Mom refuses to take “no” for an answer, baby said to have less than 5% chance of surviving is now thriving

Graceanne with her older sister Allie Claire

When Graceanne Payne came home from the hospital, just before Christmas 2013, she joined her mom and dad and older sister one day before her actual due date. Almost a year later, she “crawls enthusiastically and has already taken her first steps,” according to Scott Rogers of the Gainesville Times.

So, Graceanne came a little early? Actually she arrived September 8, 2013, weighing 1 pound, 12 ounces. She was so premature doctors had given her less than a 5% to survive. Graceanne experienced a 97-day stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Northeast Georgia Medical Center and spent almost six weeks on a ventilator.

“Definitely the hand of God was involved in her survival,” her mom, Melissa Payne, said.

Graceanne’s remarkable story began when the Payne family was visiting relatives in Maine. Rogers explained

Only in her second trimester and more than 1,300 miles away from home, Payne woke to discover her water had broken. She was taken to the nearest emergency room, where doctors said her unborn daughter Graceanne would need to be delivered in the next 24 to 72 hours.

“At that point, we weren’t quite 19 weeks, so she wouldn’t have been able to survive,” Payne said.

They visited a specialist in a nearby town who “pretty much told me this was the hand of cards we were dealt, and we would have to fold them and start over,” Payne told Rogers. Meaning the prediction of a less than 5% for survival and the likelihood that, if she did survive, “he would have a very low quality of life and be a burden on their family.”

But Payne had no interest in giving up on their baby and was determined to return to their home in Georgia.

Rogers explained that several of her friends “orchestrated her return to Georgia and set up her appointment with the obstetrician-gynocologist who approved her for continuing the pregnancy.” And

When Payne’s doctor performed an ultrasound and found a heartbeat, she was given the cautious — though not optimistic — OK to do what her heart told her to do. Payne wanted to continue her pregnancy, come what may.

“I believe that all babies are conceived for a reason,” Melissa Payne said. “It is our job to try to protect them and support what they need. Even when it’s difficult or very trying, what some could see as a burden to your family is still a gift from God.”

Payne was, of course, put on immediate bed rest. She told Rogers of feeling Graceanne kicking and moving and then going to the doctor “and they’d just frown and nod.” To keep strong for her baby, she Payne said she “relied on her family, friends, prayer and visits from church deacons to get her through the next seven weeks.”

Graceanne was born via an emergency C-section at 26 weeks and 2 days, weighing 1 pound, 12 ounces and measured 12 inches long. She had many health hazards—starting with having sufficient lung capacity to breathe on her own or be put on a ventilator.

“I woke up in recovery and asked where the baby was,” Payne said. “They said she was down in the NICU, and had enough lung tissue to ventilate.”

Of course, there were more hurdles to overcome, but as Graceanne’s health improved, so did her doctors’ optimism. Graceanne went home just in time for Christmas, 2013. Far from having medical issues, she is right on schedule, developmentally.

Carolanne Owenby, who was instrumental is helping Melissa find the right kind of help back in Georgia, calls Graceanne “the greatest miracle I’ve known in my life.” But according to Rogers, she credits another source for her survival.

“(Graceanne) was told over and over again that she had no business being here, that she wouldn’t be here, and she’s not only here but she’s thriving,” Owenby said. “A huge part of that is a testament to her mother. Melissa is one of the strongest people I know. She fought tirelessly for (Graceanne) and refused to take no for an answer at every corner. And that’s why she’s here and that’s why she’s thriving.”

By Dave Andrusko, NRL News Today

Five quotes from abortion providers that show abortion’s grisly reality

For those of us who are active in the pro-life movement, and who know what an unborn baby looks like even at the earliest stages, it is hard to believe that so many people do not know that abortions often leave behind recognizable body parts. People really are uninformed about fetal development, especially in the first trimester. For example, this past May, pro-lifers responded with incredulity when comedian Sarah Silverman called unborn babies “goo.”

The next time one of your proabortion friends or family members makes a statement like Silverman’s, direct them to these quotes by three abortion clinic workers and two abortionists.

