Chris Iverson explains the damage done to a pro-life display at Christian Liberty Academy in Illinois.
Vandals defaced a pro-life banner at a student group’s abortion-victim memorial over the weekend — the second time it has been vandalized since being erected November 3.
In what looks like a repeat case of pro-abortion criminality, a person or people defaced a banner reading, “Abortion Takes Human Life,” which accompanies rows of white crosses representing victims of abortion on the lawn of the Christian Liberty Academy.
An attempt was made to defund Planned Parenthood last year, but the United States Senate blocked it. National Right to Life Committee president Carol Tobias asserts that any future attempt to defund the abortion giant will have to wait until the Obama administration leave the White House in January.
“We have a pro-abortion, pro-Planned Parenthood ideologue in the White House, and until he leaves office, there's not going to be a whole lot we can do to keep that money from Planned Parenthood,” Tobias insists.
More than half a billion federal tax dollars currently goes to Planned Parenthood. This is in spite of its recent scandals involving the harvesting and sale of aborted baby body parts for a profit – not to mention over-billing the federal government. It is argued that stripping the world’s largest abortion provider of tax money will be difficult.
Dear Pro-life Friend, Congratulations for surviving the 2016 Election!
At this time, it appears that the unborn and vulnerable
are safer in our country. Now we can be hopeful that the U.S. Supreme
Court will move in a direction to protect life. Now we can be hopeful
that Congress will pass life protecting legislation. We can hope that
our president will sign that legislation and begin the process of
reversing the deadly effects of Roe v. Wade.
You helped make it happen with your vote.
Pro-life Battle One: You and we won because of your help.
In Illinois of the 45 contested races where our Political Action
Committee (PAC) endorsed a candidate, 32 of our candidates won.
Overall, 66 of our 79 PAC endorsed candidates were elected. Candidates
like Dan McConchie who won his race for the state senate. Dan worked at
Americans United for Life and now he is in Springfield fighting for
innocent life in the Senate.
Thank you for supporting our pro-life candidates! Pro-life Battle Two: We need your help right now.
BUT NOW we must turn our attention to the Illinois General Assembly and begin our lobbying efforts once again. HB4013, the Taxpayer Funding of Abortion bill, is in the Illinois House ready for a vote during the Fall Veto Session.
The Fall Veto Session is November 15th through November 17th and
November 29th through December 1st. House Speaker Mike Madigan lost 4
seats this election and so the pro-aborts are pushing to pass their bad
legislation before the new assembly is seated in January 2017. The
Illinois Federation will be there pushing back.
Starting in September of this year all of our fundraising efforts were focused on funding our PAC. It
was our belief that the election was so important we were willing to
risk underfunding our operating/lobbying fund to be sure the PAC was
funded. We needed to survey candidates, make endorsements, inform our supporters of our endorsements and assist pro-life candidates.
I believe that it was the right decision; however, we must immediately
begin to build up our operating funds to keep our office open and to
support our lobbying activities this veto session and the upcoming
spring 2017 legislative session.
We suspect that the opposition will introduce an assisted suicide bill
in the spring. We must always be ready to defend our Parental
Notification law from hostile amendments that would render the law
ineffective or from efforts to repeal the law. We must be prepared to fight any and all of the pro-abortion attacks in Springfield. We fought relentlessly against SB1564 the bill that amended the Illinois Right of Conscious Act in Illinois.
The goal of the bill was to close our pregnancy resource centers. As
you know it passed and was signed by Governor Rauner. Two lawsuits have
been filed – one in federal court and one in state court. The court
battle will rage on as valiant pro-life attorneys seek to stop this
monstrous law. But a better way altogether would be to prevent costly
litigation by stopping destructive legislation before it becomes law.
We celebrate the outcome of the election with you. However, we must honestly and soberly assess our situation in Illinois. We must continue to fight the enemy on all fronts – elections, education and legislation. The Illinois Federation for Right to Life as founded embraces grassroots activists as our partners in this fight for life.
To this day we know that you, the wonderful pro-life people throughout
this state will be the force that turns this state around. We celebrate you!
All of our work depends on you - your prayers, your calls, your letters,
your visits to Springfield and your financial support. We are here for you and you are there for us. Together we must defeat the forces that continue to create a culture of death in Illinois.
Video screen capture of "The Language of Abortion"
As they say, “if I had a dollar for”– in this case every time I’ve written to make fun of the verbal gymnastics that pro-abortionists routinely employ — I’d be rich.
But words on a page or on a computer screen, while effective, have a tough time competing with videos which are able to combine words, images, music, and people interacting in real-time.
When done imaginatively, they are highly persuasive.
We’ve written, more than once, about “Interview with an Unborn Child.” The 4 minute 16 second-long video is an eerily powerful chronicle, narrated by the doomed unborn child himself, which sends chills up and down your spine.
