Great News

Judge Dismisses Bogus Charge Against David Daleiden for Exposing Planned Parenthood

   Steven Ertelt

Undercover investigator David Daleiden has been vindicated. Today, a Harris County, Texas judge dismissed the bogus misdemeanor charge against David Daleiden for allegedly trying to buy body parts from the Planned Parenthood abortion business he was exposing for selling them as a part of the Center for Medical Progress’ undercover investigation.

Daleiden has maintained from the beginning that he and the Center for Medical Progress followed all applicable laws in the course of its investigative journalism and that the indictments were politically motivated.
Read the judge’s order dropping the misdemeanor charge.
CMP responded to the dismissal in a statement to LifeNews:

Judge Diane Bull’s swift dismissal of the bogus charge against CMP founder David Daleiden of trafficking human organs is the latest confirmation that the indictments from a runaway grand jury in Houston were a politically-motivated sham all along. In finding that the indictment was void on its face, Judge Bull’s ruling directly contradicts the District Attorney’s argument that the indictment was valid despite the DA’s collusion with Planned Parenthood.
The dismissal of the first indictment today sends a strong message to Planned Parenthood and their political cronies that colluding to suppress the First Amendment rights of citizen journalists will never work. The Center for Medical Progress follows all applicable laws in the course of its investigative journalism work and as more details about Planned Parenthood’s contracts for aborted baby parts come to light, it’s clear that Planned Parenthood and their business partners like StemExpress are the ones who are guilty of trafficking in human body parts.

As the Houston Chronicle reports about the dismissed charge, Daleiden’s attorneys maintain District Attorney Devon Anderson has been working in cahoots with the Planned Parenthood abortion company to target Daleiden:

Daleiden is accusing the Harris County District Attorney’s Office of illegally colluding with the nonprofit organization.
“The DA’s office has chosen to wage a war on the pro-life movement,” said attorney Jared Woodfill. “We believe there is clear evidence of Planned Parenthood actually colluding with and pushing the district attorney’s office to move forward with these indictments.”

Daleiden still faces bogus charges alleging he used a false ID to gain access to a Planned Parenthood clinic for a meeting with staff.
Daleiden posted bail in response to what his attorneys and pro-life groups explain are bogus charges related to his undercover investigation and exposure of the Planned Parenthood abortion business selling the body parts of aborted babies. Dozens of pro-life advocates turned out to support him. He turned down a plea deal and Daleiden’s attorneys and supporters countered that Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson is biased because of her association with an attorney for an abortion practitioner.
Last month, LifeNews chronicled the explosive new evidence  showing the Houston district attorney behind the bogus charges against pro-life advocate David Daleiden colluded with attorneys for Planned Parenthood.
According to attorney for Daleiden, District Attorney Devon Anderson shared confidential information with the abortion business, which she was supposed to be investigating for running afoul of state laws prohibiting the purchase or sale of body parts form aborted babies.
Yet, in recent court filings by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s attorney Josh Schaffer admitted in a sworn declaration that the Harris County DA’s office shared evidence with Planned Parenthood. That occurred even after the Texas Attorney General’s office had forbidden Anderson’s office from doing so.
The declaration was included as part of the DA office’s response to David Daleiden’s motion to quash the indictment against him, alleging prosecutorial misconduct.
Under oath, Schaffer, the Planned Parenthood attorney, admitted that he and Assistant District Attorney Sunni Mitchell attempted to do an end-run around the Texas Attorney General’s directive to Mitchell not to share raw video footage with Planned Parenthood: “I was told that the Attorney General’s Office agreed to give it to the HCDAO on the condition that the HCDAO not give it to PPGC. Mitchell told me that she would try to obtain the footage by other means.”
Mitchell was responsible in 2013 for a Grand Jury that failed to indict Houston’s late-term abortionist Douglas Karpen, after photographs and eyewitness testimony implicated him in illegal late-term abortions and killing babies who were born alive after failed abortions.
“The recent filings by the Harris County District Attorney confirm that the DA shared confidential documents and information with abortion provider Planned Parenthood, colluding with it in the prosecution of David Daleiden,” said Thomas More Society Special Counsel, Peter Breen, attorney for David Daleiden.
Breen told LifeNews: “These filings also include evidence that appears to show that the DA’s office worked with Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast to undermine the Texas Attorney General’s independent investigation of that abortion provider. The conduct of Harris County prosecutors in this case is outrageous and illegal. We look forward to pressing our motion to quash this indictment in court.”
This is the second time attorneys from Anderson’s office and Planned Parenthood were accused of working together.

