Friday, January 29, 2016

Fired for Pro-Life Views

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Oregon Right to Life president fired from other job for pro-life views

Last week, Harmony Daws, newly appointed president of the Oregon Right to Life board of directors, was fired from her job due to her political beliefs. Daws was working as operations manager for a Portland-area cleaning company.
Daws told TheBlaze that her boss, after hearing of Daws’ position with Oregon Right to Life, ordered her to remain silent at work about her pro-life views, as well as her faith.
“She told me that she didn’t want me sharing my faith, that I couldn’t tell other employees that I’m praying for them,” Daws said. “She said I couldn’t discuss my political beliefs.”
Daws complied, and avoided discussing politics in the workplace. However, days later, she was fired without warning. The reason given was that Daws had discriminated against other employees due to her faith and political views.
Oregon Right to Life reports that Daws worked with people of all backgrounds and beliefs, including a Satanist, a Wiccan, a lesbian, and atheists – and after her firing, several of them argued that they had never been discriminated against, and that Daws “loved everyone.”
“What my employer did was illegal,” said Daws. “Firing someone based on their religious or political beliefs is a civil rights violation. I’m a libertarian and I support my former employer’s right to hire and fire as she chooses. However, she could have asked for a resignation over our difference of beliefs.
“To have been mistreated as I was by being fired, after my exemplary record as an employee, was unconscionable. Regardless, had I known then what the price to accept the presidency would be, I would still have accepted the position. Fifty-eight million children have lost their lives since 1973. Losing a job in my stand for their right to life was a small price to pay.”
According to The Blaze, Daws plans to start her own business, and does not intend to hide her faith or pro-life beliefs.

Adoption

Photo from Facebook

Heroin addicted baby gets a new start with adoptive parents

On September 7, 2015, police sergeant Troy Snedeker responded to an emergency call from a home in Andover, KS. When he entered the residence, he found a tiny newborn infant lying face down on the couch. She was not breathing.

Twenty-three days later, a young couple in Indiana received an e-mail from their adoption agency: “Urgent. Baby girl born on September 7th at 26 weeks gestation. Baby girl has a level 4 brain bleed and withdrawal symptoms from heroin. If interested please email ASAP.”
Jon and Krista Agler had been dreaming of adoption for years, but they were not expecting this – a premature baby addicted to heroin. As Mrs. Agler explained on her blog:
Jon and I began a heavy, emotional, five day process of asking for prayer, inviting others to speak into this situation, sitting with really hard questions, and trying to see if we could fully surrender to the weight of unknowns that would come with saying yes to this situation. […]
Every scripture we read spoke to the situation… (Rescue the weak and needy…) Every song we listened to offered peace… (You drown my fears in perfect love, you rescue me so I can stand and say ‘I am a child of God’…) Everything we read about Jesus… (I came not for the healthy, but for the sick…)  As we sought and prayed and listened, it was clear. We were to go to this girl.
After replying to the adoption agency, the couple packed their bags and flew to Kansas to meet their new daughter, whom they named Eden. In a video posted by their church, the new parents explained that the name “Eden” means “delight.”
We’re praying for miraculous healing and also just knowing that if [God] does not heal in that way that she is going to be our delight.
The following months in the hospital were long and difficult, but finally on December 2, the Aglers were able to return to Indiana with their daughter. On December 11, Eden’s due date, Mrs. Agler posted on Facebook, “She truly is our delight, our Eden. Can’t believe I get to be her mother.”

Source: LiveAction News

Media Bias


 

BBC to air documentary of man killing himself at Swizz suicide clinic

By Dave Andrusko
BBC68reThe BBC, whose support for euthanasia and assisted suicide knows no bounds, has announced that it will air a documentary that shows businessman Simon Binner talking his own life last October.
“How to Die: Simon’s Choice” shows Binner lying on a bed before opening a valve that allows a lethal drug to enter his body. “It will be the first time footage from inside Switzerland’s second largest assisted suicide clinic will be shown on British television,” the Christian Institute reported. “Pro-life campaigners have criticised the BBC for being a ‘cheerleader for suicide.’”
From the Daily Telegraph, the BBC announced
that it is to air scenes showing a British businessman taking his own life at a Swiss suicide clinic.
The corporation said yesterday that it will screen a 90-minute documentary following the declining health of Simon Binner, a Cambridge graduate who suffered from motor neurone disease, and his eventual decision to kill himself, on October 19 last year.
Mr. Binner, who was diagnosed with the degenerative disease in January 2015, made headlines after he announced on LinkedIn that he planned to end his life at the Eternal Spirit clinic, in Basel [Switzerland].

Apparently, according to media correspondent Patrick Foster, while the BBC drew the line at actually showing the 57-year-old Binner at the moment of his death, “there is a fleeting glimpse of Mr. Binner’s dead body, as his friends and family sit weeping. The camera then cuts to the lid of his coffin being screwed down.”

The BBC bills the documentary as a “sensitive observational documentary following one family’s experience of assisted death”.
But Alistair Thompson, a spokesman for Care Not Killing, said: “We are deeply disturbed by this. This has the capacity to encourage others to take their own lives.”
The criticisms are based on a preview version of the 90 minute BBC documentary, which will air on February 10.

The backdrop for “How to Die: Simon’s Choice” was last year’s House of Commons debate in which Members of Parliament overwhelmingly rejected a bill to legalize assisted suicide.
According to the Christian Institute

In 2014, the BBC was criticised for ‘gradually normalising’ assisted suicide, after it broadcast a television drama featuring the story of a pregnant woman who agreed to prepare lethal drugs for her ill mother.
A critic said that it was never once mentioned that assisted suicide is against the law, and the programme failed to consider the consequences of helping someone to kill themselves.
The BBC was previously accused of cheerleading for assisted suicide in 2011, by airing a documentary showing another person with motor neurone disease getting help to kill themselves.

Source: Media Bias

Pro-Lifers


 

Driving back from the March for Life, Nebraska pro-lifers overcome terrible weather and a frightful highway accident

By Marilyn M. Synek, Vice President, University of Nebraska Students for Life
Editor’s note. This is the third and concluding story from pro-lifers describing the terrible weather they encountered after leaving Washington, DC, last Friday, having attended the annual March for Life commemorating the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Each account is a story of faithfulness and good cheer, despite being caught for up to a day on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Photo credit: Drew Joe Miller  

We left DC early Friday afternoon at 3 PM instead of staying until Saturday night. Our plan was to try to outrun the storm. Our leaders were concerned we wouldn’t get out of the city until Monday if we stayed, and that would cause us to miss another day of school.

Three hours into our trip, we were diverted off the interstate. Two semi-trucks jackknifed, blocking west-bound traffic, causing the Pennsylvania Turnpike to be closed. We waited at a gas station for 2-1/2 hours until they gave us the all clear and reopened the highway.

We were driving along 1-76 when traffic came to a complete standstill. We buckled down for the night and woke up the next morning to find ourselves buried in 2 feet of snow!
To pass the time on Saturday, we played cards, watched movies, and did homework. We were told to carefully ration our food and toilet paper, and we filled up our empty water bottles with snow. In the early afternoon, the volunteer fire department came by with 18 bottles of water for us and a bobcat. They scooped out the car in front of us and told us the plan was to come back for the buses and semis after they finished scooping out all the cars. Some of our members went out and played in the snow to burn off their energy.

At 9 PM Saturday night, 24 hours after being trapped on the bus at mile marker 133.6, a group of men came and began digging us out. A snowplow came and cleared a path in front of us.
We turned around and drove east towards Bedford, PA. A local elementary school had graciously opened up its cafeteria for us to sleep in.

The town was fairly small, so unfortunately there weren’t that many places still open to buy food at 11 at night. Several members in our group volunteered to walk to a gas station 2-1/2 miles away and bring back food.
On our way back to the elementary school, a very nice gentleman stopped and offered us a ride back to the school. We ate, cleaned up the best we could without showers, and went to sleep. We left that morning at 7 AM, took an alternative route to avoid the turnpike, and were finally Nebraska bound again.
Our group received enormous support for our pro-life elected officials. Both of our senators, Senator Sasse and Senator Fischer, and Congressman Smith Tweeted out their prayers and encouragement while we trapped. Governor Ricketts even went so far as to FaceTime our group to make sure that we were warm and fed, and thanked us for our pro-life advocacy. I am proud to have so many pro-life officials representing our state.
We finally returned home at 7 AM Monday morning. We were able to take much needed showers and stretch out. There is no time for resting in the pro-life movement though. Our group is looking forward to attending the Nebraska Walk for Life this weekend at the State Capitol.

Source: NRLC News

Assisted Suicide and Media


 

How media stars and media conglomerates soften resistance to physician-assisted suicide

By Dave Andrusko
Diane Rehm
Diane Rehm

Life has such an interesting way of lobbing coincidences at you. I had just finished writing “BBC to air documentary of man killing himself at Swizz suicide clinic,” which is exactly what the story is about. The BBC not only promotes physician- assisted suicide, it romanticizes killing oneself with assistance and makes it seem the only truly brave decision when someone is critically ill.
In this instance, next month the BBC is airing a 90-minute documentary about a man who flies to Switzerland to inject himself with a poisonous concoction. Apparently we will see everything, save the moment he actually dies.