Fingers and toes

1. “I wonder how many fingers and toes we put down the disposal today?”(1)

Former clinic worker Carol Everett recalled another clinic worker saying this to her around the time she first got involved in the abortion industry. Although aware of the reality of abortion, Everett went on to own two abortion clinics and direct four. Eventually, her clinics came under fire for performing “abortions” on women who were not pregnant in order to make more money. She ended up becoming a born-again Christian, leaving the abortion industry, and launching a pro-life ministry called The Heidi Group.

Detached heads

2. “When you’re doing a dismemberment D&E, usually the last part to be removed is the skull itself and it’s floating free inside the uterine cavity…So it’s rather like a ping-pong ball floating around and the surgeon is using his forcep to reach up to try to grasp something that’s freely floating around and is quite large relative to the forcep we’re using.”(2)

This quote is from sworn testimony given by late-term abortionist Dr. Martin Haskell. He is describing the most commonly used surgical abortion procedure in the second trimester. In this procedure, a D&E, the unborn baby is pulled apart by forceps and extracted piece by piece until only the head is left inside the mother. Haskell compares this floating head to a “ping-pong ball” which he must search for with his trusty forceps.

“Harpooning” a baby

3. “On a number of occasions with the needle, I have harpooned the fetus. I can feel the fetus move at the end of the needle just like you have fish hooked on a line. This gives me an unpleasant, unhappy feeling because I know that the fetus is alive and responding to the needle stab… No one has ever mentioned this, but I’ve noticed it a number of times, you know, that there is something alive in there that you’re killing…”(3)

This quote comes from an abortionist interviewed by Dr. Magda Denes, a pro-choice psychologist whom I quoted in a previous article. This abortionist is describing a procedure commonly used in the 1970s – 1990s where the doctor injected a caustic poison made of saline solution into the amniotic sac to poison the baby. Nowadays, the poison of choice is digoxin.

Body parts

4. “When you see the larger body parts it’s a little bit sickening.”

This quote, from an abortion clinic worker identified only as Marva. An unborn baby has “body parts” i.e., arms, legs, etc. that are formed by 7 to 8 weeks after conception.

A hand left behind

5. “I am walking out the back door, and I see a plastic jar of tissue and blood waiting to be sent to the path lab, and in the plastic jar a tiny perfect white hand. . . “

This quote is from clinic worker Anne Finger, describing a baby that was aborted at the clinic where she worked. Finger wrote a memoir called Past Due in which she detailed her experiences as a disabled woman giving birth to a child who had a traumatic birth and severe disabilities. She also wrote about her time working in the clinic. In this passage, she tried to downplay the aborted baby’s resemblance to a full term child by saying that only the hands looked human. You can see pictures of unborn babies here and make up your own mind.

These five quotes, all from clinic workers or abortionists who were practicing at the time they were quoted, cast light on the gruesome nature of abortion and show that pro-choicers who describe unborn babies as “goo” and abortion as only “terminating a pregnancy” are divorced from reality.

Citations

1. Carol Everett Blood Money: Getting Rich off a Woman’s Right to Choose (Sisters, Oregon: Questar Publishers Inc., 1991) 84

2. Sworn testimony given in US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin (Madison, WI, May 27, 1999, Case No. 98-C-0305-S), by Dr. Martin Haskell, abortionist

3. Magda Denes, PhD. In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital (New York: Basic Books inc,1976)141

4. “Abortion in America: Focus on the City: Sanger Center’s Moments of Pain, Conflict, Relief” Newsday (New York) March 5, 1989

5. Anne Finger Past Due (Seal Press, 1990) 86

By Sarah Terzo via NRL News Today

Editor’s note. This appeared at http://liveactionnews.org/5-quotes-from-abortion-providers-that-show-abortions-grisly-reality/#more-55844

Danger of “Presumed Consent” Organ Donation

I am not prejudging this case, but I bring it up here because I think it illustrates the loss of trust that a “presumed consent” organ donation scheme would engender in people. (Current law requires us to “opt-in” to be an organ donor–as I have. Presumed consent would require us to each “opt-out.” Otherwise, we would automatically be organ donors, no consent required.)

I worry that a presumed consent regimen would lead catastrophically injured patients to be looked upon more as organ farms than patients. Take a look at the story I quote below–particularly the parts I italicized–and you will see what I mean:

     According to family members of 26-year-old Martha Perez, her organs were removed on Friday against their wishes. Fox 4 spoke to the family before the removal and they said the third woman confirmed dead of injuries sustained in an Arlington wreck involving a suspected drunk driver was technically still alive.

