Dominik’s Blog

The ACL conference is now over. It was the last one of its name, as the organization is now known as Students for Life of America. The conference, with almost 500 attendees from over 90 schools, can be deemd a success. It brought together students from all around the nation, united by the pro-life cause, and introduced them to each other. Perhaps most importantly, it urgently reminded them that they are not alone, that there are others who think akin, and others who feel passionately about these causes.

The fight continues. It will soon be 33 years since Roe v. Wade was decided, and we as a nation have, in some regard, made progress in undoing the damage caused. But our culture can be said to have fallen even further, as is evidenced by the rampant objectification of human life. And if our cause has strengthened, so too have our opponnents’ resolve. Yet evidence points to the fact the tide is turning; our generation is more pro-life than their parents, perhaps by virtue of the fact that we are survivors. This survivors perspective struck me as interesting; I had not hear it prior to attending. The story goes as such: our generation was the first that was born after Roe v. Wade, we were the first to have faced a threat to our very existence before our birth. Every other generation could rest secure that the State did not endorse its destruction in the womb, but not ours. We were under attack from the moment we were conceived, and it is only because of our parents’ resolve and love that we survived and made it out of the womb.

It is scary to consider the raw numbers of the situation. Forty million abortions. That means 40 million members of our generation were never given the chance to be born. I am reminded of the quote by Mother Teresa that the conference closed with:
“How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers!”

These are my notes from Marie Smith’s speech at the ACL Conference. Parts are paraphrased or directly quoted from her words.

True feminism is non-violent, non-discriminatory and seeks justice for all. Today, thirty-three years after Roe v. Wade, we survey over 40 million abortions. Truly, women deserve better.

The original feminists did not see children as the enemy. Lack of financial resources and emotional support are the reason women resort to abortion. Abortion is not a solution to these problems.

Abortion does not empower a woman. It does not give job skills or safe sanitary conditions for the healthy delivery for a baby.

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These are my notes from Dr. Michael New’s speech at the ACL Conference. Parts are paraphrased or directly quoted from his words.

The main objective of the pro-life movement should be to minimize the number of abortions happening in the United States.

Bill Clinton was not a pro-life President, why then did the abortion rate go down during his presidency? Does this mean that we should elect pro-abortion presidents in the hope the abortion rate will go down? No! Correlation is not causation. Instead, evidence suggests there was the strong economy and the election of pro-life representatives and senators, along with the pro-life judges appointed by Reagan and Bush.

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These are my notes from Paul Mulligan’s speech at the ACL Conference. Parts are paraphrased or directly quoted from his words.

Paul Mulligan is director of the Gabriel Project.

During his time in the Navy, he was stationed at Guam. There he found out that the island went on a yearly March for Life, but sadly that was all they did. There were three abortion clinics but not a single pregnancy care center. Working together with the local pro-life forces and his wife, he built a support network for pregnant women. He also adopted two girls, both of whom would have been aborted had it not been for the support network.

The fruit of abortion is nuclear war, said Mother Teresa. The best way to combat abortion is through prayer. It’s easy to be caught up in a cycle of doing, doing and forgetting about prayer. It’s necessary as a grounding point. The number of abortion reversals brought about by prayers in front of abortion clinics is rising; even if the abortion happens, in the recovery process the mother will know that even though she didn’t necessary love her unborn child at the time, members of the faithful were there, praying and loving; her child did not die alone.

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These are my notes from Ashley Horne’s speech at the ACL Conference. Parts are paraphrased or directly quoted from her words.

Every 24 seconds, an abortion happens.

There have been 1.3 million abortions in the United States; 50% of those are repeat abortions and 18% are third-time abortion. Planned Parenthood will undertake 180 abortions for every single adoption referral. One out of three women will have an abortion by the time they are 45.

Most of her talk concentrated on the efforts of the SBA List, both in identifying pro-life candidates and funding female pro-life candidates. Ms. Horne also covered current legislative issues in the 109^th Congress.

These are my notes from Frederica Matthewes-Green’s speech at the ACL Conference. Parts are paraphrased or directly quoted from her words.

Back in the early 1970s, I wasn’t a pro-life feminist, I was a women’s liberation abortion rights advocate. I believed that that pregnancy was imprisonment; women cannot compete on equal footing with men unless they can become unpregnant at will.

You might be wondering how I came around to become pro-life. It started when I came home from college and read an article by Dr. Richard Selzer in Esquire magazine about “What Happens in Abortion.” Dr. Richard Selzer was pro-abortion but had never seen or performed an abortion and thus attended one to see what happened. He watched as the abortionist injected a needle into the pregnant woman’s belly, watched the needle oscillate back and forth, jerking wildly, and then slowly go still. When I finished reading the article, I realized that abortion was violence. Back then I was a full-fledged hippie, anti-war, pro-environment, anti-violence. Reading that essay demonstrated a contradiction within my beliefs. Abortion is violence.

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The following are my notes from Dr. Nigel Cameron’s speech; parts are paraphrased or direct quotes from his words.

Here at the ACL Conference, abortion is the issue which brings us together; yet there are other issues that also fall under the domain of pro-life. For example, euthanasia takes out abortion out of the womb and threatens every human life. Beyond euthanasia, which can be seen as the cognate of abortion, there are other threats such as embryonic stem-cell research.

We most develop strategies to win the war; battles are in some sense irrelevant except in as much they affect the outcome of the war. The opposition is in many-cases better funded and is also intelligent and strategic. We too must be intelligent and strategic and focus on winning the war.

Abortion, euthanasia, etc. are ancient questions; we merely face their modern interpretations. They are ancient questions, based on how we should regard the choice to end live. And now we are also considering questions of not just taking life, but also of making life: designer babies, human cloning, etc. There may be no taking life involved in “designing better babies:” a veritable revival of eugenics, in short. Hitler finally discredited eugenics, but the idea has returned: that people’s value is based on their genetic material.

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I’m in DC for the ACL Conference and the Cardinal O’Connor Conference.

Will attempt to blog as things develop; just spent the day today visiting museums in DC since I’m in town a bit early :)