The coincidence? When I finished I went upstairs and while a pot of coffee brewed, I read “Diane Rehm, loud and clear on life, love and death,” the latest in a never-ending series of puff pieces about talk show host Diane Rehm running in the Washington Post. (Rehm is located in Washington, DC. Her show airs on WAMU and is nationally syndicated on nearly 200 stations.)
It’s my experience that headlines online are often not only punchier than the ones in newsprint but also capture the author’s real intent. So the online headline is “Diane Rehm’s next act: Using her famed voice to fight for the good death.”

We’ve also written about Rehm before, not in uncritical adulation but to explain and analyze her consistently pro-death agenda. (There is a spot in Karen Heller’s profile where she says Rehm doesn’t like to talk about abortion anymore. If true, it would only be because Rehm’s in-kind contribution to the pro-abortion movement has reached some sort of statutory limitation.)
Already sympathetic to the “right to die” movement, Rehm was radicalized (I believe this is a fair characterization) by the death of her husband who starved himself to death over the course of ten days. That is now her crusade which she says she will take up full-throttle when she retires in 11 months.

We properly understand that Brittany Maynard’s assisted suicide was and is instrumental in changing—or at least softening—public resistance. But it is simply impossible to exaggerate the impact of the likes of Rehm and the BCC and artists such as novelist Sir Terry Pratchett in tilting the conversation in a pro-death direction.

Those of us who’ve been around for decades remember how that same dynamic helped to undermine abortion statutes in the 1960s and paved the way for the shoddy reasoning on display in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.
If you haven’t already, please read “BBC to air documentary of man killing himself at Swizz suicide clinic.”
Source: NRLC News

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Assisted Suicide


 

Justifying suicide

By Paul Russell, Founder, HOPE Australia
assistedsuicide431A few days ago I reported on two articles that appeared in the pro-euthanasia/assisted suicide Melbourne newspaper, The Age that attempted to ‘rationalise’ suicide.

In short, it was a sales pitch.

There’s nothing redeeming at all in suicide or self-killing. Certainly, we should grieve for the lives lost and remember the person and comfort the family. But there’s no sense at all in glossing over what took place. As bleak and as painful as it is and without any sense of judging the motives or state of mind of the person concerned and, while we may even come to understand something of what lead to that death, we must not make it seem that it is all somehow okay.

But that’s precisely what The Age article on the death of the Victorian couple Pat and Peter Shaw focussed upon. While the vaulted ideal of ‘choice’ in one sense demands that we accept what they did, to condone it from that same ideal and then justify it with a false appeal to supposed rationality is something entirely different and inherently dangerous.

Author Julia Medew doesn’t seem to understand. This became all the more evident in a follow up article published yesterday. Perhaps that’s a little harsh because this new article could also be understood as an attempt to justify the earlier piece following significant criticism.

Medew seems to take great pleasure in reporting that her article had generated significant interest. What begins in a self-congratulatory back-pat then develops into a predictable litany of supportive comments. The claim that the article has probably been read by ‘a million Australians’ is impossible to prove or disprove but is clearly intended to not only justify the indefensible but also to push the death agenda. It gets worse.

After creating a clear impression that those congratulating her on the story and those sharing ‘hard cases’ were amongst ‘hundreds more in a similar vein’ we find the obligatory yet entirely unconvincing attempt at ‘balance’, because, as we are told, ‘Not everybody agreed that the Shaws’ story should have been told.’

‘One person on Facebook accused The Age of glamorising suicide; another tweeted that it would encourage people to take their own lives…One man with a history of depression wrote…’ There you have it. Medew doesn’t even attempt to suggest that these three are a sample of those who dissented as she did with those that represented the ‘hundreds’.

There are but three. One is quoted: “Knowing how suicidal people think, I can guarantee your articles have and will lead to people in this frame of mind… taking their own lives.” Precisely so. I received emails in response to my last article on this matter along very similar lines.

But even this acknowledgement by Medew is simply a segue to self-justification: ‘We were mindful of this before the story was published. In an effort to minimise the risk for vulnerable people, we decided not to detail the methods that Peter and Pat used. We also included help lines for people to call if they were troubled by the story.”

Spare us! Withholding information about ‘methods’ is a bare minimum of consideration, as is the obligatory inclusion of ‘help lines’. Perversely, Medew’s comments can be read as an acknowledgement that The Age knows that this article has the potential to do harm. Then why publish? Answer: because an ideology has trumped common sense.

There is so much that is dead wrong with this approach. I hope that suicide prevention organisations speak out and join the chorus here; but I’m not holding my breath in anticipation. Why? Simply because the false association of this double suicide with a push for legal euthanasia and assisted suicide compromises many in the suicide prevention organisations who either actively support legal change or who have yet to come to terms with how the euthanasia agenda affects those who are vulnerable to suicidal depression and ideation.
The Shaw’s may have been entirely comfortable with their suicides being used to further this and The Age’s agenda. Pat and Peter Shaw should be remembered for the amazing lives that they lead and not the manner of their death as now seems more likely.

When the answer to pain and suffering or to the inevitable effects of aging is to endorse and support suicide, something radical will have taken hold in our society. This push for euthanasia and assisted suicide suggests that perhaps it is already here.

That drive for what is seen as the ultimate in autonomy, to wrestle control over death itself, releases each of us from a solemn duty that we hold in equal measure simply because of our common humanity. A debt of love each to the other that includes obligations that we accept and undertake gladly because of that love.

Difficult as these duties may be they are not a burden, just as those whom we love and who are the focus of these duties are not burdens. When someone suffers from aging or from illness or from any disability or disabling injury, to abandon them or to even create the spectre of abandonment is inhuman.
It is a precise reversal of John Dunne’s observation that ‘no man is an island’. It is denying our very humanity and is an egregious offence against the most basic of human needs and expression, nay; our very essence.
Editor’s note. This appeared at noeuthanasia.org.au and is reprinted with permission.

Source: NRLC News

Planned Parenthood


 

Latest annual report documents Planned Parenthood’s aggressive abortion agenda

By Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., NRL Director of Education & Research
Editor’s note. This appears in the current digital edition of National Right to Life News. Like all of the exciting content, it can be accessed at www.nrlc.org/uploads/NRLNews/NRLNewsJan2016.pdf. Please forward to your social media contacts. Thank you!
PPreport2014-15reTo say that 2015 was not the year Planned Parenthood dreamed of would be putting it mildly. The release of a series of undercover videos that showed high-level executives haggling over the price of intact fetal livers, kidneys, and lungs brought a firestorm of outrage and launched congressional investigations. It required a presidential veto to prevent a redirection of most of PPFA’s funding to community health centers. In a word 2015 was more like a nightmare for the nation biggest abortion performer and promoter.

Planned Parenthood showed, though, that however impacted by the publicity it might be, it was still adroit at evading the truth and rallying its supporters in the media and on Capitol Hill. PPFA muddied the waters with bogus claims that the videos were “heavily edited,” defending their callous cruelty by trying to argue that no laws were broken.

But that misses the point. The videos shed light on the barbarity of legal abortion itself, and the subsequent callous attitudes toward human life and practices that dehumanize the unborn that are part and parcel of the abortion culture in the United States.

What ultimate effect this debacle will have on the group’s reputation and revenues has yet to be determined. Abortion clinics stayed open even where undercover videos exposed some of Planned Parenthood’s most horrific practices and, as noted, President Obama vetoed legislation that would have put a halt on most of the organization’s federal funding for a year. But with a national election ahead and the issue fresh on voters’ minds, a new administration may chart a different course.
Planned Parenthood is already preparing for the future. It recently endorsed staunchly pro-abortion Democrat Hillary Clinton and can be counted on to spend tens of millions to elect other pro-abortion candidates this year, just as it has in the past.

Planned Parenthood’s annual report revealing

The latest annual report of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America came out around the turn of the year. Officially it covered only the period through June 30, 2015, before the undercover videos from the Center for Medical Progress were released. But one finds in those pages not only what really matters to Planned Parenthood, but also where they concentrate their energy and efforts, particularly when things get tough.

Unsurprisingly, the one constant at Planned Parenthood is an unyielding commitment to abortion. Even as the number of abortions has fallen substantially nationwide, abortions at Planned Parenthood have remained steady. This was true as Planned Parenthood’s total delivered services, such as contraceptives and its vaunted “cancer screenings” dropped, and even as many of its clinics closed and its smaller affiliates disappeared in mergers.

Revenues stayed up too, despite the drop in services and the economic downturn. Planned Parenthood can thank the taxpayers for that, with governments kicking in about half a billion dollars a year, just to keep a “non-profit” afloat that has tens of millions of dollars of “excess of revenues over expenses” left over each year.
Maintaining its position as nation’s top abortion chain
Clinics affiliated with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America performed 323,999 abortions in 2014. That’s just over three thousand fewer than it performed in 2013 (327,633) but right about what it did in 2008 (324,008).

