Forestville, Maryland: Undercover Sting Exposes Illicit Late-Term Abortion Clinic

Undercover Sting Exposes Illicit Late-Term Abortion Clinic in Maryland

July 12, 2012

Forestville, MD -- A seven-month undercover investigation conducted by Operation Rescue revealed scandalous details of a late-term abortion scheme involving one of the nation's most notorious abortionists that is shockingly similar to one run by disgraced abortionist Steven Chase Brigham.

Operation Rescue caught late-term abortionist James S. Pendergraft IV and his Maryland accomplice, Harold O. Alexander, red-handed operating an illicit late-term abortion business in Forestville, Maryland, even though Pendergraft is not licensed to practice there.

Beginning on November 8, 2011, Operation Rescue staff members, posing as potential late-term abortion customers, began recording a series of conversations with Pendergraft of Florida, which document a suspicious bi-state abortion business aggressively advertized on the Internet as LateTermAbortion.net.

"Documentation that Pendergraft is operating a late-term abortion operation in Maryland confirms that state as the Late-term Abortion Capital of America," said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue and Pro-Life Nation. "Pendergraft joins the likes of New Jersey's Steven Brigham and Nebraska's LeRoy Carhart, who targeted Maryland for their late-term businesses because of the state's reputation of allowing abortionists to operate without regulation or accountability, something we hope will be remedied by Maryland's new clinic regulations that are set to go into effect on July 23."

A video and a full report of Operation Rescue's findings can be viewed at OperationRescue.org.

Pendergraft offers late-term abortions in the second and third trimesters. His business uniquely provides women with "intracardiac injections" that kill the pre-born babies prior to the abortion. The women are then sent back to their home states or countries where the abortions are completed by others. The dangers of this process are shockingly high and place the lives of women at unacceptable risk.

In addition, OR caught Pendergraft contriving "mental health" justifications for the abortions. In one call, he said that stress over a boyfriend being in jail was a medical reason for a late-term abortion.

Complaints filed against Alexander have already yielded results. Alexander has been charged with violations of the Maryland Medical Practice Act, listing a number of shocking allegations that could cost him his medical license including a charge that he illegally shredded a medical record of a late-term abortion patient that was subpoenaed as a result of OR's complaint.

Pendergraft's complaint file remains open and late-term abortions dangerously continue at his Forestville clinic.

"We are urging the Maryland Board of Physicians to immediately act to protest the public from Pendergraft's dangerous late-term abortion operation in Maryland," said Newman.

Read the full Report

Contact the Maryland Board of Physicians at:
Voice: (800) 492-6836 or (410) 764-4777E-mail: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/1j75bghwnckvc/?&v=b&cs=wh&to=%20mbpmail@rcn.com

________________________________
About Operation Rescue® Operation Rescue is one of the leading pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation and has become a strong voice for the pro-life movement in America. Operation Rescue is now headquartered in a former abortion clinic that it bought and closed in 2006. From there, Operation Rescue launches its innovative new strategies across the nation, exposing and closing abortion clinics through peaceful, legal means. Its activities are on the cutting edge of the abortion issue, taking direct action to stop abortion and ultimately restore legal personhood to the pre-born in obedience to biblical mandates. Click here to support Operation Rescue.

About Pro-Life NationPro-Life Nation is an initiative of Operation Rescue that offers a goal-oriented strategy to end abortion. For more visit ProLifeNation.org and read our new booklet that details our strategy.
________________________________Web site: http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fr20.rs6.net%2Ftn.jsp%3Fe%3D001BwJAdXTQ4AD2meHOUDPyxDJw6q7OYRtMtdjIuvmjaysVf7aQRRtHNuh2u0KqSZZxI8aKFHyvZ0duOVQZ_P6z9PWghY6h3icuqPXldL4Z9p3unousk3ukHmWez3Q-y8mQ&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHyEAQM638AcBC4GiJgz6S0XUeRrQ E-mail: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/1j75bghwnckvc/?&v=b&cs=wh&to=info.operationrescue@gmail.com

Operation Rescue/Pro-Life Nation
Troy Newman
President
316-841-1700
Operation Rescue/Pro-Life Nation
Cheryl Sullenger
Senior Policy Advisor
316-516-3034

Hic est

... enim calix Sanguinis Mei.

1. If anyone denies that the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, but says that Christ is present in the Sacrament only as in a sign or figure, or by his power: let him be anathema.

