Bizzare

 

Clinic worker films her own abortion in bizarre video

By Lauren Enriquez
Earlier this year, the Abortion Care Network sponsored a video contest. The aim of the videos submitted was to “bust the stigma” associated with abortion. Many abortion advocates contend that it is strictly stigma, created by pro-lifers, that causes the shame that women feel after experiencing abortion. Blaming pro-life advocacy for the normal effects of abortion on women is a cheap tactic that doesn’t actually help women who are struggling with painful — sometimes traumatic — emotions after they choose abortion. But apparently, some women took the bait and submitted their videos. One of them was Emily Letts, who is an abortion counselor at Cherry Hill Women’s Center in New Jersey.

The video opens with Emily explaining her feelings and justification for the abortion. Giggling, she says “Yeah, I’m gonna be having an abortion tomorrow morning!” Emily’s video includes (non-graphic) filming during the abortion. The experience was anomalous compared with the recorded testimonies of many post-abortive women. The doctor was extremely friendly, Emily was smiling the whole time, and two clinic workers were present on either side of Emily to hold her hands during her child’s death.

This scenario does not resonate with many women’s experiences of abortion. New York Magazine chronicled appalling treatment by doctors and staff (one doctor flippantly “whistled show tunes” during his abortions), and organizations like Silent No More document thousands of negative abortion experiences. Our own Live Action investigations record unconscionable treatment of women by abortion facilities, including physical and psychological abuse and frequent violations of the law.
In post-abortive testimonies, women often recall being forgotten about, mistreated by abortionists and staff, lied to. And then there are the incidences of death among women who went into an abortion mill seeking a “safe, legal, and rare” procedure only to exit in a body bag.

Emily concludes her video by filming herself about six weeks after the abortion. She ends with the following, bizarre statement (emphasis added):

“It is about a month and a half after the procedure now. I feel like I talk to women all the time and they’re like of course everyone feels bad about this. Of course everyone is going to feel guilty,’ as if it’s a given how people feel about this. That what they’re doing is wrong. I don’t feel like a bad person. I don’t feel sad. I feel in awe of the fact that I can make a baby, that I can make a life. I knew that what I was going to do was right, because it was right for me. And no one else.”

Editor’s note. Lauren has worked for great organizations such as Texas Right to Life and Students for Life of America. This appeared at liveactionnews.org.

Source: NRLC News

Assisted Suicide

 

Death on Demand Coming to Canada?

By Wesley J. Smith

Canadian Member of Parliament Steven Fletcher

No more justifications that assisted suicide is about the “terminally ill for whom nothing can be done to alleviate suffering.” That patently isn’t true. Legislative proposals/laws that limit doctor-prescribed death to the terminally ill never have the “nothing can be done to alleviate suffering” part.
Thus, these restrictions are best seen for what they are–mere political expediencies deemed necessary by death ideologues to get the ball rolling. For that matter, so are requirements mandating that the patient actually take their own lives. Active euthanasia is the actual destination and always has been.
Here’s another example of the broad death license that the euthanasia/assisted suicide movement seeks: Legislation has been introduced in Canada’s Parliament to legalize assisted suicide, and once again the “strict guidelines” are broad enough to drive a hearse through. From “The Right to Die Well,” by the bill’s author, Steven Fletcher:

“Having been diagnosed by a physician with an illness, a disease or a disability (including disability arising from traumatic injury) that causes intolerable physical or psychological suffering that cannot be alleviated by any medical treatment acceptable to that person, or;

“Being in a state of weakening capacity with no chance of improvement and being of sound mind and capable of fully understanding the information provided to him or her under other sections of the law.”

Note, this isn’t the same thing as saying there is no way to alleviate “pain” since the suffering can be psychological. Also, that including the phrase ”acceptable to that person,” would mean that there would be no objective way to measure or judge any of this.
Besides, any suicidal person thinks there is no way to alleviate their suffering. Should this bill become law, it won’t be long before it extends to mental illness–which, after all can cause far more suffering than a physical malady. Indeed, that is precisely what happened in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland.

