Beware Texas

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$5 Million Planned Parenthood Abortion Clinic Announced for San Antonio

By Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., NRL Director of Education & Research

Planned Parenthood South Texas President and CEO Jeffrey Hons.
Photo by Mark Greenberg

Perhaps no one complained as loudly as Planned Parenthood when Texas passed laws requiring that abortion clinics meet minimal safety standards last year or promised such doom and gloom for the industry. (See nrlc.cc/1ePW3Gm; nrlc.cc/1ePWgcK ; and nrlc.cc/1ePWxwm.)
But now, instead of folding their tents, they’re announcing plans to open a new $5 million “full scale” abortion clinic in San Antonio. And this one, they assure people, will be able to meet those new ambulatory surgical center standards. (Meanwhile pro-abortionists are fighting the law in court.)
No date or location has been given for the opening, but Planned Parenthood South Texas (PPST) President and CEO Jeffrey Hons assured guests attending a fundraiser for the affiliate that the clinic would meet the new state ambulatory surgical standards.

There is currently one Planned Parenthood clinic in the area offering abortions, but it is unclear whether that one will remain open once the new center is built.
As the only Planned Parenthood facility in San Antonio that is also a surgical center, PPST officials clearly hope that they will be able to draw in customers from the surrounding area. “For those women who will have to scrape together the money for the bus ride from the Rio Grande Valley or Odessa or San Angel,” Hons told the fundraiser, “we will be there for her.”
PPST has already raised $3.5 million towards the new clinic.

 

Source: NRLC News

ObamaCare

 

The Obama Administration’s hostility to religious believers who disagree with the mandate

By Dave Andrusko
Leading up to and coming out of the oral arguments delivered to the United States Supreme Court yesterday, there’ve been a tremendous number of very thoughtful explanations of what is really going on with the HHS mandate which compels employers to provide health coverage for drugs and procedures to which they have moral or religious objections.
Jonathan S. Tobin, writing at “The Shrinking Mandate and Freedom,” compares the unyielding determination to ram this tremendously controversial mandate down the throat of unwilling participants with the Obama administration’s politically expeditious string of exemptions and delays allowing individuals and businesses to put off the mandate to purchase health plans or face a penalty.
To take just the latest example: it is transparently obvious why the Administration “has decided to give extra time to Americans who say that they are unable to enroll in health plans through the federal insurance marketplace by the March 31 deadline,” to quote Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post. Extra time, that is for “all consumers who have begun to apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov,” who will have until about mid-April to ask for an extension. (How will anyone know that a person has “begun”? “This method will rely on an honor system,” Goldstein explains. “[T]he government will not try to determine whether the person is telling the truth.”)

 

Such behavior is “President Obama’s favorite tactic in trying to soften the blow of his signature health-care law prior to the 2014 midterms,” Tobin writes. “The point of that exercise is to reduce the pain felt by both businesses and consumers in order to tamp down the general outrage about the law that has been growing since its passage.”
So if flexibility/expediency is the name of the game for Obama, why is Hobby Lobby (one of the two companies whose lawsuits were combined and argued before the High Court Tuesday) facing fines of $300 million to $400 million dollars for non-compliance? Why is Obama (to quote Tobin) “willing to go to legal war over” this?

“The government’s arguments are already vague about its justification for this decision,” Tobin write. The arguments about “women’s rights and health-care costs that are put forward by administration cheerleaders” are “red herrings.”
One of the important considerations Tobin raises is to remind his readers (through a quote from Gabriel Malor) that

“It is not a radical departure from the norm for businesses to pick and choose what health coverage they provide. In fact, that was the norm for decades. What was new and harmful and possibly part of a slippery slope to lawlessness was the decision of Secretary [Kathleen] Sebelius to impose her will on businesses, for the first time demanding that they provide morally objectionable coverage or face crippling penalties.”

Given all the exemptions, it’s hard to argue there “is a compelling government interest in forcing Hobby Lobby to bend to the will of the administration.”
Tobin concludes

“Under these circumstances with widespread exemptions the arguments in favor of the government aren’t merely exposed as constitutionally weak but a demonstration of the administration’s hostility to religious believers who disagree with the mandate. A nation that values religious freedom less than it does Barack Obama’s political calculations is one that is abandoning the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion.”