At the other end of the educational spectrum is “The Language of Abortion,” produced by Signal Hill, a Canadian pro-life group. This 31-second long video uses humor (mixed with the mildest of ridicule) to convey a powerful truth by means of a question—“The language of abortion is confusing. What are we trying to hide?”
There are three settings. The first is a baby shower. Looking down we see the lettering on a cake which reads, “Congratulations on your products of conception.” As the pregnant mom comes in the room, the assembled women cheerfully laugh as we catch a glimpse of the banner on the wall:“Uterine Contents Shower.”
A quick cut to the doctor’s office where she is drumming her fingers as she waits to see her obstetrician. The receptionist politely asks, “Is this your first clump of cells?”
The final scene is of a very pregnant woman sitting in her bedroom. In a very lovely and affectionate way she sings to her baby, “Hush blob of tissue don’t say a word, mommy’s gonna…”
So, “What are we trying to hide?” The truth that a baby is a baby is a baby.
A nationwide telephone poll take Election Day by the polling company, inc./WomanTrend for the Susan B. Anthony List found almost two-thirds support for the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act—well more than double those who opposed.
Sixty-four percent were in favor to only 28% who were opposed.
Among his commitments to pro-lifers, President-elect Donald Trump has promised to sign the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.
The House of Representatives passed the measure on May 13, 2015, by a vote of 242-184.
This legislation is based on a model bill originated by NRLC in 2010, which has since been enacted in 14 states.
The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act extends general protection to unborn children who are at least 20 weeks beyond fertilization (which is equivalent to 22 weeks of pregnancy — about the start of the sixth month).
The Trump transition team announced the appointment of Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo on Friday morning along with other national defense selections.
The third-term congressman from Kansas’ Fourth District has been part of Trump’s Pro-Life Coalition, which was named in September, in addition to being a pro-life and marriage legislator.
U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and President-elect Donald Trump
The National Right to Life Committee today praised President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to be nominated as attorney general in January.
“Jeff Sessions will bring to the Justice Department a strong record in defense of innocent human life, and consistent opposition to the imposition of social legislation by the judiciary,” said Douglas Johnson, Legislative Director of National Right to Life.
Throughout his tenure in the United States Senate, which began in 1997, Jeff Sessions has a 100% pro-life voting record. He has co-sponsored pro-life legislation including the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would protect from abortion unborn children at 20 weeks fetal age or later, who are capable of feeling pain, and the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would ensure a baby born alive during an abortion is given the same care that would apply to any other child born alive at the same gestational age.
The "TelAbortion Study" is being conducted in Hawaii, New York, Washington, and Oregon to analyze telemedicine and the delivery of abortion-causing chemicals by mail, especially in rural areas. The study website doesn't specify who or what organization is conducting the study, saying only that it is "being conducted by institutions that provide abortions in participating states."
While the "who" behind the study isn't clear, Dr. Randall K. O'Bannon of the National Right to Life Committee believes he knows "why" it's being done. He argues that the study is a way of increasing the scope of profit for abortion businesses.
“As you know, the abortion industry has been struggling with clinics that have been closing, [with] doctors who have been trying or are getting out of the business because they've gotten involved in scandals or who had some major problems,” he says. “They're having a real shortage of abortionists in the United States.” Click here for more from OneNewsNow.
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump vowed that he would sign the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to protect the sanctity of human life.
Mallory Quigley, who serves with the Susan B. Anthony List, stated that voters are evidently in agreement with Trump's pro-life view. A large majority of Millennials, African Americans and Hispanics also support the pro-life proposal. Last year, the bill passed the House, but needed 60 votes in the Senate to move forward.
“Susan B. Anthony List put out the list of a new survey finding that a majority of voters – women in higher numbers than men – support the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” Quigley informed. “This is legislation that limits abortion after five months, which of course, is beyond halfway through pregnancy – and it's at a point at which the unborn child demonstrably feels pain.”
The American Medical Association (AMA) is in the process of considering whether to forego its opposition to assisted suicide and go neutral. The Orlando Sentinel recently published a guest column by Dr. Frederick White [www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/os-ed-physician-assisted-suicide-ama–111216-20161113-story.html], who is chair of the International ethics committee with the Willis Knighton Health System in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he made the case against the AMA retreating “into the mirage of moral neutrality.” White writes:
The central premise of physician-assisted suicide is this: A doctor should be allowed to kill certain patients. That is a stark reality, but it is the essence of the physician-assisted suicide movement. Let us not quibble over causation. A doctor who purposefully writes lethal prescriptions and gives them to patients intends to cause their deaths. And when the patients die from those intentionally toxic doses, the doctor is a proximate cause of death just as certainly as if the doctor had injected lethal drugs directly. Despite what advocates of physician-assisted suicide claim, this debate is not about autonomy. Patients with terminal conditions already have the autonomy to direct limitation or withdrawal of life-sustaining care, to request palliative and hospice care, and to even take their own lives. Physician-assisted suicide is about a method of death, about whether that method of death should allow a conspirator, and about whether that conspirator should be a doctor.
