NOW, THE NEWS:
FOOTBALL STAR ZAMIR WHITE WAS TARGETED FOR ABORTION, BUT HIS 14-YEAR-OLD MOTHER CHOSE LIFE
from: LiveAction News
(33 Nov.) The star 22-year-old running back at the University of Georgia – the #1 ranked college football team in the nation – has an incredible life story. To look at Zamir White now, at six feet tall and weighing 225 pounds, you'd never know that while six months pregnant with him, his 14-year-old mother Shanee White was urged to consider abortion because her son was measuring small for his gestational age. Fortunately, the boy’s great-grandmother intervened and saved him.
In an interview with ESPN, Shanee remembered that her grandmother Nancy White told her at the time, "We’re not going to terminate the pregnancy. No matter what's wrong with him, he's going to be born." A frightened and overwhelmed Shanee told her grandmother that they should listen to the doctor since he was an authority figure. But Nancy responded, "The doctor is not God, so he doesn't have the last say. If he takes one breath, he's going to take it."
But Zamir's problems were far from over after his mother bravely chose life for him. When he was born on September 18, 1999, weighing a very respectable seven pounds, his mother and medical team saw that he was among the one in 1,600 children born each year with a cleft lip and palate. Zamir was transferred the following day to a larger medical facility because his lip and palate issues kept him from eating enough to maintain his own body temperature. Again, Shanee received dire warnings from health care professionals, as she was told that her son might not live another two weeks.
Zamir spent three months in the hospital before being discharged home with his mom and great-grandmother, who fed him with a medicine dropper to accommodate his lip and palate. When he was just six months old, he had the first of two surgeries to address the cleft lip and palate, and then another surgery at 15 months for kidney problems. A fourth surgery corrected a hernia, and then a fifth surgery several years later further improved his lip and palate.
Zamir's story is a case study in many of the so-called justifications for legal abortion. Born to a single mother and with an absentee father in prison, early medical issues, surrounded by poverty – if given a predictive vision, many would have judged Zamir's life not worthy of living. But the crucible of early suffering has tempered Zamir instead of breaking him, and his experiences have inspired many others to live courageously, whatever their circumstances. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: There are many, many stories of famous and productive people who as babies weren't expected to live, as doctors and parents thought. This ought to cause us to re-think the value of every human life!
EUTHANASIA HAS HAD NEGATIVE EFFECT ON PALLIATIVE CARE IN CANADA: REPORT
from: BioEdge.org
(7 Nov.) Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) act began to operate in 2016. It is a laboratory for how legalised euthanasia will operate in a largely English-speaking country. And, according to an article in the journal Palliative Care written by five Canadian specialists, it has had a very negative effect upon palliative care.
The authors interviewed 13 doctors and 10 nurses about their impressions. Some of the feedback is unexpected.
First, all of them spoke about an inherent conflict between the provision of palliative care (PC) and eligibility for MAiD. To ensure that their patients remained eligible, they had to withhold medications which would have otherwise removed or alleviated their pain. ?Maintaining lucidity and eligibility for assisted death, by avoiding sedative medications, took priority over achieving good symptom control for some patients,? they write. Both the patients and the PC providers found this distressing.
Second, simply mentioning the existence of MAiD can be interpreted as an invitation to the patient to request it. This adds to the emotional and existential burden upon the patients and their families. Conversations have become very difficult.
Third, MAiD has a significant emotional and personal impact on PC providers. Many of the clinicians described a large emotional toll created by exposure to Medical Assistance in Dying.
Fourth, the existence of MAiD has complicated the relationship of PC providers with their patients. Some believe that PC means assisted dying. Doctors or nurses with moral or religious objections to MAiD find that it is difficult to build a relationship with patients who want assisted dying. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: The article continues to explain that it's all about money: does the government allocate money to keep people alive, or to kill them? Of course, it is more cost-effective to "pull the plug on Grandmas" – to "end their suffering." Many such excuses can be fabricated to rationalize this genocide of the sick and elderly. But doctors who violate their Hippocratic Oath to do no harm are inflicting on their patients the ultimate harm: death.
It is the height of hypocrisy to advocate for others what they would not practice on themselves: if they would stop this hypocrisy, it would put an end to this foolish and dangerous discussion. Once society starts down this slippery slope of "what feels good" and treating humans like dogs or horses that should be put to sleep to end their suffering, that society is no better than the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany that eliminated "undesirables" by the millions.