   Source: NRLC News

History- Roe/Wade Decision

 

Roe v. Wade: Unjust, Unconstitutional, and Undemocratic

By Paul Stark

Justice Harry Blackmun
Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton. In a 7-2 decision, the Court ruled that abortion must be permitted for any reason before fetal viability—and that it must be permitted for “health” reasons, broadly defined in Doe (so as to encompass virtually any reason), all the way until birth. Roe and Doe essentially legalized abortion on demand nationwide.

The New York Times proclaimed the verdict “a historic resolution of a fiercely controversial issue.” But now, 41 years later, abortion is as unresolved and controversial as ever. Three intractable problems will continue to plague the Court and its abortion jurisprudence until the day when, finally, Roe is overturned.
First, and most importantly, the outcome of Roe is fundamentally harmful and unjust. Why? The facts of biology show that the human embryo or fetus (the being whose life is ended in abortion) is a distinct and living human organism at the earliest stages of development. This was established long before 1973, though subsequent scientific and technological advances have greatly improved our knowledge of life before birth. As Dr. Horatio R. Storer explained in a book published in 1866, “Physicians have now arrived at the unanimous opinion that the foetus in utero is alive from the very moment of conception.”

Justice requires that the law protect the equal dignity and basic rights of every member of the human family—irrespective of age, size, stage of development, condition of dependency, and the desires and decisions of others. This principle of human equality, affirmed in the Declaration of Independence and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is the moral crux of western civilization.

But the Roe Court ruled, to the contrary, that a particular class of innocent human beings (the unborn) must be excluded from the protection of the law and allowed to be dismembered and killed at the discretion of others. “The right created by the Supreme Court in Roe,” observes University of St. Thomas law professor Michael Stokes Paulsen, “is a constitutional right of some human beings to kill other human beings.”

After Roe, the incidence of abortion rose dramatically, quickly topping one million abortions per year and peaking at 1.6 million in 1990 before gradually declining to 1.2 million. Under the Roe regime, abortion is the leading cause of human death. Over 56 million human beings have now been legally killed in the United States. And abortion has significantly and detrimentally impacted the health and well-being of many women (and men). The moral gravity and scale of this injustice exceed that of any other issue or concern in American society today.

The second problem with Roe is that it is legally, constitutionally mistaken. Justice Harry Blackmun’s majority opinion claimed that the “liberty” protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment includes a “right of privacy” that is “broad enough to encompass” a right to abortion. “As a constitutional argument,” notes University of Pennsylvania law professor Kermit Roosevelt (who favors legalized abortion), “Roe is barely coherent. The Court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether.”
The right alleged in Roe is blatantly contradicted by the history of abortion law in the United States. Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment roughly coincided with enactment of a wave of state laws prohibiting abortion from conception with the primary aim (according to clear and abundant historical evidence) of protecting unborn children. Most of these statutes were already on the books by the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868, and many of them remained unchanged until Roe struck them down more than a century later.
“To reach its result,” Justice William Rehnquist thus concluded in his dissenting opinion, “the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment.”

Blackmun’s reasoning was ridiculous, his facts erroneous, his key historical claims demonstrably false. The process behind the decision was appallingly shoddy. Roe and Doe constituted a full-blown exercise in policy-making—the arbitrary (untethered to the Constitution) invention of a new nationwide abortion policy to reflect the personal preferences of a majority of the justices.

Even pro-choice legal experts don’t try to defend Roe on its merits. “What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure,” wrote the eminent constitutional scholar and Yale law professor John Hart Ely. “It is bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”

Since 1973 the Court has modified Roe while stubbornly clinging to its “essential holding.” But the Court’s abortion jurisprudence cannot forever withstand the weight of fact and reason.
Third, Roe is undemocratic. It struck down the democratically-decided abortion laws of all 50 states and imposed a nationwide policy of abortion on demand, whether the people like it or not. Because the Court lacked any constitutional warrant for this move, it usurped the rightful authority of the elected branches of government to determine abortion policy.

The radical extent of the Roe regime was not and has never been consistent with public opinion, which favors substantial legal limits on abortion. (Polling questions on Roe are often inaccurate, and ignorance of the extent of the decision is widespread). Roe has disenfranchised millions and millions of Americans, fostering divisive cultural and political battles. These Americans will not rest while Roe and abortion on demand persist. They want to have a say. The Court decided they could have none.

