Planned Parenthood 2012-13 Annual Report Released; revenue reaches all-time high for nation’s largest abortion provider

Number of abortions drop slightly, but signs point to effort to further expand abortion empire

Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood clinics, which performed a record 333,964 abortions in 2011, reported 327,166 abortions in 2012, a 2% drop, according to PPFA's annual report. At the same time its revenues were the largest ever, exceeding $1.2 billion.

Considering that the overall national abortion trend has been down for a number of years, it was perhaps inevitable that Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion chain, would eventually see some slight drop off.

In light of recent reports from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control that seemed to show yearly declines in the range of 3% to 5%, Planned Parenthood's one year decline of 2% is very modest.

Is this part of a trend or a one-time blip? Unfortunately, everything you read in the report hints that this decline may be short-lived.

Planned Parenthood is rich, powerful, and politically well-connected. Every page of the 2012-2013 annual report signals that it will continue to aggressively promote its abortion agenda both here and abroad.

From the numbers in the report, there's no clear explanation for the drop. It certainly wasn't as if Planned Parenthood suddenly began steering patients toward its other (already very limited) services for pregnant women.

Just 19,506 women received prenatal services at Planned Parenthood in 2012 (this would obviously include multiple services to individual patients rather than 19,506 individual patients). This is down from 28,674 the year before, a drop of nearly 32%! If any service appears to be being phased out, it would seem to be prenatal services to moms rather than abortion.

Adoption referrals, sent to outside agencies, are an even more infrequent occurrence at Planned Parenthood clinics. Just 2,197 Planned Parenthood patients were referred for adoptions in 2012, just slightly fewer than the 2,300 reported in 2011. Even with fewer abortions, it puts things in perspective to see that abortions still outnumbered adoption referrals at Planned Parenthood by a nearly 149 to one ratio!

Smaller PPFA clinics close, Mega-clinics open

Alexis McGill Johnson,chair, PPFA board

In the opening paragraph of the message from the group's chair that begins the report, Alexis McGill Johnson, and president, Cecile Richards, the team hails Planned Parenthood as "the nation's leading reproductive health care provider and advocate," specifying that they are "the most effective advocate in the country for policies that protect access to safe and legal abortion…"

Rather than long paragraphs on programs, the group uses several pages of its annual report to focus on "10 History-Making Moments" in which Planned Parenthood played some part.

Pro-lifers have rightly celebrated the closing of a number of abortion clinics around the country in the past few years, but have reason to be particularly concerned about Planned Parenthood's History Making Moment #3 – the opening of "more than 30 health centers" around the country in the last two years.

True, Planned Parenthood has closed clinics; they say they currently have "more than 700 health centers" around the country – just ten years ago, it was 866. But this can be very misleading.

Closures frequently involved the shuttering of small clinics that did not offer abortions and thus could not generate much revenue. The new clinics going up are often large, modern behemoths, professionally designed and decorated mega-clinics set up to process large volumes of clients and perform large numbers of abortions, and many of these are the new clinics to which Planned Parenthood must be referring. (See NRL's factsheet, Planned Parenthood: MegaClinics & Mergers)

Revenues again up

The annual report shows that these closing clinics have done little to hurt Planned Parenthood's bottom line. Revenues at the abortion giant reached another record this year, reaching $1.2 billion ($1,210,400,000, to be more precise) for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2013. Close to half (45%) of that came from the pockets of federal, state, and local taxpayers, with $540.6 million in revenue from "Government Health Services Grants and Reimbursements."

No one knows exactly how much income Planned Parenthood generates from abortion, but it surely considerably more than the 3% they tout in many of their public pronouncements. Ignore for a moment that many Planned Parenthood clinics perform abortions well into the second trimester, when they are considerably more expensive, and that Planned Parenthood has long been in the forefront of promoting more costly chemical abortions using the abortifacient RU-486. Even if we treat all of Planned Parenthood's 2012 abortions as standard, first trimester abortions, the revenues from 327,166 would easily top $147 million, close to 20% of the figure Planned Parenthood reported for all expenses associated with "medical services" for the most recent fiscal year.

The advent of ObamaCare promises even more revenues and probably more abortions. "Health Care Expansion" was #1 among Planned Parenthood's "History Making Moments" for 2012, as Planned Parenthood celebrated that the "Affordable Care Act goes into effect, with the women's preventative benefit that Planned Parenthood led the fight to include."

We won't go into detail here about all the ways that Planned Parenthood stands to benefit under the new health insurance system (if you wish to see more, look here www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/11/obamacare-key-to-planned-parenthood-expansion). But if the law steers more women toward Planned Parenthood clinics, it will obviously mean more customers, more abortions, more money, and more political influence

PPFA abortions increase over time while overall numbers drop

Long-time trend observers will note that abortions at Planned Parenthood have nearly tripled in the last two decades. This took place at the same time figures for all abortions from all abortion performers in the U.S. showed a drop of more than 25%, from 1.6 million in 1990 to about 1.2 million in 2008, with new data suggesting that the current figure may be closer to 1.1 million. (See www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/12/cdc-report-shows-decline-in-abortions-for-2010-abortion-rates-and-ratios-both-down/)

Despite this slight drop, there is nothing in these newest figures threatens to dislodge Planned Parenthood as the nation's largest abortion provider and promoter. PPFA accounts for at least 27%-29% of the intentional deaths of unborn babies in the United States.

