Friday, January 31, 2014

Education


 

Educating on Roe vs. Wade a “must do” for 2014


Editor’s note. The following “President’s message” from Right to Life’s President Barb Listing appeared in the Spring edition of RTL of Michigan News.
abortion-poll-4Another year begins and the U.S. Supreme Court rulings legalizing abortion are still in place, although much altered since 1973. Those of us who remember that January 22, 1973, day when the Court handed down Roe v. Wade can likely describe the key points of this fateful decision. That day altered our lives and our nation’s public policies and politics.
While we know so well what the words “Roe v. Wade” mean, many of our fellow citizens do not. Some 2013 research from the Pew Research Center provides some interesting information regarding what the public knows and does not know about this infamous U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Data from the Pew Research Center reveals:
  • Only about 6 in 10 citizens know that Roe v. Wade dealt with abortion.
  • 7 percent thought it dealt with school desegregation; 20 percent didn’t know what Roe v. Wade meant
  • For those under 30 years of age, only 44 percent knew the decision was about abortion.
  • Only 63 percent identified Independents associated abortion with Roe v. Wade;
  • 57 percent Democrats and 68 percent Republicans answered correctly
Our “must do” list for 2014 needs to include investing time for basic education on the 1973 abortion cases. If only a slight majority of people associate abortion with Roe v. Wade, how far would that percentage drop if they were asked about the companion case, Doe v. Bolton? That is the 1973 case that expanded the Roe decision to create abortion on demand.
See our website www.RTL.org for a refresher on the decisions.
Through our legislative work and our public education outreach, especially in schools and on campuses, opportunities will be created in 2014 to ensure that our fellow citizens realize the damage done to our nation and families by the original 1973 abortion decisions: Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. Misinformation and lack of information become roadblocks which must be removed as we work to reverse these court decisions. Are there any other court decisions which have reached the same vast proportion of deaths? 56 million deaths of unborn babies and a number growing daily.
May 2014 see our Michigan prolife movement grow and flourish as we continue to work together to protect innocent human life. Let’s start with spreading the truth about the disastrous decisions of January 22, 1973, given to us by 7 men on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Source: NRLC News

Ireland


 

Irish MP overinflates abortions for fatal fetal disability 300-fold to advance political agenda



By Dr. Peter Saunders
Editor’s note. Dr. Saunders is a former general surgeon and is CEO of Christian Medical Fellowship, a UK-based organization with 4,500 UK doctors and 1,000 medical students as members.
John Halligan
John Halligan

The Irish ‘Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act’, signed into law last July, will allow abortions to be carried out where there is a threat to the life of the mother.
It does not, however, allow abortion for fatal fetal abnormalities.
Campaigners in Ireland are now seeking to change this and are up to their usual tricks of inflating statistics.
On 13 November the Irish Journal reported on a campaign by a group called ‘Terminations for Medical Reasons’ (TFMR) who argued that 1,500 Irish women per year carried babies with fatal fetal abnormalities:
‘About 1,500 cases of fatal fetal abnormalities are reported each year in Ireland with about 80 per cent of the women travelling abroad for early inducement or terminations. Members of TFMR were devastated of the omission from the legislation this year but vowed to take their cases to Europe and beyond.’
80% of 1,500 is 1,200! Given that around 4,000 Irish women have abortions in England and Wales each year this would suggest that almost one third of them are having them for fatal fetal abnormalities. That sounds a wee bit high to me.

So where did this figure of 1,500 come from? The earliest reference to it that I can find seems to be from the same group (TFMR) on 27 May this year, reported in Breaking News Ireland.
Since this time it appears to have been picked up uncritically by the Irish media.
According to the Irish Times on 26 June, during the debate over the bill, Independent TD John Halligan ‘pointed out’ that 1,500 women in Ireland each year had to deal with a pregnancy where the baby would live for just minutes outside the womb (emphasis mine).
The figure was repeated uncritically by the Irish Examiner a day later.
To my knowledge not one of these news outlets has since retracted nor corrected the claim, with the exception of the Irish Independent who published an article by Niamh Ui Bhriain of The Life Institute on 25 November debunking the false statistics.

This encouraged us to obtain the statistics for Irish women having abortions in England and Wales for fatal fetal abnormalities from the Department of Health (DoH). According to the above there should have been 80% of 1,500 or about 1,200 each year.

So how many were there? According to the DoH Ground E abortions (those for fetal abnormality) for the years 2007 to 2011 were 27, 29, 42, 68 and 51 respectively.
But how many of these were for fatal abnormalities where, by John Halligan’s definition, the baby ‘would live for just minutes outside the womb’?

We are not told this specifically but we can make a reasonable estimate from the data available.
Of the 51 ground E abortions in 2011, 60% (31 in total) were for chromosomal abnormalities including Down’s syndrome (11), Edward’s syndrome (7) and Patau’s syndrome (7).
Of these the latter two conditions are very serious. Half of infants with Edward’s syndrome do not survive beyond the first week of life. The median lifespan is 5–15 days. About 8% of infants survive longer than one year.

More than 80% of children with Patau’s syndrome die within the first year of life.
Today the average life expectancy for a person with Down’s syndrome is between 50 and 60. A considerable number of people with Down’s syndrome live into their 60′s.
So, even given the fact that these are all life-limiting conditions, it is extremely unlikely that any of these 31 babies, if born, would have died within minutes of birth.
There were 12 babies aborted for a range of other conditions including spina bifida (3) and cardiovascular disease (2). It would expected that most of these also would not die within minutes of birth. Unlike those babies with chromosomal abnormalities most of this group would be amenable to treatment of one kind or another.

The only category where the babies might arguably have fitted Halligan’s definition of ‘fatal’ was anencephaly. There were 8 abortions on Irish women for this condition in 2011.
55% of babies with anencephaly, who are not aborted, do not survive birth. If they are not stillborn, then they will usually die within a few hours or days after birth from cardiorespiratory arrest, although there are exceptional cases of babies with the condition surviving up to two or three years.
So let’s say that about half of those with anencephaly, about 4 in 2011, would fall into Halligan’s category of being stillborn or dying within minutes of birth.

That’s four versus Halligan’s figure of 1,200. So the TD was out by a factor of 300!
I am not in any way trying to suggest that carrying a baby that has a disability to term is not a huge challenge which requires great courage, grace and support.
But if we are to have this debate at all, then we must have it based on the actual facts of the case, and not with reference to wildly spun statistics that have been simply plucked out of the air to advance a certain political agenda.

Telling lies in parliament is serious. If John Halligan didn’t know they were lies then he is rather gullible and probably also incompetent. If he did then it is a very serious matter indeed.
I wonder if he will be called to account for it? And I wonder if the Irish media will keep propagating his untruths?
This appeared at http://pjsaunders.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-12-21T11:47:00-08:00&max-results=7

Source: NRLC News

Cloning


 

The Human Cloning Goal Behind Stem Cell Cures



By Wesley J. Smith
A mouse embryo injected with cells made pluripotent through stress, tagged with a fluorescent protein. Photo: Haruko Obokata
A mouse embryo injected with cells made pluripotent through stress, tagged with a fluorescent protein.
Photo: Haruko Obokata

Buried deep in an encouraging story about another advance in turning skin cells into stem cells, we see more evidence of biotechnology’s ultimate human cloning goal.
First, the good news. An acid bath may be able to replace viruses in transforming skin cells into stem cells that can become any type of cell in the body. From the Nature News story:

“In 2006, Japanese researchers reported a technique for creating cells that have the embryonic ability to turn into almost any cell type in the mammalian body — the now-famous induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. In papers published this week in Nature, another Japanese team says that it has come up with a surprisingly simple method — exposure to stress, including a low pH — that can make cells that are even more malleable than iPS cells, and do it faster and more efficiently.”