Daleiden is facing politically-motivated attacks on multiple fronts. Earlier this year, a Texas grand jury whose task was to investigate Planned Parenthood turned on the pro-life citizen journalist instead.

A Texas grand jury indicted Daleiden and another pro-life activist, Sandra Merritt, behind the videos. Instead of prosecuting Planned Parenthood for selling aborted baby parts, Daleiden was indicted for buying them.
Daleiden rejected a deal for probation on those charges in February, and his attorney said he demands an apology from the Texas district attorney who filed the bogus charges.
Anderson has defended her indictment of pro-life advocate David Daleiden despite the fact that a Planned Parenthood abortion business board members works as a prosecutor in her office. And new information LifeNews uncovered shows Anderson’s campaign received more than $25,000 from the attorney who works for a late-term abortionist.
Since the indictment, Anderson is facing criticism over her failure to prosecute an abortionist known as the Kermit Gosnell of Houston.
Anderson oversaw a previous abortion-related grand jury investigation of Houston abortionist Douglas Karpen after Operation Rescue released evidence in the form of photos and witness testimony that babies were being born alive during abortions and intentionally killed by twisting their necks. This case garnered publicity in the wake of the conviction of Pennsylvania abortionist Kermit Gosnell on three counts of First Degree Murder for intentionally killing babies born alive during abortions in a similar fashion.
That Anderson-led grand jury failed to indict Karpen despite the considerable evidence against him.
Karpen was represented at his trial by attorney Chip Lewis, who donated more than $25,000 to Anderson’s re-election campaign. Anderson has an extensive relationship with Lewis as did her husband when he was district attorney.
Anderson has also come under considerable fire for what pro-life advocates call a politically motivated indictment and because a Planned Parenthood board member works for Anderson as an assistant district attorney. Lauren Reeder is a prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney’s criminal family law division. Reeder is listed as a non-compensated “Director” on the 990 Tax Form for 2014 filed by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.
Although Anderson indicates Reeder had no role in the Daleiden indictment, there’s really no way of knowing if that is truly the case. Because of that, pro-life advocates have called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the indictment and the fact that the grand jury never voted on charges related to Planned Parethood’s sale of aborted babies.
In April, pro-abortion California Attorney General Kamala Harris stole unreleased video footage concerning Planned Parenthood from Daleiden’s home.
California authorities seized a laptop and hard drives containing the video footage collected during Daleiden’s 3-year investigation of Planned Parenthood’s involvement in the illegal sale of aborted baby remains, according to a written statement made by Life Legal Defense Foundation, which is helping to defend Daleiden.
Harris, a pro-abortion Democrat, chose to focus her investigation on Daleiden and his associates rather than Planned Parenthood, even though the video footage so far released by Daleiden’s Center for Medical Progress shows clear evidence that Planned Parenthood was illegally altering abortion procedures to endure intact organs targeted for harvesting then selling the organs for profit.
Since the California Department of Justice, under the leadership of Democratic State Attorney General Kamala Harris, searched the home of David Daleiden on Tuesday, there have been numerous news stories noting an apparent conflict of interest in Harris’ investigation of Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress that ignores obvious evidence of illegal conduct on the part of Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood has donated $81,000 to Harris and, because of the massive conflict of interest, pro-life groups are calling for her resignation.
Harris also was endorsed by the pro-abortion National Organization for Women. NOW describes her as a “longtime, vocal supporter of Planned Parenthood” who promised to investigate CMP and fight for taxpayer funding of the abortion business.
Harris oversaw the raid — but she has significant conflict of interest problems. She is funded by Planned Parenthood and her web site is currently promoting a petition for the abortion business.
The expose’ videos catching Planned Parenthood officials selling the body parts of aborted babies have shocked the nation. Here is a list of all twelve:

