Many Illinois abortion clinics had gone without inspection for many years until recently -- and that only happened after extensive media attention to a filthy Rockford abortion facility. State officials subsequently inspected nine abortion clinics, two of which were deemed so unsafe and unsanitary that emergency license suspensions were issued. One will remain closed because of an inability to find staff willing to work there. Bill Beckman of Illinois Right to Life Committee explains why it had been about 15 years since the state's abortion clinics had been inspected. "There was this agreement when we had a pro-abortion attorney general back in the '90s that effectively left, for all intents and purposes, the regulation of abortion clinics as pretty much an opened-ended thing," he tells OneNewsNow. Oddly enough, not all abortion clinics fall under state scrutiny. Beckman explains. "One of the very curious regulations that is affecting this is that if less than 50 percent of your business is abortions, you don't even need to be licensed by the state," he says. "So Planned Parenthood falls under that window. They are not licensed by the state of Illinois at all, never get inspected, and never could even be thought about being inspected." State health officials say they lack the resources to do the inspections, but Beckman says they are just hiding behind that as an excuse for not moving on the clinics. The pro-lifer expects there will be a push in the legislature to change current laws. Contact: Charlie Butts Source: OneNewsNow
A study that suggests abortion is safer than giving birth is being disputed. 
Two researchers -- Dr. Elizabeth Raymond from Gynuity Health Projects in New York City, and Dr. David Grimes of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill -- conducted the study using information from the Guttmacher Institute. Guttmacher is supportive of abortion and is affiliated with Planned Parenthood International. Dr. Randall K. O'Bannon of the National Right to Life Committee says the study is similar to other information in past years, which pro-abortion groups try to use to counter state women's right-to-know laws that require women seeking an abortion be provided information on the dangers of abortion. O'Bannon says the conclusions of the study are rather fuzzy. "We do know, for example, that there was a study done in Finland that looked at death rates in Finland from 1987 to 1994 where they've got some more complete records, and they found out that women who had abortions had a three-and-a-half times higher mortality rate than the women who had given child birth within that first year." O'Bannon also suggests the abortion-oriented study may have more of an international agenda than domestic in that it fits with a major push by United Nations organizations for legalization of abortion worldwide, including Third World countries where it is illegal or limited. Regardless of the motivation, O'Bannon says what the new study doesn't point out is that when there is an abortion, there is a death -- that of the unborn baby. Contact: Charlie Butts Source: OneNewsNow
The head of a pro-family group is suggesting that people not buy Girl Scout cookies because of the organization's link with Planned Parenthood. Christy Volanski, whose daughters co-founded SpeakNowGirlScouts.com, has already revealed a correlation between the Girl Scouts and the abortion giant. Now, Austin Ruse, a father and head of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), is saying "no" when Girl Scouts ask him and his wife to purchase the organization's popular cookies. "The Girl Scouts really have no business partnering with the largest abortion provider in the world," Ruse contends. "Yet the [CEO of the Girl Scouts] has actually gone on network television explicitly saying that they work with Planned Parenthood." And he recalls a Girl Scout event at the United Nations, where Planned Parenthood distributed its brochures titled "Healthy, Happy and Hot -- a young person's guide to their rights, sexuality and living with HIV." "That got us going on this particular issue, and then we discovered that there was some very creepy conference that the Girl Scouts in Texas put on with Planned Parenthood which dealt with much of the same issues as the 'Healthy, [Happy and Hot]' brochure," the C-FAM president notes. "So there's just a lot of evidence, as my wife said, [that] there's something really 'rotten' going on here." He concludes that not buying the cookies is one way to show the Girl Scouts, which has seen reduced enrollment in recent years, that the organization is losing support. Meanwhile, Ruse points out that Christian-based alternatives, such as American Heritage Girls, are available. Contact: Charlie Butts Source: OneNewsNow
The left's logical case for abortion rights had officially collapsed. We can thank CNN's Piers Morgan for administering last rites when he resorted to the tired, sensationalized, "Yeah, well, what if your daughter was raped?" argument with Rick Santorum in a televised interview. Click here for the video. There's a reason why any time we seek to settle a bitter dispute between two feuding parties, we turn to a disinterested third person to act as the arbiter. The reason is because we know that when attempting to come to a clear, rational, sound conclusion about serious and many times controversial issues, emotional connections to either side can cloud our judgment and confuse our thinking. And that's also the very reason why on the great moral dilemma of our day -- the legality of abortion -- those holding to the ethically, scientifically, and constitutionally inferior position known as supporting a "woman's right to choose" (notice the habitual omission of what it is that women should have the right to choose to do) seek to inject as much emotion, as many exceptional cases, and as much passionately sensational rhetoric as possible. They may be short on logic, but they're not stupid when it comes to winning the battle for public opinion. That's why you see virtually no liberal willing to speak to the most fundamental question of the entire controversy: the humanity of what is in the womb. They simply