NEW YORK, September 13, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A 37 year old woman who suffered a pulmonary embolism after using the Ortho Evra contraceptive patch for seven months has filed a lawsuit against the patch’s manufacturer, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical, Inc., a division of Johnson and Johnson Inc.
Recent reports have indicated that the risk of developing blood clots, pulmonary embolism, heart attack and stroke may be significantly higher with the Ortho Evra patch than with other hormonal contraceptives.
Pulmonary embolism is a potentially fatal condition triggered by a blood clot that obstructs an artery in the lungs, often leaving victims with chronic health problems requiring long-term anticoagulant medications. Reports show that the deaths of at least seventeen young American women over the past two years may be related to Ortho Evra patch use.
The first fatality publicly blamed on the Ortho Evra patch came in April 2005, when a Manhattan fashion student collapsed in a city subway station. An autopsy found a blood clot had moved into the victim’s lung, and the medical examiner ruled that the clot was a side effect of the birth control device. FDA records show that seventeen patch users between the ages of 17 and 30 have suffered fatal heart attacks, blood clots and possible strokes since August 2002.
It is alleged that Ortho-McNeil was aware of the increased medical risks associated with Ortho Evra before the drug was approved and that, once approved, the company failed to adequately warn patients about these risks. The incidence of blood clots in Phase III trials of Ortho Evra was reportedly six times greater than the incidence of such events in women taking oral contraceptives.
The FDA has logged 9,116 reports of adverse reactions to the patch in a 17 month period, whereas Ortho Tri-Cyclen, a birth control pill, only generated 1,237 adverse reports in a six year period. During a 12 month period, 44 serious injuries or deaths have been associated with Ortho Evra, whereas only 17 such reports were linked to the birth control pill during a similar time period. The pattern is further magnified when usage rates are considered: Ortho Tri-Cyclen has six times the number of users as Ortho Evra.
Prior to approval, the FDA medical review expressed concerns about Ortho Evra causing venous thromboembolisms, stating: “Post-marketing surveillance for DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis) and PE (Pulmonary Embolism) events will be important, as there are potential serious adverse risks (with two cases of pulmonary emboli in the clinical trials) with this new delivery system for contraception.”
Ortho Evra was approved by the FDA in April 2002, and over 4 million women have used Ortho Evra since its approval. Ortho Evra continues to be marketed aggressively to both consumers and physicians.
Parker & Waichman, LLP, the legal firm representing the woman, is soliciting any women who may have been adversely affected by using Ortho Evra. They can be contacted at their web site: http://www.yourlawyer.com
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
FDA Reveals 17 Fatalities in Two Years from Contraceptive "Sex Patch"
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/sept/04092001/htm...
18 Year-Old New York Student Dies Suddenly from Birth Control Complications
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/apr/04040606.html
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9.10.2005
‘Population Bomb’ Bombs With the Birth Dearth
Ever since Thomas Malthus, an otherwise blessedly obscure 18th century British philosopher, popularized the notion that population increases geometrically while food supply increases only arithmetically, ever-increasing hordes of demographic doomsayers have tried to persuade us that we will be the death of us all.
Malthus' prediction of inevitable mass starvation never came true. Technology has increased food production far beyond Mr. Malthus' grim imaginings; such famines as have occurred have been, for the most part, deliberately man-made, often for political reasons.
Nor has the more recent "Population Bomb" crowd given birth to more accurate prophecies. Dire predictions that population would keep on rising until it occasioned a global catastrophic collapse today seem about as realistic as the belief that if God had wanted us to fly, we would have been born with airline tickets.
Not so long ago, demographers, especially those with a liberal agenda, saw human numbers rising as high as 30 billion. Today, however, global population growth has slowed dramatically; the emerging consensus is that population (currently about 6.3 billion) may stabilize around 9 billion by 2070, and then decline.
No one is sure why this is happening. The "usual suspect" causes — war, disease, government policy, contraception, abortion, infanticide — certainly contribute. The last two especially, since in places like China and the Arab world they're used for sex selection, resulting in a preponderance of men over women.
