Gospel of Life Society Annual Spring Celebration! 

We want to start scheduling an annual social event with lots of good food, celebration balloons, champaign and wine, cheese tasting, grab bag, to bring all members of GOLS together in a fun and light filled setting at St. Mary.  Got any idea?  Call me.  Want to volunteer, call me.


March for Life .......and...... Misc Annual Marches & Rallies

Erlinda, Kathy Jennings and our Gospel of Life Sponsors did a fine job this year filling three buses for the March for Life with adults and children from several parishes including St. Mary-Norwalk, Lady of Fatima, and St. Aloysius.  The buses left promptly at 6:00 AM and we arrived in Washington D.C. with plenty of time to meet up with others from parishes in the Bridgeport Diocese and with Bishop William E. Lori.  Both Bishop Lori and Fr. Greg Markey spoke - encouraging all to continue the fight and put their trust in Jesus Christ.  There were about 250,000 there!  The atmosphere was peaceful but very exciting -- with colorful and dynamic speeches and also talks by marchers from other countries who were impressed with our March for Life! Hear several of them in the below video. 

 

Coming up early in Feb is Catholic Awareness Day -- you will receive inputs in email updates.

 Right:
   See the Family Institute of CT 2008
   March to Protect Marriage. 

   We brought a bus load of Gospel of Life people, again from several parishes to
   this rally and then met another 20 or so there. This was much better attendance
   for us! Let's keep it up! Though 2,800 people can to fight for Traditional Marriage
   at this FIC rally, it was not enough people to prevent the Supreme Court from
   passing a same sex marriage ruling -- based on the effective complaints of
   discrimination by several couples with same sex attraction.



Legislative Action Alert Committee 

We are also forming this committee.  Its goal is to stay abreast of current bills/issues/hearings -- by working with our CT lobbyists and national organizations, and journalists such as News Life.  Then, to regularly alert all members to actions our alliances would like us to take -- such as responding to their online action alerts, writing letters, signing petitions, calling legislators, calling business executives for donations, being prepared to give testimonies at hearings on short notice, going to rallies, etc.  They should also collect samples of hearing testimonies and letters from lobbyists for our Legislative Boilerplate Library.  If you are interested in joining, please call me.

Gospel of Life Society Meetings - Speaker Engagements  
We need a team to identify good speakers for our monthly meetings and then get contact information.

Information / Database Administration   We desperately need a volunteer to take over upkeep of our member database.  We continually get new members from rallies, marches, meetings, and other events we participate in.
                                    

Public Relations 

Kathleen Joyce is the new head of our PR team which will support all of the projects and committees.  Now our top priority is the Jan 17 Tri-State Medical Seminar.  We will be mailing 3 rounds of materials to doctors on a variety of lists in 5 states (a total of about 2400mailings).  This is a major project --- a number of your have volunteered to help. We are very grateful. We could use more.  Most tasks center on creating a mailing list (such as a list of OB/GYN's from insurance directories), to preparing mail to send to mailing lists. Please call me immediately on this.  I have tasks to hand out right now.

Left:  Family Institute of CT rally to "Protect Marriage", 2006.  Notice the difference in the number of people there and those in the 2008 rally.  We pro-lifers are catching on that we have to show up for these local events just as we do the March for Life.


Gospel of Life Mailing Committee We have a committee of 4 chaired by Marie Uhrich that is doing very well.

Pregnancy Center Promotion Committee - An Evangelization Program.

Carol Zukowski has been heading up this committee and is doing a wonderful job.  She is calling the pregnancy centers listed on the 1/2 page flyer we printed and is networking with them to their common good. Initially, we are keeping the list of pregnancy centers that we are working with to a minimum -- to be effective.  As Carol builds a team, we can expand the list.  Carol has also been helping to distribute the flyers to pro-life organizations and people across CT. 

At the CT Right to Life Convention this month, she spoke for about 15 minutes on the importance of letting young women know about the presence of pregnancy centers and services they offer -- which gives them an alternative to an abortion when there is an unscheduled pregnancy.  She shared that without help, teens and young women tend to automatically decide to abort because that is what they are taught to do in schools. She pointed out that the CT4Women Web site is also on the flyer which gives additional information on the services each pregnancy center offers.  It also gives a great deal of guidance.  Bill O'Brien, President of the CT Right to Life, arranged for flyers to be placed on every table at the convention. 

