Illinois Bill Forcing Pro-Lifers to Refer for Abortion Sent to Governor’s Desk

Illinois came one step closer to forcing its pro-life medical community to choose between violating state law and violating deeply held religious conscience Wednesday, as the state’s House approved Senate Bill 1564 and set the legislation on the governor’s desk.

The bill, which would introduce decisive changes to Illinois’ Health Care Right of Conscience Act, passed by a 61-54 margin and now awaits the signature of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Originally put forward in the summer of 2015, the legislation would require pro-life medical providers, including 51 Illinois nonprofit pregnancy centers offering free services including ultrasound and STI testing, to take action the bill’s opponents say amounts to participating in an abortion.

Particularly at issue is the bill’s requirement that every Illinois pro-life medical provider of any kind who chooses not to perform a procedure such as abortion or a prescription for birth control has one of three options: Either they must “refer the patient” to another provider, “transfer the patient” to another provider, or provide a list of “other health care providers who they reasonably believe may offer the health care service.”

One way or another, the law would compel pro-life medical providers in Illinois to participate in abortions.

ACTION ALERT...

Please call Gov. Rauner's office at 217-782-0244, or click here to go to his website and send an email asking him NOT to sign SB1564 and veto the bill.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Pro-lifer drops 'b' word on politicking Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood has already endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and plans to spend $30 million on political campaigns this year.

Jim Sedlak of American Life League says not all of it will be spent on behalf of the Clinton campaign, since the purpose is to support candidates who vote to continue the taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood.

That may be business as usual for the progressives in this country but Sedlak has another name for it: bribery.

"Not only is the organization committing bribery," the pro-lifer alleges, "but the person who accepts the money is committing bribery."

Click here for more from OneNewsNow.

Supreme Court sends more mandate cases back to lower circuits

After sending the Little Sisters’ HHS mandate case back to the circuit courts on May 16, the Supreme Court voided two more mandate cases on Monday.

In Zubik v. Burwell, the Supreme Court sent back to the federal circuit courts all the cases of all the plaintiffs, including the Little Sisters, the Archdiocese of Washington, the pro-life group Priests for Life, and several Christian colleges. The circuit court decisions, which all went against the non-profits, were voided.

The decision came after the Supreme Court, in a rare move in the middle of a case, had ordered both parties to come up with alternative solutions, if possible, of guaranteeing both contraceptive coverage for employees and religious freedom protections for the non-profits.

Click here for more from CNA Daily News.

Pro-Life Groups Protest Stericycle Shareholders Meeting Saying 'DUMP Planned Parenthood'

On April 11, 2016 an Illinois court denied attempts by Planned Parenthood's waste hauler Stericycle, Inc., to censor pro-life group Created Equal's first amendment protected efforts to expose the Lake Forest, IL company for providing waste-disposal services that enable abortion giant Planned Parenthood to kill preborn children. Evidence shows Stericycle has been partnering with Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry through their collection, transportation, and disposal of aborted children and the instruments used to kill them.

Created Equal launched #ProjectWeakLink on March 29 by distributing informational postcards in the Lake Forest, IL area, which is home to Planned Parenthood business partner Stericycle. On March 31, Created Equal was notified by Stericycle's attorneys that the company was seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the campaign.

On May 25, Created Equal will be conducting a demonstration at the company's annual shareholders meeting.

Click here for more from Christian Newswire.

Thomas More Law Center Wins Huge Victory for Free Speech and Unborn Babies Against Planned Parenthood

In a huge victory for free speech and unborn babies, United States District Judge Nancy Torresen, yesterday, issued a preliminary injunction barring the Maine Attorney General and City of Portland police officers from enforcing the Noise Provision of the Maine Civil Rights Act ("Act"). Under the Act, after being warned by a police officer, it is illegal to make noise that can be heard inside an abortion clinic with the intent to interfere with a medical procedure.

In a 35–page opinion and order, Judge Torresen, an Obama appointee, held that the Noise Provision of the Act is content-based because it restricts speech based on its purpose, and therefore, is facially unconstitutional.

Click here to read Judge Torresen's entire opinion.

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Judges hear appeal of woman sentenced for aborting her 25-30 week old baby and then ignoring him after he was born alive

A three-judge panel of the Indiana Court of Appeals is hearing arguments today in the case of Purvi Patel.

Last year St. Joseph Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Hurley sentenced Patel to 20 years for throwing her newborn son into a dumpster following a chemically-induced abortion. The baby was estimated to be 25 to 30-weeks old, which did not make its way into early coverage of the hearing.

Attorneys for the 35-year-old Patel told Chief Judge Nancy H. Vaidik, Judge L. Mark Bailey and Judge Terry A. Crone to throw out the conviction.

In February 2015, following a trial that took place over six days and which 20 witnesses offered testimony, Patel was convicted of feticide and child neglect. Prosecutors said she took drugs to induce an abortion and failed to get medical help for the baby when he was born alive.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

General Conference of the United Methodist Church votes overwhelming to withdraw from Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

An incredible turn of events. Yesterday, on a vote of 425 to 268 (61% to 39%), delegates to the quadrennial General Conference meeting of the United Methodist Church voted that two United Methodist entities withdraw immediately from membership in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC).

The two coalition members of RCRC are the General Board on Church and Society (GBCS) and United Methodist Women (UMW).

As the Rev. Paul Stallsworth has written for NRL News Today, RCRC “is dedicated to keeping abortion–all abortions, of all unborn children, for any reason or no reason–legal in American society. In other words, RCRC never, ever speaks or lobbies or writes against abortion.”