This bill probably won’t pass before the next election. But the ground is being prepared for a radical lurch. I think Fletcher is right that the Supreme Court of Canada wants to strike down the existing anti-assisted suicide law.
And don’t think that beneath the surface this isn’t about health care costs. Throughout the West, a lot of effort is underway to take expensive patients off the books.
People with disabilities, the elderly, the chronically ill, and eventually the mentally ill in Canada could soon be in the maw of the culture of death, masking as compassion.
Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s blog.

Source: NRLC News

ObamaCare

 

“The Affordable Care Act and Health Care Access in the United States”

National Right to Life Report Examines the Effect of the Affordable Care Act in the United States

Today is the “official” deadline for open enrollment in the insurance exchanges established by “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (also known as Obamacare), although the Obama Administration last week gave wiggle room to anyone who says they have “started” a yet-to-be-completed application.
Either way, there are a few very important things you should know.
Earlier this month, National Right to Life’s the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics at the National Right to Life Committee issued a report, “The Affordable Care Act and Health Care Access in the United States,” that outlines the dangers Obamacare poses to your ability to access life-saving medical treatment (www.nrlc.org/communications/healthcarereport).

The report analyzes four fundamental policy areas of Obamacare and concludes that they will drastically limit access to life-saving medical treatment under the law. These four areas include: the “excess benefit” tax coming into effect in 2018, the current exclusion of adequate health Insurance plans from the exchanges, present limits on senior citizens’ ability to use their own money for health insurance, and federal limits on the care doctors give their patients to be implemented as soon as 2016.
“For pro-life Americans concerned about the impact on innocent human life—both born and unborn—the policies of Obamacare couldn’t be worse,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “Americans are just as concerned with the law’s impact on our ability to access life-saving medical treatment for ourselves, our family members, and our loved ones as with Obamacare’s funding of abortions. Obamacare is bad medicine for America.”
Since Obamacare was first debated in Congress, National Right to Life’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics has argued that key provisions of Obamacare would limit what Americans could spend—out of their own funds—to access life-saving medical treatment. As the Center’s new report concludes, Americans will see a significant shift in how they are able to access health care, and just what types of treatment they will be able to obtain.

As documented by media reports and the language of the law itself, Obamacare will limit access to life-saving treatment in four different ways:
1. Obamacare imposes a 40% excise tax on employer-paid health insurance premiums above a governmentally imposed limit that does not keep up with medical inflation. Consequently, insurance companies will be forced to impose increasingly severe restraints on policy-holders’ access to medical diagnosis and treatment—limits that will make it harder to get often-expensive treatments essential to combating life-threatening illnesses.

2. Under Obamacare, consumers using the exchanges may only choose plans offered by insurers who do not allow their customers to spend what government bureaucrats deem an “excessive or unjustified” amount for their health insurance – regardless of whether the insurers offer such plans inside or outside of the exchanges established by the law.

3. Most senior citizens know that the law will significantly cut government funding for Medicare, but they may not be aware of the law’s provision allowing Washington bureaucrats to prevent them from making up the Medicare shortfall with their own funds by limiting their right to spend their own money to obtain insurance less likely to limit treatments that could save their lives.

4. The “Independent Payment Advisory Board” is directed to recommend measures to limit spending on health care to a growth rate below medical inflation – not just for Medicare, but also for all private, nongovernmental health care spending. The federal Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) is then authorized to implement these measures by placing limits on the treatments providers may give their patients by requiring them to abide by so-called “quality and efficiency standards” imposed by HHS.

“Obamacare authorizes Washington bureaucrats to create one uniform, national standard of care that is designed to limit what private citizens are allowed to spend to save their own lives,” stated Burke Balch, J.D., director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics. “We are convinced most Americans do not believe that the government should limit the right of Americans to use their own money for health care necessary to save their lives. Yet, that is exactly what Obamacare does. ”
As noted above the report is available from the National Right to Life Communications Department at www.nrlc.org/communications/healthcarereport.

Source: NRLC News

Crime

 

Seven months pregnant woman is shot and killed in Miami, baby boy clings to life

By Dave Andrusko

21-year-old Qualecia James, seven months pregnant, was shot and killed Sunday. Baby clings to life.

21-year-old Qualecia James, who was seven months pregnant, died Sunday after being shot earlier that afternoon in Miami. Her baby boy clings to life.