• In the first video: Dr. Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood commented on baby-crushing: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
• In the second video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Mary Gatter joked, “I want a Lamborghini” as she negotiated the best price for baby parts.
• In the third video: Holly O’Donnell, a former Stem Express employee who worked inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, detailed first-hand the unspeakable atrocities and how she fainted in horror over handling baby legs.
• In the fourth video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Savita Ginde stated, “We don’t want to do just a flat-fee (per baby) of like, $200. A per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.” She also laughed while looking at a plate of fetal kidneys that were “good to go.”
• In the fifth video: Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood-Gulf Coast in Houston boasted of Planned Parenthood’s skill in obtaining “intact fetal cadavers” and how her “research” department “contributes so much to the bottom line of our organization here, you know we’re one of the largest affiliates, our Research Department is the largest in the United States.”
• In the sixth video: Holly O’Donnell described technicians taking fetal parts without patient consent: “There were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don’t know. And there’s no way they would know.”
• In the seventh and perhaps most disturbing video: Holly O’Donnell described the harvesting, or “procurement,” of organs from a nearly intact late-term fetus aborted at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s Alameda clinic in San Jose, CA. “‘You want to see something kind of cool,’” O’Donnell says her supervisor asked her. “And she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think.”
• In the eighth video: StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer admits Planned Parenthood sells “a lot of” fully intact aborted babies.
• The ninth video: catches a Planned Parenthood medical director discussing how the abortion company sells fully intact aborted babies — including one who “just fell out” of the womb.
• The 10th video: catches the nation’s biggest abortion business selling specific body parts — including the heart, eyes and “gonads” of unborn babies.The video also shows the shocking ways in which Planned Parenthood officials admit that they are breaking federal law by selling aborted baby body parts for profit.
• Unreleased Videos: Unreleased videos from CMP show Deb Vanderhei of Planned Parenthood caught on tape talking about how Planned Parenthood abortion business affiliates may “want to increase revenue [from selling baby parts] but we can’t stop them…” Another video has a woman talking about the “financial incentives” of selling aborted baby body parts.
• The 11th video: catches a texas Planned Parenthood abortionist planning to sell the intact heads of aborted babies for research. Amna Dermish is caught on tape describing an illegal partial-birth abortion procedure to terminate living, late-term unborn babies which she hopes will yield intact fetal heads for brain harvesting.
• The 12th video in the series shows new footage of Jennefer Russo, medical director at Planned Parenthood in Orange County, California, describing to undercover investigators how her abortion business tries to harvest intact aborted babies’ bodies for a local for-profit biotech company and changes the abortion procedure to do so.

The full, unedited videos have confirmed that revelations that some aborted baby remains sold by Planned Parenthood go to biotech companies for the purpose of creating “humanized” mice. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood has been exposed as having sold body parts from aborted babies for as much as 15 years.  Source: LifeSite News

Supremes

 

Pondering what the Supreme Court may do in “Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt”

By Dave Andrusko
There is likely only two weeks left in the current term of the Supreme Court. So, albeit to a lesser extent, this Monday, as in previous Mondays, there are stories speculating about what the justices will do about the outstanding “controversial cases.”
For pro-lifers, ours is HB 2, the 2013 Texas pro-life law that the High Court could render a verdict on as soon as this week.
As our readers are well aware, the two provisions under challenge in Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt require abortionists to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinics (that is in effect) and mandate that abortion clinics meet the requirements of ambulatory surgical centers (not yet in effect).
Here are a few thoughts from various outlets.
Richard Wolf, USA Today writes: “A substantive ruling could represent the most significant abortion decision by the court since 1992.”
This is an allusion to several considerations, including that with the death of Antonin Scalia, there are eight justices on the court.
The decision could limit its effect to Texas by affirming the decision of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding HB 2 but without setting a national precedent. Or the justices could essentially return the case for more proceedings, as Justice Anthony Kennedy hinted at during the oral arguments March 2.
Reuters raised the possibility of a ruling against HB 2 or rendering a ‘split decision.’  Lawrence Hurley writes

Another possibility is that the justices strike down the law, or invalidate one of the two provisions at issue while keeping the other. It may be more likely that the admitting-privileges provision, already in effect, would survive, while the hospital-grade facilities requirements, which the justices themselves temporarily blocked, would not.

Last Friday, the Los Angeles Times spent most of its time painting a grim picture of fewer abortion clinics and longer waits. Not a word about something NRLC’s Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon has explored in great depth: that almost none of these closures can be definitely said to be related to the parts of the law that have been challenged in Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt and that the longer waits simply assume that other abortion clinics (particularly Planned Parenthood’s “mega-clinics) wouldn’t pick up the slack.
More tomorrow

Source: NRLC News

Down A Very Slippery Slope

 

Advanced Request For Euthanasia?

