Washington D.C., Aug 18, 2015 / 04:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Amid Congressional debate over President Barack Obama’s proposed Iran nuclear deal, family and friends of an imprisoned American are pleading for his release to be a part of the agreement... Read more

Detroit, Mich., Aug 18, 2015 / 06:21 am (CNA).- True friendship is vital in helping young people who are struggling with same-sex attraction but trying to live a chaste lifestyle, said a prominent gay Catholic blogger. “We love when we make ou... Read more

Lincoln, Neb., Aug 18, 2015 / 04:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- It was a cold December day in Nebraska, and Ashley Stevens was riding in a car with four other women. It was the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the women and the rest of their FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) team were headed to a retreat center near Gretna, Neb. when a large truck smashed into their car on Highway 6 near the Platte River, several miles east of Lincoln. While the other women had minor injuries – a broken shoulder, whiplash, cuts and bruises – Ashley was life-flighted to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha in critical condition. She had sustained major head trauma, and had significant swelling and bleeding in her brain among other injuries.  Brad Stevens, Ashley's fiancé of just a few weeks, got the call from Nikki Shasserre, a staff member at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Newman Center, who had hosted an engagement party for the couple three weeks prior. Get to the hospital now, Ashley’s in critical condition. Father Robert Matya, the chaplain for the UNL Newman Center, had been on his way to the same retreat and was able to be with the women at the scene, praying with them and comforting them. He then rushed to the hospital to be with Brad, a former student he’d known for years, and was with him to receive the grim diagnosis. “I remember very distinctly arriving at the hospital, and Brad and I went in to sit down with the doctor, who told us that he didn’t think it was going to be possible that Ashley would survive at that point,” Fr. Matya recalled. “He was just trying to be honest with us.” That was around 10 in the morning. By 3 p.m., Ashley was heading to surgery. Father stayed with Brad and Ashley in the ICU that night. From the very first moment, Father said, the way Brad handled the situation was remarkable. “What was beautiful about watching Brad in that experience was that he was just unwavering from the first moment on, in terms of being at her side. There was never a question of his dedication to her throughout the whole experience, and that was the case not only on that day of the accident but throughout the entire process of her rehabilitation,” he said. Brad’s faith in God had been what initially attracted Ashley to him. They were both working as Residential Assistants in the Husker Village dorms, and during the long walks patrolling the halls on duty nights, she would pepper him with all of her questions about Catholicism. A devout Protestant, Ashley was amazed at how well Brad could defend and explain his faith using scripture. She became “like a little sponge,” she said, soaking up knowledge about the Catholic Church.   A few years after they became friends, and in the early phases of their dating relationship, Ashley became Catholic after taking classes at the Newman Center and developing strong friendships there. The day of the accident, dozens of friends from the Newman Center and beyond had arrived at UNMC, offering meals and prayers and whatever support they could. Word spread quickly, and more prayers and support started pouring in from UNL students and the Catholic community around the state – and even the world. Ashley, who does not remember “literally a single day” of the entire month she spent at UNMC, said she has only heard and read of the tremendous outpouring of love that occurred within those first days and weeks. “I was submerged in prayer,” she said. “From holy hours at the Newman Center, across the country, people I didn’t even know were surrounding me with prayer that I’m so thankful for.” “It’s amazing seeing God’s love through so many instruments when you’re quite literally helpless.” Slowly, Ashley started making improvements, though for a long time it was uncertain exactly how healed she could be. She had a stroke while at UNMC, and it was uncertain for a while whether she’d ever be able to walk, or hold a job, or take care of future children. “I can’t even imagine Brad, just three weeks after getting engaged, and my parents just sitting by, not knowing if I’m going to make it and if I did, what would be the end result? How much of Ashley would they get back, would he get back?” she said. Even the tiniest glimpses of hope, however, made Brad “just giddy excited,” Ashley said. “Even if I was just able to squeeze his hand or open my eyes and look at him, or just try to smile, anything gave him glimpses of hope that I was going to make it,” she said. A gratitude journal Brad kept at the time proves his incredible hope. In an entry dated Dec. 13, one day after the accident, Brad responded to the prompts in his journal:Today I feel: “Great, it was starting out to be a good day, until Nikki Shasserre called and told me the news. After that a mix of scared, sad, mad, happy.” Spiritually I: “Am overwhelmed by the huge support you have received from all over the country. I feel consoled during a moment of great trial.” Magical moments (comfort, peace, and love): “You opened your eye and looked at me!! That was huge. I was so thankful to know I had communicated with you and was able to show my love for you and show you I’m there for you.” It was Brad’s faithfulness that kept Ashley going in the hard months of recovery and therapy to come. After