Thursday, December 31, 2015

Flawed Study


 

Flawed UCSF Study Claims Aborting Women are More Positive About their Future

By Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., NRL Director of Education & Research
bmc_wmnhlt_journcoverThere’s a new study out there claiming to uncovered evidence that having an abortion enables women to have what the Huffington Post describes as “more positive views on life”(12/15/15). Really?
Here’s a quick summary of just some of the problems with the study. This study isn’t a random sample of women, or even aborting women. The measures it uses are somewhat amorphous and ambiguous.
Moreover, for women who did abort, the study tells us very little about their long-term reactions. It doesn’t demonstrate that aborting women were better off than their non-aborting counterparts. And as so typical of these studies, it doesn’t even show what the authors and their media allies want you to believe it shows!
And as we prepare to critique this latest study, recall an earlier NRL News Today analysis which found that within a week more than a third of those women who were “denied” their abortion were unwilling to say that having an abortion would have been a right decision.
What the study studied
The study, “The effect of abortion on having and achieving aspirational one-year plans” appears in the BMC Women’s Health journal, published online November 11, 2015. The authors, Ushma Upadhyay, Antonia Biggs, and Diana Greene Foster are all associated with the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health of the University of California – San Francisco. UCSF has notoriously and deservedly been dubbed as America’s “abortion academy.”
This study uses the same data set as the flawed “Turnaway” study that we’ve examined in great detail previously. That study sought to compare the outcomes of women who had first-trimester abortions as well as those who had abortions right up to a clinic’s gestational limit with those women who were “denied” abortions because they were so far along in their pregnancies, the clinic couldn’t or wouldn’t’ abort their babies.
Each of these was considered a separate “study group.” It claimed women were happier if they received the abortions than if they were “denied” them. But as we explained in our earlier critique, it ignored or glossed over a number of important issues that neutralized a lot of the researchers’ conclusions or put them, at a minimum, in seriously question.
This newly-released study is presented as if it uncovers significant new data supporting abortion’s positive effects on a woman’s life. In truth, its findings don’t tell us a whole lot more than what the researchers tried to tell us in the original Turnaway study. And if you read carefully, by no means does it clearly support such a claim.
In their baseline interview at the Turnaway study’s beginning, Upadhyay and the UCSF team simply asked the women a broad open-ended question about what their life expectations were for a year later. They kept in touch with those women and once twelve months had passed, asked them whether those expectations had been realized.
Women’s responses to that initial open-ended question ranged from how she expected to feel a year later to hopes that she might get a new car. Some women gave multiple responses.
Researchers tried to group these responses around eight general categories – child-related, financial, residence, employment, emotional, educational, relationship status, and other. Then they tried to identify these as positive (“aspirational”), neutral, or negative.
What the study did … and didn’t find
The overwhelming impression in much of the news coverage is that women having the abortions were more successful in achieving their positive life goals than those who were “denied” abortions.
But this is not what the study actually claims! It couldn’t.
The authors admit that “There was no difference by study group in the achievement of aspirational plans among the women who reported them.”
Those who were “turned away” from their sought-after abortions and ended up parenting their children met 46.2% of their aspirational goals.
Of those who had first-trimester abortions, fewer–44.7%–met their aspirational goals.
What about those who had abortions near the clinic’s gestational limits? Only a minor uptick–48.3%.
(There were 64 women in a “non-parenting” Turnaway group who either ended up aborting elsewhere, miscarrying, or allowing their baby to be adopted; 52.3% of those women achieved their aspirational plans.)
The authors attempt to say that there was a difference in the initial projections of the women’s expectations–in other words that those women who aborted expressed more positive aspirations in their initial interviews than those women who were “denied” abortions.
Upadhyay and colleagues said the expressed expectations of women who aborted were considerably more positive or “aspirational” in that first interview which took place within a week of the occurrence of their abortion than they were for women who did not abort : 84.3% for those who had a first-trimester abortions; 85.6% for those who aborted near the gestational limit; but 56.3% for those of the women “denied” abortions who ended up parenting a child.
In denial about denial
This sounds profound and troubling until one puts this finding in context. These are the expressions of women right after they have had their abortions or after being “denied” an abortion they were expecting would solve their “problems.”
As those who have studied women’s post-abortion reactions know, a woman’s initial reaction after an abortions is often one of “relief,” a temporary feeling that the immediate crisis that has been hanging over her head is over and done with. The full psychological import of what has occurred is often not entirely realized until months or even years after the event, and reactions can be severe. But the immediate feelings and expectations may well be positive.
Women trying unsuccessfully to schedule late abortions would have wrestled with this decision for several months before coming to the conclusion that abortion is her way out. For her, it may initially be very upsetting to be told that she cannot have the abortion. Occupying her mind will be the idea that everything she thought had been resolved is going to have to be dealt with again, that she is going to have to make the big alterations to her life plans she had dreaded.
It is at precisely this point–within a week of that “denial”–and before the baby was born that researchers asked these women what their expectations were for the future.
A “measurable” difference?
This gets tricky so stay with me. There is another way that the authors try to come at the issue. They argue that aborting women are both more likely to have aspirational goals and achieve them. This is a slightly different claim than the first and deeply misleading.
Percentage-wise, the likelihood that a given woman, aborting or not, would achieve her aspirational goals was about the same–generally less than 50%. But women who’d aborted initially expressed more positive goals. Thus, while the percentage would be essentially the same for all the groups, if aborting women express more goals, they had more chances of seeing one of their aspirational expectations ended up being fulfilled.
To make sure we’re clear, a woman who had aborted might express, say, four positive expectations. A woman “denied” an abortion and still coming to terms with her new future, might express only one.
It isn’t that the aborting woman was any more likely to see any of her particular positive goals fulfilled, but simply that she because expressed more of those kind of goals in the first place, so her chances of seeing at least one of those realized was greater.
And this is the statistical construct that the UCSF researchers are using to try to bolster their case.
So, because they expressed more of those aspirational [positive] goals, it could be said that 45.6% of women who aborted near the gestational limit and 47.9% of those who were “turnaways” who did not end up parenting (due to miscarriage, obtaining an abortion elsewhere, or allowing the child to be adopted) had and achieved a measurable” aspirational plan. But only 30.4% of those who decided to have and raise their children after being “denied” abortions had and achieved their aspirational goals.
Why? Ultimately because they expressed fewer goals for reasons we’ve already addressed.
A percentage isn’t given, but data charts indicate that women who aborted in the first trimester had and saw more of their aspirational goals achieved than the parenting turnaways but less than those women who aborted near the gestational limit.
It is hard to critique this claim because authors do not offer much specific data for it.
Researchers say they attempted to separate “measurable” goals, e.g., having a job, from those they felt were not measurable, e.g., achieving greater “stability.” But which goals qualified as “aspirational” involved value judgments on the researchers’ part.
Graduating from school, finding a better paying job would obviously be positive, but whether a woman had moved to a different country, gotten a divorce, or ended contact with her partner were also considered “aspirational” goals by researchers.
Researchers also measured emotional factors such as “satisfaction” or happiness that are hard to quantify and are particularly open to interpretation or suggestion. For example, what would a woman, who is being asked a year after her abortion about her feelings about that decision, be expected to tell a pro-abortion researcher?
Also evaluated were plans or statements about a women’s children, her expectations about what having the abortion or having the child would involve or how that would impact other children.
Some projections are obviously more positive than others (“my [other] daughter will be done with the first year of high school” versus “I’ll be running back and forth to day care having to pay someone to watch my child”). But the particular positive or negative focus of that initial expectation may be in part be due to whether a woman was in the midst of reassessing or recalibrating her goals in light of her recently being “denied” the abortion.
Despite a lengthy text and pages of charts, the authors do not break down these individual categories of aspirations by study group. So we do not know whether the additional aspirational goals researchers say were achieved by the aborting women a year out were across the board or clustered in the particular categories of child-related financial, residential, relationship, educational, employment, emotional or “other” goals.
The authors say that “turnaways” were less likely to have vocational goals compared to women having abortions and that there was a greater focus on relationship goals among women who aborted near the gestational limits, for example. But how this skewed the analysis or made it more likely for one group to achieve their aspirations than the other is not revealed. Certain goals, e.g., breaking up with a boyfriend, may be easier to achieve than others, such as getting a well-paying job.
We don’t learn much
Contrary to the media hype, in the end, this study doesn’t tell us a whole lot. Is it any shock that women, right after having an abortion and being affirmed in that decision by clinic staffers, are more likely to experience a sense of “relief”? Or that they also are likely to be somewhat more optimistic about their futures than women who have just been told they can’t have the abortion they believed would solve their problems? This is not really surprising and doesn’t necessarily tell us something we didn’t already know or at least suspect.
We don’t have enough details in this study to tell us whether, or to what extent, women in any of these study groups were actually better off a year after their abortion or the birth of their baby. The best we know is to what some (vague) extent their initial expectations were met. And no one fares particularly well in this regard. Authors tell us that “While most women in all groups had positive one-year plans, fewer than half of the goals were achieved within one year.”
While some may get the impression that the study results, if valid, could be applied to the larger population of women, this is not some random sample, but specifically a sample of women who were all convinced at some point that abortion was their best option. Some had abortions, some did not, but all sought them, all believed abortion was their best solution.
Surprisingly, though, even within this group of women committed to abortion, there were women who ended up having children. Despite the biases and attitudes of the researchers, apparently these women saw and found a way forward. Some did so relatively quickly, some as time went on.
This study says the parenting “Turnaways” were initially less optimistic (not surprising, given that they were just coming to terms with their abortion “solution” being taken away). However we know, from earlier data published by UCSF in the original “Turnaway” study that within a week after their “denial”–even before the baby was actually born–35% of those women were no longer willing to say that having the abortion would have been the right decision.
And we know that, one year after the birth, whatever their expectations, 86% were living with the baby, 59% perceived their relationships as good or very good, and nearly half (48%) had full-time jobs.
Outcomes for jobs or relationships a year out among women having abortions were not considerably better in the original Turnaway study, and we know from this latest study that having the abortion did not translate into a woman’s aspirations generally being met
Leaving women alone
It is easy from coverage of the latest study to get the impression that having an abortion enables a woman to achieve positive life goals like finishing school, finding a better job, or improving their relationships. But, to reiterate, this is not what this study shows.
If anything, it indicates that women seeking abortions often come to believe that having their baby killed will enable them to achieve these life goals, but the data presented here doesn’t support that.
What it does demonstrate is not that women aborting are better off, but perhaps that the abortion industry has been successful in marketing its deadly product with a certain segment of the population, making them believe that abortion offers them a brighter future.
But what do women actually get?
We do know that women “turned away” from having an abortion may get a blessing they never expected, the opportunity to see that child grow up and thrive over the years. This is something aborting women will never experience with their child, no matter what their aspirations.

