Recently, I have noticed a trend among young pro-abortion advocates that is concerning. They have set their sights on changing the definition of abortion. By making subtle changes, they seek to dramatically broaden the definition and application of the word. If successful, this linguistic attack would pose significant threats to the unborn and their mothers by blurring the lines between abortion and legitimate medical care.
Abortion is correctly defined by the American Academy of Pro-Life OBGYNs as “any drug, device, or procedure used to ensure the death of the human being in utero before, during, or in the process of separation of the mother and her embryo or fetus.”
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Within the broad national conversation on abortion, the colloquial version of this definition has been more or less accepted. We all know that a cesarean section is not an abortion. We all know a miscarriage is not an abortion. When legislation is debated in the public square, we all operate under this common understanding.
So what, then, are abortion advocates trying to change? They want to broaden the understanding of abortion to include any procedure that ends pregnancy. This was on display in a viral video featured on the Jubilee YouTube page, where a young abortion advocate debated Ben Shapiro and claimed that cesarean sections are abortions. However, this strategy is not limited only to younger pro-abortion advocates.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) policy on abortion states, “People should be able to access abortion care where and when they need it, including for such purposes as abortion care, miscarriage management, and perinatal palliative care.” [emphasis added]
ACOG has tragically become a shameless promoter of abortion. Now, they claim that caring for a woman who has had a miscarriage is “abortion care.” Equally sinister is the claim that perinatal palliative care falls under the umbrella of abortion.
Broadening the scope of the word “abortion” to include non-abortions is dangerous to mothers and their babies.
Take, for example, a woman who lives in a state with strong pro-life protections. If she is told that her state has outlawed abortion and that abortion includes miscarriage care, she may be misled into believing that miscarriage care is not legal. Often perception becomes reality, and if women believe they cannot legally access legitimate medical care the consequences could prove devastating.
In addition, this shifting of definitions could impact existing legislation, causing confusion and litigation. Women and their babies deserve to be told the truth. Changing the definitions of words does them a great disservice by muddying the waters of legitimate medical care.
Halloween has only become a big deal in Australia over the last few decades. As a boy growing up, it barely rated a mention, except through the ever present American TV shows. In Australia, it was generally ignored, considered irrelevant.
Recently in a quick trip to my local Woolworth store, I was surprised to see a big crate of oversized orange pumpkins. In America, Halloween is now the second biggest commercial holiday, only behind Christmas. I don’t know that we are at that point yet, but clearly retailers are pushing the band wagon.
The promotion of the dark side of the spiritual realm raises the question, should christians celebrate Halloween. It is not a simple question to answer definitively, but on reflection, the answer is “No.”
The Origins of Halloween
Halloween has its roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain. This festival marked the changing seasons and the descent into winter. Winter was seen as a season of death, because in the places where the Celts lived, plants did not grow , animals hibernated or moved to warmer places.
It was the beginning of the Celtic year and they believed Samhain, the lord of death, sent evil spirits abroad to attack humans, who could escape only by assuming disguises and looking like evil spirits themselves.
In 837 Pope Gregory III named November 1st as All Saints Day, a day to celebrate al the saints who have reached eternal life in heaven. All Saints Day was also known as All Hallows Day and the night before became known as Hallows Eve or Halloween. In Christian Europe it was a time to reflect on the character of the great saints.
The pagan beliefs and practices never died out completely. With the decline of christianity as a cultural force in much of the West, it is not surprising that Halloween has been reinvented as a season to celebrate the dark side of spirituality.
Our Response to Halloween
The starting point for a christian response to Halloween is to recognise that the spirit realm is real- demons are real, witchcraft is real, spiritism is real.
In the past the church has responded to cultural forces such as Samhain by christianising them, that is appropriating them and converting them to a christian purpose. As the light of the gospel is being rejected by our culture, the darkness of Halloween is gaining ground. The old approach of appropriation no longer applies.
Some argue that christians should be shining the light of the gospel at this time of the year. How that can be done varies from place to place. In parts of the USA the main focus on Halloween is not the spooks but on fancy dress and parties. Clearly christians can and should be involved in being light in these situations.
Some churches, again in the USA, opt to produce other Halloween celebrations that are more in line with the gospel.
However where people are asked to celebrate the occult in any form, christians should generally not be present. Not only are these things unhelpful, they can lead to demonic oppression by participating in things that the Lord has specifically forbidden.
In 2 Corinthians 6:14-15 we read: “Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil?”
The celebration of Halloween presents just one more opportunity (or challenge) for the believer to be in the world but not of the world.
