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Illinois pro-lifers Speak Out
By Mary Claire Gart
ASSISTANT EDITOR
Approximately 600 people attending the 9th annual Speak Out Illinois
Conference at the O’Hare Holiday Inn were urged by Cardinal George
to combine truth and love in their pro-life efforts.
Cardinal George spoke at the opening session of the Jan. 15 conference,
which was sponsored by 29 pro-life organizations, including the
archdiocesan Respect Life Office. He shared the spotlight with
a new statue of Mother Teresa and reflected on her contribution
to the pro-life movement.
While it is necessary for pro-life workers to gather to “learn
from specialists who have particular insights” so we can offer
sound facts and good arguments to others in the public debate,
he said, “there is something more that we need to take away today--something
that completes the intellectual work on behalf of human life.
Pointing to an inscription at the base of the statue, he read
the words: “Love is the reason I am here.”
“And that’s the reason, finally, that all of us are here,” he
said. ”We need both truth and love to be effective advocates for
the sanctity of human life.”
Mother Teresa was known all over the world because of “her single-minded
pursuit of one idea: that Jesus Christ is present in those who
are most in need,” he said, adding that the witness of her life
gave her unique moral authority.
Recalling her words before a stunned audience at the National
Prayer Breakfast in 1994, the cardinal asked, “Who other but this
simple and yet complex woman could have confronted the president
of the United States about the horror of abortion?”
The cardinal noted that pro-life workers are “concerned with a
topic that is the defining moral question of our day, one that
is marked by very strong feelings and antagonism.”
But he cautioned them against demonizing the people on the other
side of the issue. “It isn’t enough, therefore, to contest the
lies--and the lies continue. We’ll see them rehearsed now that
the Supreme Court is going to take up once again the question
of partial-birth abortion.”
Instead, he said, they must speak “the truth clearly--again and
again and again--but the truth always spoken in love. So Mother
Teresa is an inspiration to us and a reminder that with God all
things are possible.”
After the cardinal’s opening message, conference participants
could choose from workshops on such topics as the downside of
feminism, the myth of global overpopulation, men as victims of
abortion and winning over the fence-sitters.
Keynote speaker at the conference was Joel Brind, an endocrinologist
who since 1981 has been studying the connection between induced
abortion and breast cancer.
Brind, a professor of biology and endocrinology at Baruch College
of the City University of New York, said abortion increases the
risk of breast cancer by at least 30 percent. There are 180,000
new cases of breast cancer per year in America, an increase of
50 percent since abortion was legalized in 1973.
Still, he asserted, these facts have been covered up by “omission,
commission and flat-out lying” in an era of “outcome-based” scientific
studies.
Also speaking at the conference was Jill Stanek, the nurse who
first drew attention to the late second trimester abortions being
performed at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn. Although the hospital
has recently modified its policy, it still provides abortions
in some cases and a Roe vs. Wade memorial was scheduled there
Jan. 22.
U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde was presented the Life Leadership Award at
the conference which ended with a memorial service for the 40
million babies aborted since 1972.
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