Editor’s note. This article was written by Dr. Catherine Ferrier and published on June 10, 2016 by impact ethics in Canadian Bioethics, Death & Assisted Dying, Law & Policy, Mental Health.
Catherine Ferrier a physician in the Division of Geriatric Medicine of the McGill University Health Centre, is the president of the Physicians’ Alliance against Euthanasia.
“C-14” is the Canadian government’s bill to “regulate” euthanasia and assisted suicide. It is response to the 2015 Supreme Court of Canada decision in “Carter v. Canada.”
This was reposted on the blog of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.
The June 6 deadline for legislation in response to the Carter judgment has come and gone, and our government has yet to adopt a law regulating medical assistance in dying. Too few of us have any idea what we are rushing into.
In the Carter decision the Supreme Court of Canada judges stated that the risks associated with physician-assisted death can be limited through a carefully designed and monitored system of safeguards.
In contrast, the pressure is on to offer death as a solution for all forms of suffering, available to virtually everyone, including those who fear future suffering or disability.
The Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs wants Bill C-14 amended to include the recommendation of the Special Joint Committee on Physician-Assisted Dying

“That the permission to use advance requests for medical assistance in dying be allowed any time after one is diagnosed with a condition that is reasonably likely to cause loss of competence or after a diagnosis of a grievous or irremediable condition but before the suffering becomes intolerable….”

I have spent the last 30 years diagnosing, treating, and caring for people with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. It takes no special insight to realize that they are the principal intended “beneficiaries” of this recommendation.
Dutch academic Boris Brummans wrote in his 2007 article “Death by Document” of his father’s euthanasia death through an advance directive. His father had cancer, not dementia, but the issue is the same.

I used to be in favor of euthanasia… Although the euthanasia was meant to liberate my dad from the conventional constraints of suicide, its textual, declarative form turned him into a prisoner of himself (and us into his cellmates). By signing the euthanasia declaration… my father created a persona of, and for, himself… based on the person he thought he would be. On what were these thoughts based? Hollow images of a self not yet lived; meager ideas about a life not yet fleshed out.

The mantra behind advanced directives is “choice,” whereby one chooses to die rather than live with the “indignity” of dementia, of dependence, of becoming a burden. Brummans questions whether one can truly choose for one’s future self. He describes how he and his family members projected themselves into the future “in ways that deprived us, especially my dad, from the very liberty we thought to have signed for.”
A diagnosis of dementia is a major life crisis. Those of us who have been through even lesser crises know that our judgment is not at its best when flooded with overwhelming emotions, fears, and questions. Most of us would be sensible enough to defer life-changing decisions until we are calm enough to think clearly.
But for the person diagnosed with dementia the clock is ticking and the advance directive must be signed before decision-making capacity is lost.

Source: NRLC News

Organ Donation by Euthanasia

 

Doctors say Let’s increase organ transplant rates by encouraging euthanasia patients to donate

By Michael Cook
Editor’s note. This is excerpted from a post that appeared at Bioedge.org.
Since 2005 about 40 people in Belgium and the Netherlands have successfully combined euthanasia with organ donation, according to an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics by ethicists and transplant specialists.
The [five] doctors are so enthusiastic about the procedure that they have proposed legal changes which will speed up the procedure and maximize the number of donations. Although the numbers are still low, the idea is becoming more popular in both countries, according to the authors.
(Not everyone – in fact, only a small proportion – of people who request euthanasia are potential organ donors. Most requests come from patients with cancer, which makes them unsuitable donors. Most of the Belgians who have already participated in the programme appear to have suffered from strokes or multiple sclerosis.)

However there are some legal and ethical wrinkles to be ironed out to make the transition from euthanasia to organ donation seamless.
Some regulations and laws are supposed to be safeguards, but they “slow” the procedure down. For example, in the Netherlands, euthanasia is not regarded as a natural death and so permission must be sought from the public prosecutor to dispose of the body. In Belgium (where euthanasia is regarded as “natural”), three doctors need to sign off on the procedure. …

Another consideration is whether informing euthanasia patients about organ donation puts pressure on them to agree. The authors believe that it doesn’t, provided that it is done tactfully.
According to the principles of the Hippocratic Oath, the authors argue, doctors may even have an obligation to inform patients because they will be saving lives of organ recipients. They also point out that “The patient could be very relieved discovering the existence of this option and receiving the possibility to give meaning to his or her own suffering, by potentially relieving the suffering of others.”
Until now, transplant protocols have specified a strict separation between organ donation and euthanasia. However, if the patient is [willing], this is not necessary. “As long as all due diligence requirements are fulfilled, it should not be an obstacle if euthanasia and donation are not fully separated,” the authors argue.