Source: NRLC News

Book for All to Read

books

A pro-life reading list for 2016

Here are 20 books to add to your reading list for the new year. Some will educate and inform, others will persuade, and all will touch your heart.


True Stories
Each of the stories below is a true account of mothers who rejected or regret abortion. The first two are compilations of several beautiful stories.
The following books include the true stories of pro-life leaders:
Educational Material
Forsythe has been a pro-life attorney for decades, and he is well-qualified to write this expose on Roe v. Wade. It is both insightful and devastating. The historical and legal information provided in this book is necessary for anyone wanting to end abortion.
Dyer’s work is a scholarly treatise on the 14th Amendment and its relation to both slavery and abortion. While you may or may not agree with each of Dyer’s conclusions, this book is a good – and perhaps essential – read for anyone wanting to dive deeply into the constitutional issues surrounding abortion.
Fisher – President of Online for Life – has written this highly unique work designed chiefly for men. (Here’s the story of one woman helped through Online for Life.) In this book, “[Fisher] reveals long-forgotten or never-known facts to show that abortion is very much a man’s concern. And it’s part of a long and tragic pattern of male oppression of women.” Fisher “lays out a five-point plan for men to ‘with humility, faithfulness, and relentless perseverance, commit our time, resources, energy, heart, and testimony to ending abortion in America for the sake of women, men, and the family.'”
Why Pro-Life? is perhaps the best short book ever written on the issue. In a compassionate, factual voice, Alcorn explains how pro-life is also pro-woman and pro-family. He gives answers to “the central issues of the abortion debate” – and the answers are based in science, logic, and fact. Why Pro-Life? is offered for free digitally here, $3 here, and can be purchased in quantities of 50 or more for $1 each. The price makes this book an excellent resource for youth groups, college groups, and any other club. You can also download “50 Ways to Help Unborn Babies and their Mothers” for free here.
This short, informative read is offered free in a digital version (English or Spanish) here, making it easy to pass on. (Paper copies are also very cheap.) For anyone who wants to know the truth about birth control that is abortifacient, this book is a must-read. As the back of the book explains: “Randy examined medical journals and other scientifically oriented sources – everything from popular medical reference books to highly technical professional periodicals. He checked and double-checked, submitted this research to physicians, and asked clarifying questions of pharmacists and other experts. Few of his citations are from prolife advocates. Most are from physicians, scientists, researchers, pill-manufacturers and other secular sources.”
Written by two heroes of the pro-life movement, Why Can’t We Love Them Both is a comprehensive but easily digestible Q&A on pro-life issues. This is an excellent introduction to questions that a pro-life advocate will face, and, though the book is an oldie, it is still a goodie. A large portion of the book can be read for free here.
Grant dedicates his book in part to “all the faithful through the ages who have to go round and round in the struggle for life.” This book explains the work and the stories of some who have gone before us – many unknown. It paints a picture that will cause the reader to appreciate our rich pro-life history, while also inspiring us to willingly wear the mantle in our own generation.
While the title makes Ponnuru’s book sound rather dire (and it rightfully is), it also gives many reasons for pro-lifers to be optimistic, explaining ways to defeat the culture of death that surrounds us. Chuck Colson praises The Party of Death: “This carefully researched and rigorously argued work skillfully rebuts the seductive arguments of America’s merchants of death.”
Novels
This beautiful book tells the heart-wrenching tale of college student Dynah Carey, who is raped and becomes pregnant. Her predictable life comes apart at the seams through no fault of her own. “Her family is torn apart and her seemingly rock-solid faith is pushed to the limits as she faces the most momentous choice of her life: to embrace or to end the life within her. This is ultimately a tale of three women, as Dynah’s plight forces both her mother and her grandmother to face the choices they made.”
This futuristic novel reveals the work of a family and an abortion clinic nurse in an ‘underground’ pro-life movement. Unspeakable horrors are allowed at the local hospital…will the work of a few courageous individuals be enough to stem the tide?
Rebecca and Peter are a power couple who have committed to a childless marriage. When Rebecca becomes unexpectedly pregnant, she must wrestle with the demands of her career and the motherly instinct that is rising within her. Peter, meanwhile, is facing an awful scenario as he decides whether or not to prosecute an abortionist who delivered a live baby at his clinic. Based in part on Jill Stanek’s true story, An Accidental Life is “a must read for every pro-lifer.”
  • Tilly by Frank E. Peretti
From the back of this short novel (first released as a radio drama): “Kathy and Dan Ross are just like any other couple. No one would ever imagine what secrets lie buried in their souls until Kathy is captivated by that simple name on a tiny gravestone and their lives are changed forever. … Tilly is…a deeply moving novel – an unforgettable story of real life, love, and Christ’s forgiveness.”
Are there any pro-life books you’d like to recommend for 2016?

