EMILY’s List up to no good

(Pictured: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker)

Quick. What comes to mind when I say, “EMILY’s List”?

Radical pro-abortion feminist PAC which distributes its considerable largesse only to pro-abortion female Democrats who toe EMILY List’s extremist line.

What you might not know is that they are already loaded for bear, 21 months out from the 2016 presidential election. Thanks to Real Clear Politics’ Caitlin Huey-Burns, we have some insight into what they are planned to do to smear pro-life Republican presidential candidates.

(Pictured: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie)

First, the “war on women” may have been an unmitigated disaster for them in 2014, but that doesn’t mean they don’t intend to resuscitate this misleading and dishonest slur. They will just expand the range of differences on issues which they will insist constitutes a second-generation “war on women” and then feign indignation when their targets fight back.

Second, according to Huey-Burns,
With the help of EMILY’s List, Democrats are already laying down markers on GOP candidates. This week, the group that supports pro-choice female Democratic candidates launched a new campaign that will document each time a Republican candidate “ignores, insults, or offends” American women. The “Insult & Injury” initiative, first shared with RealClearPolitics, includes digital advertising and graphics that can be shared via social media.

(Pictured: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush)

To put it mildly, EMILY’s List and its fellow pro-abortion Democrats have incredibly thin skin. Ignoring, insulting, or offending “American women” means any comment that pro-abortionists can take out of context, magnify, and distort (which, of course, was par for the course for the phony baloney “war on women”). Or if you simply disagree with them, that’ll suffice.

And, third, as NRL News Today has written about extensively, the abortion issue will be stuffed into a duffel bag of issues—“contraception access and pay equity” and opposition to Planned Parenthood, for example—with an “economic security” label slapped on the side. Why? For the same reason support for abortion rarely stands alone: it’s a losing proposition for pro-abortionists.

There is potentially a huge field of Republican presidential candidates. Huey-Burns mentions only some: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, all of whom are pro-life.

Is there a chance of overkill? Is their likelihood of overkill? I would say yes to both. Why?

(Pictured: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio)

Think of some of the attack dogs pro-abortionists have used, such as Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. At the drop of a hat—or an imaginary “insult”—they go nuclear.

And look what happened in Colorado. Pro-abortion incumbent Senator Mark Udall (D) was so over the top that the Denver Post (no friend to Republicans) threw its editorial weight behind NRLC-endorsed Rep. Cory Gardner (R) who won last November.

Lynn Bartels of the Post affixed the moniker “Mark Uterus” to Udall and joked that if the race were a movie, it would be set in a gynecologist’s office.

As for the Republicans, they did not seem particularly worried, according to Huey-Burns, “arguing that such attempts failed in the midterms. Hillary Clinton spotlighted many of the same issues while campaigning for Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky, but the Senate hopeful lost to Mitch McConnell, even among women.”

Nothing was or is more predictable than that pro-abortionists would smear pro-life Republican men (and women, for that matter). When you got nothing to offer the American people, slinging mud would be, for them, taking the high road.

By Dave Andrusko, NRL News Today

Planned Parenthood Study Supports Their Profitable Chemical Abortion Protocol

One of Planned Parenthood large affiliates has just published a study that they assert shows that the abortion drugs mifepristone (RU-486) and misoprostol can be used safely and effectively following a different protocol than the one laid out by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

No real surprise there – Planned Parenthood has a lot of money and its reputation riding on the outcome. But facts are stubborn things. The data show that risks still remain, that follow up is lax, and that they really don’t know what happened to a lot of their patients, despite putting a lot of women through a whole lot of misery.

A different protocol

The study, “Efficacy and safety of medical abortion using mifepristone and buccal misoprostol through 63 days” was published online January 14, 2105, and is slated to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Contraception.

Two of the three authors are from Planned Parenthood’s Los Angeles affiliate. The patients from the study were drawn from “Our large network of urban healthcare centers in the Los Angeles, California area, [which] includes 19 health centers providing approximately 15,000 abortions a year, of which about 30% are medical abortions.”

The study followed 13,373 women who came in for abortions between April 1, 2008, and May 31, 2011. The chemical abortion regimen consisted of 200 milligrams of mifepristone (RU-486) followed by an at-home dose of 800 micrograms of misoprostol taken bucally (under the cheek or gum) 24-28 hours after the mifepristone.

Two immediate contrasts. The FDA protocol involved 600 milligrams of mifepristone followed by 400 micrograms of misoprostol taken orally at a return visit to the clinic two days after the first.
And while the FDA protocol also limited use to the first 49 days after a woman’s last menstrual period (LMP), Planned Parenthood aborted women who were as many as 63 days LMP.

The authors concluded that their study reinforced the safety and efficacy of their regimen.
Why do they want to change the regimen?

Before getting into the data, let us look for a moment at why Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry have such a problem with the FDA protocol.

The official focus is allegedly on increased safety and efficacy (for the woman). However the changes just happen to have the fortuitous side effect of making things easier and much more profitable for the abortion industry. Here’s how.

Mifepristone sells for about a $90 a pill, while generic misoprostol can be purchased for less than a dollar a pill. By reducing the dose of mifepristone from the FDA’s recommended three pills to one, and doubling the dose of the cheaper misoprostol, as Planned Parenthood has done in this “study,” there’s more money to be made.

Allowing women to take the second drug (misoprostol) at home rather than return to the clinic saves the clinic the space and time of additional appointments so that they can set that aside for other customers.

Likewise, extending the cutoff date by two weeks from 49 days to 63 days LMP means a bigger pool of customers.

Whether women’s chemical abortions supposedly get safer or not, take note that industry leaders like Planned Parenthood stand to gain more customers and make more money with these changes.

Study Results

As mentioned earlier, Planned Parenthood looked at the outcomes for 13,373 chemical abortion patients over a five year period. Of this number, the authors claim that 13,066, or 97.7%, were “successful.”

Seventy patients had an “aspiration for ongoing pregnancy” and 237 had “aspiration for symptoms.” There were just two cases of infections among the group and four cases requiring transfusions.

This was supposed to offer an improvement over results from the study the FDA used to justify its protocol when it approved mifepristone in September of 2000. Using the results of an April 30, 1998, study from the New England Journal of Medicine, that protocol showed diminishing “success” rates with time: 92% at 49 days LMP, 83% at 56 days LMP, and 77% at 63 days LMP. This decreased “efficacy” prompted the FDA to limit use of the drug to 49 days.

The authors here argue that by comparison, this demonstrates that their method is more effective and can be used later than the FDA limit.

“This study reinforces the safety and efficacy of the regimen for medical abortion … through 63 days estimated gestational age, and contributes to the existing evidence against restrictions requiring use of the FDA-approved regimen in the United States,” the report’s authors wrote.
Let’s see if that’s true.

Measuring “Efficacy”

The authors say that “The primary outcome of interest was successful abortion,” and the abortion was deemed “successful” if there was “expulsion of the pregnancy without the need for aspiration.”

