‘We’re just getting started,’ Roger Severino director of HHS’ Office for Civil Rights tells Pro-Lifers at NRLC Convention

The Trump administration will continue and expand its efforts to advance the pro-life cause, a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services told pro-lifers this week.

Roger Severino, director of HHS’ Office for Civil Rights, addressed the National Right to Life Committee’s (NRLC) annual convention in Kansas on Thursday, the Wichita Eagle reported. NRLC president Carol Tobias said it was the first time she could recall someone from HHS speaking at the event.

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US vs. UN abortion showdown slated for autumn General Assembly

A disagreement over abortion between the Trump administration and European governments has set the stage for a showdown in the UN General Assembly this fall.

The U.S. Mission to the UN headed by Ambassador Nikki Haley has followed the lead of the Trump administration, which has succeeded in keeping "sexual and reproductive health" out of recent agreements at the G7, G20, World Health Assembly, and the Organization of American States. The same result is proving more difficult in New York. But the latest statement from the U.S. Mission signals U.S. diplomats may be getting ready for a vote on abortion in humanitarian settings.

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Chicago area Pro-Life Billboard could be seen by millions

Have you seen this new billboard on the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago?

The Illinois Family Institute has put up an eye-catching, pro-life billboard around I-90 and Kedzie Ave (at Diversey) near the Logan Square and Avondale neighborhoods of Chicago. It’s over 80 feet wide and can been seen from a mile away. The message – “Abortion Takes Human Life” — will be seen over 10 million times before the end of July, IFI says.

This new display comes after IFI and pro-life activists reached half of the adult residents in Cook County during 2016 and 2017 with billboards, pro-life bridge events, and other mass communication efforts. The group's current message is expected to be seen by people traveling to work and school, between O’Hare and Chicago, and to the Taste of Chicago and July 4th events.

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Pro-life groups urge Supreme Court: It’s time to overturn Roe v. Wade

Ever since the announcement of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement yesterday, discussion of Roe v. Wade has been reinvigorated. In 1973, Roe forced abortion on demand, at all stages of pregnancy, on all 50 states. Today, over one million preborn children are aborted annually in the United States, and abortion has spread across the world due to American influence. But, with a cataclysmic Supreme Court change on the horizon, the human injustice that is Roe v. Wade may be seeing its final hours.

Pro-life groups, which have worked for decades to bring life to women, children, and families, are calling for the final overturn of Roe.

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Uncovered: Planned Parenthood cited for multiple campaign donation violations

Planned Parenthood, whose various political PACs and organizations spend millions of dollars pushing their abortion agenda down the throats of the American taxpayer, has been fined multiple times by the State and Federal Election Commissions for various violations. While Planned Parenthood masquerades as a healthcare organization, the organization’s former president, Cecile Richards, once claimed the abortion giant’s aim was to be the “largest kick butt political organization” — and with the help of their political arms that is what Planned Parenthood appears to be doing. But is the organization actually playing by the rules?

In a previous Live Action News report, we documented how a Wisconsin Planned Parenthood was fined by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) for failing to report contributions to Democratic candidates. Now, a more thorough review by Live Action News has uncovered additional reports from both state and federal agencies...

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Life Legal uncovers shocking facts about assisted suicide law

***** WARNING THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS *****

Life Legal attorneys have uncovered shocking facts about how California’s assisted suicide law is being implemented and who is doing the “assisting.”

One of those doctors is Lonny Shavelson, a former contract ER doctor who came out of retirement as soon as the law was passed to dispense lethal prescriptions. Shavelson is not board-certified in any medical specialty, including diagnosing or treating mental illness, which is often at the root of a request for suicide.

His sole “practice” consists of getting people to die.

Shavelson admits to having “attended at bedside” as 89 people committed suicide. He stresses that the lethal drugs must be taken within 2 minutes, or they can “fail.” By “fail,” he means the people don’t die—and may decide that they don’t want to kill themselves.

In his book “Chosen Death,” Shavelson writes about observing an assisted suicide. Gene, a lonely widower, contacted the Hemlock Society, which has since changed its name to “Compassion and Choices.”

“Sarah” the head of the local Hemlock Society office, came to Gene’s home to prepare and dispense the deadly concoction. This was not Sarah’s first experience with “assisting” a person’s death. She called it “the most intimate experience you can share with a person. . . . More than sex. More than birth . . . more than anything.”

