Students' tuition funding contraception

      

College students are calling for passage of a federal law to block the contraception mandate on their insurance exchanges under the new healthcare law.

Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life tells OneNewsNow students' premiums will be paying for contraception, sterilization surgery, and the "morning-after" pill, even if it violates their religious beliefs.

 "It's the same mandate that we've been talking about since February nationally, but now it's being applied directly to university and college healthcare plans," she says. "So … we've been talking a lot to students about this and how this relates to them and why it's so important. Well, this just hammers it home because now they're going to be funding this in their tuition."

Hawkins accounts that once students are made aware of what the government is forcing them to do, they are enraged. But the passage of a measure currently before Congress would help them fight this mandate.

 "There's a bill in Congress, [the] Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, sponsored by Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-Nebraska)," she reports. "We've got to get this bill passed in Congress and make President Obama account for this mandate."

 Students for Life is making an action kit available for pro-life students to help energize their peers to take action against the ObamaCare requirement.

 This coverage will also be available to college-age women who are not in school.

Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow

Teen-abortion bill would give parents a say

     

Members of Congress again are seeking to restrict interstate transportation for minors' abortions after years of failures to enact the legislation.

The Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (CIANA), H.R. 2299 in this Congress, was first introduced in 1998 but has never reached the president's desk for signature. A House of Representatives subcommittee heard testimony from supporters and opponents of the measure in a March 8 hearing.
 
Under the bill, a person knowingly transporting a minor who lives in a state requiring parental involvement for an abortion would need parental permission or a bypass granted by a judge in order for the procedure to occur in another state. The bill would also require abortion providers to notify parents before performing an abortion on an out-of-state minor. Violators would face not more than one year in prison or a fine.

In the 28 states that have passed parental involvement laws, "the research shows that there is a statistically significant reduction in the in-state minor abortion rate from anywhere from 13 percent to 42 percent," said Michael New, assistant professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Passing a parental notification law has helped the overall health of girls, according to New's research. It has reduced pregnancy in 15 to 19 year olds and lowered incidents of gonorrhea and suicide in the same age bracket, he said.

Testifying on behalf of the Episcopal Church, Katherine Ragsdale, president of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., told the subcommittee her church has adopted a resolution against parental permission laws in hopes of helping young women in difficult situations.

"Our position encourages the very things this bill would outlaw," Ragsdale said at the hearing. "Certainly, we want young people to be able to turn to their parents. But when they can't or won't, we want to make it easier, not harder, for them to turn to other responsible adults and, most certainly, we don't want to make it harder for their doctors to be their allies and advocates."

Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the lead Democrat on the House constitution subcommittee and a bill foe, pointed to an example of a child who could not speak to her parent about her situation. The 13-year-old from Iowa was "shot to death by her father after he found out that she terminated her pregnancy, Nadler said. The pregnancy was the result of incest, Nadler said, with the father causing the pregnancy.

But bill supporter Teresa Collett, professor of law at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, said parental permission laws have bypasses.

"In those few cases where it is not in the girl's best interest to disclose her pregnancy to her parents, state laws generally provide the pregnant minor the option of seeking a court determination ... of the girl's best interests," Collett said.

Of the 28 states that enforce parental involvement laws, 22 require only one parent to grant permission for the abortion.

Abortion is a serious procedure and holds consequences for a person's health, such as "increased risk of breast cancer; extremely premature birth in subsequent pregnancies, at 28 weeks of gestation or less, and suicide," said Rep. Trent Franks, R.–Ariz., the subcommittee's chairman.

Since 1998, the bill -- in various forms -- has received approval from the House but has gained passage in the Senate only once. The House and Senate approved different versions of the legislation in 2006, but Democrats blocked a negotiated bill from receiving a vote on final passage.

At the hearing, Nadler predicted a similar fate for this session's measure, saying, "This bill we have considered in the 106th, 107th, 108th, 109th Congresses, and I presume that we will have no more success in this Congress."

Contact: Mark Norton
Source: Baptist Press

$1 abortion surcharge decried by pro-lifers

    
     Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., criticizes at
     a March 21 news conference the latest
     Obama administration rule endorsing
     abortion funding health care. Photo
     provided by Rep. Smith's office

In a Wednesday (March 21) news conference on Capitol Hill, members of Congress and leaders of pro-life organizations decried the latest rule regarding the 2010 health care law, dubbed by critics as Obamacare. Since the rule's March 12 release, pro-lifers have pointed to two particularly objectionable aspects in a document that is more than 640 pages in length:

-- Health insurance plans in state exchanges are prohibited from specifically publicizing the fact they provide abortion coverage. They can disclose such coverage "only as part of the summary of benefits and coverage explanation, at the time of enrollment."

-- Every person enrolled in an insurance plan that covers abortion must pay a separate, monthly fee of at least $1 as an "abortion surcharge."

"So there will be millions, and perhaps tens of millions, of pro-life Americans who won't have a clue that abortion coverage is in their package until the day they sign on the bottom line," Rep. Chris Smith, R.-N.J., said at the March 21 news conference.

The "surcharge" and secrecy clause in the new rule are only the latest to be confirmed in a series of provisions protested by pro-life advocates and objectors to government funding of abortion.

Pro-lifers have decried the fact the law will permit federally subsidized abortions. Religious liberty advocates have joined pro-lifers in also objecting to a January rule -- like the latest one, also from the Department of Health and Human Services -- that requires all health plans to cover contraceptives and sterilizations as preventive services without cost to employees. The contraceptives, as designated by the federal government, include some drugs that can cause abortions of tiny embryos. That rule has a religious exemption critics find woefully insufficient.

The "surcharge" and secrecy clause are "really a sideshow," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), at the news conference.