Today we had some new blinds installed in our house. The very first thing that the installer did was to hold a spirit level around the architraves of each window. Most of the windows were fine, but one was significantly out of square and the blind needed some adjustment to fit the space.
We don’t think about it often but standards are involved in everything we do. In fact they make the modern world possible. Imagine if the manufacturers of phones each had their own frequency and the network operators had their own ideas. Everybody in Australia would be forced to use the same phone, which would be less convenient than having a choice of products all following the same standards and protocols. If oil companies were able to deliver any old fuel to the service station, we wouldn’t know for sure that our model of car was compatible with the fuel. Our cars would not function correctly and might even be severely damaged. Even in agriculture, one of the oldest and more stable industries, grain and other products have to meet a certain standard or the price paid by customers is greatly reduced. When it comes to the way we live, we think there shouldn’t be any standards. We feel we should be free to do exactly what we want when we want. We don’t want anybody setting standards for us. Just like the phone manufacturers have to agree with the networks about standards in order to make our phones work well, our mindsets and relationships need standards that allow us to run our lives effectively. The creator of all things has provided us with a book that doesn’t just set the standards, but gives us illustrations of how things go wrong when we ignore the standards. We are living in an age where we are pretty much free to live our lives how we see fit. We set our own rules. We are also living in a time of unprecedented levels of relationship breakdowns, anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses. This might be a good time to check out what the Bible says about our lifestyle choices, and bring that spirit level to see if we can make better choices.
The awakening of a mother who had no brainwave activity further calls into question the long-held medical understanding of so-called ‘brain death.’
A 36-year-old mother without brain activity woke up after hearing the voice of her one-year-old daughter, one of many incidents that calls into question the long-held medical understanding of so-called “brain death.”
Father Michael Orsi, who has heard the play-by-play of the remarkable episode from one of the nurse anesthesiologists involved, told LifeSiteNews that the woman recently went to the hospital for a double endoscopy. While patients normally wake within five to 10 minutes of the end of the procedure, the mother did not wake up – hospital staff found her heart had stopped.
She received CPR, and soon her heart was beating on its own again. Believing she had suffered a stroke, they sent the mother to receive an MRI and found she had no brain waves. She was then transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU) and put on a respirator to help her breathe.
After two days in ICU, the husband told the nurse on duty that if his wife could only hear the voice of her one-year-old daughter she would be OK. Amazingly, when he prompted his daughter to speak over his cell phone to her mother, she woke up. She was “in perfect condition,” according to Orsi.
The priest has verified the details of the chain of events with the woman’s doctor, Omar Hussein, who has also confirmed to LifeSiteNews that the mother woke up upon hearing the voice of her daughter. Hussein has said there is no way he can scientifically explain what happened.
However, the longtime medical “consensus” on brain death in the U.S. has been contested by various doctors, some of whom point out that patients can indeed go on to recover consciousness after meeting what has been considered official criteria for brain death.
Dr. Heidi Klessig recently explained that such cases of recovery after flatline EEGs (no brainwaves) can likely be attributed to a condition called Global Ischemic Penumbra, or GIP:
Woman without brainwave activity wakes up after hearing her daughter’s voice
Like every other organ, the brain shuts down its function when its blood flow is reduced in order to conserve energy. At 70 percent of normal blood flow, the brain’s neurological functioning is reduced, and at a 50 percent reduction the EEG becomes flatline. But tissue damage doesn’t begin until blood flow to the brain drops below 20 percent of normal for several hours. GIP is a term doctors use to refer to that interval when the brain’s blood flow is between 20 percent and 50 percent of normal.
During GIP, the brain will not respond to neurological testing and has no electrical activity on EEG but still has enough blood flow to maintain tissue viability – meaning that recovery is still possible. During GIP, a person will appear “brain dead” using the current medical guidelines and testing but with continuing care they could potentially improve.
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Just last month, the New York Times shared the results of a large study that found at least a quarter of unresponsive patients (those diagnosed with a coma, vegetative state, or minimally conscious state) have some awareness.
During the study, teams of neurologists asked 241 such unresponsive patients to do “complex cognitive tasks,” such as imagining themselves playing tennis. Remarkably, 25 percent of the patients exhibited the “same patterns of brain activity seen in healthy people.”
“It’s not OK to know this and do nothing,” remarked Dr. Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, the Times reported.
“This puts a whole new light on the Terri Schiavo case,” Fr. Orsi told LifeSiteNews, referring to a court’s decision to allow the husband of a cognitively disabled woman in a persistent vegetative state to have her refused nutrition and water so that she would die a slow and painful death of dehydration.
