Short Reports on OSM Related Issues/Events

Number 3: City mourns the deaths of city's homeless this year

SAN DIEGO - Can you imagine dying alone, hidden away in an alley, cold, confused, hungry, and in severe pain?  This scenario, and too many like it, occur routinely in America's Finest City.  In fact, 54 of our community's homeless died on the streets of San Diego this year. 

www.parentsfor73.com
www.yeson73.net
www.caparentsrights.org
www.cacatholic.org

Finally, please don't forget to pray for the success of Proposition 73 and to vote on November 8th.

Thank you, and God Bless!

Kent Peters

P.S.  Please don't forget to forward this message to your family members, friends, and associates.

Web and e-mail-based Resources

This morning I received an e-mail from the No-on-Proposition-73 people (Planned Parenthood and friends) in which they featured the slogan, "If she can't come to me, I just want to keep her safe." 

Planned Parenthood should stop trying to put words in our mouths.  What are they really saying?  "Trust us.  Yes, we're the abortion providers, and we are the ones to profit from each abortion.  But we'll be taking good care of your daughters, and you'll never know it."  Trust Planned Parenthood?  What an awful thought, and the calls that follow will forever cement the horror of ever having the word "safe" and the title "Planned Parenthood" uttered in the same sentence.

The link below will transport you to the Traditional Values Coalition web site where you will find more than 100 tapped calls to California Planned Parenthood facilities and other California abortion clinics.  The calls are made by a young woman pretending to be: age 13, pregnant by a 22-year-old boy friend, seeking an abortion and subsequent contraceptives, and hoping to cover up the pregnancy and the abortion.  What you'll hear will knock your socks right off and make the phrase "keep her safe" ring deadly in your mind.

You may want to listen to the Encinitas call first.  It can be found in the center row, three calls down on the TVC web page.

 http://www.traditionalvalues.org/1/pph/index2.php

Please pass this link on to friends and family as a way to expose the lie that abortion providers seek the safety of our children. 

Please don't forget... Vote YES on 73!

New Local/Regional Events and Gatherings 

If you are planning an event that falls within the mission of social ministry, send the particulars four to five weeks in advance to the Office for Social Ministry via e-mail, osmelink@diocese-sdiego.org.  The OSM reserves the right to publish or not to publish any proposed event information.  We hope this will assist your local efforts to re-build a culture of life.
 

Watch for OSM e-link bulletin #43 on Wednesday, November 30, 2005   

Article/Statement for November 3, 2005

Cutting Through the Rhetoric About Prop. 73

By Cy Kellett, Southern Cross, and Kent Peters, Office for Social Ministry
 

That Proposition 73 is controversial says some disturbing things about the status of the abortion debate in California.  Why should it be controversial that parents be informed before a daughter undergoes a serious medical procedure?

In fact, parents must not only be informed, but must give their consent for every other medical procedure performed on a non-emergency basis in this state.  But abortion is not like other procedures. It is fraught with emotion because it is so wrapped up with our feelings about the role of women in society, and the place of sex, and the impact of religion on public life.

Abortion is the emotional raw spot in our civic discourse. As such, it can turn otherwise lovely people into rhetorical howlers.  We saw this phenomenon played out recently as the U.S. Senate was considering the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court.
NARAL: Pro-Choice America put out an ad asserting that Roberts supported clinic violence.  When major media outlets pointed out that such claims did not match the actual record and when the American people got to see Judge Roberts for the low-key, albeit conservative, person that he was, it became obvious that the rhetoric was not jibing with reality. NARAL withdrew the ad.  Now, the Web site of NARAL: Pro-Choice California shouts that, "Proposition 73 is an attempt by well-funded anti-choice extremists to circumvent the courts."  Again, the rhetoric doesn't match the reality. Proposition 73 isn't about courts. It is about using an open and fair democratic process to allow Californians to fix bad law, law that currently excludes parents from important medical decisions.

The proposition is actually quite mild.  We need to stop calling each other names and ask these fundamental questions: Is Proposition 73 sensible law?  Does it promote the welfare of minors?  Does it promote the welfare of families?  To all of these questions, the simple answer is Yes.  Proposition 73 is sensible law because it promotes consistency in the medical care of minors.  Parents are very likely the only people to have all of the relevant medical facts about their children.  Therefore, including parents in medical decisions allows all of the medical facts to be considered.

Just one example, among many, is the child who has had mental health difficulties. These are invisible to the abortion provider. Yet such information can have a major impact on how post-operative care should be handled.  According to a report from the National Institute of Mental Health, America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being 2005, nearly 5 percent of minors are reported "to suffer from definite or severe emotional or behavioral difficulties, problems that may interfere with their family life, their ability to learn, and their formation of friendships."   In California, that translates to as many as a quarter of a million minor girls with mental health difficulties.  What happens when the child who has such hidden difficulties walks into an abortion provider's office?  Isn't it likely that such a child will walk out bearing trauma that will need special help in healing?  Isn't it just common sense that the parents of such children should know this, and be able to respond?

And this is just one among many hidden health and social challenges that abortion providers are likely to be blind to if parents are excluded from the process.  Here it is important to note that we are not just talking about girls who are a few months shy of their 18th birthday.  Organizations such as Planned Parenthood perform abortions on children as young as 12.  Any parent of a 12-year-old girl can tell you that she is likely to have times of profound maturity, and other times of, sometimes delightful, immaturity.  (Full disclosure: the authors of this article are the fathers of six daughters between them.)  Such a mix of traits is appropriate to her age. What is not appropriate is expecting her to be able to assume full responsibility for her health and well-being.

Which brings us to our second point: Proposition 73 promotes the welfare of minors because it helps protect them from the predatory behavior of adults.  When we replace the role of parents with people who are strangers to a child we don't decrease the likelihood of a child being abused, we increase it.   "Teens don't need a judge, they need a counselor," says the Planned Parenthood Web site in opposition to Prop. 73.  But what happens when Planned Parenthood puts itself in the role of counselor to minor girls?  Doesn't an organization that makes money, and supports very large staffs, by providing abortions have a conflict of interest when acting as a "counselor"?  The unavoidable fact is that when clinics provide abortions to 12- and 13-year-olds, they are often aiding and abetting sexual predators, who are more than thrilled to have the evidence of their crimes secretly destroyed in an abortion clinic.

Statistics from the research arm of Planned Parenthood, the Guttmacher Institute, make clear that when a young girl is sexually active, she is very likely active with a much older male.  This often makes her a victim of statutory, or even coercive, rape.
Planned Parenthood has faced sharp criticism for failing to report abortions performed on girls as young as 12 even when these pregnancies likely provide evidence that the girl has been raped.

If Proposition 73 fails, then this pattern will continue. The abortion providers will continue to be the "helpers" of pregnant girls, replacing parents and often assisting sexual predators.

This is not a healthy cycle.