Source: LiveAction News

New York Times and Life

new-york-times-headquarters-672

New York Times editors lament pro-life laws of 2015

Earlier this month, the editors of the New York Times made no effort to hide their pro-abortion bias with their piece, “The Reproductive Rights Rollback of 2015.”
The pro-life movement of 2015 has much to celebrate: the closure of abortion facilities and the pro-life laws that have been passed. But the New York Times, right from the start, lets us know what their angle is:
How many laws making it harder to get an abortion will pass before the Supreme Court sees them for what they are — part of a tireless, coordinated nationwide assault on the right of women to control what happens with their own bodies without the interference of politicians?

When it comes to these laws, the editors think that they have found an “aha” moment. They point out:
Most of the time, lawmakers are clever enough to disguise their true intent by claiming that their interest is in protecting women’s physical or mental health.
But then the very next sentence reads:
But now and then the facade falls away, as when the Mississippi governor, Phil Bryant, called a set of restrictions he signed into law in 2012 “the first step in a movement” that aims to “end abortion in Mississippi.”
Sorry, NYT, the two ideas need not be mutually exclusive.
Lawmakers in the United States are forced to work within a very tight framework from Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. Certain laws are proposed and passed where they can be, which involve making the procedure at least safer for the woman if it is going to be legal. When  the abortion industry can’t hold up to the legal scrutiny, that says something about the abortion industry rather than the laws.
If the abortion industry cannot hold up to such basic safety standards, these laws may very well be the start to ending abortion.
Taking a play from the abortion industry, the editors refer to these laws as “TRAP laws.”
The NYT editors also discuss the pro-life laws passed in Texas, which the U.S. Supreme Court will soon examine, as well as a highly problematic study on self-abortions (read the long list of problems with the study here):
Among other burdens, this increases the chance that a woman will try to end her pregnancy on her own. This is extremely risky, and in some states it is even grounds for a charge of attempted murder. One study, based on a recent survey, estimated that 100,000 to 240,000 Texas women ages 18 to 49 have attempted a self-induced abortion without medical assistance. These women, the study found, were significantly more likely than average to have less access to basic reproductive-health services like birth control.
The editors also point to one Pew Research poll that claims defunding Planned Parenthood is “politically unpopular.” No mention is made of the U.S. Senate voting to defund Planned Parenthood, or of the countless votes from the U.S. House of Representatives to do so.
But the real narrow-mindedness of the NYT editors comes in the form of what might as well be a script from Planned Parenthood:
… The organization, which is the only reproductive-health service provider for millions of poorer women, is already prohibited by law from using federal funds for almost all abortions.
That doesn’t matter to anti-choice activists in places like Wisconsin and Indiana, where efforts by conservative lawmakers and governors have forced even those Planned Parenthood clinics that don’t perform any abortions to shut down. A result is that many lower-income women lose access to basic health care as well as contraceptive services that would make them less likely to have unintended pregnancies.
What these editors don’t seem to want to understand is that there are many reasons to defund Planned Parenthood, regardless of the claim that taxpayer dollars cannot go directly towards abortion. Many Americans simply do not want their hard-earned dollars going towards an organization affiliated with abortion in any way. Many Americans also feel that such an organization should have to operate standing on its own two feet.
The NYT editors close with this:
By any reasonable measure, Texas’ law places an undue burden on women seeking abortion services and should be struck down. Beyond doing that, the justices must send a clear and broad message affirming the constitutionally protected right of women to determine the course of their reproductive lives. Political opponents have shown how quickly they can regroup and find ways to restrict or obliterate programs and services women need.
Such a view is hardly “any reasonable measure.” It’s a biased, narrow-minded and abortion-obsessed view, which completely disregards the actual lives (“reproductive lives” included) of the human beings killed by abortion.
On the bright side: when the editors of the New York Times are complaining, pro-lifers may have something to take delight in.

Source: LiveAction News

Media

Jex Blackmore

Responding to pro-abortion advocates: Satanic Temple director Jex Blackmore (part three)

Responding To Pro-Abortion Advocates is a series where I will focus in on comments made by pro-abortion persons. These comments might be seen in the news, read on various websites, or heard elsewhere. As always, the goal is to be respectful and respond to the arguments, not to attack the person.
Jex Blackmore is the chapter director of the Satanic Temple Detroit. She recently found herself pregnant, and decided to chronicle her experience leading up to her abortion. Her story was picked up by Cosmo and Jezebel, and she has been received warmly by the pro-abortion crowd.