James was a passenger in a car when another vehicle came along side and opened fire. The Daily Mail reports that the driver, who was not hurt, pulled into a driveway and called police.
“James was airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital in an extremely critical condition,” Joel Christie reported. “As doctors worked on saving her, they managed to deliver her child, who was born two months early.” But doctors were unable to save James, who was also the mother of a four-year-child.
“It hurts me so bad my daughter gone, she gone,” her father, Leroy James, told CBS. “’The last thing we always tell each other ‘I love you’ and that’s the last thing she said to me and the last thing I said to her ‘I love you’.”

Police are trying to figure out who killed Ms. James. Miami Gardens Police Detective Mike Wright told CBS4, “We are actively searching for any witnesses who will be able to help us out in this horrific incident. We need our neighbors to come together and start actually piecing this puzzle together.”

As for Leroy James, “All I got to say to the people who done this, run forever and a day. You will get caught I promise you that,” he told CBS4. “You done killed my baby girl, my firstborn. You will get caught.”
Police say Qualecia’s baby boy is in critical condition.

Source: NRLC News

Abortionists

 

Houston Planned Parenthood befuddles 911 dispatcher with attempt to obfuscate abortion hemorrhage

by Operation Rescue staff

March 31, 2014 (Operation Rescue) - By now abortionists around the nation are well aware that Operation Rescue and other pro-life organizations are accessing public 911 records to verify and document abortion-related medical emergencies that are often witnessed by street activists outside American abortion clinics.

In some instances, abortion clinics have resorted to using private ambulance services that are not subject to open records laws. Others have pressured county records officials to over-redact public information in order to hide the seriousness of all-too-common abortion-related emergencies from the public.

In extreme situations, abortionists even have been known to violate patient care standards by transporting women suffering life-threatening abortion complications to emergency rooms using private vehicles so as not to draw attention to their latest medical mishaps.
However, in Texas, the monolithic Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Houston recently resorted to new tactics to obfuscate the severity of an abortion-related medical emergency and confuse anyone who might access the 911 record.
During a call to 911 placed on December, 14, 2013, from the towering Houston Planned Parenthood abortion clinic on Gulf Freeway, the caller is heard using medical abbreviations and “shorthand” terminology to conceal the fact that an abortion patient was suffering uncontrolled bleeding and heavy blood loss.
But the tactic backfired and served only to confuse the dispatcher and delay emergency care to the hemorrhaging abortion patient, who was eventually transported to Ben Taub Hospital in Houston.
Listen to the full 911 recording here.
This transcribed excerpt is revealing of the lengths to which Planned Parenthood will go to conceal the fact that its abortionists are hurting women:

Planned Parenthood Caller: We have a 33-year old G-6, P-2 –
Dispatcher: Okay, what does that mean?
Planned Parenthood Caller: Um, she’s – um, been pregnant six times and has two living children.
Dispatcher: Okay. How old –
Planned Parenthood Caller: — Transport with IV running from ASC to Ben Taub. Um, she is status post complete A-B.
Dispatcher: What does that mean?
Planned Parenthood Caller: Abortion.
Dispatcher: Okay –
Planned Parenthood Caller: — With an EBL of 500.
Dispatcher: EBL?
Planned Parenthood Caller: Estimated blood loss.
Dispatcher: Oh, okay.
Planned Parenthood Caller: And she has no drug allergies.
Dispatcher: But she needs to go to Ben Taub — why?
Planned Parenthood Caller: Because she’s having some, um, bleeding that we can’t control.
Dispatcher: Oh, okay, okay, okay. That’s what I needed to know.

It took a long two minutes and six seconds into the 911 call before the dispatcher finally understood why the Planned Parenthood worker had called.
 
