Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Claire Chretien

NEWS ABORTION, BIOETHICSTue Jan 2, 2018 - 11:19 am EST

Intact aborted babies found in federal raid of body parts dealer’s warehouse

DETROIT, Michigan, January 2, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A black market human body parts dealer about to stand trial had the bodies of four preborn babies in his warehouse in 2013, Reuters reported on December 28.

The intact bodies of the babies were found during a federal raid of businessman Arthur Rathburn's warehouse. The news agency said it had reviewed “confidential photographs” of four human fetuses that were kept in the warehouse. Rathburn and his wife are accused of selling and renting diseased cadavers.

“The fetuses, which appear to have been in their second trimester, were submerged in a liquid that included human brain tissue,” according to Reuters.

The preborn babies’ remains indicate that they may have been born alive during botched abortions, according to a top pro-life advocate.

“These babies’ bodies seem to be virtually intact,” said Lila Rose, President and Founder of Live Action. “If they were obtained through abortion, there’s a strong possibility that the babies were actually born alive and then killed or left to die before they were sold for parts.”

“That’s because in later-term pregnancies like these, the chemical often used to kill the child in the womb before inducing labor and delivering her would not be used, as it would taint the organs and make them unusable for experiments,” she explained.

According to the state of Michigan’s case against the Rathburns, they obtained diseased bodies and body parts that had been donated. Rathburn apparently used a chainsaw to cut up some of the bodies and received a “bucket full of human heads” in the mail while his wife “took orders from customers,” the Washington Post wrote of the case in 2016.

It seems that Rathburn’s possession of these remains of unborn children only came to light thanks to the Reuters report. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-TN, who chaired the U.S. House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, said this case needs to be “reviewed.”

It does not seem that the Select Panel, which was formed in response to the undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood’s participation in the baby body parts trade, was aware of Rathburn’s possession of dead preborn children.

“Why did it take a leak to a news reporter to get this information into the hands of Rep. Marsha Blackburn, one of Congress’s leading investigators into the baby parts trade?” asked Rose.

“And why did this evidence get to her four years after its discovery and an entire year after her investigation concluded?” she continued. “Was this evidence suppressed by the Obama administration because of the administration’s close ties to Planned Parenthood and Planned Parenthood’s own participation in the barbaric baby parts trade?”

Rathburn and his wife “sometimes obtained diseased remains from their suppliers at a reduced cost, due to the fact that end users of human remains generally reject infectious bodies and body parts for use in medical or dental training,” the prosecution maintains. “It was part of the scheme that the Rathburns would provide human remains to [their] customers, falsely representing to those customers that the remains were free of certain infectious diseases.”

“How Rathburn acquired the fetuses and what he intended to do with them is unclear,” the Reuters report said. “Rathburn’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment, and neither the indictment nor other documents made public in his case mention the fetuses.”

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DOROTHY CUMMINGS MCLEAN

BLOGS CATHOLIC CHURCH Tue Jan 2, 2018 - 6:31 pm EST

Topless feminist attempts to steal baby Jesus from Vatican crèche

Catholic , Femen , Vatican Nativity

VATICAN CITY, January 2, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A topless woman attempted to snatch a wooden doll depicting the Infant Christ from the nativity scene, or presepio, in St. Peter’s Square on Christmas Day.

Alisa Vinogradova was caught on video rushing towards the presepio in Vatican Square, about two hours before Pope Francis was due to give his Christmas message. She managed to take hold of the doll before she was wrestled to the ground by police. In the skirmish, the doll lost its halo, and the bare-breasted woman fell among some unusually busty cherubs. The cherubs, who already had curious expressions, looked positively horrified.

The young woman was recorded shrieking “God is a woman” in heavily-accented English. The same words were painted on her naked back.

An extreme feminist group called FEMEN, founded in Ukraine, claimed responsibility for the action. The goal of the group is apparently “complete victory over patriarchy.” It identified Vinogradova as a “sextremist.”

Isn’t that sad? “Sextremist.” You’d think it was 1972 all over again.

Another FEMEN activist attacked the St. Peter’s Square nativity scene in 2014. Iana Aleksandrovna Azhdanova, also from Ukraine, was rather more successful in scooping up Baby Jesus before being apprehended. Azhdanova had “God is a woman” painted on her naked torso instead of her back, but it was basically the same story.

FEMEN stated on its website that Vinogradova’s act was “directed against the Vatican’s infringement of the rights of women to their own bodies. In particular, against the policy of the ‘Holy See’ associated with the promotion of the ban on abortion and ‘sacred condemnation’ of contraception.”

Rather oddly, it also stated that “FEMEN considers the anti-war policy of the Vatican a rough medieval attack on the freedom of women and their natural rights.”

It encouraged women to follow its example and “kidnap babies from religious denominations, thus, stating their right to use of their own body!”

Fire your translator, girls.

FEMEN falsely claimed that Vinogradova had successfully kidnapped the model of the infant Christ.