UNMC, Ashley was flown down to Atlanta to continue her treatment – it was closer to her parents, who live in Knoxville, Tenn., and was highly recommended for brain trauma recovery. Brad kept his job as an aide to a state senator in Nebraska, but flew down to Atlanta every Thursday through Sunday to be with his fiancé. “That was beautiful to me and exactly what I needed to keep fighting and to keep doing frustrating therapies,” Ashley said. For a while, even the basics were extremely difficult. She had to re-learn how to write, eat, walk, do long division – but Brad’s visits kept her looking forward to the weekends. “I remember seeing him every Thursday and just being giddy, when you’re going through something so life-altering, being able to cling to normalcy is exactly what you need,” she said. But May 16th, the day they had originally planned for their wedding, was harder than most. Brad flew down to be with Ashley, and they went to a church to pray. “I’m not a crier, I’m just not, but that day we went to the chapel and I just broke down, and I walked out of the church and he came after me and he said ‘What’s wrong? I’m still here, we’re still going to get married,’” Ashley recalled. She told Brad about all the doubts she had – doubts, she thinks now, that came from Satan. “We didn’t have our wedding rescheduled, I didn’t know when or if I would go back to work, I still wasn’t approved to drive, and I just kept thinking: Am I worth it?” “I remember he took my hands and said, ‘Ashley, I still love you, I love you just as much as when I asked you to marry me, I’m going to marry you, and it’s not going to be today, but it will be as soon as it makes sense, as soon as you get back and we get in our rhythm, it will be then.’” And it was. The next week, Ashley found out her release date. She entered a driving program, and was approved to start working again part-time. As the improvements kept coming, Ashley and Brad started re-looking at wedding dates. They settled on Dec. 12 – exactly a year after the accident. “It was Ashley's idea,” Brad said. “She wanted to conquer a sad day and remember it with joy, or in her words 'kick the accident in the face.'” “I think some people question like why would you want to do that, so many hard memories will be evoked on that day, why would you want to have the happiest day of your life kind of conflict with that?” Ashley said. “To me, that was the point.” It was a cold December day in Nebraska again. There had been a blizzard the day before Dec. 12, 2009, the day of Ashley and Brad Stevens’ wedding. “I guess you should expect (a blizzard) in December in Nebraska,” Ashley joked. Nonetheless, friends and family from all over the country were able to make it. “It was just a party,” Ashley said. And the FOCUS team – half of whom had been in the car with Ashley – were in the choir loft. They sang and played Bethany Dillon’s “Let Your Light Shine”, which the team had listened to together, per Ashley’s request, at a meeting a week before the accident. The truck driver was there too. “Seeing the church surrounded by people that had stood by our sides whether its prayers, meals, visits, and just having a party, it was a way of saying I’m still here, that God healed us, healed me, and performed a miracle,” Ashley said. The Stevens have now been married for almost 6 years, with two beautiful little girls. They travel in between Tennessee and Nebraska often, so the girls can get to know both sets of grandparents. They still have their ups and downs, like any couple, but in large part because of the accident, Ashley never doubts that Brad is in it for the long haul. “Marriage is hard,” Ashley said, “but it’s part of the cost, and when you sign the marriage license you know that. The vow, ‘in good and in bad, in sickness and in health,’ obviously Brad’s already lived the in sickness and in health vow out before we even walked down the aisle.” “The best advice we can offer for marriage prep is to take a step back, and evaluate your relationship,” Brad said. “And (if) there's not much about God, there's not much about how the relationship has challenged you to be better, change habits or to find joy in sacrifice, then there's a disconnect.” There are reminders of the accident – Ashley permanently lost hearing in her right ear, she suffered nerve injuries and lost partial control of her right hand. But at the end of the day goodness prevailed, Ashley said, which is why she is working on a book telling her story. “God gives us all different gifts,” Ashley said. “And I don’t have the gift of musical ability, or anything artistic, at times I don’t have the gift of extraversion, but I do have the gift of a cool story. And I have the gumption to share it.” “The point (of the story) is that God always wins,” she said. “And that may not look like the win that has always played out in your head, but he’s faithful, and he works miracles in our lives, and we can’t forget all he’s done in our life.” These days, the Stevens are looking forward to settling in Nebraska as their oldest starts school. As for Brad, he’s thankful that after everything, they’re able to have a normal life. “Ashley is a rock star and I thank God for her and the family we have together.” Photo credit: www.shutterstock.com Read more

