Christmas Dance!

WHERE: Right to Life Christmas Dance! WHY: Because when else can you dress up like your favorite Christmas Carol? WHEN: 9pm to midnight Friday (12/05). WHERE: Knights of Columbus basement.

December Meeting

Want a break from end-of-the year projects and studying? Why not spend it with your favourite pro-lifers? Our final meeting of the year is 8pm in the Montgomery Auditorium (LaFortune), followed by 9:30 Mass in the Log Chapel. I hope to see you there!

Please sign the petition to fight the "Freedom of Choice" Act!

The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) would end virtually all restrictions on abortion nationally and even overturn laws protecting doctors and hospitals from being forced to provide abortions. President-elect Obama has promised that his first action as president will be signing this act. Please sign the Fight FOCA petition (http://www.fightfoca.com/) to help send a message to Washington!

Roundtable Discussion #2: Pure Manhood and Pure Womanhood

Come join in another great discussion with Nathan and Megan! We'll start our discussion with excerpts from the books Pure Manhood and Pure Womanhood by the Everetts... and Pizza. 7pm Thursday, 6 November; Keough 24-hour lounge.

November Meeting!

Join us for our next meeting 8pm Wednesday, 5 November in the Montgomery Auditorium. At 8:30 we will be joined by Dr. Paolo Carozza from the law school. Mass will follow at 9:30 in the Log Chapel (behind Bond hall).

First Rountable Discussion - Sexuality and the Media

Today (Thursday, 9/25) from 7pm to 8pm, Nathan and Megan are hosting the semester's first Roundtable Discussion in the Keough 24-hour lounge. There will be free food (BW3's)! We will be discussing the media and the expectations (or lack thereof) that they have for our generation regarding sexuality and self control.

First Meeting of the Year!

Come meet ND Right to Life! Please join us for our first meeting of the '08-'09 school year. We'll tell you all about this year's activities and events and how you can join us in saving babies, helping moms, and making friends. WHEN: 8pm Wednesday (9/10). WHERE: Study lounge on the first floor of CoMo (Coleman-Morse).

Welcome Back!!!

Whether you're a Right-to-Life veteran, new to the club, or new to college, we hope you had a great summer and are ready to tackle another year of remarkable pro-life events and activities. Want to be added to our mailing list? Contact us at prolife@nd.edu. Want to see our upcoming meeting and event schedule? Just scroll down. Want to find out how you can get involved? Click on any of the links in the sidebar of our website (and be sure to come to our first meeting: 10 September, 8pm, location TBA).

Have a great summer!

Check back in the Fall for information on meetings and activities.

Annoucements from February Meeting

Announcements for February 7:

Theology of the Body - starts today!
Rosary - Fridays, noon & 3:30
RTL story on ND Homepage!
3rd Annual Conference, April 11-12
Edith Stein Conference, March 28-29
Join the Leadership Team!__________________________________________________________

TODAY, 6:15pm, Pasta Room, North Dining Hall

Our THEOLOGY of the BODY Group is finally meeting again!

Today will just be casual conversation over dinner to find out what people areinterested in discussing this semester. Please join us!
The group plans to meet at this time every(other?) week if it works for most ofthe interested people. No commitment needed - just come when you can!__________________________________________________________

ROSARY @ the Clinic now has 2 scheduled times this semester!
Meet at Main Circle, Fridays, Noon & 3:30pm!__________________________________________________________

Visit the UNIVERSITY HOMEPAGE right now to read a story on the MARCH FOR LIFE!www.nd.edu
__________________________________________________________

Mark your calendars now for the 3rd Annual CONFERENCE!

Friday & Saturday, April 11-12
Invited speakers are:
Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand
Dr. Eugene Diamond
Phyllis Schlafly
Dolores Meehan
Rebecca Keissling

Be sure to spread the word to your friends around campus and at otheruniversities!
__________________________________________________________

Don't forget the EDITH STEIN CONFERENCE!!
March 28-29

For more info: http://nd.edu/~idnd/edithstein/2008.html
__________________________________________________________

Want to join the Right to Life Leadership Team next year?
Email Mary Liz formore information (prolife@nd.edu)__________________________________________________________

A March to Remember: ND Right to Life Goes to the White House

A March to Remember: ND Right to Life Goes to the White House
By: Julie Hail Flory
Date: February 5, 2008
University of Notre Dame Newswire
Source

It’s a yearly trip Mary Elizabeth Walter has made for most of her life. Growing up just outside of Baltimore, the Notre Dame senior joined in many family outings to Washington, D.C., for the March for Life, an event that draws some 200,000 people to the nation’s capital each year to rally for legal protection for the unborn.

Now in her second year as president of Notre Dame Right to Life, she has kept the tradition alive throughout her college career, traveling by bus to Capitol Hill each January with a group of students to participate in the march.

But this year was a little different.

“It was kind of a surprise,” Walter says of the day, about two weeks before the trip, when she learned that this would be no ordinary march experience.

The woman who coordinates the group’s stay in Washington had contacted some friends of hers – who happen to work at the White House – and arranged an opportunity of a lifetime. She wanted to know, would the students be interested in meeting a certain commander-in-chief?

