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Respect Life Sunday
Parishioner support makes pro-life work affordable
By Ambria Hammel, The Catholic Sun
October 4, 2007
Many people won’t pick up a penny from the ground. They think it’s of little value.
Tom Peterson, president of VirtueMedia, would disagree. One of his company’s educational advertisements advocating a variety of pro-life messages — issues ranging from stem cell research to dignity for the elderly — could reach television viewers for less than a penny per household.
With the drop of a small bill, VirtueMedia sees results from ads that encourage women facing an unplanned pregnancy to choose life for their unborn children.
“Every time we run about $10 worth of ads, we get a call,” Peterson said. “And the vast majority of these women, when they get help through our pregnancy line or Web site, they’ll choose life for their babies.”
Catholics across the diocese can choose to drop as many pennies, bills or checks as they want into the Sanctity of Life collection during all Masses on Respect Life Sunday this weekend. Proceeds support television ads and pro-life activities sponsored by the Office of Marriage and Respect Life Issues throughout the year.
“The results from last year have been amazing,” said Mike Phelan, director of the office. Local Catholics donated $147,000 to the annual campaign in 2006, the first time it was re-instated after a five-year absence. The Catholic Community Foundation kicked in another $23,000.
Peterson said donors sometimes wonder why they don’t see the ads they helped sponsor. He tells them that’s because the organization buys slots during days, times, seasons and programs “targeted at young, abortion-vulnerable women and most faithful Catholics aren’t watching those networks and those programs.”
Hundreds of ads ran each month on cable and network affiliates in the Valley and northern Arizona.
“Our clinics tell us that they’ve run because they get real busy,” Phelan said. For the first four months of the campaign, 725 callers used the pregnancy line, he said.
More than 300 of them were post-abortive women. Those callers can seek healing through ministries such as Rachel’s Vineyard, which offers weekend retreats for men and women to address post-abortive emotions and begin the healing process.
One well-known post-abortive woman will appear in a commercial beginning next month.
“We’re featuring a one-minute commercial with Norma McCorvey telling the truth about how her heart changed and how supporting abortion was the biggest mistake of her life and how, with God, she will defend and support the dignity of human life,” Peterson said.
McCorvey is also known as “Jane Roe” of the U.S. Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion. Peterson described her as a sweet woman with a kind, but wounded soul.
Phelan called the commercial “a great way to reach the entire culture with our Gospel of life in order to protect our most vulnerable citizens: the unborn.”
It’s funding from the annual collection that makes such advertising possible.
“A lot of folks think somebody else will do it,” Peterson said. “Only the truly devout Catholics who give from their heart will do it.”
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