The priest pointed to the implications these findings have for the care of unresponsive patients, including in response to their capacity for mental distress.
“Imagine the terror of that, listening to what they’re going to do,” he said regarding times when the decision is made to pull the plug on an unresponsive patient. “Or hearing how it’s time to call in the organ transplant team. This is horrible.”
“Brain death” guidelines in the U.S. were revised this year to state that it occurs in individuals with catastrophic brain injury, and no evidence of function of the “brain as a whole,” a condition that must be “permanent.” Klessig has pointed out that “under the ‘brain as a whole’ formulation, people can be declared dead while parts of the brain are still working, as evidenced by electrical activity on EEG.”
Klessig has also highlighted the fact that, according to the new guideline, “(t)he panel chose to use the term permanent to mean function was lost and (1) will not resume spontaneously, and (2) medical interventions will not be used to attempt restoration of function.”
“The fact that medical interventions ‘will not be used’ implies that they might have been used and might have been successful if used. This fact alone reveals that these people are not dead, since there exists a possibility of resuscitation!” she wrote.
Klessig noted that the diagnosis of brain death becomes “a self-fulfilling prophecy: most people diagnosed with BD/DNC very quickly have their support withdrawn or become organ donors.” She is calling for AAN guidelines to be scrapped in favor of “the traditional definition of death: cessation of cardiopulmonary function.”
“Brain death is a legal fiction that removes civil rights from vulnerable brain-injured people, who, under the United States Constitution, possess an ‘inalienable right to life,’ deserve protection, and should be treated as mentally disabled persons,” Klessig maintains.
Necessity, the old adage goes, is the mother of invention.
Justin Walker, pastor of Salt and Light Baptist Church just outside Louisville, Kentucky, experienced that proverb firsthand — and it birthed a vision for a tuition-free, church-sponsored grade school, First Principles Academy.
The Origin
For years, Walker told CBN News, he led a small but stable congregation alongside his wife Sarah, with whom he shared six children. But then tragedy struck: in the summer of 2020, when the congregation — like many across the country — was struggling to find its footing amid a pandemic, the pastor’s wife received a devastating diagnosis.
She had stage 4 cancer. After months of battling the brutal disease, Sarah passed away in March 2021.
Overnight, Walker became a single father of six — five of whom live at home and were homeschooled — as well as a bi-vocational pastor working full-time for a family fabric business. It was in that season of struggle, when he was stretched and struck by grief more than ever before, that Walker saw a need.
“I didn’t realize it at first, but it really stemmed from my wife passing,” the pastor said, reflecting on the origin of his vision to launch a tuition-free school for kids in kindergarten through sixth grade. “I used to say that ‘we homeschool,’ and then my wife passed, and I realized, ‘Oh, my wife homeschooled.’”
That was now Walker’s job. As he began taking on those tasks, the grieving father brought one of his daughters to a local public library to find something for her to read.
“It was the first of June, and they were pushing all of these LGBTQ books on my daughter in the public library, and I was so upset,” he said. “And I just made this personal post on Facebook. I took a picture of the books they were [trying to give my 11-year-old daughter] … and I was so upset at that. … I took a picture of [the books] and I posted them on Facebook and I said, ‘Shame on you, public library, for pushing these books on my daughter. We won’t be back.’”
Listen to them on the latest episode of “Quick Start” 👇
That post, Walker recalled, sparked “a huge firestorm” on social media and it made clear to him there was “a great need” in his community for a better educational alternative.
“The more I started looking, the more I realized there’s a mission field in our own backyard that the average church is not involved in, and that mission field is 50 million American children that are going to public schools every day where things like what just happened to my daughter in the library are happening all day long. And here I am, the pastor of a church, supposed to be a community leader, and what are we doing about this? No one’s even talking about it.”
The Opportunity
As Walker was going through this season of pain and realization, of reckoning and navigating, a group of people in his church approached him with the opportunity to start a school.
The Kentucky-based minister — in addition to taking on the responsibilities left by the death of his wife — soon realized he couldn’t work full-time, serve as a pastor, and homeschool his children; he was stretched too thin. But he couldn’t pay the cost to put five kids in private school, either.
It’s important for the church, Walker said, to minister to people where they’re at — including financially. From his own experience, and the experiences of those around him, Walker was convinced First Principles Academy needed to be tuition-free.