After first breaking the 300,000 barrier in 2007 (305,310), Planned Parenthood’s abortion numbers hovered between 320,000 and 330,000 for the past eight annual reports, peaking at 333,964 in 2011.
Though we don’t have national abortion figures for the past couple of years yet, these steady abortion totals from Planned Parenthood are all the more remarkable, given that they come during the time from 2008 to 2011, when abortions nationally fell by nearly 13%–from 1,212,230 to 1,058,490, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

As discussed elsewhere in the December digital edition of National Right to Life News, for 2012, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) showed a continued decline, although the CDC’s national totals are missing data from several states. This means Planned Parenthood not only maintained its business, but gained market share.

Other services decline

All this while the rest of Planned Parenthood’s services, including its oft-cited “cancer screenings,” were in a steep decline. And, it’s important to remember, these “services” never included mammograms.

Planned Parenthood said it delivered 11,238,414 patient “services,” just five years earlier, in 2009. But by 2014, the number was down to 9,455,582, according to this latest annual report.
“Cancer screenings” fell from 1,830,811 to just 682,208 in that same period of time. “Breast exams/breast care” fell by more than half, from 830,312 in 2009 to 363,803 in 2014 and Pap smear tests dropped nearly two-thirds, from 904,820 to 271,539.
The surprise is not the overall drop off in the number of services – many businesses were struggling in America during that time – but that Planned Parenthood was able to keep its abortion business humming when everything else was in decline.

Another year, another billion in revenues

Annual revenues in 2015 (measured through June 30, 2015) dipped only ever so slightly from their all-time high of $1.3 billion ($1,303,400,000) last year, to $1,296,100,000. When you’re dealing with figures that large, a dip that size is essentially a rounding error

Planned Parenthood has managed to keep revenues above $1billion in the last few years, even with the declining services and clinic closings. A steady stream of abortion income has helped immensely, as has about a half billion dollars every year from U.S. taxpayers. This comes in the form of what Planned Parenthood terms “Government Health Services Grants and Reimbursements.”
This is why Planned Parenthood is so heavily invested in the success of ObamaCare, which they hope offers them a steady stream of new customers and cash.

It also makes obvious why Planned Parenthood protests so loudly whenever there is talk of rerouting its government funding to community health centers. Though PPFA is delivering fewer and fewer services to clients, they depend on that revenue to keep salaries paid and the doors open. They could give up abortion in hopes of muting the opposition, but that is the one commitment that is non-negotiable for Planned Parenthood.

More mergers and megaclinics

Planned Parenthood has been merging a few affiliates and closing several clinics over the past several years. Planned Parenthood said it had 88 affiliates and 840 “health centers” in its 2009-2010 report; the latest report for 2014-2015 indicates just 59 affiliates and 661 clinics. This alone should account for some of the decline in services.

But, with abortion numbers remaining virtually stable, what is clear is either that most of the clinics that closed were not abortion performing clinics or that Planned Parenthood has built giant new mega-clinics built to take their place. The new centers do not appear to have picked up the lost cancer screenings, but they do appear to have kept the lucrative abortion business humming.

For the past dozen years or so, while it was closing smaller clinics, Planned Parenthood affiliates embarked on a major building program. They constructed more than 25 modern, high capacity
mega-clinics of 10,000 square feet or more in cities all across the U.S. High profile projects built or underway in Houston, Texas; Portland, Ore.; Aurora, Ill.; Fayetteville, N.C.; New Orleans, La.; St. Paul, Minn; and others were joined by new facilities being built in San Antonio, Texas; Spokane, Wash.; and Queens in New York City.
These are high volume regional abortion clinics where patients from smaller Planned Parenthood satellite offices can be referred. They also function as high profile corporate headquarters and centers for political organizing, and mobilizing pro-abortion activists.

Planned Parenthood is more than just a “reproductive health care provider” with a sizable and profitable abortion sideline. Their latest annual report not only shows how abortion is a huge profit center for their business, but is also a chief focus of Planned Parenthood’s public and political advocacy campaigns.

Challenging pro-life, pro-woman laws

Planned Parenthood lists its advocacy on behalf of “safe and legal abortion” as one of its top achievements in 2015 and headlines early in the 2014-2015 annual report state that “We protected and expanded access to abortion.”

Planned Parenthood trumpets court victories against clinic regulations and physician requirements in Indiana, Louisiana, and Wisconsin. These laws were designed to make sure (a) that facilities were safe, sterile, and capable of accommodating emergency equipment or personnel in the event of a medical emergency; and (b) to ensure that the abortionist handling those cases could accompany his patients to area hospitals if needed, by having admitting privileges.

In mentioning these laws, Planned Parenthood expresses no concerns for the health and safety of women having abortions at its clinics. Instead the report complained about how such laws “would have severely limited the practices of abortion providers as well as abortion facilities and made it much harder for women to access safe and legal abortion care.”

What about that whole “pro-choice” mantra where women are supposed to be presented with all their options? Planned Parenthood proudly mentions that its attorneys were able to block an ultrasound law in North Carolina that would have made sure that women visiting its clinics were able to see an ultrasound of their unborn baby before having an abortion.

Despite statements elsewhere that ultrasounds before abortions are “the medical standard” to confirm gestational age (Commentary, 2/22/12), Planned Parenthood says in the annual report that these ultrasounds “had no medical purpose and would have only served to shame women accessing basic health care.” If Planned Parenthood was already performing an ultrasound, it seems the only real “danger” was that women might change their minds, depriving Planned Parenthood of an abortion fee.

Doing abortions without doctors

In the annual report, Planned Parenthood embraces the concept of “webcam abortions,” celebrating a victory in the Iowa Supreme Court which struck down regulations put in place by the Iowa Board of Medicine that essentially banned the dangerous procedure.

Planned Parenthood protests that were such a law in effect, women in rural areas would have to make multiple trips hundreds of miles from home to get chemical abortions.

But Planned Parenthood chooses not to draw attention to the fact that the women would never be physically examined by a doctor; that their case might be managed by only a certified medical assistant with a couple of years of community college; and that the only help they might be able to access if they encountered problems was a visit to the local emergency room, however far away that might be.

You also won’t find mention in the report that women taking these chemical abortifacients have bled to death, experienced dangerous ruptures from ectopic pregnancies, or contracted rare fatal infections.
Planned Parenthood’s California affiliates were instrumental in helping pass a law there authorizing nurse practitioners, certified nurse-midwives, and physician assistants to perform first trimester surgical abortions. Planned Parenthood said this raised “abortion access to a gold standard” and increased the number of “providers.”

Though there is no indication that new legislation expanding the ranks of potential abortionists in California made abortion any safer (data actually indicate it made things worse; see NRL News Today, 2/20/13), this does not stop Planned Parenthood from praising the “advocacy work” of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California in getting the law passed.
The truth is that abortionists are harder and harder to come by, even in states with high abortion rates such as California. It is simply inconsistent with medicine’s healing mandate, and good doctors don’t want to be associated with it.

But Planned Parenthood is nothing if not adept at improvising — even if that lowers medical standards so that they can find more (and lesser skilled) personnel to keep their profitable abortion clinics open.
No limit to the killing

For Planned Parenthood, even a ban on abortions after 20 weeks, when medical science has demonstrated that unborn babies can feel pain, is too much. Planned Parenthood says that “women should not have to justify their personal medical decisions,” and that these are “complex,” “complicated” decisions that women need to work out with their doctors, implying these are primarily medical determinations.

But newspaper factcheckers have noted that women’s reasons for later abortions are similar to their reasons for earlier ones, thus exposing the special medical justification as the red herring that it is (Florida Times-Union, 10/23/15).

Planned Parenthood neglects to mention in its annual report that it has a business interest in keeping late abortions legal. A recent count showed at least a dozen of its clinics performing abortions at 20 weeks or more (NRL News Today, 5/15/13).

Creating a pro-abortion culture

Planned Parenthood’s advocacy is not confined to Congress, the courts, or clinics. Sprinkled throughout the latest annual report are spunky references to various music, film, or rock stars, trying to make it clear that Planned Parenthood is popular with the “in crowd.”
Various well-known celebrities tweeted messages with Planned Parenthood’s #IStandWithPP hashtag. Planned Parenthood proudly notes when Hollywood consults with them on films “to ensure they handled issues related to unintended pregnancy and pregnancy options, including abortion” accurately and sensitively.”
That “sensitivity” does not include due consideration of the sentience, the rights, and the humanity of the unborn.
The report observes that Planned Parenthood arranged for MTV’s Virgin Territory to film at one of their clinics and that they were able to get the very political actress, Lena Dunham, to feature a story line “destigmatizing abortion” on her HBO show, Girls. They also partnered with Dunham, who called those working at Planned Parenthood her “heroes,” on her nine-city book tour.
Part of the abortion industry’s new campaign to “fight abortion stigma” is to insist that there is nothing problematic, morally or otherwise, about abortion. With the “1 in 3 Campaign” (so-called for a claim that one in three women will have an abortion in their lifetimes), Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards “led the way by sharing her own abortion story,” thereby “amplif[ying] the voices of Planned Parenthood patients and supporters who have had an abortion.”
A more efficient killing machine
Elsewhere in the annual report, Planned Parenthood talks about how it has streamlined patient access, making it easier to get appointments on-line, increased clinic productivity by reducing patient wait times, trained new affiliate CEO’s to help them “build and leverage leadership skills,” and “helped several affiliates return to financial health to ensure patients continued to receive the services they need.”