A few things worth noting here. Abortion, not patient comfort or safety, was the criteria for success. If a woman aborted, but suffered a major injury, as long as she did not have an “aspiration,” it would, by this standard, be successful.

Also, “success” rates may have been, in some cases, boosted by extra doses of misoprostol.

While the study used by the FDA tallied “success” or failure after a single course of the drugs and an assessment at the end of two weeks, the Planned Parenthood study “allowed for repeat doses of misoprostol for patients who had an incomplete abortion.” This means what would have been counted as a “failure” in the original study could have been listed as a “success” in the latest from Planned Parenthood. This would inflate the study’s “success” rate.

The precise number receiving this extra dose is unclear, though 87 in a subgroup of about half 7,335) did receive a repeat of misoprostol. Without this modification, efficacy rates would have been lower.

A different process?

Some may argue that modification of the protocol doesn’t matter as long as efficacy was increased. However when misoprostol becomes the primary drug, this moves towards becoming a different procedure entirely.

And this does matter. Misoprostol, developed and FDA approved as an anti-ulcer drug, has been found to function as a stand-alone abortifacient. But it has never been tested by the manufacturer or approved by the FDA for that purpose. That means that there is no standard protocol or any official guidelines about contraindications, over dosages, or side effects.

Lacking government approval, the drug is sold on the black market in the U.S. and elsewhere, but those who use it may have limited information on its risks for mother and child. Off-label use in Brazil, for example, has been associated with the birth of children with hydrocephaly, partial facial paralysis, clubfeet, or fused or missing fingers and toes. A February 2007 report from Obstetrics & Gynecology tells of a death associated with what appeared to be a misoprostol overdose during an attempted abortion in Portugal.

Even with the repeated doses of misoprostol, there was still a drop-off in efficacy the farther along the pregnancy. It was not as dramatic as in the study from the U.S. trials of the drug, but it was clear nonetheless. Measured in terms of requiring “aspiration for ongoing pregnancy” or “aspiration for symptoms,” rates for women 57-63 days LMP (4.12%) were more than twice what they were for women 43-49 days (1.7%), the FDA’s original limit.

Counting Complications

The criteria the study uses to measure significant complications is whether or not the woman was hospitalized, reporting those only in situations where there was an infection or a transfusion was required. By this measure, there were two patients with infections and four who needed transfusions.

Four otherwise healthy women having to go to the hospital for transfusions simply after taking a drug is a big deal in itself. But it isn’t clear that these were the only ones dealing with excessive bleeding.

Remember that 237 women taking the drugs ended up having “aspiration for symptoms.” The examples of symptoms given are “pain or bleeding.” That would make bleeding a bigger issue.

Lower rates of infection may be due to an addition of a prophylactic antibiotic to the protocol, but this may come at a price. The FDA says on its “Postmarket Drug Safety Information for Patients and Providers” webpage that the “FDA does not have sufficient information to recommend the use of prophylactic antibiotics for women having a medical abortion… Prophylactic antibiotic use carries its own risk of serious adverse events such as severe or fatal allergic reactions. Also, prophylactic use of antibiotics can stimulate the growth of ‘superbugs,’ bacteria resistant to everyday antibiotics.”

The published data does not reveal whether this means there were no further instances of infection, excessive bleeding, no ectopic pregnancies, no episodes of diarrhea, vomiting (that were themselves serious enough in other trials to warrant some hospitalizations), or other significant adverse events.

This of course, tells us nothing about the outcome for the 2,517 chemical abortion patients of whom Planned Parenthood lost track.

Missing Patients

The original number of chemical abortion patients was not 13,373, but 15,890. This means that there were 2,517 patients (15.8%) missing from the data set, who were excluded from the analysis.
Most of these were patients who never returned for their follow up visits (2,470), but there were also 20 excluded for missing data on gestational age. Twenty-seven were left off because they changed their minds and did not complete the chemical abortion process

Some of those 27 who changed their minds may have opted for a surgical abortion or were past the gestational limit. But others simply “began the regimen but did not take all of the medications.” The authors do not seem to want to admit that some women may have changed their minds about aborting entirely, hoping their babies would service.

Hasty Conclusions

The researchers from Planned Parenthood look at these study results and conclude that “This study adds to the growing literature supporting provision of medical abortions using evidence-based regimens, and supports the conclusion that legislative efforts to restrict medical abortion to the FDA regimen are based on political goals to restrict abortions services, not efficacy or patient safety.”

While on paper, they are reporting higher efficacy and safety rates, high numbers of missing patients from this study (and from similar ones) make one wonder if these are legitimate conclusions. Women with serious problems may have simply skipped the clinic and gone on to the emergency room, where they may or may not have told the attending physician they had taken the abortion drugs. Other women may have changed their minds once the abortion did not occur, deciding to give birth.

In any case, even in this self-serving study, the risk of failure and safety issues still remain, as does the physical and psychological ordeal of every chemical abortion. A baby still dies, a mother still goes through great pain and agony, and an abortion clinic figures out how to make more money out of the whole deal.

By Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., NRL Director of Education & Research via NRL News Today

“Selectively Reducing” Our Humanity

Every so often you run across one of those stories that you simply will never forget. If you are a man, often those stories will tell a tale of powerlessness, of an inability to save your unborn child. Because that could be YOU, that utter inability to perform your basic duty—to protect your family—is something that saps your soul and sends chills up and down your spine.

Such is the story, “The New Scar on My Soul,” which ran at americanthinker.com.

The author is anonymous. I will provide only a few details here because you really do need to read this dirge, this lament from the bottom of his soul.

The outline is simply that having conceived one child via IVF (“the light of our lives”), the couple decided they wanted another child. The doctors implanted three embryos, all “took,” but his wife decided she would not carry three babies.

She would not carry two babies. She would “selectively reduce” triplets to one baby (in the abortion trade the survivor is glibly described as a “singleton.”)

His sad account is of his futile efforts to dissuade her; of the lies they are told about how the babies will die; of his wife’s ambivalence until the very end; of the horror of having to choose between one baby and “none”; implicitly, of the damage done to his marriage; and of the punishment he believes he deserves “For I have failed, intentionally and knowingly, in the first duty of a parent: protecting the lives of two of my children.”

The author bares his soul to the reader. After you read “The New Scar on My Soul,” please be sure to say a prayer for him, his wife, the son who is already with them, and for the child she is carrying.

By Dave Andrusko, NRL News Today

Why abortion is not a “reproductive right”

This week, my colleagues and volunteers and I are at the University of Central Florida, debating university students on abortion and making the case, through conversational apologetics and abortion victim photography, that abortion is a human rights violation. As the inevitable pro-abortion protestors began to show up with their hand-made signs, I noticed that one argument was surfacing more often than most: “Reproductive rights are human rights.”

Like virtually all of pro-“choice” rhetoric, this statement is scientifically illiterate and misses the point entirely. Our case against abortion is a simple one: Human beings have human rights. Human rights begin when the human being begins, or we are simply excluding a group of human beings based on arbitrary criteria—in the case of abortion, age. Any inclusive human rights doctrine must protect all human beings.

