overhaul fall apart with Brown’s arrival on the scene. He also warned Democrats to not ram the bill through before Brown takes his seat in the Senate.

“The people of Massachusetts spoke,” Obama said. “He’s got to be part of that process.”

In an interview with ABC News yesterday, the president suggested that he would rather scale back the legislation than lose it entirely, centering “around those elements in the package that people agree on.”

That could mean removing the contentious mandate in the Senate bill requiring everyone to buy insurance. And then there are the other differences in the Senate version that House Democrats oppose – a tax on high-value insurance plans, for instance, that would especially hit union households, as well as lower subsidies to help the uninsured get coverage. The Washington Post reports on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struggling to herd an increasingly reluctant Democratic majority.

In terms of the main issue of concern for Catholics – the Senate bill’s weak restrictions on abortion funding – Rep. Bart Stupak was quoted this week yesterday saying that the legislation as is will fail in the House, with or without changed language on abortion.

“I don’t think you can find 100 votes in the House for that bill,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “Even before you get to abortion, there are three or four major issues to worry about.”

The American Catholic blog highlighted another interview with Stupak, this time with The Washington Examiner, in which he touched on the differences between his amendment restricting federal funds for abortion and the Senate’s.

“The Nelson Amendment did a number of different things and got so complicated,” he said, continuing:

I mean, mine’s a two-page amendment. Every time you look at these amendments, whether it’s the Nelson Amendment or the Capps Amendment ... they’re all 10 to 12 pages. It’s sort of like when the American people say, wait a minute, there’s no public funding for abortion, you can put that on one page. Why do you need 12 pages to try to explain what you’re doing? Well, because you’ve got this here and this one has to pay this and that. It gets all complicated.

How Brown’s win – and the shift in strategy it’s already caused among Democrats – will ultimately affect abortion language in health care seems unclear, though Stupak has stated that he has “10 or 11” fellow Democrats behind him willing to withhold their vote from the final legislation if it fails to include the strong language of his amendment. At the least, it buys pro-lifers more time to continue to contact their representatives and remind them that the majority of Americans do not want the government to fund abortions.

One thing’s for sure: it’s going to be a wild ride.

-- Elizabeth Hansen, Headline Bistro editor

Marching to a different tune

For the 37th consecutive year, pro-life marchers from coast to coast are preparing to congregate in the country’s capitol to ensure that January 22, the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s infamous Roe V. Wade decision, does not go unnoticed.

With the number of marchers having steadied at just over 200,000 since 2003, hopes are high that this year’s march will bring in record numbers and perhaps (for once) the attention of the mainstream media. This year’s “March for Life” takes place amid the backdrop of the contentious debate over health reform. With more lives at stake through the potential of publicly-funded abortion, organizers are hopeful for a larger turnout. 

Reporting on the differences of this year’s march is Tim Drake of the National Catholic Register who wrote that the Stop the Abortion Mandate coalition is asking attendees this year to make their presence felt in the nation's capitol as never before. Specifically, they are being asked to bring signs that read: “No Abortion in Healthcare” and encouraged to schedule meetings with their elected representatives and senators to let them know that they do not want publicly funded abortion included in the healthcare reform bill.

Beyond the march itself, the January 21 March for Life Convention is also shaping up to revolve around the health care question, with three of the eight speakers scheduled to speak on the topic. Also of note is the 28th Annual March for Life Rose Dinner, where Professor Robert George, co-author of the Manhattan Declaration, is addressing dinner guests on “Our Struggle for the Soul of the Nation.”  (Here's a full listing of March for Life events in D.C.).

In the Register article, Drake notes that in a first for the March, Americans United for Life Action is offering those who cannot be in D.C. in person the opportunity to sign up for a Virtual March for Life. To date, more than 23,400 individuals have signed up to participate virtually.

In anticipation of the National March for Life, many local pro-life marches have taken place around the U.S. this past weekend and drawn in record numbers of their own. Last Saturday, Jan 16, 300 pro-lifers marched in front of New Hampshire’s State House for the state's annual Right to Life March.

On the same day in Maine, hundreds joined hands around the State House in Augusta to mark the annual “Hands Around the Capitol Rally.” At 12:30 p.m. the Maine Capitol Bell was rung 37 times, representing the number of years since Roe v. Wade was enacted, while participants circled the capitol in memory of the unborn.

Thousands more swarmed the streets of Little Rock, Arkansas to walk 13 blocks to the state capitol call for the repeal of Roe v Wade in its 32nd annual March for Life.

In Dallas, Texas, thousands began their Saturday with rosary in hand, praying in front of a Dallas abortion facility. It was reported that following the prayer, 2,500 attended a special mass for the unborn celebrated by Bishop Jevin J. Farrell of Dallas and Bishop Kevin W. Vann of Fort Worth. After the Mass, a multitude of pro-lifers walked from the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe to the Earle Cabell Federal Courthouse, where Roe v. Wade was first filed in 1970.

