When the topic is abortion, there's too often a lot of grim stuff to write about.  But not this time.  This is beautiful, poignant news.

A friend forwarded a You Tube entry that had been sent along to her. It is misleadingly labeled "Andrea Bocelli Tells a 'Fairy Tale' about Abortion."  In fact it is a true story--Andrea Bocelli's own story.

My guess is that most of our readers are familiar with Bocelli, whose beautiful tenor voice is a gift from God. According to published accounts, he'd always had problems with his sight and eventually was diagnosed with congenital glaucoma. He lost his vision completely at age 12 following a blow to the head during a soccer game.

The video, which Bocelli filmed for a pro-life organization, begins with the 51-year-old Bocelli at the piano. He is speaking in Italian, with English subtitles. Thanks to my assistant, Regina Huber, for transcribing his comments.

So, for this occasion I want to tell you a little story. This is how the story goes: A young pregnant wife has been hospitalized for a simple attack of appendicitis. The doctors had to apply some ice on her stomach and when the treatments ended the doctors suggested that she abort the child. They told her it was the best solution because the baby would be born with some disability. But the young brave wife decided not to abort, and the child was born.

That woman was my mother, and I was the child. Maybe I'm partisan but I can say that it was the right choice.

And I hope this could encourage many mothers that sometime find themselves in difficult situations in those moments when life is complicated but want to save the life of their baby. ….

A lovely word of encouragement. For you, for me, and especially, perhaps, for a young woman at a very difficult time in her life.

You can watch the video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QfKCGTfn3o

 

1. Attend the San Diego "Friends of Fair Trade" monthly meeting

San Diego Friends of Fair Trade is a coalition of non-profit organizations and congregations attempting to advance the cause of fair trade.  They work to insure that all individuals who toil, both at home and around the world, to provide consumers with commodities are paid a living wage, one that can sustain a life with dignity. 

The next SD Friends of Fair Trade meeting will be on Wednesday, August 11, 2010, at 6:30 p.m. at the Open Door Book Store on 4761 Cass St., Pacific Beach - For more information, please contact Carolyn Lief at fairtradesandiego@gmail.com.  To sign up for the Fair Trade San Diego newsletter, send a request to fairtradesandiego@gmail.com 
 

2. Get Acquainted with Detention Ministry in the Diocese of San Diego

Join Deacon Jim Walsh each month for an Information and Training Seminar on detention ministry and restorative justice at the Diocesan Pastoral Center, 3888 Paducah Drive, San Diego, 92117

Visit the OSM Restorative Justice Web site: www.diocese-sdiego.org/restore

For the month of August...

- Contact Deacon Jim Walsh for days and times (see just below)

Sorry, no walk-ins.  Contact Deacon Jim Walsh for reservations or questions: 858-490-8375 or e-mail Deacon Jim at jwalsh@diocese-sdiego.org
 

3. North-County prayer witness at the Carlsbad Planned Parenthood Clinic

North County parishioners meet the third Monday of every month from 10:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. to peacefully pray the rosary in front of the Carlsbad Planned Parenthood Clinic.  The clinic is located at 1820 Marron Rd. (in the shopping center just west of Plaza Camino Real Mall).  For more information, contact Jahna White of St. Margaret Parish at 760-586-6356.
 

4. Prayerful witness for life at two locations (7340 Miramar Road in San Diego and 15546 Pomerado Road in Poway) in San Diego County

Helpers of God’s Precious Infants weekly rosary prayer vigil from 8:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. every Saturday and Wednesday at 7340 Miramar Road, directly above Metro Flooring in the complex with the Pyramid Building, adjacent to Carroll Road.  Prayer warriors also needed as early as 7:30 a.m.

Call Roger Lopez at 619-276-7525 for more information.
 
Second Saturday of the month:  20 decades of the Rosary are prayed in procession past 4 clinics following the 7:30 a.m. Mass, 15546 Pomerado Road, Poway.  For more information, call 858-748-2109. 

5. St. Dismas Guild sponsors two weekly hours of prayer for the unborn in North County

Join members of St. Dismas Guild for a rosary picket at North County Women's Medical Clinic, 120 S. Craven Way, San Marcos, (across from Cal State San Marcos), Tuesdays, 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.

The Guild also sponsors prayer (the rosary) in front of PayLess at Mission Avenue and Escondido Blvd., 347 W. Mission, on Thursdays, 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.  For information on these prayer vigils, call 760-751-8541. 


6. St. Elizabeth Seton Parish in Carlsbad has a tri-weekly prayer ministry in front of the North County Women's Medical Clinic on Craven Way - San Marcos on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays

Please join the St. Elizabeth Seton "Life Matters" Culture of Life prayer vigils at 10:00 a.m. to Noon every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday morning at "North County Women's Medical Clinic": 120 Craven Road, San Marcos - http://www.womensmedicalclinic.com/.  Those interested can carpool from St. Elizabeth Seton's upper parking lot at 9:30 a.m.  Those who do not want to carpool, please feel free to meet us at the Abortion Center at 10:00 a.m. or at any time between 10:00 a.m. and Noon.  These vigils are not confrontational.  We give witness by being present in prayer and entrust our message to the Blessed Mother.  Contact Gene: ejzoval@yahoo.com or 760-804-9656 for more information.


