The centers used to be called “crisis pregnancy centers” and were often advertised with the promise of “free pregnancy tests.” Now, the more common term is “pregnancy resource centers” (PRCs), and the range of services provided goes far beyond pregnancy testing, and includes the services of fully licensed medical clinics.

Moreover, these centers do not just operate on their own with the support of their local communities. Rather, there are large well-organized networks of pregnancy centers, united by a commitment to professional standards of care, expert training programs, and joint efforts to make sure everyone knows exactly where to turn for alternatives to abortion.

All this is good news for the pro-life movement, and to help spread that good news, a report was recently compiled by several of the leading pregnancy resource networks and organizations that foster them. Called “A Passion to Serve, A Vision for Life,” this pregnancy center report for 2009 was prepared by Heartbeat International, Care Net, the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, LIFE International, and the Family Research Council. The corresponding website is www.apassiontoserve.com.

As the report states, “PRCs serve some 1.9 million people each year with pregnancy assistance, abstinence counseling and education, community outreach programs and referrals, and public health linkages….Every day in the United States pregnancy resource centers assist an average of 5,500 Americans, female and male, young and old, with sexuality-and-pregnancy-related concerns.”

Twenty-nine of every 30 people engaged in pregnancy center work are volunteers, involved with lay and peer counseling, medical services (including ultrasound and STD testing), center upkeep, fundraising, parenting classes, and programs for healing after abortion.

The pregnancy center networks Heartbeat and Care Net operate the “Option Line,” a telephone hotline by which the caller is connected with the center closest to where he/she lives. At Priests for Life, we promote this hotline, 1-800-395-HELP, and its corresponding website, www.pregnancycenters.org, in all our public outreach.

Even the secular world is recognizing the impact of this movement. In January 2008, on the eve of the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, Nancy Gibbs of Time magazine cited the “evidence that the quiet campaign for women’s hearts and minds, conducted in thousands of crisis pregnancy centers around the country, on billboards, phone banks and websites, is having an effect” in reducing abortion rates, which are down by one third from their U.S. high.

And on September 19, 2008, the White House honored the selfless volunteers who work in the pregnancy centers. Dr. Joxel Garcia, who was the Assistant Secretary of Health, bestowed awards in the name of the President on over 150 volunteers and 56 pregnancy center organizations.

We should honor them too, and the best way we can do that is to make sure that everyone knows about their services. Let’s spread the word vigorously!

Pro-life is a spirituality, a way of relating to God, an integral dimension of the Christian Gospel. There is, in the end, only one Gospel. It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the Gospel of Life. The work of announcing and applying that Gospel to the concrete circumstances of our culture of death is deeply rooted in the commitment we already have as Christians. It is an aspect of discipleship.

At Priests for Life, we have developed and articulated this spirituality since 1991. It is a spirituality not only for priests, but for all the baptized, and the Church has allowed us not only to train people in it but to have them publicly profess promises to live it as Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. In nearly a thousand cities, people are taking this training and professing these promises.

This spirituality that draws deeply from the lives and teachings of three great pro-life warriors whom I was privileged to know personally: Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Cardinal John O’Connor.

The spirituality is biblical, prophetic, liturgical, Eucharistic, ecumenical, and Marian. It is marked by a spirit of joy, a serene confidence, a deep compassion, a radical solidarity with the vulnerable, a strong courage, a constant readiness for public witness, and a passion for justice. The missionaries do the pro-life work they are already doing, but in a way more deeply rooted in the Church.

Here’s what the promises say. Try them on for size!

“I, (name), in the presence of God the Father, the Creator of all Life, Jesus Christ the Son, the Resurrection and the Life, and the Holy Spirit, Lord and Giver of Life, and in the presence of this gathering of the People of Life, do joyfully promise, for the rest of my life, to live as a Lay Missionary of the Gospel of Life. I promise to defend my brothers and sisters whose right to life is under direct attack, and to be, especially for the unborn, the voice they do not have. I promise to pursue union with God in all things, and holiness of life which will foster my love for the weakest among us. I further promise to engage in pro-life work, according to the spirituality and virtues of the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, and to collaborate with their work to the best of my ability and within the context of my own vocation. I am confident that the Victory of Life has already been won through the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, and as the Church proclaims, celebrates, and serves the Gospel of Life, Christ will transform the Culture of Death into the Culture of Life.”