"It is a diversion from what's going on in the main tent, which is the federal subsidies," he told reporters. "We're talking about a massive new program, so-called tax credits. This is money coming straight out of the federal treasury which is going to subsidize the purchase of these plans for tens of millions of Americans."

The cost to the federal government could be $80 billion a year, Johnson said.

Smith said, "Now, under Obamacare, taxpayer subsidies in the form of what's called refundable, advanceable credits paid directly to the insurance company -- that is to say, taxpayer funds -- will subsidize insurance plans offered on the exchange that include abortion on demand -- even late-term abortion."

There are no restrictions on the reasons for abortions or how late they may be performed under the regulation, according to NRLC.

Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, told reporters, "[A]s we predicted at the time that Obamacare was passed, the state exchanges do cover abortion and will force many Americans to pay for abortion regardless of their own personal, deeply held beliefs. That's not American. That's not the country that we live in. Many Americans will be compelled by law into an insurance plan that covers abortion."

Fifteen states have enacted laws barring abortion coverage in health plans that are part of the exchanges, but those "opt-out" measures fall short of fully protecting pro-life citizens, according to NRLC.

"A state legislature may forbid coverage of abortion in the exchange-participating health plans in that state -- but under ObamaCare, the taxpayers who live in that state may not 'opt out' of subsidizing the abortion coverage for other Americans, perhaps numbering tens of millions, who live in other states that do not enact opt-out laws," NRLC reported in a March 16 analysis.

In addition, the health-care law also empowers the Office of Personnel Management to offer "multi-state" health plans that could permit federal health plans that cover abortion, according to NRLC.

In the last 15 months, the House of Representatives has passed three bills that would repeal the health-care law or bar funding for abortion under the law. In each case, Obama has threatened a veto, and the Senate has either defeated or refused to vote on the proposals.

It appears repeal of the health-care law or reversal of its abortion-funding provisions will require the election of a Senate and a president supportive of such changes -- or action by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court will hear oral arguments March 26-28 on the constitutionality of the health-care law.

Contact: Tom Strode
Source: Baptist Press

RALLY in defense of religious freedom

 
     

All 181 Bishops have signed the letter opposing the recent HHS (Health and Human Services) mandate regarding religious freedom. This mandate attacks the core of our Constitutional rights!

This is a reminder of the rallies planned across the country to defend our religious freedom!

Please make every effort to join, Friday March 23, at Noon in a RALLY in defense of religious freedom and STAND UP against the Obama administration's HHS Mandate at federal buildings in cities across the country. I have listed only those in Illinois; however St. Louis and other cities close to Illinois will be holding them as well. Please goto: http://standupforreligiousfreedom.com/ and check for the city nearest you!
 

If at all possible, please attend the rally closest to you. If time or location prevents you from joining us personally, Please join us in prayer between Noon and 1:00pm. Faithful Citizenship is everyone's responsibility!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Illinois

Chicago:

Federal Plaza

50 W. Adams Street (Map)

RSVP the Chicago rally on Facebook

E-mail the Rally Captain

Freeport:

Lincoln-Douglas Debate Square

114 E. Douglas Street (Parking Locations)

E-mail the Rally Leader

Peoria:

Peoria Courthouse

324 Main Street (Map)

E-mail the Rally Leader

Rockford:

Holy Family Parish

4401 Highcrest Road (Map)

Mass preceding Rally at 11 a.m.

E-mail the Rally Captain

Sterling:

Grandon Civic Center

310 E. Park Avenue (Map)

Mass at 11 a.m. Prior to Rally

Voters out to beat Obama hand Romney big IL edge

     

Voters hunting for a candidate who can defeat President Barack Obama and with the proper experience helped vault Mitt Romney to victory Tuesday in Illinois' presidential primary, according to results of an exit poll of voters.

 Illinois-Latest results
      10,421 of 10,448 precincts - 99 percent
     
      x-Mitt Romney, 430,535 - 47 percent
      Rick Santorum, 322,831 - 35 percent
      Ron Paul, 85,872 - 9 percent
      Newt Gingrich, 73,362 - 8 percent


Illinois delegate count:

     10,421 of 10,448 precincts - 99 percent
      51 of 54 Delegates allocated
     
      Mitt Romney 41 - 75 percent
      Rick Santorum 10 - 18 percent
      Newt Gingrich 0 - 0 percent
      Ron Paul 0 - 0 percent

Romney's win was also powered by robust margins from people worried about the economy and federal deficits.

Main challenger Rick Santorum ran strongly among people who want their contender to be a true conservative and to exhibit strong moral character, and with the most religiously driven voters. But Illinois only has modest proportions of such voters, narrowing the former Pennsylvania senator's appeal.
 
"Romney is a little too liberal for the Republican base. But that's the only way you can win. You've got to get the independents," said Norm Jay, 78, of Wheaton, Ill., who backed the former Massachusetts governor.

Underscoring how the Illinois contest occurred on terrain that was not the friendliest for Santorum, 34 percent on Tuesday called him too conservative. That was the highest proportion of voters expressing that view in any of the half-dozen states so far where that question was asked.

Romney won 74 percent of those seeking a candidate who can defeat Obama. Among 17 states where voters have been polled so far, that proportion has only been surpassed in Romney's home state of Massachusetts and in Virginia, where he and Texas Rep. Ron Paul were the only competitors.

Romney also got 64 percent of people seeking the right experience. Combined with those seeking a candidate who can best handle Obama, that gave Romney a forbidding lead among over half of those who showed up to cast ballots, the survey showed.