Part one can be read here, and part two here.
Blackmore says:

11/19/15
“A girl’s gotta sleep, especially when she’s growing something inside of her, and even more especially if that thing’s not going to be growing for much longer.”

Then:
11/22/15

“Apparently, to those who oppose abortion, the value of a potential life is directly related to how it was conceived.”
As usual, three points:
1. Ms. Blackmore is not growing something inside of her, she is growing someone. It would be easy to chalk this up to depersonalization, but there are actually many who define a human being being based on different arbitrary characteristics. This serves only to dehumanize the unborn child and rationalize the choice of abortion. Creating skepticism about the human-ness of the unborn child has been one of the great “achievements” of the pro-abortion movement.

Perhaps more concerning is the fact that Ms. Blackmore knows abortion is going to end the life growing inside of her. I’m not going to pretend to be inside the head of Ms. Blackmore, but this is indicative of a growing sentiment among pro-abortion advocates. Over the past few decades, it has become more and more clear that abortion takes the life of an innocent human being. As such, pro-abortion advocates have had to change their tactics. It’s no longer sufficient to claim the unborn child is not a human being. They now have moved on to claiming that even if abortion does take the life of an innocent human being, that’s okay because the mother has the right to refuse an unwanted pregnancy. This argument is extremely flawed, as you can see here.

2. The two quotes expose the confusion within the pro-abortion movement; Blackmore notes that something is growing, but later calls it a potential life. If it’s not a life now, what is it? If it is a life, what kind of life is it? Scott Klusendorf uses the acronym SLED to point out the four non-essential differences between an unborn human being and a born human being, and I’ve found these to be particularly insightful:
Size – growing bigger doesn’t make a person more human
Level of development – reaching arbitrary developmental milestones doesn’t make a person more human
Environment – where a person is doesn’t change who they are
Degree of dependency – being more or less dependent on someone or something doesn’t make a person more or less human
Looking at these differences illustrates the human-ness of the unborn child. Not a single one of those differences makes the unborn child any less human than the mother.
3. No, the value of unborn life is not related at all to how it was conceived, which is why we oppose abortion at all times and for all reasons. Once conception occurs, a new organism is formed, a human being with unique DNA. This new human being deserves protection, no matter how or why he or she was conceived.
We often hear about rape or incest when it comes to abortion. But it’s clear that human beings conceived in rape or incest are no less human that the rest of us. Further, there are many stories of people born of rape (see: here, here, here, here, and here), and these people certainly give testament to the idea that no unborn child should suffer the death penalty on account of the sin of one of their parents.  
Cullen Herout is a pro-life writer. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cullenheroutwriter.

Source: LiveAction News

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Planned Parenthood


 

Planned Parenthood Soundbites Just Aren’t Working

By Maria Gallagher, Legislative Director, Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation
Editor’s note. NRL News Today’s last post for 2015 will be this Wednesday. Each day, over the next three days, we will repost two of the stories our readers “liked” the most in 2015.
NoPlannedParenthoodThe soundbite machine at Planned Parenthood just isn’t working as well as it used to.
There was once a time when Planned Parenthood officials could deliver a focus group-tested soundbite to a news-hungry media and rest easy. Just repeat a few catchy phrases —“war on women,” “trust women,” “trusted health care provider,” and it was onto the next question.
But that was before undercover videos showed Planned Parenthood doctors nonchalantly discussing over salad the harvest of and compensation for baby body parts. Livers? Lungs? Legs? Heads? The American public had never heard Planned Parenthood talking about human organs, heads, and extremities before. What’s all that got to do with choice and women’s rights and breast cancer exams? I mean, those lunchtime conversations were just way off script.
We have been told there are more undercover videos to come, and that these will depict situations even worse than what we’ve seen so far.
Planned Parenthood has promoted itself as advancing the cause of women, but one has to wonder: How does it help a woman when the doctor is talking about crushing above or below to ensure that a specific part is preserved. It is clear that the abortionist is not thinking about the woman at that moment. The focus has completely shifted from the woman’s body to another’s body — the body of the baby. But the baby is treated as an organ factory rather than the distinct human being he or she is.
Planned Parenthood does not empower women. It tries to make them dependent on a non-profit with assets of more than $236 million. If a woman keeps coming to Planned Parenthood for her birth control and then she unexpectedly becomes pregnant, they can sell her an abortion, which boosts their clinic income.
By giving presentations in schools, they can attract clients when they are young and hold onto them throughout their reproductive years through the emotional pull of brand loyalty.
Planned Parenthood consistently fights right-to-know laws, which require women to be told of the risks of abortion and its alternatives. If women are fully informed, they may in fact not want to patronize Planned Parenthood, and that would be bad for business.
In her recent interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Planned Parenthood chief Cecile Richards tried repeatedly to return to the old talking points: “highest standards,” “1 in 5 women depend on Planned Parenthood for health care,” “Planned Parenthood does not ever profit,” etc., etc.
But the trouble is, those soundbites just don’t work anymore. The national conversation has shifted to what actually happens to a baby’s body during and after an abortion.
And that’s not something Planned Parenthood wants to talk about.
Editor’s note. This appeared at paprolife.us and is reprinted with permission.

Source: NRLC News

Euthanasia


 

Media Always Shocked at Visible Euthanasia Truths

By Wesley J. Smith
euthanasia81reI have been working against euthanasia/assisted suicide since 1993. During that time, I have seen a lot.
But there has been one consistent theme that cuts across Kevorkian, to the Hemlock Society’s Compassion and Choices’ agendas, to the Netherlands: The utter refusal of the media to see what is before their eyes and accurately report the truth about the movement.
Pondering the media’s blatant pro-culture of death bias, I have often thought they know what they don’t want to know.

The reporting around Philip Nitschke–Australia’s answer to Jack Kevorkian–epitomizes this phenomenon. Nitschke has always stated that he believes in an absolute right to assisted suicide, to death on demand.

Indeed, way back in 2001, he told NRO’s [National Review Online’s] Kathryn Lopez that he thought suicide pills should be available to “troubled teens.”
From the interview:

Lopez: Would there be any restrictions on who could be served on your [euthanasia] boat? Do you see any restrictions that should be placed on euthanasia generally? If I am depressed, do I qualify? If an elderly woman’s husband dies and she says she no longer has anything to live for, would you help her kill herself? What about a troubled teen? Who qualifies? Who decides if a life is worth living?
Nitschke: This difficult question I will answer in two parts. My personal position is that if we believe that there is a right to life, then we must accept that people have a right to dispose of that life whenever they want. (In the same way as the right to freedom of religion has implicit the right to be an atheist, and the right to freedom of speech involves the right to remain silent.)