Overturning Roe would not make abortion illegal nationwide. It would return the question of abortion policy back to the people and their elected representatives, where it had been for almost 200 years, and where it always belonged.
So these are the intractable problems of Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court abused the Constitution to usurp the authority of the people by imposing a gravely unjust policy with breathtakingly disastrous results.
Unjust. Unconstitutional. Undemocratic. Together, these problems will lead, eventually, to Roe’s collapse.
Editor’s note. Mr. Stark is Communications Associate for Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, NRLC’s state affiliate.

Source: NRLC News

Rationing

 

New analysis shows Obamacare exchange plans restricting access to life-saving prescriptions

By Jennifer Popik, JD, Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics

Jennifer Popik, JD

A new analysis out from consulting firm Avalere Health shows the denial of life-saving medication is rampant in the new Obamacare exchange plans.
Elise Viebeck, in her March 24, 2014, piece from The Hill “Prescription drugs: Harder to get in O-Care?” writes,

ObamaCare participants are twice as likely to face administrative barriers to using certain prescription drugs as people who receive health coverage through an employer, according to a new analysis. The research from consulting firm Avalere Health points to a little-known facet of policies on the ObamaCare exchanges known as “utilization management controls.” The controls allow insurance companies to limit access to certain medications to try and control costs and prevent abuse. People who enroll in ObamaCare plans are likely to encounter the hurdles if they’re prescribed brand-name cancer or mental health drugs, Avalere found.

At least 51 percent of brand-name mental health meds come with special controls on the exchanges, compared with only 11 percent on the employer-based market, the analysis found….The controls may include policies like “step therapy,” when patients must try cheaper medications before receiving coverage for an alternative that costs more, or “prior authorization,” which means an insurer grants coverage of prescriptions on a case-by-case basis.

As Obamacare continues to roll out, it has faced trouble on many fronts. As signups lag behind target, the Obama Administration announced a new delay, meant to entice people into the state health care exchanges. On March 26, 2014, the Administration gave an extra window for enrollees who had begun (but haven’t completed) the Affordable Care Act signup process by the March 31 deadline.
All throughout the debate leading up to the controversial 2010 law, and up until late last year, the Obama Administration kept asserting that “if you like your plan, you can keep it.” But by last December, the fact checker PolitiFact was awarding this assurance its “Lie of the Year” for 2013.
When hundreds of thousands having lost plans they liked, the administration moved on to its next claim–that “the new exchange plans would be better than your old plan.” This new promise is already proving to be at odds with the facts.

As millions of Americans are attempting to start using their new Obamacare exchange health insurance plans, stories about denial of payment keep piling up. You can read more on this here.  The limits on prescription drug coverage are just the latest evidence.
While many are quick to blame insurance companies, the real culprit is the Obamacare provision under which exchange bureaucrats must exclude insurers who offer policies deemed to allow “excessive or unjustified” health care spending by their policyholders. Prescription drugs are often a costly part of these plans.

Under the Federal health law, state insurance commissioners are to recommend to their state exchanges the exclusion of “particular health insurance issuers … based on a pattern or practice of excessive or unjustified premium increases.” The exchanges not only exclude policies in an exchange when government authorities do not agree with their premiums, but the exchanges must even exclude insurers whose plans outside the exchange offer consumers the ability to reduce the danger of treatment denial by paying what those government authorities consider an “excessive or unjustified” amount.

This means that insurers who hope to be able to gain customers within the exchanges have a strong disincentive to offer any adequately funded plans that do not drastically limit access to care. So even if you contact insurers directly, outside the exchange, you are likely to find it hard or impossible to find an adequate individual plan. (See documentation at www.nrlc.org/medethics/healthcarerationing.)
When the government limits what can be charged for health insurance, it restricts what people are allowed to pay for medical treatment. While everyone would prefer to pay less–or nothing–for health care (or anything else), government price controls prevent access to lifesaving medical treatment that costs more to supply than the prices set by the government.
While Obamacare continues to roll out in 2014, it is important to continue to educate friends and neighbors about the dangers the law poses in restricting what Americans can spend to save their own lives and the lives of their families. You can follow up-to-date reports here: 

Source: NRLC News

HHS Mandate

 

Read the transcript from the oral arguments on the Obama Mandate and see the frightful place the mandate’s logic takes us