We are not talking about the woman’s right to decide whether or not she wants to bring a child into the world. We are talking about whether or not we should have the right to violently kill a child that already exists. Abortion does not prevent a man and a woman from conceiving a child together. Abortion is a process that violently decapitates, dismembers, and disembowels a unique and unrepeatable human being, a son or daughter, that has already been conceived.
This is very simple.

The discussion about preventing life from coming into being is a religious and a moral question. The discussion surrounding the violent taking of another human life is certainly a moral question, but it is also a human rights question. Do we have the right to kill innocent human beings? No one who wishes to possess a consistent and morally coherent view of human rights can answer “Yes.”

Editor’s note. This appeared at unmaskingchoice.ca.

By Jonathon Van Maren via NRL News Today

Pro-abortion Justice Ginsburg on Roe, Casey, and retirement

Pictured: MSNBC’s Irin Carmon interviewing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

There are some prerogatives if you are co-authoring a book about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. For example, you get to interview her at the Supreme Court and act like chums, as was the case with MSNBC’s Irin Carmon.

I’ve only seen the transcript of the entire interview, not the actual interview that appeared Monday on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” I hope to do that later today. In the meanwhile let’s talk about a few of the more interesting insights into Justice Ginsburg that came out of the interview.

#1. How appropriate in describing the status of abortion laws prior to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that Ginsburg would radically understate what the situation was–just as the breadth and depth of Roe is minimized to this day.

Justice Ginsburg told Carmon

Remember that before Roe v. Wade was decided, there were four states that allowed abortion in the first trimester if that’s what the woman sought. New York, Hawaii, California, Alaska.

Truth be told, abortion was essentially legal on demand in those states throughout almost the entirety of the second trimester.

#2. Most pro-abortionists rent their garments at the thought of the 1992 Casey decision which pried open the door allowing the passage of commonsensical pro-life measures that heretofore the High Court had rejected. Ginsburg has a different—or additional—take. (Her response was in the context of whether the Court would overturn Roe and Ginsburg cited the Court’s adherence to precedent in explaining why she thought they wouldn’t.)

They gave a reason [in Casey], a rationale that was absent in Roe v. Wade itself. Roe v. Wade was as much about a doctor’s right to practice his profession as he sees fit. And the image was the doctor and a little woman standing together. We never saw the woman alone. The Casey decision recognized that this is not as much about a doctor’s right to practice his profession, but about a woman’s right to control her life destiny.

Surely it was true that if you read Justice Blackmun’s opinions in Roe (and the companion case, Doe v. Bolton), it was at least as much about deference to physicians as it was to extending the “right” to abortion to women.

In Casey, by contrast, some of the justices soared off into metaphysical ramblings—specifically in its so-called “mystery passage.”

They asserted that the abortion liberty is necessary in order “to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

“Beliefs about these matters,” says the Court, “could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.”

#3. Ginsburg gave no hint she has any intention of retiring soon. “I’m concerned about doing the job full steam,” she told Carmon. “And I’ve said many times, once I sense that I am slipping, I will step down.”

As you may remember, periodically “liberals” will suggest she step down so that President Obama could nominate her successor. The last time Ginsburg addressed this idea she was pretty hostile.

In her interview with Carmon, asked “what you want your successor to look like?,” Ginsburg responded, “My successor will be the choice of whatever president is sitting at that time.” And

#4. Carmon asks, “And when the time comes, what would you like to be remembered for?” Justice Ginsburg answered

Someone who used whatever talent she had, to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has.

But in the abortion context, Ginsburg did not help repair tears. In her work at the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, she helped pave the way for Roe and Doe.

In her many years on the bench, she has helped delay the day when the deep gash in our hearts and our Constitution is mended.

You can read the entire interview here.

By Dave Andrusko, NRL News Today

Chicago Tribune Publishes Major Story on Abortion Clinic That Refuses to Pay $36,000 Fine Following Woman’s Death

The Pro-Life Action League has been following the story of the Women’s Aid Clinic abortion facility closely for the past three years, and we’re pleased that it’s finally receiving thorough treatment from a major media outlet.

Today’s Chicago Tribune has a major front-page article on the Women’s Aid facility, whose owner, Larisa Rozansky, still has not paid the $36,000 fine assessed by the State of Illinois in 2011.

Abortion clinic moves, changes name, claims it doesn’t exist

The massive fine was assessed in response to a host of serious violations discovered by state inspectors, including failure to perform CPR on 18-year old Antonesha Ross, who died following an abortion performed there in 2009.

Since that time, Rozansky closed out the Women’s Aid Clinic bank account, dissolved the company, changed its name to Women’s Aid Center and moved to a different location — although the “Center” continued to use the same website and phone number, and for a period of time, even processed credit cards via the same Merchant Services account number as the “Clinic.”

When the state reminded Rozansky that in March 2012 that paying the $36,000 fine wasn’t optional, her response was that Women’s Aid Clinic “does not exist,” and so the state was out of luck.

In a January 2014 court hearing—which I attended—Rozansky’s attorney, Scott Skaletsky, argued that Women’s Aid Clinic and Women’s Aid Center were two “totally different businesses,” and that when Women’s Aid Clinic closed in March 2012, it had a mere $77 in its bank account. Skaletsky then told Cook County Judge Alexander White that Rozansky would be willing to write a check to the state for $77 to “make this go away.”

Unbelievably, Judge White actually bought that argument. In response, the Pro-Life Action League asked Illinois residents to take action by calling the office of State Attorney General Lisa Madigan and urging her to appeal the judge’s ruling. Her office did ultimately appeal the ruling, and the case is currently in the Illinois Appellate Court, where both parties are filing brief for oral arguments (the date for which has yet to be determined).

“For them not to pay the fine…it’s not right.”

Today’s Chicago Tribune article by reporter Nara Schoenberg—totaling over 2,200 words—is one of the most comprehensive articles I’ve read about an abortion clinic in a major news outlet in some time. Particularly noteworthy is the detailed account Schoenberg gives regarding the negligent treatment Antonesha Ross received on the day she died.

The abortion took about five minutes, after which Ross had difficulty breathing and began coughing up fluid and blood, although clinic employees didn’t call an ambulance until 40 minutes later. Then, Schoenberg notes, they merely “[offered] her a bag to breathe into” but didn’t bother performing CPR.

Schoenberg also includes some very emotional remarks from one of Ross’s close relatives:

“At the end of the day, there is a young lady that is gone, and she cannot see her children grow up, and her family misses her,” said Ross’ cousin Janell Austin Tuft of College Park, Ga. “And for us to not get justice — for them not to pay the fine — it’s not right. It’s just not right.”

Horrific conditions found by state inspectors

Schoenberg also goes into detail on what Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) officials found when they paid a visit to Women’s Aid in 2011:

In an operating room that hadn’t been used for two days, five insulin syringes were found outside of their protective packaging. The anesthesia cart contained about 28 vials of expired medication, including about 20 vials that had expired more than a year earlier. 