Though these may seem like minor administrative tweaks and technology upgrades, these are the sorts of adjustments that help Planned Parenthood stay economically viable as it maintains and expands its market share.

Efforts to reach out to Latino and African American communities, on which the organization depends for a lot of its business, are also a critical part of Planned Parenthood’s expansion plan.

Failing to understand their opposition

Again, though this latest annual report covers the period before the release of the videos from the Center for Medical Progress revealing Planned Parenthood’s connection to harvesting intact fetal organs, it is clear that this exposure has unnerved the organization.
In the opening letter, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards and chair Jill Lafer say that Planned Parenthood has been “tested in every way imaginable – and have emerged stronger than ever.”

They say “no one would bother attacking Planned Parenthood if we didn’t matter. Planned Parenthood’s resilient staff and clinicians are making a huge difference in the field of reproductive and sexual health care and in the cultural landscape as well.”
What they fail to consider is that the problem people have with Planned Parenthood is that they kill babies, for money, with a cavalier indifference to unborn human life–and they have in mind to do more of it.

Their place as the nation’s top abortion performer and promoter, and the fact that they do what they do not only with the official blessing of the U.S. government, but with hundreds of millions of our taxpayer dollars, is why they have been “tested in every way.”

As the undercover videos clearly show, this commitment to abortion not only destroys human beings, but destroys our humanity. But Planned Parenthood is apparently committed to this cause, no matter how far down it drags America.

Source: NRLC News

Say It Isn't So


 

Clinton warm to suggestion of nominating Barack Obama to the Supreme Court

By Dave Andrusko
President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton

As I read that Hillary Clinton responded with a “wow” when a Iowan asked if she’d consider Barack Obama for the Supreme Court, I couldn’t help thinking back to the opening of an “exclusive” interview Mr. Obama gave POLITICO. Glenn Thrush began
Barack Obama, that prematurely gray elder statesman, is laboring mightily to remain neutral during Hillary Clinton’s battle with Bernie Sanders in Iowa, the state that cemented his political legend and secured his path to the presidency.

But in a candid 40-minute interview for POLITICO’s Off Message podcast as the first flakes of the blizzard fell outside the Oval Office, he couldn’t hide his obvious affection for Clinton or his implicit feeling that she, not Sanders, best understands the unpalatably pragmatic demands of a presidency.
Quid pro quo? The former Secretary of State is probably more or less sincere. Or, alternatively, having embraced the Obama legacy for her own in her campaign for President, it would look rather ungrateful if she didn’t gush at the chance to possibly reward Mr. Obama, should she become president.

Here’s what happened, according to Tony Leys of the Des Moines Register:
The Democratic presidential candidate was responding to a question from a voter, who noted that the next president probably will have several Supreme Court appointments to make. The man wondered aloud if Obama might be one of them if Clinton moves into the White House.
“Wow! What a great idea!” Clinton exclaimed as the crowd of 450 people roared approval and applauded.

“I’ll be sure to take that under advisement,” she said. “I mean, he’s brilliant. He can set forth an argument, and he was a law professor, so he’s got all the credentials. Now, we do have to get a Democratic Senate to get him confirmed.”
She laughingly added that she wasn’t sure if he would be interested. “He may have other things to do.”

Leys then refers to an interview Obama gave to Jeffrey Toobin that appeared in 2014 in the New Yorker. Toobin asked Obama “if, like William Howard Taft, he entertained thoughts of serving as a judge later in his career.” [Mr. Taft, after serving as President, later became the tenth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.]

Leys observes “Obama didn’t rule it out, though he voiced doubts.” Toobin put it differently: Obama “sounded tempted by the idea.”

The New York Times put a different spin on Clinton’s remarks, noting that there was a second “wow”:
She then repeated “wow” again, as if giving herself an extra second to think of a good answer, considering that she has been praising Mr. Obama’s agenda and leadership repeatedly on the campaign trail recently.
“He may have a few other things to do, but I tell you, that’s a great idea,” Mrs. Clinton said — not quite committing but certainly not dismissing the notion.
She then turned to the current court, saying that “we need new justices who actually understand the challenges we face” and wondering if some justices made decisions based on “naïveté.”

Just guessing but I suspect none of the “some justices” was appointed by a pro-abortion Democrat.

Source: NRLC News

Ireland


 

Two challenges to ruling that sets the stage for undermining Northern Ireland’s protective abortion law

By Dave Andrusko
Northern Ireland’s attorney general, John Larkin Photograph: Press Association
Northern Ireland’s attorney general, John Larkin Photograph: Press Association

When last we posted on abortion in Northern Ireland, Mr. Justice Mark Horner had largely agreed with The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission that Northern Ireland’s abortion legislation breached Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights by not allowing for abortions in cases of fatal fetal anomaly, rape, and incest.

However, even though Justice Horner’s decision was a blistering denunciation of current law, delivered over the course of two hours, when he subsequently read his final conclusion in December, Justice Horner told a packed hearing at Belfast High Court it would be “a step too far” for him to interpret sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861 to allow for abortion in these three instances.

Thus, Northern Ireland’s Parliament is not obliged to pass new legislation on abortion, although all agreed the decision laid the foundation for what pro-abortionists like to call a “relaxation” of the law. The very pro-abortion BBC argued the decision “placed an onus on the Northern Ireland Assembly to legislate on the issue.”
Northern Ireland's Minister of Justice David Ford
Northern Ireland’s Minister of Justice David Ford

Which brings us to two different but related appeals of Judge Horner’s decision.
On Monday Northern Ireland Attorney General John Larkin confirmed that his office has launched an appeal to overturn Justice Horner’s ruling. Back in November Larkin said he was “profoundly disappointed” by the decision and was considering the grounds for appeal. According to the Irish Times he is challenging the entirety of the decision.

He’s been joined by Northern Ireland’s justice minister, David Ford, whom, according to the Irish Times is challenging specific elements of the decision.

Ford told BBC’s Good Morning Ulster programme that “The real danger is that the way the judgement read human rights law.” The BBC reported, “Mr. Ford said this potentially goes ‘beyond the 1967 act as it applies in the rest of the United Kingdom.’” (Unlike other parts of the United Kingdom, the 1967 Abortion Act does not extend to Northern Ireland which has a very protective abortion law.)

“David Ford said he was concerned that a lack of ‘legal certainty’ could lead inadvertently to abortion on demand,” the BBC reported.

Source: NRLC News

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Media Bias


 

Networks Cover Panda Cub’s Debut 26x More than March for Life

By Katie Yoder
MarchforLife2016bContrary to popular media belief, the blizzard didn’t scare pro-life marchers away. It scared reporters away. Either that, or their allegiance to the liberal agenda did the job.

Tens of thousands of Americans filled Washington, D.C., Friday for the annual March for Life commemorating the nearly 60 million babies snuffed out since 1973’s Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. During their nationally broadcast news shows following the march (Friday night to Monday morning) ABC, CBS and NBC totally ignored the event – except as a casual reference to a group stranded in the snow.
At the same time, the three networks dedicated more than nine-and-a-half minutes – 26 times more than the march – on the debut of the National Zoo’s cub last weekend. Journalists don’t care about the unborn, but they care about the newly born if they happen to be adorable animals.
How dare they. There’s no denying that panda cubs are cute and attention-worthy. But there’s something terribly wrong when the networks devote minutes to animals, while only sparing seconds to human beings.
This year’s march was particularly relevant in light of the Center for Medical Progress videos released last summer exposing Planned Parenthood’s harvesting of aborted baby parts. These videos resulted in nationwide protests, congressional hearings, state investigations as well as a heated GOP presidential debate.
But of the networks, only ABC had anything to say about the march. Good Morning America reported Sunday on a “group of high schoolers trying to get back to Kentucky after visiting D.C. for the March for Life.” That one mention amounted to 22 seconds.
pandababybeibei3During the same time period, last week (Friday evening to Monday morning), ABC, CBS and NBC combined spent nine minutes and 36 seconds on the public debut of the National Zoo’s new panda cub, Bei Bei.
ABC World News Saturday on Jan. 16 hyped “panda-monium” while CBS’ Sunday Morning on Jan. 17 highlighted the “dozens” that came to see Bei Bei.
ABC and NBC also mentioned a Mass celebrated by groups stranded on the Pennsylvania turnpike, by the way. But they couldn’t bring themselves to say why those Catholics were on the road: for the March for Life. NBC’s Today called them a “church group.”
baby309March for Life Media History
The broadcast networks and news outlets have long misrepresented the March for Life.
This year was no exception. The Washington Post called the 2016 March for Life “small” while The New York Times estimated “hundreds.”