“We want this to be a ministry,” he said, urging those concerned about the cost that God will provide what is needed for the outreach opportunity to thrive. “This is what the church has done through its whole history. We don’t charge ticket prices for people to come in on Sunday. Freely we receive and freely we give. I’ve just encouraged everyone to take the word ‘tuition’ and replace it with ‘donation.’”
While there is no set tuition, the school takes donations to pay its teachers and administrators, as well as the cost of running the campus inside an old horse auction facility, the home of Salt and Light Baptist Church.
And it’s “not just a pipe dream,” Walker said. “We’ve done it. We’ve successfully launched.”
The Objective
On the Wednesday after Labor Day, the school — accessible to the public and not limited to just Salt and Light congregants — opened with 65 students and several staff members with classes from kindergarten through sixth grade with the goal of adding a full middle and high school in the future.
To enroll, parents — and students who are old enough — are required to sign an agreement stating they understand First Principles Academy is a ministry and, as such, will be teaching students from a Christian worldview.
“We believe that the huge problem in our country and what we’re seeing with depression and anxiety and many of the social problems that we’re seeing stem from [a] lack of Christ at the center of our education,” Walker said. “So we have a goal of putting Christ at the center of our education. So there is a part of this that goes a little deeper. There is a community need, yes, but there’s a need to bring Christ into our education. … We want that first and foremost and we want mom and dad to know and we want students to know that this is what we will be teaching.”
The “grand goal,” he continued, is for the Gospel to go forth from the classroom to the community. Walker said he hopes to see unbelieving students hear the Gospel in math class — or any other class — come to faith in Jesus, and take the life-saving message home to their families.
That objective is at the heart of the decision to open the school to the public, not just churchgoers. While the school is “an evangelistic outreach,” Walker noted, it is committed to looking different from public schools and will remain committed to its core values and statement of faith.
“You’re coming and joining what we’re doing,” he said. “There is enrollment. We have a right to say, ‘No, you’re not going to do that here.’”
In addition to providing a much-needed resource to his community in Kentucky, Walker said he’s hoping his church’s school will be “a beacon of light … so that other churches can do the same thing.”
“We want to see the church, at large, rallied around this and say, ‘Oh, this is possible; we can do this,’” the pastor said. “I have this crazy vision: I would love to see, in 20 years, that it would be the strange thing if you went into a church and they didn’t have a school. … [We want to see] churches across America saying, ‘We can open a school.’”
To learn more about First Principles Academy, to consider enrolling your children, or to donate to the ministry effort, click here.
In ancient times, the pagan god Moloch required child sacrifices. These so called “gods” were actually demons, which begs the question: Has the worship of Moloch returned, this time in an operating room? Those who celebrate abortion, the destruction of the most vulnerable, are doing the bidding of the devil. You don’t have to convince Dr. Catherine Wheeler, who in the early 1990s occasionally committed abortions. But that all changed one day when God got her attention.
“I was about to begin an abortion procedure on a teenager, when the room darkened, and time seemed to slow down. There was an unmistakable presence of evil, and I was the only one who seemed to notice it. What scared me most was my awareness of pure evil in the operating room, related to the abortion I was performing,” explained Dr. Wheeler.
It was a pivotal moment in the doctor’s life, where God revealed the horror and destruction of abortion. This set in motion a new path for the doctor, who never committed another abortion. “I thought I was helping women. The life and value of the preborn were lost in the abortion conversation. I bought the feminist’s lie that women needed to have access to an abortion in order to pursue their dreams and be fulfilled,” continued Dr. Wheeler.
But that isn’t the end of the story. This conversion didn’t happen all at once for Dr. Wheeler, who described the process, “God gently nudged me over time to fully realize the humanity and value of human life.”
Wheeler related how her realization about the sanctity of life “paralleled my journey” back to Christianity and “to walk with Christ.”
“Jesus wasn’t put on this earth to crush people. He came to save people. His death on the cross was to redeem our sins. The gentle hand of God has tenderly guided me along,” she said.
It wasn’t until 2020 when Dr. Wheeler decided to go public and speak out as a pro-life advocate after deeply thinking about how our society became so coarse about human life. “It started when society devalued marriage and promoted intimacy without consequences. You can’t have a sexual revolution, unhindered sexuality, without contraception and abortion,” she noted.
“Sexuality has become almost like a transaction and physical only. If you don’t love the person you’re being intimate with, and that relationship is disposable, why would you love a child who was a result of that?”
“I think the larger issue is that women have been convinced that their value is tied to pursuing a big dream and big life goal and defining that as the most important thing about them. Society has convinced women that children get in the way of what matters most, rather than being one of the most important parts of our lives,” Wheeler said.