Lifesite news reported that in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, national religious and political leaders joined a sign-waving crowd of thousands of pro-lifers in Houston to rally against what they’re calling a "prenatal racial genocide" perpetrated by Planned Parenthood. Protests by Houston’s pro-life community have been ongoing since April of 2009 when Planned Parenthood purchased a six-story, 78,000-square-foot building, in an 80% minority community in Houston, converting it into an abortion clinic. In anticipation for the national rally, 10,000 people, many of them youth, were reported having packed Houston’s Grace Community Church on Sunday for a five-hour prayer and praise meeting sponsored by The Call to Conscience.

Beyond U.S. borders, Catholic News Agency reported that Paris’s 6th annual March for Life united 25,000 French pro-lifers – an increase of 10,000 from last year. The crowd, consisting largely of families and youth under 25, marched peacefully against abortion through the streets of Paris on the 35th anniversary of its legalization in the country. The march brought together 15 French pro-life advocacy groups against abortion with reports indicating that this year’s event saw an unprecedented mobilization effort on social networks like Facebook.

Coming around full circle, pro-life leaders from around the world will be on hand for this Friday’s National March for Life in Washington. Human Life International is hosting an international conference prior to the noon March that will include nine pro-life leaders from Africa, Europe, South America, Asia and Oceania that will share with the crowds the implications of American pro-life efforts around the world.

Stay tuned for Headline Bistro’s exclusive photo coverage and video blog wrap up of the 2010 National March for Life!

-- Michele Nuzzo-Naglieri

There could be major implications from today's special election in Massachusetts.

The biggest news of the day is undoubtedly the race unfolding in Massachusetts between Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Martha Coakley as they vie for the Senate seat previously occupied by the late Ted Kennedy. Early reports are that turnout is extremely heavy, with some voters turning around in their cars and heading home after seeing the lines of people waiting to cast a vote.

Hanging in the balance is the filibuster-busting 60th vote for (or 41st vote against) healthcare legislation, President Obama’s signature issue. 

The implications for health care are so high, that President Obama as well as fromer President Clinton stumped for Coakley, yet the visits have yet to bear fruit for Coakley in the polls. Pennsylvania Senate Democrat Arlen Specter has ordered his staff to make calls on behalf of Coakley, while Republican John McCain has also made fundraising contacts in Massachusetts on behalf of Brown.

It is easy to see today’s election as a referendum of sorts on the Obama presidency, and health care in particular, which is being hotly contested in one of the bluest of blue states. Massachusetts hasn’t elected a Republican senator since 1972, and one can't help but wonder at the irony of Ted Kennedy's successor possibly being the vote to undo health care reform in this country.

Further more, in the run up to today’s special election, Coakley -- the early and overwhelming favorite -- has completely lost what was once a 30-point lead and now trails behind Brown. Whether at the end of the day Coakley wins or loses, the cause of her dramatic plunge in the polls will surely be discussed.

One much-publicized incident that couldn't have helped was Coakley's recent interview with radio host Ken Pittman. When the topic turned to the issue of conscience freedoms, Coakley argued that Catholics who are morally opposed to abortion and contraception “probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room.” The recording is below:

Even mainstream commentators took note of what seemed an extremist hostility towards religious conscience. It was a rather breathtaking dismissiveness toward people of faith, as well as the 624 Catholic hospitals in the U.S. -- not to mention Massachusett's own Catholic population. While there were certainly more factors besides that interview chipping away Coakley's lead, alienating such a significant voting block was likely not the best political move.

As the Wall St. Journal's James Taranto put it, "According to exit polls, 53% of Massachusetts voters in 2008 were Catholic. Supporting invidious discrimination against roughly half the state's voters would seem a decidedly unmethodical way of winning an election."

Poll after poll shows Americans favorable toward conscience protections for health care workers. If Coakley loses, her loss will serve, among other things, as a cautionary tale for politicians who speak and act against them. 

Paul Ciarcia

The dark side of abortion, IVF and contraception

Supporters of Church teachings opposing abortion, contraception and in vitro fertilization are experiencing vindication this week. Several landmark studies have made international headlines in recent days, confirming a link between incidents of breast cancer and abortion, and the health risks posed by in vitro fertilization and certain forms of birth control.

For years researchers and scientists have dismissed as pro-life rhetoric studies linking the use of contraceptives and abortion to increased rates of breast cancer. However, a significant 2009 federal study is now supporting those claims. The study was conducted by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. They found that women who previously had an abortion showed a 40% increase in contracting breast cancer. Their research also indicated that women who used oral contraceptives were up to four times more likely to contract “triple negative” breast cancer (TNBC), one of the more deadly forms of the disease.