As you may have seen around campus or in your email, a generous donor offered to pay for Lourdes College students who were interested in attending the Foundation for Life Charity Benefit Reception. I saw the flyers around campus and with a few friends decided to attend. The evening was very well attended and the room was full of people from all over the area.

According to their website, Foundation for Life is a Toledo-based non-denominational educational organization dedicated to promoting the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death. The issues that this group focuses on are abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.

Jill Stanek was the keynote speaker for the evening and upon her arrival at the podium she instantly had the audience captivated by her story. Jill worked as a registered nurse at Christ Hospital in one of Chicago's suburbs. During her time there she came to realize that the doctors were abandoning born-alive aborted babies in rooms to die without any medical care. Her story was quite interesting as she gave examples of babies, who might have been given a diagnosis of some sort of debilitating disease, who were born-alive only to be left for dead. At times the diagnosis was wrong and the infant was completely healthy, not that it should really matter. The babies were often delivered early, usually in the second or third trimester, by inducing labor. Once the baby was born they received no medical treatment and at times were left in soiled linen rooms to die. When Jill realized this was happening she began to speak out and was eventually fired from her position at the hospital. Later she became a key witness in many national debates regarding the issue of born-alive abortions, including both the Born Alive Infant Protection Act and Partial-Birth Abortion Ban. The evening was heart wrenching to say the least, the speaker captivating and her message grabbed at my heart. I was completely overwhelmed by the number of people who attended, they expected over 500. There were many schools that were represented by their students and the amount of young people who attended was astonishing.

I would personally like to thank they donor who so generously offered us tickets and I can say I walked away from the evening with a new knowledge of what has happened in our world and what continues to happen to all those who are innocent.

Sunday, November 16, 2008 8:47:13 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1] | 

For a couple of years now my interest has been peaked on the topic of HUMAN TRAFFICKING. I am shocked and appalled that human trafficking is going on in our world today and I find it rather interesting that Toledo is considered a main hub for recruitment of trafficking victims. My goal here is to give you some facts and open your eyes to what is happening not only around the world but in our backyards.

This blog post will be the first of a series of posts on human trafficking. If you are interested in learning more about it please feel free to contact me.

What is human trafficking?

Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery. Victims of human trafficking are subjected to force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor. Victims are young children, teenagers, men and women.

Did you realize?

After drug dealing, human trafficking is the second largest criminal industry in the world today and it is the fastest growing!

Looking at some of the numbers:

·     Approximately 600,000 to 800,000 victims annually are trafficked across international borders.

·     14,500-17,500 of those victims are trafficked into the United States.

·     While these numbers include children, women and men; more than half of them are children.

What kind of “work” are the victims forced to do?

Many of the victims are made to engage in prostitution and pornography. However; trafficking also occurs in forms of labor exploitation, such as domestic services or restaurant work, sweatshop factory work or migrant camp work (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).

Methods used by traffickers to press victims into lives of servitude and abuse include:

·     Force—Rape, beatings, confinement

o     Force involves the use of rape, beatings and confinement to control victims. Forceful violence is used especially during the early stages of victimization, known as the ‘seasoning process’ which is used to break victim’s resistance to make them easier to control.

·     Fraud—False offers of employment, marriage, better life

o     Fraud often involves false offers that induce people into trafficking situations. For example, women and children will reply to advertisements promising jobs as waitresses, maids and dancers in other countries and are then trafficked for purposes of prostitution once they arrive at their destination.

·     Coercion—Threats, debt-bondage, psychological abuse

o     Coercion involves threats of serious harm to, or physical restraint of, any person; any scheme, plan or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that failure to perform an act would result in serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; or the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process.

(U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Human Trafficking Fact Sheet, 2008)

Wednesday, November 05, 2008 3:46:28 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1] | 

Hello! I am excited to a part of the blogging world this semester! I have enjoyed reading the blogs to find out what every one is doing and thought that I would like to give it a try. I am a senior here at Lourdes (yes, I am graduating in May!) majoring in Theological Studies. I am asked frequently what it is I plan to do with my degree; well, next fall I will be planning on attending Loyola in Chicago for my master’s degree in pastoral counseling. I have grown to love it here and I know it will be difficult for me to leave and journey forward in my education.

This semester I am taking four classes. The first one is Survey of Catholic Belief with Dr. Grubb. It has given me an opportunity to learn more about my faith and religion. Sometimes, like many people I am sure, I wonder why I believe the things I do. Dr. Grubb has been great with explaining things and working through the Catholic faith! Next I have Philosophy of Religion. This class is challenging for me to say the least. I have done very well in my other philosophy classes, but this one I am not so sure about. I will say one thing, it causes me to think and view things in different way…which I am sure are good. Then I am taking Great Religions of the West! It is interesting to learn about the different western religions and we even go on field trips!!! Finally my last class is a fun one..Music in Therapy. It is every other Saturday for four hours, but the time goes really fast and is so much fun! We are able to play with instruments and experience what it is a Music Therapist does!

I am also a workstudy for campus ministry and service learning, so you might have seen me around. I enjoy being active in this ministry and love being a part of the Lourdes College community!

Wednesday, October 29, 2008 11:37:42 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] | 

LourdesWorld .com welcomes Laureen as a new student blogger! Welcome Laureen!

Tuesday, October 28, 2008 2:20:22 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] |