I do not believe that telling people they have a right to life while denying them the means, manner, or information necessary for them to give this life away has any ethical consistency. So all people qualify, not just those with the training, knowledge, or resources to find out how to “give away” their life.
In August of that year, I was brought Down-Under to tour the country [Australia] in what, in essence, was an anti-Nitschke tour. I accused Nitschke of advocating death on demand, including for teenagers. It created a media firestorm, with television stations chasing me down for interviews in restaurants, and eventually a front page story of me accusing him of importing suicide bags.
Happily, that story began Nitschke’s long line of legal troubles recently culminating with the loss of his medical license.
I noticed during the two week national tour, that reporters seemed emotionally invested in disproving or denying what I was saying about Nitschke. One day, he admitted his advocacy in the Sydney Morning News. The next day he denied my charges. A talk radio host told me, in seeming triumph, that I had been refuted and my charges discredited.
I replied, “If you call lying effective refutation, perhaps so.” And then I read Nitschke’s quote from the previous day’s Morning Herald. Unsurprisingly, the host immediately changed the subject without acknowledging the truth of my assertions.
Now, the media seems surprised (AGAIN!) that Nitschke believes in assisted suicide for social reasons. From the News.com.au story:

DOCTOR  Death Philip Nitschke has again courted controversy, saying he sees many people now “who want to die for social reasons”.
The controversial doctor, who burned his medical certificate in Darwin last month over frustrations with the Medical Board of Australia, said people should not need to be sick to seek voluntary euthanasia. “A person controlling the time of their death should be a fundamental right,” he told the NT News from Switzerland yesterday.
“It’s not the majority of ­people, but it’s a growing number of people, who have come along for reasons that would not be considered suffering of a terminal illness. “They’ve made a rational decision, thought through all the issues and now they think it’s an appropriate time to go.”

Excuse me: How is this news? Nitschke has been saying this very kind of thing for more than a decade. A week from now, they will forget until the next time.
You see, when it comes to the culture of death, the media know what they don’t want to know.
Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s great website.

Source: NRLC News

Pro-Life Pregancy Centers


 

Judges Turn Away Two Injunctions to Halt California Bully Bill

By Jay Hobbs
gavel5Pro-life pregnancy help centers are days away from having to choose between following their conscience and following a newly enacted state law in California, after two district judges denied motions for preliminary injunctions Monday.
The motions were filed on behalf of a total of six life-affirming pregnancy help medical clinics—each of which are state-licensed clinics—by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) and the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) in separate cases.

Judges in both cases declined to stop the so-called “Reproductive FACT Act” from taking effect Jan. 1, 2016 on constitutional grounds. The rulings set the stage for the state’s 150 pro-life pregnancy help locations—including 74 state-licensed clinics offering free limited ultrasound—to incur first-offense fines starting at $500 for refusing to post signage the organizations say forces them to advertise a pro-abortion message.

Both nonprofit law firms are expected to challenge the respective decisions. ACLJ Senior Counsel Francis J. Manion confirmed he had filed an appeal early Tuesday to the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
“We’re obviously disappointed with what the district court did in denying the motion for preliminary injunction,” Manion said. “As far as we’re concerned, that was just the end of round one. We think our arguments are strong, and we obviously disagree with the court’s opinion. We’re relatively optimistic that we’ll get it reversed on appeal. We think the law is strongly on our side. Sometimes courts see it differently than we do and we understand that, so we’ll try at the next level.”
Two hearings regarding the law have yet to be held.

Interpreting pregnancy center messaging as “commercial and professional speech,” U.S. District Judges Jeffery White and Kimberly Mueller both ruled that the signage dictated by the new law—which applies in practice only to pro-life pregnancy help locations—does not pose an eminent enough threat to justify blocking the bill, signed into law Oct. 9 by Gov. Jerry Brown.
Even though the bill was sponsored by NARAL Pro-Choice California and built primarily upon the abortion advocacy group’s unfounded allegations against community supported pregnancy help, Judge Mueller ruled that the notice, “provides the information in neutral language and does not incorporate ideological commentary that conveys an opinion.”

The law will force 150 local pregnancy help non-profits, including the 74 state-licensed free ultrasound facilities, to give each of its clients a disclaimer, which includes the phone number of a county social services office where a client could obtain an abortion covered by Medi-Cal.
The notice, which the law specifies must either be posted as a public notice in “22-point type,” “distributed to all clients in no less than 14-point font” or distributed digitally “at the time of check-in or arrival,” applies to all of the entities—even those licensed by the state. [It will read]

“California has public programs that provide immediate free or low-cost access to comprehensive family planning services (including all FDA-approved methods of contraception), prenatal care, and abortion for eligible women. To determine whether you qualify, contact the county social services office at [insert the telephone number].”

Meanwhile, pregnancy help centers that do not offer medical services will be required to post the following signage in two “clear and conspicuous” places—“in the entrance of the facility and at least one additional area where clients wait to receive services,” as well as in “any print and digital advertising materials including Internet Web sites”.

The font required is to be “in no less than 48-point type” and will read as follows:
“This facility is not licensed as a medical facility by the State of California and has no licensed medical provider who provides or directly supervises the provision of services.”

Judge White presided over the case presented by the American Center for Law and Justice, which represents LivingWell Medical Clinic, Pregnancy Center of the North Coast and Confidence Pregnancy Center.

Judge Mueller ruled in the case presented by the Pacific Justice Institute, which represents A Woman’s Friend Pregnancy Resource Clinic, Crisis Pregnancy Center of Northern California and Alternatives Women’s Center.

Editor’s note. This appeared at pregnancyhelpnews.com.

Source: NRLC News

Supreme Court And Texas


 

