Joan Andrews Bell

On January 15, 1998, Joan Andrews Bell was sentenced and imprisoned in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for a term of three to 23 months (nearly two years!) for an incident of peaceful, non-violent opposition to abortion in 1985.

In its February 1998 issue, Inside the Vatican magazine points out that, by comparison, there have been "some 300 cases in England and America in recent years of women accused of killing their newborn children" in which the accused woman never spent more than a single night in jail.

Pennsylvania residents, especially, are encouraged to contact Pennsylvania's elected officials to encourage them to intercede on behalf of Joan Andrews Bell, a true prisoner of conscience.


"Dr. Kevorkian, who has induced the death of scores of people, has gone free from jail while pro-lifers have been sentenced to years in confinement for refusing to move away from an abortion mill: Where is the justice?" -- DONALD W. TRAUTMAN, Bishop of Erie, Pennsylvania (Roman Catholic), January 17, 1998




"I continue to protest the imprisonment of pro-life people who peacefully try to end abortion. No government, no law, no power on earth can rightly tell a human being that he or she is not allowed to try to save someone's life. That is all that Joan has tried to do: to save the lives of children from abortion. She suffers now not because of any wrongdoing on her part, but because of the fact that a blindness to the personhood of the pre-born child has been built into our legal system. It is time for more and more people to join in peaceful resistance against abortion and, in the words of the Pope, "conscientious objection" to the unjust laws that allow it to continue. Joan should be immediately released, and then tens of thousands of people should join her in peaceful presence at abortion mills throughout the land."
Thanks,

Fr. Frank Pavone
Priests for Life
Vatican City




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