Christian sentenced to hang in Pakistanfor blasphemy

Read Mark Pickups latest blog "Christian sentenced to death in Pakistan for blasphemy". Go to http://markpickup.org

HLM

Heart-ignorance of God

Read Mark Pickup's last blog "Heart ignorance of God" at http://markpickup.org

Longing for perfect love

Read Mark Pickup's latest blog, "Longing for perfect love."

Go to http://markpickup.org
The above link may not work. You may have to manually input the blog address.

Pregnancy Counselling Centres are mainstreet Christianity at its best!

http://www.facinglife.tv/episode/season_5/episode_3/episode_503.html

My friend Brad Mattes of the Life Issues Institute in Cincinnati sent me a note about Bethany Steele. Twenty-four years ago her mother found herself in a crisis pregancy. She seriously considered abortion. But through the help of a Christian crisis pregnancy center, she continued her pregnancy and placed her baby for adoption. John and Elaine Steele adopted baby Bethany into their wonderful, loving family.

When she was eighteen, Bethany wanted to meet her birth-mother. The link above chronicles that story.

Christian Pregnancy Counselling Centers can be found in cities across North America.

I co-founded one in the city of Edmonton in 1984. It is called the Pregnancy Care Centre (see their web-site at http://www.pregnancycarecentre.ca/Home/tabid/63/Default.aspx). Each year, over 1,800 women in crisis pregnacies pass through the Pregnancy Care Centre. They have discovered life-affirming alternatives and turned away from abortion. Thousands of children are alive today through the work of this agency -- and others like it. Post-abortive women have received counselling and spiritual healing. Pregnancy Care Centres are mainstreet, shoe-leather Christianity at it's best.

Churches are the backbone of support, not only financially but through providing volunteer support, outreach, and prayer.

Support Pregnancy Counselling Centres in your area.

Mark Pickup

Tribute to Dr. Mildred Jefferson (1926-2010)

Read Mark Pickup's tribute to the great American Pro-Life activist, Dr. Mildred F. Jefferson. Go to http://markpickup.org

HLM

Being pro-Life means more than opposing abortion

Being pro-Life is so much more than being anti-abortion. Being truly pro-Life pro-Life means being concerned for every human life at every stage, stage and eventuality -- especially in the face of increasingly aggressive cultural forces tat say otherwise. It not only means opposing the destruction of all human life but also providing constructive alternatives that uphold human life.

Critics of the pro-Life movement often accuse pro-lifers of only being concerned about saving unborn babies. This is not true, and I think the accusers know it -- or they are woefully uninformed about the pro-Life movement.

For years I've worked with pro-Life groups across North America; I have encountered
an extensive network of programs and services offering life-affirming alternatives to women in crisis pregnancies. Pro-Life activists work in partnership with local crisis pregnancy centres and churches to provide support and inclusion for women and their babies.

Many crisis pregnancy centres offer crucial life skills training to young mothers, employment assistance in concert with existing community resources, or help women to get educational upgrading and/or further education. Other groups work with adoption agencies if women in crisis pregnancies wish to take this option.

Many pro-Life groups have established counselling services for post-abortive women.

These are essential pro-Life responses in a era when abortion on demand is widely accepted.

But things must not end there and they have not.

The pro-Life movement has evolved over the decades from solely trying to stop abortion to actively working to check the acceptance of euthanasia and assisted suicide. This is necessary because, with the passage of time, western society has hardened its attitudes toward vulnerable, inconvenient or unwanted human life.

The thought of assisting the suicides of defeated people has gone from being unthinkable to acceptable to legislatively supported in places like Oregon and Washington state. Advocates of euthanasia and assisted suicide are vociferously lobbying in other jurisdictions for laws that allow killing of terminally and chronically ill people.

Even without legislation, euthanasia and infanticide of incurably ill and profoundly disabled newborns and adults are being quietly practised in hospitals across North America. It's often a subtle practice cloaked in nuances of health care decision making and cryptic medical terminology designed to convince families and caregivers to allow people with terminal or chronic illnesses or serious disabilities to be euthanized.

What is the usual method of killing? Withholding nutrition (food) and hydration (water). Sadly, in certain bioethical and medical circles, imperfect or inconvenient human life has become as cheap as grass clippings.

Many pro-Life groups are quickly expanding their work to respond to this new assault against vulnerable humanity. They must shift gears to become proactive and encourage community based strategies to educate people about caring for loved ones who acquire disabilities of diseases.

This may involve promoting or establishing community faith-based hospices, special supports for parents expecting a disabled child or befriending families where early onset of dementia has been diagnosed in a parent or spouse. New pro-Life responses should involve development or coordination of respite services for primary caregivers of profoundly disabled people.*

[Sometimes a proper response to such families may be as simple and practical as help with yard work, providing transportation to and from medical appointments, or helping them research where to access services and advocacy when needed.]

Society's aversion to disability and the myth that death is preferable to disability must be challenged at every turn. It must be challenged because it is a lie.

The pro-Life movement must promote a new cultural paradigm that sees people with disabilities as indispensable to community life. We must get the message out that people with disabilities have unique gifts to bring to the table of human experience. Even those who are comatose or unresponsive unknowingly call their caregivers and community to a higher standard of love.

Mark Pickup
____________________________
*My wife's experience with abortion, post-abortion grief and living for 26-plus years with my degenerative multiple sclerosis, as well as helping aged family members with end of life care has equipped her with a heart and understanding for appropriate and well-rounded community pro-Life responses. This blog entry is largely based upon her insights.

MS "liberation" treatment raises a red flag

See Mark Pickup's latest blog about MS "Liberation treatment" at http://markpickup.org