Over 50 years ago, demographer Frank Notestein described three phases of population growth. In phase one, associated with primitive societies, birth and death rates are both high, causing population to stabilize at low levels. In phase two, associated with developing societies, birth rates stay high, but, due to improving productivity, sanitation, nutrition, education and medical care, death rates drop; population soars. If a country develops further economically, phase three ensues and population stabilizes with low birth and death levels.
Today, the developed world averages a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of about 1.6 children per woman, less than the replacement level of 2.1.
According to demographer Nicholas Eberstadt: "Europe's overall TFR stands in the 1.4 to 1.5 range, with Italy and Spain on the low end, at about 1.2, and France and Ireland on the high end, at about 1.8. The U.S. fertility rate has been over 2.0 since 1990 and is just under replacement today — somewhere between 2.0 and the 2.1 replacement level, making it about 40 percent higher than Europe's."
Birth rates in less-developed areas, including parts of the Arab world, are also dropping below the replacement level. True, less developed areas will have younger populations than the West for the next several decades. But across the globe, the trend is now toward stable and older populations.
But, like human beings, these predictions are imperfect; nobody knows for sure what the future will bring.
Even so, there are likely to be problems, such as a "demographic time bomb" not caused by rapid population growth, but by slow decline, and the possibility that a birth dearth resulting in proportionally fewer young people may bring on societal poverty.
So, what's the problem?
In essence, this: Despite all the blather and worry about excess population, economic and technological advance have been intimately associated with increasing populations in the past. Every baby is born with one mouth to feed but also with two hands to work, produce, prosper and create. At the same time, older populations, almost by definition, do less work per capita and require more care than younger ones.
Malthus' prediction of inevitable mass starvation never came true. Technology has increased food production far beyond Mr. Malthus' grim imaginings; such famines as have occurred have been, for the most part, deliberately man-made, often for political reasons.
Nor has the more recent "Population Bomb" crowd given birth to more accurate prophecies. Dire predictions that population would keep on rising until it occasioned a global catastrophic collapse today seem about as realistic as the belief that if God had wanted us to fly, we would have been born with airline tickets.
Not so long ago, demographers, especially those with a liberal agenda, saw human numbers rising as high as 30 billion. Today, however, global population growth has slowed dramatically; the emerging consensus is that population (currently about 6.3 billion) may stabilize around 9 billion by 2070, and then decline.
No one is sure why this is happening. The "usual suspect" causes — war, disease, government policy, contraception, abortion, infanticide — certainly contribute. The last two especially, since in places like China and the Arab world they're used for sex selection, resulting in a preponderance of men over women.
Over 50 years ago, demographer Frank Notestein described three phases of population growth. In phase one, associated with primitive societies, birth and death rates are both high, causing population to stabilize at low levels. In phase two, associated with developing societies, birth rates stay high, but, due to improving productivity, sanitation, nutrition, education and medical care, death rates drop; population soars. If a country develops further economically, phase three ensues and population stabilizes with low birth and death levels.
Today, the developed world averages a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of about 1.6 children per woman, less than the replacement level of 2.1.
According to demographer Nicholas Eberstadt: "Europe's overall TFR stands in the 1.4 to 1.5 range, with Italy and Spain on the low end, at about 1.2, and France and Ireland on the high end, at about 1.8. The U.S. fertility rate has been over 2.0 since 1990 and is just under replacement today — somewhere between 2.0 and the 2.1 replacement level, making it about 40 percent higher than Europe's."
Birth rates in less-developed areas, including parts of the Arab world, are also dropping below the replacement level. True, less developed areas will have younger populations than the West for the next several decades. But across the globe, the trend is now toward stable and older populations.
But, like human beings, these predictions are imperfect; nobody knows for sure what the future will bring.
Even so, there are likely to be problems, such as a "demographic time bomb" not caused by rapid population growth, but by slow decline, and the possibility that a birth dearth resulting in proportionally fewer young people may bring on societal poverty.
So, what's the problem?
In essence, this: Despite all the blather and worry about excess population, economic and technological advance have been intimately associated with increasing populations in the past. Every baby is born with one mouth to feed but also with two hands to work, produce, prosper and create. At the same time, older populations, almost by definition, do less work per capita and require more care than younger ones.