The inspector found medications and frozen dinners stored in a biohazard refrigerator that also contained fetal or placental tissue, according to the report, and a recovery room technician was observed taking a paper towel from the garbage and using it to cover a tray used to serve food to patients. … 

After the inspection, the state suspended the clinic’s license on an emergency basis, citing conditions that were “directly threatening to the public interest, health, safety and welfare,” and fined the clinic $36,000. [emphasis added]

It’s also worth noting that this was the first time Women’s Aid had been inspected in 15 years.

Abortion clinic owner claims she is the victim

Rozansky herself is quoted in the article on a couple of occasions, and makes no bones about claiming that she is the one who’s the victim. Here’s one example:

“I tried to help women to get legal abortions,” Rozansky said. “If someone wants to work against that, there’s nothing I can do.”

Here’s another (referring to the January 2014 Cook County court hearing):

At one point, Rozansky blamed the fine on the age of her medical equipment — a relatively small factor, inspection records show, compared with the lack of proper nursing personnel and the lapse in Ross’ care.
“That’s why I was fined: because the equipment was old,” Rozansky told the judge. “So I gave it away.”

“So I gave it away.”  Think about that for a second.

It doesn’t take much common sense to know what should be done with old—and, more to the point, unsafe—medical equipment: It should be disposed of.  But instead, abortion clinic owner Larisa Rozansky gave it away, presumably to be used again.

Expired medications, frozen dinners in biohazard freezers, giving a dying woman a paper bag instead of performing CPR, failing to dispose of unsafe medical equipment…and Larisa Rozansky claims that she and her abortion clinic are the ones being victimized.

Such complete and total disregard for basic health and safety and utter contempt for the law illustrate how incredible it is that Illinois does not require regular inspections of abortion facilities, to say nothing of the fact that several other abortion facilities in the state—including all of those run by Planned Parenthood—are not subject to inspection at all.

“Safe and legal”? You be the judge.

By  John Jansen, Pro-Life Action League

“Starve Alzheimer’s Patients” Pushed Again

The principle that all patients must always receive humane care is under pronounced assault in bioethics, Indeed, some bioethicists now argue that nursing homes should be required to starve Alzheimer’s patients to death–even if they willingly eat, and presumably even if the patient begs for food–if so instructed in an advance medical directive.

To show you how the culture of death corrupts, spoon feeding isn’t a medical treatment. It is basic humane care–akin to keeping clean, warm, or turning to prevent bed sores. Just as the latter three would never be withheld regardless of an advance directive, neither should food and water!

But suicide pushers now teach people how to kill themselves by starvation, called “voluntary stop eating and drinking” (VSED) in the culture of death trade. So, these bioethicists say that those who aren’t competent to commit VSED, should have the right to have others kill them slowly by refusing to provide them food and water when they are capable of eating and drinking by mouth.

“VSED-by-proxy” is supported increasingly in high places. For the second time (that I know of), a supportive article was published in the prestigious Hastings Center Report. From, “Controlling the End Game of Dementia,” by Paul T. Menzel and M. Colette Chandler-Cramer:

Advance directives to withhold food and water by mouth add an important option not contingent on happening to need life-sustaining treatment. Existing U.S. law does not provide such directives a bright green light, but it provides considerable logical support.

Competent patients already have the legal right to die by stopping eating and drinking, as well as the legal right to direct refusal of treatment in advance, including treatments absolutely necessary for continued life. So if becoming incompetent doesn’t cause someone to lose her rights but only means the rights have to be invoked by a proxy, why should becoming incompetent cause someone to lose the right to die by refusing to eat and drink?

Understand: This is not refusing a feeding tube–which is deemed medical treatment and can be refused by advance directive. Ditto, antibiotics, etc…

Rather, to repeat myself so that the point is sure to sink in–it would force nursing homes and care facilities to starve patients to death who willingly eat and drink!

The advocacy strategy here, of course, is to allow lethal injecting Alzheimer’s patients, e.g., “Why should we be forced to starve these people when we could easily inject them?” The answer is: We shouldn’t starve them! 

The way things are going, the only people allowed in medicine will be those willing to kill. How scary is that?

By: Wesley J. Smith Human Exceptionalism Life and dignity

Iowa Supreme Court to hear challenge to Iowa law banning webcam abortions next month

(Photo: Christopher Gannon/The Des Moines Register)

If there is a “face” of webcam abortions, clearly it is the massive Planned Parenthood of the Heartland (home headquarters, Des Moines, Iowa). More than 6,800 women have had abortions using the system since PPH began webcam abortions in 2008. When a woman has a webcam abortion, she never sees the abortionist in person, a condition the Iowa Board of Medicine found unacceptable.

In its September 2013 decision, the Board of Medicine required abortionists to see the women in person and perform physical examinations before dispensing abortifacients. Women were also required to do in-person follow-up visits.

That decision was upheld last August by a district judge, and PPH appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court. Yesterday the Des Moines Register reported that the court will hear the case next month.
Oral arguments are set for March 11, according to the Register’s Tony Leys.

However the system is still operational, because last September the Iowa Supreme Court put a stay on Polk County District Court Judge Jeffrey Farrell’s decision.

Webcam abortions are an integral part of the long-term strategy of the Abortion Industry. As NRLC’s Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon explained to NRL News Today, web-cam abortions are built around a system which makes it possible for the abortionist and the pregnant woman never to be in the same room.

It is designed to expand the number of abortions by reaching “underserved” populations, largely in rural areas. Here’s how webcam abortions works.

An abortionist back at a hub clinic teleconferences with a patient at one of the smaller satellite offices, reviews her case, and asks a couple of questions. If satisfied, he clicks a mouse, remotely unlocking a drawer at her location. In that drawer are the abortion pills which make up the two-drug abortion technique (RU-486 and a prostaglandin). She takes the RU-486 there and takes the rest of the pills home to administer to herself later.

In its lawsuit PPH contended, “The rule was promulgated solely for the purpose of preventing access to early abortion, and for no legitimate purpose relating to the health and well-being of Iowa women.” Not so, said the Board of Medicine in papers filed with Judge Farrell.

Lawyers for the Board noted that only physicians may provide abortions under Iowa law. “The board said providing abortion pills falls under that requirement,” Leys reported last year.

“Abortion-inducing drugs are not over the counter medications,” the state lawyers wrote. “Unless and until such a time when abortion-inducing drugs are no longer required to be dispensed by physicians, physicians must do so within the confines of the standard of care. The Board of Medicine determined the standard of care requires a physical examination prior to dispensing abortion-inducing drugs.”

The case is potentially hugely important for the Abortion Industry. Using a video-conferencing system (which PPH likes to call “telemedicine”), a single abortionist could “supervise” many, many times the number of women he could actually abort, were he to be required to be in her presence. The added revenue is staggering.

Responding to public concerns expressed in an Iowa Right to Life petition signed by 20,000 Iowans, and a formal petition presented by 14 Iowa medical professionals challenging the safety of web-cam abortions, the Iowa Board of Medicine met June 28, 2013, to consider new rules to govern the practice. The August 28 meeting, which lasted 3 ½ hours, was to give the public the opportunity to comment on the proposed new rules. The new rules were adopted a few days later on an 8-2 vote.