Supreme Court justices agree to hear crucial Texas abortion case on March 2

By Dave Andrusko
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
Last week, while NRL News Today was on break to celebrate Christmas, the Supreme Court announced the date it would hear arguments in a challenge to two key provisions of HB 2, Texas’s omnibus 2013 pro-life bill. The day the justices set is Wednesday, March 2, 2016.
This would mean, as was widely anticipated, that the justices would have a decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole by the end of June–smack in the middle of the presidential contest.
HB 2 is best known outside the state for the filibuster that temporarily derailed the law. Pro-abortion state Senator Wendy Davis catapulted her role in that filibuster to national fame, which tempted her to run what proved to be a disastrous campaign for governor in 2014.
At issue are two provisions: (1)that abortion clinics meet the same building standards as ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs); and (2) that abortionists have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital for situations of medical emergencies. The latter has already gone into effect.
Austin-based U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel declared the requirements unconstitutional but was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. [1]
Judge Edith Jones
Judge Edith Jones
As we have written previously, the various and sundry challenges to H.B. 2, the twists and turns, are mind-numbingly complex. (See here and here.)
We’ll address a few of them after gleaning what we can from a story that appeared in Reuters today. Their reporters had access, which we don’t, to a brief filed late Monday by lawyers for Whole Woman’s Health and other abortion clinics in Texas.
The overall thrust is nothing new: the law, the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights argues, imposes an “undue burden” on women seeking to abort and, contrary to assurances by the state, does not improve medical safety for women.
Referring specifically to the requirement that abortion clinics meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers, the CRR told the justices that nearly half of the 40 abortion clinics operating in Texas closed after the law passed and “many more would shut down,” if the law is upheld.
CRR lawyers also insisted abortion is “safer than many other common medical procedures.”
Judge Edith Jones wrote the unanimous opinion for a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that upheld provisions of Texas’ H.B. 2, challenged by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and several Texas abortion clinics.
In her 34-page opinion, Jones noted something never mentioned in press accounts: “Planned Parenthood conceded that at least 210 women in Texas annually must be hospitalized after seeking an abortion.”
Judge Lee Yeakel
Judge Lee Yeakel
Judge Jones also wrote, “Witnesses on both sides further testified that some of the women who are hospitalized after an abortion have complications that require an OB/GYN specialist’s treatment. ” She added, “Against Planned Parenthood’s claims that these women can be adequately treated without the admitting-privileges requirement, the state showed that many hospitals lack an Ob/Gyn on call for emergencies.”
Then there is the thorough and thoughtful 44-page brief previously filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Among many other arguments, Attorney General Paxton reminded the justices that
Petitioners ignore the fact that under the Fifth Circuit’s decision, which granted as-applied relief in McAllen, every metropolitan area with an abortion facility operating today in Texas will still have an operating abortion facility if the ruling takes effect
In addition, he wrote, “States are given wide discretion to pass medical regulations.” Paxton explained that the admitting privileges requirement had already been upheld by courts in a separate lawsuit which “correctly conclude[d] that the challenged provisions of HB2 do not facially impose an undue burden.”
Petitioners ask this Court to depart from a quarter-century of this Court’s abortion jurisprudence by judging for itself the medical effectiveness of HB2’s requirements and balancing it against the burdens purportedly caused by HB2. In short, petitioners would have this Court serve as “the country’s ex officio medical board with powers to approve or disapprove medical and operative practices and standards throughout the United States”—a role this Court has specifically declined to assume.
“[The abortion providers] wish to proceed as if their first lawsuit against HB 2 never happened,” the state attorneys continued. “But they litigated that case to a final judgment, and arguments and evidence they chose not to present there are barred.”
[1] Pro-abortionists never challenged the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. Also not before the justices is a provision that requires the abortionist to be in the same room as the woman receiving the chemical abortifacients (which is not the case with so-called ‘web-cam” abortions) and that abortionists follow the protocol approved by the FDA for the use of the two-drug “RU-486” abortion technique.
 
Source: NRLC News

Abortion

landfill-garbage-disposal

Right-to-life foes shriek at having to treat dead babies better than garbage

Nothing angers pro-aborts more than reminding people what abortion is. That’s why they’ve been so desperate to discredit the Planned Parenthood undercover videos, and it’s why Salon’s Sean Illing hysterically denounces one of the mildest state pro-life proposals yet—an Ohio bill requiring aborted children be given a respectful burial or cremation—as “hideous” and a “new low”:
The latest anti-abortion gambit occurred in Ohio, where “State lawmakers are introducing new legislation that would require women who have abortions or miscarriages to designate arrangements for burial or cremation of fetuses,” according to a report by WVXU in Cincinnati. And no, that wasn’t a typo – women treated for miscarriages are also required to sign a form “designating burial or cremation of fetal remains,” because 6-week old embryos are human persons with friends and family members who need closure after their death.

Illing seems to hope his readers walk away under the impression that women who get abortions would then be forced to plan funerals for the babies they’ve just had killed. But the bill doesn’t do anything more than what it sounds like—the patient has to sign a form deciding whether her dead son or daughter will be cremated or buried, and then the abortion mill takes care of the rest. Signing one more form shouldn’t be burdensome at all to someone who’s as confident in the righteousness of her “choice” as Planned Parenthood constantly tells us its customers are.
And contrary to his sarcasm, funerals (which the bill doesn’t even mandate; just a disposal method more dignified than being dumped in landfills alongside trash) aren’t solely for those left behind; they’re because the deceased deserves that respect. But hey, when the position you’re defending is so reliant on denying basic humanity, this sort of feigned obliviousness is inevitable.
This is yet another politically-motivated attack on women’s rights. This won’t stop abortions, but it will make life for those who need them harder. And that’s the point. The cost of this measure, as the WVXU report notes, “would be passed on to the facility which could then pass it on the women being treated.”
Oh, so now abortion ideologues are concerned about how government regulations impact costs. Funny, that concern falls on deaf ears when their desire to force companies to subsidize employees’ abortifacients and birth control was the subject…
“None of this is medically necessary,” says Gabriel Mann of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, “The only reason that these bills are being introduced is because they want to try to harass abortion providers and harass women that are seeking a safe a legal procedure.”
This is an odd complaint, considering that abortions themselves aren’t medically necessary and most aren’t even sought for medically created reasons. But again, our opponents can’t discuss the real reason without inviting conversation as to the dignity and humanity of their victims.
The bill also appears to be a petty retaliatory response to Attorney General Mike DeWine’s failed investigation into Planned Parenthood in Ohio. Inspired by the debunked Planned Parenthood videos, DeWine looked for evidence that the organization was selling the body parts of aborted fetuses. No evidence was found, and this proposed bill is how Republican lawmakers responded.
This may be the most inexcusably dishonest paragraph in Illing’s entire piece. In addition to the shameless lies about the accuracy of the Center for Medical Progress videos and what the ensuing investigations have found, he leaves out a key detail: that DeWine’s investigations found that Planned Parenthood clinics in the state were having dead babies’ remains disposed of in landfills. That’s what inspired this bill—and a very different scenario than political retaliation.
The country has changed. Public opinion has shifted dramatically on a number of social issues, particularly same-sex marriage and abortion, and the law now reflects that.
Really? Twenty-one years of at least 54% of the country consistently saying they want most abortions outlawed certainly doesn’t sound like change. In fact, multiple pro-choice observers in recent years have acknowledged that changing opinions on same-sex marriage haven’t been accompanied by increasing acceptance of abortion. So it’s not public opinion the law reflects—when people get to vote, pro-life ideas do very, very well—it’s that the judiciary protects abortion from public opinion.
Indeed, it’s because Illing and his pals know abortion is so vulnerable to public opinion that they see this legislation as a threat. “We don’t bury medical waste, we bury people” are dots the abortion lobby can’t afford to let people connect.