“And, of course, we said ‘yes,’” Walter recalls.

It was Bill McGurn, a 1980 Notre Dame graduate and chief speechwriter to President Bush, and his wife, Julie, who set up the presidential visit for 25 members of the Notre Dame contingent, who first enjoyed breakfast at the White House.

“It was incredible,” Walter says of the experience, which she found especially significant as a history major. “We ate in the Red and Blue and Green Rooms, and those rooms are usually museum space, but there we were, eating breakfast while sitting on the couch that Dolly Madison sat on.”

The group then joined a small crowd of about 200, including about 50 students from nearby Christendom College, in the East Room for an up-close and personal address by the president, who shared his admiration for their commitment to the cause. “I see people with a deep conviction that even the most vulnerable member of the human family is a child of God,” President Bush said. “You're here because you know that all life deserves to be protected. And as you begin your march, I'm proud to be standing with you.”

Held each year to mark the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that required the legalization of abortion, the March for Life’s mission is to urge the adoption of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to overturn the decision.

The yearly Notre Dame trip is about more than just the march itself. Participants spend time exploring Washington and learning about the history and ideology of the pro-life movement.

“We try to set aside a day to explore the religious sites around D.C. – the National Shrine, the Franciscan monastery – all the sites that remind us why as Catholics, and as Christians, we believe in the right to life,” Walter said. “Then we take another day to explore the secular side; to try to understand why we as Americans, as humans, believe that we have the right to life.”

For the first time this year, the group also spent a day volunteering at various locations around the city.

But not too surprisingly, the highlight most certainly was the audience with the president, who left the crowd with some parting words of encouragement.

“As you give voice to the voiceless, I ask you to take comfort from this: The hearts of the American people are good,” he said.

Walter plans to continue attending the march, even after graduation. But she knows this year’s trip will be hard to top.

“Will we be disappointed that we don’t get to go the White House? Well, we’ll miss it,” she admits, even though future trips certainly won’t be lacking with the week of activities.

“It’s not everyday that the president says thank you and then shakes your hand and says, ‘Go Irish!’”

February Meeting

Please join us for the first meeting of the semester, Wednesday, February 6 at 8pm in the Montgomery Auditorium! Come learn about this semester's events and share ideas. Mass will follow at 9:30 in the Log Chapel.

Embrace Life

Embrace life

The Observer: Viewpoint
By: Charles Rice

Posted: 1/23/08

Would you call it an exercise in futility? On Jan. 22, Notre Dame and Saint Mary's students joined the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., calling for reversal of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling on that date in 1973 which mandated, in effect, elective abortion at every stage in pregnancy. The Court defined the unborn child as a nonperson who is therefore not entitled to the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution to persons.

The Supreme Court will not reverse that holding of Roe. Even the Justices who say that Roe should be "overruled" define that as a "states' rights" approach that would allow the states to permit or forbid abortion. That would affirm the holding of Roe. If your life is subject to extinction whenever a state legislature so decrees, then, so far as the United States Constitution is concerned, you are a nonperson.

Depersonalization is the theory of the Nazis' treatment of the Jews and of the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott case in which the Court held that freed slaves could not be citizens and said that slaves were property rather than persons.

Abortion is not simply a legal issue. It is embedded in American culture. The Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that from 1973 to 2005, more than 45 million surgical abortions occurred in the United States, with 1.21 million in 2005, down from 1.31 in 2000. Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion. These figures do not include the uncountable number of early abortions by abortifacients, including most "contraceptive" pills.

Abortion is a symptom of what Pope Benedict XVI called "a dictatorship of relativism… that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the 'I' and its whims as the ultimate measure." The secularism, relativism and individualism of that culture affect the most fundamental human activity, the generation of life.

Abortion is a product of the contraceptive ethic. "[D]espite their differences," said John Paul II, "contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree…. rooted in a hedonistic mentality unwilling to accept responsibility in matters of sexuality, and … a self-centered concept of freedom, which regards procreation as an obstacle to personal fulfillment."

Until the Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1930, no Christian denomination had ever said that contraception could ever be objectively right. Contraception deliberately separates sex from procreation. It affirms that there is such a thing as a life not worth living, and that man (of both sexes), rather than God, is the arbiter of whether and when human life shall begin. If you claim the right to decide when life begins you will predictably claim the right to decide when it ends, as in abortion and euthanasia.

With the marketing of the pill in the 1960s, Roe v. Wade was inevitable. A contraceptive culture needs abortion as a back-up. The meltdown of that culture is accelerating.

Francis Fukuyama called the introduction of the contraceptive pill "The Great Disruption" in relations between men and women. In the nature of things, sex is reserved for marriage, and marriage is permanent, because sex has something to do with babies. The contraceptive separation of sex from life leads to the separation of sex from marriage and to the irrelevancy of marriage. In 2006, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control, a record 36.9 percent of all births were out of wedlock. Out-of-wedlock births are 80 percent of births to teens and 60 percent to mothers in their early 20s. In 2006, they were 26.6 percent among non-Hispanic whites, 70.7 percent among non-Hispanic blacks and 49.9 percent among Hispanics.

