This past Saturday was Birth Mother's Day - a day to celebrate birth mothers and share the blessing of adoption!
Take a few minutes to watch this beautiful witness by Mayra Duron.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
March Update
These past few months, TPAL has accomplished a lot!
In January, our group attended the March for Life. We also attended a conference in Phoenix called Redefine, hosted by Voices for the Voiceless, where our President had the opportunity to speak on a panel of student leaders.
On February 14th, we sponsored a concert for the Crisis Pregnancy Centers (which by the way, they have since changed their name to Hand of Hope - check out their awesome website here). With over 800 people in attendance, we raised almost $6,000 net - that's enough to save at least five lives!! We have many more events coming up, especially in April and May, so stay on the lookout! Sign up for our email update list by emailing teensprotectingalllife@gmail.com.
Also, Teens Protecting All Life was named Students for Life's High School Group of the Month! Check out the article here.
And as always, thank you so much for your continued support. Together, we will end abortion and build a culture of life!
Monday, January 21, 2013
Civil Rights Today
Today, Americans honor the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and remember his legacy of fighting for civil rights for all people, regardless of the color of their skin. Did you know that the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is also a civil rights activist and has carried on his legacy of fighting for equal rights for all people? She fights for the rights of an entire class of persons who, to this day, continue to be discriminated against. These people are discriminated against based on their age, size, location, and sometimes even their gender or race. Who are these people and why do we allow them to be continually discriminated against?
These people that Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King, fights for are our neighbors in the womb. All it takes for them to lose any and all of their rights as human beings is to be labeled as an "inconvenience" or a "choice." Anytime during the first nine months of their lives, they can be killed by well-paid doctors at the insistence of their own mothers. This is permissible simply because of how old they are, how dependent they are and because of where they are. And it goes beyond that. Girls are aborted much more often than boys not only in foreign countries such as India and China, but the practice of sex-selective abortion has been happening in America as well. Additionally,while African Americans comprise 12.4% of the American population, over 30% of the nation's abortions are done on African American women. In Pennsylvania, 1 out of every 2 African-American pregnancies end in abortion. Of course, this isn't very surprising since Planned Parenthood was founded by a racist eugenicist, Margaret Sanger.
Speaking of her uncle, Dr. Alveda King said, "I know in my heart that if Uncle Martin were alive today, he would join with me in the greatest civil rights struggle of this generation - the recognition of the unborn child's basic right to life." King's father, Rev. A.D. King, was also a leader in the civil rights movement.
So today, as we remember the great strides made by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists in the fight for equality, let us continue to fight for civil rights for all people - regardless of their age, size, location, gender, or race.
These people that Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King, fights for are our neighbors in the womb. All it takes for them to lose any and all of their rights as human beings is to be labeled as an "inconvenience" or a "choice." Anytime during the first nine months of their lives, they can be killed by well-paid doctors at the insistence of their own mothers. This is permissible simply because of how old they are, how dependent they are and because of where they are. And it goes beyond that. Girls are aborted much more often than boys not only in foreign countries such as India and China, but the practice of sex-selective abortion has been happening in America as well. Additionally,while African Americans comprise 12.4% of the American population, over 30% of the nation's abortions are done on African American women. In Pennsylvania, 1 out of every 2 African-American pregnancies end in abortion. Of course, this isn't very surprising since Planned Parenthood was founded by a racist eugenicist, Margaret Sanger.
Speaking of her uncle, Dr. Alveda King said, "I know in my heart that if Uncle Martin were alive today, he would join with me in the greatest civil rights struggle of this generation - the recognition of the unborn child's basic right to life." King's father, Rev. A.D. King, was also a leader in the civil rights movement.
So today, as we remember the great strides made by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists in the fight for equality, let us continue to fight for civil rights for all people - regardless of their age, size, location, gender, or race.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Special Announcement
We are excited to announce that TPAL will be sponsoring a concert featuring Big Daddy Weave with Chris August and Citizen Way! The concert will be on Thursday, February 14th as a fundraiser for the Crisis Pregnancy Centers. Hope to see you there!
Buy your tickets here. Check out the Facebook event page and share it with your friends!