Finally, the “dead donor” rule is frustratingly inconvenient for organ donor euthanasia. Since the patient has chosen to die anyway, why shouldn’t it be possible, the authors argue, to have “a ‘heart-beating organ donation euthanasia’ where a patient is sedated, after which his organs are being removed, causing death”?
The authors conclude:

“Combining euthanasia and organ donation in a so-called ‘donation after circulatory death’ procedure seems feasible on legal, ethical or medical grounds, and is increasingly gaining social acceptance in both Belgium and the Netherlands. Since current legislation does not specifically focus on the—when drafted unpractised—combination, future redrafting may be necessary in perspective of the contemporary developments regarding occurrence of such combined procedures

– See more at: bioedge.org

Source: NRLC News

Life is Awesome

 

The enormous impact of a baby’s “first kick”

By Dave Andrusko
Editor’s note. If you want to peruse stories all day long, go directly to nationalrighttolifenews.org and/or follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/daveha
I became “pro-life” long before I realized that abortion had been legalized nationwide in 1973. And I didn’t even know it.
Even with my rapidly aging synapses, I still can recall that moment in 1964. My mom, already the mother of six children and over 40, encouraged me to touch her by-then prominent belly and then place my ear on it.
Talk about black and white becoming Technicolor. The abstraction that my youngest brother had been previously had now become a concrete, living, moving human being.
Wow.

That vivid memory was the first thing that crossed my mind when I read, “A Baby’s Kick Changes Everything about Abortion,” by Georgi Boorman.
After I read the post, it occurred to me how infrequently we talk about an unborn baby’s first kick these days, what we used to call “quickening.” Because ultrasound pictures are almost ubiquitous (and take place earlier in pregnancy), comparatively little attention is paid to that moment which occurs somewhere around the 20th week.

Boorman’s baby packs a wallop. As she writes,

No, it’s not comfortable. No, it doesn’t feel “natural,” not because it isn’t, but because there’s nothing I’ve felt quite like it. My husband told me our baby never felt more real than after she started kicking. The ultrasounds were beautiful, especially seeing her heartbeat. But it was still more conceptual at that point. When you feel her move, it’s like she’s saying, “I’m here! I’m real! I’ll be out in the world soon!”

Then, a few paragraphs later

For the first time in my life, the life of my baby is more than a concept, and so now all my reactions to pro-abortion articles are physical, not just intellectual or even emotional.

These reassuring comments are bracketed by her thoughts on abortion and help the reader understand her responses. First, quoting Lindy West, the pro-abortion author of a new book excerpted in Glamour magazine, she wonders how anyone can write the following:

I don’t give a damn why anyone has an abortion. I believe unconditionally in the right of people with uteruses to decide what grows inside their body and feeds on their blood and reroutes their future. There are no ‘good’ abortions and ‘bad’ abortions, there are only pregnant people who want them and pregnant people who don’t, pregnant people who have access and support and pregnant people who face institutional roadblocks…”

But they do. In more polite, more discrete language, that is precisely the view Hillary Clinton subscribes to.
On the back side of this quote, Boorman is particularly distraught by women who have already given birth to children but who, nonetheless, abort. I was encouraged that “a gentler thought [came] to cover my anger.”
That all women who’ve aborted not only “need healing” but also “need divine forgiveness and grace, as we all do.” She continues

The empathy I have with these mothers is that of a fellow sinner in need of redemption. … But grace has already come through Christ, and he mends what is torn. It is through him that we can love fully; he replaces the turmoil of our wrongdoing with a peace “that transcends all understanding.”

One other thought about Mrs. Boorman post at the Federalist.

My baby is real—not just real to me, but objectively real. She shows up in my blood test and on the ultrasound, and others can feel her kicks. She is very much a human being.

However, as the quote from Ms. West reveals, to the pro-abortion mind the child is not “objectively real.” Or, better put, it doesn’t make any difference. The only question is “wantedness.”
Thank goodness it would never have occurred to my mother that the lives of the seven Andrusko s depended on us being “wanted.”