Romney, who has used his business background to cast himself as the candidate best equipped to create jobs and eliminate federal waste, bested Santorum by more than 20 percentage points among voters riveted on the economy and the federal deficit as top issues. People with those concerns accounted for over 8 in 10 voters, making Romney's strong edge with this group impossible for Santorum to overcome.

Voters from families earning at least $100,000 a year and college graduates also tilted strongly toward Romney. That proved decisive, since those earning less than that amount and those without degrees split about evenly between him and Santorum.

Santorum, outspoken on the campaign trail about the importance of faith, had a 20 percentage point margin over Romney among voters saying that sharing religious beliefs with a candidate mattered greatly. Such voters, though, accounted for shy of 1 in 4 voters, a slightly smaller share than average among states whose voters have been surveyed so far.

Around two-thirds of the votes of those seeking a real conservative and a contender with strong character were backing Santorum. But such voters comprised less than half the overall vote.

"I don't know if he (Romney) is willing to deal with the hard issues or if he would back down from them," said Don Gramer, a Santorum voter who works for the Catholic diocese in Rockford, Ill.

Though Santorum won comfortably among those considering themselves very conservative, Romney did strongly with somewhat conservative voters and moderates.
 
Santorum, a devout Catholic, lost to Romney by 23 percentage points with Catholic voters, a problem he has encountered consistently this year. While the two men ran roughly evenly among Catholics who attend church weekly, Romney, who is a Mormon, had more than a 2-1 lead with Catholics who go to services less frequently than that.

Analysts have said that for Catholics, religious identity is a weaker factor in determining political views than it is for some other faiths.

Further showing how the makeup of Illinois voters worked against Santorum, he defeated Romney modestly among white born-again and evangelical voters, a group with whom he has generally prospered since the Super Tuesday primaries earlier this month.

But they only accounted for around 4 in 10 voters in Illinois, a bit lower than average in voting so far. Among the nearly 6 in 10 Illinois voters not in that group, Romney had a commanding 2-1 advantage.

Asked which candidate they would back if only Romney and Santorum were in the race, the difference in support between the two men narrowed a bit. That suggests that it might be somewhat to Santorum's advantage if former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul dropped out of the race, which neither has suggested they are about to do.

Even as the third month of the GOP nominating battle nears a close with no end imminent, only around 3 in 10 Illinois voters said they want the race to end as fast as possible, even if their own candidate loses. Some Republicans have expressed worries that the length of the campaign has hurt the party's chances of defeating Obama because of the intense, repeated criticism the GOP contenders have fired at each other.

The survey of 1,621 Illinois voters was conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks by Edison Research. Interviews were conducted as voters left their polling places Tuesday at 35 randomly selected sites.

The survey has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Contact: Alan Fram and Jennifer Agiesta  
Source: Associated Press via OneNewsNow

News Links for March 16th

    

Most Americans oppose forced contraceptive coverage

Catholic layman, business owner files suit against HHS mandate

Planned Parenthood closings motivating president

Abstinence ed's positive effects

Suit: TX Planned Parenthood guilty of $6M fraud

What Roe has wrought: 'after-birth' abortion

HHS mandate: USCCB decries unequal treatment of Amish, Catholics

Catholic woman would rather risk life than follow HHS mandate

Great Lakes State cleaning up abortuaries

Finally - justice for pro-lifers

Born-Alive Infant Protection Bill Makes Headway

Wrongful Birth Lawsuit Wrong

Five more TX abortionists scheduled for hearings on abortion abuses

WA's abortion coverage bill advances

Daily Telegraph: Sex-Selection Abortions May Be Widespread in the U.K.

Abortions reportedly done at Spanish Catholic hospitals

Abortion cover-ups getting 'urgent' attention

Morning-after pill leads to increased abortions in Spain

Women's support for Obama drops in wake of HHS mandate

   
 
A recent poll shows that President Barack Obama's approval ratings dropped 12 percentage points among women voters, despite claims that a federal contraception mandate would help his bid for re-election.

"It's definitely something that young women are concerned about," said Kristan Hawkins, executive director of Students for Life of America.

Hawkins told CNA on March 13 that beyond just contraception or abortion, the mandate touches on the issue of religious freedom, which is clear to any woman in the U.S. "whether she's religious or not."

"It goes too far," she said, adding that women are beginning to ask fundamental questions about what the government would be able to regulate next if this mandate were to succeed.

In recent weeks, political analysts have suggested that Obama's re-election campaign will receive a significant boost in women's votes due to its support for a controversial federal contraception mandate.

But a New York Times/CBS News poll shows that Obama's approval rating among women has plummeted at three times the rate as men within the last few weeks.

The poll, conducted March 7-11, revealed that the president's approval rating among Americans has fallen from 50 percent last month to an all-time low of 41 percent.

While Obama's approval rating dipped just four percentage points among men, it dropped by 12 percentage points among women.

The decrease in women's support comes amid debate over a Jan. 20 mandate issued by the Obama administration under the new health care law. Introduced by the Department of Health and Human Services, the mandate will soon require employers to offer health care plans that include full coverage of contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, even if doing so violates their consciences.

Faced with a storm of protest from those who argued that the mandate violated First Amendment guarantees of religious freedom, President Obama promised an "accommodation" for religious freedom on Feb. 10.

Under the "accommodation," which was never incorporated into the original mandate, religious employers would not directly buy the controversial coverage but would instead purchase health care plans from insurance companies that would be required to provide it free of charge.

Critics of the promised "accommodation" note that under such an arrangement, insurance companies would likely raise employers' premiums in order to account for the "free" coverage, effectively passing the cost of the coverage back to the employers who object to it.

The U.S. bishops and numerous other groups have called for legislation to either overturn the mandate or implement an effective religious exemption.