By Dave Andrusko

Hobby Lobby co-founders David Green and Barbara Green

I had a chance this afternoon to read the entire 100+page transcript from Tuesday’s widely anticipated Supreme Court oral arguments in which the justices heard an extremely thoughtful challenge to the HHS mandate which compels employers to provide health coverage for drugs and procedures to which they have moral or religious objections.
We’ve commented previously on the 90-minute back and forth on “Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby” and “Conestoga Wood v. Sebelius” (nrlc.cc/1iBhOKX and nrlc.cc/QgOVKJ), so this post will be more of a series of hopefully informed impressions.
I suppose it’s fairly common, but the lawyer for the plaintiffs had not completed his second sentence before former Solicitor General Paul Clement was interrupted by Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Her line of questioning was one she (and other justices, particular Elena Kagan) used as a kind of moat to try to separate the Obama mandate from Clement’s extremely effective attacks.
In a word if Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood can successfully argue a religious objection, then (in Justice Kagan’s words) “you would see religious objectors come out of the woodwork.”
As he always is in front of the justices, Clement was unflappable. Each case is different, he argued, and the “parade of horribles” offered up by the government is hypothetical and unconvincing.
The justices who favored the Obama mandate kept trying to find some irresolvable scenario that would force Clement to back off. Each one they offered—including what happens if a single stockholder in a company does not have a religious objection to providing health coverage for a particular drug or procedures –-Clement provided a perfectly rational, acceptable answer to.
You had to feel sorry (sort of) for Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who is not nearly as quick on his feet as Clement is. (Every time he sai he wanted to “walk” the justices through a particular point, he stumbled.)

 

He made it to his third sentence before Chief Justice John Roberts politely asked if Verrilli’s opening words weren’t “inconsistent with RFRA,” the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was at the core of the defense relied on by the plaintiffs.
Understandably a debate on what the RFRA meant/means took up a lot of time.
Verrilli had the unenviable task of trying to demonstrate that the government had a “compelling state interest” in requiring what Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood opposed providing, given the many exemptions the Obama administration had provided. Verrilli had a particularly difficult time with the “grandfathering” clause [allowing people to hold onto old insurance policies that don’t meet the new ObamaCare requirements], both explaining why it was used and predicting when (in the foreseeable future) it might expire.
As the Los Angeles Times’ Jon Healey described the exchange, “As [Chief Justice John] Roberts noted, there’s no date certain for grandfathered plans to be eliminated. In theory, they could continue until all of their current holders reach retirement age and switch to Medicare.”
This intersected with the question of why mandating the services Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood objected to furthered “a compelling governmental interest.” As Healey put it (summarizing a line of questioning from Justices Roberts and Samuel Alito), “If it’s so compelling to require employers’ health plans” to include this coverage, “why did the Affordable Care Act allow people to hold on to ‘grandfathered’ plans that didn’t include the coverage?”
There was one other very important point begun with question from Justice Alito: “What about the implications of saying that no for-profit corporation can raise any sort of free exercise claim at all and nobody associated with the for-profit corporation can raise any sort of free exercise claim at all,” which is the government’s position.
What about abortion? Justice Anthony Kennedy put it this way:

“Under your view, a profit corporation could be forced — in principle, there are some statutes on the books now which would prevent it, nut — could be forced in principle to pay for abortion.”

Verrilli responded:

“Well, I think that if it were for a for­ profit corporation and if such a law like that were enacted, then you’re right, under our theory that the for­ profit corporation wouldn’t have an ability to sue. But there is no law like that on the books.”

In the four minutes he was given in rebuttal time, Clement picked up on Verrilli’s less than sterling response. Clement said

“Let me start with the Abortion Conscious Clause, because it tells you something about where Congress has drawn the line and it tells you the consequences of the government’s position. Historically, those conscience provisions have applied to all medical providers, including for-profit medical providers. But we learned today that as far as the government’s concerned, that’s just Congress’ judgment. If Congress changes its judgment and says that a for-profit medical provider has to provide an abortion, RFRA doesn’t apply. That, with all due respect, cannot be what Congress had in mind when it passed RFRA.”

Source: NRLC News

Gosnell

 

Gosnell attorney says “regular inspections” would have kept Gosnell “from going so far astray”

By Dave Andrusko

Jack McMahon, Kermit Gosnell’s defense attorney

It’s always dicey to base a post exclusively on a story from a single news outlet, doubly so when the topic is convicted murderer/abortionist Kermit Gosnell.
But the Associated Press story author MaryClaire Dale, has done some fine work on Gosnell, who operated the infamous West Philadelphia Women’s Medical Society, so we have reason to trust her account of a panel meeting on high-publicity trials held last Friday at Widener University School of Law.
Two of the principles of the Gosnell murder trial were there as member of the law school panel: His ultra-flamboyant attorney, Jack McMahon, and the trial judge, Jeffrey Minehart, a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge. (Except for the last couple of sentences, Dale only quoted McMahon.)
What can we glean from Dale’s account? Several important considerations, which we’ll list and then work our way through. Dale’s lead sentence is

“The lawyer for an abortion provider convicted of killing babies who were born alive said he thinks regular inspections at his client’s Philadelphia clinic would’ve kept him from going so far astray.”