By Dave Andrusko, NRL News Today

Baby girl survives cancer detected before birth

After suffering the loss of a child through miscarriage, Lisa and Anthony Smith were elated to know they were expecting a baby girl. That is, until “joy soon turned to terror” when doctors detected a tennis ball sized tumor on the baby’s neck at 32 weeks.

Lisa expressed how they “were terrified. I couldn’t bear to think of her having cancer as an adult, let alone ­before she was born.”

As a mom, she “just had to pray that she [Jenna] would be able to survive.”

Before the umbilical cord was even cut, a tracheotomy was performed to allow baby Jenna to breath. She underwent chemotherapy and recently celebrated Christmas with a small neck tube as the only visible sign of the fight she has won at such a young age.

Doctors expect treatment to end this month and to start working toward removing the tube next month.

Recovering from the unexpected events of the last year, Anthony is “so incredibly proud. Jenna’s the strongest one of all of us. She’s been the one carrying us.”

By Laura Peredo via NRL News Today

Editor’s note. This appeared at http://liveactionnews.org/baby-girl-survives-cancer-detected-before-birth/#more-59477

Hold the presses, pro-abortionist discovers pro-lifers help pregnant women

The site is called “Creative Loafing Charlotte,” and I know nothing about it other than I ran across it when an article popped up titled “Pro-lifers have a new weapon: Tenderness.”

Much—most–of Emiene Wright’s column is just the usual filler. Pro-life legislation is out of whack—never mind that every demographic, including young people and women, support the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

Pro-lifers who are out front legislatively and at rallies are grumpy old geezers comfortable with fire and brimstone rhetoric—never mind that this is a reassuring stereotype that pro-abortionists cling to regardless of all evidence to the contrary.

But the story is interesting because Wright, who describes herself as a “staunch believer in the right for safe and legal access to abortion,” did a “little reconnaissance on ‘the enemy’s’ doings” and found, to her surprise, that not all pro-lifers have horns protruding from their foreheads.

Lo and behold, she discovered (much to her surprise) was that there are pro-life organizations that help women through crisis pregnancies and beyond. Now you and I know that women-helping centers are as old as the Pro-Life Movement itself, but lots of other people don’t.

Wright also discovered a “pregnancy ultrasound bus” (which has been borrowed from Help Crisis Ministry) that offers ultrasounds and counseling to women considering an abortion.

Even as she devotes 3/4ths of her piece to lambasting “junior pastors,” Wright can’t evade the truth that “there a secondary cadre” that “passed out pamphlets and drew people into more personal conversations, answering theoretical and often very personal questions as to what they believed and why.”

Two quick concluding thoughts. First, a seed was planted in Wright’s brain. It is unlikely to flourish because chances are that it will not be watered by Wright looking further into what CPCs and Women-Helping Centers do for young girls and women facing crisis pregnancy.

Second, it is precisely these organizations that NARAL has in its crosshairs. NARAL will grind out phony baloney “studies” that “prove” CPCs are misleading pregnant women when, in fact, what they are doing is simply telling truths about abortion that are threatening to NARAL and its sister organizations.

To the Abortion Establishment, abortion is routine, therefore it is beyond good and evil (although they believe it is a good) simply because it is. Would that logic work if the topic were domestic abuse? Should we not condemn spousal abuse just because it is? Of course not.

The pro-life house has many rooms. Some are occupied by legislative activists, others by people who put their energies into electoral politics, still others by those whose mission it is to help women who are pregnant and do not know what to do.

Each does critically important work.

By Dave Andrusko, NRL News Today

Abortion Industry panicky over Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act

Carol Joffe is an old hand in the abortion advocacy business. We’ve written about her more than once [see nrlc.cc/16PnI9y and nrlc.cc/1KEUetU].

But, wow, what a quote she gave to Esme E. Deprez, writing about legislation to ban dismemberment abortions for Bloomberg News.

“Abortion care can be, in the abstract, deeply upsetting and the anti-abortion movement using the word ‘dismemberment’ is not an accident,” said Carole Joffe, a reproductive health sociologist at the University of California at San Francisco. “It puts the pro-choice movement on the defensive.”

Before unpacking that statement, let’s go back to 2012 and something Joffe said then about her pro-abortion colleagues. Here’s what I wrote:

Write at Slate.com Joffe said she had “considerable concerns about what calling [transvaginal] ultrasounds ‘rape’ and ‘unnecessary’ will mean for abortion patients and providers.” Joffe totally opposes these laws, but politely denounced the “wrongheaded” rhetoric that abortion rights supporters have been using to oppose ultrasound laws.

“In the short run, the labeling has sent pro-life legislators running,” Joffe said. “But in the long run, it risks turning a benign and routine part of the abortion procedure into cause for alarm.”

So, #1. Pro-abortionists routinely engage in fear-mongering, synthetic hysteria, and the creation of imaginary plots they attribute to pro-lifers.

#2. The question is not that dismemberment abortions put “the pro-choice movement on the defensive”— the “Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act” clearly has–but why? According to Deprez’s story, which ran today, it’s because (according to opponents) “the bills inaccurately describe what medical literature calls dilation and evacuation”; and because pro-lifers are “deploying grisly language.”

Of the former we need say next to nothing. It’s a rehash of the talk-about-anything-else strategy they deployed against a bill to ban partial-birth abortions. “D&E” abortions are described with accuracy in the bills introduced in Kansas and Oklahoma. We know it and so, too, does the Abortion Industry and its enablers in the “mainstream media.”

What do they mean by “accurate”? It’s when (and only when) a dismemberment abortion is described in antiseptic language, language that is as vague and meaningless as it is misleading and soothing.
To the pro-abortionist, “accurate” means avoiding at all costs what actually happens–pulling a living child apart body part by body part; arms, legs, torso, and head.

Rather to the likes of, say, Tara Culp-Ressler, a dismemberment abortion “involves dilating the cervix and using surgical instruments to remove the fetal and placental tissue.”

That’s right, “fetal and placental tissue.”

We can agree with Culp-Ressler on one thing: nobody would confuse that description with ‘grisly.’

By Dave Andrusko, NRL News Today

Gallup: Americans want stricter abortion laws; satisfaction with current policy plummets

Per Gallup, February 9:

In 2015, 34% of Americans say they are satisfied with current U.S. abortion policies. This is the lowest percentage since Gallup first asked the question in 2001.

Gallup determined Republicans were the most dissatisfied political group, and they want stricter rather than less strict laws:

One factor contributing to the drop in satisfaction with abortion policies is significantly lower satisfaction among Republicans since 2012. From January 2001 to January 2008, after the election of Republican George W. Bush… at least 39% of Republicans each year said they were satisfied with the nation’s abortion policies…. 

However, since 2012, with Democratic President Barack Obama in office, no more than 29% of Republicans have been satisfied with the nation’s abortion policies. And Republicans’ satisfaction is particularly low this year, at 21%, an 8% decline from a year ago. 