Thus, as traditional values became less important, people viewed human life as having less meaning, which resulted in a broader acceptance of abortion. Wheeler also puts some of the blame on Christian churches: “The biblical view of sexuality and intimacy within marriage as God’s good plan to protect children and women (as well as men), occurring within the sanctity of marriage are not being discussed in the pulpit. Most pastors are scared to discuss it. It’s a huge lost opportunity to prepare our young people with reality before the culture pushes a destructive narrative on them.”
Pregnancy can complicate your life, and the abortion lobby tells young women that abortion is necessary to maintain your own happiness or career goals. In fact, the modern culture encourages women to celebrate their abortion. This is how abortion is rationalized and is the narrative that Dr. Wheeler now fights against. “I want to put a pebble in their shoe, make them just a little uncomfortable so they’ll think deeper about the value of human life.”
Dr. Catherine Wheeler is featured in a new book by John DiGirolamo, It’s Not About the dEvil, which is a dramatized non-fiction account of three compelling individuals. You can read more about Dr. Wheeler’s life-changing moment that prompted a Christ-centered transformation to become a pro-life advocate. The plot is not a straight line, as there are twists and turns, some unexpected moments that are emotional, inspiring, and always captivating. The story also subtly shows how the culture and the decline of traditional values have impacted abortion in this country. Books can be purchased on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and more information about the author can be found at https://itisnotabout.com.
This message, “Digital Cocaine”, will change the way you think about phones and social media in particular. You need to watch it and make appropriate changes in your life and your family. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN4jqMlkgf8
I was there for the very first episode of “Doctor Who” a little over 60 years ago, and I have seen just about every episode in the Classic era as well as the modern era. The only exception was during Jodie Whittaker’s reign as The Doctor, when the stories were just so atrocious that they were not worth the time to watch.
When Russell T Davis was announced as the returning show runner, I thought that happy days were here again. The first few episodes of the current season were good. “Bubble and Pop” was excellent and “Rogue” was looking to be as good as any Doctor Who story.
Then there was The Kiss. My stomach turned and deep grief came over my soul.
Two men kissed on television. Get over it you homophobic bigot.
Yes I have seen men and women kiss on screen before. I do get over it, within milliseconds.
Here is the thing- The Doctor is not a man. He is not a human being. The writers, producers and everyone else in the show have forgotten that. He is an alien from a different planet. He has two hearts.
The first Doctor, played by William Hartnell, was clearly driven by ideas that are not ones that we share. At times he seemed sinister, potentially able to turn on people as much as help them. The second Doctor, played by Patrick Troughton, was more playful and quirky, but never human.
The Kiss was not queer erotica as some people have written. It was bestiality, at least from the Doctor’s perspective. It would have been the same if David Tenant’s Doctor had kissed Rose in the same way.
RTD and the rest of the team might be patting themselves on the back for being “transgressive” or even “inclusive”. Really they have signed the death warrant for “Doctor Who”. The Kiss is for “Doctor Who” what Fonzie jumping the shark was for “Happy Days.”
Can “Doctor Who” be saved?
If the show’s producers can get their heads around the fact that The Doctor is an alien, and therefore somewhat removed from humans, then possibly.
Maybe it needs to take another 20 year hiatus to allow it to be rebooted. Perhaps another Doctor and different writers can rediscover the essence of the story.
At the moment, that it will limp along for another couple of seasons. The connection with Disney will continue to poison the show, and then it will just stop.
Listening to the news and the panic coming from our politicians and activists over the last few weeks, you would think that Australia is a very violent place and that women are being killed by the millions by out of control partners.
Official statistics from the Australian Institute of Criminology tell a different story.
Firstly the rate of murders in Australia per population is declining, and has been for many years.
Well maybe the rate of death in domestic violence cases is exploding. After all those feminists must be jumping up and down about something. While every death at the hand of a partner is tragic, there is no need for the kind of moral panic we have been seeing in the media and governments lately. Homicides by domestic partners or even by friends is on the decline.
What about women then? Are they more likely to be killed by toxic masculinity in the home?
It is the case, and probably always has been, that more men are murdered than women. Why are we not seeing the media jumping up and down about that?
Murder is evil. Domestic violence is evil. But when the stats are so obviously out of kilter with the hype you have to wonder what is going on.
A 36-year-old mother without brain activity woke up after hearing the voice of her one-year-old daughter, one of many incidents that calls into question the long-held medical understanding of so-called “brain death.”
New Life Narrabri 