Beyond the services statistics, there are strong restatements and reaffirmations of Planned Parenthood's pro-abortion policy and plans. (See also "Five Takeaways from PPFA's Annual Report," http://nrlc.cc/1h3T4JM.)

Number 6 of the "10 History-Making Moments" in which Planned Parenthood played some part–"Wendy Stood"–features a page high photo of Wendy Davis. Davis is the Texas state Senator who Planned Parenthood says filibustered a "draconian abortion law" and lit a fire in that state and led the public to rise up against "unprecedented attacks on women's health at the state level, from North Dakota to North Carolina." (Davis is now running for governor.)

The laws in these cases are not specified, though it should be noted that the law that Davis famously filibustered featured "draconian" provisions such as protecting 20 week old pain-capable unborn children from abortion and requiring that abortion clinics meet some minimally basic safety standards so that women in Texas were not treated like those in abortionist Kermit Gosnell's house of horrors.

PPFA looks ahead

Planned Parenthood spent millions on the 2012 presidential election and was heavily involved in Virginia governor's campaign. Its political arm stirred up phantoms about attacks on women's health care, on cancer screenings (remember that many Planned Parenthood clinics offer abortion, but not mammograms), in the process misleading many voters.

It is clear that the wealthy abortion giant isn't going to just walk away. But let this small drop in abortions be a reminder that the efforts of pro-lifers, educating their communities, voting, passing laws, reaching out to abortion vulnerable women, and praying can make a difference. A woman who finds out there are better, life-affirming alternatives to abortion may decide not to be Planned Parenthood's latest customer or conscript.

And when a child lives and a mother thrives, that's a real "history making moment."

To read the report for yourself, go here.

Contact: Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D. NRL Director of Education & Research

Belgian Senate Okays Child Euthanasia

Belgium took a big step closer to child euthanasia, with a huge vote in favor in the Senate. From the ABC story:

Senators on Thursday voted 50-17 in favor of the proposed law. If adopted, it will decriminalize euthanasia for children, if they are in great pain, suffer from a terminal condition and are expected to die soon. The children would have to submit a written request to be euthanized, and be aware of what their request meant. No age limit would be set, but the children would have "to possess the capacity of discernment."

Good grief.

Contact: Wesley J. Smith, National Review

More Obamacare Rationing Evidence: Exchange Plans Limit Access Not Only to Top Hospitals and Doctors, But Also to Drugs

As mainstream media outlets are reporting, and as NRL News Today has repeatedly documented, tens of thousands who had individual health insurance policies that were terminated against their will, despite numerous and repeated assurances from President Obama that if you liked your insurance plan you could keep it, are finding that the replacement policies available in the state and federal "exchanges" typically severely restrict the doctors and health care facilities in their plan networks. More evidence is emerging of the extent of these limits, and now there is new information about wide limits on access to lifesaving drugs.

In an article by Ariana Eunjung Cha, the December 9 , 2013, Washington Post reports,

"A new analysis of health plans sold in the federal exchange — which covers 36 states — and 14 state exchanges found that the benefits tend to be skimpier than in most other private insurance in the United States, with drug benefits a particular weak spot. The analysis, by Avalere Health, a health-care consulting company, was based on a sample of 600 insurance plans.

. . .

"As the details of the benefits offered by the new health-care plans become clear, patients with cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune diseases also are raising concerns, said Marc Boutin, executive vice president of the National Health Council, a coalition of advocacy groups for the chronically ill.

. . .

"[P]eople who expected the new plans to provide pharmaceutical coverage comparable with that of employer-sponsored plans have been disappointed. . . . [I]nsurers selling policies on the exchanges have pared their drug benefits significantly more, according to health advocates, patients and industry analysts. The plans are curbing their lists of covered drugs and limiting quantities, requiring prior authorizations and insisting on 'fail first' or 'step therapy' protocols that compel doctors to prescribe a certain drug first before moving on to another — even if it's not the physician's and patient's drug of choice."

Besides limits on access to drugs, there are more news accounts on limits on access to hospitals and doctors.

In a December 8, 2013, piece in the highly-regarded British paper Financial Times entitled, "New Affordable Care US health plans will exclude top hospitals," reporter Stephanie Kirchgaessner writes:

"Amid a drive by insurers to limit costs, the majority of insurance plans being sold on the new healthcare exchanges in New York, Texas, and California, for example, will not offer patients' access to Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan or MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, two top cancer centres, or Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, one of the top research and teaching hospitals in the country…. It could become another source of political controversy for the Obama administration next year, when the plans take effect. Frustrated consumers could then begin to realise what is not always evident when buying a product as complicated as healthcare insurance: that their new plans do not cover many facilities or doctors 'in network.' In other words, the facilities and doctors are not among the list of approved providers in a certain plan."

And a December 5, 2013, Bloomberg article, "Doc Shock' On Deck in Obamacare Wars," Megan McArdle notes

"Come January, when some number of Americans have bought insurance on the new health exchanges and are starting to use the services, you can expect another controversy to arise when many of them find out just how few doctors and hospitals they have access to…. It's true that narrowing your networks gives you more leverage to negotiate prices with doctors — if you're willing to exclude most of the doctors in the state, you're in a better bargaining position than you are if doctors know that you're selling customers the ability to see any doctor they want. But the doctors who are in really high demand can simply refuse to take the lower price. And unfortunately, there does seem to be some correlation between how much we spend on health care and how good the results of treatment are."