To translate, Planned Parenthood had just completed an abortion on a patient who was essentially hemorrhaging and had already lost 500 milliliters of blood in a relatively short time. The abortionist on duty could not control the bleeding, so they requested emergency transport from Planned Parenthood (an ASC or Ambulatory Surgical Center) to the hospital.
Just to give an idea of how much 500 ml of blood is in terms of American measures, she had lost approximately 17 ounces of blood – about half of the allowable blood loss for an average-sized woman undergoing surgery.
“If Planned Parenthood thinks their ‘insider lingo’ will outsmart us, they completely underestimate the Pro-life movement. This kind of nonsense is actually endangering the lives of women and delaying their access to emergency care when every minute might mean the difference between life and death,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “It just goes to show that for Planned Parenthood, covering up their mistakes takes priority over the lives and health of women.”
Reprinted with permission from Operation Rescue

Source: LifeSite News

Abortion

 

3 legal reasons why abortion should be banned

by Kristi Burton Brown

1) Murder is illegal.
Murder is the “unlawful killing of a human being” with some level of intent. California law includes “a deliberate intention unlawfully to take away the life of a fellow creature.”
The only thing preventing abortion from being included in the definition of murder is that it’s currently not “unlawful.” But basic science proves that an unborn child is a “human being.” No mention of “personhood” is necessary for basic murder definitions. Killing a “human being” or a “fellow creature,” even, is enough.
Why, as a society, do we pick and choose human beings whom we can deliberately kill? These human beings are fully human, entirely innocent, and helpless and voiceless. Yet we purposely target them, setting very few restrictions on their killings.
Is there any other class of human beings that our society will make it “lawful” to kill? Belgium is already on the path to extending legal murder through its legalization of euthanasia – even child euthanasia. History shows that Nazi Germany, once it began to legalize the murder of human beings, simply continued down the path – the elderly, the sick, the disabled, gypsies, homosexuals, the Jews, those who defended the Jews. Where would it have stopped?
This is why abortion must be illegal if murder is illegal. It should never be “lawful” to kill any innocent human being.
2) The 14^th Amendment was designed to protect classes of people like the unborn.
At the time the 14^th Amendment was adopted, abortion was already illegal or being made illegal throughout the nation.

The criminalization of abortion accelerated during the 1860s, and by 1900 it was generally considered a felony in every state.

Thus, there was no reason for Congress to specifically discuss the unborn in their debate on the 14^th Amendment. The unborn were already a protected class in the U.S.
However, during the debate on the 14^th Amendment, Senate Sponsor Jacob Howard explained that it was essential for every man (or human being) to be equal in regard to the basic right to life:

I urge the amendment for the enforcement of these essential provisions of your Constitution, divine in their justice, sublime in their humanity, which declare that all men are equal in the rights of life and liberty before the majesty of American law.

Senator Howard also stated:

It establishes equality before the law, and it gives to the humblest, the poorest, the most despised of the race the same rights and the same protection before the law as it gives to the most powerful, the most wealthy, or the most haughty.

House sponsor John Bingham further explained the intent when he argued, as Robert C. Cetrulo writes, that “the Amendment was intended to be ‘universal’ and to apply to ‘any human being.’ Fourteenth Amendment rights were intended not only to ‘pertain to American citizenship but also to common humanity.’”
3) Federal laws already protect the unborn.

Justice requires our laws to be consistent.

The law on the death penalty and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act are prime examples.

Federal law prohibits the death penalty for pregnant women until they give birth. (18 U.S.C.A. S.3596) In essence, the law declared that an innocent unborn person cannot be sentenced and put to death for a crime he did not commit.  If the unborn child were not seen as a person in the eyes of the law, there would be no need for this prohibition.
Common law typically prohibited the execution of a pregnant woman until birth, though its prohibition was not even as strong as the current federal law.  The U.S. Supreme Court (in Union P. R. Co. v. Botsford) explained the purpose of the common law doctrine: “to guard against the taking of the life of an unborn child for the crime of the mother.” Inconsistently, the Court calls the unborn child a “child” and yet refuses to recognize her as a person.

It’s wrong for a mother to have the right to kill her children. True feminists realize that our power doesn’t come through the blood of our children.
The UVVA specifically prohibits the killing of unborn children, defining them as follows:

… a child in utero, and the term ‘child in utero’ or ‘child, who is in utero’ means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.

And yet, even with this powerful definition, the law makes exceptions for mothers to give permission for their children to be killed.
How contradictory, tragic, and wrong.