Majorities of both men and women in the New York Times / CBS News poll also voiced support for religious and moral exemptions to the mandate.

Those polled believe by a 57 percent to 36 percent margin that religiously-affiliated employers should able to "opt out" of covering the full cost of birth control and related drugs if they have object to doing so. 

Fifty-one percent say they support an exemption for all employers who have religious or moral objections to the mandate.

The poll findings come as the Obama administration launched increased efforts within the last week to bolster support among women voters by appealing to the healthcare law. On March 12, more than 1 million mailings were sent to women nationwide in separate versions for mothers, older women and young women, reported the New York Times. 

Hawkins said that her organization is "comprised of mostly young women" who see the religious freedom concerns being raised by the mandate and do not accept the administration's claims that it is looking out for women's health.

She pointed out the irony in the fact that she, as the employer of a pro-life organization that seeks to end abortion, would be required under the mandate to offer an insurance plan that covers abortion-causing drugs.

"There's no freedom at that point," she said.

Hawkins said she has "pro-choice" friends as well who oppose the mandate for forcing people to violate their consciences. They realize that the mandate is "not about contraception" and "not about women's health," she said.

She also decried the efforts of those who have been "using women's health" to promote the mandate, stressing "they're not doing it for me."

Hawkins encouraged women to take an active role in the political battle by contacting their Congressmen and making their voices heard.

When people are talking about the upcoming elections, they should be talking about this issue, she said, adding that men and men should work together to show the Obama administration that "this is not the will of the American people."

Contact: Michelle Bauman
Source: Catholic News Agency

Irish government's rejection of UN abortion pressures

    

The Irish Government's decision to reject recommendations made by a number of UN member states for Ireland to legislate for abortion "recognises the reality that Ireland is the safest country in the world for women to give birth" the Pro Life Campaign (PLC) has said.

Last October the Irish government appeared before the UN Human Rights Council as part of the Universal Periodic Review process and rejected calls made by six countries for Ireland to legislate for abortion. The countries were Holland, Germany, Denmark, Slovenia, Norway and Spain.

A Government report designed as a response to a series of other recommendations made last year as part of the UN's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) was presented in Geneva this morning and confirms Ireland's decision to reject calls for abortion.

Responding to the adoption of the Universal Periodic Review report, PLC spokesperson Dr Ruth Cullen welcomed the Government's stance.

Dr Cullen said: "Calls for abortion legislation fly in the face of the United Nation's own recent research showing that Ireland, without abortion, is a world leader in terms of safety for women in pregnancy. Maternal safety in Ireland, it should be noted, is better than in the six countries which last year sought to put pressure on Ireland to introduce abortion. The latest UN study on maternal mortality, published in 2010, shows that out of 172 countries for which estimates are given, Ireland remains a world leader in safety for pregnant women.

Source: Pro Life Campaign

Another Shoe Drops Forcing Americans to pay for Abortion Coverage

    

This week while the House of Representatives was out of session, the Obama Administration confirmed its insidious plan for public funding for abortion coverage in Obamacare (PL 111-148) when it issued rules for Obamacare exchanges, complete with an abortion surcharge and a secrecy clause. 

"The mass deception of the Obama 2010 Executive Order has finally been exposed," said Congressman Chris Smith (NJ-04), Co-chair of the Congressional Pro-life Caucus.  "The Executive Order implemented the same accounting gimmick, abortion surcharge and secrecy clause that was in the original text of the bill.
 
"We knew it at the time, and the final exchange rule confirms once again that the President was suggesting one thing while doing precisely the opposite," said Smith.
 
This week's Obama abortion funding rule confirms that publically funded insurance plans WILL include abortion on demand.  Using an accounting gimmick, the premium payers will pay the President's abortion surcharge of at least one dollar per month.  This separate charge will go directly into an abortion fund. 

"Requiring the segregation of funds into allocation accounts -- a mere bookkeeping exercise is a cheap political trick designed to circumvent longstanding prohibitions on taxpayer funding of abortion," said Smith. "This is an unprecedented break with longstanding federal policy on funding for abortion." 

The rule also contains a secrecy clause specifying that the abortion surcharge cannot be itemized in marketing materials, and may "only" be disclosed "as a part of the summary of benefits and coverage explanation, at the time of enrollment."
 
"This secrecy clause requires insurance companies to bury the abortion surcharge in the summary of benefits so Americans shopping for an insurance plan on the exchange won't know about the abortion surcharge until they sign up for coverage -- and even then they could easily miss the fine print," said Smith. "Undoubtedly many enrollees will be shocked when they get a bill for the Obama abortion surcharge. Once enrolled, even pro-life Americans will be forced to pay for other people's abortions.
 
"There is NO abortion surcharge and there is NO secrecy clause in the Hyde amendment or in legislation I authored in 1983 (the Smith amendment) to prohibit abortion funding in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program," said Smith.  "Both of these longstanding policies explicitly prohibit coverage for abortion in the federal programs they cover, but President Obama refused to apply the same policy to Obamacare.
 
"That's why the House has passed THREE bills to overturn this attack on longstanding policies," Smith said. The three bills are as follows:

•On January 19, 2011, the House passed H.R. 2, to repeal Obamacare by a bipartisan vote of 245-189. The President threatened a veto and the Senate defeated a similar provision by a partisan vote of 47-53.
 
•On May 4, 2011, the House passed Smith's bill, H.R. 3, the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" by a bipartisan vote of 251-175. The President threatened a veto and the Senate has taken no action.
 
•On October 13, 2011, the House passed H.R. 358, the "Protect Life Act" by a bipartisan vote of 251-172. The President threatened a veto and the Senate has taken no action.
 
