I never heard of Red Rose Rescues until this weekend when a post came across my Facebook page of Fr. Imbaratto's arrest. He was apparently arrested in September for a similar incident.
Fr. Imbaratto is an associate of Priests for Life, but sources have explained that Fr. Imbaratto is doing this independent from Priests for Life (which is not surprising).
Here's a description of Red Rose Rescues.
In a nutshell, the people involved are going into the waiting room of abortion clinics.
Once inside the clinics, small teams of pro-lifers peacefully approached mothers seated in the waiting rooms and offered them red roses as a symbol of life. Attached to each rose was a card which on one side read,”You were made to love and to be loved … Your goodness is greater than the difficulties of your situation. Circumstances in life change. A new life, however tiny, brings the promise of unrepeatable joy.” The card also contained phone numbers of local pregnancy help centers.
These rescues did not involve the blockading of abortion center entrances or procedure rooms. When police officers arrived on the scene, pro-lifers attempted to continue conversation with women or sat on the floor praying quietly or singing hymns until they were placed under arrest, organizers said.
“Those involved in the “Red Rose Rescue” talked to women scheduled for abortions, extending to them words of encouragement and offering material help. In addition to reaching out to the mothers, the rescuers chose to remain in the clinic as an act of solidarity with the unborn children scheduled to be killed by abortionists. The rescuers, like any others who recognize an urgent situation, responded to dire circumstances of imminent peril in a spirit of intervention on behalf of innocent babies and beleaguered mothers,” organizers informed LifeNews.
Organizers say they have a legal right to rush onto property to stop a man from beating his wife or killing a person, so they believe this legal right then extends to stopping women from having abortions.
I'm not sure what lawyer would give that opinion, but I hope they didn't pay for it!
Assault and battery and killing people outside of a womb are illegal acts. There is no corporation whose business is killing people outside of the womb. Abortion clinics, unfortunately, are conducting the business of killing unborn babies legally - so no right exists to enter the lobby of the business and undertake the actions described above. In some cases, one could trespass onto the property of a business owner to stop the criminal activity of its employees or customers.
I spoke to advocates at length and they seem to take the position that everyone who has any conviction that contradicts civil law has the right to come onto private property and interfere with your constitutional and civil rights to lobby your clients or attendees.
Using their own logic, they would approve of giving the same rights to abortion activists to talk about abortion options in the lobby of prolife pregnancy centers. Gay couples to burst into Catholic Sacrament of Marriage? The possibilities about this 'right' are endless and we do not come out on the winning team.
Setting aside for a moment that this conduct is criminal and unconstitutional, the real problem is, this gives proaborts the ammunition they need to broaden "safe zone" areas in front of abortion clinics. The consequence of this is: The boots on the ground in front of clinics are pushed too far to make a difference in saving lives. Meaning more babies die.
Advocates say buffer zones were 'struck down' by the Supreme Court. But that is meaningless. The reality is, the country is in control of activists who are anarchists. Here is what happened in Boston after the Supreme Court ruled buffer zones violate the First Amendment.
We are in a worse situation than we were before Supreme Court ruling. And just like Romneycare, this tyranny has the potential to be put into place when activists give them the ammunition by breaking laws.
Prudence is a virtue.
12 comments:
Hear, hear....we must all learn to be good Germans.
Congratulations, you are thoroughly "Americanized".....now the Constitution trumps God's Laws.....as if there is actually a "right" to an abortion or to kill unborn babies; there IS a right to the Mass however.....but that's probably one of those alien Catholic concepts.
55 million dead unborn babies and you want more ....prudence? Because if we make nice with the pro-aborts they'll allow us our "safe space?" You clearly don't understand the opposition.
Edison,
After 30 years of blogging, I'm not going to waste my time defending myself against the absurd claim that this post means I'm now a proabort or coward.
There is nothing effective about what they are doing.
The idea that you could be converted by a group of gays who busted into a wedding in a Catholic Church and refused to leave may seem like a possibility to you, but I live in the real world. All they are doing is kissing people off which in effect, hardens hearts. They are not thinking it through, and when you get down to basics to show them the effects of what they are doing, they startncomig up with accusations to throw at you to circumvent processing reality.
This does not serve the unborn or the uncatechized. It hands the enemy the leverage they need to broaden buffer zones that keep prolifers from effective practices. It's a dud.
No where do I say you are a coward or pro-abort - that's your reaction, which says something. I am saying your thinking is completely muddled. You are arguing that the Red Rose Operation is wrong because the "law" doesn't allow for it and that we must respect the abortuaries because abortion is the law of the land.
No where do I say that I am worried about being "converted" by gays - not even sure where you get that from. The right to the sacraments supersedes the state's authorities and there is certainly no legal right for gays to intrude upon it. You are equating an unjust law with a just one; the latter is binding, the former is not.
The idea that if we simply play nice the pro-aborts will come around hasn't panned out - if anything they are more entrenched in their beliefs today, some even acknowledging that the fetus truly is a living baby - but that it just doesn't matter.
Edison, I went to great lengths to explain what is wrong with "red rose"., yet you continue to caricature my explanation as being a person who puts Divine Law beneath civil law. I'm tired of erroneous accusations that viciously misrepresent 30 years of public ministry witnessing and teaching faithfulness to Christ come what may. Reread my post. What it says is there is no fruit to Christ in breaking this law, and those who break the law under this circumstances are endangering lives. So ilbreaking the law is not being done in service to Christ and the unborn.