While some are blaming the insurers, the true culprit is the Obamacare requirement that exchange bureaucrats exclude insurers who offer policies deemed to permit Americans to engage in "excessive or unjustified" health care spending. As the Post article reports, "Insurers . . . acknowledge that to keep premiums low, they must restrict the use of some costly drugs if there are alternatives."

Under the Federal health law, state insurance commissioners are to recommend to their state exchanges the exclusion of "particular health insurance issuers … based on a pattern or practice of excessive or unjustified premium increases." Not only must the exchanges exclude policies from being offered in an exchange when government authorities do not agree with their premiums, but the exchanges must even exclude insurers whose plans outside the exchange offer consumers the ability to reduce the danger of treatment denial by paying what those government authorities consider an "excessive or unjustified" amount. (See documentation at http://www.nrlc.org/medethics/healthcarerationing .)

This evidently is creating a "chilling effect," deterring insurers who hope to be able to compete within the exchanges from offering adequately funded plans that do not drastically limit access to care.

When the government limits what can be charged for health insurance, it restricts what people are allowed to pay for medical treatment. While everyone would prefer to pay less–or nothing–for health care (or anything else), government price controls prevent access to lifesaving medical treatment that costs more to supply than the prices set by the government.

As Kirchgaessner explains,

"Mr. Priselac at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles says … the hospitals that are being excluded are leaders in innovation, which saves billions of dollars for the healthcare system in the long run. 'There is confusion between price and efficiency,' he says. 'The major teaching and research hospitals are more expensive not because they are inefficient but because of what they do.'"

While Obamacare continues to roll out, it is important to continue to educate friends and neighbors about the dangers the law governing them poses in restricting what Americans can spend to save their own lives and the lives of their families.

Note: the abortion-related provisions dealing with the state exchanges are described here: http://www.nrlc.org/AHC/index.html

Contact: Jennifer Popik, JD, Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics

CDC reports decline in U.S. abortions

Abortions are on the decline in the United States, though numbers remain shockingly high in New York City, according to a CDC report released over Thanksgiving. 

The study used voluntary data from 44 states, New York City and the District of Columbia.

From 2001 to 2010, the number of reported legal abortions in the United States fell by 9 percent. The number of teenagers getting abortions dropped most significantly, probably due in part to the overall drop in teenage pregnancies. For that 10-year period, the abortion rate among teenagers fell about 30 percent. The six states not included in the study had not provided data for each of the 10 years.

The number of abortions in New York City alone remains incredibly high: 83,750 in 2010. That amounts to 694 abortions for every 1,000 live births. No other jurisdiction approaches that high an abortion ratio. Other city health reports have shown that nearly 40 percent of pregnancies in New York end in abortion.

Also from the CDC's New York numbers: 82 percent of abortions in the city were performed on African American or Hispanic women. 

The CDC authors noted that the numbers, because they are voluntary, significantly underreport abortions compared to the more fully researched Guttmacher Institute studies. For 2008, the CDC reported 825,564 abortions while Guttmacher reported 1.21 million abortions.

The CDC released another report Dec. 6 compiled from its own data as well as outside sources like Guttmacher that shows, since 1990, the abortion rate has fallen 32 percent.

Contact: Emily Belz/WORLD News Service, Source: Baptist Press

Emily Belz is a writer for WORLD Magazine. This article is used by permission by Baptist Press from WORLD News Service.

Palatine High School Teacher tells Student Abortion not acceptable topic

Abigail Cornejo is a Sophomore at Palatine High School who merely wanted to write a paper on the controversial topic of abortion. But her English teacher had something else in mind and told Conejo she couldn't write on the topic — and if she did, she would have to write from the pro-abortion perspective.

"My English class is doing a controversial issue research paper," Abigail told LifeNews. "My English teacher, Mr. David Valentino originally told the class we may not do abortion, euthanasia, or legalization or marijuana. I asked why we couldn't do infanticide, abortion and he replied with, 'I've read too many papers on it. I don't care anymore.'"

Cornejo is now writing about stem cell research.

Source: Illinois Review

Funding for adult stem cell research increasing, report finds

A recent report has found that research on ethically-sourced adult stem cells is rising in popularity, leaving advocates pointing to its advantages – in both ethics and outcome – over embryonic stem-cell research.

The views of the scientific community are shifting with the realization that "the best hope for rapid medical advances lies with morally unproblematic alternatives," said Chuck Donovan, president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, to the Washington Times for a Dec. 3 article.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute is the research branch of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List. Recent reports by the institute have shown significant shifts in research funding from embryonic stem cells to more successful and ethically acceptable adult stem cells.

"Money also talks," said one of the two reports detailing the changes in funding, adding that "what the money is saying is that those viable alternatives exist and it is with them that the real therapeutic promise of regenerative medicine lies."

Stem cell research has been the source of much controversy, both over its potential for regenerative and potentially life-saving therapies, and over the ethical questions in how the cells are obtained.