Find out more at www.MissionariesoftheGospelofLife.org.

There are two specific things I want to call on pro-life Americans to do regarding the health care reform debate.

First of all, now is the time to intensify our prayers and gear them specifically to the health care reform debate. We at Priests for Life have composed a special prayer for this purpose. I have placed it below, and urge people to use it in their families, prayer groups, and parishes. Moreover, we have created a cause on Facebook called “Pray to End Abortion.” This cause can become the largest prayer group in history as people connect on Facebook and commit together to pray not only regarding health care, but regarding all aspects of the pro-life movement. Special prayer resources will be created throughout the year, corresponding to specific needs and seasons. You can access the Facebook prayer cause at www.ProLifePrayers.com. (For those who do not wish to use Facebook, another option is the our website www.PrayerCampaign.org).

Let’s promote this cause, link to it from our websites, blogs, and social networking pages, and send it out to our email blasts during these days that are so critical to this debate!

The second action item is to trumpet the voices of those who have had abortions. The women and men of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign have created a three-minute video in which women who have had abortions speak about how it harmed them, and declare that an increase in abortion will mean an increase in health problems for women.

Let’s meet their courage with ours and use this video to bring their voices into the debate. See and spread the video at www.SilentNoMoreAwareness.org/healthcare.

The time for action is now, and the action could not be more simple.

Prayer for our Nation’s Health Care Reform

Lord Jesus, you are the Divine Physician,
And the source of all life and health.

Guide our nation at this critical moment,
As our government seeks health care reforms.

Give our elected officials the humility to know
That they are servants, not masters.
Give them the wisdom to realize
That every life has equal value.
Give them the strength to resist the idea
That some lives can be sacrificed to save others
Or that killing the unborn is a part of health care.

Give your people the courage to speak up
And to hold public officials accountable for their actions.

Save us, Lord Jesus, from a culture of death,
And let every reform in our public policy
Be based on the reform of our hearts and minds
In the light of your Gospel,
For you are Lord forever and ever. Amen.

God takes personal testimony seriously. It’s the way he has spread his word from the beginning. He intervenes in the lives of his people, and then he commands that those who have experienced his intervention tell others about it.

The Old Testament Patriarchs encountered God in a variety of surprising ways, and the advancement of salvation history depended upon their sharing that witness, starting with Abraham’s sharing of the encounter by which God told him to relocate his family and trust in a promise of fruitfulness that seemed impossible. The prophets likewise, through words and symbolic actions, told the people what God spoke to them. And the central event of the Old Testament, the Exodus, comes to us through generations of personal testimony to the mighty intervention of God.

Jesus Christ himself is the testimony of the Father. “I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence,” Jesus explained (John 8:38). “For this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth” (John 18:37).

Paul’s conversion experience on the road to Damascus is one of the most famous testimonies in Christianity. And it does not stop with the Bible. Whether it’s through the Confessions of St. Augustine, or the writings of Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, or Ignatius of Loyola, this much is clear: personal testimony is an essential tool of evangelization.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that one of today’s most powerful pro-life developments is the movement by which women and men who have lost children to abortion are speaking out about their pain and healing. The Silent No More Awareness Campaign, a project of Priests for Life and Anglicans for Life, gives these individuals opportunities to witness in churches, in the media, and in public rallies around the world. They reveal the hidden horror of abortion, and they proclaim that for those alienated by sin – whether abortion or not — there is a Savior.

It’s time for the Church and for each of us to hear and spread the testimonies of these men and women. Let’s match their courage with ours, by confronting the world with the word of their testimony, which can be found at www.SilentNoMoreAwareness.org and on You Tube at www.youtube.com/silentnomorecampaign. Even the Supreme Court in 2007 acknowledged the significance of such testimony. And that’s only the beginning.