Fort Worth, Texas, Aug 17, 2015 / 05:19 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Christianity is spreading rapidly in China, and it could be because of how well the faith fits in with modern scientific technology. According to the renowned sociologist Rodney Stark, the number of Christians in China is growing at an impressive annual rate of seven percent. Stark coauthored, with Xiuhua Wang, the 2015 work A Star in the East: The Rise of Christianity in China. Stark views himself as a social historian and is co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. Stark and Wang estimate that in 1980 there were 10 million Christians in the People's Republic of China, and that in 2007 the figure was 60 million. These numbers yield an annual growth rate of 7 percent – which means that last year, there were nearly 100 million Christians in China. They hold that this large increase in the number of Christians in China is driven by the conversion of the better educated, who are experiencing “cultural incongruity” between traditional Asian culture and industrial-technological modernity, which results in a spiritual deprivation, which Christianity is able to answer. China's intellectuals, Stark told CNA Aug. 14, “are very convinced they've got to turn West to understand the world they live in … and they're convinced by my argument that eastern religions don't fit the modern world they're engaged in, and that they need to look to the West to find philosophies and religions. It's quite amazing.” Eastern religions, like Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, Stark maintained, “are all anti-progress; they all proclaim the world is going downhill from a glorious past, and that we should look backwards, not forwards. None of them admit that we're able to understand anything about the universe – it's something we have to meditate on, not something to try and theorize about, as the physicists and chemists do. And that doesn't fit with the world that modern Chinese are experiencing having happened around them.” “Industrial society, and all the science it's based on, doesn't fit well with those kind of religious views,” Stark reflected. “But the question of what does the world mean, and how do we live in it, persists – and so that's a major motor in the Christianization of China, and it explains why it's the most educated Chinese who are the most apt to join.” The spread of Christianity in China, he said, has been possible even “during the worst time of Chinese persecution” under Mao Zedong's cultural revolution of the 1960s and 70s because “this process of conversion is invisible; the government can't see it.” According to Stark, religious conversion occurs primarily through social networks, and so is “invisible” to government officials. He holds that Chinese living in rural areas are more likely than city dwellers to be Christian, because their social ties are stronger, and thus Christianity can be transmitted there more easily. Revivalist tent meetings, he said, “is not really how it's done…People join things in a much more intimate, a much quieter way.” Catholic missionaries have been in China since the Jesuits of the 16th century, and in 1949 – when communist forces gained control over the whole of the mainland – there were some 5,700 Catholic foreign missionaries, and a total of nearly 3.3 million Catholics. The communist government of China expelled foreign missionaries, and later established the “Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association,” a government-sanctioned Catholic Church. This has existed in opposition to the 'underground' Church, which is persecuted and whose episcopal appointments are frequently not acknowledged by Chinese authorities. Stark noted, however, that the Aug. 4 consecration of Fr. Joseph Zhang Yinlin as auxiliary bishop of Weihui is “the most important news from a Catholic perspective to come out of China in years.” Bishop Zhang was approved of by both the Chinese government and the Holy See – the appointment of bishops has been the two states' most prominent area of contention throughout the past 60 years, so their agreement is of some import. “That was a very big deal,” Stark said, “because that's been the whole basis of Catholic persecution since the 1950s: that there were to be no trekking with religion that had any external, foreign ties; and the Protestants of course could and did accept that very easily, but for Catholics, the whole business of rejecting Rome wasn't really on, although some Catholic bishops at least pretended to do that – although it's not clear that they really did … I think this is very, very big news.” The last episcopal consecration before Bishop Zhang's had ended in icy relations between the Vatican and China: in July 2012, Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin – who had been part of the Patriotic Association – announced shortly after his consecration that he was leaving the association. He was subsequently confined by the government. Stark suggested that because of the agreement between Beijing and Rome on Bishop Zhang's nomination “there's no reason now that the Catholics have to be at all be underground; they can now all be part of the above-ground Church.” “It was also made very, very clear in all the press releases that he had been pre-approved by the Pope. And consequently he violates that part of the Association's rules, and the government is condoning it; which means in a sense, the end of that particular government-controlled, non-standard Catholicism. The fact of the matter is that most of the people in that Church were real Catholics – they just pretended. I mean there was a lot of contact with Rome on the sly, but this is coming right out in the open, and I think it's very important.” Stark affirmed that the change in the past three years – from the consecration of Bishop Ma to that of Bishop Zhang – is a huge change, adding, “I was extremely surprised by it.” “But the fact is, the Communist Party is fairly deeply involved in Christian growth, in ways that are not talked about – but out in the villages, many of the local communist leaders are very openly Christian, to the point of having crosses on their doors, their living room walls, which is hardly being discreet about it.” “In the cities it's more discreet, but still, in all there are enormous numbers of sons and daughters of communist officials who are now Christians, and you go to their elite