"Recognizing the gravity of the accounting gimmicks, abortion surcharge and secrecy clause, 15 states have already passed laws to prohibit elective abortion coverage on their exchange," said Smith.  The 15 states are: Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia.
 
"Abortion isn't health care," said Smith. "We live in an age of ultrasound imaging -- the ultimate window to the womb. We are in the midst of a fetal health care revolution, an explosion of benign innovative interventions designed to diagnose, treat and cure disease or illness any unborn child may be suffering. Obamacare should do them no harm. Tragically, it does the worst harm of all. It kills children and makes others complicit in abortion."

Contact: Jeff Sagnip
Source: chrissmith.house.gov

Obama Administration Defunds Texas Medicaid Over Planned Parenthood

   

Just how committed is the federal government to Planned Parenthood? Enough to put more than 100,000 low-income Texas women at risk.
 
The Lone Star State has completely defunded Planned Parenthood and other providers of elective abortions. Congress, meanwhile is looking into allegations that Planned Parenthood affiliates nationwide have committed Medicaid fraud. Late last week, the federal Department of Health and Human Services announced it will withhold Medicaid dollars from Texas unless it allows Planned Parenthood to have some of the money.
 
That's the money the Texas Women's Health Program relies on to provide low-income women with breast cancer screenings and other preventive services.
 
"Our Legislature decided in 2011 that we were not going to fund abortions or abortion affiliates of Planned Parenthood, and this administration basically doesn't care," Gov. Rick Perry said, adding that the administration is violating the 10th Amendment.
 
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott may take it to court.
 
"Greg has clearly said that if they continue to go after the State of Texas that he will sue to defend our constitutional right to administer this program," Perry said.

Contact: Steve Jordahl
Source: CitizenLink

Taking on executive branch re: abstinence ed.

    
     Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

While the Obama administration continues to push its agenda for safe sex and its support of Planned Parenthood, Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) has introduced the Abstinence Education Reallocation Act to the Senate.

The Senate version of HR 2874 mirrors a measure introduced by Rep. Randy Hultgren (R) of Illinois last year. Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association says it would reestablish an effective approach to the Sexual Risk Avoidance program.

 "Basically, it does a couple of things: The first is it clarifies what is meant by 'abstinence education' by really defining it as sexual risk avoidance education, and it very clearly communicates what an authentic abstinence program teaches," she explains.

Meanwhile, Huber reports that a congressional sign-on letter is being circulated in the House by Reps. Bill Flores (R-Texas) and Dan Boren (D-Oklahoma), "asking that this legislation actually become the working language for abstinence education funding in the budget that will be debated here very soon."

 In his 2013 budget, President Obama proposes that money available to states for abstinence education be redirected toward comprehensive sex education, which Huber describes as a "breathtaking overreach of executive power"

Contact: Bob Kellogg
Source: OneNewsNow

Oregon breaks its assisted suicide record

     
 
The state of Oregon set another record last year for physician-assisted suicides, and critics continue to decry the practice and the annual report.
 
Seventy-one people died by means of assisted suicide in 2011, the Oregon Public Health Division reported March 6. A total of 114 people received prescriptions for lethal drug doses during the year. Those figures surpassed the previous highs in the state: 65 deaths and 97 prescriptions, both in 2010.

The report came as efforts in two other states move in opposite directions on the issue. Assisted-suicide advocates in Massachusetts are seeking its legalization, while opponents in Georgia are advancing legislation to outlaw it. Washington is the only state other than Oregon to legalize the practice.

Oregon has recorded 596 assisted-suicide deaths since its Death With Dignity Act took effect in late 1997. That law permits terminally ill citizens of Oregon to take their own lives by using lethal drug doses prescribed by doctors.

Assisted suicide is monstrous, and the report is a mockery, said pro-life, bioethics specialists in response.

"While others are courageously providing the best of compassionate care for dying patients, a few doctors in Oregon are contributing to a grotesquery," said C. Ben Mitchell, professor of moral philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn. "How many years will the number of deaths rise before the Oregonians call for a halt to this barbarism?

"Medicine is a healing ministry, not a killing machine. When patients feel that suicide is their best option, doctors have failed," said Mitchell, a biomedical and life issues consultant for the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. "When doctors write the prescription for life-ending drugs, they admit their failure and become complicit in the deaths of those patients."

Wesley Smith, a leading foe of assisted suicide, said the annual report is a "joke."

"One of the great propaganda coups of the assisted suicide movement was making people believe" the annual reports are "meaningful or informative," Smith wrote on his Secondhand Smoke blog. As examples, he said:

-- "They are based almost solely on self reporting by death doctors, who are about as likely to tell the state that they broke the law as they are to tell the [Internal Revenue Service] they cheated on their taxes;"

-- The state "has no authority or budget to investigate abuses or violations -- even if a doctor did self confess. All they can do is refer to the physician's licensing board.

-- "The documentation is destroyed after the report is published so there is no independent way to check."

Massachusetts voters are expected to vote in November on an initiative to legalize assisted suicide.

The Georgia House of Representatives passed in a 124-45 vote March 7 legislation designed to prohibit assisted suicide. The Senate has yet to vote on the proposal.

The latest Oregon report again reflected concerns raised in the past by critics about inadequate care of those planning to take their own lives.

For instance, only one of the 71 who died by means of assisted suicide last year was referred to a psychiatrist or psychologist for formal evaluation. Also, prescribing doctors were present for the deaths of only six of those who took their own lives.

The Oregon report again showed people who took advantage of assisted suicide had three concerns far more than others -- 90 percent were concerned about being unable "to engage in activities making life enjoyable," 89 percent about "losing autonomy" and 75 percent about a "loss of dignity."