     The Tarrant County medical examiner says Perez died Wednesday and doctors have declared Perez brain-dead, although the hospital declined to confirm that citing patient privacy. “But she still has heart and lung functions,” said family member Juan Martinez. “They took her off the life support and she was still breathing.”

First, “brain dead” is dead and the organ removal protocols would not require the removal of life support. More, if Perez was indeed breathing on her own, by definition, she wasn’t dead.

Now, see how a presumed consent would breed distrust and anger:

     Perez was a registered organ donor and doctors told the family they were prepared to harvest the organs for donations. Perez did not have a will or an advance directive that would have instructed doctors exactly what to do in regards to taking her off of life support.

     According to Martinez, the family felt it was too soon. “We don’t want to be pressured. My family feels pressured and it’s just hard for someone to make that kind of decision when this just happened,” Martinez said Friday before her organs were removed.

     Legal expert Jessice Dunne said the family has the legal right to keep Perez on life support if her organs are still functioning. If they stop, then it’s up to the hospital what to do. “We know we have to come to a decision but we aren’t going to let no hospital or no state make that decision for us,” Martinez said. That wasn’t the case as the hospital decided to move forward in the process.

Under presumed consent, anytime a hospital stopped life support and removed organs, loved ones could become similarly suspicious, feeling that a rushed decision was made because the organs mattered more than the patient.

(That seems to be the concern here because Perez had opted-in. Even so, permission is requested prior to procurement. This is the first case I have heard of where organs were taken under these circumstances without family permission. That could also sow distrust, but I don’t want to get into that now.)

The distrust would be especially acute in a medical system increasingly obsessed with cost control and in a milieu in which bioethics “experts” increasingly reject the sanctity/equality of human life in fabor of a utilitarian “quality of life” ethic.

I have no idea what happened in this case. But if we adopt an opt-out organ donation system, I will remove myself as an organ donor. I wouldn’t have enough trust to “leave it to the doctors” whether the time had come to harvest my organs.

By Wesley J. Smith, Human Exceptionalism

STOP ERA in the Illinois veto session.

We need your immediate help to phone and email your Illinois State Representative and urge a NO vote on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) could be voted on tomorrow when the Illinois House begins their veto session.  They will be in session Nov. 19-20, and Dec. 2-4 with additional days in early January before the new Illinois General Assembly begins.

The ERA has already been ratified by the Illinois Senate.  If the House ratifies it, it will help the unconstitutional "3 state strategy" gain traction and ultimately create a genderless society.

 

(1) Call the Capitol switchboard at 217-782-2000, and ask to be connected with your own State Representative, or visit: http://www.elections.il.gov/districtlocator/addressfinder.aspx and urge a NO vote on ERA.  It is very easy!  Call and email today!

 

(2) Spread the word to every pro-lifer you know!

 

ERA will require taxpayer funding of abortions. Several states have ruled that ERA requires taxpayer funding of Medicaid abortions because, since only women undergo abortions, the denial of taxpayer funding is "sex discrimination." (N.M. Right to Choose/NARAL v. Johnson, Nov. 25, 1998.) The same reasoning could extend to all insurance through Obamacare. We must NOT give courts the power to force us to pay for abortions!

 

Please call the Illinois Capitol office TODAY at 217-782-2000, ask to be connected with your State Representative, and urge a NO vote on ERA. (The operator will tell you who is your own Representative.) We must not let Illinois make the terrible mistake of voting for ERA.

 

What is the ERA?

 

The ERA is a U.S. Constitutional Amendment that has not yet been fully ratified.  The supporters of the amendment claim that if they can get 3 more states to ratify it, it will become a binding US Constitutional Amendment.  The main wording of the amendment reads:  "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." 

 

The amendment originally sought to give women equal rights, but its vague, overly broad language would actually harm women, their families, and our society by removing important legal safeguards. The ERA would create a genderless society by nullifying all laws and government practices that make any distinction based on gender.  The broad language of the ERA will empower the federal government to regulate every aspect of our lives.  An immediate example includes abortion.