There were fewer participants than years past, but tens of thousands still attended the march, according to March for Life organizers.

“We were extremely pleased with what appeared to be tens of thousands of Americans who came together to celebrate life today despite the weather conditions,” said Jeanne Mancini, President of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, in a statement to MRC Culture. “Today we proved our commitment to this cause, and protecting all life, especially for the unborn.”
MRC Culture, reporting at the scene, captured those marchers on camera.

Last year, 200,000 people marched in Washington, D.C., but only CBS mentioned the march, allotting just 15 seconds. To put that in perspective, that was only one second for every 13,000 people who put work, school and other obligations aside to travel from as far away as the West Coast. That was only one second for every 3.8 million babies aborted in the last four decades.
In 2014, the networks spent 46 seconds on the hundreds of thousands marching in Washington, D.C. Yet, ABC, NBC and CBS spent four-and-a-half times that on the Climate March.
Since 2013, the networks have devoted just 78 seconds to the March for Life.

Spanish-Speaking Media

According to MRC Latino, which monitors media reporting in Spanish, Univision’s national evening newscast, Noticiero Univision, spent a mere 10 seconds covering the 2016 March for Life Friday evening. Predictably, the mention came from within a report about the incoming blizzard.
“The report, by correspondent Lourdes Meluzá, explicitly mentioned the march, included images of the march, highlighted the brave souls who marched despite the weather and interviewed a marcher whose return travel plans are complicated because of the storm,” MRC Latino told MRC Culture. …
Telemundo failed to mention the march.

MRC research analyst Mike Ciandella, MRC Culture staff writer Mairead McArdle and MRC Latino director Ken Oliver-Mendez contributed to this report.
Editor’s Note: This appeared at newsbusters.org

Source: NRLC News

Pregancy Help Centers


 

NPR says a few kind words about CPCs before lowering the hammer

By Dave Andrusko
PregnancyCenterQRWhen a story about a crisis pregnancy center begins on a high note, you might be tempted to breathe a sigh of relief: no hit job. But, if where the story runs is NPR, you know what they giveth with one pinky, they’ll taketh back with a mailed fist. (Of course, the headline kind of spills the beans–“States Fund Pregnancy Centers That Discourage Abortion” — but more about that in a second.)

NPR’s Jennifer Ludden begins by painting a very encouraging story built around a young woman who came to a CPC when she thought she was pregnant:
She walked into PDHC [Pregnancy Decision Health Center] feeling ashamed of “my dirty little secret.” But when the test came back positive, she says she felt a rush of relief when the women at the center were happy for her.

“I remember Rita, one of the nurses, came in and she was like, ‘Oh, congratulations, Mommy-to-be!’ And I just got on my knees and started bawling,” she says. “And for some reason at that point it felt like maybe this wasn’t just about me, maybe there’s another person that I need to think about.”
The counselors at PDHC helped her to tell her parents and assisted her to arrange for an adoption. “She says she can’t know for sure whether she would have gone ahead with an abortion had she gone to Planned Parenthood,” Ludden explains, “but ‘I never, ever regret the decision I made.’”
But, having told this “happy story,” Ludden goes into overdrive to make up for lost ground. All the recyclable arguments NARAL has tossed out in state after state are resurrected. Since we’ve rebutted them all innumerable times before, just two quick points.

To be fair, Ludden ends by explaining that (the best efforts of NARAL and its allies to the contrary notwithstanding) most of the local laws passed that treat CPCs with one standard and abortion clinics with another have gone down in flames.

The other point is that bone in the throat for the Abortion Industry which is the beneficiary of hundreds of millions of public and private dollars: that some states provide some monies for CPCs or sell “Choose Life” specialty license plates and give CPCs a small share of the proceeds.
How can this be! NARAL et al. thunder. CPCs oughtn’t to get a penny when they (and then the list of phony baloney allegations).

When it comes to talking to women in crisis pregnancies, the Abortion Industry wants a monopoly. And like all monopoly wannabes, they’ll do anything to crush the competition.

Source: NRLC News

Pro-Lifers


 

YOU-nique Creations

By Carol Tobias, President, National Right to Life
snowflake2reIn recent days, much of the country experienced millions of billions of trillions of snowflakes, and more on top of that. In other words, a countless number of snowflakes. Each snowflake is different from the other snowflakes, never to be duplicated again. Once those snowflakes melt, that particular design, that special creation, will never be seen again.

In their uniqueness, human beings are like those snowflakes. Specially designed and uniquely created. There have been billions of human beings on this earth yet no two people are alike. You are one-of-a-kind. You are unique. Or as some dear friends at my church recently reminded us: you are YOU-nique.

As members of the right-to-life movement, we work against abortion and euthanasia and assisted suicide. We do so in the service of celebrating Life in all its beauty and uniqueness. We celebrate the lives of our family and friends; we celebrate the lives of the elderly and disabled who may need our help in special ways; we celebrate the new life of each baby, born and unborn, bringing new smiles and laughter into the world.

True, as we go about our usual routines, we can sometimes be tempted to be discouraged by the seemingly insurmountable task ahead of us. We know that each time a life is ended by abortion or euthanasia, a unique and irreplaceable creation is gone.
But we continue to fight the good fight, the noble fight, the just fight. We know that as we add more and more people to our Movement, we have proof positive that we are changing hearts and minds.
One day the time will come when our country will look at every human being, born or unborn, and say, “YOU are you-nique.” And why? Because each and every unique pro-lifer never wavered.

Source: NRLC News

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Pro-Abortion Hillary


 

More evidence pro-abortion Hillary Clinton is very nervous about Iowa

By Dave Andrusko
Pro-abortion Sen. Bernie Sanders and pro-abortion former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Pro-abortion Sen. Bernie Sanders and pro-abortion former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Let’s see if one set of facts explains the latest hysteria from Hillary Clinton and her sisterhood of pro-abortion advocacy groups. The following is from today’s Des Moines Register, the leading newspaper in Iowa, seven days away from the first presidential caucuses. Tony Leys writes
A recent Iowa Poll found that Clinton and [rival Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie] Sanders were splitting the support of Democrats who backed Obama in 2008. Of those who supported Obama then and intend to caucus Feb. 1, 41 percent supported Sanders and 39 percent supported Clinton, the poll found. The same poll showed Clinton’s once-commanding lead among likely Democratic caucus participants had almost evaporated. She was at 42 percent to Sanders’ 40 percent.

As many (okay all) have noted, this has that deja vu all over again feeling about it. Just as was the case in 2008, Clinton’s seemingly insurmountable lead is melting away. What to do?
Ratchet up their attack on Sanders, whose voting record (he says) is 100% pro-abortion. On what grounds? As best I can tell, the attack is two-fold.

To call the NARALs and the EMILY Lists part of the dreaded “Establishment” is a kind of subtle sexism—a lament that is as familiar as it is tiresome.

But given that imaginary opening, Clinton’s allies argue that Sanders isn’t as true-blue a “progressive” as Clinton is. “It was a real wake-up call for folks that he probably wasn’t where he needed to be in this fight,” said Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. So, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Hogue and the heads of the five families, aka like-minded pro-abortion feminist organizations backing Clinton to the hilt, announced that Sanders wasn’t as aggressive as Clinton was in calling for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment.

In response, Sanders dutifully chimed in with a statement Friday, saying “Women must have full control over their reproductive health in order to have full control over their lives.”
Leys notes
In Iowa, NARAL’s average member is a young woman in her 30s — the very demographic that tends to support Sanders, despite Clinton’s strength with older women.
Leys ends with the unsurprising observing that Clinton’s final weeks in Iowa
have been punctuated by events tailored at reaching younger women. Over the past week, she visited two college campuses, including one event with pop singer Demi Lovato. And after speaking at an event with NARAL in New Hampshire, she will campaign with Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood’s president, on Sunday.
The question, obviously, is could anyone be so naïve as to think that Clinton’s flailing about is evidence of a genuine disagreement between pro-abortionists instead of what it is–desperation

Source: NRLC News

Texas and Supreme Court


NRLC Files Supreme Court Brief Supporting Texas Abortion Laws

supreme-court99reOn Friday, on the 43rd anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Supreme Court supporting Texas against a challenge to the state’s quality standards for abortion providers–Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole. Texas requires, as do many states, that abortionists have hospital admitting privileges and that abortion clinics meet the same standards as other ambulatory surgery clinics.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the Texas laws.
Key to the case is the level of scrutiny federal courts should apply to decide if such laws are constitutional. The NRLC brief addressed the Court’s “undue burden” scrutiny, explaining that the Fifth Circuit correctly followed that applicable test.

