Lay

All four Gospels tell of Jesus cleansing the temple. The Gospel of John, however, provides the most detail about what took place, which bears witness that the Evangelist was present at this event. (John 2:13-22)  Jesus went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, the feast that commemorated both the Israelites’ passing out of slavery in Egypt and the covenant that God made with the Jewish people in the wilderness.

“In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers at their business.”  The scene that Jesus beheld was that of exploiting the temple and its sacrifices for monetary gain.  Upon observing such roguish activity, Jesus made a whip of cords and drove them all out, even violently scattering the coins and turning over the tables.  He told those selling pigeons: “Take these things away; you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”

By referring to the temple as “my Father’s house,” Jesus reveals that he is the Father’s Son.  Being the Father’s incarnate Son, Jesus, then, is the custodian of his Father’s house – the temple where his Father dwells.  His very singular distinctiveness as the Father’s incarnate Son gives him unparalleled authority over his Father’s house, and so the right to cleanse the temple from all that is ungodly.  The disciples later remembered the scripture passage: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” (Psalm 69:9).  Jesus has fulfilled that oracle.

In response to Jesus’ actions, the stunned and irate Jews, nonetheless, demand a sign that would authenticate his authority for performing such an unprecedented action, to which Jesus responds: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  The Jews immediately note that the temple has taken forty-six years to build, and “will you raise it up in three days?”

The word “this” is theologically significant.  On the one hand, “this” is the stone temple that is directly in front of them.  On the other hand, as the Evangelist later grasps, Jesus was referring to himself.  “But he spoke of the temple of his body.  When, therefore, he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.”

As the Son of God incarnate, Jesus is the new and living temple, “for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” (Colossians 2:9)  To come into God’s presence, one no longer needs to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and enter the temple.  Rather, Jesus is the Word made flesh, and, therefore, God now tabernacles among humankind.

Jesus is “the Father’s house” in which his Son now abides.  To be in communion with the Father, one must abide in his incarnate Son.  The temple is now superfluous. It was a prophetic anticipation of the Incarnation, and now, with the coming of Jesus, it has lost the purpose for which it was built.

Moreover, if Jesus, as the incarnate Son of God, is the new and living temple, he must now offer the perfect Passover sacrifice wherein he will establish a new and everlasting covenant.  Likewise, through this new covenant, Jesus must cleanse the world of sin and cast out death, for only by being cleansed of sin with its curse of death can humankind pass over to a new life of holiness.  This Jesus accomplishes in his sacrificial death and glorious resurrection.

The Jews do destroy Jesus, who is “this temple,” by crucifying him.  But as the living temple, Jesus, through his crucifixion, becomes the perfect high priest who offers the perfect Passover sacrifice of the new covenant.  That the Passover sacrifice of himself was efficacious is found in Jesus raising himself gloriously from the dead on the third day.  In so doing, Jesus, as risen-incarnate-Son of the Father, now becomes the glorious heavenly temple, the Father’s new house, wherein all have access to his heavenly Father.

St. Peter beautifully states the relationship between Jesus as the risen temple and those who abide in him:  “Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:4-5)

The risen Jesus is the living stone that was discarded by men but selected by God as the cornerstone of the living and life-giving temple.  Those who abide in the risen Jesus also become living stones in the Father’s new spiritual house, for they have become holy priests offering spiritual sacrifices in, through, and with the risen Christ Jesus.

As part of the destruction of Jerusalem, “this temple,” too, was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., which was foretold by Jesus.  His disciples pointed out to him the beauty of the temple.  In response, he said: “You see all of these, do you not?  Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down.” (Matthew 24:1-2) And that happened.

It may have appeared to most that its destruction was a simple historical event that should be noted.  It could no longer stand, however, for if it remained, it would be an opposing sign to “this temple” that is the risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Presently, its very absence remains a sign of the presence of the indestructible living temple.

John the Evangelist, in the Book of Revelation, has a vision of the heavenly Jerusalem.  “And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.” (Revelation 21:22)  In the heavenly Jerusalem, there is no need of a temple, for in Heaven one abides fully, in communion with the ever-living Lamb, in the Father’s house – a house that will never be destroyed.