 

Please call and email your state senator again and continue to encourage them to vote no on the ERA. Remind them that because the amendment is poorly worded, it will actually harm women by overturning many laws and practices that benefit women.  It will prohibit all restrictions on abortions.  Finally, the 3 state strategy being used to resurrect the legally dead ERA is in violation of the U.S. Constitution.  Encourage them to support women, their families, and our society by voting against the ERA (SJRCA 75).  If they want an amendment for women in the Constitution, encourage them to write a better amendment that doesn't bring about so much harm to women and our society.

 

What can I do?

 

(1) Please contact your State Representative today to urge them to vote NO on the Equal Rights Amendment.  You can find contact information for your state legislators at (217) 782-2000 or visit: http://www.elections.il.gov/districtlocator/addressfinder.aspx

 

(2) Please pass this on to others and encourage them to contact their state legislators too.

 

If we all take action, our voices will be heard.  Thanks for all you are doing to protect our families, our society and our religious freedoms! 

  

More information about the ERA:

 

There is currently an attempt to pass the original federal Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in Illinois in an effort to have three more states ratify the amendment.  The supporters of the ERA have a complex legal argument in which they claim that the time deadline of 1979 can be extended.  If three more states ratify the ERA, it could become a binding national constitutional amendment.  The Illinois House passed it in 2003, but it was blocked in the Illinois Senate.   The Equal Rights Amendment will not help women; instead it will harm women, their families, and our society.

 

The ERA will further entrench abortion in our society and legally mandate taxpayer funding for elective abortions. The New Mexico Supreme Court recently ruled under their state ERA that since only women undergo abortions, the denial of taxpayer funding is "sex discrimination" (N.M. Right to Choose/NARAL v. Johnson, 975 P.2d 841, 1998).

 

Clearly the ERA will harm women, families, society, and the structure of our government. Please contact your state senator and state representative today to urge them to vote NO on the Equal Rights Amendment.   You can find contact information for your state legislators at (217) 782-2000 or visit: http://www.elections.il.gov/districtlocator/addressfinder.aspx

Pro-abortion judge leaves case after public outcry

Following public pressure, a federal judge with past ties to Planned Parenthood has recused himself from an Ohio case involving the federally funded, nationwide abortion-provider.

Ohio law requires abortionists to have a transfer agreement with a private, nearby hospital in the event of a medical emergency from an abortion. But Planned Parenthood of Cincinnati was unable to find a hospital willing to connect with it and filed suit with federal judge Timothy Black against the state to overturn the law.

Now that Judge Black has stepped away from the case, pro-life organizations in Cincinnati are waiting to see which federal judge will deal with a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood against the state health department.

Paula Westwood of Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati tells OneNewsNow about the judge's past connections with Planned Parenthood.

"We put the information out that he has served as a past president and director of Planned Parenthood of Cincinnati," she explains. "He also served as its attorney – and as attorney he did target pro-life witnesses who had been [demonstrating] in front of Planned Parenthood."

According to Westwood, Black sought to have those pro-lifers held in contempt of court.

The pro-life spokeswoman shares that with release of that information, public pressure began to mount. "... I also am aware that people were making phone calls asking him to recuse himself," she continues. "It was a clear case of conflict of interest and it was a detriment to the judicial process – and we did learn on Saturday that it is official: he has recused himself ... reluctantly, but he has."

As yet, another judge has not been named to hear the case. Westwood says when it does go to court, one of the first objectives will be to ascertain why a federal court is being used to determine whether a state can regulate abortion and how.

By Charlie Butts, OneNewsNow.com

Republicans retain pro-life leadership: McConnell as incoming Senate majority leader, Boehner as Speaker

(right) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

The symbolism was perfect. A pro-life party makes huge gains November 4 and pro-life Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is elected unanimously as majority leader-elect today by the Republicans who will serve as senators in the Congress that convenes in January.

And McConnell, who was strongly supported by National Right to Life in his re-election bid against pro-abortion Alison Lundergan Grimes, is nominated by pro-life Sen. Kelly Ayotte (NH). His nomination is then seconded by incoming pro-life Senator-elect Tom Cotton (Ark.)

McConnell, first elected to the Senate in 1984, will officially become majority leader when the new Congress is sworn in January. McConnell has served as Senate minority leader during the past eight years.

Republicans picked up eight seats in the mid-term elections and have a strong chance to pick up a ninth next month in Louisiana, where pro-abortion Democrat Mary Landrieu is squaring off in a runoff December 6 against pro-life Republican Bill Cassidy.