Twenty-five of the 114 people who obtained prescriptions in 2011 died without taking the drugs. The state did not have information on whether 25 others who received prescriptions had ingested the drugs. Seven patients who obtained prescriptions in previous years died from taking lethal doses in 2011.

Contact: Tom Strode
Source: Baptist Press

News Links for March 9th

    

President Obama Elevates Providing Abortion Inducing Drugs and Sterilization Above Religious Freedom and the First Amendment

National Right to Work Expert Joins Ave Maria Law Faculty

Premeditated Murder of Newborn Babies Justified as Morally Equivalent to Abortion

Victory in Court for Personhood Colorado; Petition Set to Move Forward

Texas Defunds Planned Parenthood Completely

'Great' free-speech victory for pro-lifers

Georgia House Passes Assisted-Suicide Ban

GA bill would restrict abortion, eliminate pain

PP possibly losing more tax dollars

Another pro-lifer wrongfully arrested

Young Women to Walk 21-Day, 250 Mile Trek Calling America 'Back to Life'

Maryland Police to Get Training About Pro-lifers' Rights, Says Agreement

Pro-Life 'Justice Ride' Begins State-Wide Florida Tour March 12

Emergency call from abortuary

Underground abortion doctor charged in Spain

Netherlands considers expansion of assisted suicide

School-Based “Health Clinics”

     

District 116 in Round Lake, Illinois is embroiled in a controversy over a proposal to put a "school-based health center" (formerly called school-based health clinics) in Round Lake High School.

School-based health centers are a creation of the Left. The beliefs that propel this movement are the same beliefs that drive the push for comprehensive sex ed. Liberals in the education and health care fields try to put innocuous, non-controversial aspects of school-based health clinics front and center, hoping that they can distract gullible taxpayers from their real agenda, which is to facilitate adolescent sexuality, to sever sexuality from moral considerations, to undermine the ties between children and their parents, and to render sexual activity immune from all consequences.
 
Here are ten issues to consider when debating the merits of installing school-based health centers in more public schools:

 1. Those who support school-based health centers believe that it is the role of government to provide everything to citizens that they see as good, which is why the United States is drowning in debt and spawning generations of citizens who lack personal fiscal discipline and a sense of responsibility for their own lives. We are becoming lazy, self-indulgent consumers who believe we're entitled to everything we want, but believe we have no responsibility to pay for it. This is not an indictment of truly needy people. This is a comment about liberals who control public schools and about those who have an entitlement mentality toward government, like the Georgetown University law student who believes that other people have an ethical obligation to pay for birth control for female students enrolled at one of the most prestigious and expensive law schools in the country.
 
 2. Taxpayers do foot the bill for school-based health centers. I was amazed at the statements made by pro-health center consultant Brenda Bannor who spoke at a District 116 school board meeting.

Bannor said that no school funds and "no tax dollars are used to operate the school-based health center…It will be run by the Lake County Health Deptartment. The school provides only the space and there's actually a federal grant that will be coming out that's specifically for building school-based health centers."

What, pray tell, does Bannor think federal grants are other than tax dollars?

Bannor goes on to say that Round Lake High School would use the Lake County Health Department to administer the health center because it is a "federally qualified health center" and therefore "they are able to get enhanced reimbursements through Medicaid." She stated that "there will be billing done, so the health center will be able to recoup dollars through billing." And she stated that the district will not be "asking the federal government to constantly fund the health center." How can Bannor say that money will be recouped by billing Medicaid and in the same sentence say that the government will not be constantly funding the health center?  Again, where does Bannor think funding for Medicaid comes from other than tax dollars?

Initially I thought Bannor didn't understand funding issues, but after reading her bio on the Millenia Consulting site, I realized that she couldn't possibly be as ignorant of funding issues as her statements to the district suggested. Therefore, I can't help but wonder if she was deliberately trying to mislead Round Lake community members.

 3. School-based health center advocates emphasize the parental consent form as a way to assuage the concerns of parents. What they don't fully explain is that the form is usually a general consent form, giving students permission to use the center.

These forms often fail to provide a detailed explanation of what parents are agreeing to. For example, parents might not realize that they are agreeing to allow their child to be provided with birth control or abortion referrals or be counseled in affirmative ways about same-sex attraction.

Many parents do not realize that the health center will not inform them when their child has used the center and cannot tell them if their child has received any mental health treatment or services related to sexual activity. Some on the Left will argue that teens can access mental health services and birth control through other organizations that must also conceal this information from parents. The difference, however, is that in those cases, public schools are not participating in the process.

 4. Liberal educators, who view themselves as "agents of change," believe that it is both the right and responsibility of public schools to solve all of society's ills. The scope of what liberal educators view as the role of public education is remarkable in its breadth. Liberal teachers believe it is their job to teach the "whole child," which is why we see public schools and publicly funded school-based health centers promoting liberal beliefs about homosexuality and gender confusion to other people's children. 

Of the school-based health centers that provide reproductive health services, 63% offer "sexual orientation counseling" on-site. Another 22% provide referrals for "sexual orientation counseling." Eighty percent provide on-site pregnancy testing. Seventy percent provide on-site birth control counseling. Is it really the task of public schools to make available these services during the school day? And is it really the public's responsibility to pay for these services to be provided to other people's children?

We need to think deeply about what the purpose of public education is and what it should be. Should the purpose of public education be to solve all teen problems? Is it to solve all societal ills? Just because a problem like teen pregnancy exists does not mean that it is the task of public schools to try to solve it, particularly when the solutions liberal educators propose are controversial and expensive. There are many societal problems that stand outside the purview of public education to solve. School-based health centers illegitimately expand the role of public schools.