Stem cells taken from human embryos require the destruction of new human life. In the past, researchers have advocated their use because they have the potential to grow into nearly any type of tissue, making them a kind of "master cell."

However, in clinical trials and treatments, it has been difficult to coax the cells to turn into a specific type of tissue. In addition, therapies relying on embryonic stem cells have shown a tendency to turn into tumors and cancers following treatment.

In contrast, adult stem cells come from a variety of tissues found in newborns and adults, including the placenta, umbilical cord, bone marrow and other bodily tissues. Their extraction does not require the destruction of a human life.

While they naturally grow into a more narrow set of tissues than embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells have also been induced to form other kinds of tissues outside of their natural range. In some cases, the stem cells can also be harvested from the patient himself, nearly eliminating the chance of the body's rejection of the treatment.

To date, embryonic stem cells have failed to yield any successful treatments, while adult stem cells have been used to treat more than 100 diseases and conditions.

Amid concerns over the ethics of stem cell sourcing, President George W. Bush in 2001 restricted federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to cell lines that already existed.  

Supporters of embryonic stem cell research in California reacted with a voter initiative pledging $3 billion in funding over 10 years only to research on embryonic stem cells, to be distributed through grants by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

By 2012, however, funding at the institute had shifted, with a majority of grants – totaling $50 million – going towards research on non-embryonic stem cell projects and only $19 million in funding awarded to embryonic research.

A similar shift in funding has taken place at Maryland's Stem Cell Research Commission, according to a Lozier Institute report from October. In 2007, the organization funded 11 embryonic stem cell research projects and four non-embryonic ones. Now, it is supporting one embryonic stem cell project and 28 non-embryonic ones.

Grants in Maryland "can also serve as an important bellwether for the direction stem cell research is taking," the report added, "given that the state is home to one of the nation's most prominent sites for stem cell research, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine."

Dr. David Prentice, senior fellow for the Family Research Council and a researcher in cell biology, stated that researchers were told for years "that embryonic stem cells were the 'only' stem cells for treatment as well as lab research."

"But even in states previously devoted exclusively to embryonic stem cell and cloning research, the majority of grants now are going to ethical, successful adult stem cell studies," he commented in a statement.

"This latest news simply emphasizes what advocates of ethical stem cell research have said for years - adult stem cells are the true gold standard for stem cells. They are certainly golden for patients; more than 60,000 people a year around the world are currently treated with adult stem cells."

Adult stem calls research has shown "tremendous progress," while embryonic stem cell research "relies on the destruction of young human life" and has had limited success, Prentice observed.

This offers a clear choice to researchers and investors who are looking for results, he said. "Adult stem cells save lives."

Source: CNA/EWTN News

Posthumous Paul Walker movie lauded for pro-life message

One of late actor Paul Walker's final movies – a thriller set to debut next week – is drawing praise for its life and family-affirming message.

Walker, best known for his role in the Fast and Furious franchise, died in a fiery car crash on Nov. 30. The actor was 40 years old.

Before his death, Walker had completed filming for a film entitled Hours. The suspenseful thriller was filmed in March of this year in New Orleans and is still set to be released on Dec. 13, despite Walker's death. He stars with Genesis Rodriguez in the film.

Hours takes place in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina. Walter plays Nolan, a man who faces the death of his wife and premature birth of his daughter as the storm hits.

Nolan must fight to keep his daughter alive. She must be kept on a respirator for 48 hours in an incubator at a hospital that has been flooded and left without power.

In a Dec. 7 article for Live Action News, writer Lauren Enriquez said that Hours offers a strong pro-life message.

"Walker's character defies all odds and gives completely of himself to the point of self-sacrifice so that his daughter can have a chance at staying alive and becoming healthy," she explained, praising the "incredibly life affirming role."

Peter Safran, the movie's executive producer, told the Hollywood Reporter that Walker "was incredibly proud of this project."

He recalled being at a press conference two weeks before the crash. "I remember sitting with (Walker) and how excited he was for people to see this movie."

"Hours embodies a message that was so important to him, which is that you have to do everything you can to keep friends and family safe," Safran explained.

Source: CNA Daily News

The HHS mandate: What's at stake?

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a pair of cases that challenge the HHS mandate requiring most private companies' insurance to provide coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients. The Obama administration asked the high court to review the issue after a federal appeals court in Colorado found in favor of Hobby Lobby, an Oklahoma-based crafts franchise. The court will combine the Hobby Lobby case with lesser-known case involving Conestoga, a Pennsylvania company that lost earlier bids for relief from the mandate.

These are among the questions people are asking about the issue:

Q: What is this contraception mandate?

A: As part of the Affordable Care Act, the universal health insurance reform passed in 2010 (often referred to as "Obamacare"), all group health plans must now provide -- at no cost to the recipient -- certain "preventive services." The list of services mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services includes sterilization, contraceptives and abortifacient drugs.

Q: If this mandate is from 2010, why are we talking about it in 2013?

A: On Jan. 20, 2012, the Obama administration announced that it would not expand the exemption for this mandate to include religious schools, colleges, hospitals and charitable service organizations. Instead, the administration merely extended the deadline for religious groups who do not already fall within the existing narrow exemption so that they will have one more year to comply or drop health care insurance coverage for their employees altogether and incur a hefty fine.