Well now it’s here, and we have to act quickly to stop it. The health care reform bills now being finalized in Congress are going to end up mandating the federal funding of abortion without even mentioning the word - unless Congress explicitly excludes abortion. And that’s what we have to urge them to do. Otherwise, we will end up with a health care reform bill that will expand abortion more radically than anything since Roe vs. Wade.

Abortion, of course, is not health care and has nothing to do with health care. After all, what disease does abortion cure? None. And what proven medical benefit comes from the procedure? Again, none.

But in the minds of President Obama and the abortion lobby, abortion is essential. On July 17, 2007, for instance, Barack Obama said to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, “Reproductive care is essential care, basic care so it is at the center, the heart of the plan that I propose…insurers are going to have to abide by the same rules in terms of providing comprehensive care, including reproductive care…that’s going to be absolutely vital.”

And Hilary Clinton said the following to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on April 22, 2009: “Reproductive health includes access to abortion…”

Many will be misled by the fact that the health care bills don’t talk about abortion. But as Congressman Chris Smith pointed out in a June 26 letter to colleagues in Congress, “Without abortion explicitly excluded from any government mandated or government funded benefits package, abortion will be included. Time and again, bureaucrats and courts have decided that abortion must be included in public health programs unless the Congress explicitly provides otherwise.” That is why explicit exclusions of abortion have been placed in programs like SCHIP and the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan.

Without such an exclusion in health care reform legislation, federal officials would be empowered to mandate coverage of abortion in virtually all health plans; massive federal subsidies would be provided for abortion on demand; an expansion of abortion providers would be required; and at least some state abortion regulations would be nullified.

A vast majority of Americans oppose the public funding of abortion. As Congressman Smith points out, “Abortion funding restrictions save lives…The…Alan Guttmacher Institute periodically publishes reports on the effect of limitations on abortion funding. They have concluded that when Medicaid does not fund abortion 30% of Medicaid-eligible women who would have otherwise had an abortion choose life” (June 26 letter to colleagues).

In committee, pro-life amendments to prevent abortion coverage have already been rejected by pro-abortion legislators. And they want to vote on a health care bill within weeks, before people have a chance to consider all the implications. Your Representative and Senators need to hear from you today.

For more details, visit www.priestsforlife.org/legislation

The timing was perfect, because these two new documents have much to say to the current administration, and to the wider culture, both within and outside the Church.

The new encyclical is an addition to the rich body of the social teaching of the Church. Social doctrine is just as much a part of Church doctrine as are the teachings on the Trinity and the sacraments. And one of the new encyclical’s key points is that a proper understanding of true human and social development is possible only in light of the revelation that comes in Christ.

Another key point is this: social justice cannot advance unless the right to life is protected. And this is where pro-abortion politicians and parties so often get it wrong. They trumpet support for human rights, human development, and social justice, but also think that abortion belongs to those categories.

The Pope has affirmed again that just the opposite is true. Here are two of his key quotes:

“The Church forcefully maintains this link between life ethics and social ethics, fully aware that ‘a society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized’” (n.15).

“Openness to life is at the centre of true development. When a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man’s true good. If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of a new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away” (n.28).

Pope Benedict refers explicitly in the new encyclical not only to previous “social encyclicals,” but also to the “life encyclicals,” Humanae Vitae and Evangelium Vitae, as he seeks to erase the unnecessary gap that often exists between social awareness and awareness of the rights of the unborn.

And he asserts that those rights do not come from government and are not negotiable:

“If the only basis of human rights is to be found in the deliberations of an assembly of citizens, those rights can be changed at any time, and so the duty to respect and pursue them fades from the common consciousness. Governments and international bodies can then lose sight of the objectivity and “inviolability” of rights. When this happens, the authentic development of peoples is endangered” (n.43).

I hope the President did his reading on the plane. Let’s be sure to do ours as well.