Consisting of women who strip off before shouting, splashing bishops with water, barging into mosques, and committing relatively minor (if deeply annoying) acts of vandalism, FEMEN is rather pathetic. It’s hard to stay mad at young women who think their toplessness is a weapon that hurts others more than themselves. It is particularly sad considering how many young women in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, are coerced into the sex trade.

FEMEN has had its share of coercion, too. In 2013 the supposedly feminist-extremist FEMEN was revealed to be controlled a man named Viktor Svyatski. A filmmaker named Kitty Green, who became very close to the group while filming a documentary, told the Independent that Svyatski “hand-picked” the pretty girls who interrupt gatherings with their bare-breasted protests.

“He hand-picked the prettiest girls because the prettiest girls sell more papers,” she said. “The prettiest girls get on the front page... that became their image, that became the way they sold the brand.”

FEMEN leader Inna Shevchenko claimed that the group had expelled Svyatski soon after Green finished her documentary. But the story tainted the feminist credentials of FEMEN ever after. Apparently the group was even funded once by a Turkish salesman selling Chinese lingerie. The pretty young women rushed out into the streets to “protest” clad in his stock. How sad is that?

FEMEN picks only very young, pretty and slim women for its operations, perhaps thinking that these are the women with the most power over men. If they studied traditional societies with any attention whatsoever, they would realize that old-fashioned mothers, sisters, wives and daughters, women who both demand and follow a strict moral code, have the strength to muster armies. Half-naked women are merely momentary distractions, and the shock of seeing bare breasts eventually wears off. So does the shock of manger-robbing. FEMEN trying to run off with a model of the Infant Christ from the St. Peter’s Square presepio was shocking the first time; the second time it was merely pathetic.

It was particularly pathetic considering how awful the presepio was this year. Poor half-naked Alisa Vinogradova wasn’t half as offensive to faithful Catholics as was thefully naked muscleman to her right. He, along with the busty cherubs (take a good look), was the real Christmas scandal.

Perhaps it’s a reminder that enemies outside the Church are nothing compared to enemies within the Church. I wish Ms Vinogradova all the best in the New Year: a nice warm coat, for example, and the collected works of Saint Edith Stein on the dignity of women.

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‘Eerie and ominous’ sign appears as Pope Francis visits Vatican Nativity

Pope Francis visits Vatican Nativity on New Year's Eve

Anthony H. Wagner

OPINIONTue Jan 2, 2018 - 4:16 pm EST

‘Eerie and ominous’ sign appears as Pope Francis visits Vatican Nativity

Catholic , Pope Francis , Vatican Nativity

ROME, January 2, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Would Pope Francis say anything about this year’s Vatican nativity scene — which was so clearly meant as a nod to the LGBT lobby — when he paid it a visit on New Year’s Eve?

He spoke not a word of course, but instead blessed it and chuckled as a few dignitaries, responsible for what some have called a “hideous” and “sacrilegious” crèche, gave him a guided tour.

And yet something very eerie and ominous happened that evening.

At exactly the same time as the Pope left St. Peter’s Basilica and walked to the crèche in St. Peter’s Square, a squabble of about 500 seagulls suddenly flew up from behind the basilica and circled around the crèche.

They swarmed above the nativity scene, squawking and squealing for about the exact time it took for the Pope to walk from the basilica to the crèche. They then disappeared into a night sky lit up by an almost full moon.

Seagulls flying above the Vatican Nativity

Many had been wondering what the Pope might say about the nativity scene. Facebook had banned users posting the figure of a naked man in the crèche, and when LifeSite revealed its creators came from Montevergine, a town with close links to Italy’s LGBT community, its sordid nature became clear.

The naked, athletic figure was ostensibly meant to be a poor man, showing one of the seven corporal works of mercy (clothing the naked) while other disturbing figures, in what is normally a scene of holy innocence and purity, showed a dead man covered in a blanket (burying the dead) and what looked like a decapitated head behind iron bars (visiting prisoners).

That the Pope should remain silent about the crèche, which even the Italian police in the square disliked and thought “strange,” is not surprising as he had seen the plans for the crèche weeks ago and had given it his approval.

Also the timely appearance of the seagulls, who scavenge on any filth they can find, is actually not new to St. Peter’s Square during this pontificate.

In the adjoining piazza and around the colonnade, passers-by have been shocked at the degradation and squalor that emerges there at night. The seagulls descend on the headquarters of the Church and pick at rubbish bins, leaving debris strewn across the sidewalks and roads.

The homeless are allowed to bed down under main thoroughfares and archways, on the outskirts of the colonnade and in front of the Holy See press office. Often they are drunk and disorderly, sometimes threatening passing tourists hoping to get a shot of the basilica.

For all of the Pope’s worthy outreach to the poor and the homeless, he hasn’t lifted them up and off the streets, but instead created a culture of homelessness around the Vatican.

Some have called the miserable scene “apocalyptic.”

And yet the general waste and degeneration, the screaming, scavenging birds circling over the Vatican like a dead carcass, is perhaps highly symbolic of this pontificate, one that many see leading the Church in the direction of a kind of death.

And all the time that the degradation and squalor continue in the Church — both physically and morally — no one is really speaking up and coming to her rescue.

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