Q: Is there a religious exemption from the mandate? If so, who qualifies for the exemption?

A: According to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the SBC's GuideStone Financial Resources in one of the suits, there is a "religious employer" exemption from the mandate but it is extremely narrow and will, in practice, cover very few religious employers. The exemption may cover certain churches and religious orders that inculcate religious values "as [their] purpose" and which primarily employ and serve those who share their faith.

Many religious organizations -- including hospitals, charitable service organizations and schools -- cannot meet this definition. They will be forced to choose between covering drugs and services contrary to their religious beliefs or cease to offer health plans to their employees and incur substantial fines. "Not even Jesus' ministry would qualify for this exemption," they note, "because He fed, healed, served and taught non-Christians."

Q: Doesn't the mandate only apply to religious organizations that receive federal funding?

A: No. The mandate applies to religious employers even if they receive no federal funding.

Q: When did the government begin requiring employer insurance programs to pay for contraceptives?

A: According to the Becket Fund, the trend toward state-mandated contraceptive coverage in employee health insurance plans began in the mid-1990s and was accelerated by the decision of Congress in 1998 to guarantee contraceptive coverage to employees of the federal government through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). After FEHBP -- the largest employer-insurance benefits program in the country -- set this precedent, the private sector followed suit, and state legislatures began to make such coverage mandatory.

Q: Why is the federal government dictating that contraceptives should be covered by insurance?

A: In 2000, the EEOC issued an opinion stating that the refusal to cover contraceptives in an employee prescription health plan constituted gender discrimination in violation of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). That law was adopted by Congress in 1978 in response to a Supreme Court decision holding that an employer's selective refusal to cover pregnancy-related disability was not sex discrimination within the meaning of Title VII, the primary federal law addressing employment discrimination.

As the Beckett Fund notes, "Although this opinion is not binding on federal courts, it is influential, since the EEOC is the government body charged with enforcing Title VII. This opinion led to many lawsuits against non-religious employers who refused to cover prescription contraceptives." The federal district courts have split over the issue of whether the PDA requires employers to provide contraception. The only federal court of appeals to address the issue held that the PDA did not include a contraceptive mandate.

Q: But what about the First Amendment protections? Isn't such a requirement inherently unconstitutional?

A: In Employment Division v. Smith, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment's free exercise clause "does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a 'valid and neutral law of general applicability,'" simply because "the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes)." According to the Becket Fund this means that the fact that an act infringes on the religious beliefs or regulates the religiously motivated policies of a religious institution does not necessarily make the law unconstitutional.

Q: Doesn't this seem to be primarily a Catholic issue?

A: No. Although the Catholic Church has been the most vocal opponent of the mandate, many Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders also oppose the mandate. In fact, several evangelical leaders have called on evangelicals to stand with Catholics in civil disobedience to this law. Additionally, 300 academics and religious leaders signed a statement by the Beckett Fund explaining why the mandate is "unacceptable."

Q: I don't oppose contraceptives, so why should I care about this issue?

A: There are two reasons that all Christians, regardless of their view on contraceptives, should be concerned about this mandate.

The first reason is because it forces Christians to pay for abortion-inducing drugs. The policy currently requires coverage of Ulipristal ("ella"), which is chemically similar to the abortion drug RU-486 (mifepristone) and has the same effect (to prevent embryos from being implanted or, if already implanted, to die from lack of nutrition). Additionally, RU-486 also is being tested for possible use as an "emergency contraceptive." If the FDA approves it for that purpose, it will automatically be included under the mandate.

The second reason is that it restricts religious liberty by forcing religious institutions to pay for contraceptives and abortifacients even if the employer has a religious or moral objection to such practices.

Q: While it may be a pro-life concern, why is it a religious liberty issue for me since I support the use of contraception?

A: If the mandate is allowed to stand it will set a precedent that the government can not only force citizens to violate their most deeply held beliefs but that we can be sanctioned for refusing to do so. As John Leo has noted, today it is contraceptives and abortifacients, but "down the road it will be about suicide pills, genetic engineering, abortion and mandatory abortion training, transgender operations, and a whole new series of morally problematic procedures about to come over the horizon."

As Leo has recounted, a Catholic-run California hospital was sued because it refused to perform breast-enlargement surgery on a transgendered patient. The state court ruled the hospital had violated the state's anti-discrimination laws. (Caving under litigation, the hospital paid $200,000 to the transgendered man.)

Q: Didn't the Obama administration offer a compromise?

A: In response to the concerns of religious organizations, Obama offered a "compromise" in which he proposed that insurance companies, instead of religious institutions, be required to cover procedures and products that they find objectionable at no cost in their insurance policies. In other words, the insurer would be required to provide the services "free of charge" and pay for them out of their own pocket.

As economist Steve Landsburg has noted, the proposed compromise does not really change the fact that the religious employers are still being forced to pay for the contraceptives-abortifacients: "[A]ll economists ... understand that transferring the responsibility from employers to insurers amounts to transferring the cost from [insurers] to insurance buyers, which is to say that it's not a change in policy. One of the first and most important lessons we teach our students is well summarized by a slogan: 'The economic burden of a tax is independent of the legal burden.' Ditto for a mandated insurance purchase. It is not the law, but the underlying price-sensitivities of buyers and sellers that determines where the burden ultimately falls. Your president knows this. He's banking that you don't."