Some parents, usually liberal, argue that they want their children to have access to reproductive services. But, the fact that some parents want their children to access reproductive services doesn't mean it's the role of public schools to provide them or for taxpayers to fund them.

 5.Promoters of school-based health centers believe that teens have an absolute, unfettered right to sexual autonomy and privacy in matters related to sexuality. They believe that the sexual liberty of minors should supersede parental rights.

 6.School based health centers provide mental health services that address homosexuality and gender confusion from a liberal perspective only, which means they provide counseling that affirms homosexual acts and gender confusion as normative, healthy, and moral. We must remember that these non-factual beliefs are being promoted with public money.

 7.School-based health centers are promoted as means to provide essential health care to "undocumented," students. But what kinds of services are taxpayers morally obligated to subsidize for those who are here illegally? An argument can be made that decent, compassionate people are morally obligated to pay for emergency care and illnesses, but are we obligated to pay for nutrition education, gender counseling, and contraceptives for anyone let alone people who are in the country illegally. The children of undocumented aliens are not responsible for being in this country illegally, but that doesn't make Americans responsible for paying for their birth control counseling or pills.

 8.The more money the government takes to "solve problems," which almost always results in costly, bureaucratic nightmares, the less money individuals have to give to organizations and institutions that offer better ways of solving problems, organizations like churches and parachurch organizations.

 9.When society continually uses the minority of irresponsible parents as justification for allowing the government to do more and more, as school-based health center proponents do, we actually rob responsible parents of the liberty to do their jobs. In addition, we encourage government dependence.

 10.When we remove all obstacles to and consequences for unmarried adolescent sexuality, we get more of it.
 Society has eliminated emotional and psychological consequences by eliminating social taboos about non-marital sex. We have been taught that guilt, shame, and fear are inherently bad when in reality appropriate guilt, shame, and fear serve important social functions.
 
We try to eliminate the physical consequences of sex by providing birth control, abortion, and free medicine.
 
And we try to eliminate all financial consequences by providing housing, medical care, and food stamps to unmarried mothers.
 
Some suggestions and questions for the District 116 School Board:

 •The school board should be required to provide a comprehensive summary of the pros and cons of school-based health centers to all district taxpayers after which they should ask for feedback.

 •This comprehensive summary should include the actual costs to taxpayers, including monies that will come from local, state, and federal coffers, including federal grants.

 •The feasibility study already conducted by District 116 states that it included discussions with "stakeholders." Anyone who pays taxes in District 116 is a stakeholder. Actually, since much of the funding is apparently coming from the federal government, the stakeholders are really every taxpayer in the nation. Were any community opponents of school-based health centers included in the discussions?

 •The feasibility study has a list of "Health Needs of District 116 Students" that includes "reproductive health services," "comprehensive sex ed," and "nutrition education." Some questions for the board should include the following: Exactly how many people were interviewed for the feasibility study? How were they chosen? Exactly how many people identified each item as a need? Were the categories of needs provided to the interviewees or were the questions open-ended? Isn't nutrition education addressed in health classes in middle school and high school?

 •Do community members understand in detail the differences between abstinence education and comprehensive sex ed? Were interviewees provided with research from organizations like the Heritage Foundation on the efficacy of abstinence education?
 
Some argue that teens are going to have sex regardless of what we want, so we should do everything we can to protect them from the worst consequences. But all teens are not going to have sex. Actually some teens decline sex when there are too many obstacles in place. In the good old days when parents were semi-feared authority figures, condoms were hard to come by, and society maintained taboos against non-marital sex, we didn't have astonishing rates of sexually transmitted infections; we didn't have between 800,000 to 900,000 teens getting pregnant annually; and we didn't have 230,000 thousand teen abortions each year.
 
Here are some other sexually related activities that some teens are going to engage in:

 •Some teens will have sex in public places. Should schools provide rooms for them to have sex in, in order to prevent these teens from getting caught by police?

 •Some teens will engage in autoerotic asphyxiation. Should schools provide ways to ensure that they don't accidentally die while engaging in this dangerous sexual practice?

 •Some teens will engage in sadomasochistic sexual practices. Should schools teach them about safe words?

 •And some teens will engage in oral-anal sexual practices. Should schools provide dental dams to them?
 
School-based health centers offer hypothetical scenarios that they believe show why these centers are necessary, like what if a teen is too afraid to talk to her parents and as a result has unprotected sex and contracts an infection or becomes pregnant. But conservatives can offer alternative hypotheticals. What if a teen who knows how strongly her parents feel about premarital sex and, therefore, fears talking to them, decides not to have sex because she can't easily access birth control?
 
Schools already have health centers in which students can be treated for chronic illnesses like diabetes, and emergencies and illnesses that occur during the school day. The central and most controversial purposes of these school-based health centers are to facilitate adolescent sexual activity and to offer counseling services that affirme homosexuality and gender confusion.
 
Public schools, even academically strong public schools, are playing an increasingly troubling role inAmerica's decline. Liberal educators seek to promote their moral and political beliefs and values with our money through our schools. In the process, they help to undermine children's conceptual understanding of family, to weaken family unity and parental rights, and to foster dependence on government.
 
If that's not bad enough, liberals seek to create a hedonist's utopia: guilt-free, cost-free, marriage-free sex. A healthy society — which is a society with a moral foundation — must not facilitate such a corrupt world. Facilitating something wrong is never right.
 
The problem with many conservatives is that they refuse to look at the big picture. They fail to realize that societal change rarely happens through dramatic single events. Rather, it happens through the slow, incremental accretion of smaller events that we ignore or dismiss, like the establishment of this school-based health center.