The post This Temple, Rebuilt appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

By “TYLER DURDEN”

“…since March 2023, the number of full-time workers has collapsed by 1.347 million while the number of part-time workers exploded by 1.888 million.

“There’s more. Regular readers are aware that all the job gains since 2018 have gone to immigrants, mostly illegal immigrants, something we spent last month’s jobs post discussing in detail. So what happened in March? It will come as no surprise that there was more of the same, and after the collapse in native-born workers in the last three months when nearly 2.5 million native-born workers lost their jobs, March saw some pick up, and 929K native-born workers were added. Meanwhile, after last month’s record increase in foreign-born workers, in March illegal immigrants added another 112K jobs, pushing the total number of foreign-born workers to a new record high of 31.114 million.

“Said otherwise, not only has all job creation in the past 6 years has been exclusively for foreign-born workers…

“… but there has been zero job-creation for native born workers since July 2018! This, as we have been saying for months now, is a huge issue – especially at a time of an illegal alien flood at the southwest border…

“… and is about to become a huge political scandal, because once the inevitable recession finally hits, there will be millions of furious unemployed Americans demanding a more accurate explanation for what happened…”

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/behind-todays-stellar-jobs-print-it-was-literally-all-part-time-jobs-and-illegals

(I have been meaning to write up the New Madrid fault/quakes of 1811-12, and boy am I glad I never did get to it. Here is Jeff Childers with more info than I ever knew. Including, that an eclipse also coincided with those quakes, which were said to have caused church steeple bells to ring a thousand miles away on the east coast. But that’s not all: There is a vaxx angle – several angles, in fact. Childers posted this substack an hour before the NJ quake hit, which was felt from Maine to NC. The best thing about his essay is that he makes no predictions; he simply states facts. Wildly coincidental facts. Please click over and subscribe. -nvp)

X MARKS THE SHOT

In which we tumble down the Great American Eclipse rabbit hole, finding at least one inexplicable element

(click over to substack to see the images – I couldn’t embed. -nvp)

To set the table, there is a third eclipse we haven’t mentioned yet. On December 14, 2020 — remember that date — a total solar eclipse passed across South America. Nothing particularly interesting to us lay in that eclipse’s path. Yawn. But then … in a mildly interesting coincidence, the date of the 2020 South American Eclipse happened to lie exactly at the midpoint of the two Great American Eclipses. Behold:

August 21, 2017 ←→ 1211 days ←→ December 14, 2020 ←→ 1211 days — April 8, 2024.

Huh. So that’s a little curious, right? But it gets much curiouser. On the same date as the middle eclipse — December 14, 2020 — two insanely significant things happened here in the United States. First, Joe Biden was certified as Resident by the Electoral College. So, there’s that bit of insanity. But that’s not even the big one.

Second, on December 14, 2020, exactly halfway between the two Great American Eclipses, and on the same day as the South American eclipse, nurse Sandra Lindsay became the first American outside of clinical trials to be vaccinated for covid-19. Sandra got Pfizer. But forget about Sandra. The point is, December 14, 2020 was also the vaccine’s release date.

So … the deadliest medical intervention and biggest manmade disaster in history started on the day of a total eclipse, and was perfectly bracketed on both sides of the calendar by total eclipses, eclipses that happen to make an “X” over the same country that produced that same disastrous intervention.

I’ll grant you, all of that is weird and wildly coincidental. But I don’t put much stock in numerology, or astrological coincidences, and I’m not supernatural about eclipses. Thus, given only the facts I’ve reported so far, I still probably would not have taken up the time this morning to write about the Pfizer triple-eclipse connection.

But then, one more domino dropped and that was it. It got even weirder.

Turns out, the first batches of Pfizer, including Nurse Sandra’s shot, were almost certainly produced in a Pfizer manufacturing facility located in Chesterfield, Missouri, which was one of Pfizer’s very first facilities that made the vaccine. Check this out: the Chesterfield, Missouri Pfizer plant was in or near 2017’s total eclipse path, and is also in or near 2024’s total eclipse path. In other words: the Pfizer shots, which were first deployed precisely halfway between the two Great American Eclipses on the calendar, were also made inside the paths of both of those Great American Eclipses. Meaning, right where they intersect at the “X”:

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/x-marks-the-shot-friday-april-5-2024

The moon has people on the move.