The brief put the undue-burden test in the context of the Supreme Court’s early adoption of the role of national medical board, in which it substituted its judgment for that of legislatures in striking quality-control regulations of abortion providers. It did this though it originally said, in Roe v. Wade (1973), that states could enact such regulation.

The brief then explained how Justice O’Connor argued in her dissent in Akron (1983) that the Court should adopt a more deferential undue-burden test. The brief noted that NRLC submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in Casey (1992), stating what would be necessary to make an undue-burden test workable.

In Casey, the Court adopted key aspects of that approach, in a decision that Justice O’Connor co-authored. Casey’s lower-scrutiny, more deferential, undue-burden test got the Court out of the medical-board role.

The NRLC brief explained that the nature of the undue-burden test from Casey must be understood in light of Justice O’Connor’s understanding of it in her Akron dissent. The brief showed that Casey’s undue-burden test, properly understood, supports the Fifth Circuit’s analysis. And it explained that the concerns that caused the Court to reaffirm Roe generally in Casey while abandoning the medical-board role by greater deference require the Court to not abandon the proper understanding of the undue-burden test (unless the Court wants to overrule Roe).

James Bopp, Jr., NRLC’s General Counsel and co-author of NRLC’s brief here and in Casey, comments: “After striking many reasonable medical regulations, the Supreme Court decided to abandon the medical-board role in Casey. It did so with a lower-scrutiny, undue-burden test. The Texas challengers want the Court to again be the national medical board by reviving strict scrutiny. That would damage the rule of law and the Court’s legitimacy.”

The case is Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole (15-274). Briefs are available here and here.

Source: NRLC News

Monday, January 25, 2016

Feminists

Feminists for Nonviolent Choices

Yes, you can be a feminist and be pro-life

Remember when being a feminist required nothing more than believing in equality between the sexes? Oh, wait — no, feminism over the past half century or so has revolved around much more than that. These days, you have to pass a litmus test before you’re allowed in the feminism cool kids club, and the biggest requirement is that you must be a fanatical, diehard supporter of abortion. The latest example is Dr. Jen Gunter, who is furious at Vox for publishing a post titled “Why I’m a pro-life feminist,” by Claire Swinarski.
Obviously, it’s horrible for any outlet, anywhere, to publish an op-ed that Gunter doesn’t personally agree with, so there’s that major offense. And on top of that, according to Gunter, you can’t be a feminist and be pro-life.

Given the ever increasing erosion of abortion rights and the fact that 2015 brought a banner year of criminalizing pregnant women one would have thought that focusing on facts instead of propaganda would be the ethical thing to do. Claire Swinarski, the writer, is allowed to have her opinion (no matter how ill-informed, patronizing, or steeped in the swill of patriarchy it may be), but Vox certainly doesn’t have to publish it on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. And yes Vox also published a piece on post Roe restrictions, but here’s the thing, it’s the lies and half-truths and propaganda wrapped up in the illusion of “helping to keep women safe” that have contributed to this erosion of Roe so it’s a bit ironic to see the two side by side.
With that in mind I want to take a minute or two to explain why being *cough* pro-life means you are anything but a feminist. When I say pro-life I don’t mean what you would do when faced with the decision about your own pregnancy, I mean imposing your view on others. Like the author on Vox thinks is the right thing to do. For feminism.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Hey, you know who would be really, really surprised to find out that you can’t be a feminist and also be pro-life? Every first-wave feminist ever. You know, the women who believed in equality and fought for the right to vote? Yeah, them. Women like Mary Wollstonecraft, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (pictured), Louisa May Alcott… they abhorred abortion. Susan B. Anthony famously said of abortion:
Guilty? Yes no matter what the motive, love of ease, or desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh! Thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation which impels her to the crime.
The number of pro-life feminists is truly staggering. But thank goodness we have Jen Gunter to tell us that all of these feminists were wrong for being pro-life, and because they didn’t totally love abortion, they weren’t really feminists either. Who needs silly things like the right to vote or the ability to own property? All women need is abortion! That’s what really matters.
Funnily enough, the feminist movement’s approval of abortion can be traced back to men, not women. As Feminists for Life president Serrin Foster pointed out in an interview with Live Action News, Larry Later and Bernard Nathanson were key players in pushing abortion onto second-wave feminists. Women willingly went along, and we now have the bastardized movement that we all know and loathe today, which calls itself feminist.
Today, feminists insist that women walk in lockstep. They insist women must think the same way and support the same things. Feminism isn’t about equality anymore; if it was, then pro-life feminists would be eagerly welcomed. Instead, being pro-abortion is required, despite the fact that a majority of women are pro-life.
Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony
It’s men who are more pro-abortion than pro-life, and why not? First, it allows them to have sex without consequences. They can sleep with a woman, get her pregnant, and have no responsibility whatsoever. They don’t have to deal with raising a baby or paying child support, and they also don’t have to be faced with going through the trauma of having an abortion, with all of its risks. Everything is pushed onto the woman to endure, while men can, if they so choose, get off virtually scot-free, thanks to abortion. Second, men who may otherwise dislike abortion feel obligated to support it, because being openly pro-life can lead to demonization from today’s so-called “feminists,” who deride these pro-life men as anti-woman. (Remember what Susan B. Anthony said about men driving women into abortions? Imagine how she’d react to this.)
Yet again, we see that the pro-choice movement is anything but. For them, there is only one choice, and that is abortion. Women do not have the choice to become pro-life, according to modern feminists. They don’t have the choice to look at a complex issue such as abortion and come to their own conclusions — no, women like Jen Gunter evidently feel that they should be allowed to dictate women’s opinions for them. And in the process, they’ve turned their backs on what so many of the original feminists believed in and fought for. What exactly is feminist about that?

Source: LiveAction News

Parental Rights

Carly-Fiorina-672

Fiorina controversy highlights pro-abortion hypocrisy on parental rights

Pro-abortion outlets including Gawker, Jezebel, Raw Story, and ThinkProgress are ganging up on Carly Fiorina for a mix-up at the Iowa Right to Life Presidential Forum, which was held at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden. A preschool field trip was going on there at the same time, and it seems Fiorina invited several of the children to sit on stage while the rally was going on. Some parents have expressed anger at Fiorina for allegedly pressuring their kids, who were as young as four and five, to take part in the event and be exposed to the heavy, disturbing subject of abortion.
For the record, Fiorina’s campaign disputes that version of events. A spokesperson first said simply, “We were happy that these children chose to come to Carly’s event with their adult supervisor,” then on Thursday deputy campaign manager Sarah Isgur Flores released an extended explanation (which only ThinkProgress has bothered to update their story with)…

In Des Moines yesterday, a group of preschoolers along with their parents and teachers followed Carly right into the event she was speaking at for Iowa Right to Life. Earlier, she’d run into the kids in the Botanical Gardens and watched the koi with them for a while. I guess the kids must have thought she was pretty neat because then their teachers and parents and the kids all followed Carly into the event complete with Carly stickers.
Considering that Live Action routinely catches all four of these sites peddling egregious falsehoods and Fiorina turned out to be telling the truth the last time pro-aborts accused her of lying, it’s pretty safe to guess which side has more credibility.

It’s certainly possible that there was a communication breakdown in terms of where the school group thought they were headed, and the chaperones erred in deciding to follow a political candidate to a political event without getting the permission of parents that weren’t present, but a certain degree of confusion is to be expected when political events happen at public venues where people are present for other purposes—regrettable, but hardly the end of the world.
But for the sake of argument, let’s temporarily suppose Carly’s attackers are right, that she saw a random group of children passing by and pounced to pressure them into a photo op, without the slightest regard for the kids’ peace of mind or the parents’ decision. Such a move would be an encroachment on parental rights that no pro-lifer should defend.

Abortion is an ugly, horrifying subject, and as important as it is for everyone to understand it eventually, we can’t presume to know when and whether other people’s children are ready to handle that level of darkness. It is ultimately up to every parent to decide when and how to broach the subject with their children.

Indeed, our side is the champion of parental rights in this debate, so it’s more than a little ludicrous to see pro-aborts lecturing Fiorina about this alleged offense while they routinely defend far more egregious interference in how parents raise their kids.

After all, they’re the ones who vigorously oppose laws requiring parents to have a say in—or even to know about—their teenage daughter having an abortion. They’re the ones who support health programs intentionally hiding teens’ sexual activity from their parents. They’re the ones who aren’t bothered to see Planned Parenthood explicitly tell kids that “despite what your parents and teachers say,” knowing about sex is way more important than understanding math or chemistry, or teach teens and younger a whole array of pro-promiscuity lessons about “sex play,” “embracing the slut label,” and even deliberately hiding one’s HIV status from a sex partner.

But no, none of that is worth an uproar. The real crime is that some kids at a botanical garden saw what a developing preborn baby looks like. The horror.

Parental rights are under attack, but not by Carly Fiorina. It is the abortion lobby and its fans who want to cut Mom and Dad out of the equation and force their demented values on America’s kids. Big Choice is a menace to children outside of the womb as well as within.