Source: NRLC News

Unborn Babies

 

Protecting unborn babies “helps make the earth a better place for everyone”

By Maria Gallagher, Legislative Director, Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation
I have found that some of the most eloquent spokespeople for the pro-life movement are the youngest ones.
That truth became abundantly clear as I was reading through dozens of “thank you” cards for state lawmakers that had been handmade by students, some as young as the first grade.
One card carried an ink drawing of a bumble bee. On one wing the student wrote, “I’m alive,” and on the other wing, “Alleluia.”

Another card, emblazoned with a pink heart, carried the message, “Dear fellow pro-lifer, thank you so much for your courage. I appreciate your support of the pro-life cause.”
A student named Jasmine submitted a card with a picture of a pair of baby feet on the front. Inside, the card read, “Save the babies. Don’t let your child die. Don’t kill babies.”

Students at St. Joan of Arc School in Hershey, Pennsylvania, sent cards with teddy bears carrying baskets of flowers on the front. Inside one of the cards, a boy named Tyler wrote, “Dear Legislator, thank you for saving the lives of unborn babies. Sometimes it’s hard to stand for what you believe in. Thank you for all of your efforts to stop abortion.”
A girl named Grace wrote, “Dear Lawmakers, thank you for supporting pro-life. We really appreciate all your help! It is so sad to hear about all the babies in trouble or that have passed. Then when I hear people are helping, supporting, and protecting them, it makes me feel happy. We are praying for you, and thinking of your work.”

One school—Good Shepherd in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania—submitted more than 100 cards for legislators. A strong, encouraging pro-life message appeared in each one!
Reading through the large volume of thank you notes, I was once again reminded of the enthusiasm of so many young people for the pro-life cause. Even the littlest ones know that babies are precious and should be protected under the law.
These young citizens are using the resources available to them—markers, crayons, pencils, pens, and construction paper—to send an important message to their elected officials. They want innocent human life to be protected, beginning from its earliest stages of development forward.
What is our job as adults? To encourage young people in their pro-life advocacy. When they get to college, they will be bombarded with anti-life messages. It may take every ounce of strength they have to resist the pervasive culture of death.
With all the death and destruction that has been in the news as of late, it is easy to lose heart. Please don’t.

The next generation is willing and able to accept the pro-life torch and raise it high. Their earnest efforts can lead to a nation where every child is cherished and each mother is respected and supported.
Remember the words of Caroline, a student at Good Shepherd, “Thank you for protecting babies and supporting them too. This helps make the earth a better place for everyone.”

Source: NRLC News

Life- A Beautiful Choice

 

‘Fox & Friends’ Interviews Mom Who Refused to Abort Down Syndrome Baby

By Katie Yoder
The pro-life movement doesn’t just have science on its side. It also has heart.
During Fox & Friends Thursday, co-host Ainsley Earhardt turned to the viral story of a mother who penned a “powerful message” to the doctor that suggested she abort her baby with Down syndrome. Earhardt invited the mother, Courtney Baker, on the show with her now 15-month-old daughter Emersyn (Emmy).
Earhardt began by citing Baker’s letter to her doctor that went viral after ABC News heavily promoted it:

“You were so very wrong to say a baby with Down syndrome would decrease our quality of life… So my prayer is that no other mommy will have to go through what I did. My prayer is that you, too, will now see true beauty and pure love with every sonogram.”

“She is just so sweet!” Earhardt exclaimed to Courtney when she first appeared on camera with little Emmy.
As Emmy waved at the camera, Baker spoke out against abortion.
“We knew we were going to keep her,” she said of Emmy, even though she was “terrified” when she first discovered her daughter had Down syndrome.
With the help of her letter, Baker wanted the doctor see past the “misconception that there’s no value in the life” of someone with Down syndrome.
Because, as Baker put it, Emmy is “changing the world.”
“[T]hese babies are so – so precious and I want every – not just all the doctors to know that, I want all the mommies to know that, that are pregnant right now who are in that – making that decision,” Baker added.
While Baker was a “little afraid,” she “absolutely fell in love” with Emmy the first night following her birth.
“[T]his has been the best year of my life by far,” she said of Emmy. “She’s brought so much joy to – to me and to so many other people.”
Baker described Emmy’s personality as “hilarious,” “smart” and “fun” – as well as a baby who has changed the lives of her entire family.
“She’s really grown our faith,” Baker said of Emmy’s impact on herself, her husband and her two older daughters. “She’s grown us as people.”
Because of Emmy, Baker’s oldest daughter wants work with special needs children and both of her daughters want to adopt babies with Down syndrome.
“It’s changed who they’re going to be,” Baker said. “It’s changed the trajectory of their lives. And, they’re proud of her. And they’re better people – we’re better people because of her.”
Baker also had a message for pregnant women who might find themselves in a similar position as she once was:

“That little baby inside of you is going to change the world. It’s going to change your world. It’s – you know, I really felt like my life was over. And my life just started. And, you know, your life is just beginning and that’s the – the greatest, it’s the greatest thing in the world.”