9.07.2005
The New Feminism
Radical feminist propaganda cannot compete with the truth about the genius of woman
Gone are the 70s complete with bra burnings- young women these days don't get why the "liberated women" were so mad at men: the pay scale approaches their male counterparts, and the threat diminshes. Hey, maybe the unique differences aren't so bad after all...
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Sunday, August 28, 2005
ARTICLE
Into the Deep (Our Sunday Visitor)
Publication Date: August 28, 2005
America's radical feminists have a long list of worries these days. In addition to fretting about pro-life politicians, conservative judges and moral values voters, the aging vanguard of the abortion-rights movement is on the losing end of a generation gap.
Leaders of such groups as the National Organization for Women (NOW) and NARAL Pro-Choice America are concerned about statistics showing that today's young women are more pro-life than their middle-aged counterparts and far less likely to identify themselves as feminists.
Despite heavily funded marketing efforts and the unflinching support of America's media and entertainment elites, abortion-rights activists are struggling to sustain their political influence and attract the young.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that NOW's political donations have fallen sharply since 1992, and NARAL President Nancy Keenan has cited youth recruitment as crucial to her group's survival. "Years of progress on women's health, reproductive freedom and personal privacy are in peril," Keenan said last fall. "We need to . . . reunite a new generation of young women around preserving and protecting our hard-earned right of freedom of choice."
That may be easier said than done. Young women today are often repelled by the angry rhetoric, male-bashing and strident support for abortion rights that characterize feminist groups. They see a deep disconnect between the authentic feminist ideal of women's equality and the radical feminist obsession with power politics and sexual license. Where authentic feminism celebrates the dignity of women and the complementarity of the sexes, radical feminism refuses to acknowledge differences between men and women, idealizes androgyny and denigrates marriage and motherhood.
Most offensively to this new generation of egalitarian Americans, radical feminism defines women's equality as a woman's right to kill her unborn child. Rather than celebrating the fertility and maternity that women instinctively consider special gifts, radical feminism classifies them as curses and urges women to reject them.
As one educated young woman explained to me recently, while balancing her newborn baby girl on her hip, such a distorted view of equality holds no appeal for her. "It's like saying, 'You're free to amputate a part of yourself.' Why would I find that attractive?"
What is attracting young women like this one is the authentic feminism articulated by the late Pope John Paul II. This "new feminism" respects the equality of women as persons made in the image of God. It acknowledges their special gifts as well as their special calling to defend the weakest among us.
"The moral and spiritual strength of a woman is joined to her awareness that God entrusts the human being to her in a special way," the Pope wrote in 1988. ". . . [T]his entrusting concerns women in a special way – precisely by reason of their femininity – and this in a particular way determines their vocation."
"The genius of woman," as Pope John Paul called it, is her natural receptivity to life, which is revealed in the very structure of her body.
It's no wonder so many young women are attracted to this new feminism, which celebrates a woman's dignity while calling her to defend the dignity of every human person, including and especially the child within her womb.
—Colleen Carroll Campbell is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
Sacrificing Humans to the Condom Gods
Is it flippant to wonder if the major international AIDS institutions, the United Nations and its many allied nongovernmental organizations, actually worship the condom? After all, they are willing to make sacrifices – human sacrifices – in the name of the condom. Right now, these groups are in the process of sacrificing the people of Uganda.
Uganda must be sacrificed because its AIDS rate is too low, and it is low because the government of Uganda decided almost from the beginning of the epidemic to seek to convince the general population to change its behaviors. School children were told to abstain and to delay sexual initiation. Married couples were told to remain faithful to one another. The school children listened; the couples listened, and Uganda escaped the epidemic that has devastated every other country in its region.
But this success through a veritable sexual counter-revolution could never be acceptable to the liberal and sexually liberated members of the international AIDS establishment, who needed to prove that the new norms of sexual promiscuity were not to blame for the explosion of sexually transmitted diseases, culminating in the AIDS epidemic, and that sexual promiscuity could even be made "safe" through a tiny piece of latex.
And so they have engaged in a massive campaign of misinformation that is now being advanced by sympathetic or ignorant media outlets almost every day of the week. They must turn reality on its head to make their case.