Excellent. Ethical stem cell research that avoids using embryos should be celebrated.
But deeper in the story, the ultimate agenda surfaces. These cells–unlike embryonic and IPS cells made with viruses–can be turned into placental cells.
So?
“That could make cloning dramatically easier, says [Teruhiko] Wakayama. Currently, cloning requires extraction of unfertilized eggs, transfer of a donor nucleus into the egg, in vitro cultivation of an embryo and then transfer of the embryo to a surrogate.”
That’s somatic cell nuclear transfer, the process that led to Dolly, and has now successfully created embryos in humans:
“If STAP [Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency] cells can create their own placenta, they could be transferred directly to the surrogate.
“Wakayama is cautious, however, saying that the idea is currently at ‘dream stage.’”.

Revealing that for all the discussion of cures and testing–which scientists certainly seek–I believe human cloning remains the ultimate goal of the sector.
Why? That’s when the real genetic tinkering, transhuman religious recreationism, and other Brave New World fun could begin.
Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s great blog.

Source: NRLC News

Abortionists


 

“How self-righteousness and cold rationalizations blur distinctions between man and monster”



By Dave Andrusko
Abortionists Steven Brigham, Kermit Gosnell, and Timothy Liveright
Abortionists Steven Brigham, Kermit Gosnell, and Timothy Liveright

Over the years we’ve talked multiple times about abortionist Steven Brigham, including Tuesday (“Abortion apologists try to shift blame for notorious abortionists from themselves to pro-lifers”). We write about him because he’s lost his license in multiple states, is accused of maiming who knows how many women, and is Houdini-like in his ability to escape sanctions.
Of course our opposite numbers also care about the women Brigham (and the abortionists who’ve worked for him in four states) are accused of injuring and exploiting. But there is another reason they have written more of late about Brigham, who is fighting yet again to get his suspended New Jersey license reinstated: Kermit Gosnell. His three murder convictions were the worse black eye the abortion industry has suffered in decades. They must distance themselves from the man who operated the “House of Horrors.”
Contrary to what the Planned Parenthoods insist, Gosnell and Brigham, two peas in a pod, are not the only abortionists who are unskilled, untrained, and uncaring. This uncomfortable truth (for the abortion industry) is admitted near the end of Eyal Press’s 10,000-word-long story, “Steven Brigham’s abortion clinics keep being sanctioned for offering substandard care. Why is he still in business?” which appears in the current New Yorker.
As we talked about Tuesday, the first of Press’ self-assigned tasks is to demonstrate that it’s really the fault of pro-lifers that the likes of Brigham and Gosnell exist. Here’s Press’s explanation of how it all came to pass:
“The caricature of clinics as ‘abortion mills’ run by venal profiteers has long been a staple of the anti-abortion movement. As a result, pro-choice activists understood the potential dangers of drawing attention to any facility that might reinforce this stereotype. One clinic director told me, ’We know the anti-choice community will manipulate any story, however minor, to paint the entire abortion-care community with the same brush.’ Politicians could cite such stories as justification for imposing burdensome regulations. Yet clinic owners also knew that some providers saw what they did as a business, not as a social mission. As reputable doctors, hospitals, and medical schools increasingly distanced themselves from abortions, it became more likely that substandard providers would fill the void.”
If I understand her point, pro-lifers’ accusations were self-fulfilling prophecies. Label abortion clinics “abortion mills” and suddenly “substandard providers” will “fill the void” left when the “good people” leave or never get into the trade.
Really? Not to belabor the point, but quacks have been a part of the abortion trade going back to the first days after Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton were handed down. Think about what you have to do in abortion and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it attracts those kinds of people.
And those predators exist today. Look at what self-described “pro-choicers” who at one time worked for Planned Parenthood of Delaware recently said.
Nurse Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich testified that there are some “startling similarities between the situation with Planned Parenthood of Delaware and Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s clinic in Philadelphia.” What were those similarities? “Both operated extremely hazardous abortion clinics and their respective states refused to close them despite repeated warnings,” according to the News Journal. (Emphasis mine)
Another similarity—uncannily like what is you read not just about Gosnell but also in Press’ account about Brigham—is the behavior of abortionist Thomas Liveright. Mitchell-Werbrich told columnist Kristen Powers that she saw him
“’slapping a patient,’ and placing patients on ‘operating tables still wet with the blood from the previous patient.’ He refused to wear sterilized gloves during procedures and would sing ‘hymns about sin to girls during the painful dilation phase of an abortion’ and play ‘Peek-A-Boo’ with patients. She said he ‘rushed abortions’ and allowed ‘sedated patients to wander down [the street] dazed and confused.’”
There’s much more, but let’s go back to Press’s question: why do the likes of Steven Brigham (and Kermit Gosnell and Thomas Liveright and who knows how many others) stay in business?
The initial cover story in Press’ account is, as we wrote Tuesday, that it’s difficult to air dirty laundry in public when the “anti-abortion movement” caricatures clinics “as “’abortion mills’ run by venal profiteers.” In other words, in almost all cases they won’t tell authorities no matter how horribly these guys act for fear of giving “ammunition” to pro-lifers.
But, truth be told, if you read Press carefully, you can divine five reasons that have nothing to do with pro-lifers, all of which reflect badly on pro-abortionists.
#1. The aforementioned cowardice. If you read others stories (especially about how abortion advocates went out of their way not to blow the whistle on Gosnell), you’d think there was a virtual army of “abortion rights advocates” trying to get Brigham out of the abortion trade. There weren’t that many. More common was the response of equally notorious abortionist LeRoy Carhart, who specializes in late, late abortions.
Carhart recalls for Press meeting Brigham at an National Abortion Federation meeting, in the early 1990s
“’He came and asked me if I would train him to do second- and third-trimester abortions.’ After learning that Brigham had limited experience doing first-trimester abortions, Carhart cautioned him against the idea. Privately, he was taken aback: ‘He seemed like a nice person, but I was amazed that somebody would, you know, want to learn how to fly a jumbo jet before he learned how to fly an airplane.’”
If, as even Press admits, the dangers (to the woman) increase the later in pregnancy the baby is aborted, if you really cared about women (as Carhart insists he does), why wouldn’t you move heaven and earth to stop a man who is not even a gynecologist?

