Abortion takes miracles out of the equation

Every baby is a miracle. I’ve heard that saying many, many times, but I understand it a lot better now that I’m working in the pro-life movement.

Especially when I read stories about babies like Hannah.

While Hannah was still in the womb, doctors diagnosed her with Trisomy 18, a chromosomal abnormality that causes most babies to die at birth.

Doctors encouraged Hannah’s mother, Bernadette, to abort her. They said Bernadette’s seven other children would suffer while she was confined to a hospital bed with a high risk pregnancy, but she and her husband refused to kill Hannah in the womb.

Instead, they hoped and prayed. Hannah was born, not without problems, but she lived. Hannah spent a remarkable five years with her family before she died.

Her mother said, “Five beautiful years with her. I just want to tell mothers, ‘Don’t do this [abortion].’ I had to fight through it all. I wanted my baby alive and I wanted to carry her. We would have missed out on all of the beauty of life with my daughter.”

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Choosing “The Simone Perspective”

Simone Biles

American gymnast Simone Biles’ story is more than one of Olympic gold; it is one of perspective. So what follows below is not an argument, or an “I told you so” moment to the abortion community. It is simply one writer’s thoughts on perspective.

The life-affirming Pregnancy Help Community lives out one perspective every day. Let’s call it, “Potential,” or what we might now term, “The Simone Perspective.” Those who carry a pro-choice label, and those in the abortion lobby, carry another. For fairness’ sake, let’s call it “Realism.”

We know Biles is leaving Rio with four gold medals and a bronze, perhaps giving the world the best Olympic gymnastics performance of all-time.

The world also knows Biles’ story is an amazing one; it’s front-page news that her birthmother battled addiction issues, that Simone and her sister bounced through foster care for years, and that they were adopted by their maternal grandfather and grandmother, Ron and Nellie Biles.

We also understand that Ron and Nellie, through adoption, are in every sense of the word, Simone’s “real” mom and dad. Theirs is a story of faith, fortitude and grace—leading to Simone’s record-shattering accomplishments in Rio.

Here is where perspective comes in. Biles’ parents saw her and discarded the Realism of her circumstances, and now Simone Biles is an Olympic champion.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

What a repeal of the Hyde Amendment would mean

The Guttmacher Institute is the abortion industry’s think tank, formerly a “special research affiliate” of Planned Parenthood, whose analyses the media treats reverentially.

If you go to the Guttmacher Policy Review dated September 13, 2013, you’ll learn a primary reason that Hillary Clinton and the Democrat Party are determined to repeal the Hyde Amendment, an annually enacted law that prohibits federal Medicaid funding for abortion except in the cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.

In the Review, you’ll find the conclusion that if the Hyde Amendment were repealed, “The number of abortions among Medicaid-eligible women nationwide would be expected to increase by approximately 33,000 [annually].”

Guttmacher sniffs that this would represent “only a 2.5% increase in the number of abortions performed nationwide,” although to anyone who does not draw a paycheck from the Abortion Industry or who has a heart, that is a lot of additional dead babies.

In fact, the impact would be even worse. As NRLC’s Federal Legislation Director Douglas Johnson noted, “It should be kept in mind that the 33,000 projection applies only to Medicaid, but the actual effects of losing the Hyde Amendment would be broader, because some other federal health programs (e.g., Indian Health Service) track the Hyde Amendment policy as well, either by law or as a political matter.”

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“Worse Than Death” Meme Pushes Culture of Death

Assisted suicide is promoted in the USA with fear mongering about the terminally ill suffering with intractable pain for which nothing other than a lethal overdose will suffice.

In actual suicide facilitation, existential issues–such as fears about being a burden or loss of dignity–rather than untreatable pain are the reasons people cite for requesting assisted suicide.

These are important issues that need to be addressed. But, like pain, they are relievable and often respond to compassionate interventions.

The thing is, these very real difficulties also could apply to the non-terminally ill elderly and people with disabilities–threatening these populations with the assisted suicide temptation the more doctor-prescribed death is celebrated in the media and normalized in society.