Sarah held Gene’s head on her lap as she gave him the suicide drugs. As he started to fall asleep, Sarah put a plastic bag over his head and told Gene to “Go to the light.”

But the drugs failed. Gene woke up and started screaming.

Shavelson describes what happened next:

“His good hand flew up to tear off the plastic bag. Sarah’s hand caught Gene’s wrist and held it. His body thrust upwards. She pulled his arm away and lay across Gene’s shoulders. Sarah rocked back and forth, pinning him down, her fingers twisting the bag to seal it tight at his neck as she repeated, ‘the light, Gene, go toward the light.’ Gene’s body pushed against Sarah’s. Then he stopped moving.”

As Wesley Smith writes, “There is a word that describes what happened to Gene, and that word is murder.”

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Justice Anthony Kennedy retires from U.S. Supreme Court

After months of speculation, Anthony Kennedy, the pivotal justice in so many cases including abortion, announced today that he retiring from the Supreme Court effective July 31.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said. “The Senate stands ready to fulfill its constitutional role by offering advice and consent … we will vote to confirm Justice Kennedy’s successor this fall.”

The decision by the 81-year-old Kennedy gives President Trump his second opportunity to shape the Supreme Court possibly for decades to come. In April 2017, President Trump formally appointed appeals court judge Neil M. Gorsuch to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia who died in April 2016.

Kennedy had dropped a number of hints, only seemingly to step back, that he would be leaving after 30 years on the nation’s highest court. He was appointed by President Reagan in 1988.

In a letter hand delivered following today’s last batch of decisions, Kennedy told President Trump

“My dear Mr. President. For a member of the legal profession it is the highest of honor to serve on this court. Please permit me by this letter to express my profound gratitude for having had the privilege to seek in each case how best to know, interpret and defend the Constitution and the laws that must always conform to its mandates and promises.”

There have been titanic battles over nominees to the Supreme Court, including those who were ultimately defeated and others, such as Justice Clarence Thomas, who surmounted an all-out attempt at character assassination. But with the Court so evenly divided and with Democrats happily moving further and further to the Left, this confirmation fight will no doubt be one for the ages.

Kennedy was a part of the coalition that upheld the core holdings of Roe v. Wade in the 1992 Casey case. He also was part of the majority that struck commonsense abortion regulations in the 2016 Women’s Health v. Hellerstadt decision.

On the other side he was a pivotal vote in the 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart decision which upheld the federal ban on partial-birth abortions and just this week was part of the 5-4 majority which struck a California law that attacked the free speech rights of pregnancy help centers.

In response to Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy’s announcement the following statement may be attributed to National Right to Life President Carol Tobias:

All too often, our efforts to protect unborn children and other vulnerable humans have been overridden by judges who believe they have a right to impose their own policy preferences. We look forward to President Trump nominating a jurist who shares the view that Supreme Court justices are constrained to enforce the text and original intent of constitutional provisions, and on all other matters should defer to democratically elected lawmakers.

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Four more IL gubernatorial candidates could be on November ballot

Voters could see several gubernatorial candidates on the 2018 General Election ballot in November - including  Libertarian Party candidate, a Conservative Party candidate and two independents - if they're allowed to stay on the ballot. More could join Democrat JB Pritzker and "Rauner Party" Bruce Rauner later this week if petitions are submitted to the State Board of Elections by Friday.

From the state's first-time Conservative Party, State Senator Sam McCann of Plainview gathered enough signatures to submit petitions for himself and Aaron Merrejohn of Riverton IL:

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A slate of statewide candidates from the Illinois Libertarian Party submitted these names:

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As did two independent candidates:

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New York bill targets pregnancy centers with bogus investigations

Pro-abortion politicians in New York are moving ahead with another attack on pro-life pregnancy help centers. Last week, New York Assembly member Deborah Glick introduced a bill that targets pregnancy centers with sham investigations of the state’s 200 pregnancy help centers, nonprofits that provide peer counseling, ultrasounds, material aid, and post-abortive help at no cost.

Similar to other measures that have been pursued over the last several years, the bill starts with an assumption of guilt, calling pregnancy centers “deceptive clinics that do not provide comprehensive reproductive health care.”