The solar eclipse on Monday, 8 April 2024, is expected to draw millions to good viewing spots in the “path of totality,” stretching from Mazatlán to Montreal. Preemptive closures have been announced to deal with the logistical challenges.

The moon rarely blocks the sun entirely, but every year the lunar cycle determines the date of Easter, and much else depends on that. So the Feast of the Annunciation is also on the move this year, transferred from its usual spot on 25 March – which fell during Holy Week – to 8 April, the first day after Holy Week and the Easter Octave, to no longer impede it.

The coincidence of an eclipse with the Annunciation suggests that the meandering of the moon might be a matter for spiritual meditation. Mary is the woman with the moon at her feet and clothed with the sun. (Revelation 12:1)

The moon is an apt Christian symbol for the Blessed Mother, as the moon has no light of its own, but only reflects the light of the sun; Mary reflects the light of her Son upon the face of the earth. But the moon is not purely ancillary much less merely decorative; its gravitational pull keeps the earth in balance, as it were.

An intermediary between the sun and earth, the moon watches over the earth with its face turned always to the sun. The moon is not a star, like the sun, a fearsome source of light and warmth. It remains the more approachable light. It is not possible to look directly into the sun – face to face, as it were (Exodus 33:20) – much less to stand upon it. The moon can be contemplated easily, a friendly companion, a gentle reminder that the sun, though not seen, is working still and will return.

If the sun is the glory of the Lord coming before the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7:13), then the moon is the kindly light that guides us “o’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent/ till the night is gone.” The light of Newman’s poem is Christ, the light, but if it serves as a guide during the night, then it is the light reflected by the moon, rather than the direct light of the sun. The source of light is the same in either case.

An eclipse is a symbolic challenge. What to make of the moon when it obscures the sun, rather than reflects its light? Is that not the objection to Marian devotion, that it puts someone between us and the Son? Perhaps it even obscures the greater light with a lesser light, or that which is not even light at all? Does not the natural rarity of the eclipse teach us that the proper supernatural order of things is to prefer our sunlight directly? Why put so much stock in a moon which, for most of its cycle, only partially reflects the sun – and often enough – blocks it?

All such objections are good reminders that Mary is never to obscure Jesus, and the cult of the saints is not to diminish, but enhance, the worship of God. There exist pious souls who ignore the Blessed Sacrament in a church while pouring out their hearts before a statue of Our Lady or an image of the Little Flower or Padre Pio. God likely looks kindly on misguided piety, but it remains misguided.

The Annunciation gives a proper spiritual interpretation of a solar eclipse. For that singular moment in Nazareth, the moon determined whether the sunlight – the Son’s light – would reach the world. This is how St. Bernard of Clairvaux puts it in a sermon excerpted in the Divine Office for 20 December:

The angel awaits an answer; it is time for him to return to God who sent him. We too are waiting, O Lady. . . .The price of our salvation is offered to you. We shall be set free at once if you consent. In the eternal Word of God we all came to be, and behold, we die. In your brief response we are to be remade in order to be recalled to life. Tearful Adam with his sorrowing family begs this of you, O loving Virgin, in their exile from Paradise. Abraham begs it, David begs it. All the other holy patriarchs, your ancestors, ask it of you, as they dwell in the country of the shadow of death. This is what the whole earth waits for.

Just as celestial movements offer those rare moments when the reach of the sun’s light depends – fleetingly – on the moon, there was a singular moment in Nazareth. God sent his Son into the world, but dependent upon the free consent of the Virgin of Nazareth. To be sure, she was filled with grace and preserved from sin. Grace enhances freedom and sin erodes it; thus the sinless Mary, full of grace, was more free, not less. And the Incarnation depended upon her freedom, by God’s own choice. The light coming into the world (John 1:9) depended upon Mary to enter it. The sun depended, for that moment, upon the moon.