And now, an article published in JAMA Internal Medicine–in the context of intensive care treatment decisions–creates a new “worse than death” medical category.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Imagining a Clinton Legacy

Hillary Clinton is a known quantity. As NRL News editor Dave Andrusko so succinctly summarized Clinton’s position, “Abortion for any reason or no reason, as late in pregnancy as desired, paid for by the public.” If she were elected president for four, maybe even eight years, what would be her legacy to this great country?

The short answer? A further entrenchment of abortion on demand and millions more unborn babies whose lives are ended because they are ‘inconvenient’ or someone deemed them not worthy of respect.

In the 1990s, when Hillary’s husband was president, their often quoted position was that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.”

No one in the pro-life community ever believed that cover story, but many did.

Her position became very clear, however, with the Health Security Act, also known as Hillary Care. This “health” plan, formulated by Hillary Clinton and pushed by her husband’s administration, was a dream come true for the abortion industry. It would have required that every health plan or policy sold provide a federally defined benefits package which covered abortion on request; that every working American and every employer must purchase the federal benefits package, including abortion; and that abortion facilities be accessible in every region of every state. In addition, the law would have repealed many state laws on abortion including parental consent, waiting periods, limits on third-trimester abortions, conscience clauses, etc.

In other words, Hillary’s health plan would have been all abortion all the time. The pro-life community worked extremely hard to make sure that Hillary’s plan never became law.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Terminally ill grandmother sees ultrasound in which she learns her grandchild is a girl

There are a gazillion Facebook videos but I’d wager few are as precious as this.

Taylor Masilotti and her mother Donna Callender
watching Taylor’s ultrasound.

Just three days before she died, Donna Callender lay in bed next to her daughter Taylor Masilotti as the doctor operates an ultrasound machine. The doctor tenderly asks, “Are you ready? You have a daughter.”

“No way,” Callender says, and, momentarily, “Oh, wow. Look at it move.” Before you know it the doctor is patiently pointing out to both women the baby girl’s features– hands, eyes, the umbilical cord, and the like.

Mother and grandmother exchange looks that you have to see to understand. In a story filed by the Daily Mail, we read

‘Wednesday afternoon was one of my forever favorite memories I got to share with my mom,’ Taylor wrote on Facebook.

‘I got to lay next to her, hold her hand and cry happy tears while we found out the gender of the baby.

‘I can’t thank the hospital enough for allowing this to happen. For allowing me to create my last memory with my mom! ’



Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Euthanasia: Disability Hate Crime, and the silence

People gather in front of the front gate of the Tsukui Yamayurien
facility for the disabled in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture,
on  July 26.  (Takeshi Iwashita)

The Australian News Weekly magazine published an excellent article by Paul Russell, the Executive Director of Hope Australia and Vice Chair of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition-International.

Russell, in his commentary, examines the reaction to the disability hate crime that occurred in a care facility in Sagamirihara, Japan where on July 26, 19 people with disabilities were brutally killed and another 26 people with disabilities were injured.

Russell is essentially commenting on the media response to the killing in his article that he titles: Euthanasia – Disability hate crime: then the rest is silence. He writes

The media characterised the attacks as “senseless” and “incomprehensible”. At one level, this attack on innocent defenceless people by a lone madman is, indeed, “incomprehensible”. But for my many friends in the disability community it is, perhaps, an extreme example of the kind of prejudice that they experience all too often; a chilling and visceral reminder of the subtle and not so subtle discrimination that is never far from them and that echoes through history.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Have embryonic stem cells hit the wall?

“Will Embryonic Stem Cells Ever Cure Anything?” is a skeptical headline which you would expect to read in a conservative journal like the National Review or the Weekly Standard. However, it is a bit surprising to find it in the MIT Technology Review, in a profile of Douglas Melton, a Harvard stem cell scientist.

… no field of biotechnology has promised more and delivered less in the way of treatments than embryonic stem cells. Only a handful of human studies has ever been carried out, without significant results. The cells, culled from IVF embryos, are capable of developing into any other tissue type in the body, and therefore promise an unlimited supply of replacement tissue. Sounds simple, but it hasn’t been.