#2. It is not pro-life state authorities who turn a blind eye to the Brighams and Gosnells. As we wrote repeatedly in our coverage of Gosnell, the 261-page Grand Jury report was a searing indictment of the Department of Health, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, the Department of State, and fellow doctors, especially those at nearby hospitals who treated Gosnell’s victims.
What Gosnell was doing was not a mystery, not cloaked away in anonymity. There were plenty of people who knew and who could have shut down Gosnell. They chose not to for a host of reasons, including “for political reasons,” to quote the Grand Jury. (That’s a reference to when a pro-abortionist became governor of Pennsylvania.)
Making sure there were no “barriers” to women seeking abortions was not only Job #1, it was the only job.
Read Press’s story and you find example after example after example of Brigham wriggling out of corners, brazenly evading state laws and orders from medical authorities. It is impossible to believe that if they really wanted to, they could not have put Brigham permanently out of business.
On the other hand, Press’s story lets the cat out of the bag. Not long after New York revoked his license in 1994, the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners prepared to render judgment on whether it should revoke Brigham’s license, too.
Brigham, naturally told an administrative-law judge that, well, these things happen in what Press euphemistically calls “advanced-gestation abortions.” Who knows what would have happened if it were Brigham’s word alone, but, Press writes, he lined up
“Michael Policar, a respected gynecologist and a former national spokesperson for Planned Parenthood, [who] testified on Brigham’s behalf. The injuries that the New York board had attributed to negligence, Policar said, could have happened to patients ‘in the best of hands.’ (Policar told me that he had reviewed the medical records for only two patients, and had never vouched for Brigham’s general competence.) Several other physicians offered similar testimony.”
The judge ruled in Brigham’s favor. Press has other stories coming out of Maryland of colossal indifference to women or a resolute inability (unwillingness?) to follow through to keep Brigham and his associates from flimflamming what minimal laws on abortion existed in Maryland.

#3. Brigham could sell ice cubes to Eskimos. Handsome, youthful looking, a former athlete, he oozed charisma and sincerity in his interviews with Press, who admits she was almost taken in.
“Brigham was cordial and ingratiating, and he never raised his voice. He seemed so convinced of the purity of his intentions and the bad faith of his detractors—they were either protesters or competitors, he said—that, while he spoke, it became difficult to imagine otherwise.”
Brigham deflected every criticism of his outrageous behavior, attributing it to those crazy pro-lifers or his greedy competitors. The syllogism goes something like this.

 

Pro-lifers are awful and liars to boot.
Pro-lifers accuse Brigham (and his associates) of treating pregnant women horribly.
Thus Brigham must be innocent, since pro-lifers are liars.

Or, as Press puts it, Brigham would have you believe he “was a dedicated doctor, and the zealotry of the religious right was responsible for his troubles.” Of course, there is not a shred of truth to this bogus evasion.

#4. What else explains why women go to the likes of Brigham (besides those awful pro-lifers and “unnecessary” laws)? Shame. They believe they deserve this because of the “stigma” of abortion.
Yet the middle class professional Press uses to illustrate that it is not just poor women who are exploited by Brigham– while “passionately pro-choice”—is” embarrassed” not by pro-lifers but by the fact that she’d already had an abortion.
“I’m twenty-eight years old, and I can’t figure it out yet?”
Finally

#5. Brigham is invincibly confident, self-assured, a man who never gets rattled. The rationales/justifications/rationalizations he offers Press sound eerily like what Gosnell told reporter Steve Volk after he was convicted. They transform themselves into martyrs to a higher cause, incapable of seeing (or at least admitting) the trail of victims they leave in their wake.
I disagree completely with Volk that Gosnell’s “case is more complicated than most media portrayals allow.’

But he could have been speaking of Brigham when he concluded, “Yet, up close, his story is worse than we knew—a lesson in how self-righteousness and cold rationalizations blur distinctions between man and monster.”

Source: NRLC News

See This Movie


 

“Gimme Shelter” and the art of battling giants



By Dave Andrusko
Vanessa Hudgens as Agnes “Apple” Bailey
Vanessa Hudgens as Agnes “Apple” Bailey

I was wrapping up work yesterday when my wife, Lisa, shot me an email. Did I want to go see “Gimme Shelter” at the local AMC multiplex?

Of course! We’d run Brent Bozell’s laudatory review of Ronald Krauss’s film that stars Vanessa Hudgens as Agnes “Apple” Bailey (see “You’re Right to Choose This Movie”), and I was eager to see if this film the director insists Hollywood didn’t want made could live up to Mr. Bozell’s kudos.
Last night was another bitterly cold end to the kind of day many states have endured (and far worse). I got to the parking lot early and while waiting for Lisa I listened to the audio book of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest work, “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.”
The section I heard was about a teenage Canadian girl who had been abducted while walking home and killed. By the time we walked into the door I was doubly primed: a pro-lifer witnessing an unabashedly pro-life film and someone who had just been reminded how fleeting life can be, how dangerous even life in a “safe” area can be, let alone on the streets. Talk about prophetic.

Now, of course, just because a film has recognizable stars—Hudgens, Brendan Fraser, James Earl Jones, and Rosario Dawson—doesn’t mean the usual media suspects won’t dismiss it as cheesy and preachy and (as the New York Post review put it) “a clunky movie that feels as if it’s underwritten by the Roman Catholic Church.”

Is “Gimme Shelter” as good as Bozell concluded or as off-the-rack as the Post reviewer determined? Let’s see.
Apple Bailey is a sixteen year old living with her junkie mother (played by Rosario Dawson) in a hellhole. As we later learn she’d been taken away as a child and had lived in 12 foster homes before being returned to her mother. When “Gimme Shelter begins,” Apple is cutting her hair and telling herself, “You can do this!” Escape.

Over the violent protestations of her mother, she races out the door. She makes her way to the home of the father she has never seen (Tom played by Brendan Fraser) and his wife Joanna (played by Stephanie Szostak) where she brazenly tells them she just needs a place to stay for a while to get her life together and then she’ll be gone.

The encounter with her rich father and his wife and two young children is as awkward as you expect it to be. An already tenuous situation grows exponentially worse when they find out she is pregnant.
The film’s narrative heart and soul is how Apple overcomes the forces that are pushing her to abort. She is rescued by a Catholic priest (James Earl Jones), is brought to a home for teen mothers based on the real-life experience of Kathy DiFiore, the founder of Several Sources Shelters, where she discovers in Kathy and her housemates the family she has never had.
But what makes “Gimme Shelter” just an awesome film is that it is also a story of forgiveness and redemption. Fraser, as her birth father, was a lout for abandoning her mother and hasn’t changed much in the ensuing years.
His manipulative advice to Apple–after her pregnancy is confirmed and her response–is the movie’s linchpin:
“It’s time you turn the page on this, move forward, and before you know it; you will have forgotten that it ever happened.” In a word, abort.
Not missing the irony, Apple responds, “Turn the page, like you did with me.”
That memory of abandonment—and the ultrasounds photos of her baby that she’d been given and kept in her shoe—provide her with the moral resources to run out of the abortion clinic at the last possible minute. She is not going to abandon her baby, as Joanna had abandoned Apple to the abortion clinic’s tender mercies.
But just as Apple’s hard shell of survival mechanisms soften as she experiences the love of the young women at the shelter, so, too, does Tom as he gets to know his daughter. Apple reads the one correspondence she’d ever had from her father and it is a familiar story: young, wasn’t ready to be father, didn’t want to disappoint his family.
By the end of the film, her father lovingly embraces Apple’s new baby, whom she has appropriately named “Hope.” The reason I have always loved Fraser as an actor is that his expressive face shows not just pain, but pain that is the expression of hurt deep in the soul.
His character knows how horribly he failed Apple and Apple’s mother. He is trying to do his best to make up for his act of cowardice 17 years before.

