Statement of Conscience

by Joan Andrews Bell

Joan Andrews Bell, of full age, upon her oath, says:

I am the named defendant Joan Andrews on the above captioned matter. This is my statement of conscience. This is why I cannot accept probation.

Human life begins at the moment of conception. This is an undisputed fact of medical science. It is confirmed in every human biology and physiology book. It is confirmed in the fields of embryology and fetology. Dr. Jerome Lejeune, Dr. Liley, and all the experts of medical science I have read confirm this fact. The research does not need further defense. It stands on its own uncontested merit.

Even the "Supreme" Court in Roe and Doe could not refute this fact. The Court, acting in a cowardly manner, pretended the fact did not exist by refusing to address it. The court lied by claiming that it is unknown when human life begins. The Court ignored documentation in legal briefs, which contained undisputed scientific and medical proof that life begins at conception. The Court preferred, instead, to enshrine social reasons as the "impeccable" basis for launching a brutal holocaust against the most defenseless in our society, the preborn. All proponents of abortion maintain the same intellectually dishonest position that recites hollow rhetoric that preborn children are "blobs of tissue," and that this "developing tissue" must be destroyed for social reasons. Scientific fact and inalienable rights of those deprived of their lives are ignored. Not surprising. Every holocaust in history has stood on the same corrupt and faulty premise which claims that certain categories of people must die under the guise of social necessity, proclaimed emotionally in an effort to mislead.

In my 24 years in this sorrowful struggle, I have never met an abortionist yet, nor any proponents of the "choice to kill" position, who, when willing to discuss the facts instead of spouting falsehoods, did not admit that abortion is the act of killing a human child. However, the facade gone, they maintain that killing is necessary for social reasons. It's a sham. Truth and reason have been rejected and Truth has been stomped underfoot. Distorted logic is maintained through an act of the will.

We in America know we are killing children! God help us, we are a people who condone or ignore the brutal destruction of human life for a myriad of shallow and baseless reasons. We have made destruction of children our one, true god. It comes down to a matter of false values and convenience. Do we value human life or do we uphold falsehood and personal selfishness?

Indeed, the "choice people" have manufactured their own private laws depending on neither a morally based legal tradition nor moral norms of human conduct and moral behavior. Tragically and shamefully, government power and legal sanction has been given to this slaughter of the innocent, thus corrupting and undermining our whole system of law and order. The courts of our land have unleashed anarchy against its most vulnerable members. America now stands under judgement of history, and the just hand of God.

It is not surprising that after World War II, not only were the doctors of Nazi Germany held accountable for the murder of the innocent, but also the Judges who had followed laws of a corrupt legislature which legislated Jews to be non-persons and "enemies of the State." We mock justice today and show ourselves to be the greatest of hypocrites.

God is Truth. Because God is Truth, all correct knowledge, judgement, understanding, wisdom, and science come. from God and have their sole validity in the relationship they have to eternal laws of Truth, proceeding from the Universal law-giver, the Creator of the Universe.

Human life is sacred because mankind is made in the image and likeness of God. Abortion is not only a crime against humanity, in that individual human beings are denied due process of law, but it is a crime against God! Without measure or limitation, all human life is sacred because we belong to God, and we shall one day return to Him. By our merits and our choice, we will either gain eternal happiness with God or lose God forever.

To declare that certain human life is not sacred, is to declare that no human life is sacred, that no one is to be universally cherished and protected. In essence, it is to say there is no God, and all reality is anarchy, that truth is meaningless, justice is non-existent, and love is outlawed.

From earliest childhood, I was taught my Roman Catholic Faith by word and example. First by my parents, then by the good priests and nuns whom God placed in my life.

Catholic doctrine is clear and must be universally accepted. It is infallible truth. Dissenters from Divine Truth have excommunicated themselves from the Catholic Faith.

The Catholic Church teaches with the force of infallible doctrine that abortion is a heinous sin, the act of killing an innocent child. No Catholic can approve such crime. Neither can he give consent, support, cooperation nor any participation with the murder of the innocent, defenseless child in the womb. Pope John Paul II clearly spells this out in his recent encyclical, Evangelium Vitae.

