CNS STORY: Women converge on Capitol Hill to tell Senate of their pro-life views

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CNS Story:

LIFE-WOMEN Apr-28-2005 (890 words) xxxn

Women converge on Capitol Hill to tell Senate of their pro-life views

By Nancy Frazier O'Brien
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- From college students to grandmothers, an assortment of women from around the country came to Capitol Hill April 27 to tell their senators that pro-life and anti-cloning views represent "real women."

The "Real Women's Voices" lobbying day, sponsored by six pro-life or pro-family organizations, brought more than 200 women to Washington, gave them a crash course in lobbying and sent them to meet with their senators about cloning, federal judicial nominees and parental notification before an abortion.

Another 1,200 women signed up online to participate "in spirit" by contacting their senators that day by phone, fax or e-mail.

"Women are the bearers of human life and we must therefore be the protectors of human life," said Kara Klein, a freshman at The Catholic University of America in Washington, at a press conference on the event.

"We must stand up for those who cannot speak for themselves and say no to the violence of abortion, no to the violence of death by starvation and dehydration, and no to all violence that is perpetrated against women," she added.

A singer who is working on her second album, Klein recently wrote a song dedicated to Terri Schindler Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged Florida woman who died March 31, 13 days after her food and water were removed by her husband against her parents' wishes.

The lyrics of "Beautiful Still -- Terri's Song" say in part: "Do you think I'm beautiful still?/Even now when I have never felt so broken?/Like a flower once in bloom/I have begun to wilt./Do you think I'm beautiful still?"

The Rev. Alveda C. King, a grandmother, linked the fight against abortion to the civil rights movement led by her late uncle, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"If the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is to live, our babies must live," she said. "Our mothers must choose life."

Rev. King said she underwent two abortions before her six children were born, and suffered from guilt for years but eventually achieved healing.

"The doctor told me (the abortion) wasn't going to hurt any more than having a tooth pulled," she said. "It did."

Rachel Campos-Duffy, a former participant in MTV's "The Real World" reality series, described herself as "a product and former face of the MTV generation" -- a generation, she noted, that has "never known a time when abortion was not legal."

Although women her age have been told since childhood that "the right to abortion was a hard-fought gift to us," she said, "my generation has more firsthand experience with the painful aftermath of abortion" than any other generation.

"We know that abortion represents failure: women in time of need being failed by their boyfriends, husbands, parents, friends and, of course, our society," added Campos-Duffy, who currently co-hosts the weekly cable series, "Lifetime's Speaking of Women's Health," with Florence Henderson.

Campos-Duffy and her husband, Sean, also a veteran of "The Real World," live in Wisconsin and have three children.

Helen Alvare, an associate professor of law at Catholic University who recently was part of the five-member U.S. delegation to the Mass inaugurating the papal ministry of Pope Benedict XVI, said the new pope and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, both "seamlessly ... wove together respect for the unborn alongside respect for every other human person -- women, religious minorities, refugees and the poor, to name just a few."

"By contrast, how incongruous is the United States in allowing unlimited abortion rights alongside its many fine statements and demonstrations of respect for women and human rights," she said. "It doesn't fit together."

The "real women" lobbyists took messages to their senators in support of an up-or-down vote on President George W. Bush's judicial nominees, against human cloning and in favor of the Child Custody Protection Act, which would ban efforts to circumvent parental notification or consent laws in one state by taking a minor to another state for an abortion.

The House version of that bill, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, was approved on a 270-157 vote April 27. Its chief sponsor, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., expressed confidence at the press conference that the bill -- already approved three times by the House -- would also pass in the Senate this year.

Speaking about the rationale behind the bill, the congresswoman said, "A minor who is forbidden to drink alcohol, to stay out past a certain hour, or to get her ears pierced without parental consent is certainly not prepared to make a life-altering, hazardous and potentially fatal decision, such as abortion, without the consultation or consent of at least one parent."

Sponsors of the lobbying day were the Susan B. Anthony List, National Right to Life Committee, Eagle Forum, Silent No More Awareness Campaign, Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America.

Jane Abraham, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, said the lobbying day was organized "because we know our nation is at a crossroads."

"We know that our senators' votes on judges, cloning and other pro-life issues this session will be decisive in determining what our nation will stand for in the coming generation -- a nation that honors the dignity of women and children's lives or one that pits one against the other," she added.

END

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