Source: LiveAction News

Adoption Story

Permission only for IAMUNTOLD story

Marcy’s story: “Adoption was the best option for both me and my baby”

(IAmUntold) A single mom with no support system and faced with a second pregnancy. As I walked through the doors of a place that I thought would help me find the solution to my “problem,” I found a much different answer, but one that brought joy to more than just me.

I had a very difficult and unloving childhood. I was the victim of sexual assault and I did not finish high school. I was unemployed and struggled with mental health issues. I had a child I was determined to raise, but parenting was challenging for me. I was a loving and attentive parent to my son, but I was a single mother with no support from anyone.

IMG_0082
Marcy’s birth daughter
When my son was only five months old, I became pregnant again.
My first thought was to have an abortion. I didn’t see any possible way I could parent another child. I went to a local Care Net crisis pregnancy center thinking about getting an abortion. At Care Net I was reassured that terminating the pregnancy was not my only option. I did not fully realize what happened during an abortion.  Once I was educated on what it meant to have an abortion, I knew I couldn’t go through with it. I decided that adoption was the best option for both me and my baby and I was referred to Bethany Christian Services.

I looked through profiles of prospective adoptive families and one stood out to me. I prayed and asked God to guide me and He kept directing me to one particular family. When we met for the first time, I shared with the family that I wanted my daughter’s middle name to be “Faith.”  I told them, “I need to have faith to give her up and trust you.” The couple then shared that if they had a daughter someday, they were already planning to give her the middle name of “Faith.” That was the sign to me that God was bonding us together.

I received on-going support during the adoption process. My Bethany caseworker took me to all of my prenatal appointments and watched my young son while I saw the doctor. I joined a women’s Bible study and my faith grew.

When my daughter was born, I spent time early on caring for her and invited the adoptive parents to stay at the hospital and spend time with her as well. While it was not an easy process, I followed through with the adoption plan. A month after the baby was born, I got a job. A few months later, I moved to an apartment in a safer neighborhood. As a result, I was better able to care for my son.
1A343AC4-A80D-44BE-85DE-6297C97E6CEB@attlocal.net
Today, I have a positive, open relationship with the adoptive family and it brings me joy to see how well my birth daughter is doing. I believe adoption is the best of both worlds. I gave my daughter a better life than I could give her and I gave this gift to two people who can’t have children. I still see her and she’s always going to know me. She has a mom and dad who love her to death.
She’s always smiling and I can tell she’s very happy. I have peace with my decision, and I consider her a blessing.
“But as for you, be strong and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded.” 2 CHRONICLES 15:7
Editor’s Note: Original story shared on IAMUNTOLD.ORG  – please visit the site to view the music video of UNTOLD, by Matthew West, along with other stories and resources. Story is reprinted here with permission.

Source: LiveAction News

Beautiful Story

Kyle Porter, stillborn, miscarriage, no heartbeat, life

We lost a child and gained something greater

Charles Spurgeon once said this about suffering:
It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity.
Those are some of the most sobering words I’ve ever read. A month ago, I could not have known their depth nor their weight. Now I can.