university campuses, and it's shocking, the Christian feel of the place, in a way that you don't get in American, Christian colleges. You don't get this feeling at Notre Dame, or at Texas Christian, that you get walking around the University of Peking.” He noted that there are many Christian professors, and that Christianity is strongest at the universities – where the future members of the country's Communist Party are studying. “This may be part of what's going on behind the scenes,” Stark supposed: “that it's becoming uncomfortable to push Christianity around.” Stark then noted that this is not the case in one of China's 34 province-level administrative divisions. In Zhejiang province, churches have been ordered to stop displaying crosses, and a number of churches have been demolished. Seven Christians have also been detained in that province. Stark suggested that this persecution, localized as it is, may be because “the head of that province might be some communist who's in rebellion, if you will, against the loosening of reservations in the rest of the country.” This loosening of reservations is notable – Stark reflected that “this whole notion of an underground church is very peculiar, since some of these 'underground' churches are four stories tall, and have crosses all over them. They're underground only in the sense that they don't have legal sanction – but they sure aren't hidden.” In light of this new openness to Christianity across China as a whole, Stark supposed a continued 7 percent annual rate of growth of the religion. At that rate, there will be 150 million Christians in China in 2020; 295 million in 2030; and 579 million in 2040. “The growth might stop: you never know what's going to happen in the future,” Stark said. “But at the current rate, there'll be a whole heck of a lot of Christians in China awfully soon.”   Read more

Santa Fe, NM, Aug 17, 2015 / 03:53 pm (CNA).- It is in Christ that true compassion for the dying is found – not in assisted suicide, said the Catholic bishops of New Mexico. Their comments came after the state’s Court of Appeals struck d... Read more

Washington D.C., Aug 17, 2015 / 03:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The United Nations’ global development goals for the next 15 years still contain language that is all but certain to be used to increase access to abortion worldwide, say pro-life advocates. “We are profoundly concerned,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) told CNA in an interview about the agenda. “This is being launched by the heads of state as a transformative document. And it’s supposed to be the agenda for the next 15 years, for the entire globe, including the United States. For the developing world and for the developed world.” The Sustainable Development Goals are part of the United Nations’ comprehensive development plan for the next 15 years to fight poverty, end world hunger, fight human trafficking, and promote sustainable energy. They are a continuation of the original 15-year Millennium Development Goals set in 2000 to “reduce extreme poverty” worldwide. The language for the goals was finalized Aug. 2 in an outcome document and will be voted on this September at the U.N. General Assembly – right around the time of Pope Francis’ address to the assembly on Sept. 25 in New York City. The goals set a broad global development agenda, but are broken up into smaller targets to achieve this development. And it is here that the problematic language is hidden, pro-life advocates say, because while many of the outcome document’s goals are laudable – such as ending poverty and hunger – two specific targets could enable a massive expansion of abortion access worldwide. Target 3.7 lies under the overall goal “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.” The target states, “By 2030, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including for family planning, information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes.” Target 5.6 sits within the goal “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.” The target states, “Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences.” The language of the targets – “sexual and reproductive health-care services” and “sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights” – has been commonly acknowledged in the past to include abortion access. Many U.N. agencies and Western donor countries, including the U.S., interpret the language to include abortion access, a former diplomat at the U.N. and a participant in numerous negotiations involving sexual and reproductive health language told CNA in June. And even though the two programs mentioned in target 5.6 – the Beijing Platform for Action and the ICPD Programme of Action – limit the push for abortion access to remain within national laws and regulations, donors can still wield their influence here. The donors will tie development funding to conditions that largely pro-life developing countries must liberalize their abortion laws, the former diplomat explained. Other politicians and diplomats have conceded that the “sexual and reproductive health” language includes abortion access. Back in 2001, at a preparatory committee meeting for the drafting of the U.N. document “A World Fit for Children,” the head of Canada’s permanent mission to the U.N. stated outright that the “services” for “reproductive health care” included abortions. And in 2009, former U.N. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Smith at a congressional hearing that the United States’ definition of “reproductive health” does include abortion access. The chief of staff for then-U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan told Smith in 2006 that the language does not include abortion, but only “after a very, very long pause,” the congressman recalled. And regardless of what Western diplomats have already said, the biggest problem with the targets is the ambiguity of the text, Smith pointed out. Wealthy donor countries can easily interpret “reproductive health-care services” to include abortion. And poorer countries rely heavily on their development funding. “To most of the world, especially the developing world, the U.S. is like a life-or-death situation for them,” Smith said. “If they have refugees, they need refugee money. And to the developing world, the U.N. is almost like another government, if not a major government, for them.” Countries such as Liberia, which recently experienced a health care crisis with the spread of Ebola, are very dependent on foreign aid, Smith said. “The funding is going to be such a pressure, because these are the countries that need the help to continue to reduce maternal mortality, child mortality,” explained Marie Smith, founder and director of the pro-life outreach group Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues. Those countries objecting to the language – Malta and some African countries, including Nigeria – were ignored at the documents’ Open Working Group in 2014. “It all really finalized last July [2014] with the Open Working Group,” Marie Smith said. “And after that time, Nigeria and a number of countries, even Malta, were objecting to ‘reproductive rights’. But the gavel was just brought down with over 20 countries still wanting to object and issue reservations.” Those reservations did not stop when the outcome document was finalized on Aug. 2 and the language remained there, she added. “This whole concept of the sustainable development goals and targets really do not have universal agreement. And the countries’ reservations really are not accounted for in any way. So there still are broad differences.” “I’ve been to these conferences many times,” Smith said. “The governments practically plead for changes in text, and the co-chairs and their staff decide what’s in and what is out. So there’s no democratic process whatsoever.” After the language for the goals is voted on in September at the U.N. General Assembly, indicators will be crafted to measure the progress of countries in achieving these goals. This is where the big push for abortion could make headway with donor countries tying aid to the progress that developing countries have made with respect to the indicators. The World Health Organization will be “helping write these indicators,” Smith said. They openly support increased access to abortion worldwide and are very much relied upon in developing countries, he added. The organization is not shy about its support of abortion. In the executive summary of its report “Safe Abortion: Technical and policy guidance for health systems,” it states that “to the full extent of the law, safe abortion services should be readily available and affordable to all women.” “This means services should be available at primary-care level, with referral systems in place for all required higher-level care,” the report added. “WHO has credentials, and now they have integrated abortion into their agenda,” Smith said. And other groups implementing the goals have done so as well. “If you look at all the organizations and read their own webpages,” he said, “these are the terms that they use, and it has clear definition to them, and they will be part of the implementation brigade.” Pro-abortion non-governmental organizations like the International Planned Parenthood Federation have pushed for the language to remain in the goals, Marie Smith noted. In a statement on its website, IPPF said that the goals are “important because they will guide national policy making and budget prioritisation.” They added that “we’ve been fighting for inclusion of universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights in the SDGs. Half of all the anti-poverty targets are focused on sexual and reproductive health and rights which proves that these rights are critical to global development.” “There is a will not to unravel the package of goals and targets, and upset the political balance, which is good news as there is a target for sexual and reproductive health under the health goal and reproductive rights under the gender goal,” the organization continued. The Vatican has responded to the development goals with seemingly mixed messages. On June 22, the Apostolic Nuncio to the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the U.N., Archbishop Bernardito Auza, supported the “verbatim inclusion of the Sustainable Development Goals and targets.” Yet he added that “We would oppose the imposition of targets and indicators on countries and peoples whose laws and values are contrary to them” – the imposition of targets increasing abortion access in countries with pro-life laws, for example. “With this in mind, we would need to address how reservations of delegations contained within the Report of the OWG will be reflected in the Outcome document,” he added. This statement was made well before the final document was finished Aug. 2. On Tuesday, however, the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations criticized the goals for pushing access to abortion. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said the U.N. is acting as if "with abortion, that is, with ‘reproductive health,’ you can help eliminate underdevelopment." That is akin to thinking that through “eliminating people there would be fewer problems," he added. Smith believes the language will enable a massive, unprecedented push for abortion access worldwide. In “40 years in the pro-life movement, 35 as a member of Congress, I have never seen such a well-orchestrated effort to promote abortion,” he said. Read more