 

Jones as Fr. McCarthy and Ann Dowd as Kathy DiFiore avoid the trap of coming off as plaster saints. They are deeply devout and dedicated to helping these young women and their babies, but their responses a couple of times almost make you cringe. Faced with a defiant and belligerent Apple, those are the kind of responses I suspect you and I might make.

Likewise the young women in the shelter (my wife tells me some of the actresses actually were clients at a shelter) have the baggage that comes with living disorganized lives, and at least one deeply resents having to help Kathy raise money for the shelter. In a “cheesy” “preachy” movie, everyone would be flawless, running over with gratitude for a warm bed and a hot meal, and incapable of saying anything problematic.

Krauss told Anne Morse that he got the idea for the film a few years ago while visiting his brother.
“One of DiFiore’s shelters was about a mile from his brother’s house, and he decided to pay it a visit,” Morse wrote. “’I knocked on the door and introduced myself, and saw what was going on. I actually borrowed Kathy’s video camera and started interviewing the girls.’ Krauss visited again and again, and one day he encountered a young girl ‘who had walked about 25 miles to get there in freezing weather with no jacket. And she was three months pregnant.’”

Hudgens prepared for the role, Keith Fournier notes, by “living in crisis pregnancy shelters, spending time with the heroic mothers who overcame great odds to choose the life of their children.” Fraser quietly donated his salary to the shelter.

Which brings me full circle back to the audio book. Shelters like Kathy DiFiore’s not only save the lives of countless babies, they have rescued young women and given them a chance against all odds. After she ran away from her mother, Apple was reduced to eating food she’d snatched out of garbage containers and sleeping in cars whose owners had left them unlocked. Without the love and assistance of Fr. McCarthy and Kathy DiFiore, it’s not difficult to guess her fate.

There were only a handful of people at the theatre last night to watch “Gimme Shelter”; my guess is, given the weather, none of the 18 films showing had more than a few dozen patrons.
But the symbolism was hard to miss. In a cold, hard world, where unmarried pregnant teens come under siege to abort, it is that saving remnant who reaches out to them that will save both them and their little ones.

Source: NRLC News

Thursday, January 30, 2014

New York and Abortion

 

New York State Assembly Passes Abortion-Expansion Legislation


Pro-abortion New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
Pro-abortion New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
On Monday the New York State Assembly passed the ‘Women’s Equality Act,’ once again sending the legislation to the New York State Senate.

Last year, despite support in both the Assembly and the Senate for nine of the ten points, the Assembly held the nine points hostage in favor of the abortion-expanding tenth point.
“There is nothing empowering to women about bringing abortion-on-demand up to the moment of birth to New York,” said Lori Kehoe, Executive Director of New York State Right to Life. “In a day and age when females can be killed in utero simply for the crime of not being male, it is a mockery of what our feminist foremothers stood for to try and force this on New Yorkers. Women’s rights must begin in the womb, or women have no rights at all.”

The tenth point of the Women’s Equality Act, the point of contention between the Assembly and the Senate, would expand access to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy for essentially any reason, would allow non-doctors to perform these surgical procedures, and provides no conscience protections for medical professionals opposed to taking human life.
Throughout the second trimester, late abortions can be completed by dismembering the developed unborn child, even when they can feel pain, pulling the baby out piece by piece until the mother’s uterus is empty. After the abortion, the abortionist must reassemble the child’s body to ensure nothing has been left inside the child’s mother.

In abortions that take place later in pregnancy, which would be legalized in New York by the abortion-expanding Women’s Equality Act, often babies are killed by sliding a needle filled with a chemical agent, such as digoxin, into the beating heart, before being delivered.
“Like the majority of New Yorkers, we oppose expanding abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy. We stand strong in supporting the right of every individual to have that first right, the right to life,” added Kehoe. “New York’s daughters deserve better than abortion.”

Source: NRLC News

State Run Media


 

Anderson Cooper interviews Marlise Munoz’s family, plight of preborn child ignored

Wednesday night, the husband and mother of the late Marlise Munoz gave CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° an exclusive interview chronicling the events that led up to Marlise’s ultimate death, along with that of her pre-born daughter, earlier this week.

The interview primarily vilifies the Texas law that required Marlise to be kept on life support until her baby, whom Marlise was still gestating in her “brain dead” state, had reached viability, and Cooper focused little on the fact that Marlise had been pregnant.

Below is an excerpt of the transcript.
COOPER:  So the doctors initially didn’t even — didn’t know about this law.

MUNOZ:  No.  Actually, we were called back into her room in ICU.  And the doctor told us about this.  And of course, we’re like no, we want to disconnect her.  And his words were, we were asking for an explanation.  His words, he’s like I’m sorry, I just found out about this law five minutes before you did.  I’ve been told to notify you of it.

COOPER:  When they told you this, I mean, this is the worst thing that could possibly happen to you.  You’re in this horrific situation.  And you’ve made this difficult decision based on conversations that you’ve had with your wife, with your daughter in the past.  What goes through your head when a doctor says we’re not going to follow your wishes?

MACHADO:  For me, I thought there must have been a miscommunication of some way.  We said no, no, no, no, that’s not what she wanted.  She wanted never to be on life support.  And that’s when they’re saying, well, but she’s pregnant, and then it went from there.  So we knew we weren’t going to let this rest.  Because it wasn’t right.  It was not honoring her wishes.

COOPER:  I think a lot of people think, well, maybe if you had had something in writing, that would have made a difference, if she had written down if there was an advanced directive or something.  But under this Texas law, even if it’s in writing, it gets overridden.

MACHADO:  Exactly.  Exactly.

MUNOZ:  She could have been detailed everything exactly how this happened, detailed it, and it wouldn’t have mattered.

COOPER:  There are some families in that situation who think, well, maybe she can come back from this.  Maybe a miracle can happen.

MUNOZ:  I mean, we still held the hope.  I mean, I did.  I can say I did.  But for me, it was, at least for me, I couldn’t turn off the knowledge that I know of what was going on.  And even though I did want to keep the hope — and you — it’s my wife.  I’d do anything.  I, many a nights that I asked God to take me instead.  But you can’t turn off that knowledge that you know how bad it was.  And like I said, I promised her.  I told her.  I will honor your wishes.  For me and her dad, that was the hardest.  Because we looked her in the eye and told her.  And for the state of Texas to not let us do that was hard.  You want to keep your word to your loved one.

The abortion lobby took a keen interest in the case, and NARAL Pro-Choice America even created a petition asking Attorney General Greg Abbott to address the purported discrepancy between Marlise’s end-of-life wishes as her husband recounted them, and the Texas law that protects the children of pregnant women who are pronounced “brain dead” until they are viable and can be given a chance at life outside the womb (this normally takes place around 24 weeks).

Marlise’s wishes were not documented on paper, and whether or not she would have wanted to be disconnected from her ventilator knowing that it would have prematurely ended her child’s life is unclear. (Brain death as “death” is a development of the early 1980s, and is highly-controversial because its diagnosis can, legally, vary greatly between physicians and hospitals.)

Source: LiveAction News

A Movie to See



The life affirming film ‘Gimme Shelter’ is a must-see tear-jerker

Gimme Shelter
On Saturday I went to see the new movie Gimme Shelter. I heard a positive radio review that highlighted the film’s life-affirming perspective. I knew the movie was based on a true story of a pregnant homeless teen who fought to save the life of her child. The main character in the film, Apple, played by High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens, leaves her drug-addicted mother on a journey to find her biological father, Tom Fitzpatrick, played by Brenden Fraser.