Here is the story of how we lost a daughter, and gained so much more.
The question people love to ask when you tell them (or they see) that the woman you’re with is pregnant is almost universally, what are you having? It’s a reasonable question, of course, because what you’re having (girl, boy, twins or more) affects the trajectory of your life almost as much as the fact you’re having a child to begin with.
My wife, Jen, and I like to be surprised by what we’re having. It adds a little punch to the birth itself (not that Jen would agree births need any extra “punch”). It was something we were certainly looking forward to this time around. We already have one boy and one girl so (for me anyway) there wasn’t the twinge of wanting a boy like there was during our first biological birth.
Both our boy and our girl are special to me in different ways. Boys are tumultuous and uninhibited. Girls are unfailingly sweet and equally dramatic. I love them both deeply. I was simply thrilled about finding out which we were adding to our family of (soon-to-be) five. The closer we got to the due date, the more excited I realized I was.
The last thing I wrote in my journal before our unborn baby died three weeks ago was this:
I’m getting really excited about baby No. 3. Really excited. I finally read the birth book and I realized how curious I am to find out the gender. I could not be more enthralled with that right now. I’m also hopeful Jen’s labor will be swift and steady.
That was on a Monday morning. Two hours later, Jen told me she hadn’t felt the baby move all morning. She was 36 weeks pregnant.
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Our pastor, Matt Chandler, always says: “Your life can change with one phone call. You’re not exempt.” The problem is that I always thought I was. I thought my friends were, too. This is an illusion, of course, and about 100 minutes later I got that phone call from my wife, who said the midwife wanted her to get a sonogram because she couldn’t find the baby’s heart.
If we’re being honest, we didn’t need the sonogram. It was a formality. We both already knew. We both knew as we drove to the hospital. We both knew as they put her in a wheelchair. We both knew as they went through two sonogram machines thinking one was broken. The doctor didn’t even need to say it, but she did anyway. Two words that change the rest of your life. There might not be two more devastating words.
No heartbeat.
All of the emotions.
*   *   *   *   *
Our friends, family, and church were spectacularly gracious in the days that followed. It’s impossible for me to stress that enough. They were unbelievable. The weight was not ours alone to shoulder, which made tasting the unfolding nightmare at least palatable.
John Piper once wrote that he “loves the ready tears of strong men.” I now have some old T-shirts that would agree with him. My friends came and held me, and we wept. Their wives came and held my wife, too. It was a spectacular outpouring of God’s grace in giving us deep and enduring friendships.
These friends with whom we had built up 1,000 or 3,000 common days bore a part of our burden. I’m not sure how we would’ve moved forward without them, and without their prayer. The Lord sustained us throughout. We certainly did not sustain ourselves.
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The morning after we got the news, we sat in our car at the hospital with our friend (and labor and delivery nurse) Andrea, about to go talk to the doctor about how to get our baby out. All three of us wept softly as she prayed over us.
That day felt like a thousand days condensed into 24 hours. So much of it is blurry, and yet so many moments are etched into a layer of my mind and heart reserved for the handful of days in our lives which are not mundane.
Filling out paperwork in the doctor’s office that felt like taking the SAT. A long walk with a great friend around the medical center. Weeping with our pastors. Lunch with Jen and Andrea (who stayed with us all day) while balancing on the massive bouncy birth balls littered about the delivery room.
The anesthesiologist coming in like Mike from Breaking Bad. No words, just business. Jen asking if she had elephantiasis after getting the epidural. It was the slowest fastest day I’ve ever had.
It was also the most emotional. Before leaving for the hospital early that morning, Jen said, “God willing, this is the hardest day we’ll ever go through.” You always feel like you’ve emptied yourself of the emotion, and it just keeps coming. It is exhausting.
Jen was monumental, though. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how wonderful she was the entire week. I was (mostly) a disaster. A mess of tears and emotions and intense pain. She was calm and confident. In the Lord. In herself. And in me. Our marriage may have been pronounced five years ago, but it was seared into my heart during this week.
She eventually gave birth to our not-breathing child. The doctor showed me the gender. I looked down at my wife and told her. We had a girl. We named her Kate Noelle. Jen grabbed her out of the doctor’s hands.
“Oh, my baby, my baby. She’s beautiful.”
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Stillborn births are not necessarily unique. That doesn’t dull the sting or erase the pain, but it at least reminds you many parents have walked this path. My mom had a stillborn child. Some of our friends’ parents did too. One out of every 115 pregnancies ends with a stillborn.
We don’t want to cry out “Why us?” when this is so common to so many. Instead, we want to say “Yes, us—and thank you to everyone else before us for walking this path with grace.”
There is a couple from our church, Ben and Ashley Barr, whose son Thomas died in a similar fashion in the exact same hospital room, just one week before. They had literally walked the path we walked, and they walked it well. We took great hope in such great faithfulness.
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Jen asked what my lasting memory from the day of Kate’s birth was. There are many. One that sticks out is walking with Andrea from the delivery room to the hospital waiting room after Kate was born to face our friends, families, and kids.
“You married a great woman,” she said. “I know,” I replied.
We walked in silence. A thousand-yard stare and a million-mile walk. We finally rounded the corner. I looked for my kids, but found my parents. The background was a myriad of people and tears. I think I saw our pastor on his knees. “We had a girl.” I could barely get the words out. “She’s so pretty.”
We got to introduce Kate to her brother and sister. We got to read as a family and had Hannah sing our EFGs (in lieu of our ABCs). Hannah and Jude got to pray for baby. We told them baby was going to live with Jesus.
Hannah could not have been prouder. Jude gave some questionable pat-pats to Kate, as he is prone to do. They loved her as much as they love each other. Of all the griefs we had, the toughest is probably not being able to give them something they had been looking forward to for months.
They didn’t understand, but someday they will, and we wanted to have photos and moments to point to to remind them. I told my friend Josh I don’t want to protect my kids from difficult things. I don’t want them to only know good moments. I don’t want them to only see our good side, because they will be mightily disappointed when they leave home. Both in us and by how the world actually works.
One of our greatest joys the entire week was sharing these fleeting minutes with our momentary family of five.
Jen and I also got to spend a night in the hospital with our child. The juxtaposition of desperately needing to sleep and not wanting to waste the minutes you have left before you never see your kid again is a strong one. I slept fitfully. Everyone in hospitals does. I held Kate close while her mom rested. It was a good time. One I’m thankful we had.
It was also a bittersweet night, knowing we’d never physically lay eyes on our daughter again. But Psalm 139:16 says the Lord has already numbered all our days.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
I’ve received about 11,500 of them thus far. Kate only received about 250. That seems unfair. But the Lord wasn’t surprised when she passed away, and we take comfort in knowing that.
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As we prepared to go home the next day, more friends visited and held our girl. More tears. But also a joyful farewell knowing we would see her again someday.
I asked Andrea to come back to the hospital. I’ve known Andrea off and on since we were in elementary school. She is a terrific friend. I never thought I would be texting her as an adult to come help us say goodbye to our baby. Jen wanted to put Kate in Andrea’s arms. Nobody else.
I told Jen her job was done and that she had done it well. It was finished. That brought peace. We kissed her face and whispered, “See you soon, sweet girl.”
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Driving home from the hospital without a child is not a trek I hope anyone else reading this ever has to take. It is a sad and brutal thing. All you want is to hear the thing you’ve found yourself trying to escape the last few years: a screaming child.
We rested for a day and went to the funeral home on Thursday. There are only a couple of reasons 30-year-olds walk into funeral homes. None of them are good. This one least of all.
We ripped through the minutia. It was surreal. Picking flowers for your baby’s casket. Picking a casket for your baby. My gosh. We chose four white roses representing each member of our family to lay around Kate’s casket for the memorial. We picked a burial plot. That destroyed me.
She would be buried next to Thomas. She shared a delivery room with him. Now she shares a resting place. Jen found great joy in this.
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The memorial was on a Saturday morning. I read a letter I had written about the week. I didn’t think I could get through it. The Lord continued to sustain, though. I looked out over 50 or 75 of our dearest friends and family, and tried my best to preach what we had learned from the week. Here’s part of what I read:
Hebrews 5:8 reminds us that Jesus learned obedience from suffering. We have felt the weight of that verse this week, and testify that it is good. We lost Kate, but we got more of God, and it is a sweet thing.
There is no bitterness among us. How could there be? We aren’t even promised tomorrow. We are sustained here on Earth in the expanse of the universe only by God’s words. We are owed nothing.
We are instead grateful to have met Kate. To have shared half a day with her. For Jen to have shared eight months with her. That is a gift! It is nothing else. And while Jen wanted Kate to meet her and see her face and feel her embrace, we rejoice that she saw Jesus first.
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I’ve always enjoyed the spotlight to a degree. I think everyone does in some way. That feels like a pretty personal thing to admit, but I’m also writing about the loss of a child, so I guess we’re beyond that. This was a week when I both embraced and loathed the spotlight.
I embraced it because I was glad to shine a light on our Lord, and I loathed it because I really, really wish I didn’t need to in this way.
The last of these spotlight moments was carrying my child’s casket from the hearse to the grave. I spoke with our pastor a few hours before that. He stared me in the eyes and told me that, as her father, I wouldn’t regret putting her casket in the ground.
I shook as I stood in the road 25 yards from her resting place and stared at a casket the size of a wastebasket, with 15 sets of eyes staring at the back of my head. I didn’t want to move. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to wake up.
Eventually, I lowered my six-pound child six feet in the ground with a pair of straps that looked like they should have been corralling boxes in the bed of our truck when we moved to our next house.
I had to get down on my knees and then lay on my chest to reach far enough in to release the casket. We buried Kate with some of our favorite things. Books, pictures and drawings from the kids. We wept over the grave and laid four roses on her buried casket (even the one Hannah destroyed at the memorial).
*   *   *   *   *
Putting a baby in the ground changes you. I don’t know how it couldn’t. We went back to the church, and I found one of those strong men I mentioned earlier. He held me again and told me things would never be the same for any of us. He’s right.
A 19th-century hymnist named Horatio Spafford knew the feelings we felt that day. Spafford and his wife lost four daughters when their ship crossing the Atlantic sank. He then wrote what might be the most famous hymn of all time. We sang it at the memorial. The first verse crushes.
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
On our way home from the memorial and burial, Jen told me she felt like she’d never worshiped like she did at Kate’s memorial. She’d never had this much on the table.
In our 30-plus years on Earth, we have almost exclusively known great gifts and a rich life. I said this at the memorial, but we have a good life. We have tremendous friends, enjoy our work, and delight in our children.
For a lot of us (myself included), Christianity has come easy. There’s been no suffering. There’s been no pain. There have been few questions. There’s been no reason to not trust God and to not call ourselves Christians.
And now there is.
Now we have known unimaginable depths. The sorrow that flowed that week is an unspeakable thing. And we can truthfully say the Lord is good in both the joy and the sorrow, if not greater in the sorrow. That was what we tried to point to all week.
That we do not hope in our children. That we do not hope in each other. That we do not hope in our friends or our families or in anything outside the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. That is all. In Christ alone. This was a wild reminder of that. One we didn’t want, but always need.
My friend Nathan said that until that week, loving the Lord amid sorrow this deep was only a theory for many of us. Putting a baby in the ground makes it real. And not just for us. Our friends mourned deeply with us, which was as rich a reminder as I’ve ever had of God’s purpose in ordaining a deep community of friends.
Peter would call all of this sanctification:
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Pet. 1:6–8)
If I’m honest with myself, this is a good thing for me. Would I choose this path? Never. Would I choose any part of it for myself or anyone I’ve ever met in my life? No. But it is ultimately good for me and for my family, and that’s a really difficult thing to admit.
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This is why I say we lost a child (a baby!), and gained everything. Christ is everything, or he is nothing. We lost so much, but gained so much more. We got so much more of the Lord than we ever had before. We got more of the Lord than I knew was possible for a human to get.
It’s hard to describe what I mean when I say we got more of God. That is an ambiguous thing, I realize. We all saw it on each other’s faces, though. The Lord was near. We all shared a lot of joy and peace that week that wasn’t man-made. It was sweet. It was a deeply spiritual week. Probably the most spiritual of our lives.
Life that week was so thick and so rich that it barely resembled all the other weeks I’ve experienced. And the goodness in all of this (and a sign of God’s spectacular grace to us) is that the only constant we knew that week is that God is still good and his grace and love roll deeper than we will ever know. He is sufficient, but he is also beyond sufficient. He is good enough to give us more of himself, no matter the circumstance.
James 1:17 says this:
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
Jen says that means our faith must not waver because God didn’t change. He didn’t waver. The only thing that has changed is how much of him we carry with us. We lost sweet Kate, but we got so much of the Lord. Not in spite of, but because of her.
Don’t mistake what I’m saying here. We lost a lot. We lost a child. It is every parent’s deepest fear and greatest nightmare. I honestly can’t, off the top of my head, think of anything worse in terms of sheer traumatic force applied to two married adults. But we gained even more than we lost. This is a bittersweet reality. One too complex for me to understand in full.
A pastor named Dave Zuleger once observed this about suffering:
Suffering is one of the great instruments in God’s hands to continue to reveal to us our dependence on him and our hope in him. God is good to give us the greatest gift he can give us, which is more of himself, and he’s good however he chooses to deliver that gift.
We can now testify to the truth in these words.
We have two healthy kids and one on the way. God is good. We have two healthy kids and the one on the way has died. And God is even greater than we thought he was.
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So now we move on. But we move on as vastly different people than we were before. All of us. Not just Jen and me. Our friends, our families, everyone who was involved. We have been grateful for that. Not only that could our burden be divvied up, but that the Lord would mature us and those around us because of this.
My friend Josh sat with us in the delivery room a few hours after Kate was born and confessed amid many tears that he’d never longed for heaven like he had on that day. I thought that was a compelling and honest confession. One I tearfully agreed with and tucked away.

I’ve always found heaven to be a strange thing. Or rather my relationship with heaven. It seems like a place we should long for more than we do given how twisted and disturbing the planet we live on is. And yet, I like it here. I really do. C. S. Lewis would say I prefer mud pies.
That’s not something I’m proud of. It’s also something I’m hopeful will change as I continue to accept the reality that sweet Kate is there (and not here) forever. And it’s already started. Heaven is more at the forefront of my life because of that week. We’ve talked about it more. It’s a place I think about. It’s a place I want to be.

Not to see the girl I lost, although that will be a good thing. But it is a pale and pathetic thing compared to seeing in full the God who willingly chose that which I would never dream of choosing. I want to meet my daughter, yes, but what I really long for is to meet the Father who gave his Son.
Editor’s Note: Permission to print granted by the author and The Gospel Coalition, where this article appeared on January 7, 2016.

Source: LiveAction News