Editor’s note. This appeared at Newsbusters.

Source: NRLC News

Ireland

 

U. N. committee again harshly criticizes Ireland’s protective abortions laws

By Dave Andrusko

Cora Sherlock

Since the United Nations and Amnesty International have been targeting Ireland’s pro-life laws for some considerable time, it came as zero surprise that the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Committee found that the nation’s “abortion law violates the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and called for widespread reform,” to quote the Associated Press.
More specifically, the 29-page report targeted the country, in this instance, because it does not permit abortions in cases where the unborn is diagnosed as having a fatal anomaly.
In 2011 Amanda Mellet complained to the Committee that she’d been told in the 21st week of pregnancy that her baby had a heart defect and “likely would die” inside the womb or shortly thereafter.
“After three weeks, she checked with doctors to see if her now 24-week-old fetus still had a heartbeat and, when told it was still alive, traveled with her husband to the English city of Liverpool” where a premature delivery was induced, the AP reported. 36 hours later she delivered a “stillborn baby girl.”
According to Reuters, “The U.N. report said Ireland’s law made the rights of inviable [nonviable] fetuses superior to the rights of women and this arbitrary imbalance ‘cannot be justified,’ because the unborn child’s life cannot be saved.”

The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights welcomed the “ground-breaking ruling” as sending “the clear message that Ireland’s abortion laws are cruel and inhumane, and violate women’s human rights.”

Amnesty International/Ireland, which is the forefront of the campaign to overturn the Eighth Amendment, chimed in, “The Irish government must take its head out of the sand and see that it has to tackle this issue.”

This tragic case is part of the larger objective–to eliminate Ireland’s “Eighth Amendment.”
“The 8th Amendment (Article 40.3.3.) to the Irish Constitution is the original Life Equality Amendment,” Deputy Chairperson Cora Sherlock of the Pro Life Campaign has explained. “It protects the equal right to life of unborn children and their mothers.”
The pro-life community in Ireland has made an especially concerted effort to defend babies diagnosed with life-limiting conditions. Last year a bill was introduced by Clare Daly to legalize abortions in cases of babies with life-limiting conditions but it was defeated.
“Everyone in the Dáil [the lower house of the Parliament of the Republic of Ireland] knows that Deputy Clare Daly supports abortion on demand up to birth,” Sherlock said at the time.

“The fact that she keeps introducing bills in the Oireachtas [the Parliament] to allow for abortion where unborn babies have life-limiting conditions is just part of her campaign for wider abortion. But it is deeply hurtful to families who opted against abortion in these situations to hear Deputy Daly and her colleagues describe their babies as ‘non-viable’ and ‘incompatible with life’.
Sherlock continued, “It is absolutely reprehensible that some members of the Oireachtas have described the utterly defenceless babies in these situations as ‘simply a piece of flesh with no sensation, capacity for sensation or any form of feeling.’ What a grossly ignora

Source: NRLC News

Abortion Clinics

 

Abortion worker: Women who asked to see their aborted babies were shown egg whites

  Sarah Terzo 

There have been many cases of abortion facility workers withholding key facts from abortion minded women. In some cases, staffers outright lied. For example, in this article, a post-abortive woman recalls being told that her baby was just “a clump of cells”:

When I saw that a 3-month-old “clump of cells” had fingers and toes and was a tiny, perfectly formed baby, I became really hysterical.

I’ve been lied to and misled, and I’m sure thousands of other women are being just as poorly informed and badly served. To prove it, John [her husband] and I visited most every clinic in Cleveland. I pretended I was pregnant and asked for guidance.

What we heard was incredible. One counselor told us the fetus did not begin to resemble a human being until 7 months, another said 5 months, and so it went.

Based on countless testimonies from former abortion providers and abortion patients (here are just a few), we know that many abortion facilities deceive women before their abortions. Live Action investigated the industry’s rampant lying and manipulation of women.
But a staffer has come forward to say that the deception by abortion workers sometimes continues even after the abortion is over.
Former clinic worker Laurel Guymer explains how some women ask questions after their abortions. Some of the women even want to see the remains of their aborted babies. The clinic had a very special way of dealing with such requests.