2. If anyone says that the substance of bread and wine remains in the holy sacrament of the Eucharist together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that wonderful and extraordinary change of the whole substance of the bread into Christ's body and the whole substance of the wine into his blood while only the species of bread and wine remain, a change which the Catholic Church has most fittingly called transubstantiation: let him be anathema.

--The Council of Trent (1545-1563)

Benedict MD steeple struck by lightning

The steeple of Saint Francis de Sales Catholic church in Benedict, Maryland, was struck by lightning on Sunday evening, July 8, 2012. Slate shingles were blown off the roof and scattered across the lawn and parking lot of the church and into a wooded area across Benedict Avenue about 100 feet.

Neighbors two doors away from the church were watching the storm and witnessed the lightning strike, exploding the shingles away from the roof and sending them like projectiles across the property. They also saw the roof catch fire as a result but said the rain quickly put the flames out.

Damage is largely on the east side of the cupola between the lantern and cross crowning the steeple as partially visible in above photo.

Photo by Karen Hefter.

Winter

... is five months away but we can start thinking about it now.

Photo source: Support the Priests and the Catholic Church, Facebook, dated 1955.

Saint Francis de Sales Summer Dinner

Prep in the kitchen

Chatting at the table

Joe Spohr, a visitor from Germany by way of Cape Town, South Africa, and Michigan, also crewed the vessel Irish Blessing on its voyage to Benedict by way of the Chesapeake and Patuxent River.

Father Cusick with his dad, "father" Cusick, the skipper of the sailing vessel Irish Blessing on port call in Benedict for the weekend

Photos courtesy of Doug Swanson

Socialism will always be incompatible with Faith and democracy because it is an attack upon God and His will

Archbishop Chaput: "God made us for more than the world ... We belong to God, and only to God."

"Caesar is a creature of this world, and Christ's message is uncompromising: We should give Caesar nothing of ourselves."

July 4, 2012

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT'S HOMILY:
NATIONAL CLOSING MASS OF THE FORTNIGHT FOR FREEDOM
Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, DC


Paul Claudel, the French poet and diplomat of the last century, once described the Christian as "a man who knows what he is doing and where he is going in a world [that] no longer [knows] the difference between good and evil, yes and no. He is like a god standing out in a crowd of invalids . . . He alone has liberty in a world of slaves."

Like most of the great writers of his time, Claudel was a mix of gold and clay, flaws and genius. He had a deep and brilliant Catholic faith, and when he wrote that a man "who no longer believes in God, no longer believes in anything," he was simply reporting what he saw all around him. He spoke from a lifetime that witnessed two world wars and the rise of atheist ideologies that murdered tens of millions of innocent people using the vocabulary of science. He knew exactly where forgetting God can lead.

We Americans live in a different country, on a different continent, in a different century. And yet, in speaking of liberty, Claudel leads us to the reason we come together in worship this afternoon.

Most of us know today's passage from the Gospel of Matthew. What we should, or should not, render unto Caesar shapes much of our daily discourse as citizens. But I want to focus on the other and more important point Jesus makes in today's Gospel reading: the things we should render unto God.

When the Pharisees and Herodians try to trap Jesus, he responds by asking for a coin. Examining it he says, "Whose image is this and whose inscription?" When his enemies say "Caesar's," he tells them to render it to Caesar. In other words, that which bears the image of Caesar belongs to Caesar.

The key word in Christ's answer is "image," or in the Greek, eikon. Our modern meaning of "image" is weaker than the original Greek meaning. We tend to think of an image as something symbolic, like a painting or sketch. The Greek understanding includes that sense but goes further. In the New Testament, the "image" of something shares in the nature of the thing itself.

This has consequences for our own lives because we're made in the image of God. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the same word, eikon, is used in Genesis when describing the creation. "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" says God (Gen 1:26). The implication is clear. To be made in the image of God is more than a pious slogan. It's a statement of fact. Every one of us shares -- in a limited but real way -- in the nature of God himself. When we follow Jesus Christ, we grow in conformity to that image.

Once we understand this, the impact of Christ's response to his enemies becomes clear. Jesus isn't being clever. He's not offering a political commentary. He's making a claim on every human being. He's saying, "render unto Caesar those things that bear Caesar's image, but more importantly, render unto God that which bears God's image" -- in other words, you and me. All of us.

And that raises some unsettling questions: What do you and I, and all of us, really render to God in our personal lives? If we claim to be disciples, then what does that actually mean in the way we speak and act?