Propaganda: Condoms were responsible for the success in Uganda, and cases of AIDS may now increase because the Bush administration has begun to replace condoms with abstinence-only training. According to a August 30th story in the Guardian newspaper, "Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary general's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, said US cuts in funding for condoms and an emphasis on promoting abstinence had contributed to a shortage of condoms in Uganda, one of the few African countries which has succeeded in reducing its AIDS rates. 'There is no doubt in my mind that the condom crisis in Uganda is being driven by [US policies],' Mr. Lewis said yesterday. 'To impose a dogma-driven policy that is fundamentally flawed is doing damage to Africa.'" According to Reuters, Lewis claimed that Bush's "distortion of the preventive apparatus . . . is resulting in great damage and undoubtedly will cause significant numbers of infections which should never have occurred."
Reality: Abstinence and fidelity were responsible for the success in Uganda, and AIDS may now increase because Western institutions have insisted that condoms replace abstinence and fidelity training. According to Dr. Edward Green, a Harvard medical professor and an expert on Uganda, "Abstinence and fidelity objectives and indicators have been almost completely removed from Uganda's current national AIDS strategy (which were central to earlier strategies), apparently to appease the wazungu (foreign AIDS advisors)." And so there is the possibility that the West could use condoms to raise AIDS rates while at the same time blaming abstinence, in order to make the case for even more condoms.
Propaganda: It is more important to liberate Ugandan women from conventional marriage than it is to liberate Ugandan women from prostitution, since marriage is an enormous threat to women. According to Lewis, "As more and more research is done on the particular vulnerability of women to infection, we're learning more about the situations in which risk is paramount. And extraordinarily enough, according to UNAIDS, the risk is particularly high in apparently monogamous marriages and partnerships. Ironically, and lethally, in the age of AIDS in Africa, marriage can be dangerous to women's health. . . . There is virtually no defense against that reality: the power imbalance in marriage is too great to permit or to request the regular use of condoms. Thus it is that the classic 'ABC' intervention [Abstain, Be faithful, or use Condoms as a last resort] doesn't work in the one place where the risk for the woman may be greatest….A way must be found to allow the woman to protect herself, independent of male hegemony."
Reality: It is difficult to know whether this statement is simply chauvinist (men cannot remain faithful and do not care if they infect their wives), or chauvinist and racist (black men cannot remain faithful and do not care if they infect their wives). But the idea that married women are more vulnerable than prostitutes because some married men are promiscuous – when all men who frequent prostitutes are by definition promiscuous – is ridiculous.
Propaganda: The Christian beliefs of George W. Bush and the Ugandan first lady are guiding them to replace sound public health policy – again focused almost exclusively on the condom – with "abstinence only" religious doctrine. According to the Guardian, "Campaigners accuse Uganda's first lady, Janet Museveni, of being instrumental in the switch towards a policy of abstinence. Ugandan government officials say that her religious beliefs, stemming from being a born-again Christian, are central to her promotion of the message of abstinence."
Reality: It was traditional religious beliefs that guided the Ugandan government and its people to reduce sexual promiscuity so successfully in the late 1980s and 1990s.
In this perverse quest to prop up the condom, all things tied to self-control – the only sure way to avoid the sexual transmission of AIDS – are blamed for a disease spread primarily through a lack of self-control. Green is preparing for the worst: "I personally have been fearing an increase in national prevalence for a couple of years . . . If Uganda's AIDS program looks increasingly like that of any other African country (condoms, testing, pills), it would follow that Uganda would begin to have results like other African countries. . . . After a decade of unprecedented HIV prevalence decline, casual sex and HIV prevalence may now be on the rise. From what we have seen already, 'experts' are probably preparing to blame this on Uganda moving to 'abstinence only.'"
But is it possible that not everyone in the mainstream media has accepted this fiction? Last Tuesday, the same day that Reuters dutifully reported that, "US Abstinence Drive Hurts AIDS Fight – UN Official," the news service ran another story with the headline, "Topless Virgins Vie for King in AIDS-hit Swaziland." Apparently, "More than 50,000 bare-breasted virgins vied to become the King of Swaziland's 13th wife on Monday in a ceremony which critics say ill befits a country with the world's highest HIV/AIDS rate. King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch, arrived dressed in a leopard-skin loincloth to watch the Reed Dance ceremony, which he has used since 1999 to pluck new brides from the girls dressed in little more than beaded mini-skirts. . . . Critics say [King] Mswati, who has courted controversy for his lavish lifestyle . . . sets a bad example by encouraging polygamy and teenage sex in a country where 40 percent of adults live with HIV."