When the women woke up in recovery they often whispered to me, “Was it a girl or a boy?” I was instructed to tell them it was too small to know for sure. But occasionally a woman would ask, “Can I see the fetus?” The standard line in an abortion setting was “a pregnancy is a bunch of cells, too early to differentiate” (unlike in IVF, where the women having miscarriages at earlier stages were told they have lost the “baby”). But some women insisted on seeing the fetus, so we would check how many weeks they were and select the appropriate pot off the shelf.

None of the containers had a fetus in them, nothing recognizable to the naked eye at least. The contents resembled pavlova mixture: egg whites stiffly beaten, floating in a clear solution. They never saw their own fetus. It had been dismantled by the abortion procedure, suctioned into a glass container, then strained like peas in the slush room, the foot measured to estimate gestation, then finally discarded in the biohazardous waste.

While the real aborted babies were fully developed with feet that could be identified and measured, women were shown a carefully concocted bowl of indistinguishable muck.  What the women saw bore no resemblance to the babies they had just aborted.
In this way, the woman was able to go home with the belief that she hadn’t killed anything remotely resembling a baby. She would believe what the clinic workers told her – that the abortion only removed “a bunch of cells.” If she stumbled across pictures of aborted babies or information on fetal development later, she would be convinced that the pictures were fake and the information lies- because, after all, she saw the remains of her baby with her own eyes.

Not only has the abortion industry deceived these women, but they have inoculated them against the truth.  Arguments from pro-lifers will fall on deaf ears, because the woman cannot imagine that the abortion clinic has tricked her.
This type of deception both hardens a woman’s heart towards the plight of preborn babies in our society and interferes with her healing. Instinctively, women feel a connection with their preborn babies. Guilt may lurk below the surface, and facing reality is often the catalyst that brings healing.
One thing to take away from Guymer’s testimony is that abortion clinics can be quite sophisticated in deceiving women. They have to be. If women knew they were going to have their babies dismembered and thrown out as medical waste, many of them would say no to abortion.  There would be fewer patients, which means less money for the abortion facility, which ultimately leads to centers going out of business. Workers fight to prevent that from happening, even if it means lying to their patients.
 Source: Melinda Tankard Reist Giving Sorrow Words: Women’s Stories of Grief after Abortion (Springfield, IL: Acorn Books, 2007) 181

Source: LiveAction News

Life Wins

 

Abortion still “morally wrong,” latest Gallup shows

By Dave Andrusko
A Gallup poll conducted May 4-8 finds that more Americans still find abortion “morally wrong” (47%) than “morally acceptable” (43%). In 2015, Gallup’s numbers were 48% and 42% , respectively.
The breakdown along party lines is that only 24% of Republicans said abortion was morally acceptable, 44% of Independents, but 62% of Democrats.
A couple of background items.
First, the question is asked in this manner: “I’m going to read you a list of issues. Regardless of whether or not you think it should be legal, for each one, please tell me whether you personally believe that in general it is morally acceptable or morally wrong. How about abortion?”
As we have written countless times, if you breakdown responses to the question under what circumstances should abortion be legal, a majority opposes the reasons for which at least 90% of all abortions are performed. So, to most people, “in general” doesn’t necessarily tell you what you need to know about abortion in general, its morality in particular.

Second, “morally wrong” is much more categorical than “morally acceptable,” much more black and white. “Acceptable” is hardly an endorsement. What would be the response if the second option was whether the person thought abortion is “morally commendable”?

Third, when a recent survey conducted for the Knights of Columbus asked the question, 60% said they believed abortion is morally wrong, while only 37% think it is morally acceptable. Interestingly, exactly one-third of self-identified pro-choicers said abortion is morally wrong.
On an encouraging note, while there is still a majority who found “Doctor Assisted Suicide” morally acceptable, the numbers are down slightly from 2015 (naturally not noted by Gallup).
In 2016, 53% responded that they believed Doctor Assisted suicide is morally acceptable to 41% who said it is morally wrong .

In 2015, 56% said they believed Doctor Assisted Suicide was morally acceptable, to 37 who told Gallup they believed it was morally wrong.
Needless to add, the “Doctor assisted” label increases support. Even now, people are more likely to voice support when a “doctor” is involved.

Source:NRLC News