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Meeting Update
Teens Protecting All Life had our first meeting this morning. For those who couldn't make it, and as recap for those who were there, here's the bullet points of what we discussed:
- Revised/Expanded Mission Statement:
- Teens Protecting All Life (TPAL) is a nondenominational Tucson pro-life group run by teenagers, for teenagers. All Tucson teens are welcome to join, and TPAL is not limited to any specific schools or parishes/churches. TPAL is dedicated to promoting a right to life for all people, from womb to tomb. TPAL will raise awareness for pro-life causes, through educational meetings and reaching out to the public. TPAL Will also raise money for pro-life organizations in various ways, and attend pro-life events, such as the 40 Days for Life and the March for Life. TPAL will meet at least once a month, and sometimes more than that. TPAL is consecrated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, who is the Patroness of the Unborn.
- General
- We will have one public meeting a month. At these meetings, we will discuss an issue and then what we are going to do about it.
- Most meetings will revolve around protecting life in the womb. We will have meetings to discuss why people have different opinions, where they are coming from, and how we can address their misconceptions/misunderstandings.
- Some meetings will be about other Right to Life issues, such as respecting life until natural death.
- Leadership will meet about every 2 weeks, as needed.
- We want to make an official logo and get T-shirts.
- All members will write blogs for the website.
- Activities
- We've been to Reachout Pregnancy Center, we want to go volunteer again.
- Praying at abortion clinics/offering information for free ultrasounds.
- Teddy bears
- We will donate some of our teddy bears to local shelters, pregnancy centers and hospitals.
- Concert for Life
- We are in the process of planning a Concert for Life in March 2013. TPAL will be supporting/planning this event in conjunction with the Crisis Pregnancy Centers. The purpose of the concert is to raise money for The Crisis Pregnancy Centers and to raise awareness for our group.
- We will need volunteers.
- What do we want to give out at the event? At other concerts, they've given out Precious Feet pins.
- We want to make bracelets for our group
- Maybe rubber, or just with beads?
- We will probably sell them to raise money for CPC.
- Positions Needed
- Secretary
- Treasurer
- For Next Time
- Next public meeting will be in September, date to be announced.
- Leadership will have the next meeting in about two weeks, probably at the same location/time as today, if possible.
- Think about:
- Who do you want to see at a concert? Think low-key Christian artists.
- What should we put in our baskets for the Concert for Life?
- Think about logo ideas.
- Think of anything you would like to see in the future for our group!
- Email me at teensprotectingalllife@gmail.com (or comment below) if you think of anything!
In case anyone is interested, the websites I gave you were the following:
Lifesitenews - http://www.lifesitenews.com
Live Action - http://liveaction.org/
Priests for Life - http://www.priestsforlife.org/
(warning: there are pictures of abortions on this website)
Voice of Revolution - http://www.voiceofrevolution.com/2009/01/18/abortion-statistics/
Abortion No - www.abortionno.org
(warning: very graphic pictures of real abortions)
Justice and Peace Shall Kiss - http://psalm85.blogspot.com/
Christian Life Commission - http://www.omosclc.org/
Here is a great fact sheet, because it's important to know what's really going on: http://lifeteen.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/2012_LTAbortionFactSheet.pdf
Here's a good website that explains why we chose Our Lady of Guadalupe to consecrate our group to: http://www.priestsforlife.org/articles/guadalupeandabortion.htm
Thanks to all who came! See you at our next meeting!
If you have any questions or comments, please email us at teensprotectingalllife@gmail.com!
Friday, July 27, 2012
Monday, July 2, 2012
The Truth is, True Love Hurts
When we think of the word 'love', many of us probably think of a stereotypical image of flowers and chocolate, or a cute couple holding hands, taking a long walk down the beach. If something similar to those images is the first thing to pop in your head when someone says 'love', that's not bad, because this is what society tells us love is. Society tells us love is meant to bring us happiness and pleasure.
According to society, love is supposed to be pink hearts and roses.
And according to society, love and lust are interchangeable words.
And then society tells us that if we stop having pleasure in a relationship or if we get bored with it, or things get too hard, that’s okay, because we can just get a divorce and/or move on to someone else.
The truth is that these so called 'truths' that society gives us are false. Love is not meant simply to bring us pleasure. In fact, true love will do just the opposite.
As Mother Teresa once said, "it is very important for us to realize that love, to be true, has to hurt." True love hurts. It requires sacrifice. It causes us pain, whether that be physically or emotionally. But if someone sacrifices for you, doesn't that show just how much they love you?
It wasn't easy for Jesus to love us. Through the scourging, through the heavy cross, through the nails in his hands, He still loved us. If you don't think it was hard for him love us, watch The Passion, or read up on the damage carrying a cross and being hung up on it can do to one's body. And if you don't think he really loved us, look at the cross. It wasn't nails that held Him there. It was love. It hurt him to love us, physically, mentally and emotionally.