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Women in California may soon be protected from abortionists like these

In this age of breaking the secrecy around sexual abuse, a California bill is seeking to “lift the veil of secrecy around physician sexual assault and other patient harm,” according to a press release issued by Consumer Watchdog. The group estimates that the Patient’s Right to Know Act of 2018 (SB1448) “would require disclosure by approximately half of the doctors the California Medical Board places on probation every year.” The move comes on the heels of horrific sexual abuse allegations against two high profile doctors, Larry Nassar and George Tyndall, whose troubling misconduct histories were unknown by the women they cared for as patients. But due to the fact that many abortionists have been previously disciplined by the medical board, SB1448 may also have ramifications for the abortion industry.

An abortion facility is one place where women are likely to know little, if anything, about their doctor. Compounding this is the fact that abortion and Planned Parenthood facilities in California are some of the least regulated in the nation. The abortion industry there has become a breeding ground for some of the most unscrupulous and dangerous doctors preying on women

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Abortionist Robert Rho Sentenced to Prison for Killing Woman During Botched Late-Term Abortion

Abortionist Robert Rho, who pleaded guilty last month to Criminal Negligent Homicide for causing the death of Jaime Morales, 30, during a botched second trimester abortion, was sentenced yesterday to serve fifteen months to four years in state prison.

Over Rho's 23-year career as an abortionist, he committed an estimated 40,000 abortions, according to his attorney Jeff Lichtman.

But Rho was known to cut corners on abortion procedures to save time and money. His short-cuts proved fatal for Jaime Morales when she visited Rho on July 9, 2016.

Rho conducted an abortion on Morales' 26-week baby in just one day instead of the recommended 2-3 days. Because of this, he inflicted serious internal injuries on Morales, including a perforated uterus and lacerated cervix, uterine artery, and vagina.

Instead of calling an ambulance for his hemorrhaging patient, he cinched her cervix closed to conceal the internal bleeding. Despite her drifting in and out of consciousness due to blood loss, Rho released Morales from his abortion facility. She died just hours later.

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Planned Parenthood sues Trump administration, calls abstinence education “dangerous”

Calling an abstinence-only educational curriculum “dangerous,” Planned Parenthood affiliates filed a lawsuit on Friday against the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The abortion corporation announced that it was “challenging the administration’s efforts to impose their abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) agenda on the 1.2 million young people who are set to benefit from the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPP program). The lawsuit seeks to protect the future of the TPP program. If successful, the lawsuit will ensure that the TPP program maintains its evidence-based principles and that new grantees are not forced to push dangerous AOUM curriculums.”

Of course, Planned Parenthood’s narrative comes directly from the fiction section. Over in non-fiction, the facts show that the TPP programs are vastly ineffective.

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Supreme Court sides with pro-life pregnancy centers in California abortion case

The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked a California law requiring pro-life pregnancy centers to post information on programs to obtain and free or low-cost abortion.

The 5-4 ruling in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) v. Becerra sent the case back to a lower court to be reconsidered, in light of the Supreme Court’s finding that “We hold that petitioners are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the FACT Act violates the First Amendment.”

Lower courts had rejected a petition to temporarily block the California law while it was being legally challenged. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the case against the law was unlikely to succeed on its merits.

The Supreme Court reversed that ruling, saying that the Ninth Circuit was wrong to treat the speech of pregnancy centers as a lesser category of free speech simply because it is “professional speech.”

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Court down to last days to decide law violating pregnancy center’s First Amendment rights

As is always the case as the Supreme Court approaches the end of its turn, important cases remain to be resolved. For pro-lifers, that is National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra.

As anyone who has read about, let alone attended oral arguments, there is no foolproof way of gauging from the justices’ questions what they are thinking. For example, “hostile” questions may be a fishing expedition to find the best answer to give to colleagues who really are hostile to someone’s argument.

That being said, the justices, from the least receptive to anything resembling a pro-life initiative, to the more sympathetic, found California’s so-called “Reproductive FACT Act” a stretch. The law requires both pregnancy help centers that offer medical services and those who don’t to “act as a ventriloquist’s dummy for a government message”—abortion—as one pro-life attorney phrased it.

If they offer medical services, they must post signage that the state offers free abortions. If they don’t, they must post signage that announces, “This facility is not licensed as a medical facility by the state of California.”