Melton’s specialty is diabetes. Because this is a complex and widespread disease, governments and companies are willing to spend huge amounts of money to find a cure. They will continue to fund embryonic stem cell research – but whether it succeeds is still unknown.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

“Assigning human attributes to not-yet-human embryos” upsets pro-abortionists

The online magazine Slate has a column titled “The XX Factor: What Women Really Think.” Allison Benedikt pondered the meaning of it all in “Photoshopping a Fetus Onto Your Pregnant Stomach Isn’t Just Tacky, It’s Bad for Women.”

How so? Well, it’s all cumulative, Benedikt writes unhappily, this “treat[ing] fetuses like people—including them in our family photo shoots, tagging them on our Facebook walls, giving them their own Twitter accounts.”

The more there is of that “the harder it will be to deny that they are people,” the more difficult it will be to resist “legislators and activists arguing that ‘the unborn child’ inside a pregnant woman’s womb should have the same rights as the living among us.” Woe is me.

Pro-abortionists are not known for understatement (they ARE known for seeing conspiracies everywhere) so it is not surprising that Benedikt grows progressively more unglued as her essay proceeds. From a grudging live-and-let-live (so to speak) perspective in the beginning, by the end abortion advocates who are female are warned that to Photoshop sonograms on their pregnant stomachs is the equivalent of giving aid and comfort to the enemy (that would be us).

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

They would force you to pay for abortions

Well, it’s official:

The Democratic party – and its standard-bearer, Hillary Clinton – want to force you to pay for abortions.

They’ve long wanted this, of course. But in the just-completed Democratic National Convention, they went further. They passed a platform resolution that says:

“We will continue to oppose—and seek to overturn—federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman’s access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment.” [emphasis added].

The Hyde Amendment is the annual provision in federal Health and Human Services funding bills that bars any federal tax dollars from being used to pay for elective abortions.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Mike Pence ably defines his pro-life record, says he is “grateful to be standing with Donald Trump in his strong commitment to the right to life”

Mike Pence on Fox News Sunday

If you had a chance to watch “Fox News Sunday” yesterday, you know that moderator Chris Wallace grilled pro-life Indiana Gov. and Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence. Which is fine although it would be nice if pro-abortion Hillary Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine would get the same level of scrutiny on all the Sunday talk shows.

Our single-issue focus is on what Wallace calls “a lightening round — quick questions, quick answers.” The last exchange in particular. Here it is in its entirety:

WALLACE: Finally, you signed an abortion bill this year that bans a woman for getting an abortion because her fetus has genetic abnormalities. Now, I know that you would like to see Roe versus Wade reversed. But given the fact that it’s still the law of the land, why does the state have the authority to limit the reasons a woman has to end her pregnancy?

PENCE: Well, I’m pro-life, I don’t apologize for it. I’d like to see Roe versus Wade overturned and consigned to the ash heap of history.

We took a stand in the state of Indiana, that frankly many countries have taken, that abortions for the reason of race or sex are morally offensive, and we stand by that. But we also cherish those who have disabilities in the state of Indiana, and taking a step in the direction of protecting the unborn — who are facing physical challenges and disabilities, I think was the right thing to do.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Hologram ultrasounds and the future of crisis pregnancy work

A prototype hologram ultrasound display

The tech blog The Verge recently profiled the future of computer displays beyond the latest VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) headsets by looking at a prototype hologram display.

A virtual reality headset covers your eyes and projects a computer-generated world (or a specially filmed movie) around you that gives you the feeling that “you are there” and allows you to interact with it.

Augmented reality is different in that the display you wear in front of your eyes actually shows you the world around you, but overlays it with projected images or information that seem like they’re part of this world.

But holograms, as envisioned by the hologram display, would go a step further to create the representation of something three dimensional right in front of you. You’re probably asking yourself what this has to do with the cause for Life?

As you can see from the image above, The Verge illustrated a version of their story with a drawing depicting a 3D hologram ultrasound, and referred in their article to the possibility that the technology could be used to allow expectant mothers to “view an image of their developing baby.”

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Freeport Pregnancy Center Marks 25 Years of Life-Affirming Service

Few of the people working with Freeport Pregnancy Center in Illinois remember the days when their lone staff member met with pregnant women in two windowless rooms. Back then, pregnancy tests were done in a public restroom down the hall. The only material help available came in the form of maternity clothing—stored in a nearby church’s baptistry.