I do believe there is a faction that breaks the law for the self serving purpose of looking like a martyr and when it's pointed out their actions damage the cuss, they resort to the same accusations you post here, and more.
Breaking the law for the sake of breaking the law, though you know or should know it's impact hardens hearts and will impedes saving lives is a disservice to Christ.
Not sure how many other ways to say it, but I'm thinking it's crystal clear that a person who takes this sane and logical position cannot be accused of putting civil law over divine law by persons of good faith.
BTW-my illustration on the chances of being converted by gays bursting into a Mass to persuade you the Catholic Church needs to marry gays is my attempt to explain the efficacy of what red rose is doing.
The chances of bursting into a lobby of proaborts to conduct a protest in the hopes of converting them are as equal to gays converting you by bursting into a Mass to conduct a protest. Think of what yiurnown response would be, and apply it to the response of people responding I think we all know well that the reasons gays would burst into a Mass are not conversion. The same efficacy applies what red rose is doing.
You're right, TTC. As Americans we believe in the rule of law. As sincere as the Red Roses protestors are, they are breaking the law. The situations you propose as being equivalent--gays disrupting a marriage, etc--are equivalent to what the Red Roses are doing.
PEACE, People Expressing a Concern for Everyone, invaded clinics in the 1970s and disrupted the by chaining themselves to the machines. Forltunately, PEACE didn't keep up these "actions" very long. People were convicted and given prison sentences.
OK, I now understand your "Mass and gays" analogy...still disagree. Not all women at an abortuary are fully committed to an abortion....one voice to the contrary could change their mind. If sidewalk counseling from a "safe zone" can be effective, I don't see why doing it up close should be any less so - especially by one in clericals (think of how many Catholics are aborting their own). The clinic I used to witness at had its "legally approved" protest space (the public sidewalk) which was so far from the entrance it was essentially worthless - it's hard to see how Red Rose could make things any worse.
You also set up a bit of a straw man, pretending to know the motives of the individuals involved and stating that there is "no benefit to breaking the law" and that it is "endangering lives." Please provide any proof you might have...otherwise it's just your conjecture.
Lastly, do you really think pro-aborts are free speech advocates when it comes to pro-lifers? They would shut down all protest today if they could - the restrictions you cite well precede the Red Rose Rescues.
Edison,
I don't know how anyone could come to the conclusion that storming into an office and protesting converts uncatechized proaborts. 99% of proaborts are going to be pissed, upset, furious - and the result of that is their proabort convictions will embolden. When those people have an unexpected pregnancy, they are 100 % more likely to abort in the future.
There is an intellectual dishonesty to this that frustrates me.
If you worked at a prolife pregnancy center and a group of proaborts stormed into the lobby, are you actually trying to convince me that your mind would be open to what they say? I don't believe it!
If a group of gay civilly married Catholics stormed into your son's wedding to explain why they believe the Church should include them in the Sacraments, are you trying to convince me that you and the guests in attendance are open to listening and changing your mind about gay marriage?
It's ludicrous!
You and your guests are going to be outraged. They'll be so ticked off that anyone even sitting on the fence is going to turn against gay marriage advocates.
People are not thinking it through.
This is what you wrote: "Abortion clinics, unfortunately, are conducting the business of killing unborn babies legally - so no right exists to enter the lobby of the business and undertake the actions described above." Well, you seem to be running away from that argument (as well you should), now focusing on the supposed repercussions of Red Rose Rescues...more babies will die! safe zones will be expanded! pro-aborts hearts will be hardened!
There's an intellectual dishonesty here all right...like your "pulled from thin air" statistics and unsupported assertions. Again you are creating a straw man - you can cite nothing to support your statements. One LifeSite article stated that a woman left without getting an abortion after being approached by a Red Rose member in the clinic...but you know better, right?
Edison,
Two can play that game. There is no statistical evidence that red rose stunts are saving lives. When the protesters started to act like defiant nutjobs, perhaps the woman who left wondered if they may have guns or bombs and ran out of the office without the abortion but called the next day to reschedule. That's what I would have done.
Further, you have presented no evidence that what I'm saying isn't true.
What I do know, and what is absolutely incontestable, and what I trust you know but curiously refuse to admit - if a group barges into a building or onto a highway or into a Mass to protest or act nutty - no victim of that circus is open to hearing what you have to say or conversion. All you are doing is pissing them off.
I find it hard to believe that this is a Catholic ministry. Catholics are first and foremost in the business of salvation. They don't count one body and conclude their mission is successful service to God. They think it through, looking at the salvific character of likely outcome along with the physical bodies saved. We don't harden hearts of thousands of people to save one body.
If you ram the gates of Auschwitz and one prisoner escapes, but the Germans shoot one hundred, you don't come out ahead in the body count - AND, you have caused a German who otherwise may never have been involved in direct shooting, to have to kill dozens of people. You can count that one body and call it a victory until the cows come home, but it isn't.
Here is another example - we unfortunately had to explain this one to the Cardinal:
If you don't want to have anything to do with committing abortions, but you want to accept the offer of the government to financially help your hospitals with cash, you can't hire subcontractors to commit the abortions, and taxi drivers to give them a ride to their execution. Aside from what is obviously murder for hire, killing of a body and baiting uncatechized into surrendering their salvation and there is all kinds of passive involvement by all kinds of people who work at the hospital that affect salvation.
It's my opinion that no Catholics should get wrapped around the wheels of this for the reasons stated.
Peace out!
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