Source: LiveAction News

HHS Mandate

 

Obama’s mandate imposes his views on all Americans

by James D. Agresti

In a blatant inversion of reality, the New York Times editorial board is claiming that corporations want to “impose their religious views on their employees — by refusing to permit them contraceptive coverage as required under the Affordable Care Act.” In truth, the so-called contraception mandate imposes the views of President Obama (and the Times editors) on all Americans.
The Affordable Care Act (a.k.a Obamacare) gives the Executive Branch at least 40 regulatory powers that have the force of law. The Obama administration has exercised this authority tomandate that “most new and renewed health plans” cover “all FDA-approved forms of contraception” without any copayments.


This means that nearly all Americans who pay for health insurance—whether they are private citizens, business owners, or taxpayers—are required to pay for the products that Obama demands. This is not about the legality of these products but forcing everyone to pay for them, whether they want to or not. In short, the mandate denies everyone the freedom to purchase a healthcare policy that covers what they want, instead of what the President wants.

Proponents of the mandate often focus on employees who want these items paid for by health insurance provided by their employers, but they completely ignore the business owners and other employees who don’t want to pay for these items. This is a critical omission, because when government forces all health plans to pay for certain items, all of the insured are forced to pay for them through their insurance premiums.

Thus, regardless of whether the mandate is upheld by the Supreme Court or struck down in part or in whole, the only people who are in danger of having someone else’s views forced down their throats are those who don’t want to pay for these products. Everyone else would still be free to buy them as they wish.

Similarly, CNN recently stated that Rush Limbaugh “called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a ‘slut’ and ‘prostitute’ for her support of women’s access to birth control.” This is a gross mischaracterization of the facts. Everyone in the U.S. already had “access to birth control.” What Fluke demanded is that others be forced to pay for it.
Moreover, Fluke argued that others must buy her the precise type of birth control she prefers. She didn’t want to pay for it, and she didn’t want whoever she was having sex with to pay for it. Instead, she wanted others with no role in her sex life to pay for it. That is not about “access” but coercion.
Proponents of the mandate have also been actively spreading falsehoods about the devices and drugs that the mandate covers. The scientific facts are clear that some of these products destroy viable human embryos, which is abortion or tantamount to it.

Yet, NPR, the New York Times, and others are obscuring these facts by misrepresenting scientific studies and uncritically quoting scientists who are donors to Obama—without even identifying them as such. These realities are scrupulously documented in Just Facts’ article, “Does the Obama mandate force you to pay for abortions?”
While people can argue endlessly about the pros and cons of this mandate, let’s make no mistake about who is seeking to impose their views on others: It is the people who support the mandate, not those who don’t want to be forced to pay for products that others demand.

The article originally appeared at JustFacts and is reprinted with permission.

Source: LiveAction News

Plan B

 

 

Plan B: It’s not just a contraceptive

by Lauren Enriquez

As the “Hobby Lobby case” (aka Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. v. Sebelius) is underway at the Supreme Court in our nation’s capital, this may be a good time to review what all the fuss is about. Hobby Lobby’s owners, as well as those of Conestoga Woods (the company fighting the HHS mandate along with Hobby Lobby), are Christian. As such, they believe that causing the intentional death of an innocent person is a moral evil, and they object to what they view as being party to those deaths by being forced to pay for abortifacient drugs, which can cause such deaths.
Many groups – including Christian groups and some pro-lifers – have cried foul over this allegation, claiming that the belief that certain contraceptives can also cause abortions is false. They believe that the birth control pill, condoms, IUDs, Plan B, ella, etc. are all just contraceptives that prevent sperm and egg from joining. This is true for some forms of contraception, like condoms and spermicides, which can only inhibit the mobility of sperm and have no effect once sperm and egg are joined as a new human life. Other contraceptives can take the process a step farther, though, and when they fail to serve as contraceptives (aka, conception does take place), they can also make a woman’s body hostile to the newly formed embryo and cause the child to be expelled.