This year on Sunday, June 12, nearly 200 people easily fit into the center’s recently renovated offices to celebrate its 25 years of service. During the open house, visitors toured freshly painted rooms filled with new furniture and flooring, as well as the revamped store for the Earn While Your Learn program. The afternoon culminated in a prayer of dedication for the remodeled center.

Located near low-income housing developments, Freeport Pregnancy Center is within walking distance for women there. But Center Director Emily Giasson’s re-branding efforts aim to help the center appeal to other women as well. She explained, “My vision was that it’s even a place a professional could come and be comfortable: a special place to come and want to come back to.”

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Lawsuit Filed Against Gov. Rauner

The law firms of Alliance Defending Freedom and Chicago's Mauck & Baker attorney Noel Sterett have filed a lawsuit (The Pregnancy Care Center of Rockford v. Rauner) against Governor Rauner in Winnebago County, Illinois on behalf of Pregnancy Care Center in Rockford, Dr. Anthony Caruso who runs A Bella Baby OB/GYN, and Aid for Women pregnancy resource center.

This is in response to Governor Rauner signing Senate Bill 1564 which forces medical professionals and pregnancy resource centers to discuss the "benefits" of and refer for abortions.

ADF sent a letter to Rauner in May on behalf of numerous pro-life physicians, pregnancy care centers, and pregnancy care center network organizations advising him that the bill, SB 1564, would violate federal law and therefore place federal funding, including Medicaid reimbursements, in jeopardy. ADF also warned legislators about the problems with the bill last year. The lawsuit claims the new law, which is actually an amendment to the existing Illinois Healthcare Right of Conscience Act, violates state law and the state constitution.

“Pro-life health care professionals shouldn’t be forced to hand out lists describing how to contact abortionists, yet that’s what this law mandates that they do,” explained ADF Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot. “If this profane amendment to Illinois’ conscience protection law remains on the books, doctors and medical staff committed to saving all lives will be forced to promote the killing of some children, women will lose access to doctors who unconditionally value human life, and pregnancy resource centers that offer free help and hope to pregnant women will be forced to refer to abortionists. This is the kind of government coercion that the state constitution, the state Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the very law that was amended were all designed to prevent.”

The new law forces medical facilities and physicians who conscientiously object to involvement in abortions to adopt policies that provide women who ask for abortions with a list of providers “they reasonably believe may offer” them. Illinois law prohibits government from placing burdens on religious conscience without a compelling interest for doing so. Additionally, the Illinois Constitution protects “liberty of conscience,” saying that “no person shall be denied any civil or political right, privilege or capacity, on account of his religious opinions.” It also protects free speech, which includes the right not to be compelled by government to speak a message contrary to one’s own conscience.

More information is available at ADF's web site by clicking here.

What is the Unborn? A Case for Biological Humanity from Fertilization

Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason

Before you can even answer the question of whether or not abortion is moral, you must first decide what the unborn is. For as Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason observes, if the unborn is not human, then no justification for elective abortion is necessary. It would be no different from having a mole removed or a tooth pulled. But if the unborn is human, then no justification for elective abortion is adequate.

If it’s true that no one can tell when human life begins, then the benefit of the doubt should go to life. We should not be aborting the unborn because there’s a chance we could be aborting living human entities. If a hunter hears a rustling in the woods, does he shoot right away or does he make sure the rustling wasn’t caused by another human? Or if you’re driving down a road in the dark and you see the outline of something that may be a child or may simply be the shadow of a tree, do you drive into it or do you slow down? Or if you’re about to blow up a condemned building and you’re not sure if someone’s inside, do you blow it up anyway or send someone in to make sure?

However, it’s not true that no one can tell when human life begins.

The unborn from fertilization are alive because they exhibit the properties of living things. They grow through cellular reproduction and division, they metabolize food for energy, and they respond to stimuli. In fact, the only things the unborn need to survive are adequate nutrition, a proper environment, and an absence of fatal threats. That’s all any of us need. There is no point in human development at which the developing entity goes from non-life to living.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Singer Sia ‘Proud’ To Perform at Abortion Concert

Singer Sia

Singer Sia will openly champion abortion at a Chicago concert as part of a 30-plus city tour.