White explains that the position of a physician is never neutral:
When doctors tell society that they do not have an opinion about physician-assisted suicide, they are abdicating a critical responsibility. Society has vested doctors with special rights and privileges concerning matters of life and death. Doctors decide whether to recommend a risky surgery. Doctors decide when to counsel a patient’s family that life-sustaining treatment should be withdrawn. Society allows doctors that special standing by virtue of their training and experience, but also by virtue of their moral agency. Society expects that doctors will form moral judgments guided by their ethical codes. And on the most pressing life-and-death issue of our day, doctors cannot take a pass. They must choose — either a doctor will or will not be allowed to kill certain patients.
Dr. Lisa Harris was seen in one of the undercover videos captured by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP).
Amid continued post-election violence across the U.S. in response to Hillary Clinton’s failed bid for the presidency, one of the abortion providers caught on tape last year discussing baby body parts procurement in the Planned Parenthood fetal tissue trafficking scandal has said abortionists will break the law if necessary to keep performing abortions.
The abortion lobby has been sounding the alarm for a possible judicial and legislative attack on the lucrative procedure since Donald Trump’s upset victory over Clinton last week. Planned Parenthood called for donations and second trimester abortion doctor Lisa Hope Harris told a science and technology periodical that while abortionists are worried about the potential for overturning Roe v. Wade in a Trump administration, because of “conscience” they would be willing to keep performing the procedure even if it became against the law.
Pro-life President-elect Donald Trump and pro-life Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan (R-Wi.). Getty image.
Pro-life Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wi.) won a unanimous vote of support today from House Republicans colleagues for a second term as speaker of the House.
The full House will select the Speaker when the 115th Congress convenes in January. Since Republicans will retain a majority of about two dozen seats in the new Congress, today’s vote virtually assures Ryan’s election as speaker in January.
Ahead of today’s vote, Ryan told reporters, “Welcome to the dawn of a new unified Republican government,” according to the Washington Post.
Meanwhile, House Democrats, still reeling from the election results, put off leadership elections until after Thanksgiving “following an outcry from several dozen members who said they needed more time to assess last week’s devastating election,” POLITICO reported.
While no Democrat has formally announced he/she would challenge House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Ca.), “the next two weeks will now be a debate about Pelosi’s future,” Heather Caygle and John Bresnahan reported.
During his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump stood firm on defunding Planned Parenthood, but said he would only support stripping the funds if the nation's largest abortion-provider refuses to stop doing abortions. A fight over the funding is expected in Congress – but American Life League is hopeful that with Mike Pence as his vice president, Trump might be convinced to defund regardless.
"[Pence] was the guy who single-handedly in 2007 wrote the first amendment to a bill in Congress that specifically named Planned Parenthood and tried to take all the money away from them," explains ALL spokesman Jim Sedlak. "So Mike Pence is an absolute opponent of Planned Parenthood – and we're hoping that he will have an influence on Mr. Trump."
Pence told a reporter in 2007:
"If Planned Parenthood wants to be involved in providing counseling services and HIV testing, they ought not be in the business of providing abortions. As long as they aspire to do that, I’ll be after them."
President-elect Donald Trump and Reince Preibus, Trump’s choice to be his Chief of Staff
As you would expect, when President-elect Donald Trump announced yesterday he had chosen Reince Priebus to fill the all-important role of chief of staff, I asked the pro-lifers who would know Priebus best: Wisconsin Right to Life. Here’s what Heather Weininger, Executive Director of Wisconsin Right to Life, told NRL News Today:
Reince Priebus is a true friend to all of us in the pro-life movement. Even from his earliest days in Wisconsin politics, Reince has always been, and always will be, on the side of those who are the most vulnerable. While his behind-the-scenes pro-life efforts too often go unnoticed, his influence in Republican politics has markedly increased the strength of his party’s pro-life position. Reince, as chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, stayed firm and true to his state party’s pro-life platform. Then, as the head of the Republican National Committee, Reince worked hard to ensure his party’s national platform became the most pro-life it has ever been in the history of the Republican party. Reince has never shied away from his firm belief in the right to life. We are thrilled that we will have a Wisconsinite working in the White House to fight for the most basic and fundamental human right, life.”
A controversial waste disposal company has dropped its legal fight against a pro-life group that waged a grassroots campaign against it.
Stericycle, which disposes of the bodies of aborted babies as "medical waste," was caught in Ohio and in Texas dumping the remains in a land fill.