[O]f those who are dissatisfied, twice as many prefer stricter rather than less strict laws: 24% want stricter laws, while 12% want current abortion laws to be less strict….

At the same time, no meaningful changes have occurred in Democrats’ and political independents’ views on these questions since Obama became president.

Interestingly, this poll was taken before the 20-week abortion ban debacle in the House. I expect dissatisfaction now is even higher.

Also interesting is that despite all the feminist hang-wringing, Democrats basically want the status quo, and Independents are leaning slightly toward wanting stricter laws.

How does the Democrat/feminist 2012-14 “war on women” meme fit in here? All that can be said is it certainly didn’t help them.

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Measles outbreak draws attention to aborted fetal cells in vaccines

The issue of childhood vaccinations provides a rare meeting place for liberals and conservatives.

There is no shortage of progressives like Robert Kennedy, Jr. who champion the anti-vaccination movement.

But there is also a contingent of conservatives who oppose it as well. As noted by Vox:

They are by no means guided by a singular ideology. They may be the vaccine-hesistant Amish, vaccine-refusing Christian Scientists, Jenny McCarthy acolytes, granola crunchers who don’t want to put “unnatural” things in their kids’ bodies, or simply worried parents who delay immunizing their children.

And there are also pro-lifers.

Until now pro-life opposition to vaccinations hasn’t gotten much airplay.

But the recent measles outbreak has drawn attention to the “anti-vaccine movement,” of which the pro-life contingent opposes those derived from aborted fetal cells. A February 4 Washington Post story belittles that argument while nonetheless corroborating it:

The Internet rumors that claim vaccinations mean having tiny pieces of aborted fetuses injected into your body are flat-out wrong, yet there is a grain of truth in the assertion that vaccinations and abortions are linked. 

Many of the most common vaccines, for rubella and chicken pox for example, are grown in and then removed from cells descended from the cells of aborted fetuses.

Right to Life of Michigan provides a list of vaccines derived from aborted fetuses.

Objections by pro-lifers have historically been moral, although both Protestant and Catholic leaders have pronounced vaccinations permissible, as both RTLMI and WashPo point out.

But reading the “Top 10 Evil Human Experiments” jolts one back to the reality that the lure of health benefits for mankind can never excuse torturing and killing people. And murdered preborn babies obviously never gave permission to use their tissue for vaccinations.

On the other hand, is it moral to expose a pregnant mother to rubella, for instance, and risk either abortion or malformation of her baby by not vaccinating your child?

Obviously, the issue is complicated.

But now, another factor has been added to the mix: Autism.

Autism has been a fear since 1998, when a now retracted study in The Lancet pointed to the mercury-based additive thimerosal in the Measles/Mumps/Rubella (MMR) vaccine.

That fear is repeatedly tamped down as unfounded, but the fact remains, according to webmd.com, that autism has spiked at “an alarming rate” from one of every 2,000 children in the 1970s and 80s to one of every 150 today.

Now, one research group believes the spike can be traced to the addition of aborted fetal cells into vaccines.

Quoting one of my previous blog posts on a study published in September 2014 in the Journal of Public Health:

The implicated vaccines are MMR (measles/mumps/rubella), Varicella (chickenpox), and Hepatitis A. 

Using data from the U.S. government, United Kingdom, Denmark, and Western Australia, researchers found a spike in autism around the world after vaccines using animal cells were replaced by vaccines using aborted fetal cells: 

Autistic disorder birth year change points were identified as 1980.9, 1988.4 and 1996 for the US, 1987 for the UK, 1990.4 for Western Australia, and 1987.5 for Denmark. Change points in these countries corresponded to introduction of or increased doses of human fetal cell line-manufactured vaccines… 

This pattern was repeated in the US, UK, Western Australia and Denmark. Thus, rising autistic disorder prevalence is directly related to vaccines manufactured utilizing human fetal cells. Increased paternal age and DSM revisions were not related to rising autistic disorder prevalence.

Lead researcher Dr. Theresa Deisher noted something more alarming, “Not only are the human fetal contaminated vaccines associated with autistic disorder throughout the world, but also with epidemic childhood leukemia and lymphomas.”

Thanks to abortion, parents are being forced to pick their poison.

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By Jill Stanek

The suffering brothers and sisters of aborted children

The siblings of aborted children sometimes find it hard to deal with their trauma. (Photo credit: James Dennes on Flickr)

Abortion is anything but a simple choice. It affects not just the child who dies in an unimaginable way. It affects not just the mother who suffers through the abortion or the father who could do nothing to stop it. Abortion affects the family at large – grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and brothers and sisters.

It can be a very strange thought to wonder why you were chosen to live while your brother or sister was chosen for death. Why did you survive? What would your sibling have been like, acted like, looked like? Would he or she have resembled you? Become your best friend? Years of memories you should have had were wiped out before you ever knew that your brother or sister should have existed. Indeed, abortion is anything but simple for the brothers and sisters of aborted children.

Barb, who has worked with the AAA Center for Pregnancy Counseling for nearly thirty years, writes this:

“Abortion teaches children that they have worth because they were conceived in the right conditions and at the right time; that they have value because their parents want them. Up to 50% of all American children have lost a brother or a sister to abortion, making it much more likely that they live with a performance view of love: I was born because I was wanted therefore I better perform so they will continue to love me.”

Barb also talks about the reality of survivor’s guilt among siblings of aborted children and about the horrors of selective reduction, in which one or more babies in a multiple pregnancy (twins, triplets, quadruplets) are selected for death and aborted while the rest are allowed to live. Mark I. Evans, a doctor known for doing selective reductions, explains the heartache from his own perspective. Imagine the thoughts of surviving siblings once they discover what happened to their brothers or sisters, right next to them in the womb:

“It’s a very hard procedure, because the baby is moving, and you are chasing it. That is what is very emotional — when the baby is moving and you are chasing it.”

Angie (not her real name) is the sister of two aborted children. She was the oldest child and the only girl allowed to be born. Her only full biological sibling was aborted just a few short years after Angie’s birth. Angie’s mother then went on to have two sons – Angie’s half-brothers. They were five and nine years younger than her. When Angie’s mother got pregnant for the last time, she decided she was too tired to have a fourth child. So she flew to New York, where elective abortion was legal at the time, and aborted Angie’s last sibling.

Angie will always have to wonder why she was allowed to live when her brother or sister was subjected to a crude back-alley death. Would she have ever had a sister? Would her real father have been able to stay in her life if her full brother or sister had lived? What would it have been like to have had a sibling close in age to her; to grow up with as a friend? Would she have been a second mother to her youngest sibling, just like she was to her youngest living brother? What made the difference? Why was she saved, when others died?

While Angie may never get all of her answers, it’s important that she – and other men and women like her – find an outlet for their painful questions. There are several wonderful healing ministries for men and women who have experienced abortion, but it’s much harder to find a support group for siblings of aborted babies.

Renee – an oldest daughter just like Angie – shares these sentiments on her blog, Surviving Sibling. She writes about her very personal story – her struggle with her brother’s untimely death, her love for her mother, and both her and her mother’s decisions to get involved in the pro-life movement.