Were we supposed to compare the two articles, and notice that the UN and its friends can condemn Bush (who has pledged $15 billion to fight AIDS), Christianity, abstinence and fidelity in one article, while no Western critics could be found for the bizarre ritual of promiscuity in the other article? Were we supposed to notice that people like Lewis are fixated on Uganda, where the AIDS infection rate is 6 percent, instead of places like Swaziland, where the entire society may come crumbling down?
Douglas Sylva is Senior Fellow at the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM). His e-mail address is dsylva@thefactis.org
More on UN Discrimination Against Abstinence Groups
Uganda must be sacrificed because its AIDS rate is too low, and it is low because the government of Uganda decided almost from the beginning of the epidemic to seek to convince the general population to change its behaviors. School children were told to abstain and to delay sexual initiation. Married couples were told to remain faithful to one another. The school children listened; the couples listened, and Uganda escaped the epidemic that has devastated every other country in its region.
But this success through a veritable sexual counter-revolution could never be acceptable to the liberal and sexually liberated members of the international AIDS establishment, who needed to prove that the new norms of sexual promiscuity were not to blame for the explosion of sexually transmitted diseases, culminating in the AIDS epidemic, and that sexual promiscuity could even be made "safe" through a tiny piece of latex.
And so they have engaged in a massive campaign of misinformation that is now being advanced by sympathetic or ignorant media outlets almost every day of the week. They must turn reality on its head to make their case.
Propaganda: Condoms were responsible for the success in Uganda, and cases of AIDS may now increase because the Bush administration has begun to replace condoms with abstinence-only training. According to a August 30th story in the Guardian newspaper, "Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary general's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, said US cuts in funding for condoms and an emphasis on promoting abstinence had contributed to a shortage of condoms in Uganda, one of the few African countries which has succeeded in reducing its AIDS rates. 'There is no doubt in my mind that the condom crisis in Uganda is being driven by [US policies],' Mr. Lewis said yesterday. 'To impose a dogma-driven policy that is fundamentally flawed is doing damage to Africa.'" According to Reuters, Lewis claimed that Bush's "distortion of the preventive apparatus . . . is resulting in great damage and undoubtedly will cause significant numbers of infections which should never have occurred."
Reality: Abstinence and fidelity were responsible for the success in Uganda, and AIDS may now increase because Western institutions have insisted that condoms replace abstinence and fidelity training. According to Dr. Edward Green, a Harvard medical professor and an expert on Uganda, "Abstinence and fidelity objectives and indicators have been almost completely removed from Uganda's current national AIDS strategy (which were central to earlier strategies), apparently to appease the wazungu (foreign AIDS advisors)." And so there is the possibility that the West could use condoms to raise AIDS rates while at the same time blaming abstinence, in order to make the case for even more condoms.
Propaganda: It is more important to liberate Ugandan women from conventional marriage than it is to liberate Ugandan women from prostitution, since marriage is an enormous threat to women. According to Lewis, "As more and more research is done on the particular vulnerability of women to infection, we're learning more about the situations in which risk is paramount. And extraordinarily enough, according to UNAIDS, the risk is particularly high in apparently monogamous marriages and partnerships. Ironically, and lethally, in the age of AIDS in Africa, marriage can be dangerous to women's health. . . . There is virtually no defense against that reality: the power imbalance in marriage is too great to permit or to request the regular use of condoms. Thus it is that the classic 'ABC' intervention [Abstain, Be faithful, or use Condoms as a last resort] doesn't work in the one place where the risk for the woman may be greatest….A way must be found to allow the woman to protect herself, independent of male hegemony."
Reality: It is difficult to know whether this statement is simply chauvinist (men cannot remain faithful and do not care if they infect their wives), or chauvinist and racist (black men cannot remain faithful and do not care if they infect their wives). But the idea that married women are more vulnerable than prostitutes because some married men are promiscuous – when all men who frequent prostitutes are by definition promiscuous – is ridiculous.