Source: LiveAction News

Planned Parenthood

Columbia Missouri Planned Parenthood Abortion Clinic 40 Days for Life

Judge rules in favor of Missouri Planned Parenthood’s abortion license

U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey, a Clinton appointee, has ruled that a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Columbia, Missouri may keep its abortion license. The ruling follows two temporary delays after state health officials’ attempted to revoke the clinic’s abortion license in the beginning of December.

Although the facility still needs to find a new abortionist with local hospital admitting privileges before it can resume abortions, Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri is still hailing the ruling as a “huge victory” which affiliate CEO Laura McQuade claims has proven that the dispute was always “political gamesmanship” rather than “about health and safety issues.”
In her ruling, Laughrey declared that because the state had only revoked one other ambulatory surgical center’s license, and worked with the clinic for three months to solve its safety issues before revocation, she believed the Planned Parenthood clinic was being held to different standards.
“The evidence submitted to the court indicates that DHSS’s unprecedented hasty actions were likely the result of political pressure being exerted by Missouri legislators,” she wrote, “and the Department’s perception that if it did not act in accordance with the legislature’s desires, its budget would be cut.”

In response, Campaign Life Missouri director Sam Lee declared it “ridiculous that a federal judge would prevent state health officials from protecting the health and safety of Missouri women,” while the Attorney General’s office has said it is reviewing the decision.
Earlier in the dispute, state Solicitor General James Layton denied Planned Parenthood’s objections that health officials were acting too quickly by noting that “they’ve known for years that the statute requires privilege. They’ve known at least since sometime in September that their doctor was going to lose the privilege.”

Source: LiveAction News

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

WOW -Please Read


 

Calmly, truthfully talking about abortion

By Dave Andrusko
Christine Flowers
Christine Flowers

All I can say is, “Wow!” In a mere 486 words, Christine Flowers wrote one of the finest pro-life essays I have ever read.
So let’s talk about abortion” can—and should—be read at the Philadelphia Daily News.

After beginning, “Conversations about abortion take place on many different levels, including medical, legal, political, and moral,” Flowers quickly runs through each of them. She shows how fragile (okay, bogus) is the case for abortion made on each of these grounds. For instance,
“Most lawyers would agree that the constitutional basis for legalized abortion is flawed, and that Roe v. Wade is the perfect example of the ends justifying the mind-numbing means. Justice Harry Blackmun… essentially created a right to a medical procedure out of penumbras. Not exactly a stellar moment in constitutional history.”
But her best and most thoughtful rebuttal is “in the moral realm where the most heated debates take place.” Flowers writes,
“Abortion supporters learned long ago that it helps to talk about the rights of the woman and shift attention away from the child.”
More specifically, Flowers bluntly challenges the notion that “it takes ‘courage’ to have an abortion, as a writer for the New York Times opined.” We can disagree on many aspects of the debate over abortion, Flowers writes, but we cannot,
“delude ourselves into believing that it takes more courage to destroy a growing fetus than it does to allow that child to be born. We can’t pretend that it is more selfless to use abortion as birth control than it is to give birth and then gift that child to loving, adoptive parents.”
Flowers then does something that pro-lifers (as a matter of course) do which pro-abortionists (also as a matter of course) insist we don’t do: acknowledge that it “hard to be pregnant, especially if you don’t want to.”
As Flowers writes, “Living is sometimes hard,” a truth about the human condition with which we are intimately familiar. Most pro-lifers have either worked in Crisis Pregnancy Centers, or been through an unplanned pregnancy themselves–or known someone who has. Some have even succumbed to despair and aborted their child.
We know the temptation to “take the easy way out.”
So we know it doesn’t take courage to kill an unborn child.
But it often does require courage to stand up to a boyfriend who is pushing the woman into having an abortion, through emotional or physical coercion.
It takes courage to keep going when your “friends” are advising you that it is stupid to continue a pregnancy that can be ended with a “simple” operation.
It takes courage when most everyone you know says, “Don’t be a fool. Be smart.”
Great column. Read Christine Flowers’ “So let’s talk about abortion.”

Source: NRLC News

Ireland and Assisted Suicide


 

Euthanasia & assisted suicide bill introduced in Irish Parliament

By Paul Russell, Founder, HOPE Australia
Irish Deputy, John Halligan
Irish Deputy, John Halligan

Irish Deputy, John Halligan tabled [introduced] his Dying with Dignity Bill 2015 in the Irish Lower House (Dail) on the 15th of December.
Halligan had been telling the Irish Press that a bill was imminent for much of this last year, claiming that he had been working with Exit International’s European representative, Tom Curran, and two solicitors to draft the new bill.
Curran was the partner of Marie Fleming who went through the Irish Courts seeking in vain to overturn the statutes on assisting in suicide so that Curran could accompany her to Dignitas in Switzerland without falling afoul of the law. Fleming has since passed away.
The Bill, the ‘Dignity in Dying Bill 2015’ would usher in both assisted suicide and euthanasia, the latter only being available if the person could not effectively take the lethal dose without assistance. In a strange insertion, Halligan’s bill also allows for the creation of an unspecified machine that would deliver the fatal dose after being activated in some way by the patient.
This sounds very much like Exit International’s ‘stock-in-trade’, its supremo, Philip Nitschke, having developed a number of ‘deliverance’ machines over the years. This is the first time, however, that this writer has seen an attempt to codify the practice in law.
The bill while restricting access to only those with a terminal diagnosis, does not set a time frame for the progress of the illness or disease. Many other bills of this type have tried to restrict access to those with less than six months to live. Halligan’s bill, by contrast, would have a person qualify from the day they receive their diagnosis, regardless of how long they may live, whether or not there is remission, or even if a cure is possible.
It is hard to know whether Halligan was himself totally clear on what his own bill does and does not do, and one will easily forgive an exaggeration or two by someone trying to make the case. But Halligan’s explanation of his bill in his speech before the Dail last week is a far cry from the reality. He told the parliament:
‘This Bill proposes to introduce legislation recognising the right of clearly consenting adults who are enduring intolerable physical suffering to seek medical help to end their lives.’
Whether by intent, oversight, or ignorance, Halligan’s speech mislead the parliament.
He mentions pain and suffering a number of other times as well yet, curiously, there is nothing in this bill that says a person must be suffering; nothing. So, this pitch to the heart strings in images of loved ones in pain that conjure up a supposedly justifiable exception to killing people because they are suffering. To suggest– as we have often been told – that assisted suicide and euthanasia are only ever a ‘last resort’ is simply not true in this bill.
The bill seems incomplete in places, including at least one sub-clause that makes no sense at all. Far from being a well-thought out bill worthy of a parliament’s attention and debate, it seems more likely that tabling this effort in December is more about face saving, massaging a constituency, and/or an election pitch.
The Irish people are due to go to the polls to elect their next government sometime before early April 2016 at the call of the Prime Minster. This leaves little time for this bill to be debated in full.
Even so, Ireland is not immune from these debates and, no doubt, if re-elected, John Halligan or even someone else, will raise the matter again.
Editor’s note. This appeared at noeuthanasia.org.au and is reprinted with permission.