“Apparently she chose that night [the night of her mother’s abortion], because going out, then, would not likely arouse suspicion. Years later it brought me such pain to think that that night before she left, when I gave her a hug, I also hugged my little brother inside, but the next time I hugged her, it was just her alone. How sad she must have been. And how innocent and unaware I was. …

“For a while after finding out, I had such a deep sadness that I could not identify at first. I felt like I did when I lost one of my nursing home friends, but nobody had recently died. What was up? Then I realized it was my brother. I was grieving the loss of a little sibling, that up until then had not existed (that I was aware of). How strange. How could I possibly feel so strongly for someone I never met, or even knew about? As I mentioned before, I am not an emotional person, so these feelings were extra unappreciated. I felt stupid for grieving 11 years later. He was long gone, I shouldn’t feel anything. But, that’s not how it works. Over time, I felt that sadness less frequently, but still, 6 years later I feel twinges at times. I have also, at times, felt completely at peace with our situation, and at other times, have seriously forgotten about him. That, I believe, is often a defense mechanism.”

Renee has decided to reach out to other siblings of aborted children through her blog and through two Facebook groups she’s created: Abortion Hurts Siblings and Others and a “secret” group called “I Lost a Sibling to Abortion.” If you are suffering from the loss of a sibling through abortion – or still processing it – check out Renee’s blog and Facebook groups. Losing a sibling through abortion is a legitimate cause for grief and pain, and it’s important to find healing as much as possible.

Abortion Recovery International also helps siblings of aborted children find healing. You can call them at 1-800-395-HELP.

We must admit that abortion causes only suffering for the brothers and sisters of an aborted child – whether they come before or after the abortion.
As Barb says:

“I think one of the most difficult things for me to face is a woman who is attempting to justify an abortion for the sake of her other children. I always want to tell them…the best thing for her little ones is to have a brother or a sister. In fact, explaining to sons and daughters a few years in the future as to why they aborted their sibling will probably be the most difficult thing they will ever do[.]”

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

By Kristi Burton Brown via NRL News Today

Pro-abortionists scramble to try to neutralize impact of the truth about dismemberment abortions

Groundbreaking legislation recently introduced in Kansas that would protect unborn children from dismemberment abortions is causing quite the stir among abortion advocates.

A recent article by Tara Culp-Ressler featured on ThinkProgress described the legislation as “the next anti-abortion strategy lurking around the corner.” According to the author, the bill is “cloaked in emotional language” and filled with “evocative details.”

But it’s not the language of the bill that elicits strong reactions; it’s the reality of dismemberment abortions themselves. It’s unthinkable that in a civilized society we would permit our youngest members to have their tiny limbs pulled and twisted apart.

These are the same little ones we can see plain as day on an ultrasound with a beating heart, unique facial features, and tiny hands and feet. These reminders resonate with our most basic humanity.

Culp-Ressler’s article quotes Dr. Anne Davis, the consulting medical director for Physicians for Reproductive Health and an OB-GYN who provides abortions. Davis exclaimed, “Immediately, when I heard the title of these bills, I had to take a deep breath and calm down.”

“This is a familiar tactic, similar to the other types of bans we’ve seen. It seems the strategy is to take language that provokes emotional responses and then to argue that, because there’s an emotional reaction to something, it should be illegal,” she continued.

Elizabeth Nash, the states issue manager at the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, also took issue with the language: “Clearly this is an effort to take some of the tactics of the past — using very graphic descriptions and inflammatory language — to ban access to abortion.”

Yet, abortionists themselves note the gruesome nature of dismemberment abortions.

Dr. Warren Hern, a Colorado abortionist who has performed numerous D&E abortions and has written a textbook on abortion procedures, has stated “there is no possibility of denial of an act of destruction by the operator [of a D&E abortion]. It is before one’s eyes. The sensation of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current.”

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy offered this description of the D&E abortion technique:

“After sufficient dilation [of the cervix], a doctor inserts grasping forceps through the woman’s cervix and into the uterus to grab a living fetus. The doctor grips a fetal part with the forceps and pulls it back through the cervix and vagina, continuing to pull even after meeting resistance from the cervix. The friction causes the fetus to tear apart. For example, a leg might be ripped off the fetus as it is pulled through the cervix and out of the woman. The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn apart limb by limb. The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off.”

In place of a straightforward description, ThinkProgress chose this vague description: “It [D&E abortion] involves dilating the cervix and using surgical instruments to remove the fetal and placental tissue.”

While nothing is technically inaccurate about that description, it purposefully omits the key details about what happens to the unborn child, skipping over the dismemberment process entirely.

The article also questioned the validity of a medical illustration of a D&E abortion.

The writer refers to the graphic as National Right to Life’s “renderings” of a D&E abortion. But in fact, that graphic is an off-the-shelf image from the standard catalog of images produced by Nucleus Medical Art, a leading provider (probably the leading provider) of the technical medical illustrations used in every area of medical education. The drawing was not commissioned by NRLC, nor altered by NRLC. The image is NMA’s depiction of a D&E abortion at 23 weeks LMP (21 weeks fetal age).
But nothing needs to be changed to shock the conscience. A straightforward graphic of that a D&E abortion at 23 weeks speaks for itself.

Dismemberment abortions, like partial-birth abortions, tear on the public’s heartstrings because it forces us to face a horrifying reality. No longer is abortion a social or political issue, but a human issue, which results in the brutal deaths of the youngest members of the human family.

Science shows that within 3-4 weeks after fertilization, the growing unborn child’s heart begins its first beats. By 6 weeks, the child has detectable brainwaves and a complete skeletal system. A week later, the child has complete fingers, toes and ears, and by 8 weeks all organs are formed and functioning. By 20 weeks, the unborn child has the capability to feel pain.

Dr. George Flesh, a former abortionist, wrote,

“Tearing a developed fetus apart, limb by limb, is an act of depravity that society should not permit. We cannot afford such a devaluation of human life, nor the desensitization of medical personnel it requires. This is not based on what the fetus might feel but on what we should feel in watching an exquisite, partly formed human being being dismembered.”

It’s well past time that our society stands up and protects its youngest and most vulnerable from the violence of dismemberment abortions.

By Andrew Bair, NRL News Today

U.S. House votes to repeal ObamaCare ... again, Dold one of 3 GOPers to oppose

The U.S. House voted 239-186 to repeal Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act with no Democrat votes in support. Two Illinois Republicans sent out explanations for their votes immediately after casting them.

Republican Illinois Congressman John Shimkus (IL-15) supported the measure.

“The reality is that the President’s upending of our health insurance system has hurt more Americans than it has helped,” said Shimkus.

“On a family level, millions of Americans have lost plans they liked and were promised they could keep while others have been forced to pay hundreds of dollars more just to keep seeing their doctor,” Shimkus continued. “For employees and their employers, Obamacare’s costly mandates have led to cutbacks in hours, wages and hiring.”