Some confusion has been swirling, however, about what constitutes a pregnancy, and how emergency contraceptives like Plan B actually work. Consequently, a crusade has been brewing against the allegation that hormonal contraceptives and emergency contraception can cause abortions. But the bottom line is that they can.
The definition of “pregnancy” has been changed over time. Groups like the ACOG (the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) have altered the definition of pregnancy over the years (notably, in 1965 and 1972). Rather than acknowledging (as the science of embryology universally does) that a new, unique human life begins to exist during the process of fertilization (which occurs outside the uterus), ACOG now posits that pregnancy does not begin until implantation in the uterus occurs. This means that they do not recognize the existence of a pregnancy until after an embryo has successfully burrowed into his or her mother’s uterus and found it hospitable to life. By this newer, questionable definition of pregnancy (arguably motivated by an anti-life agenda), embryos expelled from their mother’s bodies before implantation are essentially unworthy of any mention.
But pro-lifers know that, regardless of where a living embryo is in his or her mother’s body, this is a human worthy of recognition, protection, and respect.
Now, although emergency contraceptive drugs are designed with the purpose of preventing ovulation, or preventing sperm from reaching an egg if ovulation does occur, a third mode of action is possible when the first two fail: Plan B’s “plan C,” so to speak, is to cause a woman’s body to expel the embryo that is formed when the first two modes of action have failed. There is no way to know how frequently this occurs, and research may suggest that this mode of action is infrequent (prompting Plan B to seek removal of the FDA’s cautionary labeling, which is undoubtedly bad for sales). Nevertheless, by the FDA’s own admission:

If fertilization does occur, Plan B may prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb (implantation).

“Fertilized egg” here refers to a human embryo – a unique human being whose pregnant mother may unknowingly suffer his or her loss after ingesting Plan B (and even the birth control pill can have this effect on uterine lining).
Plan B is different from RU-486 but can still be an abortifacient. Individuals who cry foul over pro-lifers calling Plan B an abortifacient often contend that only the RU-486 abortion drug can actually cause an abortion. RU-486 does indeed work very differently from Plan B does. The purpose of RU-486 is to terminate a pre-born child who is successfully developing inside a woman’s uterus. It can be taken well into the first trimester to induce abortion, and it consists of two different drugs taken over a period of days. The first drug cuts off the baby’s nutrition, while the second causes the uterus to contract and expel the baby.
This is not how Plan B and other forms of emergency contraception work. As previously stated, emergency contraception’s primary goal is to either prevent ovulation or inhibit sperm and egg from joining in fertilization. But, as the FDA affirms, the third mode of action of Plan B is to “prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb (implantation).” Note that there is nowhere for this fertilized egg – aka the tiny human being – to go, except to be expelled from the woman’s body. This is, effectively, an abortion. And this is why companies like Hobby Lobby take issue with paying for drugs and devices that work like Plan B.


Source: LiveAction News

Life Issues

 

Why pro-aborts can’t avoid occasionally sounding pro-life

by Calvin Freiburger

It’s obvious why graphics like the above, quoting from Dr. Seuss’s classic children’s story Horton Hears a Who!, are popular in pro-life circles: it’s appealing to see a universally beloved cultural figure voice a simple truth with such obvious implications for the abortion debate.
Recently, I came across the below image on the Proudly Pro-Choice Tumblr, featuring a quote from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which holds a similar appeal:

The other side often complains about our use of such quotes, particularly when the meaning we take from them allegedly contradicts the pro-abortion views of their authors. PPC says:

I’m so sick of anti-choicers taking quotes out of context – this is from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which has nothing to do with abortion. Exactly like Dr. Seuss and his Horton Hears a Who. Stop it! You’re not accomplishing anything!
I also looked into Rowling a little – nothing about her being pro-life but I did find some stuff that points to her being pro-choice. So I have a feeling she probably wouldn’t want her book quotation being used in such a way.

I couldn’t find examples of Rowling directly discussing abortion, but she did declare she wanted a Democrat in the White House and called Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “extraordinary,” so killing the unborn apparently doesn’t bother her much. As for Seuss,  AKA Theodor Geisel, his biographer Phillip Nel writes:

In fact, during his lifetime Seuss threatened to sue an anti-abortion group unless they took that off their stationery and they did take it off their stationery but it’s still used. I’ve still seen propaganda in recent years from pro-life groups that have adopted Horton’s line, ‘A person’s a person, no matter how small.’ It’s one of the ways in which Seuss has been misappropriated. He would not agree with that.