Apple’s attempts at reconciling with her father seemingly fail after he discovers she’s pregnant. She ends up in a troubling situation that leads to a meeting with a priest played by James Earl Jones. The priest ends up offering Apple hope by bringing her to a shelter for teen moms.
Although some critics accused the movie of being preachy, the actors are not openly very religious or pro-life. Hudgens took the role because she wanted to prove she could act in a serious part. She identified with Apple’s story of transformation and spent two weeks living in a Several Sources Shelter in New Jersey to better relate to her character.

I found the movie heartfelt, raw, and truly compelling. It was worth much more than the $8 I spent for a matinee ticket. I thought several things in this film were rare compared to most of what comes out of Hollywood these days.

Positive portrayal of a pro-life shelter
The home that Apple stayed in was based on the real-life Several Sources Shelter, founded by Kathy DiFiore. Years ago, Kathy opened her home to a woman and her baby. The need was so great that after a time, she left the corporate world and opened up four residential shelters in New Jersey. Filmaker and director Ron Krauss portrays the shelter as a loving home where the girls are a family. Kathy’s character is seen as merciful, protective, and devoted to her faith. It’s a welcome change of pace to see a major movie give a dignified and honest picture of pro-life work and a women’s shelter.

Sincere religious characters
It’s not easy to represent people of faith in a secular film, but Gimme Shelter does it well. The priest is tenderhearted and concerned for Apples safety. In one scene, Apple sits with him in a hospital chapel room and reads aloud Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord.” According to an interview with National Review, James Earl Jones, who played Father Frank McCarthy, actually donated his film’s salary to the Several Sources Shelter. Jones studied to be a priest in his youth, which may explain his willingness to act in this role.

Realistic and relatable circumstances
The film touches on the issues of homelessness, teen pregnancy, drug addiction, abandonment, fatherlessness, poverty, and abortion. Although people in Hollywood sought to prevent it from coming and crucified it afterwards, the story will connect with people. A number of reviews called the film “unrealistic,” but director Krauss decided to make it after meeting a teen mom who walked over 25 miles in a snowstorm just to reach the shelter. When she made it and saw an available bed for her, she hugged Krauss. If that scene was in the film, it might have been attacked as being “unrealistic” as well, but it really happened. In the same sense, the things Apple deals with are really happening to young women throughout our country. Some, like Apple, will and do try everything they can to save themselves and the lives of their children.

In summary, Gimme Shelter is a must-see film. Pro-lifers should support this movie and invite others to see compassion displayed on the big screen. Vanessa Hudgens said making this movie deepened her own desire to become a mom.

“Being a mother is something that us women have been born into existence to do. I’ve always felt I’ve had maternal instincts as all females do. It’s something that’s ingrained inside of you ever since you’re young and playing with Barbies. [Motherhood] is such a miracle and so beautiful. I’ve always thought that.”

She goes on to tell the Mercury entertainment, “The scenes with my baby were the best times ever. That precious little face! There’s nothing more magical in the world than seeing a human being in the tiniest package possible.”
I agree with Vanessa and thank her, director Ron Krauss, and the cast for making this film. Bigger thanks to Kathy DiFore and her life-saving work that inspired it.

Source: LiveAction News

Obama and the Unborn

 

Obama in SOTU: We believe in ‘dignity and equality of every human being’

In his annual State of the Union address last night, Obama made a statement about human life that he would be hard-pressed to defend if the pre-born could speak loudly enough to challenge him on it:
We believe in the inherent dignity and equality of every human being regardless of race or religion, creed or sexual orientation.
Skip to 57:32 to see his comment here.
Unborn human embryo, 7 weeks after conception
Unborn human embryo, 7 weeks after conception.

In reality, the fact is that when a person does not stand for the dignity and equality of the unborn, he cannot consistently stand for the dignity and equality of everyone else. Obama doesn’t stand for who those children are, or what they will become if they are allowed to be born.
Until a child has bypassed all of the threats with which he is faced prior to birth — no thanks to Obama’s vehemently anti-life American policies — Obama does not recognize its “inherent dignity and equality.” If dignity and equality were “inherent” to “all human beings,” as he claims, then they exist indivisible from the human being from the moment it becomes a human being (which, science tells us, is at the moment of fertilization).

But, even the statement that “being born” is a prior requirement to Obama assigning dignity and equality must be qualified: even being born alive isn’t enough for Obama to respect a human being’s dignity. He made this clear when he voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act four times before taking office.

He makes this clear when he wishes God’s blessing upon Planned Parenthood, an organization that staunchly defends its practice of allowing born-alive children to die helpless on their tables after failed abortions.
When Obama’s supposed belief in the inherent dignity and equality of humans actually begins, in his mind, is a mystery; but one thing is for certain: the part about it applying to “every human being” is simply a lie.

Source: LiveAction News

Hardness of Heart


 

Salon writer believes abortion is a human sacrifice and she’s okay with that

Pregnant woman
We hear about them quite often in the news – the mothers who sacrificed themselves for their child. The women who put their own well-being aside and do whatever it took to save their child. For example: A mother who drown after saving her three young children from a river. The mother who protected her son with her life in an earthquake by using her body as a shield. The mother who threw herself in front of an oncoming car to save her child and lost her own life. And the mother who gave her life to cancer rather than subject her unborn daughter to harmful medications. We call these women brave. We call them selfless. We call them heroines. We say they know the true meaning of motherhood.

So what do we say than of mothers like Mary Elizabeth Williams who believe that fetuses are living human beings, that the fetuses they have carried or will carry are their living babies, but in the same breath announce that those children’s lives are not as valuable as their own? Are they brave? Are they selfless? Do they know the true meaning of motherhood? Williams, in a piece for Salon writes:
I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.

If life indeed begins at conception and that is no longer the argument surrounding abortion, then does the argument become: When does love begin? Does love begin with that first positive pregnancy test? Does love begin only when a pregnancy is planned? Does love begin when the child is born? Or does love begin when the child is able to return a smile? When do we love someone enough to give value to their lives, value above our own?