Propaganda: The Christian beliefs of George W. Bush and the Ugandan first lady are guiding them to replace sound public health policy – again focused almost exclusively on the condom – with "abstinence only" religious doctrine. According to the Guardian, "Campaigners accuse Uganda's first lady, Janet Museveni, of being instrumental in the switch towards a policy of abstinence. Ugandan government officials say that her religious beliefs, stemming from being a born-again Christian, are central to her promotion of the message of abstinence."
Reality: It was traditional religious beliefs that guided the Ugandan government and its people to reduce sexual promiscuity so successfully in the late 1980s and 1990s.
In this perverse quest to prop up the condom, all things tied to self-control – the only sure way to avoid the sexual transmission of AIDS – are blamed for a disease spread primarily through a lack of self-control. Green is preparing for the worst: "I personally have been fearing an increase in national prevalence for a couple of years . . . If Uganda's AIDS program looks increasingly like that of any other African country (condoms, testing, pills), it would follow that Uganda would begin to have results like other African countries. . . . After a decade of unprecedented HIV prevalence decline, casual sex and HIV prevalence may now be on the rise. From what we have seen already, 'experts' are probably preparing to blame this on Uganda moving to 'abstinence only.'"
But is it possible that not everyone in the mainstream media has accepted this fiction? Last Tuesday, the same day that Reuters dutifully reported that, "US Abstinence Drive Hurts AIDS Fight – UN Official," the news service ran another story with the headline, "Topless Virgins Vie for King in AIDS-hit Swaziland." Apparently, "More than 50,000 bare-breasted virgins vied to become the King of Swaziland's 13th wife on Monday in a ceremony which critics say ill befits a country with the world's highest HIV/AIDS rate. King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch, arrived dressed in a leopard-skin loincloth to watch the Reed Dance ceremony, which he has used since 1999 to pluck new brides from the girls dressed in little more than beaded mini-skirts. . . . Critics say [King] Mswati, who has courted controversy for his lavish lifestyle . . . sets a bad example by encouraging polygamy and teenage sex in a country where 40 percent of adults live with HIV."
Were we supposed to compare the two articles, and notice that the UN and its friends can condemn Bush (who has pledged $15 billion to fight AIDS), Christianity, abstinence and fidelity in one article, while no Western critics could be found for the bizarre ritual of promiscuity in the other article? Were we supposed to notice that people like Lewis are fixated on Uganda, where the AIDS infection rate is 6 percent, instead of places like Swaziland, where the entire society may come crumbling down?
Douglas Sylva is Senior Fellow at the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM). His e-mail address is dsylva@thefactis.org
More on UN Discrimination Against Abstinence Groups
9.06.2005
Planned Parenthood Offers Neither Food or Medicine to Katrina Victims
With "health services" like these, who needs a doctor?
As organizations like Catholic Charities and Red Cross solicit donations in order to provide basic necessities for Hurricane Katrina evacuees, Planned Parenthood is asking for money in order to hand out contraceptives and abortifacient morning after pills to victims of the storm making their way to the Houston area.
A link on Planned Parenthood's website that says, "Help with Hurricane Effort," takes visitors to a page that touts the organization's work. "Planned Parenthood staff are on the frontlines aiding patients in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. You can help. 100% of your tax-deductible contribution will go directly to supporting our continued efforts to provide health services." Included in those health services are a month's supply of contraceptives and an "emergency contraception kit." Elsewhere on the website, birth control is referred to as an item "critical" to the "well-being" of women and families. Visitors to the site are assured that nothing will stop Planned Parenthood's efforts. "Despite the horrific events of the past few days, affiliates and health centers in this region are determined to serve all those that come through the door."
Emergency contraception typically refers to Plan B, the controversial drug that can work by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in a women's uterus. Despite the fact that medical textbooks show otherwise, Planned Parenthood insists Plan B never ends a pregnancy.
The effort is being coordinated by Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas. Peter Durkin president and CEO of that chapter said, "We're offering a free month's supply of birth control pills and/or emergency contraception if they have either a Mississippi or Louisiana driver's license. During these calamities, sometimes you don't bring your pills with you, because you're trying to get out of there in one piece." Their website says they are working to make sure evacuees "can continue to get birth control and other reproductive health services." Abortions are among the "reproductive health services" offered by Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas.