7. St. John the Evangelist Parish in Encinitas Pro-Life Mass and Rosary held on the first Monday of each month

The first Monday of every month is designated Pro-Life Monday at St. John the Evangelist Church, 1001 Encinitas Blvd, Encinitas.  The 8:00 a.m. Mass will be followed by a Rosary for Life.


8. Prayer Vigil at Planned Parenthood - First and Grape Street, San Diego – Saturdays from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.

Prayer vigil contacts: Luis Mendoza 619-259-3906 or Roger Lopez 619-276-7525.   Rosary processions the first Saturday of every month from Our Lady of the Rosary, Date & State St., after the 7:30 a.m. Mass.             


9. Most Precious Blood Parish Rosary Prayer Vigils held on Wednesdays each week 

The Pro-Life Prayer Group from Most Precious Blood sponsors a Rosary Prayer Vigil in front of "A Woman's Choice" Clinic abortion facility at 1550 Broadway, Chula Vista, every Wednesday at 8:45 a.m.  For more information, please call Shirley Henry at 619-420-7096 or Luis Mendoza at 619-259-3906.
 

10. Prayer partners are needed at the office of Feliciano Rios M.D., 1079 Third Ave., suite 3, in Chula Vista - Dr. Rios performs abortions at his medical facility - Meet each Wednesday from 8:45 a.m. to 10:45 a.m.

Please contact Luis Mendoza, a Missionary of The Gospel of Life Lay Associate, at 619-259-3906, with questions or to share interest in this prayer ministry.


11. Pray in front of the Planned Parenthood facility located at 1685 East Main, just off the Greenfield Drive exit in El Cajon - join friends and neighbors

According to the PP website, chemical (RU-486) abortions only are done at this location - not surgical abortions.  They do refer women for abortions to their surgical center on First Ave.  Join the group each Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Contact: mfowler@nethere.com


12.   The Goretti Group offers chastity prayer and speaker training monthly

Every First Friday of the month, the Goretti Group will celebrate a St. Maria Goretti Mass at Our Lady of the Rosary, 1654 State Street, at 6:15 p.m.

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 1, 2010
 

Buffett Secretly Spending Millions on Abortion Med-School Scheme: NY Times    

By Patrick B. Craine

OMAHA, Nebraska, July 19, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Billionaire investing mogul Warren Buffett has been secretly backing a campaign to combat the decrease in doctors who are training as abortionists and to bring abortion into mainstream medicine, revealed the New York Times this week.

In her NYT magazine cover story, journalist Emily Bazelon describes how abortion “rights” activists are working to “recast doctors, changing them from a weak link of abortion to a strong one.”

The piece, entitled “The New Abortion Providers,” claims that abortionists and the pro-abort lobby are trying to dispel the image of the “greedy, butchering ‘abortionist’.”  “The bold idea at the heart of this effort is to integrate abortion so that it’s a seamless part of health care for women — embraced rather than shunned,” writes Bazelon.

The strategy, she says, aims at moving abortuaries away from stand-alone facilities into hospitals and encourages family physicians to offer abortions within their practices.

She describes two training programs for abortionists that are central to this strategy.  The first, called the “Family Planning Fellowship,” is a two-year post-residency program designed to further equip doctors for providing abortions and contraception.  She says this fellowship is now being offered at 21 university campuses.  The second is called the Kenneth J. Ryan Residency Training Program, which aims to supply medical schools with funds to train ob/gyn residents in providing abortions.  So far, this program has funded 58 campuses in the U.S. and Canada.

Both programs are run out of the University of California at San Francisco, and both are directed by Uta Landy, the former director of the National Abortion Federation.  Bazelon spoke with Jody Steinauer, the associate director of the Fellowship program, but she said that Landy declines all interviews out of fear that publicity would scare off potential universities, or their lone donor.

“The money for the Ryan and the Family Planning Fellowship comes from one foundation and from one family,” writes Bazelon.  “The donor has chosen to remain anonymous, which helps to explain why there’s been so little publicity about the pro-choice strategy of bringing abortion into academic medicine. It has been covered by a veil of semisecrecy.”

But as the two training programs have grown, this anonymous donor has become more widely known, she says.  “In the course of my reporting, two doctors who had not done the fellowship themselves, but who work in universities, volunteered to me that the money for the programs comes from the Buffett Foundation,” she wrote.

According to Bazelon, the Buffett Foundation’s tax records reveal that most of its spending is allocated to “abortion and contraception advocacy and research.”  The Foundation has given tens of millions to Planned Parenthood and Ipas, as well as millions to other pro-abortion groups like Catholics for Choice.  Buffett has pledged to give away 99% of his estimated $47 billion assets, with most of it going to the Gates Foundation, which is infamous for its avowed emphasis on population control.

Despite Buffett’s and the rest of the pro-abortion movement’s efforts to bring abortion into the mainstream of medicine, however, pro-life leaders insist that abortionists are by nature at the bottom rung of medicine, where debauched doctors end up when they are too incompetent for any other area.

“No one goes to medical school with the intent of working in a Planned Parenthood or some other abortion clinic,” said Mark Crutcher, President of Life Dynamics Inc., last month, after an Ottawa abortionist was disciplined for his incompetence in treating 25 of his clients.  “The wash-outs from the leftovers of medicine wind up working in these abortion clinics.”

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