A ongoing goal of this committee is to work to counter the negative publicity surrounding adoption as an alternative to abortion, and help more girls to selection this choice.  Most pregnancy centers say that the situation remains the same -- 98% of the girls would rather kill their babies that put them up for adoption.  We have to help them to realize that there is now open adoption, they can even help select the parents, and they can visit to monitor their child.  Check it out and spread the word!   Anyone care to help?

Parish Sponsors Network - An Evangelization Project We now have two volunteers who will partner to continually call and help parish sponsors -- Janet Jenson and Fran Neglia.  Since the election we are having more success putting our meeting announcements into parish bulletins and getting our flyers put up on their bulletin boards.  Prior to that, we have added some very powerful and active parishes such as St. Michael's in Greenwich.  Let's thank God for his help in this evangelization effort. Sponsors tell me it is a joy to hear the parishioners in their parishes relay back to them information we have given them -- such as "the need to show up in masses at the rallies or the legislators do not take us seriously -- it even hurts us";. We are being effective, though often it is not widely apparent and progress is difficult when there is little or no support from pastors.  Our sponsors are courageous!       

CT4WOMEN -- WEB SITE PROJECT

The CT4Women Web Site - An Evangelization Project: 

As you may know, we created this site to help young women in CT by giving information to help them avoid an unscheduled pregnancy or guidance on alternatives to abortion if an unscheduled pregnancy does occur. Hits and visits to this site are exceeding our expectations for the year. In the summer, we increased the numbers of hits and visits substantially by changing keywords which brought Internet searchers to the site. As of Oct 1, the Jenny Story Billboard went up again.  This has caused a substantial increase in site activity.  Another contributing factor is the new Student Info Kiosk page,  which offers student-level general pro-life and inspirational info, is fun, and use is increasing at a faster rate. In Oct we got 25,973 hits and 1293 visits, up from Sept's 16, 900 hits and 833 visits. Visitors to the Adoption, Chastity and Abstinence pages and Test Your Relationship page are increasing and that needs to be explored further.  Most visitors go to the Baby Development page

Where the focus on the site has been to assist women who have unscheduled pregnancies, it will be expanded now to include the introduction of women from 25 to 45 years of age to the Creighton Model FertilityCare System via the Tri-State Plus Medical Group we formed (see the subsection below). Lastly, we will add legal and nursing home info for older women. 

Below is more detailed information on this project.

This Site is Unique: 

It is Not As Flashy  -   It is Growing Slowly  --  but Ct Women Know they can trust this site. 

1)  We are not selling any products or services to Web site visitors, and we are not part of an organization that is selling anything. The only intention of the CT4Women site is to objectively help, and that seems to be apparent. 

2)  We do not just tell about alternative options, we explain each and give adequate fact-finding information and guidance to confidently investigate the option further. We also check out all sources of information and only use highly credible sources.  To do this, we work closely with the CRLC to fully check out all sources of help that we refer women to, such as pregnancy care centers, to make sure they are legitimate, and are what they claim to be.  Because they are in CT, we also visit them and maintain lines of communication for networking purposes in our monthly meetings. 

3)  To make this site easy to navigate, distill the information needed, and tag other information for further reading, and give links for more in depth reading.  We have also given allot of thought to the amount of information and its format -- to maximize "decision support".  We know that some of the unwed moms looking at this site are under time pressures and psychological pressures, maybe even abuse.  We need to make it as easy for them to get the information they need to make their decisions. The feedback we have gotten confirms we have made the right decision with many compliments for the quality of information and delivery from viewers and professional reviewers.

4) For those who like to shop, which includes most of use, we offer allot of pages that viewers can visit at their own pace.

To increase traffic, we 5 week series of ads in the UConn paper and plan to do that again this year.  We will try to place ads in the Sacred Heart, Fairfield U, and Yale papers --- all is dependent on budget.   We will generate press releases for selected papers, Letters to the Editor, and work with the CT Right to Life staff to raise funding to further promote the CT4Women and pay for additional billboards. Volunteers are needed to help maintain a focus on promoting this site in the ways mentioned and other innovative ways -- you may have some ideas. Call me if you have any interest.