BELARUS: "WE, POLITICAL PRISONERS, WERE NOT ALLOWED TO ATTEND CLUBS, THE CHURCH .."
from: Forum 18 News Service
(12 Nov.) Prison officials finally allowed Catholic political prisoner Mikita Yemialyianau a pastoral visit on 3 November. He had just ended a three-week hunger strike in protest at the denial of a clergy visit since his transfer to Mogilev prison in 2020. Prison officials prevented him from renewing a subscription to a Catholic newspaper. Prison officials finally allowed Orthodox Christian Yelena Movshuk a clergy visit in October, her first since her August 2020 arrest. Prison officials prevented her attending a worship meeting in August 2021. "We, political prisoners, were not allowed to attend clubs, the church, the gym or places of study," a political prisoner freed in September declared.
The regime continues to obstruct political prisoners' access to pastoral visits from clergy, attendance at limited worship meetings in prison and to receive religious publications. Roman Catholic Mikita Yemialyianau was on hunger strike from 11 to 31 October, partly in protest against denials of pastoral visits from a priest since his transfer to prison in Mogilev in 2020. A letter he sent to a priest asking him to visit never reached the priest. Prison officials finally allowed Yemialyianau to have a pastoral visit from a priest on 3 November.
Prison officials refused to allow Yemialyianau to subscribe to a Catholic diocesan monthly newspaper for the second half of 2021 after confiscating the May issue. Officials claimed the May issue could not be given to him as publications "promoting war, incitement to racial, national and religious hatred, violence or cruelty, and publications of a pornographic nature" cannot be given to prisoners.
Yemialyianau has attended Mass regularly since he was 10 years old and served as an altar boy from the age of 15, according to his mother. "I believe that finding himself in a difficult situation and facing this ordeal, Mikita turned to the Word of God for support and consolation, especially in the absence of clergy visits," Nastassia Yemeliyanava told Forum 18.
Yelena Movshuk, a 45-year-old Orthodox Christian, repeatedly tried to get a pastoral visit from a priest from the time of her arrest in August 2020. She hoped to have a pastoral meeting with an Orthodox priest who held a service in the prison in Zarechye in Gomel Region in August 2021, but prison officials prevented her from attending. A different Orthodox priest was able to make a pastoral visit to Movshuk in October [read more...]
COMMENTARY: This sort of discrimination against Christians is carried over from the Soviet era: in many ways, Christians were limited lower eduation levels and to menial jobs, they were singled out for ridicule and persecution, and those who continued to make a bold stand for their faith. Belarus is currently being led by Aleksandr Lukashenko, a holdover from the Soviet beaurocracy.
WHEELCHAIR USERS CAN FACE HEFTY COSTS NOT COVERED BY INSURANCE
from: Disability Scoop
(16 Nov.) Beth Smith dreads the day when her wheelchair finally gives out.
The aging chair has functioned as an extension of her body for roughly a decade, ferrying the 62-year-old to the transit station near her Albany, Calif., home; to the office where she works; and to medical appointments and other errands. When things break, she and her partner have tried to make cheap fixes with duct tape and screws.
But when it stops working for good, Smith will have to turn to her health insurance. And her insurance plan caps its coverage for wheelchairs and other "durable medical equipment" at $2,000 a year, she said – far less than the $17,000 cost of her motorized chair.
"I don't know what I'm going to do," said Smith, who has cerebral palsy.
For now, she's going to court. Smith and other wheelchair users are suing over such insurance shortfalls, arguing that failing to effectively cover wheelchairs is discriminatory against people with disabilities.
The federal class-action suit targets the biggest commercial health insurer in California – Kaiser Foundation Health Plan – and a state agency that sets out minimum requirements for what many health plans must cover. If Smith wins in court, it could affect not only Kaiser members but also other wheelchair users with private insurance across the state.
The California case spotlights the financial burdens facing many wheelchair users in a market where the right equipment can cost thousands of dollars, or even tens of thousands of dollars, and private insurance covers only so much. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: $17,000 for a motorized wheelchair is more than a small car can cost. But medical equipment isn't mass-produced, so each unit costs more than an assembly-line produced car. The issue here, though, is also that prices allowed by insurance for disability equipment is often decades behind today's costs. And because people with mobility disabilities are a small minority, their votes get overridden by the majority.
(14 Nov.) Beginning last year, the official and "near-church" media of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), began to flaunt the consecration of a new church. That church was built to replace "the one captured by the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) raiders."
The spokesman for the UOC-MP, Metropolitan Kliment of Nizhyn and Pryluky (Vecherya), said the following at an interview with the Russian website “pravoslavie.ru”: "In those places, where our temples were taken away, in most cases, we have already built new ones." The construction sometimes occurred in a staggering speed, from 3 to 8 months. What could be the possible reason for the observed rapid reaction and what is likely to follow?