Washington D.C., Aug 16, 2015 / 04:05 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In a controversial new policy move, global human rights organization Amnesty International has announced that they support the worldwide decriminalization of consensual prostitution and sex work. While the group claims this will ultimately help women, a swarm of critics – scholars and celebrities alike – mobilized in quick and fierce opposition, arguing that the bad far outweighs the good.   Announcing the development on August 11, secretary general Salil Shetty lauded the “historic day for Amnesty International,” while noting that the decision was not made “easily or quickly.” This shift, according to Amnesty, marks a step towards an effort to regulate the sex industry more closely, aiming to lower the amount of exploitation and abuse that women who are involved in prostitution notoriously experience. The new policy would also theoretically encourage better health care for women in prostitution and reduce the stigma involved with the industry. Preceding Amnesty's decision, the New York Times published a piece on the slippery slope of the sex industry – calling it a vague, gray area, especially when it comes to its decriminalization. “Can we really draw a bright line between a person who has casual sex, in private, with various lovers, and a person who has sex in private, with various short-term and long-term lovers, from whom she accepts monetary support?” the piece asks, arguing that private, consensual acts – whatever they may be – have a right to be protected. However, a slew of therapists, sex trafficking survivors, and celebrities have recently spoken out against the policy change to decriminalize a criminal business – saying that there is in fact a very bright line that should be drawn to keep prostitution on the criminal side. “It's a terrible idea,” said Tina Frundt, founder of Courtney's House in Washington, D.C. “This has been tried and failed – in the Netherlands, in Germany – they've closed down over 30 brothels because we are talking about a criminal industry that we are trying to legalize,” Frundt said. “Criminals think like criminals. It's a die-hard criminal business making millions,” she added. Many brothels in Germany or Amsterdam obtain fake identification for minors and adult women who are forced over from other countries so that they can be sold in a legalized market, Frundt said. For the underworld of prostitution, global decriminalization is the best thing that could happen. Frundt herself is a survivor of child sex trafficking and founded Courtney's House in 2008 to help women and children heal from domestic sex trafficking and commercial sex exploitation. She sees multiple people per day who have experienced trauma and wounds from the trafficking industry. If prostitution is tolerated globally, especially within the United States, she believes the amount of people who seek help at Courtney’s House will double – simply because trauma comes with the territory. Frundt is not alone in her stance against decriminalizing prostitution. Candace Wheeler is a therapist with Restoration Ministries, an organization that aims to heal and help sex trafficking survivors. She believes that Amnesty's new policy could have a dangerous effect. “As a therapist, I don't really see a difference between sex trafficking and prostitution,” Wheeler told CNA. She said her main job is to heal the wounds that have been caused by the prostitution and trafficking industry. Although Wheeler recognizes the need for legal boundaries, she was skeptical about what decriminalizing sex work could result in. “There has to be some kind of accountability,” she said, and pointed to Amsterdam’s tolerant policy for sex work within the country, asserting that their model just doesn’t work. “What they have found (in Amsterdam) is that tolerance is not protecting women who are in prostitution there, because it's mostly women who are trafficked from other countries, and they are realizing that their tolerance is a huge problem,” Wheeler said. “If it's decriminalized, then that just opens up the door for that kind of business. We could have established brothels and red light districts, and then crime comes with that, and drugs – and I am the person that gets to see them afterwards and try and heal them,” she said. Celebrities such as Kate Winslet, Anne Hathaway, Chris Cooper, and Meryl Streep echoed this stance by signing a letter asking Amnesty to rethink their decision on decriminalizing an unregulated $99 billion global sex industry. These celebrities are also joined by various survivors of the sex trade, who have experienced the “inescapable harms the sex trade inflicted,” as stated in the letter.   Medical professionals, gynecologists and mental health professionals have also asserted that regardless of how a woman ends up in the sex trade – consensual or not – their experience can lead to long term physical and psychological harm, and in some cases, death.   “Growing evidence shows the catastrophic effects of decriminalizing the sex trade,” the document reads, pointing to the German government who found that decriminalizing the sex industry did not make women safer or the industry more regulated. Instead, it's tolerance only increased the amount of human trafficking and expanded “legal brothels” within the country. The signed letter also states that decriminalizing the industry will only transform brothel owners into businessmen and women into “deals.” In addition, lifting the ban on prostitution will do nothing to separate the difference between the women who have a choice in the trade and the women who are forced into it – it will only give the industry a green light to continue forward. “Amnesty's reputation in upholding human rights for every individual would be severely and irreparably tarnished if it adopts a policy that sides with buyers of sex, pimps and other exploiters rather than with the exploited,” the letter read. “By so voting, Amnesty would blow out its own candle.” Read more