Why is that so, according to McMahon? Because Gosnell was “not a stupid man.” And

“He may not have been at the Mayo Clinic (level), but he would have risen to a higher level of competence … to remain open.”

What else about those inspections, or lack thereof? Dale writes

“Authorities in Pennsylvania had failed to conduct routine inspections of all its abortion clinics for 15 years by the time Gosnell’s facility was raided as part of a prescription drug investigation. …

Okay, but why?

“McMahon said he believes that regulators turned a blind eye to Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic because it was providing ‘a cheap service’ to poor, minority women.”

There was nothing “cheap” about Gosnell’s services. Moreover what came through repeatedly in the Grand Jury report, that Gosnell never treated the rare Caucasian woman who came to his abortion clinic with the kind of malevolent indifference he dished out to women of color.
Before I list the third item of particular interest mentioned in Dale’s story, recall exactly what Gosnell was convicted of and the setting in which these poor women of color gave up their babies’ lives.
He is serving three consecutive life sentences for deliberating aborting viable babies in a manner that they would be born alive and then slitting their necks. Additional years were added for his conviction of second-degree involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, whose treatment by woefully under-qualified staff virtually guaranteed that something like this would happen. (The Grand Jury concluded that another woman had “died of sepsis after Gosnell perforated her uterus,” but there were no records that would prove what they were sure was true.)
So what was that third consideration in Dale’s story?

“Gosnell’s biggest transgression may have been hiring high school dropouts and other unqualified people to act as doctors, McMahon said. The employees performed abortions, administered anesthesia and monitored high-risk patients.”

I don’t know how you quantify the level of “transgressions” of a man who (according to the Grand Jury report) was responsible for the following–and thought absolutely nothing about it:

“One woman, for example, was left lying in place for hours after Gosnell tore her cervix and colon while trying, unsuccessfully, to extract the fetus. Relatives who came to pick her up were refused entry into the building; they had to threaten to call the police. They eventually found her inside, bleeding and incoherent, and transported her to the hospital, where doctors had to remove almost half a foot of her intestines.

“On another occasion, Gosnell simply sent a patient home, after keeping her mother waiting for hours, without telling either of them that she still had fetal parts inside her. Gosnell insisted she was fine, even after signs of serious infection set in over the next several days. By the time her mother got her to the emergency room, she was unconscious and near death.

“A nineteen-year-old girl was held for several hours after Gosnell punctured her uterus. As a result of the delay, she fell into shock from blood loss, and had to undergo a hysterectomy. One patient went into convulsions during an abortion, fell off the procedure table, and hit her head on the floor. Gosnell wouldn’t call an ambulance, and wouldn’t let the woman’s companion leave the building so that he could call an ambulance.

 

None of that fell on the shoulders of his underpaid, unlicensed staff. That was Gosnell at his most cavalier, as indifferent to these women’s health as he was obsessed with making millions and millions and millions of dollars.

It is true the Grand Jury report then immediately adds

“Undoubtedly there were many similar incidents, but even they do not demonstrate Gosnell at his most dangerous.

“Day in and day out, the greatest risks came when the doctor wasn’t even there. Gosnell set up his practice to rely entirely on the untrained actions of his unqualified employees.”

But just so we’re clear, was it ultimately the fault of the staff—which was, like almost all of the women who came in, poor and uneducated? Of course not.
What exactly was Gosnell’s “transgression,” in his attorney’s eyes? Was it greed that blinded him to the humanity not only of the hundreds of viable babies he aborted alive, according to the Grand Jury report, but of his patients as well?
Of course. But the invincible conviction that he was on the side of the angels which McMahon also managed to miss, during the trial and since, played a major role in blinding Gosnell to the horror of what he was routinely doing.
As part of the one post-conviction interview Gosnell gave, reporter Steve Volk walked Gosnell through what he had admitted to. Volk wrote

“’Dr. Gosnell,’ I told him, ‘you’ve admitted, on all the major charges, you’re guilty.’