By Joe Carter who is director of communications for the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

What the new CDC abortion numbers tell us about abortion’s impact on minorities

 

The abortion of a child of any ethnicity or color is a tragedy that impacts a whole nation. But one thing the latest numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) tell us is that abortion continues to exact a particularly devastating toll on minority communities.

As mentioned in a post from earlier this week, the CDC annual "Abortion Surveillance" for 2010 found a 3.1% drop in abortions from 2009, on top of a 4.6% drop from the previous year. (See "CDC Report Shows Decline in Abortions for 2010; abortion rates and ratios both down")

Because the substantial decline in abortion across the board in the last twenty years (upwards of 400,000 fewer a year by the Guttmacher Institute's more exact count), clearly raw numbers of abortions have gone down for virtually all demographic groups, minorities included. This is obviously good news and an indication that the drop that began in 1990 continues to the present day.

However what these latest numbers confirm is that declines seem to have been greater among whites than among minorities. Put another way demographic data from the latest CDC report clearly show that abortion continues to have a hugely disparate impact on minorities.

There is an important caveat: There are significant limitations in the CDC's numbers. Several states, including the most populous, California, do not report their numbers to the agency. And even among those that do, the data is not necessarily gathered and sorted in the same way.

Not every state asks about race or ethnicity, so precision is difficult. But in the 28 reporting areas [1] that identified both race and ethnicity, 35.7% of abortions were performed on what the CDC refers to as "black" women, 21% were performed on Hispanics, and 6.5% were done on non-Hispanic women identified as being of "other" race or ethnicity (Table 12 in the CDC's Abortion Surveillance for 2010).

This means that 63.2% of abortions in those reporting areas were done on minorities, or nearly two thirds.

Tallying up figures from the 2010 Census, minorities constitute 44.1% of the population: Hispanics (16%), Black (13%), Asian (5%), Native American (0.9%), Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (0.2%), "Other" (6%), or some mixed race category (3%) [2]

If 44.1% of the population is responsible for 63.2% of the abortions, unborn children in those communities are clearly under assault. It is obvious that abortion mills located in or near minority communities are doing high volumes of business.

It is possible, of course, that statistics from "missing states" could tilt the balance back towards the middle, but unlikely. While states not reporting both race and ethnicity to the CDC include predominantly white northeastern states like Vermont and New Hampshire, and Midwestern states such as Nebraska or North Dakota, other large states with significant minority populations such California, Florida, and Illinois were also not included.

If anything is likely, it is that the percentage of abortions to minorities is higher.

The drop in abortions across the board for all racial and ethnic groups shows that pro-life legislation, education, and outreach have had an impact, but these statistics are perhaps an indication that there is more work to be done in these particular minority communities.

Planned Parenthood and its allies in the abortion industry market themselves to these communities, doing Latino outreach, bringing in hip-hop celebrity spokespersons, offering themselves as allies to the poor, yet, not surprisingly, the presence of an abortion clinic has never done anything to "revitalize" these hurting communities.

In 2004, women, many of them minorities, told researchers from Guttmacher that abortion was not something they wanted, but was sometimes what they thought was their only option. For their sake, for the sake of their children, we need to make sure that minority women know of and have access to life-affirming and life-preserving alternatives.

Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight…

[1] The CDC uses reports from both state health departments and those from health departments in Washington, DC and New York City.

[2] www.census.gov/2010census/news/releases/operations/cb11-cn125.html

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

Unborn baby destroys mother’s cancer, “he saved his mummy’s life”

Nicola Weller and son, Brandon

In 2010 Nicola Weller went into the hospital to remove a tumor from her womb. As she told the British newspaper, The Daily Mail recently, "I was absolutely devastated. My world just fell apart. My daughter was four years old, and I was being told that I was facing cancer. It was terrifying to think that I may leave her without a mum."

But as a nurse at Dorset County Hospital in Southwest England was performing a scan to locate the tumor, she abruptly left the room. When she returned with three radiologists, they informed her the tumor had disappeared!

"They then broke the news to Mrs. Weller that she was seven weeks pregnant," Lucy Laing reported. "The pregnancy hormones had caused her tumour to disappear."

Mrs. Weller told Laing, "'I was stunned to find out I was expecting a baby – but even more stunned to hear that this baby had caused my tumour to disappear. It was like he had been sent from above to save my life."

Doctors closely monitored her pregnancy but no further treatment was required and her son Brandon, now three, was born September 2010, at 7Ib 8oz. "none the worse for his experience."

Mrs. Weller had not intended to become pregnant, "So getting pregnant was a miracle in itself," she told Laing "[B]ut to find that my unborn baby had caused this tumour to disappear was a further miracle. All that was left on the scan was a few blobs of blood floating around. There was no other sign of it. My baby ended up saving my life. Without him I may not have been here today."

According to Laing, Mrs. Weller was referred to Bridport Community Hospital in Dorset, England for a scan after discovering swelling under her rib in September 2009. She was told her there was a tumour growing around her womb and she needed an operation to remove it.

It was then that the miraculous sequence began.

Mrs. Weller told Laing, "It was a relief when he was born, and it was lovely to meet and hold my wonderful son who had saved me. He was delivered with his right arm pointing forwards so we nicknamed him Superman."