Or is the argument now: When do our lives gain value? Are we of value when our mother sees us on the ultrasound image of the first time? Are we of value when we first smile? First speak? Graduate from high school? Earn a master’s degree? Or maybe when someone wants to marry us? And at one point is our life valuable enough to someone that we are deemed worthy of life?
Williams continues:
All life is not equal. […] a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.
First of all, that “entity” is her own child. And because her child is still in her womb and is therefore at her mercy, should a woman have the right to kill that child? Could the same apply to a newborn who is at the complete mercy of her mother? Or a young child who lives in a coma after an accident? Does the parent, or anyone, have the right to end a life because of autonomy or lack thereof? If your grown child could no longer physically care for herself, would you kill her?
Williams writes that we make choices about life all the time. We decide if a criminal should live or die. We remove people from life support. She reminds us that we are often at war. These are true. But that doesn’t make them right. For the truly pro-life, the death penalty is just as wrong as abortion. And for the truly pro-life, starving an ill person such as Terri Schiavo to death is murder. And for the truly pro-life, war is not the answer. Abortion isn’t the only focus of truly pro-life people. Just because a person, such as a prisoner, or a person in a coma, or an unborn child is not in control of their own lives does not mean we are therefore allowed to treat them however we want. We are not able to abuse them by taking drugs while pregnant or starving a prisoner or by chaining up a person who has suffered brain damage. So why are we able to kill them? If it is wrong to abuse them, why is it not wrong to kill them?
Williams goes on to write this gem:
If by some random fluke I learned today I was pregnant, you bet your ass I’d have an abortion. I’d have the World’s Greatest Abortion.
Just let it sink in: The World’s Greatest Abortion. I can only imagine what that would entail: extra suction to make sure the baby is totally dismembered and in the most pain possible?  Two needles into the belly to make certain that the baby’s heart stops super-fast? Twice as much saline to burn that baby beyond recognition? An explosion of confetti when the technician has accounted for all ten fingers and ten toes?
Everything that Williams says is heartbreakingly shocking to me as a mother and as a pro-life human being. She finishes up her post with this:
[Abortion] saves lives not just in the most medically literal way, but in the roads that women who have choice then get to go down, in the possibilities for them and for their families. And I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time — even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.
Do you agree? If indeed we can all agree that fetuses are human life, are we prepared to say that certain lives are worth sacrificing for our own personal benefit? Are we prepared to say as a country, that our freedoms don’t apply to all people, only a select few?
Are we prepared to allow pro-choice businesses and activists, struggling after two years of abortion restricting laws, to erase the exact reasons the United States of America was even created in the first place? Are we prepared to once again legalize slavery? Are we prepared to legalize human sacrifices? Because if you believe that a certain single human life is worth killing for any reason, than you believe all human life is worth killing – yours, your child’s, your grandchild’s. For any reason. At any time.

Source: LiveAction News

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Cosmo

  • end abortion 2
 

Cosmo special: ‘How abortion changed our relationship’

Looks like Cosmo is running out of sex tips – and the end result isn’t pretty.
As a “Special Report” for February’s issue, Cosmopolitan published Liz Welch’s piece entitled, “Our Choice: How Abortion Changed Our Relationship.” Welch introduced her article, which profiled couples who chose abortion, by speculating, “Abortion can test a relationship, cement it, or end it as Cosmopolitan discovered in speaking to the four couples here.”

Cosmopolitan, a “lifestylist for millions of fun, fearless females who want to be the best they can be in every area of their lives,” boasts more than three million subscribers.
“Ending a pregnancy,” Welch acknowledged, “is always a difficult decision. But these women didn’t make it on their own.” She explained, “Peek behind the doors of your local women’s health clinic and you might see something surprising: men.” “Surprising,” because, well, abortion mills like Planned Parenthood ooze with “between a woman and her doctor” rhetoric, not to mention the “Not in Her Shoes” campaign.

Speaking of Planned Parenthood, Welch lavishly quoted its president, Cecile Richards. Richards gushed, “Men are much more involved in decisions involving birth control and pregnancy as well as termination these days.” As an introduction to Welch’s piece, she praised, “The more people tell their personal stories the better. It gets these conversations out of the political realm and into people’s real lives.”
Welch delved into these “real lives” by dividing the couples into four stories:
  • “We knew we weren’t ready for a baby.”
  • “It changed things so much that we split up.”
  • “We decided to get serious after the abortion.”
  • “It was the humane thing . . . and it devastated us.”
In the personal stories, Welch left footprints by highlighting the most vital quotes from the couples:
  • 24-year-old Frisco: “I told Cindy [his girlfriend] I would support her whatever decision she made, including being there for her and the child if she wanted to keep it.”
  • 23-year-old Cindy: “I want to be a mom one day. And I know it will be the right time when the idea of getting pregnant gets me excited.”
  • 24-year-old Kristina on her abortion at Planned Parenthood, “I appreciated how normal they made everything. Goonies played in the waiting room, and Beyonce was on the stereo during surgery.” 
  • 23-year-old Brittany on choosing abortion: “I called him to say I was pregnant. We both cried, but then I said, ‘This is too emotional. I have to be logical.’”
  • Brittany: “In the room, the doctor asked, ‘How many weeks along is she?’ A nurse replied, ‘Diez,’ just as the anesthesia needle stuck into my arm.”
But it was at the end of her article that Welch completely betrayed her take on life and choice. She placed a blurb for post-abortion hotline urging, “call the Exhale After-Abortion Talk Line for agenda-free counseling,” in order to connect to a “pro-voice” community (hmm, does that rhyme with anything?).
 
This is “agenda-free,” according to Cosmo:
List of Exhale Sponsors:
Compton Foundation
Mary Wohlford Foundation
The California Wellness Foundation
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
The Ford Foundation
The Moriah Fund
The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Perhaps this is Cosmos’ sordid way of taking responsibility for its content the rest of the year. When your fare is dedicated to telling women how much and how good their sex should be – with a  “Holiday Sextacular” piece, hyping strip clubs to women, and labeling waiting until a second date for sex as “100% outdated” – you should prepare them for possible consequences, and the feminist-left's approved solutions to them.
Reprinted with permission from NewsBusters

Source: LifeAction News

Baby Nicole

 

Eric Munoz names his deceased daughter Nicole

FORT WORTH, TX, January 28, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – He went to court to see that the life support systems keeping her alive would be disconnected. Now, Erick Munoz has given his unborn daughter a name before burying her.

"They think it was a female," he told the Associated Press of the 23-week-old child, whose death became assured after Munoz secured a judge's order ending hospital care for his pregnant wife last Friday.
Erick and Marlise Munoz holding baby Mateo.
Erick and Marlise Munoz holding baby Mateo.
He named the baby girl Nicole, his wife Marlise's middle name. The first child, Mateo, is about a year-and-a-half old.

Munoz found his 33-year-old wife, who was 14 weeks pregnant, collapsed in their home on November 26. Shortly after being admitted to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, she was declared “brain dead,” which is the definition of legal death in the state of Texas.
But, recognizing the humanity of the unborn child, Texas law provides that a pregnant woman's body will be kept alive until her baby can be delivered.
Munoz sued on January 14, saying that his wife did not wish to be kept alive by artificial means.
"Since my wife's death on Nov. 26, 2013, I have had to endure the pain of watching my wife's dead body be treated as if she were alive,” he said in a court filing.
Judge R.H. Wallace Jr. ruled on Friday that the mother was dead, her unborn daughter was abnormal and not viable, and under Supreme Court rulings women had the right to end pregnancies if they wished.

There was no report that Marlise wished to end her child's life, nor had she left any written directive about end-of-life-care.

However, the hospital removed Marlie Munoz from life support at 11:30 Sunday morning.
The case riveted the attention of the nation's pro-life movement, both for the life of the child and the mother. In addition to exposing potential difficulties with the state's laws, the Munoz case has shown many the inexact nature of pronouncing a human being “brain dead.”
Click "like" if you want to end abortion!
Wendy Davis
Wendy Davis
The subject became a subject of discussion in last night's debate between four Republican hopefuls running for lieutenant governor of Texas, all of whom agreed the hospital should have given Nicole Munoz a chance to live.
Incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said, “I think we need to clarify the law on this and permit this baby to be born.” State Senator Dan Patrick said, “We are born in the image of God, and whenever we have the opportunity to preserve life, we should do that. That's our duty, as Christians. That's our duty, I believe, as legislators." Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said, “We need to make certain that as a society we are protecting life.” Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson said the law needs to change in 2015.

Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is seeking the governor's office being vacated by Rick Perry, said in a statement that he would “continue to work” to "protect both families and human life.”
His likely Democratic rival, Wendy Davis – who represents Fort Worth in the state Senate – dissented from the Republican consensus. The fate of both Marlise and Nicole Munoz "should be made by Mrs. Munoz's family, in consultation with her doctors," she said in a statement.
The position is more in line with her record as a defender of abortion, despite her attempt to moderate her image in November when she told an audience, “I am pro-life.”

SourceLifeSite News

Abortion Funding


Another Obama Promise Broken, Affordable Care Act Massively Funds Abortion, Violates Hyde Amendment



Editor’s note. The following are excerpts of remarks made today on the floor of the House of Representatives by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) about H.R.7, No Taxpayer Funding Act.
Cong. Chris Smith (R-NJ)
Cong. Chris Smith (R-NJ)

HR 7 seeks to accomplish three important goals:
1. Make the Hyde Amendment and other current abortion funding prohibitions permanent;
2. Ensure that the Affordable Care Act faithfully conforms with the Hyde Amendment as promised by the President;
3. Provide full disclosure, transparency and the prominent display of the extent to which any health insurance plan on the exchange funds abortion.
Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States stood just 10 feet from where I stand in September 2009 and told a joint session of Congress that “under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion.”
On March 24, 2010, President Obama issued an executive order that said the Affordable Care Act “maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to newly created health insurance exchanges.”
We now know that’s not true at all. The ACA does not extend Hyde Amendment restrictions to the newly created health insurance exchanges.

As my colleagues will recall, the Hyde Amendment has two parts. It prohibits direct funding for abortion and bans funding for any insurance coverage that includes abortion except in the cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.

Under the Affordable Care Act, massive amounts of public funds in the form of tax credits – $796 billion in direct spending over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) – will pay for insurance plans, many, perhaps most of which will include elective abortion. That massively violates the Hyde Amendment.
We have learned that every single Obamacare plan in Connecticut and Rhode Island includes abortion on demand.

In my own state of New Jersey, my staff and I have learned after a great deal of work that of the 31 plans offered in the state, at least 14 plans subsidize abortion on demand. Yet none of the plans make this information available to the consumer shopping online. This is the case in state after state.
To further understand how the ACA expands public funding for abortion, my colleagues don’t have to look any further than the DC Health Link—our own portal for health insurance. Of the 112 health insurance plans available to members of congress and staff only nine exclude elective abortion. 103 plans—over 90%–subsidize abortion on demand. About 75% of our insurance premiums are subsidized by the taxpayer so the taxpayer is clearly being compelled to subsidize elective abortions.
Mr. Speaker, since some health insurance plans offered on the exchange have already been purchased, HR7—just like the Hyde Amendment—makes the elimination of public funding for abortion except in the cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, applicable in the ACA next year—beginning on January 1, 2015, at the start of a new contract year.
So in the meantime, in order to ensure robust transparency, HR7 adds a major new provision requiring full disclosure and prominent display of “the extent of coverage” of abortion, if any, and separate disclosure of any abortion surcharge.

Obamacare requires premium payers to be assessed a separate abortion surcharge every month to pay for abortions. We have learned that consumers may never know they are paying the surcharge, despite assurances to the contrary when the ACA was passed.
In 2009, Senator Ben Nelson said
“if you are receiving Federal assistance to buy insurance, and if that plan has any abortion coverage, the insurance company must bill you separately, and you must pay separately from your own personal funds–perhaps a credit card transaction, your separate personal check, or automatic withdrawal from your bank account–for that abortion coverage. Now, let me say that again. You have to write two checks: one for the basic policy and one for the additional coverage for abortion.”
However, research published by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) indicates that insurance carriers are not actually billing the surcharge separately at all. In fact, Gretchen Borchelt, director of state reproductive health policy at the National Women’s Law Center, told the Huffington Post that “we used to talk about it as being two checks that the consumer would have to write because of the segregation requirements, but that’s not the way it’s being implemented.”

Finally, Mr. Speaker, because abortion brutally dismembers, decapitates or chemically poisons an unborn child to death, Americans have consistently demanded that public funds not pay for abortion.
A huge majority—well over 60%–according to most polls show that women and men in this country don’t want to be complicit in abortion by subsidizing it. A December 2009 Quinnipiac poll found 72% opposed to “allowing abortions to be paid for by public funds under a health reform bill.”
Another poll by International Communications Research asked “If the choice were up to you, would you want your own insurance policy to include abortion?” 69% of women said no!
Mr. Speaker, that’s because an ever growing number of people recognize that abortion isn’t health care—it kills babies and harms women.

We live in an age of ultrasound imaging—the ultimate window to the womb and the child who resides there. We are in the midst of a fetal health care revolution, an explosion of benign interventions designed to diagnose, treat and cure the precious lives of these youngest patients.
HR 7 will help save lives and will reduce abortions.

The Judiciary Committee Report accompanying HR 7 suggests that the Hyde Amendment has saved over a million children because 1 in 4 women who would have procured an abortion don’t go through with it if public funding isn’t available.

HR 7 will reduce abortions. HR 7 will help save lives.

Source: NRLC News

Sad Story


 

John Andrew Welden sentenced, leaving behind a dead unborn baby, a devastated mother, and two hurting families



By Dave Andrusko
Remee Jo Lee, after John Andrew Welden was sentenced to 13 years and eight months.
Remee Jo Lee, after John Andrew Welden was sentenced to 13 years and eight months.

NRL News Today has covered the case of John Andrew Welden, its many twists and turns, all the way back to last May when he was indicted on a federal charge that he murdered his own unborn child.
As our readers know, last September Welden cut a deal to avoid a murder charge made possible by the federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act– legislation that was instigated by NRLC and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2004. If he’d been convicted on that charge, Welden faced a mandatory life sentence.

Then, at the last possible moment, the judge decided he needed to address the possibility (however slight) that the misoprostol (Cytotec) Welden had tricked Remee Jo Lee into taking had not caused her to lose her 6-7 week old unborn baby.
As we reported, after listening to experts for two days, U.S. District Judge Richard A. Lazzara came to the only conclusion he could have. That the one 200 microgram dose of Cytotec did exactly what Welden intended it to: aborted Lee’s baby boy.
Yesterday Judge Lazzara sentenced the 28-year-old Welden to 13 years and eight months on charges of product tampering and conspiracy to commit mail fraud. That was the sentence originally agreed to by prosecutors and defense attorney Todd Foster.

Most of the stories I read about Monday’s sentencing were matter of fact or snide (Welden quoted the Bible, for example, Jeremiah 29:11, to be specific).
Tampa Bay Times reporter Patty Ryan wrote an entirely different story and included the statements of both Ms. Lee and Welden at the end. Be sure to take five minutes and read her extraordinary account at www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/john-andrew-welden-faces-sentencing-in-tampa-abortion-pill-case/2162858.
You read stories about boyfriends behaving horrifically towards their pregnant girlfriends, up to and including murdering them. We’ve run many stories about jerks who have connived their girlfriends into taking abortion-inducing drugs. Tragically, the availability of drugs that act as abortifacients makes this probably a fairly routine occurrence about which we only occasionally hear.
What Ms. Ryan accomplishes is to bring a human face to this tragedy, to show us the ripple effects of this abortion.
I will leave it to the reader to judge how sincere Welden’s apology was. For what it’s worth, he told the court that he accepted full responsibility for his actions and asked for forgiveness.
Ryan wrote
“His voice sounded beaten and sorrowful.
“Hers sounded hurt and angry.”
Lee was not in a forgiving mood.