On the Democratic side, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) has been tapped by his caucus to be the Senate minority leader come January.

(right) Pro-life Speaker of the House John Boehner

Over in the House, Republicans re-elected John Boehner (Ohio) as Speaker. New and re-elected members also returned Boehner’s top three leadership lieutenants: Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Ca.), Majority Whip Steve Scalise (La.), and GOP Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rogers (Wa.). As is Boehner, all three are pro-life.

Republicans have already gained 12 seats and could possibly equal or eclipse the 246 they won in 1946. There are 435 voting members in the House; 218 constitutes a majority, when all members vote.

House Democrats are expected to return pro-abortion Nancy Pelosi (Ca.) as House minority leader, although (as is the case with Sen. Reid) there is grumbling within the ranks after a tumultuous Tuesday.

Pelosi got into an argument today with reporters when they asked if she had considered stepping down from her leadership position.

By Dave Andrusko, NRL News Today

UK to Create “Suicide Courts?”

Talk about a death panel!

The House of Lords–pushed again to legalize assisted suicide–struggles with the nonsense of fashioning ”strict guidelines” to protect against abuse. (As I have repeatedly shown, guidelines don’t protect, they just give the illusion of control.)

The latest scheme is to create what could be called “suicide courts,” where suicidal people will ask a judge to approve their doctor-prescribed death. From the Independent story:

Judges could routinely be given the power of life or death over patients who are determined to die to end their suffering.

Proposals to use judges as the final arbiters of who can be helped to die go some way to satisfying opponents to Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill. Lord Pannick QC proposed judicial oversight in amendments to the Bill which went before the House of Lords yesterday.  The Lords, in the first Parliamentary vote on the Bill, gave it their approval.

This is nuts! This would be worse than Oregon, in some ways, more destructive than Belgium and the Netherlands!

Assisted suicide should be illegal because it amounts to a joint enterprise to end a human life.

With legalization, you have private transactions between doctors and suicidal patients. It’s wrong, but the government isn’t officially or directly involved in the death.

But a suicide court would make the government a direct participant in suicide. The State would be ruling that some lives are not worth living. It would give an explicit imprimatur to suicide.

That’s a huge and dangerous step that should never be taken.

And here’s the irony: The UK opposes the death penalty. Trying to accommodate the Culture of Death is driving us out of our minds.

By Wesley J. Smith

Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s great blog.

Should pro-life groups be forced to help destroy life?

Another legal challenge to ObamaCare that raises crucial questions related to other pro-life cases awaits a federal court decision within the next few months.

March for Life has challenged the Obama administration's mandate to provide free insurance coverage for contraception and abortion-causing drugs on a pro-life organization. ObamaCare, which forces employers – regardless of their moral convictions – to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs under threat of heavy financial penalties, has been under fire from pro-life organizations and Christian business owners.

Alliance Defending FreedomAlliance Defending Freedom is representing March for Life in the case. Elissa Graves, the ADF attorney on hand for arguments in federal district court in Washington, DC, tells OneNewsNow, "March for Life is an organization that holds 100-percent pro-life views based on science and ethics instead of religion. It advocates for life at all stages which includes from conception until death. Some of these drugs do have effect after conception."

As a pro-life organization, the attorney says, "March for Life should not be forced to help destroy life."

According to Graves, the presiding judge was very engaged during the court proceedings. "The judge was very interested in arguments for both sides and seemed to really know the arguments and asked a lot of great questions of both sides," she offers.

A similar lawsuit was brought by Priests for Life, a Catholic pro-life group that also objects to the mandate on religious grounds. Graves maintains that if courts can force coverage on groups like these two, they can likely compel all to do so.

ADF senior legal counsel Matt Bowman, who presented arguments Wednesday on behalf of March for Life said, "Pro-life organizations must be free to operate according to the beliefs they espouse. March for Life was founded to oppose the tragedy of abortion – the very thing the government is forcing the organization to provide through its health insurance plan."

Hobby Lobby, in a high-profile Supreme Court case ruling in June, won the right to exclude coverage for abortion-causing drugs on religious grounds.

Bowman added: "The government cannot selectively punish organizations that wish to abide by their beliefs."

By Charlie Butts, OneNewsNow.com

“This Time” is a powerful pro-life, pro-adoption video

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.”