Analogies are not exact. Mary never eclipses Jesus. But one can imagine Abraham and David and the tearful children of Adam looking up and praying that the moon give permission for the sunlight to breakthrough again. The shadow of an eclipse is a memory of the beginning, when “darkness was upon the face of the deep.” (Genesis 1:2)

In the beginning God said fiat lux. And so it was.

Mary replies today, fiat mihi. And so He came to be among us.

The post The Eclipse and the Annunciation appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

A baby who was born the same size as a coke can is now a thriving one-year-old after physical contact with her parents appeared to prompt her recovery, according to her doctor.

Baby Jo arrived at just 23 weeks and 4 days gestation after her mother, Carolina, was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia. Carolina had to undergo an emergency cesarean section and Jo was born weighing just 12 ounces (340g) and measuring just 10 and a half inches (27cm) long.

Due to her prematurity, Jo had underdeveloped lungs and required the use of oxygen. Her parents were told that the chances of her survival were low.

Her father, Michael, recalled “Dr Everette was incredibly sweet and compassionate, but she kind of just spelled it out for us that, look, small babies this early just don’t normally make it. We frequently can’t get them intubated. There’s, you know, not a lot we can do”.

Dr Rachel Everette of St Francis Children’s Hospital said “She wasn’t going to survive. She was very small and she was on the edge of viability”.

However, baby Jo fought for life

Unexpectedly, Dr Everette was able to intubate the baby. “That wasn’t supposed to happen”, the doctor said. “She wasn’t supposed to have a mouth big enough for me to be able to intubate her, because she’s so tiny”.

Jo’s parents were finally allowed to hold their baby when she was nine days old, when doctors thought that she was going to die.

Dr Everette said “It was almost like Jo just got energised from the fact that her mom and dad were holding her. We could just watch her sats [oxygen saturation levels] go up, slowly but it’s going up”.

After 142 days in the neonatal intensive care unit, Jo was able to go home with her family. She is the smallest baby to survive at St Francis Children’s Hospital, and is on the Tiniest Baby Registry for the world’s smallest surviving babies.

Jo is now a year and a half old and is being weaned off oxygen at home.

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Extremely premature babies are surviving at higher rates than ever

At 23 weeks gestation, Jo was born below the current UK abortion limit of 24 weeks. Research published in November 2023 by academics at the University of Leicester and Imperial College London found a total of 261 babies born alive at 22 and 23 weeks, before the abortion limit, who survived to discharge from hospital in 2020 and 2021. This is compared to the Government abortion statistics, which show that in 2021 alone, 755 “ground C” abortions were performed when the baby was at 22 or 23 weeks gestation (ground C is the statutory ground under which the vast majority of abortions are permitted and there is currently a 24-week time limit for abortions performed under this statutory ground).

Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “Baby Jo’s story is amazing and demonstrates how important parental love and expert medical support both are to the thriving of premature babies”.

“Sadly, many babies receive neither, and are aborted at the same age as Jo was when she was born. Stories like this should prove to the British public and the Government that a revision of the abortion law is long since overdue, and that the current 24-week limit should be lowered to reflect these very premature babies who are surviving and thriving with the right support”.

LifeNews Note: Republished with permission from Right to Life UK.

The post Premature Baby Born the Size of a Soda Can Beats the Odds, Celebrates First Birthday appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The state of Washington has suspended the license of a nurse who forced his pregnant girlfriend to take an abortion drug.

In a story that is a reminder of how easily-available abortion drugs enable predators, Washington State Board of Nursing suspended the license of 2-year-old David Benjamin Coots.

In March, police arrested Coots for trying to force an unwanted chemical abortion on his pregnant girlfriend. He reportedly placed abortion-inducing pills inside his victim’s womb during an abnormally aggressive sexual encounter. The woman realized something was awry when she found two pills and a small piece of foil on toilet paper while sitting on the toilet.

In addition to the nurse license, Coots faces charges of second-degree assault, third-degree rape, tampering with a witness, and five counts of violation of a court order

His wife, Melissa Coots, who allegedly pressured the victim not to report Coots to the authorities, has been charged with witness tampering.

Now Coots has lost his license.

She called him “flirty for a doctor” and he later asked for her number, hoping she could help him with real estate, according to the (WSBON).

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They became friends and then started dating in Sept. 2023 when Coots told her that he and his wife were getting a divorce. The pair have five children.

In Jan. 2024, the victim said she had taken multiple pregnancy tests that were positive. She said Coots was “overly supportive” when she told him about the pregnancy and said he would take care of everything.

According to court documents, she told a deputy that she and Coots were having sex on Jan. 27 when he put his fingers into her farther and harder than normal, and that Coots was acting strangely afterward. She said after he left for the night, she noticed a pill fall from her vagina.

The victim said she asked Coots what the pill was. Eventually, according to documents, he told her he put four pills inside her that “causes miscarriages.”

The victim went to the emergency room and had a rape kit performed.

In the days following, the victim said Coots sent her money and showed up at her house asking to talk, according to documents. She told investigators that she also received texts from Melissa Coots who threatened her if she talked to police, and also offered her money to keep quiet.

David Coots was arrested on March 11 for violating a court order and showing up where the victim was staying with a letter and gifts.

Coots has been released on $500,000 bond and is ordered to wear a GPS tracking device.

The post Nurse Who Forced His Pregnant Girlfriend to Take Abortion Drug Loses His License appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Institutional conscientious objection may sound like an arcane bioethical issue, but it will be at the centre of fierce political debates in coming years. As more and more jurisdictions legalise procedures like abortion and euthanasia, some hospitals and clinics, mostly Catholic, will refuse to provide facilities. Governments will try to force them to participate – and there will be fireworks. This is already happening on a small scale in Canada and Australia.

The idea that an institution can have a conscience is roundly denied by many bioethicists. The ability to discriminate between right and wrong is a property of individuals, not institutions, they believe. Therefore hospitals which refuse to provide, say, abortions should be forced to do so and doctors who refuse to participate should be sacked. After all, abortion is legal and socially acceptable.

Up to now, arguments for and against institutional conscientious objection have been relatively unsophisticated. One side says, “do what I say or else”; the other side responds, “we have a time-honoured right to our beliefs”. These are vulnerable to the exercise of raw political power.

However, bioethicists are beginning to examine this issue more carefully. In the Journal of Medicine & Philosophy, two Australians, Xavier Symons and Reginald Chua, defend a right to institutional conscientious objection by parsing the terms of the debate more carefully. (Full disclosure: Symons is a former deputy editor of BioEdge, who is currently working at Harvard.) They sketch three familiar arguments against institutional conscientious objection:

• People have consciences; institutions don’t have consciences.
• Institutions that receive public funding should provide legally sanctioned services.
• Institutions must not deny legal services to people in desperate need, especially when they have nowhere else to go.

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Symons and Chua contend that these objections fail to take into account the metaphysics of institutions. While institutions are not individual persons, we often speak of them as if they had moral responsibility. For instance, Israel should not bomb Gaza or Iran should not fund Hamas. This is hardly a knock-out blow to opponents of ICO, but it should give us pause. It is an approach which is supported recent philosophical research.

Their critique of the government funding argument deploys another simple distinction:

Catholic facilities are not funded by governments with an implicit expectation of providing abortion or euthanasia. They are funded with the expectation that they act in accord with their foundational ethos. If anything, Catholic hospitals are honoring the expectation that the State has of them by acting in accord with their basic values and not providing terminations and assistance in dying.

Forcing these institutions to provide “immoral” services causes them moral harm.

Finally, they discern in the argument about denying essential services a strong streak of consequentialism: “that the life and health of women is of greater importance than respecting an institution’s mission and values”. But this is a matter of reasonable, if vehement, disagreement.

They note that the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2012 that “States are obliged to organize their health service system . . . to ensure that the effective exercise of freedom of conscience by health professionals . . . does not prevent patients from obtaining access to services to which they are entitled.”

Without demolishing the arguments against institutional conscientious objection, they contend that much more depth, nuance, and tolerance are needed in a conflict which is sure to become more heated in coming years.

LifeNews Note: Michael Cook is editor of BioEdge where this story appeared.

The post Christian Hospitals Should Not be Forced to Kill People in Abortion and Euthanasia appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Scotland could become the first jurisdiction in the United Kingdom to legalise assisted dying.

Scottish Liberal Democrat Liam McArthur tabled an assisted dying for terminally ill adults (Scotland) bill last week. He said that: ““This bill contains robust safeguards, similar to those which have been safely and successfully introduced in countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the United States, where they continue to enjoy strong public support.”

This will be the third bill to legalise assisted dying tabled in Holyrood.

It is far from certain that this third attempt will pass on a conscience vote, although McArthur is confident. The First Minister, Humza Yousaf, is opposed, along with the Church of Scotland, the Catholic Church in Scotland, and the Scottish Association of Mosques.

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Surprisingly, the former First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who is still very influential, says that she is leaning towards a No vote. Writing in the Glasgow Times, she said “despite my expectations, the more deeply I think about the different issues involved, the more I find myself veering away from a vote in favour, not towards it.”

“I worry that even with the best of intentions and the most carefully worded legislation, it will be impossible to properly guarantee that no-one at the end of their life will feel a degree of pressure, a sense that it might be better for others for them not be here – even if their loved ones try to persuade them otherwise.

“And, even more, fundamentally, I worry about the thin end of the wedge. That if we normalise assisted dying – if we come to associate dignity at the end of life with choosing to die, rather than being supported to live in as much peace and comfort as possible – then we will, as a society, lose focus on the palliative and end-of-life care and support that is necessary to help people, even in the worst of circumstances, to live with dignity. And I worry that, over time, this shift in collective mindset will see the tightly drawn provisions of this bill extended much further.”

LifeNews Note: Michael Cook is editor of BioEdge where this story appeared.

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Abortion activists in Florida are frustrated after the state’s Supreme Court ruling allowing a fetal heartbeat law to take effect failed to produce “rage” donations.

The Florida Supreme Court ruled in favor of a law signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in April 2023 that would prohibit a doctor from performing an abortion after a heartbeat is detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy. McKenna Kelley, a board member of the Tampa Bay Abortion Fund, said that, unlike the aftermath of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, the Florida ruling had produced little “rage giving” despite a growing demand for funding for abortions, according to Axios.

“It’s really important that if you care about people having access to abortion, you help support us,” Kelley told Axios.

The Tampa Bay Abortion Fund helps pay for women to travel out of state to get an abortion if they are past the six-week mark, according to the group’s website. Kelley explained that the group covers a wide variety of needs and that they will pay out anywhere from $10 to $1,900, with the average cost being around $1,100, according to Axios.

After the ruling, Kelley said there was a small increase in giving but nothing like what the group saw after the Dobbs decision in June 2022, according to Axios. The fund reportedly raised over three times its annual budget after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

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The Tampa fund is not the only abortion group struggling to make ends meet over the last several years. Groups like the National Network of Abortion Funds and the Louisiana Abortion Fund said in January that they were having to scale back their services or risk shutting down due to the lack of “rage” donations coming in.

Additionally, the Florida Supreme Court also ruled in favor Monday of putting an abortion amendment on the ballot for voters to weigh in on in November.

Currently, three states have abortion amendments on the ballot, including New York and Maryland, with Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota considering similar initiatives.

Kelley said that it was “frustrating” to see people celebrating the court’s decision and overlooking the heartbeat bill that will soon go into effect, according to Axios.

“It was personally quite frustrating on Monday to see celebration … knowing how many people are not going to be able to get an abortion between May and, if the ballot measure passes, whenever that goes into effect,” Kelley said.

LifeNews Note: Kate Anderson writes for Daily Caller. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience.

The post Abortion Activists are Mad That Florida’s New Heartbeat Law Isn’t Flooding Them With “Rage” Donations appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The Biden Justice Department is prosecuting more pro-lifers in a move one congressman called “a weaponization of federal government.” On Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee announced that four pro-life activists were convicted of misdemeanor violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act after participating in a peaceful protest outside a Nashville-area abortion facility in 2021. A federal judge found defendants Eva Edl, Eva Zastrow, James Zastrow, and Paul Place guilty on Tuesday. The four could face up to six months in prison, five years of supervised released, and fines of up to $10,000 each. They will face sentencing July 30.

Appearing on “Washington Watch” on Wednesday, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) commented, “This is a weaponization of federal government. It’s aimed at Christians. Ever since this administration took office three and a half years ago, they’ve gone after Christians, they’ve gone after pro-life centers.” He continued, “Ain’t it amazing that you can have cities torn up, buildings burned, looting, people hurt, you don’t hear about that. … Yet if you sing and are just peacefully being at [abortion facilities] … and then charge them under the FACE Act, which is — it’s ludicrous.”

Edl, the Zastrows, and Place reportedly faced a bench trial, meaning that Middle District of Tennessee Magistrate Judge Chip Frensly heard the case, instead of a jury. According to news reports, Frensly deliberated for less than half an hour before handing down a guilty verdict. The pro-lifers, after being convicted, prayed and sang hymns outside the courthouse.

Six other activists who participated in the 2021 pro-life protest were previously convicted in January and face sentencing July 2. They face “up to a maximum of 10 and a half years in prison, three years of supervised release and fines of up to $260,000.” Last year, pro-life activists were convicted of FACE Act violations related to a peaceful protest outside a Washington, D.C.-area abortion facility. Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly determined that the FACE Act violation in question was a “crime of violence” and immediately jailed the convicted pro-lifers months before sentencing. Thus far, the Biden Justice Department has prosecuted at least 25 cases under the FACE Act, targeting around 60 Americans.

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Norman commented, “This happens in third-world countries that are dominated by those that run Venezuela, Cuba. And — no, it’s startling — and it just shows you how we’ve got to have a change in administration.” He added, “And it couldn’t come too quick.”

In a February speech at the National Religious Broadcasters 2024 International Christian Media Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, former President Donald Trump warned that the Biden administration is treating pro-lifers as “enemies of the state.” Pointing to the Tennessee pro-lifers convicted in January, the former president said, “This is a communist state, just so you understand. This is the beginning of a communist state. … This is the only way they’re going to be able to stay in office, because they’re running a regime that is so incompetent. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.”

Trump also reiterated his December pledge to form a task force, if reelected, to root out anti-Christian discrimination. “As soon as I get back in the Oval Office, I’ll also immediately end the war on Christians,” the 45th president promised just days before Christmas. “Under crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted and government has been weaponized against religion like never before. Biden and his corrupt Department of Injustice have sent SWAT teams to arrest pro-life activists…”

“When I’m back in the White House, never will your government be used to target Christians and other religious believers. Upon taking office, I will create a new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian bias to be led by a fully reformed Department of Justice that’s fair and equitable,” Trump promised. “Its mission will be to investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment, and persecution against Christians in America. … Americans of faith are not a threat to our country. Americans of faith are the soul of our country and they have been from the beginning.”

In a statement to The Washington Stand, U.S. Attorney General for the Middle District of Tennessee Henry Leventis said that although the Justice Department seeks to protect freedom of speech “without regard to the beliefs or viewpoints being expressed,” “the defendants were charged as a result of their actions, which went beyond mere expressions of their beliefs, interfered with the rights of others, and violated federal law.” He added, “Accordingly, these defendants were found guilty by a federal magistrate judge and their co-defendants were found guilty by a jury of their peers.”

LifeNews Note: S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

The post Joe Biden Wants to Put Elderly Pro-Life People in Prison, Donald Trump Would Defend Them appeared first on LifeNews.com.

In the same day, the Florida Supreme Court handed down two vastly different opinions with life-or-death implications for the preborn. One decision affirmed that there is no right to abortion in the Florida Constitution and the other allowed an abortion amendment to move forward — which would permit virtually unfettered access to abortion — to appear on the Florida ballot.

Until then, Florida will be among the most pro-life states in the country with robust protections for the preborn after the Florida Supreme Court’s 6-1 ruling against Planned Parenthood. On April 1, the court overrode previous abortion opinions dating back to 1989 and upheld the 15-week abortion ban. Because of this, the six-week abortion ban, which corresponds with when a preborn baby’s heart begins beating, will soon be in effect.

But in November, all of this could be undone. While this ruling was a huge win for life in Florida, it could be overridden if Floridians vote to pass the abortion ballot measure the court also approved.