Tom Brejcha of the Thomas More Society says Stericyle drew the attention of pro-life group Created Equal, which launched a public campaign against Stericyle and its CEO demanding that they stop working with abortion giant Planned Parenthood.
Oh, my goodness, another incredibly powerful pro-life video this time from John Elefante, the former lead singer of the group “Kansas.” I learned about “This Time” from Charisma News which explains that the video shares the story of the birth of Sami, Elefante’s adopted daughter, whose 13-year-old mother came perilously close to aborting Sami.
“I can’t imagine life without my daughter, Sami, and it just breaks my heart that pregnant young women much like her birth mother, instead of choosing life for their babies, are denying them the chance to be born,” Elefante tells Abby Carr “If our song can in any way bring attention to this issue and encourage those who are considering abortion to choose life through options such as adoption, then we couldn’t be happier.”
For starters, Elefante does a marvelous job setting a real-life stage: a very frightened (barely) teenage girl who discovers she is pregnant. Scared out of her wits, she slams the bathroom door on her mother and races to the “solution”: the abortion clinic.
When a girl or woman is at the abortion clinic—let alone in the operating room itself—the pressure to “get this over with” is unfathomable. In this case, the young girl is half-asleep in the waiting room and dreams of being with the little girl she is carrying and about to abort. Click here for more from National Right to Life.
Scene from "The Big Bang Theory" entitled
“The Brain Bowl Incubation”
CBS’s Big Bang Theory has kept the pro-life message going with the storyline of Bernadette’s pregnancy this season. This time, they focus on the baby’s development including how it already “hears voices.”
On Thursday’s episode “The Brain Bowl Incubation,” Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Amy (Mayim Bialik) decide to combine their skin cells to form brain cells in a petri dish at the lab. Proud of their creation, Sheldon feels like a dad, going so far as to comparing their science experiment to Bernadette’s (Melissa Rauch) baby, much to her disapproval.
Big Bang has brought up Bernadette’s baby time and time again in a positive, pro-life way. Glad to see they value the “life”– not the “choice” – growing inside her. Keep up the good work, CBS!
HB4013 - State Insurance Public Aid Abortions House Sponsors:
Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, Carol Sente, Ann M. Williams, Elizabeth Hernandez, Barbara Flynn Currie, Gregory Harris and Emanuel Chris Welch Status:
This bill is Re-referred to Rules Committee
Additional information:
The language for this bill has also been added to SB1465 as an amendment (House Amendment 1).
This bill is in the Appropriations-Human Services Committee. It was
not called for a vote during this last session, however it is unknown if
this bill will be heard in the committee during the next session.
Summary:
This bill removes the portion of the State Employees Group Insurance Act that prohibits including the expenses of obtaining an abortion, induced miscarriage or induced premature birth. This means that the State's medical assistance program will no longer exclude coverage for abortions. It also now includes abortions, or induced miscarriages or premature births on the list of services provided. In addition, this bill will no longer prohibit the Department of Human Services from making grants to nonprofit agencies and organizations that use such grants to refer or counsel for, or perform, abortions. So tax payer money could be used to cover abortions and fund grants to organizations who perform abortions. This bill removes all restrictions on tax payer funding of abortions.
Action: Contact your Illinois State Representative and urge them to vote NO on HB4013.
You can find your Representative's contact information by clicking here.
While the number of abortions in the United States has declined, a recent report shows that women seeking abortions are increasingly preferring medical abortions, rather than surgical ones.
According to data from Planned Parenthood, in a report from Reuters, medical abortions – those by pill – made up 43 percent of all abortions in the U.S. in 2014, up from 35 percent in 2010.
In some places, the demand for the abortion pill tripled after March, when the FDA expanded the use of the abortion pill (mifepristone or RU486 misoprostol used together with misoprostol) to include pregnancies up to 10 weeks. Previously, only women who were up to seven weeks pregnant were able to take the pill, due to concerns about side effects. Click here for more from CNA/EWTN News.
At issue is a proposal for the national doctor group to move to a neutral position on Euthanasia – often called physician-assisted suicide or “mercy killing.” This neutral position is what pro-death forces are striving for, believing that it will open the door for physicians to help kill their patients.
Association of Pro-Life Physicians President Dr. Patrick Johnston told OneNewsNow, “The issue here is not what the Left – the pro-death forces – are making it out to be,” Johnston argues. “I want people to be comfortable – and at the end of life, as well. The issue is prescribing a poison to intentionally kill patients versus providing compassionate, loving health care compatible with the Golden Rule.
The Hippocratic Oath, on the other hand, calls physicians to do no harm. Johnston points out that in pre-Hippocrates Greece, patients were more concerned that doctors were being paid to kill them than they were paying them to keep them alive.