Source: NRLC News

Roe V Wade Has To Go


 

Roe v. Wade: Absurd, deadly, catastrophic

By Paul Stark
Editor’s note. We are just 24 days away from the 43rd anniversary of the twin disasters–Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton. During December we have reposted previous stories about the cases. Beginning next week, we will post new stories.
Roe_v_Wade_Bad_LawRoe v. Wade the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the right to liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution includes an unstated “right to privacy” that is in turn “broad enough to encompass” a right to abortion (which is also never mentioned in the Constitution) and this entails that states are constitutionally required to permit abortion on demand. Got it?

There was no reason to think the Constitution contains a right to abortion, and every reason to think it doesn’t. Most obviously damning are all the state abortion bans enacted in the latter half of the 19th century, about the same time the Fourteenth Amendment was put into place. As Justice William Rehnquist wrote in his Roe dissent, “To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment.”

Absurd? Completely.

The consequence of Roe (and its companion decision, Doe v. Bolton) was a Court-mandated, nationwide policy of abortion on demand at virtually any stage of pregnancy. Almost forty-two years later, this policy has resulted in the legal and deliberate killing of more than 56 million unborn human beings. That’s more than 56,000,000 innocent members of the human family.
Abortion, under the Roe policy, is the leading cause of human death. The number of Americans killed because of Roe dwarfs the number of American casualties from every war in our history combined.
But those comparisons can be misleading. Abortion isn’t death in the service of national defense, freedom and justice, or death as a result of natural causes, like heart disease (as tragic as those deaths are).
Abortion is intentional killing for the convenience or supposed benefit of others; it is the elimination of those very young, defenseless and voiceless human beings who get in the way of what we want.
Abortion, in other words, is precisely the kind of injustice that our soldiers have fought and died to defeat.
Editor’s note. Paul Stark is Communications Assistant for MCCL, the state affiliate of National Right to Life 

Source: NRLC News

A New Book


 

New book exposes the incoherence of the pro-abortion position with wit and verve

By Maria Gallagher , legislative director, Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation
Editor’s note. This story appeared in the latest edition of National Right to Life News at www.nrlc.org/uploads/NRLNews/NRLNewsDec2015.pdf. Please share it, and all the other many stories from this 50-page edition, using your social media contacts.
howtoberightbookAt a time when a top-rated television show has one of the main characters undergo an abortion to the strains of “Silent Night,” you might be tempted to think when it comes to the life-or-death issue of abortion, pop culture is totally devoid of sanity.
Then along comes a work which makes you smile as you realize the pro-life message is getting through.

Author Greg Gutfeld’s recently-released book, How to be Right: the Art of Being Persuasively Correct, humorously identifies ways that serious topics can be best articulated in today’s rabid media environment.

For me, the most effective portion of the book was a passage labeled, “Four Persuasive Points: The Planned Parenthood Videos.” Gutfeld, who hosts the Greg Gutfeld Show on the Fox News Channel, is referring to the alarming undercover videos produced by the Center for Medical Progress, in which high-ranking Planned Parenthood officials callously and unmercifully discuss the harvesting of the body parts of unborn babies. In spite of congressional investigations , the mainstream media have largely ignored the controversy, a state of affairs that would have to be attributed to pro-abortion bias.
In his first point, Gutfeld shrewdly notes that the contention of Planned Parenthood—that “it’s a shame to let it (baby body parts) go to waste”– actually “destroys the moral case for abortion.” The reason? Gutfeld points out that such an admission “suggests strongly that you believe that child is/was of value.”

In his second point, Gutfeld discusses Planned Parenthood’s view that dismemberment of an unborn child is a woman’s right: “If dismemberment of a fetus is a right, then so is a right that I possess, allowing me to dissect my uncle after he passed away, too.” (Another important consideration, obviously, is that we haven’t taken our uncle’s life.)
Thirdly, Gutfeld asks if this “butchery is perfectly normal activity, why the need for euphemism?” Gutfeld adroitly points out such “fetal research” is an evil which can only exist under “the protective umbrellas of euphemism.”

Finally, he takes the media to task for claiming that the undercover videos were selectively edited. After all, the videographers made the entire, unedited videos available online. “When the media is more upset about the splicing of film than the splicing of babies, it reveals that their reservoir of compassion is as empty as their platitudes about choice.
“I’d tell them to go to hell,” Gutfeld writes, “but they’re already in it.”
The business of abortion is brutal, nightmarish, hellish—as former abortionists who are now pro-life have readily admitted. For them to deny someone’s very humanity—especially a helpless unborn child’s—is to lose part of your own humanity in the process.

The pro-life movement is on the right side of history. We can take some lessons from Greg Gutfeld on how to be persuasively correct when talking about our message and our mission.

Source: NRLC News

2016 Elections and Abortion

Keep_Abortion_Legal

Prediction: Abortion debate will play increased role in 2016 elections

The abortion debate has long played an important role in elections, with many voters on both sides considering the issue to be of high importance. But for some time, abortion has largely taken a back seat, particularly in recent elections.
Activists on both sides of the debate predict that will change this election cycle, both in the 2016 presidential election and in several key Senate races.
First, this year’s release of undercover videos showing unethical and illegal behavior by Planned Parenthood officials drew national attention to the organization and to abortion. The videos, along with subsequent investigations of Planned Parenthood, divided Republicans and Democrats, pro-lifers and abortion advocates.

Current pro-life candidates also appear much more willing to actively discuss abortion than did other pro-life candidates in recent elections. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, believes that current events surrounding abortion are providing an opportunity for candidates to be outspoken on the issue.
“Abortion will bubble over into the general election,” said Dannenfelser.” “If you don’t know how to handle this issue, you will be eviscerated.”
Another factor in the increased buzz around abortion is the recent decision by the Supreme Court to hear a case regarding a Texas abortion law. Politico reports:
The timing of the decision, likely next June, is expected to drive voter turnout, galvanizing those on both sides of the abortion debate to turn out for a presidential candidate who shares their views on one of the nation’s most polarizing social issues. Oral arguments are expected in early March.
“It’s an amazing convergence of events,” said Charmaine Yoest, CEO of Americans United for Life. “We haven’t seen a moment like this for 40 years.”

Source: LiveAction News