Mother Teresa once said that, "This is the meaning of true love, to give until it hurts."
We are called to love our neighbors, and this means more than just baking a cake for the new family next door (by the way, does anyone even do that anymore?). We are called to share the love of Christ with everyone we encounter and we are called to sacrifice for our neighbors.
One Saint Gianna Molla (1922-1962) is a great model of true sacrificial love.
Gianna was born in Italy, the tenth of thirteen children (however, only nine of the thirteen made it to adulthood, including Gianna). As a young woman, Gianna had hopes of one day joining her priest brother in his missionary work in Brazil. She got her medical diploma in 1949 and wanted to use it to help the poor people. She was chronically ill and so she could not do this near to the extent she wanted, but she did practice pediatrics in Italy.
Gianna met her husband in 1954, and by 1959, they had three children. She had two more children, which she lost before birth.
In 1961 she became pregnant with her sixth child. In her second month of pregnancy, Gianna developed a fibrome on her uterus.
The doctors gave her only three options:
1. She could have an abortion, which would save her life and allow her to have more children
2. She could have a hysterectomy, which would save her life, but it would kill her unborn child and she wouldn’t be able to children in the future
3. Or, she could have an operation to remove only her fibroma, which would be potentially fatal for her, but would significantly increase the chances of her unborn child's survival.
Although the doctors were most insistent on option #1, because they saw it as having the best results, Gianna was not going to let her child die if there was something she could do about it. So, she chose to have the operation to remove her fibroma. The fibroma was removed, but Gianna still had problems. It was becoming evident that Gianna would not be able to survive the birth of her child and she told her family that, “This time it will be a difficult delivery, and they may have to save one or the other – I want them to save my baby."
On April 21, 1962 (Good Friday that year), Gianna gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Gianna Emanuela. Gianna (the mother) died a week later. She was beatified a saint by Pope John Paul II in 1994.
Saint Gianna is a modern example of true love. True love hurts. True love requires sacrifice. Saint Gianna went through extreme amounts of pain, and what's even more, she gave up her life for that of her unborn child. If you want to know more about Saint Gianna, click here.
We wonder what is wrong with the world today, and often we blame everything bad that happens on God. Why would an all-loving, all-knowing God allow such evil in the world? It seems like the peace that everyone says they want for the world is unachievable.
There are certain key things that break peace. You see, as long as we are all more concerned about ourselves, our happiness, our well-being over that of our family, our friends, or even strangers, the peace we speak of is unachievable.
Specifically, abortion breaks peace because abortion is an act of choosing oneself over that of another. It is not a loving act, because the mother is not sacrificing for her child, but rather killing her child.
Many of us believe that abortion is wrong… in most cases. What about cases of incest and rape? What about cases where the health of the mother is at stake (much like Saint Gianna's story)? First of all, abortions due to incest and rape make up less than 1% of all abortions. And abortions due to the life/health of the mother or child makes up less than 2%. 98% of abortions are a result of personal choice (the child is unwanted or inconvenient).*
Second of all, it is not right to punish the child because of the sin of another. Someone once explained the situation to me as, "An act of violence created life, don't end that life with an act of violence." And adoption is always an option. And, in this day and age, with so much technology and medicine, it would be really rare for an abortion to be the only option in saving a mother's life.
Mother Teresa was a woman of great faith. She combined social justice with Church teaching, and wasn't afraid to share her beliefs with the world. Imagine the reaction in the White House in 1994 at the National Prayer Breakfast, when the small nun, in her quiet voice, proclaimed a bold truth, “...But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”
World peace starts in the womb. And really, what makes a child inside the womb so different from a child outside the womb? In the womb, the baby has brain waves, a heartbeat, we've even seen unborn babies react to music and smile!
Once we value and protect the precious life in the womb, once we are willing to love until it hurts, once we are ready to sacrifice for true love, then we will become a light of peace in the darkness of the world.
For an even more modern story (it actually happened last month!) of a mother's sacrificial love for her child, check this out.
*Abortion statistics: http://www.voiceofrevolution.
Note: Pictures above are from Live Action
According to society, love is supposed to be pink hearts and roses.
And according to society, love and lust are interchangeable words.
And then society tells us that if we stop having pleasure in a relationship or if we get bored with it, or things get too hard, that’s okay, because we can just get a divorce and/or move on to someone else.
The truth is that these so called 'truths' that society gives us are false. Love is not meant simply to bring us pleasure. In fact, true love will do just the opposite.
 |
| Society lies. Society tells us this is a cell clump of nothingness. |
As Mother Teresa once said, "it is very important for us to realize that love, to be true, has to hurt." True love hurts. It requires sacrifice. It causes us pain, whether that be physically or emotionally. But if someone sacrifices for you, doesn't that show just how much they love you?