So, why is “This Time” so effective?

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 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.

It would likely take something as powerful as a “picture” in her mind’s eye to convince her that this is desperately wrong. The abortion clinic staff is shown restraining her from leaving, which is not uncommon. They’ve seen it all before and, to them, this is just routine, last-minute panic.

But Sami’s teenage mother does make it to the phone to call for her own mother. The last scene is of her outside, visualizing her baby at three or four, just as her mother arrives to take her home.

The music, as you would expect from a multiple-Grammy-winning songwriter and producer, is just tremendous. The lyrics tell the story of why she ran to the abortion clinic….and why she chose life. (I will not spoil the delight you will experience by quoting the refrain that makes your heart soar.)

Take four minutes out of your busy day and watch “This Time.”  Believe me you’ll be forwarding this video to all your friends and family.

Garth Brooks’ Tender Ballad “Mom” is pro-life from beginning to end

Garth Brooks

Sundays are always hectic for the Andruskos, but especially yesterday. It was my wife’s birthday. We gathered at our oldest daughter’s home–our kids, our daughter-in-law, and our two grandkids—to celebrate Lisa as a wife, mom, grandmother, and mother-in-law.

Fortunately (I think that’s the right word), I had not had time to dial up some texts and emails that had been sent to me talking about this “tear-jerker of a song.” Well…today I had time to listen to Garth Brooks’ new song, titled simply “Mom.”

Oh, my goodness.

By now, I’m guessing that Garth’s tender performance of this song on Good Morning America has been seen by half of North America. He describes it as his second favorite (second only to “The Dance”) and it is easy to see why. Why it’s one of his two favorites and why every female in the GMA audience was weeping. (Confession: like Garth, I choked up as well.)

So what is “Mom” about? Glad you asked. The Don Sampson, Wynn Varble-penned ballad is a conversation between an unborn baby and (I will assume it’s a girl) her Maker. The “little baby”—considering the glory of where she is confesses that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to stay with God. That earth down there is awfulllly big and she is awfulllly small. Hey, God, you’re not mad at me, are you?

On the contrary, God responses, but there is somebody special who is waiting for you. Since everybody else has copied this stanza, I will, too.

So hush now, baby, don’t you cry
Cause there’s someone down there waiting
Whose only goal in life
is making sure you’re always going to be alright
A loving angel, tender, tough, and strong
It’s almost time to go and meet your mom.

Pass the Kleenex.

The song just grows more and more tender. God reminds the baby to listen closely. Mom is going to teach her the important stuff she needs to know. But good manners and laughing and loving, important as they are, are only minutiae in comparison to her most important task:

And she’ll put you on the path that’ll bring you back to me

You can watch Garth perform the song on GMA on a gazillion different spots. Here’s one.  The audience reaction is almost as remarkable as the song.

Great pro-life ballad from word one to word last.

On second thought, maybe it would have been a blessing to play Garth in honor of Lisa and all the other great moms who have chosen life. Even if (especially if?) we had all bawled like children, these moms deserve this tribute, and much, much more.

By Dave Andrusko

NRL News Today

Actress Ellen Barkin: ‘Fetuses,’ ‘Infants’ Not People Because They ‘Cannot Talk’

Ellen Barkin

Forget speaking for the voiceless – according to Hollywood.

Actress and abortion absolutist Ellen Barkin took to Twitter Nov. 1 to declare when life begins. (She’s not a scientist, but maybe she played one on TV once.) According to Barkin, a fetuses, babies and infants are not “persons” because they “cannot talk.” A Tony and Emmy award winner, Barkin has boasted roles in movies including, “The Big Easy,” “Sea of Love,” “Ocean’s Thirteen” and “Very Good Girls.”

“News flash…a fetus cannot talk,” Barkin tweeted. “It is not a person. Not even a baby, not even an infant. Nope. Sorry.”

In the past, Barkin proved she had no qualms about arguing abortion over Twitter, saying:

As a “pro-abortion” advocate, Barkin believes she’s really “pro-life:”

Besides warning that “Virginia Regulations Could Shutter Abortion Clinics” in 2012, Barkin is an Obama supporter (“if Obama loses the election,” then “a police state will be just around the corner”) and Wendy Davis advocate.

She also has a thing for mocking Christian conservatives, and her flip pro-abortion attitude compliments some of Lena Dunham’s past comments.

