If you or someone you know is pregnant:
If you want to learn more and advocate for life:
St. Mary has a Respect Life group on Facebook to help you stay up to date on current happenings and to provide resources that you can easily share with friends.
Please take a few minutes to carefully read this important message that the Diocese of Lansing has sent out to all parishes from Jenny Ingles, the diocesan Director of Fertility and Life Ministries, and a parishioner here at St. Mary.
More information and resources are available here:
Decline to Sign Webpage
In addition, Governor Whitmer and Planned Parenthood of Michigan announced separate lawsuits last week that aim to preserve abortion in Michigan. Governor Whitmer’s lawsuit seeks to circumvent a Michigan law that protects pregnant women and unborn persons from the harms of abortion.
The lawsuit also seeks to reinterpret Michigan’s Constitution, which is silent on the subject of abortion, to protect abortion as a constitutional right. The governor falsely frames her endeavor as an attempt to preserve women’s health and healthcare. However, true healthcare does not seek to end life. True healthcare seeks to preserve life and health, both of the mother and the unborn child.
Governor Whitmer argues that abortion is the answer to women who are pregnant and in crisis. Yet, this “answer” ends the life of the child and assumes that the mother suffers no harm from it. Experts have demonstrated that abortion causes long-term emotional and mental trauma for mothers. And abortion always ends in death.
Women who are pregnant and in crisis should be met with empathy, compassion, resources, and medical treatment that allows both mother and child to thrive, and assistance in raising their children or placing them for adoption.
Let us Walk with Moms in Need
https://www.micatholic.org/advocacy/focus/2022/how-catholics-walk-with-moms-in-need.pdf
Please register at https://www.dioceseoflansing.org/WWMN if you are interested in helping start a Walking with Moms chapter in your parish/grouping.
Most importantly, Bishop Boyea has responded to Governor Whitmer’s lawsuit and pronouncement that she will “Fight Like Hell” to preserve abortion. Bishop has asked all of us to “Fight Like Heaven” and participate in a Holy Week of Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving. \
His letter is here: https://www.dioceseoflansing.org/news/read-fight-heaven-bishop-boyeas-response-governors-pro-abortion-legal-move
We have also built an accompanying Fight Like Heaven Webpage here that includes excerpts from his letter and the ways he is specifically asking us to pray, fast, and give alms, as well as social media and Flocknote graphics for you to use.
Yours in Christ,
Jenny
Knowing that “with God, all things are possible,” people of faith and conscience unite in 40 days of prayer and fasting. Christ told us some demons can only be driven out by prayer and fasting. The two go hand in hand. Prayer keeps us rooted in the fact that it is our desire to carry out God’s will. Fasting is a sacrifice that helps us reach beyond our own limitations with God’s help.
40 Days for Life website
The next 40 Days for Life Campaign will be this fall, praying outside of the Planned Parenthood in Frandor.
Sign up for time slots, sign the Statement of Peace, and find out more details here:
40 Days for Life
Lansing website