Billboards:  Two Billboards are Up Through Feb. 2009

The photo to the right is the first billboard we put up in Bridgeport, on Main Street, Exit 44 off the Merritt Pkwy, between the Mall and St. Vincent's Hospital.  Besides the Web site design and maintenance, this project is involves the billboard logistics and scheduling as well as financial sponsors. The Pro-life Billboard group at St. Mary, Ridgefield, has been helpful with all of this and is responsible for the two billboards that are currently up.  With the success of the Web site and first billboard, the St. Mary, Ridgefield Billboard Team, started putting our Web site on some of their pro-life billboards in the Danbury area.

Note:  The billboard idea was conceived and designed by the Gospel of Life Society and under the guidance and sponsorship of the Connecticut Right to Life Corporation, Waterbury and help from St. Mary-Ridgefield Billboard Group who have been putting up Pro-life billboards for years. The purpose of the Gospel of Life billboards is to steer viewers to the CT4Women web site which provides key information to teens, college students, and career women to designed to offer substantial help with life-changing decisions.  A theme throughout the Web site throughout the pages devoted to the young unmarried people is to influence them away from abortion, to other alternatives, and toward a life style of chastity and abstinence which will give them better quality of life and help them avoid medical and psychological problems.

Bridgeport Billboard - We Must Find Funding to Put Billboard Back Up 

Vigil teams praying for it to go back up! Those who stand outside the abortion clinic in Bridgeport are praying that this Jenny Story Billboard there goes back up.  (It was temporarily taken down to find additional funding to keep it up.  In 2008, it was up in November and December, at a cost of $1050/month to our sponsor -- the Connecticut Right to Life Corporation, Waterbury, sponsor for this site.)  They report that females who went to the abortion clinic had to pass the billboard, and that it made them much more receptive to talking to them. If you cannot stand outside an abortion clinic but your heart is with those who do, please consider donating to this cause.   A monthly commitment of $5 or so would help us to budget and buy billboards. If interested, go to the bottom of the page for donation instructions.

More Billboards Up in CT!

Donations Needed. If you cannot stand outside an abortion clinic but your heart is with those who do, please consider donating to more billboards.   A monthly commitment of $5 or so would help us to budge and buy billboards. If interested, go to the bottom of the page for donation instructions. Go to the bottom of the page for donation instructions.

Volunteers Needed

-  We need a chairperson for this committee, and more volunteers to join existing volunteers from St. Mary, Ridgefield and CRTL personnel.
- Sales person: to help convince parishes to collect donations to sponsor billboards which are $1050+/month -- perhaps as a Lenten or other project.
-  PR:  the write ads for high school and college news papers, and press releases for local papers
-  Prospect:  Visit with school superintendents to introduce the site and post flyers or posters around campus.

TRI-STATE PLUS MEDICAL GROUP

THIS IS A NEW PROJECT 

During our April 12, 2008, meeting, we gave the below need for this committee, and 19 people signed up. If you are interested, please contact Eileen Bianchini, 203 847-5727 or email:  stmarygols@aol.com.  Further, one doctor and approximately 6 nurses want to explore Natural Family Planning.

It was decided to make this a Tri-State Plus Medical Group for NY, NJ, CT and also RI and PA.  We do not have enough Pro-life doctors in any of the three states, and CT does not have even one pro-life OB/GYN!  Below is a list. 

WHY A MEDICAL GROUP?

1)  For the Young People -- To Help Them Migrate to Chastity & Abstinence

Because as long as doctors still prescribe contraceptives and recommend abortions, and school systems keep teaching safe sex, the youth will have greater difficulty migrating away from these practices. We have been talking to university students (UConn, Yale and Sacred Heart) and parish youth groups.  They tell us that they buy into the concepts and reasons to embrace chastity and abstinence, but to smoothly start practicing chastity and abstinence, they need help in two areas. 

a)  They want us to educate doctors on chastity and abstinence, and train doctors in the Creighton Model method, which can also be used to address typical female problems. They say that as long as their doctors are prescribing the pill to them and their friends for just about everything and casually recommending abortion, it is difficult to successfully implement chastity. Currently, most internists, general practitioners, OB/GYNs, automatically prescribe contraceptives for pregnancy control and also for many other purposes (such as female cramps, irregularities, PMS, etc), and they are prone to recommend abortions when unwed women become pregnant.