By Katie Yoder

Editor’s note. This appeared at newsbusters.org.

Suicide is not Dignity, it is Suicide

(Right) Wesley Smith

Beware movements that word engineer and deploy gooey euphemisms to further their agenda. It generally means there is something very wrong with the agenda.

In the wake of Brittany Maynard’s death, suicide promoters are now using the word “dignity” as a synonym for suicide, more than implying that dying naturally is not dignity.

That is not only cruel, it is wrong.

Dignity is intrinsic. Sick and dying people seeking to be assured they still have it look at us–our faces–like mirrors. If they see us thinking they are less than they once were, it can be devastating.

In the Guardian, Brian Smith–obviously no relation–says his father should have been able to commit dignity rather than die of old age and the effects of post-polio syndrome. From, “What Do You Tell Your Father When He’s Ready to Die?”

But over time, his body began to break down, and breathing became labored. The polio had come back, this time in the form of post-polio syndrome, which weakens muscles that were affected the first time around. Dad’s ailment would slowly strip him of his independence, his ability to move and, eventually, his ability to breathe. If this was death’s door, he was rapping it with what knuckles he could. His decline would last nearly a decade before his doctors gave up on treatments and assigned visits from hospice nurses.

For my father’s disease, there is no cure.

But there is always care–and love–which Smith family apparently gave dad in bounteous quantities. Good.

But Mr. Smith continued to decline:

As his days devolved into a drudgery of pills, bad daytime TV, and constant reliance on a breathing machine, Dad told us he was ready to die. “I’m done,” my father said. But choosing to die, or even assisting someone who wants to die, is a felony in California. Our options to humanely end the suffering were limited.

Self-starvation and dehydration remain the only legal ways to help someone choose when they die in the state. But few of us can muster the strength to starve to death, and caretakers – including Medicare-supported hospice nurses – are not in the business of starving people.

Saying, “I’m done,” isn’t the same thing as saying, “I want to commit suicide!.” Yet, that is what Smith wished for his father. Indeed, Smith never writes that his father asked to be killed.

I have been there. When my dad was dying of colon cancer, a moment came when he was sitting on his bed and we were talking. He suddenly looked up at me and sighed deeply with an expression that said, “I’m done,” more loudly than if he had uttered the words.

That wasn’t the same thing as saying, “Kill me.” Dad wasn’t saying, “Get me the poison pills.” He was saying, “I am done fighting.”

We moved to hospice mode, and he died a few months later–with true dignity. He did not commit suicide.

As the column notes, people can make themselves dead if they really want to. Do we really want to make suicide easier?

And note the consequences of accepting the destructive meme that suicide is dignity. One commenter takes Smith’s advocacy to its logical place:

The Oregon law is a good beginning, but it should apply also to those facing incurable pain, paralysis or imprisonment that could go on for years.

Exactly right. When it comes to assisted suicide, in for a penny, in for a pound.

The question isn’t terminal illness. Many people suffer more and for longer than the dying

The issue is whether facilitated suicide is a right. If it is, it can’t be limited to the dying. Indeed, perhaps other than to those with only a transitory desire to die, it can’t be limited at all.

So, let’s have an honest debate. A right to facilitated suicide? Yes or no. Just don’t call it “dignity.”

P.S. My good friend, the late poet and disability rights activist, Mark O’Brien, contracted polio at age 6 and lived the rest of his life in an iron lung. Mark was adamantly against assisted suicide. He too died from post-polio syndrome. He died with dignity, not by suicide.

By Wesley J. Smith

Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s great blog.

How Assisted Suicide Advocacy Hurts the Sick

Imagine you have Lou Gehrig’s disease. You know you are dying.

But your struggle is made even more difficult by advocates who claim:

1) You should commit suicide if you want “death with dignity;” and,

2) Your society should help you do it.

That was the circumstance in which my hospice patient–nay, good friend–Robert Salamanca found himself in the late 1990s. As the Supreme Court grappled with whether to create an assisted-suicide Roe v. Wade (it refused 9-0), the media covered the story like they just did Brittany Maynard–with ALS patients used as the bloody flag to create emotional support for doctor-prescribed death.