After she had given birth and was in the hospital recovering from her caesarian section, she was struck by the fact that even though the maternity ward seemed to be full of women, there were no other newborn babies around except hers. In fact, her infant son was all alone in a room full of empty incubators. It was a strange and almost eerie site.

One morning, Laura was awakened by screaming and moaning coming from down the hall. Thinking it was simply the labor pains of other women giving birth, she asked the nurse why someone didn’t help them. The nurse replied matter-of-factly: “Oh they’re not in labor. They’re having abortions. They didn’t think it would hurt.”

It turned out that the hospital Laura was in specialized in providing abortions, and following the 1973 Supreme Court decision, their business was booming.

The image of that ghostly maternity ward, devoid of all but one, solitary child; devoid of all the happy sounds of crying, newborn babies, with only the agonized sobbing of post-abortive mothers echoing through the empty corridors, reminded me again of how much emptier our world is because of all the abortions that have taken place since this most horrible of all atrocities was legalized.

And make no mistake, it is the most horrible of all atrocities. Sometimes people in our own Church attempt to trivialize abortion by lumping it together with the other evils of the world — by comparing it with poverty, disease, war, etc. But as the numbers clearly demonstrate, there is no comparison. Since 1973 there have been 50 million abortions in the United States alone. Worldwide, there are 42 million abortions every year. That means that in the last thirty years, there have been over 1.5 billion abortions!

1.5 billion! That’s the equivalent of approximately one quarter of the entire population of the planet! One quarter of the earth’s population, murdered; snuffed out; gone.

There’s a famous poem about Jesus that concludes with the memorable lines: “All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as that One Solitary Life.”

Unfortunately, we can say about abortion:

All the wars ever fought,
All the holocausts ever perpetrated,
All the plagues that ever raged,
All the bombs that ever dropped,
All the famines that ever laid waste to the land, put together, have not killed the number of human beings wiped out by abortion.

And yet, hope endures, because God’s grace abounds, even amidst such devastation.

And what ever happened to Laura’s baby? As she proudly related to me, her son, Fr. Sal, just celebrated his one year anniversary as a priest of the Catholic Church!

MP Artur Górski, deputy head of the parliamentary commission on Polish-Lithuanian cooperation, has stated he intends to copy the Lithuanian law and introduce it before the nation’s parliament for passage.

“I have already asked for the translation of the Lithuanian law ‘on the protection of youth’ into Polish,” said Górski, a member of the major opposition party, Law and Justice. “This is a very interesting initiative and no doubt a very necessary one, especially now, when we face a more and more obvious expansion of gay activist circles.”

Górski spoke with the Catholic daily “Nasz Dziennik,” saying he believed the initiative could be ready by the fall. He stated that 50 parliamentarians would be needed to sponsor the measure to bring it to a vote, but added that he believed the proposed initiative would gain more than enough support for its passage, and possibly the support of all the MPs in the Law and Justice Party.

“If you look at the Polish parliament and see the ruling Civic Platform and major opposition Law and Justice, both claiming to be right wing, then there should be no trouble in passing such a law,” Gorski said.

If passed, the Polish equivalent of Lithuania’s law “on the protection of youth,” would ban any public promotion of homosexual, bisexual or polygamous relations among Polish youth. The law also targets public messages directed toward youth that promote violence, horror, suicide, and self-abuse.

The measure would also provide a strong legal barrier to homosexual “Pride” parades that promote the social acceptance, display, and celebration of aberrant sexual behaviors in civil society.

“I think this law is needed also in Poland,” said MP Leszek Deptu³a of the minor coalition Polish Peasants’ Party. “We should protect kids and youth from homosexuality and from promoting this idea. That’s why my opinion on this issue is very clear: if such a project appears, I will sure support it.”

“I am not against people of other sexual orientation, but I think there is no need to manifest and propagate such behaviors,” added MP Stanislaw Rakoczy.

For two decades I have been proclaiming from the pulpits of America that abortions happen in the third trimester. Many Americans find it hard to believe. Now, in the aftermath of the death of George Tiller, this fact is getting a bit more attention.