Thinking about the relationship of Caesar and God, religious faith and secular authority, is important. It helps us sort through our different duties as Christians and citizens. But on a deeper level, Caesar is a creature of this world, and Christ's message is uncompromising: We should give Caesar nothing of ourselves. Obviously we're in the world. That means we have obligations of charity and justice to the people with whom we share it. Patriotism is a virtue. Love of country is an honorable thing. As Chesterton once said, if we build a wall between ourselves and the world, it makes little difference whether we describe ourselves as locked in or locked out.

But God made us for more than the world. Our real home isn't here. The point of today's Gospel passage is not how we might calculate a fair division of goods between Caesar and God. In reality, it all belongs to God and nothing - at least nothing permanent and important - belongs to Caesar. Why? Because just as the coin bears the stamp of Caesar's image, we bear the stamp of God's image in baptism. We belong to God, and only to God.

In today's second reading, St. Paul tells us, "Indeed religion" -- the RSV version says "godliness" - "with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it." True freedom knows no attachments other than Jesus Christ. It has no love of riches or the appetites they try to satisfy. True freedom can walk away from anything -- wealth, honor, fame, pleasure. Even power. It fears neither the state, nor death itself.

Who is the most free person at anything? It's the person who masters her art. A pianist is most free who -- having mastered her instrument according to the rules that govern it and the rules of music, and having disciplined and honed her skills -- can now play anything she wants.

The same holds true for our lives. We're free only to the extent that we unburden ourselves of our own willfulness and practice the art of living according to God's plan. When we do this, when we choose to live according to God's intention for us, we are then -- and only then -- truly free.

This is the freedom of the sons and daughters of God. It's the freedom of Miguel Pro, Mother Teresa, Maximillian Kolbe, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and all the other holy women and men who have gone before us to do the right thing, the heroic thing, in the face of suffering and adversity.

This is the kind of freedom that can transform the world. And it should animate all of our talk about liberty - religious or otherwise.

I say this for two reasons. Here's the first reason. Real freedom isn't something Caesar can give or take away. He can interfere with it; but when he does, he steals from his own legitimacy.

Here's the second reason. The purpose of religious liberty is to create the context for true freedom. Religious liberty is a foundational right. It's necessary for a good society. But it can never be sufficient for human happiness. It's not an end in itself. In the end, we defend religious liberty in order to live the deeper freedom that is discipleship in Jesus Christ. What good is religious freedom, consecrated in the law, if we don't then use that freedom to seek God with our whole mind and soul and strength?

Today, July 4, we celebrate the birth of a novus ordo seclorum - a "new order of the ages," the American Era. God has blessed our nation with resources, power, beauty and the rule of law. We have so much to be grateful for. But these are gifts. They can be misused. They can be lost. In coming years, we'll face more and more serious challenges to religious liberty in our country. This is why the Fortnight for Freedom has been so very important.

And yet, the political and legal effort to defend religious liberty - as vital as it is - belongs to a much greater struggle to master and convert our own hearts, and to live for God completely, without alibis or self-delusion. The only question that finally matters is this one: Will we live wholeheartedly for Jesus Christ? If so, then we can be a source of freedom for the world. If not, nothing else will do.

God's words in today's first reading are a caution we ignore at our own expense. "Son of man," God says to Ezekiel and to all of us, "I have appointed you as a sentinel. If I say to the wicked, 'you will surely die' - and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them . . . I will hold you responsible for their blood."

Here's what that means for each of us: We live in a time that calls for sentinels and public witness. Every Christian in every era faces the same task. But you and I are responsible for this moment. Today. Now. We need to "speak out," not only for religious liberty and the ideals of the nation we love, but for the sacredness of life and the dignity of the human person - in other words, for the truth of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God.

We need to be witnesses of that truth not only in word, but also in deed. In the end, we're missionaries of Jesus Christ, or we're nothing at all. And we can't share with others what we don't live faithfully and joyfully ourselves.

When we leave this Mass today, we need to render unto Caesar those things that bear his image. But we need to render ourselves unto God -- generously, zealously, holding nothing back. To the extent we let God transform us into his own image, we will - by the example of our lives - fulfill our duty as citizens of the United States, but much more importantly, as disciples of Jesus Christ.

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Editor's Note: For more information about the Fortnight for Freedom in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia please visit http://archphila.org/HHS/hhs.htm. For further information about the Fortnight for Freedom nationally please visit www.Fortnight4Freedom.org.


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Kenneth A. Gavin
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215-587-3747