The justification for the Reproductive FACT Act, passed on strictly party-line votes in the Democrat-controlled California statehouse and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, is that pregnancy centers were allegedly misleading women. As became painfully clear at oral arguments, there is precious little evidence to support the allegation.

Nearly all the justices found ample reason to consider the question whether the requirements constituted an “undue burden.”

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Phyllis Schlafly's son Andy, speculates on effects of possible Supreme Court justice retirement

In an email Monday, Andy Schlafly, son of the late conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, shed light on speculations that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy may announce his retirement soon.

"If Kennedy retires, then that may explain why he declined to join the pro-abortion wing of the Court on the petition for cert by Planned Parenthood in the Arkansas abortion medication complications case," Schlafly wrote. "To the surprise of all, and the dismay of pro-aborts, the Supreme Court "denied cert" in that case, thereby allowing the pro-life decision by the 8th Circuit to stand.  (Planned Parenthood v. Jegley)  This is the first time in memory that the Supreme Court, which has enough votes to grant cert for Planned Parenthood, has rebuffed PP's request."

One the other hand, Schlafly said, if Justice Kennedy does not retire, his opposition to Planned Parenthood in the Jegley case could indicate the 81-year-old justice's opinion has shifted against abortion.

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Pro-abortion Vice Media wanted woman to abort so they could film it

Texas is ground zero for abortion activists. The state has passed numerous pro-life laws in recent years, including banning brutal dismemberment abortions and putting into place protections for victims of sex trafficking and the abortion industry. The state has also permanently banned taxpayer funding for abortion. And while all of these things have made the state safer for both preborn children and for women, it has also made Texas a target for pro-abortion activism — including from the media, which is supposed to be unbiased.

In 2015, Vice was considering doing a special for HBO on abortion restrictions in Texas, and a producer came up with a twisted spin: find a woman, try to convince her to have an abortion, and film it. The producer’s manager thankfully axed the story, and the producer was fired.

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Rape survivors and persons conceived in rape fight ‘exceptions’ in Iowa’s heartbeat law

Save the 1, a pro-life organization dedicated to ending abortion — including the abortion of preborn children conceived in rape or incest, or those diagnosed with a fetal abnormality — is fighting to remove the “exceptions” rule added to Iowa’s new heartbeat law. They argue that the law, which outlaws abortion once a heartbeat is detected, should protect all preborn children regardless of the circumstances of their conception.

In February, the heartbeat bill without exceptions passed in the Iowa Senate, but the final bill included the exceptions in order to appease some House Republicans who refused to support the law without them.

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Judge’s ruling against ‘Red Rose Rescue’ activists at abortion facility ‘troubling’

A group of pro-life activists in Michigan who entered a West Bloomfield Township abortion facility last year in what is known as a “Red Rose Rescue” have been given a sentence in the trespass case which some are calling extremely harsh. The activists have been ordered not to come within 500 feet of any abortion facility in the entire nation, and to not have contact with one another for a period of one year — something their attorney claims was only handed down because this case centers around abortion. He says this infringes on their free speech rights.

The activists’ crime, according to the Oakland Press, was that they entered the abortion facility “where they offered roses, prayed, sang and urged patients in the waiting room not to terminate their pregnancies. They were led out by police, arrested and charged after refusing to leave the clinic when asked to.”

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Students, maintenance crew join forces to wash away pro-life campus chalk drawings

Recently, several students at Western Washington University were caught on camera using traffic cones to wash away pro-life chalkings by Students for Life at Western Washington University. One student tells a member of Students for Life that the plan is to just erase "the really s‑‑‑‑‑ ones [messages]."

The students began erasing the chalking on Thursday, June 7th around 7 PM PST and then Students for life re-chalked around 10:30 PM PST that same night. The following morning, maintenance crews were ordered to wash away the chalkings.

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Texas Governor promises to honor pro-life teen’s dying wish and ‘outlaw abortion’

The Governor of Texas has promised a pro-life teen dying from cancer that he will “outlaw abortion altogether in the state of Texas.”

Governor Greg Abbott, 60, called his constituent Jeremiah Thomas as the teen lay in the cancer ward of a children’s hospital. The Governor was connected to the teen through “Make a Wish,” a program that allows young people who are terminally ill to fulfill a personal dream. Many children choose to meet a personal hero, like a sports star. Thomas decided to use his "wish" to reach out to the governor and ask him to do something to end the killing of preborn babies.

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