declare any discussions of humanness, biology, and personhood rights to be above their pay grade, and thereby dismiss themselves from any expectation or obligation to answer questions that would expose their logical bankruptcy. Instead, they set the parameters of the debate, and draw conservatives into wildly emotional exchanges that inflame passions rather than engage intellects. Take the recent interview of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum conducted by CNN host Piers Morgan. Santorum is a pro-life stalwart and one of the few conservatives on the national scene who articulates the seemingly obvious position that if you believe an unborn child is a human being entitled to fundamental and constitutional rights, then there is no exception by which you can condone the denial of those rights. Otherwise, you are absurdly attempting to make a moral case for murder. But in what can only be described as indignant tones, Morgan challenged this logical consistency not with an appeal to reason, but with this bit of shameful, back-alley journalism: "Do you really believe, in every case, it should be totally wrong, in the sense that -- I know that you believe, even in the cases of rape and incest -- and you've got two daughters. You know, if you have a daughter that came to you who had been raped, and was pregnant and was begging you to let her have an abortion, would you really be able to look her in the eye and say, no, as her father?" Morgan's disgraceful retreat from sound logic to the manipulative playground of emotion-driven passions is as transparent as it is embarrassing. This question is not designed to reveal any truth in the abortion debate, but rather is a tactical scheme made for the cameras in which the liberal questioner puts the conservative respondent in a corner. If Santorum says he would deny his daughter's pleas, he looks like the cold and heartless goon that Morgan believes him to be. If he says he would relent and allow his daughter an abortion, he surrenders his moral high ground and appears a hypocrite. And though Santorum answered the question effectively, stating that he "would do what every father must do ... try to counsel your daughter to do the right thing," there's a greater point to be made here. Liberal politicians never have to answer such outrageous emotionalism in their interviews. Can you imagine, for example, Barack Obama being called on his condemnation of former President Bush's advanced interrogation techniques with this challenge: "If Sasha and Malia were kidnapped and were being held and brutally tortured by terrorists, and we captured one of their accomplices who had knowledge of their secret hideout, would you not authorize any force necessary to get your girls back?" Can you fathom the outcry against such a loaded, sensationalized question? Or compare apples to apples and envision Obama being quizzed by Piers Morgan: "So if you believe that partial-birth abortion is a legitimate medical procedure that violates no moral law, would you be willing to inject the saline into your own daughter's womb to burn your grandchild alive?" Such outrageously aggressive and offensively personal questioning would have Morgan looking for work within a week. Yet that is what conservatives face every time they attempt to discuss the issue of abortion with liberals. If sound conclusions come from restraining emotions, and liberals conduct their entire case on the basis of emotion, what should that tell us about their conclusions? Contact: Peter Heck Source: OneNewsNow
Earlier this week the IFRL reported on a Press Release provided by the Coalition on Abortion Breast Cancer that Susan G. Komen for the Cure would no longer financiall support Planned Parenthood, this was great news at the time, however it increased the donations to Planned Parenthood and now is moot because the decision has been reversed. After days of controversy, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation has said it will reinstate funding for Planned Parenthood. Earlier this week, the foundation moved to discontinue funding Planned Parenthood. The Associated Press reported the change came because of a new Komen policy forbidding grants to organizations under official investigation. Founder and CEO Nancy G. Brinker explained the latest decision and the changes in a statement attributed to her and the group's board. Here's an excerpt (with original emphasis in bold): "We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives. The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not. Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair. Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities." Komen's decision to halt funding led to an outpouring of support for Planned Parenthood, including a jump in funding. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for one, pledged up to $250,000 of his own money to the organization to help make up for the money for breast cancer screening. Contact: Scott Hensley Source: NPR News
Life Dynamics has produced a new report on violence against women who didn't want an abortion, revealing information that one pro-lifer says would be a "scandal" to ignore. Spokesman Mark Crutcher, producer of the documentary Maafa 21, says the abortion lobby knows about the violence; they talk about it at some of their conventions, he says, but do nothing about it. And he points out that the historic position among feminists was pro-life. Mark Crutcher"One of the reasons that the early feminists in this country -- the people like Susan B. Anthony, and Virginia Woodhall, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul, who wrote the Equal Rights Amendment -- the reason that these women were all opposed to the legalization of abortion was because they knew that it would be a weapon used by sexually irresponsible and sexually predatory males," he explains. "It was not something that would profit women." In the report "Under-the-Radar Violence in the Conflict Over Abortion," Life Dynamics documents 80 known cases of women murdered for refusing to have abortions. And Crutcher says that is only the tip of the iceberg, as there are also women and girls who are coerced, intimidated, and threatened into terminating pregnancies. So as the pro-lifer concludes, "Ignoring that is a scandal." Contact: Charlie Butts Source: OneNewsNow
Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has introduced a bill to repeal regulations issued by the Obama administration that many faith-based organizations say would force them to buy health insurance plans that violate their consciences. "The Obama Administration's obsession with forcing mandates on the American people has now reached a new low by violating the conscience rights and religious liberties of our people," Rubio said in a Jan. 31 statement. Rubio also criticized the administration for "forcing religious entities to abandon their beliefs." He described his bill, titled "The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2012," as "a common sense bill that simply says the government can't force religious organizations to abandon the fundamental tenets of their faith because the government says so." On Jan. 20, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized a "preventative services" mandate that would require employers to purchase health insurance plans that cover sterilization and contraception, including some abortion-causing drugs. The mandate includes a religious exemption, but it only applies to organizations that exist for the purpose of inculcating religious values and limit their service and employment primarily to members of their own faith. The limited scope of the exemption means that most religiously-affiliated ministries and groups will not qualify for it. Rubio introduced his bill on Jan. 31 "to provide religious conscience protections for individuals and organizations." The legislation observes that the mandate's "absurdly narrow exemption," which is "unprecedented in Federal law," will exclude thousands of "charities, hospitals, schools or soup kitchens that hire or serve individuals who do not share their religious tenets." It points out that "religious freedom and liberty of conscience are inalienable rights protected by the Declaration of Independence and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution." Rubio's bill also notes that the Department of Health and Human Services refused to broaden the religious exemption to the mandate "despite receiving thousands of comments protesting" against its narrow scope. If the bill became law, it will prevent any regulations issued under the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act from requiring "any individual or entity" to provide coverage or information on contraception or sterilization if that individual or entity is opposed to doing so "on the basis of religious belief." It also prohibits the imposition of a fine, penalty or other punishment on individuals or entities that make a religiously-based decision not to purchase such coverage. Contact: Michelle Bauman Source: CNA/EWTN News
Note: Warning: This story contains graphic content. A series of ads for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (PPNNE) that's being run on the Internet, in print and on the sides of buses in Maine and Vermont is raising eyebrows — everywhere but in the state Legislature. The ads have slogans proclaiming, "We're your Friend with Benefits," ""We're your quickie," and "We're your Private Area," to name a few, letting teens and adults know that they can ask PPNE anything, because "We're your sexual health experts, nothing will freak us out." "It's all to market their new location" in downtown Burlington, said Vermont Right to Life Committee Executive Director Mary Hahn Beerworth. "It looks like a pretty expensive deal here. But a significant number of the members of the Vermont legislature rely on Planned Parenthood's support at election time, and would most likely be fine with the ad campaign." Though no information on how much the ad campaign cost PPNNE was available, Beerworth said PPNNE is free to devote all its private donations to efforts like it — including the explicit text-messaging service it runs for teens called "consensualtext.org" — because it has a lock on federal and state taxpayer dollars. "Planned Parenthood gets the entire Title X (family planning) allotment for Vermont, the entire $1.5 million. It's a no-bid contract. It just goes right to them," she explained. "So they've kept all abstinence education out of the state. They are the sexual educators, and they work hand-in-hand with the Department of Health. "Our state grants them another $300,000 with no strings attached." Vermont is the only state in the union with no abortion restrictions of any kind — no parental notification, no informed consent, no bans on late-term abortion, and nothing to prohibit non-doctors from performing them. "Vermont is considered unique in its use of non-physicians," Beerworth said. "So when a minor daughter goes in for an abortion without her parents, she also goes in without a doctor." Contact: Karla Dial Source: CitizenLink
October BabyAmerican Family Studios, an arm of the American Family Association, is set to release its first major motion picture this spring, and one movie critic expects it to make a huge impact on the culture. "They adopted me because my birth mother tried to abort me. I guess I wasn't supposed to survive, and I barely did," the main character, Hannah, shares in an excerpt from the film. October Baby, which was briefly released in theaters in Alabama and Mississippi last October, is set to go nationwide next month. Bob Waliszewski of Focus on the Family's Plugged In tells OneNewsNow how much he likes the movie. "I love the fact that we have a movie that underscores once again in a very creative way just how valuable every single human life is," he notes. Waliszewski believes the film, which features veteran actors John Schneider and Jasmine Guy, could make an impact on society, "especially if folks who don't typically come from the pro-life side of the equation or the faith community see it." "I think it can help break down some walls and help present life in a creative way as being very, very positive -- all life," the critic adds. October Baby hits theaters on March 23. Contact: Bill Bumpas Source: OneNewsNow