She concluded

"'I hadn't planned another baby, but I'm so glad I did. The tumour was in the early stages of cancer, so it was life-threatening. I've never heard of a baby destroying a tumour before – but I'm very glad that Brandon did.

"'One day when he's old enough to understand I'll tell him how he saved his mummy's life. Alisha understands what has happened and she's very grateful to him too. She dotes on her little brother.'"

Contact: Dave Andrusko, NRL News

Inspiring true story of a woman who survived an abortion

Melissa Ohden

Melissa Ohden is a walking miracle.

Ohden's mother, an unwed teenager at the time of her pregnancy, went through a saline-infused abortion, a procedure that soaked Melissa's body in saline solution for five days. Her mother was expected to give birth to a dead baby.

But a nurse heard Melissa crying on that day in 1977 at St. Luke's Medical Center in Sioux City, Iowa.

Since publicizing her story, Ohden has become an outspoken advocate for women and children to choose life.

Melissa shows us what our missing brothers and sisters would be like, if we would just give them a chance.

As Melissa said, "It's not just a word. It's not a statistic. It's not just a choice…just a right — It's a human being."

Watch and share her powerful testimony.

Editor's note. This appeared at liveactionnews.org.

By Caleb Parke, NRL News

As Americans Lose Both Their Insurance and Their Doctors, The Rationing Built into Obamacare is Being More Widely Acknowledged

As the mainstream media is now commonly reporting, and as NRL News Today has repeatedly documented, individuals whose health insurance policies are being terminated against their will are finding that the replacement policies available in the state and federal "exchanges" typically severely restrict the doctors and health care facilities in their plan networks, omitting many specialists and highly rated health care centers. The replacement policies often force people to leave their current physicians for others from a small pool of doctors accepting bottom-of-the-barrel reimbursements. It's as though your minivan was suddenly repossessed and replaced with a subcompact.

Also being reported in the mainstream media are acknowledgments of rationing elements in Obamacare that the National Right to Life Committee has been warning of since its original proposal in 2009 and 2010. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, a prior Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is a physician who has been a presidential candidate as well as an Obamacare supporter.  Last summer, he was widely quoted as saying the Independent Payment Advisory Board set up by Obamacare is "essentially a health care rationing board."

Now Time magazine political analyst Mark Halperin has chimed in.

During a November 26, 2013, interview on CNBC, he noted, "The Independent Payment Advisory Board, which is a big part of the Affordable Care Act that is central to cost control, is something that hasn't been debated in a real way . . . we need to have that debate in this country. . . . Those decisions that are made by that board are going to lead to what I think could be described perfectly reasonably as rationing."

On a Newsmax TV program the previous day, Halperin said that rationing is "built into the plan. It's not like a guess or like a judgment. That's going to be part of how costs are controlled."

It is said that as Benjamin Franklin was departing from the Constitutional Convention, he was accosted by a woman who asked whether under the newly drafted Constitution ours was to be a monarchy or a republic. "A republic, Madam," Franklin is reported to have said, "–if you can keep it."

Americans can keep our freedom – including our freedom to spend our own money, if we choose, to save the lives of our family members – only if we inform ourselves about the laws enacted in our name, and seek action from our legislators based on that information. Candidly, how many have carefully read National Right to Life's factsheet, "Routes to Rationing"? You need to study it well enough to be able to recount the four key ways by which the federal government, under Obamacare, is limiting what we are allowed to spend, out of our own private funds, to get life-saving health care?

By Burke Balch, JD, Director, Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics

Of 112 Obamacare Plans for Congress and Staff, 103 are Pro-Abortion

Washington, D.C.—With a December 9th deadline for Members of Congress and congressional staff to sign up for Obamacare health insurance, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith released new evidence of President Obama violating pro-life laws and providing taxpayer funding for insurance plans that include abortion on demand.

"In the run-up to passage of Obamacare, Americans were repeatedly told and reassured by President Obama himself, including in a speech to a joint session of Congress in October 2009, that 'under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion.' Obama even issued the infamous Executive Order that claimed, 'the Act maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to newly created health insurance exchanges,'" said Smith.

"Once again we see those promises ring hollow—what the President said simply isn't true today. In the most recent example, 103 of the 112 insurance plans that Members of Congress and congressional staff are being directed to INCLUDE ELECTIVE ABORTION coverage. Only nine plans offered exclude elective abortion," Smith continued. (Click here to view flyer regarding the nine plans.)

Congressional employees have until just Dec. 9, 2013 to sign up for an employer-sponsored insurance plan on the Obamacare exchange offered in the District of Columbia (DC Health Link). Doubtlessly many congressional staff will—knowingly or unknowingly—sign up for these abortion plans marking a distinct departure from the Smith Amendment, a longstanding law prohibiting abortion coverage in plans provided to federal employees.

The amendment offered by Chris Smith three decades ago to ban abortion funding in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Programs is still current law. Like the Hyde Amendment, the Smith Amendment prohibits the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) from funding or even engaging in administrative activities in connection with any plan that includes abortion. However, the Obama Administration is now violating the Smith amendment since OPM has begun to administer a system for Members of Congress and their staff to obtain taxpayer-subsidized insurance coverage that pays for the destruction of innocent unborn children.