“He was quiet for a long time before saying in a slow, weary voice: ‘No, I’m innocent.’

A moment later

“In an ideal world,” he responded, “We’d have no need for abortion. But bringing a child into the world when it cannot be provided for, that there are not sufficient systems to support, is a greater sin. I consider myself to be in a war against poverty, and I feel comfortable with the things I did and the decisions I made.”

So, Gosnell confessed to everything, denied everything, and rationalized everything away.
Let’s end by returning to McMahon’s comment that, because Gosnell was not stupid (Gosnell himself clearly thinks he is brilliant), “regular inspections” at his abortion clinic ”would’ve kept him from going so far astray.”
Then why do pro-abortionists fight clinic regulation measures with every resource at their disposal? Maybe for the same reason that the clinic regulations that were on the books (weak as they were) were not enforced. Here’s what the Grand Jury concluded

…[T]he Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be ‘putting a barrier up to women’ seeking abortions. Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety. Without regular inspections, providers like Gosnell continue to operate; unlawful and dangerous third-trimester abortions go undetected; and many women, especially poor women, suffer.”

Source: NRLC News

Tragedy

 

Baby boy whose body was discovered at a waste recycling center laid to rest

By Dave Andrusko

Nidia Yolibeth Alvarado

Even in an era of virtually instantaneous communication, sometimes you don’t hear about an event of significance until the next day.

A baby boy, who was discovered dead three months ago at a San Antonia-area recycling center, was laid to rest on Monday.
The baby who came to be named Noel, was thought to be a few days old. He was found two days before Christmas stuffed in a blue duffel bag on the intake conveyor belt of a Waste Management recycling center in San Antonio, Texas.
Bail for his mother, Nidia Yolibeth Alvarado, 25, was set at $2 million. Alvarado told investigators that she threw Noel’s body into a dumpster at her apartment building, according to local station KWTX.

“Waste Management spokeswoman Lisa Doughty says an employee working at the beginning of the sorting line found the body just before 1 p.m. on Monday Dec. 23. The facility immediately stopped operations at that time and police were called, she said.”

Police Sergeant Javier Salazar told reporters, “It’s believed that the suspect gave birth to that baby boy, and shortly thereafter murdered him by strangulation.” KWTX also reported that staff at the hospital where Alvarado gave birth under an assumed name helped authorities link her to the murder.
But Monday was about not allowing Noel’s life to go unrecognized. Television station KHOU reported, “After months of legal battles, a judge ordered Noel’s body to be released to those who want to bury him.”

At that point, the audience heard from Pamela Allen, a local businesswoman, who had raised funds to pay for funeral arrangements. She said,

“This is not how this story is going to end. I’m going to make sure and change a page on this child’s story. And that page is going to have my signature on it. All those people who called in, all those people who wanted a better outcome for Noel, they’re finally going to get to see that. And I’m ecstatic over that.”

Baby Noel was laid to rest at the Chapel Hill Funeral Home.

Alvarado remains jailed on murder charges.

Religious Liberty

 

Rep. Chris Smith: Obamacare’s “attack on religious freedom is no accident”

Editor’s note. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), co-chair of the House Bipartisan ProLife Caucus, issued the following statement regarding the U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments today in the religious freedom cases of Sebelius, Sec. of H&HS v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius, Sec. of H&HS.
Washington, D.C.–

Cong. Chris Smith (R-NJ)

I am grateful that the Supreme Court took up this critical case for religious liberty, and I am hopeful that the Court will provide much needed relief from this discriminatory Obamacare policy.
Under the Obama administration’s coercive mandate, family-owned businesses like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood have found themselves in the impossible position of being forced to violate their moral or religious beliefs, or face crippling fines. And this not only puts businesses at serious and unnecessary risk, but also employees who may lose their jobs and their healthcare.
It is the height of hypocrisy for the Obama administration to coerce family businesses that provide generous healthcare for their employees into a situation that may force them to close. The Obamacare financial penalties are draconian, egregious and without precedent in U.S. law. Under Obamacare, a family business that does provide healthcare for its employees, like Hobby Lobby, but objects to covering certain drugs and services will be fined up to $36,500 per year per employee. That’s outrageous. For the Greene family of Hobby Lobby, this could amount to nearly half a billion dollars in fines per year.