Government officials, including educators, throw fuel on the fire by promoting contraception even among pre-teens. Not surprisingly, the birth rate to teens rose three percent in 2006, the first rise since 1991. Cases of gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis, the STDs for which reporting is required, continue to rise.

In such a Copulation Explosion, you have to expect a rise in pregnancies and that many will end in abortion. The "morning-after pill," an abortifacient, is available over-the-counter and is easily, if illegally, obtainable by minors without parental knowledge.

Neither the law nor politics can get us out of this mess. Contraception and abortion are a subset of the question: Who is God? Who decides whether and when life begins and when it ends? Abortion is an aspect of our contraceptive rejection of God's gift of life. Before he became Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said, "[T]he ultimate root of hatred for human life… is the loss of God. When God disappears, the absolute dignity of human life disappears as well…. Only this divine dimension guarantees the full dignity of the human person…. In the struggle for life, talking about God is indispensable."

The March for Life is not a futile exercise. It focuses on abortion, the ultimate secular sacrament. The March is an in-your-face, on-site reminder to the Executive, the Court and the Congress of their derelictions and of what they ought to do. Under the leadership of Washington attorney Nellie Gray, the March, from its inception, has also been an act of prayer. The message: Human life is sacred because it is a gift of God. The students in the March bring honor to the Notre Dame community.

Professor Emeritus Rice is on the faculty of the law school.
He can be reached at (574) 633-4415 or rice.1@nd.edu.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

© Copyright 2008 The Observer

Club joins March for Life

Club joins March for Life
Right to Life travels to Washington, D.C. to protest legalized abortion

The Observer: Frontpage
By: Marcela Berrios

Posted: 1/22/08
More than 230 students from Notre Dame, Saint Mary's and Holy Cross have made the 12-hour bus trip to Washington, D.C. to join thousands of other pro-life advocates at the March for Life on Tuesday.

The march is an annual demonstration against Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in 1973.

The Notre Dame Right to Life Club offered students three travel options, ranging in length from 36 hours to four days. Students on the two longer trips participated in service projects and mini pro-life conferences as a prelude to the march.

"So far everybody seems to really be enjoying themselves," Right to Life president Mary Liz Walter said Monday night. "And tomorrow should be even better. I think for most it'll be such a powerful experience to be in the heart of the nation's capital next to hundreds of thousands of other people, all united for one cause."

More than 200,000 people attended last year, according to the Right for Life Web site.

In addition to a 27 percent increase in the number of Notre Dame, Saint Mary's and Holy Cross participants, Walter said there are about 30 students from Purdue University who registered to attend through Right to Life. She said the club's travel options were affordable and convenient for many college students.

Tuesday's itinerary will include attending a youth Mass, rallying at Capitol Mall and finally marching from the Mall to the Supreme Court building, the Notre Dame Right to Life Web site said.

"Hopefully this will be an opportunity for everyone to be in solidarity with other people who are also fighting for the dignity and the respect for human life in all of its stages," Walter said.Notre Dame students traveling to Washington, D.C. for the march have been excused from classes by the Office of Residence Life and Housing because the march represents an integral part of Right to Life's mission, Associate Vice President for Residence Life Bill Kirk said Monday.

"Right to Life is a recognized student organization and like many other student organizations with national conferences and events that are critical to their underlying purpose, they were granted excused absences to be able to participate in the march," Kirk said.

The decision to allow these students to miss their classes, he said, is in accordance with the absence policy outlined in duLac, which says members of groups that officially represent Notre Dame may receive excused absences when they are away from campus performing duties for the University. Like many students involved in varsity or club athletic events, mock trials, choir tours, honorary society national conventions and student union board national conferences, among other events, participants of the Right for Life March were eligible for an excused absence from their classes through Kirk's office.

"This is not the first year that excused absences have been granted for participants in the Right to Life March," Kirk said. "Our office only maintains class absence records for the immediately previous year, so I am unable to say with certainty for how many years excused absences have been provided, but I do recall excused absences being granted for at least the last several years," he said.

Last year, about 120 students took advantage of this option and filled three Right to Life charter buses to Washington, D.C. This year, as the number of participants surpassed 100, Kirk was "delighted" to approve their absence from class.

He said he hopes these students will be "a very visible sign" of the University's commitment to its Catholic mission.

"I can think of few better ways to do so than through this march," Kirk said.

The students on the four-day trip, which came with a price tag of $85 per person, have been lodged at the St. Agnes Parish in Arlington, Va. since Saturday morning. The second batch of students, who paid $75 to cover the cost of transportation and some food at the parish, arrived one day later. The third and final group, which contributed $50 per person to cover the cost of the buses, arrived this morning after an overnight drive.

But for many students, spending the night on a bus is a minor inconvenience for a chance to make their voices heard.

Senior Ana Laura Virzi said she just wants to protest abortion on behalf of "all the unborn souls that didn't have the opportunity to protest themselves."From the bus carrying the third group to Washington, D.C., she said that though she is a Panamanian citizen, she thinks it's important to make a difference in the United States - a country that may well serve as an example for other countries in Latin America and the world on the abortion issue.

© Copyright 2008 The Observer