"Only in response to public pressure did D.C. Health Link release a FAQ explaining how to decipher which plans exclude elective abortion coverage. To date, Secretary Sebelius has failed to provide any information about abortion coverage in plans sold in dozens of states on the Federally Facilitated Marketplace– even after promising to do so over a month ago," said Smith.

"This failure to disclose is a problem indicative of Obamacare plans nationwide and is why I have introduced the 'Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act' (H.R. 3279), a bill that requires information regarding either inclusion or exclusion of abortion coverage as well as the existence of an abortion surcharge to be 'prominently displayed.' To rid Obamacare of its massive expansion of abortion-on-demand facilitation and funding, I have also introduced the No Taxpayers Funding for Abortion Act, (H.R. 7)," Smith continued.

"Abortion isn't health care — it kills babies and harms women. We live in an age of ultrasound imaging — the ultimate window to the womb and the child who resides there. We are in the midst of a fetal health care revolution, an explosion of benign interventions designed to diagnose, treat and cure the youngest patients," said Smith.

"Once again it is clear that Obamacare's abortion mandate violates federal law and makes taxpayers complicit in the culture of death. This is not reform," said Smith.

Editor's note. The above was sent out today by the office of Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ)

Contact: Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), NRL News

Yes, It Is Rationing

It's four years overdue, but America is finally beginning to have the debate about Obamacare we were promised. Barack Obama had assured us – another in his long series of broken promises – that the meetings held to devise the plan would be televised on C-SPAN. Americans would have every opportunity to know what the law is, and how it would affect them.

That never happened. The law was put together behind closed doors. Nancy Pelosi later arrogantly told us "we have to pass the law so you can know what's in it."

Now we're finding out.

National Right to Life was a lone early voice exposing how the law would cause rationing of life-saving care. But Obamacare supporters have mocked the claim. Their standard line has been "the ACA is designed to expand coverage, not reduce it."

But that's only one part of the law. Central to this overhaul of our healthcare system is a harsh regime of rationing – denial of care. And it's finally being admitted.

Last summer, former Vermont governor, Democratic presidential candidate, physician and Obamacare supporter Howard Dean made headlines when he spilled the beans. The Independent Payment Advisory Board set up by Obamacare, Dean said, was "essentially a health care rationing board."

Further clarification about the role of this board, known as IPAB, came in a series of interviews and tweets last week by Time magazine Senior Political Analyst Mark Halperin. Coming from an avowed supporter of universal coverage, as Halperin is, the interviews were very instructive, containing insights every American should know.

Halperin first discussed rationing on a November 25th Newsmax TV program. "It's built into the plan. It's not like a guess or like a judgment. That's going to be part of how costs are controlled."

Later that day, Halperin clarified in a tweet that his comments were not about so-called "death panels," as the show's host had termed it, but about rationing. This is an important distinction for pro-lifers to understand so we (unlike Obama) are completely clear and honest about what the Affordable Care Act does when we discuss it with others.

"Death Panels" vs. broad government-generated rationing in the ACA

The British National Health Service (NHS) has appeals committees to review "individual funding requests." They meet to determine whether treatments in a specific case will or won't be paid for by the government health care system, NHS. These have sometimes been termed "death panels" because if a patient needs a treatment to save or extend his life and can't afford to pay for it himself, a verdict of "no" by the committee means the patient could die – hence, the term "death panel."

Obamcare's Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) will not operate this way. It won't review individual cases; in fact, the law is written to preclude this type of direct rationing. That's why some Obamacare supporters protest that the law actually bars IPAB from rationing.

But Obamacare actually gives IPAB far more power to ration than if it was acting as judge and jury to individual patients. Broadly speaking, IPAB is given sweeping powers to recommend to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) whether and how whole categories of treatments are to be reimbursed – and is required to use these powers to prevent overall health care spending from being allowed even to keep up with medical inflation. Thus, they can (in fact, it is their job to) limit reimbursement and ration care from thousands or millions of people at a time.

For example, IPAB might decide that a new, promising treatment for breast cancer is not "cost-effective," given the board's calculation of the number of lives it might save versus the cost to offer the treatment. HHS might then issue a "quality measure" binding on health care providers that does not authorize use of the treatment.

Effectively, HHS would have the power to drive most doctors out of business if they ignore its directives to ration. Women who might have been saved by the new treatment would die if the older, cheaper treatments don't cure them.

Halperin was open about the law's intention to ration in a follow-up interview on CNBC last Tuesday.

"Those decisions that are made by that board are going to lead to what I think could be described perfectly reasonably as rationing, " Halperin said. "Again, as I said, that's built into the system."

"The Independent Payment Advisory Board, which is a big part of the Affordable Care Act that is central to cost control, is something that hasn't been debated in a real way . . . we need to have that debate in this country."

Currently, if an insurance company, doctor or hospital denies you a treatment or payment for a treatment, you have several options. States have insurance commissions to which you have a right to appeal payment denials by insurance companies. You can go to another doctor or hospital to get care.

Under Obamacare, these avenues will be largely closed off to you and your loved ones. If the government says you can't get a treatment, your current ability to appeal to a government body will be curtailed. And Americans don't yet realize the law will prevent you from spending your own money to get treatments deemed in an Orwellian way "ineffective" by the unelected, largely unaccountable IPAB board.

Source: NRL News