I would note parenthetically that a company that does not provide any health insurance whatsoever for their employees will be fined $2000 per year per employee, an unfair burden to be sure but far less than $36,500 per year per employee if they refuse to include certain drugs or devices that violate their moral or religious tenants. For the Greene family of Hobby Lobby, dumping their existing healthcare coverage for employees could result in fines of up to $26 million per year or potentially $448.5 million less in fines than if they actually provided health insurance.
This burdensome penalty is completely unfair, unreasonable, and unconscionable. The Obama administration is saying we will punish you, we will hurt you, we could even put you out of business for providing healthcare for your employees unless you provide healthcare according to the government’s conscience. Also, employees currently on their businesses health plan could lose the coverage they need for themselves and their families. Secretary Sebelius and President Obama have no business imposing their morality on people of faith, but that is exactly what their oppressive mandate does.

The Supreme Court has a duty to protect the religious and conscience rights of the Greens and the Hahns [owners of Conestoga Wood] and everyone else suffering government imposed harm. The U.S. high court must act to protect the First Amendment rights of these families. Protecting them also protects their employees from the dire, foolish, and unprecedented consequences of the Obamacare mandate.

And let’s make no mistake about it, this mandate is very much Obama’s willful intention. The imposition of this attack on religious freedom is no accident. It comes straight from the pages of Obamacare. In December of 2009, in the run up to the passage of Obamacare, Senator Mikulski offered an amendment which provided the authorizing language for this oppressive mandate. When President Obama spoke at Notre Dame University (also currently suing over the mandate) in 2009, he spoke about drafting a “sensible conscience clause” – and yet, today, protection of conscience is another highly visible broken promise of Obamacare.

To tell people that their conscience is irrelevant and that they must follow the federal government’s conscience rather than their own is completely antithetical to the American principle of freedom of religion and the first amendment. Unless reversed, Obama’s attack on conscience rights will result in government-imposed discrimination against those that seek to live according to their faith. Under the weight of the mandate’s ruinous fines and penalties many businesses could be forced to shut down, eliminating jobs. I never would have believed this kind of religious violation could occur in the United State. The Supreme Court must end this abuse.

Source: NRLC News

HHS Mandate

 

Supreme Court hears oral arguments in challenge to Obama Mandate

By Dave Andrusko

Former Solicitor General Paul D. Clement

In a widely anticipated case, the Supreme Court this morning heard two challenges consolidated into one case that are contesting the HHS mandate which compels employers to provide health coverage for drugs and procedures to which they have moral or religious objections.

Each side was given 45 minutes to present its case. The lead attorneys were the same as faced off two years ago when the High Court addressed the issue of ObamaCare’s individual mandate requirement: former U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, and current Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.
The Plaintiffs–Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp.– are family owned corporations. Hobby Lobby is a chain of arts-and-crafts stores while Conestoga Wood Specialties is a Mennonite-owned cabinet maker. They argue that the mandate, which are regulations adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services under a provision of ObamaCare–violates the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion clause.
Most media accounts came to the conclusion that, as is so often the case, the swing vote is likely Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy. Adding suspense was that he asked questions that each side could conclude favored their position.

For instance, over at the Scotusblog.org, long-time Supreme Court watcher Lyle Denniston likened the discussion to “something like a two-act play on a revolving stage: first the liberals had their chance and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy gave them some help, and then the scene shifted entirely, and the conservatives had their chance — and, again, Kennedy provided them with some support.”
And the Washington Post’s Robert Kaiser wrote that “The three liberal and female justices were the most vocal in questioning Paul Clement. Justice Elena Kagan “said Clement’s argument could be extended to employers refusing to pay for blood transfusions or vaccines because of religious objections.”

Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.

Denniston wrote, “When it was Solicitor General Verrilli’s turn at the lectern, he found immediately that Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito, Jr., were ready to pounce, disputing each of the government lawyer’s core points” about the need for the mandate in this context.

Those included queries about what Congress meant when it passed the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the religious rights of corporations, and why the government couldn’t pay for the services it wanted but to which the plaintiffs objected.
What Denniston described as the “low point” for Verrilli came near the end

“when Justice Kennedy told him bluntly: ‘Under your view, for-profit corporations can be forced to pay for abortion. Your reasoning would permit that…. You say that for-profit corporations have no standing to litigate what their shareholders believed.’”