The Houston area has drawn more Katrina evacuees than any other city with some estimates placing the number at 150,000 and it is believed that as many as a quarter million – maybe more – evacuees will make their way to Texas.
Meanwhile, according to a press release, Father Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA, met today with President Bush at the White House. Father Snyder, along with other nonprofit leaders, reported on ongoing relief efforts in the aftermath of Katrina. Catholic Charities agencies across the nation have responded to the crisis to meet the immediate needs of evacuees and plan for long-term recovery efforts. While Catholic Charities cannot accept gifts of clothes and food, donations of money will be used to provide for the emergency relief and long-term recovery of Katrina's victims.
Copyright 2005 - TheFactIs.org. Permission granted for unlimited use. Credit required.
9.01.2005
New Orleans City Council President: "Maybe God's Going To Cleanse Us"
I hear this warning loud and clear. Living in Connecticut, a blue state, which just recently legalized civil unions, I'm waiting for "a big fat chastisement."
NEW ORLEANS, September 1, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The popular adage, "there are no atheists in the trenches" sums up the truth that in times of disaster it is natural for people to turn to God, for help and also for an explanation. The devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina has brought that reality home to the United States, particularly in the affected regions.
Yesterday Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco called for a state-wide day of prayer. "As we face the devastation wrought by Katrina, as we search for those in need, as we comfort those in pain and as we begin the long task of rebuilding, we turn to God for strength, hope and comfort," she said. Meanwhile, New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas after witnessing the horrors first hand and hearing talk of Sodom and Gomorrah commented, "Maybe God's going to cleanse us."
The theme of cleansing or purification has become a frequently discussed topic as the tragedy in the affected states unfolds. European papers have suggested that Katrina was the punishment the US received for failing to sign onto the Kyoto accord, Islamic militants have rejoiced that "private" Katrina has joined in the holy war against the U.S. for - among other things - the Iraq war. Some have even suggested that the hurricane was God's punishment on the U.S. for cooperating in the removal of Jews from the Gaza strip.
However, beyond these speculations is a more general acknowledgement that New Orleans, the epicentre of the disaster, was a sin city" which harboured few rivals. The New Orleans "southern decadence" festival which was to take place Labour Day weekend, is described by a French Quarter tourism site as "sort of like a gayer version of Mardi Gras" which is "most famous (or infamous) for the displays of naked flesh which characterize the event," with "public displays of sexuality . . . pretty much everywhere you look."
The city is also renowned for occult practices, particularly voodoo.
Michael Brown, creator of the immensely popular SpiritDaily.com website - popularly known as the Catholic DrudgeReport, has said that Katrina was "definitely" a purification for New Orleans. Brown points out that the name Katrina itself means "pure". And that, Brown told LifeSiteNews.com, is not a coincidence. "I don't believe in coincidences," said Brown, adding that God has everything in His control and "I think that everything is interwoven."
LifeSiteNews.com contacted Brown due to his startlingly accurate prediction of the events in New Orleans in 2001, when he issued what is now being seen as a warning to New Orleans. In 2001 Brown wrote a piece about what he felt was upcoming disaster for New Orleans.
Brown began, "There are few cities with so many good as New Orleans and also few cities where there is such a stark coexistence with the bad. It is this city, the Big Easy, that is home to kind and generous and Christian people . . . and yet also this city that has allowed evil to flourish in a way that has become truly dangerous." Noting the occult practices and the sexual immorality, Brown warned, "When you invoke dark spirits, you get a storm. The very word hurricane comes from the Indian hurukan for evil spirit."
Brown claims no hearing of inner voices, but said in his warning to the city, "When I visited the National Hurricane Center, they told me there was no place that gave them the meteorological willies like your city." Describing what would befall the city if a major hurricane were to strike, Brown said, "On Bourbon Street -- which has turned into a stretch of porn shops, strip joints, and hooter bars -- there would be water to the second story."
"Officials told me that in the best of circumstances 100,000 would be stranded . . . If a category-five made landfall between your city and Baton Rouge . . . it would be 'the most catastrophic hurricane in the history of the United States.'"
See Brown's warning written in 2001 here:
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