b) The students repeatedly report to us that it is too easy to be sexually active and the peer pressure is tremendous.  Though 93% of the parents have been training their children in chastity and abstinence, they are thwarted in their efforts by school and university programs that teach free sex (called safe sex) under Abstinence-Plus programs (which are 95% contraceptives).  See http://www.ct4women.com/abstinence.html  http://www.ct4women.com/contraception.html   and   http://www.ct4women.com/pc_abortion.html  for details. Further, for every $1.00 the government gives for Abstinence programs, it supplies $12 for Abstinence-Plus programs.  To turn this around, we are working closely with lobbyists in CT to inform parents of upcoming legislation on sex education and how to communicate to their legislators to veto requests by the contraceptive-abortion industry to do more safe-sex training in educational environments. Note:  Ironically, the contraceptive-abortion industry blames parental ineffective sex training, at home, for the increases in abortions and sexually transmitted diseases in the past.                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Dr. Scanlon, at last Med Meeting .

2)  For Women Who Have Untreatable or Chronic Health Issues and Need the Natural System & Personalized Treatments

We have been finding that women in the 25 to 45 age group often have reproductive health issues that have been dragging on, are not fully cured, are getting worse, and for these reasons are seeking doctors who care and use more effective methods of diagnostics and treatments. This is especially true for women who have been on the pill, which uses artificial hormones, or have been taking artificial hormones for reasons other reasons -- for a long period of time. Unlike natural hormones, artificial hormones do not duplicate the formulas for hormones that the body produces, and they cause problems in the body.  They do not cooperate with bodily processes, damage the immune system, lead to hormonal imbalances.  Often, products on the market do not even try to mimic bodily hormones but are instead are designed to suppress normal bodily processes in order to subdue certain symptoms such as cramps or irregularities.  While they do this very well, they mask -- and may actually aggravate -- the causes of problems -- which are permitted to go untreated, often for years.  In some cases, the hormonal imbalances lead to more serious problems such cancers or infertility. Through the use of a woman's own biomarkers, doctors are able to precisely diagnose possible causes, and treatment them in synchronization with the woman's own personal reproductive phases (every woman's is different).  All this results in diagnostics that are right on and treatments that cooperate fully with the body to cure it. Success rates are high, even for those most doctors consider to be chronic such as repeated miscarriages and infertility (85% success rate - published).

3)  For Women Seeking All-Natural and Pro-life Methodologies for Themselves or Daughters

If you phone doctors in Connecticut who advertise as Pro-life doctors, you will find that all except a couple will say they prescribe the pill and other contraceptives.  They consider not doing abortions to be Pro-life.  See  http://www.ct4women.com/contraception.html  for interesting reading on why contraceptives are NOT Pro-life, and this is the kind of information we must relay to our doctors and nurses. Connecticut needs some Pro-life doctors that mothers can take their daughters to and be assured that the doctor will not be trying to talk the daughter into taking contraceptives.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Jan 17 FertilityCare Seminar

This was our first seminar 'by doctors and practitioners for doctors and practitioners', and it was very successful. It purpose was to promote Creighton Model, FertilityCare system, based on NaProTECHNOLOGY, to doctors, nurses and women in the Tri-state area, PA and RI.  See the Jan 17 Seminar:  Invitation Packet for campaign information and links to medical sites with diagnostic and treatment information. 

Jan 17 Creighton Model FertilityCare Seminar -- A Success!  Thank you to all of you who contributed time and monies to it, to the Sisters of Life who hosted it, the CT Right to Life who provided much of the funding, Kathleen Joyce, Bob Muckle, and Jim Torlai for their help constructing spreadsheets and mailing lists, Minuteman Press-Norwalk for their swift printing of last-minute handouts, the Catholic newspapers that printed great articles, the staff at One More Soul who shipped key literature on time despite difficulties, the mailing team of Tim Dineen, Kathy Tafuro, Tony A, and Nicole and Greg Takacs, the Gospel of Life people who came to give support, Fr. Augustine and the Friars of the Immaculate for video taping on such short notice, Darlene Wagner for talking with the friars on our behalf and volunteering to create CDs from DVDs, and  we want to especially thank Fr. R. Blackwell and our speakers (Dr. Watson, Dr. Scanlon, Dorothy Dugandzic, and Paul and Alexandra McLaughlin) who were so professional and offered our audience their hearts as well as their knowledge. Additional thanks to Paul and Alexandra for creating our new Web site! It was a great joy to be a part of this project!