Hobby Lobby, which has a workforce of 13,000 people of all faith, prevailed before the full 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“In a divided opinion, the appeals court relied in part on the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which said corporations have political speech rights just as individuals do in spending on elections,” Kaiser wrote. In that case Judge Timothy Tymkovich, writing for the majority, concluded “We see no reason the Supreme Court would recognize constitutional protection for a corporation’s political expression but not its religious expression.”
A panel of the 3rd U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the Conestoga Wood Specialties must comply with the HHS mandate.
The financial penalties for non-compliance are extremely heavy, particularly for Hobby Lobby with its large work force. The fine is $100 per day per employee–$365 million for Hobby Lobby.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) issued a statement this morning with this apt conclusion:

“This burdensome penalty is completely unfair, unreasonable, and unconscionable. The Obama administration is saying we will punish you, we will hurt you, we could even put you out of business for providing healthcare for your employees unless you provide healthcare according to the government’s conscience. Also, employees currently on their businesses health plan could lose the coverage they need for themselves and their families. [HHS] Secretary Sebelius and President Obama have no business imposing their morality on people of faith, but that is exactly what their oppressive mandate does.”

Source: NRLC News

Boycott and World Vision

Boycott: Evangelicals react to World Vision decision to hire people in gay ‘marriages’

FEDERAL WAY, WA, March 25, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The nearly billion-dollar Christian charity World Vision has reversed its longstanding policy, announcing that it will begin hiring homosexuals in same-sex “marriages” to work for their ministry.

World Vision U.S. President Richard Stearns told Christianity Today on Monday that his board was “overwhelmingly in favor” of the change, though not unanimous.
World Vision, based in the state of Washington, employs more than 1,100 people from more than 50 denominations, some of which now perform same-sex “marriage” ceremonies. “Same-sex marriage has only been a huge issue in the church in the last decade or so,” he said. “There used to be much more unity among churches on this issue, and that's changed."
Employees must still believe the organization's statement of faith and remain chaste before marriage or faithful within “marriage.” The new policy will have no impact on World Vision affiliates in 100 countries around the globe.

The U.S. policy does not mean the group is endorsing gay “marriage,” Stearns said, adding that the group continues to “affirm and support” traditional marriage.

Instead, Stearns couched the new policy in terms of creating Christian “unity” by not focusing on what he considered non-essential issues. “We're an operational arm of the global church, we're not a theological arm of the church,” he said.
The announcement created an immediate backlash among the charity's largely evangelical Christian donor base.

“World Vision maintains that their decision is based on unifying the church – which I find offensive – as if supporting sin and sinful behavior can unite the church,” said Franklin Graham, the president and CEO of Samaritan’s Purse and leader of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
“My dear friend, Bob Pierce, the founder of World Vision and Samaritan’s Purse, would be heartbroken,” Graham said. “He was an evangelist who believed in the inspired Word of God.”

Franklin Graham

Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, said, “World Vision has abandoned the warning of Paul and compromised the integrity of a ministry financially supported by Christians who regard Scripture as the final authority on the issue.”
“Christians who support World Vision should stop, as should all of the artists and authors who raise money for them,” he emphasized. “There are many other organizations that sponsor children around the world who remain true to the Gospel."

Stearns likened the divide between Christians to controversies over the proper baptismal method, saying eliminating this theological issue would help focus the organization's efforts to promote Christianity. "I know the Evil One would like nothing better than for World Vision to be hobbled and divided on this issue, so that we lose our focus on the Great Commandment and the Great Commission,” he said.
"I think we've got a very persuasive series of reasons for why we're doing this,” he added.
But Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, called his rationale “pathetically inadequate.”

“It is ridiculous to argue that World Vision is not taking sides on the issue,” he wrote. “Willingly recognizing same-sex marriage and validating openly homosexual employees in their homosexuality is a grave and tragic act that confirms sinners in their sin” and “will mislead the world about the reality of sin and the urgent need of salvation.”
Russell D. Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, agreed.
“If sexual activity outside of a biblical definition of marriage is morally neutral, then, yes, we should avoid making an issue of it,” he said. “If, though, what the Bible clearly teaches and what the church has held for 2,000 years is true, then refusing to call for repentance is unspeakably cruel and, in fact, devilish.” 
 
"We’re entering an era where we will see who the evangelicals really are, and by that I mean those who believe in the gospel itself, in all of its truth and all of its grace,” he added. “And many will shrink back.”
He said, "Donor bases come and go. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ stands forever.”
Contact:
World Vision, Inc.
34834 Weyerhaeuser Way South
Federal Way, WA 98001
1-888-511.6443
1-253-815-1000
info@worldvision.org

Source: LifeSite News