The singer tweeted the news to her millions of fans:

The event is sponsored by an “All Access” coalition committed to “defending our access to abortion and celebrate women’s empowerment.”

The coalition plans to unite celebrities to “share their stories about why access to abortion strengthens women, families and ultimately the country.”

Besides Cleveland, the coalition will host 30-plus similar concerts in locations including Atlanta, Chicago, Miami and Philadelphia.

Click here for a list of the coalition.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

UNC Study Shows Enormity of Abortion’s Impact on Public Health, Minorities

Public health statistics do not, as a rule, take account of the unborn lives lost to abortion when calculating mortality. A team of researchers from the University of North Carolina has challenged this omission and published a paper examining just how much the correction of this omission would change our perceptions of America’s most preventable health crises.

The consequences are enormous, across the board, but the impact is absolutely devastating on black and Hispanic communities. When one considers not only the lives, but the years lost, the loss is staggering.

The paper, “Induced Abortion, Mortality, and the Conduct of Science” was written by James Studnicki, Sharon J. Mackinnon, and John W. Fisher and was published in the June 2016 online edition of the Open Journal of Preventive Medicine.

It starts with a statement both bold and obvious: “There is no credible scientific opposition to the fact that a new genetically distinct human organism begins with fertilization and that, simply stated, human life begins at conception.” The authors then affirm that, barring natural fetal losses (e.g., miscarriage), “conception usually results in a live birth.”

Given that, the authors draw the logical conclusion that abortion results in a human death.

Despite this undeniable truth, these deaths are not counted in the nation’s mortality statistics. When added back in, some astounding conclusions are revealed.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Why “Safe, Legal and rare” is passé to Hillary Clinton

Pro-abortion Hillary Clinton

Granted, the pace may be glacial, but ever, ever so slowly the Mainstream Media is acknowledging that “this ain’t your grandmother’s Democratic Party.”

I don’t mean a nod to the super-obvious: the party has raced Left. That is embraced by most journalists, so long as Hillary Clinton does not scare off the electorate which, as always, is center-right.

What I do mean is a vague acknowledgment that the mind of Clinton is soaked in abortion extremism. Put another way, it’s as if all the zaniest pro-abortion initiatives were dishes on a Lazy Susan. They are all so good (in a twisted pro-abortion sense) that Clinton cannot pass up even one.

Abortion for any reason or no reason, as late in pregnancy as desired, paid for by the public. And that’s just the start.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Networks Hype Buffett’s Clinton Endorsement, Forget His $1.8 Billion to Abortion

Warren Buffett

When Warren Buffett promised to make his tax returns public if Donald Trump did the same, the media loved it. But they refused to cover one key thing Buffett’s tax returns would reveal about the Midwest billionaire — his support for abortion.

While ABC, CBS, and NBC all covered Buffett’s endorsement speech for Clinton on August 1, they skipped the more than $1.8 billion Buffett has given to fund abortion.

Instead of reporting that Buffett has given enough money to abort more than 3.6 million children (or almost the entire population of Los Angeles), the networks promoted Buffett’s “challenge to Trump.”

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Top Hillary donors could cover PP budget for 120 yrs.

Worth more than $64.5 billion dollars together, Clinton’s most prominent financial backers could easily cover the amount needed to fund the taxpayer-provided portion of the budget for the world’s largest abortion provider, which receives more than $550 million in American taxpayer funds each year from the federal government. The remaining half of Planned Parenthood’s budget is paid through grants, private donations and service fees.

The compiled campaign donation data collected by the Daily Caller utilized the latest figures provided by the Federal Election Commission and the Center for Responsive Politics to calculate the net worth of Clinton’s 20 most wealthy donors, with the media hub using a number of public sources to compile its final results.

Many familiar names topped Clinton’s list, with records showing that a number of them are generous contributors to Planned Parenthood, which reported conducting 323,999 abortions during its most recent fiscal year.

Click here for more from OneNewsNow.