The Associated Press reported on June 2 in an article by Eric Olson that physician LeRoy Carhart of Nebraska wants to continue performing abortions at this late stage, but he, as well as Warren Hern, also want to make sure enough physicians are trained in how to do so.

How many are we talking about? The AP story reported, “Carhart said 75 to 100 of the ’several thousand’ abortions he performs annually are in the third trimester.”

Stanley K. Henshaw, a senior fellow at the Guttmacher Institute, the research division of Planned Parenthood, and the best source of these statistics, is quoted in a June 5 Washington Post article as saying, “The information just isn’t available… This is an area that we just don’t know much about.”

The Guttmacher Institute does report in its official statistics, however, that some 13,310 abortions each year are at 21 weeks or more of pregnancy (that is, 1.1% of the 1.21 million abortions per year). Of the 40 states that reported in 2005 to the Centers for Disease Control, 32 states reported abortions of babies 21 weeks or older.

This means that every day, 37 babies the size of a large banana are dismembered and decapitated — and these include healthy babies of healthy mothers… and it’s happening legally.

These are babies that the mother can already feel moving. According to MedlinePlus, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, these babies are storing fat on their bodies, their heartbeats can be heard with a stethoscope, they can hear, they have eyebrows, eyelashes, fingernails and toenails. Incidentally, MedlinePlus calls them “babies.” (See www.nlm.nih.gov/MEDLINEPLUS/ency/article/002398.htm).

Many people wonder how they can get some traction in the seemingly intractable abortion debate. How can they get people to listen, or make pro-choice people believe that pro-life people have good reason to be against abortion?

My suggestion: start by discussing the facts I just mentioned.

It’s morally legitimate to focus on late-term abortion; that doesn’t deny that all abortion is wrong; it’s simply a way to get the ball rolling, a pedagogical method of going from the most obvious to the less obvious, of starting with what people know and leading to what they don’t know.

When people are astonished by these facts, as they will be, they are forced to re-evaluate just how much priority “privacy” and “choice” have over life. If they are “pro-choice,” they are forced to figure out when in pregnancy the line is drawn — and why.

And now you’re talking.

Wow. “Respectful toward every position.” To put it plainly, that’s nonsense. The position that is precisely excluded is the position of the unborn child… the position that demands absolute respect and protection for that child, not because we have come to some consensus about it, but because the child deserves it now, without compromise or delay.

It is the position that says it is not equivalent to every other position, and that we cannot ‘agree to disagree’ about abortion. Why not? Because when someone is carrying out violence against someone else, you don’t sit back and ‘agree to disagree’ with the perpetrator. You intervene to stop the perpetrator and to protect the victim.

But the fact that this is the forgotten position should be no surprise, because ultimately that is the problem. The child in the womb is the forgotten member of our society.

And the tragedy of the forgetfulness that excludes these children is never more clear than when the society and its leaders who forget at the same time claim to be seeking justice for everyone, advocating for everyone, respecting everyone, and remembering everyone.

One cannot relegate the soul, the energy of the pro-life movement just to a “position” on which one can have a civil “disagreement.” The position of pro-life advocates is in a different category, because abortion itself is in a different category. We don’t settle for civil disagreements about racism, segregation, genocide, terrorism or other human rights violations. It’s only the human rights of that forgotten brother and sister in the womb that seem not to matter enough.

The position that sees abortion as a deal-breaker, a show-stopper, is precisely the position toward which the President is not respectful. It’s the position that allowed people to vote for him, though they said they opposed abortion. Yes, abortion is evil, they admitted. It’s just not a deal-breaker. It’s the position that prevented so many from seeing a problem with honoring President Obama with a law degree at Notre Dame. Sure, we disagree with him on abortion. But it’s not a show-stopper. We wouldn’t give the degree or the platform to a racist, but this is different. It’s the position that allows people to ignore the question of whether a Supreme Court nominee is for or against abortion. So what? It’s not like we’re putting an advocate of violence on the Court, right?

It’s time for the blindness to end. If abortion is murder, let’s act like it.