Contact: Laurie Higgins
Source: Illinois Family Institute

House Panel Discusses Circumvention of Parental-Notification Laws

    

A group of experts testified this morning before the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution about the necessity of a bill that would make it illegal for anyone to get around state parental-notification laws by taking a girl to another state for an abortion.
 
The Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (H.R. 2299) has 153 cosponsors in the House, and would levy fines and prison sentences on anyone taking a minor to another state in order to avoid telling her parents or getting their permission to have an abortion. It also would require abortionists to make every effort to give a girl's parents at least 24 hours notice, unless the teen's life is at stake.
 
"Regardless of whether the girl choose to continue or terminate her pregnancy, parental-involvement laws have proven desirable because they afford greater protection for the many girls who are pregnant due to sexual assault," said Teresa Collett, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis who's testified before Congress several times. "By insuring that parents know of the pregnancy, it becomes much more likely that they will intervene to insure the protection of their daughters from future assaults."
 
Collett pointed out that 74 percent of sexually active girls younger than 14report having nonconsensual sex — and in California, men 25 and older father more children by teenage girls than do boys under 18. But several abortionists nationwide have been held liable for failing to report suspected cases of statutory rape.
 
Michael J. New, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, said all the studies done on parental involvement laws show they're worth enacting. Not only do they reduce abortion, they also provide strong incentives for girls not to engage in unprotected sex.
 
And an interstate abortion-notification law, he said, is needed for several reasons.
 
"Every study that tracks out-of-state abortions finds that after a parental-involvement law goes into effect, the number of girls obtaining abortions in adjacent states without parental-involvement laws will increase by a statistically significant margin," he said.
 
"It is safe to say that parents have more invested in the well-being of their minor daughters than a boyfriend, a friend or a relative. They also would likely have the best knowledge of their daughter's medical history. There have been reported instances where minor girls obtained abortions without their parents' knowledge and died because they did not realize they were allergic to the anesthesia."

Contact: Karla Dial
Source: CitizenLink

'Frightening' ethics behind 'after-birth abortion'

     

While another two ethicists are suggesting that it's alright to terminate the lives of babies for a period after they've been born, if it's done for the same basic reasons an unborn baby would have been aborted, a pro-lifer points out that their stance is nothing new.

Rita Marker of the Patients Rights Council says Alberto Giubilin of Italy and Francesca Minerva of Australia likely have ethics, but "the question is what kind of ethics? And they're frightening."

Both Giubilin and Minerva agree that an unborn baby and a newborn do not have the moral status of actual persons and are consequently morally irrelevant, so what they call "after-birth abortion" should be permissible in all cases where abortion is, including in cases where the newborn is perfectly healthy.

However, Marker explains that this is nothing new. Another Australian philosopher and ethicist, Peter Singer, co-authored a book promoting it several years ago.

 "If you have a child who has any type of problem that might cause difficulties for the family -- and these are such things that they described as ... hemophilia or some relatively benign conditions, not even life-threatening conditions under most circumstances -- they said that parents should be able to end that child's life for a certain length of time after birth because it would be a problem for the family," Marker details.

 Giubilin and Minerva are not as well-known as Peter Singer, who has a chaired professorship at Princeton University and is teaching his views on the subject to American students. The Patients Rights Council executive director urges people not to be gullible.

Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow

Birth-control mandate setting a precedent

     

A nationwide legal alliance that defends conservative values says the Obama administration's birth-control mandate is one of the greatest threats to Christians' rights in U.S. history.

Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney Kevin Theriot says this government mandate is about religious freedom in America, not about a woman's right to contraceptives. And he views this as one of the greatest threats to Christian liberty in the nation's history "because it's … setting the precedent for the government to be able to impose its will on a religious organization when doing that completely violates the longstanding convictions of that religious group."

So his firm is already defending Louisiana College and Geneva College in their lawsuits against the Obama administration (see earlier story), and they expect to file more lawsuits in the near future.

 "The Alliance Defense Fund is representing religious organizations who have a sincerely held religious belief not to provide abortifacients or other types of care that would violate their religious convictions, and we do that free of charge," Theriot explains.

 Regarding the mandate, the attorney adds, "This is a calculated and intentional attempt to eradicate constitutional protections" that should terrify every freedom-loving American.

Contact: Bob Kellogg
Source: OneNewsNow

Abortion -- taking doctors out of the picture

     

According to one pro-lifer, midwives and nurses performing abortions is the latest trend spreading throughout the country, as fewer and fewer doctors are interested in the practice.

Late last month, Sen. Christine Kehoe (D) introduced SB 1501 to the California Senate -- a bill that would allow physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and nurse midwives to do chemical and aspiration abortions. But the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) tells OneNewsNow this idea is not confined to California. Legal Counsel Jennifer Popick reports that the notion is popping up in other states at the behest of abortion activists.

 "Those who promote abortion sort of have this two-tiered approach. They say abortion's something between and woman and her doctor and we want to keep it safe, rare, and legal. Quite frankly, they're working very hard to take the doctors out of the picture," Popick contends. "It's sort of just rhetoric masking that they want abortion on demand, and it's absolutely something that doesn't protect women."

She points out that because abortion is invasive, the absence of a doctor could spell trouble if and when complications arise. However, fewer doctors are interested in that field.

 "Not many physicians are going into it anymore, into the practice of abortion. It's got a stigma attached to it," the pro-lifer explains. "For various reasons, nobody's going into it anymore as a practice field, and so there [are] fewer and fewer doctors across the country performing abortions."

 Popick also notes "telemed" abortions, where a woman speaks briefly via webcam with a doctor who is possibly located hundreds of miles away. RU-486 is dispensed with the push of a button, and the woman goes home to have the abortion by herself, which takes the doctor out of most of the picture.

Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow