By CHRISTOPHER MANION
After the most depressing and brain-dead Democrat convention ever, America needed a break. We got it when the GOP delivered a powerful week that was solidly founded on the defense of the unborn.
The most riveting moments featured two uncommon women who related their vivid experiences focused on the realities of life and death. On Tuesday night, Abby Johnson, who had served for eight years as the director of a Planned Parenthood abortuary, painted a stunning picture of what abortion is really all about.
“For most people who consider themselves pro-life,” Johnson said, “abortion is abstract. They can’t even conceive of the barbarity. They don’t know about the ‘products of conception room’ in abortion clinics where infant corpses are pieced back together to ensure nothing remains in the mother’s womb . . . or that we called it the ‘pieces of children’ room. For me, abortion is real. I know what it sounds like. I know what abortion smells like. Did you know abortion even had a smell?”
One day Johnson was asked to assist in an ultrasound-guided abortion. “Nothing prepared me for what I saw on the screen,” she said. “An unborn baby fighting back, desperate to move away from the suction. And I will never forget what the doctor said next. ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’ The last thing I saw was a spine twirling around in the mother’s womb before succumbing to the force of the suction.”
The next night we heard the impressive account of Sr. Dede Byrne, of the Community of the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. This modest, phenomenal woman had served as an army colonel, practicing medicine and surgery in Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula, and Afghanistan, before entering her community in 2002.
She then embraced her vocation as a missionary, serving the marginalized in Haiti, Kenya, Iraq, Sudan, and Washington, D.C. She had served the marginalized all over the world, she said, “but the largest marginalized group in the world can be found here in the United States. They are the unborn.”
“As a physician, I can say without hesitation: Life begins at conception. While what I have to say may be difficult for some to hear, I am saying it because I am not just pro-life, I am pro-eternal life. I want all of us to end up in Heaven together someday.
“Which brings me to why I am here today. Donald Trump is the most pro-life president this nation has ever had, defending life at all stages. His belief in the sanctity of life transcends politics. President Trump will stand up against Biden-Harris, who are the most anti-life presidential ticket ever, even supporting the horrors of late-term abortion and infanticide.”
Showing her rosary, she promised that the president had “a nationwide of religious standing behind him.”
The contrast with the Democrat Convention could not be more clear. Sr. Simone Campbell, famous for riding “The Nuns on the Bus” tour, joined Fr. James Martin, SJ, on the list of those offering invocations there. When asked about abortion, Sister Campbell, who leads the Network Lobby, refuses to reply. “It is above my pay grade,” she says.
Convention Memories
Some time back I recounted a conversation I had as a 13-year-old at the 1960 GOP Convention in Chicago. A troupe of gals was lined up, ready to join the demonstration when Richard Nixon’s nomination was formally announced. When I approached one of them, intent on changing her mind, she smiled and turned over the strap of her black cocktail dress. There she had hidden a “Kennedy for President” Campaign button.
“I’m gettin’ paid for this, honey,” she cooed.
Her words should be engraved on every entrance to Washington, D.C.
Well, that week in Chicago 60 years ago was historic for many reasons. Dave Franke, longtime contributor to National Review and a lifelong conservative, tells The Wanderer that he also managed to get onto the convention floor. He and a bunch of other college-age conservative activists “literally snuck into the delegate assembly tent when the folks from South Carolina held up the side of the tent,” he tells us.
“From there we marched to the entrance of the convention hall. Nobody was expecting a demonstration until Nixon would be formally nominated, so nobody stopped us. Then, when Arizona put in Barry’s name as favorite son, we marched in with our signs and voices — right past those faux Nixon girls you met — to the total surprise of the assembled delegates. Goldwater made his speech, the first time he was prominently on nationwide TV, and the rest was history.”
History, indeed. “It was at Chicago that we kids decided we needed a permanent conservative youth organization that would not be based around one election year,” Franke says. “That was when the idea — not the name, yet — for Young Americans for Freedom was born.”
Two months later, on September 11, 1960, YAF was indeed born, when dozens of conservatives gathered at Bill Buckley’s home in Sharon, Conn. Happily, the group is still thriving, and will be celebrating its sixtieth anniversary in Washington, D.C., next month.
Apologies? No Thanks!
Catholic News Agency reports that pharmaceutical giant Bayer “has agreed on a $1.6 billion settlement payout for women who were injured by its now-discontinued sterilization device, Essure.”
“Bayer stopped selling Essure in the United States in 2018,” CNA reports, “one year after it stopped selling the device in other countries. Initially, Essure was not recalled, and Bayer blamed a lack of sales, rather than safety, for why it stopped making the device. Essure was finally recalled in September 2019.”
Steve Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, has been fighting to stop Essure for years. Untold thousands of women have been injured by using Essure, he says. Regarding the announcement of Bayer’s colossal settlement agreement, Mosher says:
“Bayer prepares to buy the silence of women injured by its failed Essure sterilization coils, but still will not apologize to them, or admit it was wrong to manufacture and market the dangerous device in the first place.”
Coming Soon
To A Diocese Near You?
There’s a revolt going on in the Diocese of Orange, the Los Angeles Times reveals, and it’s not pretty.
In June, prominent Catholic donors were told that they were no longer on the board of an independent charity founded some years back to help the diocese recover after the sex-abuse-and-coverup scandals. The Times reports that the group had “rebuffed what they contend was an illegal plan to ‘invade’ endowment funds and flout donor wishes.”
Dioceses throughout the country are suffering unprecedented financial woes. In the words my father would use to describe the situation, “They’re shaking for the drinks.” While the USCCB concentrates on avoiding Joe Biden’s support for abortion by emphasizing its “anti-racism” campaign, its members are desperately looking for cash. Their first target, of course, is the federal taxpayer, to whom several prominent prelates made an impassioned overture for over a billion dollars several weeks ago, asking for support for Catholic schools.
But their efforts will eventually have to focus on the Catholic laity, and there the prospects are uncertain. While the faithful are wondering why bishops let governors keep abortuaries open while shutting down the Mass, pastors are wondering how many of their parishioners are going to come back when the stringent lockdown measures are finally lifted.
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