On February 7, I argued before the Florida Supreme Court to reject this abortion amendment from appearing on the ballot for its violation of state law. Unfortunately, the Court ruled 4-3 to the contrary. Should the amendment appear on November’s ballot, it would enshrine abortion in the state constitution and make the Sunshine State a graveyard for the preborn with virtually no restrictions on abortion if voted on by 60% of Florida voters.

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It’s important for Floridians to be aware of this extreme amendment’s broad, destructive implications, and it’s equally as important for Americans nationwide to understand that the far-reaching agenda to put abortion on state ballots does not stop with Florida. Other states, such as Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota, are also being targeted by the pro-abortion movement for abortion measures to appear on ballots in November.

Since the fall of Roe, the pro-life movement is zero-for-seven in abortion-related ballot measures, with losses in California, Michigan, Vermont, Kentucky, Montana, Kansas, and most recently, Ohio. This is partially due to the propagation of lies and fearmongering from the pro-abortion movement to sway even moderately pro-life Americans into siding with abortion.

Of particular concern in the deceptive strategy to enshrine abortion through state ballot initiatives is that the language used often conceals the sweeping scope of the initiatives.

The pro-abortion movement relies heavily on lies and gaslighting for public support because promoting what abortion truly is — the killing of preborn babies — is not a winning message. To get around this, the pro-abortion movement uses undefined, deceptive terms and euphemisms like “clump of cells,” “women’s health,” and “reproductive freedom” to mislead the masses. The use of vague language was certainly the case for the Florida amendment, and this was one of my arguments against the amendment before the court earlier this year.

In her dissent to the court’s opinion, Justice Jamie Grosshans agreed with my argument and laid out just how voters can be easily misled by the deceptive ballot summary for the abortion amendment.

“A voter may think this amendment simply returns Florida to a pre-Dobbs status quo. It does not,” she wrote. “A voter may think that a healthcare provider would be clearly defined as a licensed physician specializing in women’s health. It is not. A voter may think that viability falls within a readily apparent time frame. It does not. … And, critically, the voter may think this amendment results in settling this issue once and for all. It does not. Instead, this amendment returns abortion issues back to the courts to interpret scope, boundary, definitions, and policy, effectively removing it from the people and their elected representatives. Perhaps this is a choice that Floridians wish to make, but it should be done with clarity as to their vote’s ramifications and not based on a misleading ballot summary.”

Justice Renatha Francis reiterated the conflict of the amendment’s ambiguity in her dissent, stating that the amendment is a “Trojan horse for the elimination of any recognition of the State’s interest in protecting what Roe termed ‘potential life.’”

A Trojan horse, indeed.

What the amendment’s ballot summary doesn’t say is that the term “health care provider,” the person who could prescribe a post-viability abortion for “health” reasons, includes nearly 60 professions, including tattoo artists and massage therapists.

It leaves out the fact that every pro-life law in Florida (except potentially the parental notification requirement) would be overruled, paving the way for unrestricted abortion access.

It fails to mention that the amendment would authorize abortion for any reason at any time up to birth and endangers women by removing health and safety regulations.

It also neglects to add that the “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion” language would tie the hands of the legislature from enacting any laws to protect preborn lives or their mothers.

The reality of the abortion amendment in Florida is that it will hurt women and enshrine the “right” to kill children in the Florida Constitution. The amendments on the ballot in other states follow a similar blueprint and would steamroll existing pro-life protections.

I previously warned the Florida amendment would be a “slippery slope to infanticide” and give the “abortion industry license to murder preborn babies without restriction or regulation.” I stand by these words completely and warn Floridians not to be complicit in the pro-abortion movement’s goal to legalize and normalize the genocide of the preborn by voting for this radical amendment.

The preborn are the most vulnerable and marginalized group in the U.S., and we will continue fighting for Florida to remain one of the most pro-life states in the nation and for pro-life protections to be extended to all 50 states.

LifeNews Note: Mat Staver is the founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel.

The post Florida Now Protects Babies From Abortion, We Have to Keep It That Way in November appeared first on LifeNews.com.