Former Seuss attorney Karl ZoBell says he cannot confirm the veracity of internet rumors that Geisel’s widow Audrey actively supports Planned Parenthood, but he does claim she was bothered by pro-life fliers distributed with the quote at the 2008 premiere of Horton’s big-screen adaptation: “She doesn’t like people to hijack Dr. Seuss characters or material to front their own points of view.”
So how is it that authors can give us such elegant affirmations of the pro-life ethic without actually being pro-life? Simple: the pro-life ethic is embedded in every affirmation of human decency – and tolerance for abortion is a massive, glaring affront to it.
Universal human equality, basic compassion for the weak, protection of the helpless, the ugliness of violence, the unfathomable potential of every life…by default, each of these values necessarily includes all human beings, including those in the womb. It’s simply impossible to praise or promote any of these values without tacitly paying lip service to the unborn.
First, to exclude the unborn, you have to consciously go out of your way. “Every human life except x, y, or z is worth the same, and worth saving.” In the case of Horton, not only do you have to add an exception, but you also have to remove “no matter how small” – half of the quote!
Second, there’s no way around the fact that accepting abortion is an affront to all the other values we associate with basic human dignity. If some of us may be killed by another human being for any reason, we cannot be equal. Suctioning and slicing apart a tiny human being can’t be considered “compassionate” per any sane understanding of the term. The “pre-viability” argument for abortion turns the idea of weakness on its head, changing it from sign of needing protection into a license to kill. And the cheap rationalization that “unwanted” or disabled babies wouldn’t have lives worth living anyway is the ultimate in cynicism, a declaration that we’re all ultimately hopeless slaves of circumstance.
Like it or not, these quotes are inherently pro-life, and pro-lifers who use them as such are hardly guilty of twisting anything. If anything, our only crime is assuming their own authors actually meant what they wrote.

Source: LiveAction News

Supremes

  

Supreme dishonesty on HHS mandate by Justice Ginsburg & Solicitor General Verrilli on Tuesday

by Dustin Siggins

Since the HHS Mandate requiring insurance coverage of abortifacients, sterilization, and contraception was put forth over two years ago, supporters have largely relied on misleading and inaccurate statements to pretend the mandate is constitutional, effective public policy, and does not fund abortions. See a few examples here, here, and here.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about the mandate. In those arguments, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli joined the mainstream media in promoting falsehoods about the Affordable Care Act and the mandate. (Verrilli argued for the mandate on behalf of the Obama administration.)

The falsehoods were recorded by an unofficial transcript that came out shortly after the case was argued. First, Ginsburg's falsehood, as I reported last week:

Ginsburg said that the mandate's parent law, the Affordable Care Act, “passed overwhelmingly, both houses of Congress. People from all sides of the political spectrum voted for it.”
When the law passed in the House of Representatives, zero Republicans voted for it and 34 Democrats voted against it. In the Senate, zero Republicans supported the Act.

Additionally, in each chamber the vote in favor was very close. In the House, victory was gained by a mere seven votes out of 431 cast, and in the Senate the margin of victory beat the GOP filibuster attempt by only two votes out of 99 cast.

On to Verrilli. Later on in the arguments, he said that no law "requires for-profit corporations to provide abortions." He claimed that the owners of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood, the plaintiffs in the case, are sincere in their beliefs, but factually incorrect.
 
This statement flies in the face of what the Department of Health & Human Services' (HHS) Office of Women's Health says in a document on contraceptive devices. According to this agency, copper intrauterine devices and hormonal intrauterine devices cause abortions by preventing a fertilized egg -- also known as a brand-new human being -- from implanting in the uterus.
There is strong evidence indicating that Ella and Plan B cause abortions, which means Verrilli's dismissal of such concerns is doubly disturbing.

The HHS Mandate has been controversial since the day it was introduced, using government policy to put those who believe birth control, abortions, and sterilization are moral above those who have moral opposition to their use. And while the misleading and dishonest statements from the media are problematic in their own way, Ginsburg and Verrilli are public employees. They should be focused on defending truth, justice, and the Constitution, not political agendas that directly contradict their oaths of office.
Note: The Public Affairs Office of the Department of Justice ignored multiple requests for comment about Verrilli's statement and where his information came from. A "public affairs specialist" did reach out in response to the requests, but no comment or information was provided.

Source: LifeSite News