The Jan 17 Creighton Model FertilityCare system seminar was a great success.  31 people came from CT and other states, in cold weather and threats of snow, including 8 nurses and 4 new doctors, (2 from CT, 2 from NY).  The speakers were terrific and kept everyone enthused and on the edge of their seats! We received a number of thank-you emails from those who attended and encouragements from those who did not. Several said they may be contacting Dr. Watson,  Dr. Scanlon, or Dr. Carpentier for immediate assistance.  All were happy to discover that there is a well-developed alternative to secular birth control offerings and a new full-service "women's health system" that is more effective at healing the widest spectrum of women's health problems including those that have multiple causes or that have been allowed to become worse or chronic because the contraceptives were masking causes or typical treatments were inadequate. A number of attendees, some of which were nurses,  expressed serious intentions to take the practitioners training in March. 

The follow-through is exciting too!  A local paper, The Hour, got wind of this and wrote a story about it and another story about the Pro-Life position on "Conscience Clauses" for medical personnel. Prior to the seminar, we had four articles written up (2 in the Catholic Transcript, 1 in the Fairfield County Catholic, and 1 in the Four County Catholic) and it was from them that we got most of the nurses and other attendees. From our mailing to 800 OB/GYNs, we got only one of the doctors.  One of the attendees, who is a writer, and will submit a commentary to her local paper.  Personnel from the Right to Life in RI could not come, but want to discuss what we can do to bring the FertilityCare message there.  Fr. Augustine, of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate (Griswold, CT http://figuadalupe.wordpress.com/friary/contact/ ), who video taped the seminar, said we should bring the information to the northern part of CT by the friary.  Pro-life groups from various parts of CT and other states as far as South Carolina want to know how they can duplicate the seminar. Magnificat, in the Bridgeport diocese, is interested in doing some Mother-Daughter luncheons. To our astonishment, one of the nurse attendees, Lisa Hoffer, has already worked with Dr. Scanlon to create a snappy presentation, "Fertility Literacy", which she gave  on Jan 27 to 23 students in her nursing program and her professor at Sacred Heart University!  Then, the professor requested more information and offered to create opportunities for us to introduce to other groups.

Overall, there was a great deal of enthusiasm.  Though we ended late (5:30 pm), no one wanted to leave.  They had lots of questions.  I think the enthusiasm and excitement was because everyone recognized both intellectually and intuitively that we spoke the truth.  We thanked them all for coming and for being so supportive.  We ended by saying, we have begun to take action to help babies and women and “We think we did something today that pleased God”.  Now, the ongoing challenge for all of us is to learn as much as we can about the Creighton Model and then to keep saying “YES TO THE CALL” to continue to create new avenues to spread the word, the call to become a practitioner, the call to help team members, or the call to expand an existing MD practice.  In all we do, we will have the joy of knowing that we are reducing unscheduled pregnancies and helping women to enjoy the health that God meant them to have when He created Eve.

To learn more about the great technology we will be introducing, see the attached see the literature we sent to doctors to promote the Seminar.

If you did not have a chance to provide your doctor’s contact information, please do send it to be added to our database.  I will invite all doctors in our database (in groups of 4) to see the DVD of the seminar (particularly, the talks by the two doctors and question and answers afterward) and give them a copy of it with other material.   Doctors who attend will be invited to a presentation by a live doctor. Send to Stmarygols@aol.com  ====>>>  subject:  Doctor Contact Info

THE TRI-STATE PLUS MEDICAL GROUP WEB SITE

This Web Site has been designed and is currently being populated. When it is complete enough, we will make it available to everyone, and use it as a central repository of the Medical Group's information, available resources and key links.

THANK YOU FOR VISITING US! 

Eileen Bianchini, SFO
Gospel of Life Society, Chairperson
(203) 847-5727

Saint Mary Church
"The Mother Church of Norwalk"
Pastor: Rev. Greg J. Markey