My Catholic Faith also teaches that the Catholic faithful must inform their conscience, according to the teaching of the Church. Once one has an informed, correct conscience one must follow his conscience, regardless of the consequences. It is my humble privilege to follow my conscience and my Catholic faith in defense of the innocent and the just. I will not cooperate with immoral, unjust laws corruptly and cowardly imposed on the American people for the sake of pretending to solve social and economic problems by murdering innocent children. I will not accept probation. To accept probation would be to accept the lie that I harmed society by trying to peacefully, prayerfully and non-violently save children from a brutal death by abortion, and that I therefore need to be rehabilitated. To accept probation demands that I sign my name to a paper which says I will obey unjust laws. Indeed, I will not obey unjust laws nor consent to cooperate with the murder of the sacred lives of God's precious children. I could no more adhere to the unjust laws of this land, or in any way give credence to evil enshrined in law, than deny God Himself. With God's help, I will with trembling and shame for my own sins and weaknesses, accept and defend the Laws of God.

Finally, the United States, like all of Western Civilization, has a legal and moral tradition that accepts the fact that abortion is a crime against human life. This great evil was illegal up until the Un-Supreme Court decided to reject the facts of science arid the legal and moral traditions of this country. Against all moral norms the Judiciary falsely "legalized" child killing.

Abraham Lincoln said, in response to the argument that Blacks were not fully human because slavery was legal, "it is never right to do wrong, even when sanctioned by law."

Law becomes anarchy when it discriminates against or dehumanizes a segment of humanity, and furthermore murders the innocent under pretext of law. Human laws which are unjust are null and void, wrote the master theologian Thomas Aquinas, when they violate ultimate Truth, God's law.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that the first and most basic duty of government and of law is the protection of human life, not its destruction. He maintained that if government violates this most basic right, which is its primary purpose for existing, then it forfeits its authority to rule. In essence, such a government and its law unleashes anarchy upon the governed and, indeed, the world order.

"Sometimes we must interfere," said the Nazi Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel, as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. "When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy . . . whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race. religion or political views, that place must-at that moment-become the center of the universe."

When anarchy reigns under the tyranny of law, the people must re-establish law and order by giving no credence 'to false authority. Rather they should re-establish legitimate authority. Unjust laws and decrees will cease to have power when just men refuse to cooperate with such evil.

Recognizing that in the United States of America today so-called "unwanted" preborn children do not have protection under the law, it is only fitting that those of us who love them, and align ourselves with them, be denied freedom, and be condemned to jails and prisons. Preborn children, denied legal protection, often find the womb a tomb. We, the born, who struggle on behalf of these abandoned children, can find our tomb of reparation in a jail cell or prison dungeon. And yet, (tie deepest and darkest tomb and dungeon of all is the human heart in a nation gone murderous. When a child can be coldly dismembered alive in utero, with national approval and brutal sanction of law. there is no hope for such a nation without Divine intervention. My only prayer is for God's will to be done in all things, and may repentance come so that no immortal soul is lost.

In summary, there are three platforms to my continued decision to serve God and refuse to cooperate with the Abortion Holocaust in America:

1) Science. The undisputed medical, scientific fact that human life begins at conception. I accept that fact.

2) My faith. The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is a hedonistic crime against an innocent human life, and that this evil must be opposed by all the faithful at every opportunity and by every moral means. The Church also teaches that conscience is primary, that one must have an informed, correct conscience, and that one must follow his conscience. I understand and accept this fact about my religious teaching as a Roman Catholic, and I affirm it.

3) America's true legal and moral tradition brands abortion as a crime against humanity. I accept this fact as an American citizen.

Therefore, regardless of the consequences, I cannot deny truth, nor violate my conscience by cooperating with unjust laws, nor commit treason by betraying the founding principles and moral truths upon which our nation was built. I know I must act in a way which will help re-establish true law and order in America. I pray that our nation's self-destructive course can be reversed.

It is a deep privilege to suffer imprisonment for the love of God and for the sake of innocent children. I surely have enough sins of my own to warrant long and hard reparation behind bars, but I pray God will use any time of separation from my family to also alone for the sin of abortion, even in the smallest way. It is a fitting thing to suffer imprisonment when one's nation has shown contempt for life and for the laws of God.

As this holocaust of the Culture of Death has shown time and again, this whole struggle goes far beyond unjust laws and a government gone bad; it is a war between good and evil. That is why the Court is not putting me in jail to serve a fixed sentence. Instead, there may be an effort to coerce me to violate my conscience under the cruel pressure of jail and the suffering caused to my family by an indeterminate incarceration. With Gods grace. I will die in jail before I place even my family before God. If anyone puts God first. can he ever doubt God's protection over his family? No, never!

Regardless of what happens, my husband and children are in God's hands. I worry not. Any pain is joy when offered to the Just and Merciful God of us all. Thank you, dear, sweet Jesus, for this opportunity to draw closer to You!

signed, Joan Andrews Bell

This item 248 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org