It wasn't easy for Jesus to love us. Through the scourging, through the heavy cross, through the nails in his hands, He still loved us. If you don't think it was hard for him love us, watch The Passion, or read up on the damage carrying a cross and being hung up on it can do to one's body. And if you don't think he really loved us, look at the cross. It wasn't nails that held Him there. It was love. It hurt him to love us, physically, mentally and emotionally.
Mother Teresa once said that, "This is the meaning of true love, to give until it hurts."
We are called to love our neighbors, and this means more than just baking a cake for the new family next door (by the way, does anyone even do that anymore?). We are called to share the love of Christ with everyone we encounter and we are called to sacrifice for our neighbors.
One Saint Gianna Molla (1922-1962) is a great model of true sacrificial love.
Gianna was born in Italy, the tenth of thirteen children (however, only nine of the thirteen made it to adulthood, including Gianna). As a young woman, Gianna had hopes of one day joining her priest brother in his missionary work in Brazil. She got her medical diploma in 1949 and wanted to use it to help the poor people. She was chronically ill and so she could not do this near to the extent she wanted, but she did practice pediatrics in Italy.
Gianna met her husband in 1954, and by 1959, they had three children. She had two more children, which she lost before birth.
In 1961 she became pregnant with her sixth child. In her second month of pregnancy, Gianna developed a fibrome on her uterus.
The doctors gave her only three options:
1. She could have an abortion, which would save her life and allow her to have more children
2. She could have a hysterectomy, which would save her life, but it would kill her unborn child and she wouldn’t be able to children in the future
3. Or, she could have an operation to remove only her fibroma, which would be potentially fatal for her, but would significantly increase the chances of her unborn child's survival.
Although the doctors were most insistent on option #1, because they saw it as having the best results, Gianna was not going to let her child die if there was something she could do about it. So, she chose to have the operation to remove her fibroma. The fibroma was removed, but Gianna still had problems. It was becoming evident that Gianna would not be able to survive the birth of her child and she told her family that, “This time it will be a difficult delivery, and they may have to save one or the other – I want them to save my baby."
On April 21, 1962 (Good Friday that year), Gianna gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Gianna Emanuela. Gianna (the mother) died a week later. She was beatified a saint by Pope John Paul II in 1994.
Saint Gianna is a modern example of true love. True love hurts. True love requires sacrifice. Saint Gianna went through extreme amounts of pain, and what's even more, she gave up her life for that of her unborn child. If you want to know more about Saint Gianna, click here.
We wonder what is wrong with the world today, and often we blame everything bad that happens on God. Why would an all-loving, all-knowing God allow such evil in the world? It seems like the peace that everyone says they want for the world is unachievable.
There are certain key things that break peace. You see, as long as we are all more concerned about ourselves, our happiness, our well-being over that of our family, our friends, or even strangers, the peace we speak of is unachievable.
 |
| World peace starts in the womb. |
Many of us believe that abortion is wrong… in most cases. What about cases of incest and rape? What about cases where the health of the mother is at stake (much like Saint Gianna's story)? First of all, abortions due to incest and rape make up less than 1% of all abortions. And abortions due to the life/health of the mother or child makes up less than 2%. 98% of abortions are a result of personal choice (the child is unwanted or inconvenient).*
Second of all, it is not right to punish the child because of the sin of another. Someone once explained the situation to me as, "An act of violence created life, don't end that life with an act of violence." And adoption is always an option. And, in this day and age, with so much technology and medicine, it would be really rare for an abortion to be the only option in saving a mother's life.
Mother Teresa was a woman of great faith. She combined social justice with Church teaching, and wasn't afraid to share her beliefs with the world. Imagine the reaction in the White House in 1994 at the National Prayer Breakfast, when the small nun, in her quiet voice, proclaimed a bold truth, “...But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”
World peace starts in the womb. And really, what makes a child inside the womb so different from a child outside the womb? In the womb, the baby has brain waves, a heartbeat, we've even seen unborn babies react to music and smile!
Once we value and protect the precious life in the womb, once we are willing to love until it hurts, once we are ready to sacrifice for true love, then we will become a light of peace in the darkness of the world.
For an even more modern story (it actually happened last month!) of a mother's sacrificial love for her child, check this out.
*Abortion statistics: http://www.voiceofrevolution.
Note: Pictures above are from Live Action
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