Bob was devastated by such advocacy. I will never forget coming to his house one day after one of the networks did a high-profile story on an ALS patient who wanted assisted suicide. He was livid: “They are trying to drive me from the well-lit boulevards into the dark alley,” he said angrily. 

Bob also told me that such advocacy made it harder to “keep moving forward,” e.g., to maintain an upbeat outlook and “get every moment that life still has to offer,” while constantly hearing that life with progressing disabilty wasn’t worth living and having to contend with pro-euthanasia fear-mongering that he would die “choking on his own spit” (to quote the lie uttered repeatedly on television by Jack Kevorkian’s odious lawyer, Geoffrey Feiger–including during a debate against me on Good Morning America.)

In fact, Bob had been suicidal. He had wanted to go to Kevorkian, but his family wouldn’t cooperate. And he was so glad! “I came out of the fog,” he told me. “I am so glad to still be alive.”

Bob was so incensed against assisted suicide that he wrote a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle. He told me that he hoped I would make use of his work in the continuing fight against assisted suicide. In that spirit–and as an antidote to all the Brittany Maynard media poison–I reprint his entire piece below:

I DON’T WANT A CHOICE TO DIE

By

Robert Salamanca

I have lived with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease) for seven years. On January 8, the Supreme Court heard arguments concerning whether terminally ill people have a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide. After the two-hour hearing, with its blending of emotion and law, the justices seemed highly skeptical.

I hope so. For as Chicago’s beloved Cardinal Joseph Bernardin wrote to the Supreme Court just before he died: “There can be no such thing as a ‘right to assisted suicide’ because there can be no legal and moral order which tolerates the killing of innocent human life, even if the agent of death is self-administered. Creating a new ‘right’ to assisted suicide will endanger society and send a false signal that a less than ‘perfect’ life is not worth living.”

Euthanasia advocates believe they are doing people like me a favor. They are not. The negative emotions toward the terminally ill and disabled generated by their advocacy is actually at the expense of the “dying” and their families and friends. We often feel disheartened and without self-assurance because of a false picture of what it is like to die created by these enthusiasts who prey on the misinformed.

What we, the terminally ill, need is exactly the opposite — to realize how important our lives are. And our loved ones, friends, and, indeed, society need to help us feel that we are loved and appreciated unconditionally.

Instead, reporting in the media too often makes us feel like token presences, burdens who are better off dead. For example, in a recent ABC “Nightline,” Ted Koppel interviewed a pro-euthanasia supporter with ALS who announced to the world that he was going to take his life on a specific date. He felt he was obligated to do so because of his beliefs and the terminal situation of his disease. I found this act of showboating pretentious and ABC’s presentation of his condition exploitive. Mr. Koppel asked him why he had not yet taken his life and his only answer was… no answer. It was obvious to me that despite what he said, this man really wanted to live. Indeed, the people around him urged him to live. He listened. He did not commit suicide but died a peaceful and natural death with loved ones at his side.

Many pro-euthanasia groups “showcase” people with ALS. They portray us as feeble, unintelligible and dying by slow suffocation. This is absolutely false, and I protest their efforts vehemently. By receiving proper medical care, a terminally ill person can pass away peacefully, pain-free and with dignity. We are not people just waiting for someone to help us end our misery, but to the contrary, we are people reaching out to love… to be loved… wanting to feel life at its best.

Too many people have accepted the presumption that an extermination of some human lives can be just. Are we becoming a society so starved for heroes that we are too quick to embrace the Jack Kevorkians of the world? Where has our sense of community gone? True, terminal illness is frightening, but the majority of us overpower the symptoms and are great contributors to life.

If physician-assisted suicide is legally available, the right to die may become a duty to die. The hopelessly ill may be subtly pressured to get their dying over with — not only by cost-counting providers but by family members concerned about burdensome bills, impatient for an inheritance, exhausted by care-giving or just anxious to spare a loved one further suffering.

In my view, the pro-euthanasia followers’ posture is a great threat to the foundation upon which all life is based, and that is hope. I exhort everyone: Life is worth living, and life is worth receiving. I know. I live it every day.

________________________________________

Robert Salamanca, of Pleasanton, CA, is living intensely with ALS. His article originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, 2/19/97, and is reprinted here with the author’s permission.

Bob died peacefully–with dignity–of ALS in his sleep. I was honored to give his eulogy.

By Wesley J. Smith, Human Exceptionalism