 

“Everybody wants to tell you what to do,” she told Judge Lazzara. “The only thing I want you to do is show Andrew the same amount of mercy he showed me during my pregnancy.”
I remember the first time she spoke publicly–on CNN’s New Day program (see “I Just Wanted My Pregnancy”: Women duped into aborting her baby gives first interview to CNN’s “New Day”). She said,
“Nothing else matters in the world to me. Everything I thought was important before this took a really big change when this blessing came into my life. …There’s no words for the horror I wake up to every day, that this is my reality. There’s no escaping it, there’s no turning it off.”
And it was the depths of Ms. Lee’s loss of the baby she had already named Memphis that Ryan conveyed in her account. I don’t to lose the power of the narrative, so I’m going to offer this extended quote. Ryan wrote

Welden may have a dismal future, she said, but Memphis has no future.
“He hurt me really badly,” she testified. “More so than anyone else in this entire world. He took away the most precious thing I could have ever had and that was my baby, our baby.”
She felt death inside of her, she said.
At one point, her remarks turned into a sort of eulogy for the baby she didn’t get to have.
Memphis, she said, filled her every breath with meaning.
Memphis taught her the importance of family.
Memphis taught her how strong she was.
Memphis taught her about self-respect.
“I never want to forget Memphis. I loved being pregnant. I wish that Memphis were here. I need him so much. But he is here. He’s always in my heart. He’s with my family and I think he’s here, he’s what’s brought us all together.” 

There was hurt everywhere in the courtroom. Being the dad of an adult son myself, I was especially moved by what Welden’s dad, Dr. Stephen Welden, said to the judge. Ryan reports that Dr. Welden wondered aloud if he should have done something differently with his son.
“If there is such a thing and I didn’t do it,” he said, voice dissolving into a sob, “then I owe everybody an apology.”

[1] Welden told Ms. Lee that his physician father said that she had an infection and he was bringing her antibiotics. After scratched identifying markings off the Cytotec pills, Welden then put the fraudulent label on the empty pill bottle and put the altered Cytotec pills inside. Welden “also affixed a second label to the bottle reading, ‘Amoxicillin: 125mg oral tablet,’ a common antibiotic,” according to reporter Elaine Silvestrini.

Source:NRLC News

Tax Payer Funding


 

National Right to Life Applauds U.S. House Vote to End Abortion Subsidies Under Obamacare and Enact Permanent, Government-Wide Hyde Amendment



2013-nrlc-logoWASHINGTON – The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) today commended the 227 members of the U.S. House of Representatives who voted to pass the landmark No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (H.R. 7), but directed sharp criticism at the 188 House members who voted against the bill, and at President Obama, whose White House issued a veto threat.

At the time Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, an array of long-established laws, including the Hyde Amendment, had created a nearly uniform policy that federal programs did not pay for abortion or subsidize health plans that included coverage of abortion, with narrow exceptions. However, key provisions of the 2010 Obamacare health law sharply departed from that longstanding policy. Among other objectionable provisions, the Obamacare law authorized massive federal tax subsidies to assist many millions of Americans to purchase private health plans that will cover abortion on demand.

Some Obamacare defenders originally insisted that the new premium-subsidy program was not really “federal funding” of abortion because a “separate payment” would be required to cover the costs of the abortion coverage, which NRLC dismissed as a mere “bookkeeping gimmick.” The debate over the significance of the “separate payment” has been rendered rather academic because the Obama Administration is ignoring the two-payment requirement – a development that few journalists or “factcheckers” have taken note of, despite the previous credence given to the “two-payment” gimmick. See “Bait-and-Switch: The Obama Administration’s Flouting of Key Part of Nelson ‘Deal’ on ObamaCare,” http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/12/bait-and-switch-the-obama-adminstrations-flouting-of-key-part-of-nelson-deal-on-obamacare/.

H.R. 7, sponsored by Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Dan Lipinski (D-Il.), would codify the principles of the Hyde Amendment on a permanent, government-wide basis, applicable to both longstanding federal health programs and to the new programs created by Obamacare. Under the bill, health plans that cover elective abortions would not qualify for federal subsidies, although such plans could still be sold to those who wish to purchase them with personal funds.
On today’s vote on passage, the bill was supported by 221 Republicans and six Democrats. It was opposed by one Republican and 187 Democrats, many of whom echoed attacks on the bill found in a veto threat issued by the White House.

“The White House veto threat demonstrates yet again that President Obama is engaging in establishing massive federal subsidies for abortion on demand, notwithstanding his evasions and denials,” said National Right to Life President Carol Tobias. “The 188 House members who voted against the bill will be firmly marked as supporters of federal funding for elective abortion.”

Further details on specific components of H.R. 7 are found in NRLC’s January 24 letter to the House of Representatives (http://www.nrlc.org/uploads/ahc/NRLCToHouseHR7.pdf). More extensive documentation on the abortion-expanding provisions of Obamacare, and the overall history of limitations on federal subsidies for abortion, are found in NRLC’s congressional testimony at http://www.nrlc.org/uploads/ahc/ProtectLifeActDouglasJohnsonTestimony.pdf.

Founded in 1968, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of 50 state right-to-life affiliates and more than 3,000 local chapters, is the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots pro-life organization. Recognized as the flagship of the pro-life movement, NRLC works through legislation and education to protect innocent human life from abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide and euthanasia

Source: NRLC News

Abortion Funding


 

Pro-abortion President Obama threatens to veto H.R. 7



By Dave Andrusko
President Barack Obama Photo credit: AP
President Barack Obama
Photo credit: AP
Hmmm, let’s see. Sun rises in the east; winter colder than summer; Washington, DC is closer to Baltimore, Maryland than to Hong Kong—certainties whose givenness is rivaled only by the sure knowledge that President Obama would threaten to veto H. R. 7—the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act set to be voted on in the House of Representatives today.
But, a friend of the President might respond, there is no need for H.R. 7! Didn’t Mr. Obama, going all the way back to March 2010, assure the American people that “The Act [ObamaCare] maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to the newly created health insurance exchanges”?

Yup, he did. But, as Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) pointed out, this is flatly not true. Wasn’t true nearly four years ago and is even more demonstrable false today.

The President and his allies in the House and Senate want the d
iscussion to veer off onto number of rabbit trails by insisting that H.R. 7 does things that it plainly does not. We focus on what the legislation actually does.

 

HR. 7 would codify the principles of the Hyde Amendment on a permanent, government-wide basis, with respect both to longstanding federal health programs and to the new programs created by the Obamacare law.
A lot is at stake. As NRLC wrote in a letter to the House, “A Member’s vote on H.R. 7 will essentially define his or her position, for or against federal funding of abortion, for the foreseeable future.”
NRL News Today will post a story later this afternoon after the House vote

Source: NRLC News