Republican Illinois Congressman Bob Dold (IL-10) was one of three GOPers that opposed it, along with freshmen Reps. John Katko of New York and Bruce Poliquin of Maine.

“The people of the 10^th District sent me to Congress to advance solutions, not sound bites, to the problems we face.   Among the issues that I believe congress must urgently address are the rising premiums and deductibles under the Affordable Care Act, along with the law’s massive cuts to Medicare programs and plan cancellations that have limited choices in healthcare.  I have always maintained that the Affordable Care Act was the wrong approach for America’s healthcare system and opposed its passage from the start.  However, the only way we are ever going to move beyond simply talking about the law’s many flaws and finally deliver solutions to the American people is through bipartisan reforms that can pass both chambers of congress and receive the President’s signature.

“Casting yet another symbolic vote for full repeal of the law, without any replacement legislation, simply distracts us from the work that must be done to drive costs down, restore access to care and make healthcare work for everyone.”

Illinois Review will post the Illinois delegation roll call as soon as its available. The bill now proceeds to the U.S. Senate. It is unknown how U.S. Senator Mark Kirk will vote on the measure.

Senator Dick Durbin has promised to oppose it. President Obama promises to veto it.

Source: Illinois Review

2014 shows Planned Parenthood decline but gov't funds still flow

Planned Parenthood is declining even though the federal government continues to pump a huge amount of taxpayer dollars into the organization.

American Life League's STOPP International has released a survey of Planned Parenthood facilities in the United States. Spokesman Jim Sedlak describes what the organization found.

Sedlak, Jim (American Life League)“During the year 2014, Planned Parenthood continued to close centers at a record rate,” he says. “In 2014, they closed 34 health centers in 19 different states, which means it now has a total of 668 centers around the nation.”

That's down from 938 in 1995. Out of those centers, 337 perform surgical or medical abortions. The number of Planned Parenthood facilities nationwide has declined dramatically since 1973.

“Planned Parenthood maintains its position as the nation's largest abortion chain as it now operates 45.6 percent of all of the surgical-medical abortion facilities in the country,” he tells OneNewsNow.
As far as tax revenue for 2014, government funding has decreased, but only slightly compared to the overall amount directed to Planned Parenthood.

“The government reduced funding by $12 million, but it still gives them over $530 million - so the decrease was not much,” he says.

Most of the decrease came from state tax revenue. American Life League's goal is to put an end to Planned Parenthood, and Sedlak contends the report shows the campaign is having the intended impact.

South Dakota has become the fifth state with only one Planned Parenthood abortion facility in operation, and North Dakota is the only state where medical services are not offered by Planned Parenthood.

By: Charlie Butts, OneNewsNow.com

Planned Parenthood: Our study shows abortions are totally safe - NOT!

A pro-life group is fighting abortion giant Planned Parenthood for claiming abortion protocols by the Food and Drug Administration are not needed.

The protocols, if followed, are designed to provide the optimum level of safety for women doing chemical abortions. Planned Parenthood, after conducting its own study, claims there are no concerns.

Mailee Smith, a spokesperson for Americans United for Life, says the study was done using only Planned Parenthood's own patients – and only some of them.

"There is data missing for 45 percent of the women who underwent chemical abortions," Smith says. "That's a significant percentage and we don't know if those women had multiple chemical abortions, and so that skews the data considerably."

Another 15 percent never reported back to Planned Parenthood, so it's not known if they had complications.

Planned Parenthood 620x300The study is being used to counter states that want laws to follow FDA protocol.

"The study actually does no comparisons between the FDA-approved protocol and their misuse of the drugs," says Smith, who is an attorney. "They only look at their misuse of the drugs. And so there's no proper comparison between what the FDA has said is the only proper way to administer the drugs."

Smith alleges that Planned Parenthood's goal is not about women's health but the abortion business's financial gain.

By Charlie Butts OneNewsNow.com

Abortion proponents in uproar over pro-life handcuff mailer

The abortion lobby has taken note of Pro-Life Action League’s mailer project and doesn’t like it.
On January 22, the 42nd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision, the League sent a mailer to every abortion clinic in the U.S.

Inside was a pair of plastic handcuffs, a photo of Oklahoma City abortionist Naresh Patel being arrested last month, and a note asking, “Could you be next?”

The note encouraged abortion workers to get out of the business for their own good and included PLAL’s Eric Scheidler’s personal cell phone number.

The list of abortionists and workers who have been arrested in the past four decades since abortion was been legal and supposedly moved off the back alley is as long as the reasons: extortion, tax evasion, sex abuse, drug abuse, illegally prescribing and selling drugs, murder, negligence, on and on. criminality.

And it makes sense. Those in the business of killing babies for a living have already demonstrated rather gaping character flaws. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude they’ll commit other crimes.

But abortion proponents are up in arms. Quoting Planned Parenthood executive VP Dawn Laguens from a Cosmopolitan article devoted to the mailer:

“I think it reads like what it is: intimidation and harassment and a very implied threat,” she said. Abortion opponents “want to outlaw abortion and put women and doctors in jail. I think they’re sending about as clear a message as they can that that’s exactly what they want to do.”

How PLAL’s mailer could be construed as a threat to lock up women is a stretch, but Cosmo wasn’t alone. Kudos to BreitbartUnmasked.com for adding an illustration for flourish….

leftinalabama.com saw menace in the mailer as well, also accusing PLAL of supporting China’s one-child policy by buying Chinese-manufactured handcuffs – really.

I asked Scheidler, why all the attention? It’s not as if pro-life activists haven’t done similar mailings before.

“One reason is they think it makes us look like we’re trying to intimidate someone,” said Scheidler. “But if you think about it for more than a second – toy handcuffs and a signed letter including a personal cell number – a threat of what? If you’re committing crimes and I know about it, then I am going to turn you into the police; that’s not a threat.”

Eric noted the League gets pro-abortion counterparts – mailers with red coat hangers on them.
“We just laugh,” said Scheidler.

But PLAL’s mailer also hit close to home.

“I think they have a guilty conscience,” noted Scheidler. “Arrests like that of Naresh Patel put them in such a bad light. It exposes them for who they are. It has been really surprising to have two abortion providers actually call me as a result of the mailer – a pro-life activist – to try to justify what they’re doing.”

One, Anise Burrell from Summit Medical Center in Detroit, argued with Scheidler on the phone for 10 minutes.

“She kept repeating, ‘This is an ugly cruel world’ she was sparing children from being born into,” said Scheidler.

 

Abortion industry types know mailers such as PLAL’s may have the intended impact and prompt abortionists and workers to walk away. Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards tried to mitigate the damage in a tweet…

Who's preventing more unintended pregnancies: healthcare providers or anti-abortion activists mailing them handcuffs? http://t.co/dXMQ5t1nlJ
— Cecile Richards (@CecileRichards) January 29, 2015

Scheidler has indeed received calls and texts from workers wanting out.
But there is a flip side.

“I’ve received countless crank calls and crank texts,” noted Scheidler, adding someone complained to Facebook about him yesterday, which led to his account being suspended for three hours.
Then there are real the real harassers.

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