It is obvious that the UOC-MP consistently fulfills the task of its command center, to preserve the church influence at any cost. The task for the UOC was set in 2014, after the start of the war with Russia. At that time, it was difficult to maintain the reputation of the UOC-MP, as there was enough information about a large number of clergy and some bishops supporting the Russian invasion of Donbas as well as the support for the annexation of Crimea. The UOC-MP was saved from destruction, not surprisingly, by the then President Petro Poroshenko. More precisely, his unwillingness to create a powerful internal front against the background of the war.
In 2018 Patriarch Bartholomew bestowed autocephaly for the OCU communities. In the absence of canonical and legal objections, the technology of "persecution against the canonical church" was launched by UOC-MP. Various methods of demonstrating "persecution" were used, which gave the Moscow Patriarchate enough opportunities to discredit both the OCU and the Ukrainian authorities, including the international arena.
The culmination of the "persecution" was protests against the arrival of Patriarch Bartholomew in Kiev in August 2021. It was immediately clear, that the numerous processions and signatures against all evil, was not to protect the rights of believers. Today, the UOC-MP is moving from the tactics of the persecuted to the strategy of creeping expansion. The time has arrived for the scenario of receiving dividends from the opposing church for being "persecuted.” And so, after the rain, new UOC-MP temples began to appear like mushrooms, as evidence of the long-awaited victory over the "enemies of the canonical church." [read more...]
COMMENTARY: Propaganda that is repeated over and over again to the widest audience can override news about the true situation on the ground, as is this case: Russia has a louder voice than Ukraine.
ON DECEMBER 1, THE SUPREME COURT WILL BEGIN HEARING ORAL ARGUMENTS THAT MIGHT OVERTURN ROE V. WADE
from: Susan B. Anthony List
(18 Nov) SBA List has completed production of their FINAL ADS ahead of the Supreme Court case that poses a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade. The ads highlight the scientific advancements that reveal the humanity of unborn children.
Countless babies' lives are at stake in the December 1st Supreme Court case, which is why SBA List has decided upon a $2.5 million budget for their final ads. Please watch one of these final ads before the Supreme Court case that could DISMANTLE Roe v. Wade
The OBGYN in our featured ad discusses the fact that current U.S. law fails to reflect modern science. By 15 weeks in the womb, there are THOUSANDS of pain receptors throughout the child’s body. In fact, a child at 15 weeks in the womb can even hear and respond to the voice of her mother.
But because of Roe v. Wade, it's currently legal to kill that baby who can smile, feel pain, yawn, and acknowledge her mother's voice. But on December 1, the Supreme Court will begin hearing oral arguments to correct this grave injustice – and we need to be sure these ad's message is heard loud and clear. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: First and foremost, we need to pray for a pro-life victory over the anti-life practice of killing unborn babies. But we should also help spread the message by giving of our time and money!
NOW, OUR VIEWS:
How is it that society can be so concerned about racism, but at the same time turn a blind eye to ageism? Just as racism is real, so is ageism every bit as real. We can be unconsious of both, but still be guided by those attitudes in our society. Discrimination against elderly people takes many forms, from simply ignoring them, to sending them off to a "care facility" where they will likely die of loneliness before a physical illness takes them away instead of caring for them, to actively assisting their death by letting the "hospice care team" give them an extra high dose of morphine.
Do Not Reject Me in My Old Age - read Psalm 71:9-18!
Just yesterday I came across a wonderful web-page: "WHAT IS SPIRITUAL FORMATION?" The author, Wil Ramsey, a former Baptist pastor and now a layman, sounds very much like an Eastern Orthodox Christian as he writes in the section entitled "Spiritual Formation by Orthodoxy, Orthopraxy, and Orthopathy" - I encourage you to read the whole article!
While reading the above article, I saw in the sidebar the title of another article: Christians and the LGBT community - Alienating, Accepting, and Affirming. These are the three quite different attitudes that Christians have toward LGBT people. It led me to update the section on this topic in my 2008 article "Our Homecoming" about our discovering Original Christianity: please read the three paragraphs at this link, even if you don't read the whole long (15-page!) article. You can also get a PDF file of the whole article here.
One of our "Morning Prayers" regular participants, Pastor Jothi in Tamil Nadu, India, has sent us some videos about the flooding in India:
the flooding in his village (water hip-deep),
the flooding in Chennai, the capital city,
a flooded house falls into a river (9 people died),
the flooding sweeps away cattle (hard to watch).
Pastor Jothi says they've never had such flooding before. Friends, if you don't think climate change is real, just wait 'til it comes to your town!
Please remember to pray for Christians in Secularized Countries, and for...
Your fellow-servants,
Bob & Cheryl
p.s. There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and trying to make them equal. - F.A. Hayek