“There is nothing moderate or nuanced about RCRC, which has consistently lobbied to defend grisly ‘partial-birth’ abortions, even after our Social Principles included a statement ‘call[ing] for the end of this late-term practice,’” said John Lomperis, a delegate to the General Conference and United Methodist director at the Institute on Religion and Democracy. “In contrast to the United Methodist Church, RCRC dismisses the value of unborn human life. RCRC even promotes rituals to bless all the work of elective abortion clinics, describing aborting unborn children as always ‘holy work.’”

Lomperis added, “This is a necessary and good step towards affirming that the unborn are persons of sacred worth. This also shows the UMC moving away from other liberal, declining, ‘mainline’ denominations to embrace a new faithful, global identity.”

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Could Brittany Maynard Have Been Saved?

This week, CBS’ 60 Minutes reported that FDA has just granted “breakthrough status” for an innovative treatment for glioblastoma brain cancer that was first reported by 60 Minutes on March 29, 2015.

Brittany Maynard had glioblastoma and died by physician-assisted suicide on November 1, 2014, just 5 months before the original TV segment aired.

Brittany Maynard was a young newlywed who, with enormous media publicity and the support of the pro physician-assisted suicide group Compassion and Choices, announced her intention to commit assisted suicide. She asked for donations to the Brittany Maynard Foundation to raise money to help Compassion and Choices fight for legalization of physician-assisted suicide throughout the US.

Using Brittany’s story and foundation, Compassion and Choices was finally successful after years of failed attempts to get a physician-assisted suicide law passed in California.

Did Brittany, her doctors, or Compassion and Choices know about the promising clinical trials for glioblastoma reported by 60 Minutes before Brittany took her life with a physician ordered lethal overdose?

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Gallup poll a gold mine of useful information and misleading inferences

As is always the case with Gallup and abortion, the latest post from veteran Gallup writer Lydia Saad is informative. In places it also makes you scratch your head and occasionally it’s deeply misleading. (The figures come from Gallup’s 2016 Values and Beliefs poll, conducted May 4-8.)

The headline is understandable, given that Donald Trump’s views on abortion are a work in progress: “Most ‘Pro-Life’ Americans Unsure About Trump’s Abortion Views.”

But what is far more interesting is that after decades of unabashed, straight-forward, unambiguous promotion of abortion, Hillary Clinton’s views are unknown, or at least unclear, to many pro-choice adults.

Let’s compare the responses to the presumptive nominees of the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively. Saad writes

Sixty-three percent of Americans who describe themselves as “pro-life” are unable to say whether they agree or disagree with Trump on the abortion issue. The rest are about equally divided between agreeing (19%) and disagreeing (18%) with him.

Clinton?

Hillary Clinton is unambiguously pro-abortion rights and has talked about her strong support for women’s reproductive rights for decades. Nevertheless, the public is only a bit less vague about her stance on the issue compared with Trump’s. Overall, 22% of Americans say they agree with her views and 32% disagree, while 46% are unsure.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

City of Chicago and Illinois Department of Public Health Risk Women's Health and Safety

On May 19th, the Thomas More Society filed complaints against the City of the Chicago and the Illinois Department of Public Health for refusing to release information that is rightfully available under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, known as FOIA. The actions arise from requests by the Pro-Life Action League and private citizens for records that were legitimately requested in accordance with FOIA and have not been fulfilled. Both FOIAs were filed regarding matters involving the health and safety of women at abortion clinics.

Thomas Olp, attorney with the Thomas More Society, explained, "Both the City of Chicago and the Illinois Department of Public Health have acted unreasonably and unlawfully in withholding the requested public records. These FOIAs were filed seeking information regarding abortion clinics at which women's health and safety may be at risk. In both cases, the legitimate public interest in seeking the records is provable and compelling. Yet neither the city nor the health department has complied with the Illinois Freedom of Information Act which declares the public policy of the State of Illinois to be that 'all persons are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government.'"

He added that the Illinois FOIA law raises a presumption that "all records in the custody or possession of a public body are ...open to inspection or copying." While private information may be exempt from public disclosure (if it is "highly personal or objectionable to a reasonable person and in which the subject's right to privacy outweighs any legitimate public interest in obtaining the information"), the burden of proving the exemption rests squarely on the agency asserting the exemption. In neither case, Olp maintained, has the city or health department met the burden of proving that its refusal to disclose public records was justified.

Click here for more from Christian NewsWire.

Pro-abortionists’ desperate attempt to hide the truth about fetal pain

The pro-abortion mind is not big on incontrovertible truths. There is only one: nothing matters but choice, exercised by the woman. Whether to snuff out that child’s life is fair, ethical, just, or its very opposite, doesn’t matter. It is literally a decision beyond right and wrong: it is hers to make, so get over it, pro-lifers, and move on.

To pro-lifers, there are many incontrovertible truths–human equality, mutual interdependence, the responsibilities that attend absolute power over a powerless unborn child, to name just three. But here I’d like to talk about a “truth” that pro-abortionists will defend with the unborn child’s dying breath: these children cannot experience pain until at least the 27th week or even (some would argue) until after birth.

Put another way fetal pain cannot be true. Were pro-abortionists to concede the self-evident–the capacity of the unborn child to experience unfathomable agony as she is ripped apart– suddenly that “tissue” or that “pregnancy” or that “uterine content” takes on human qualities that gives pause to all but the hardest heart.

This denial of reams of scientific evidence constitute such a key component of the pro-abortion narrative that no amount of evidence could ever cast even the slightest doubt.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Say what? Everybody's happy with SCOTUS decision?

How is it possible that both sides are declaring victory in Monday's move by the Supreme Court to send the ObamaCare contraceptive mandate dispute back down to the lower courts?

The White House, which authored the contraceptive mandate, was thrilled with the ruling. "We obviously were pleased with the announcement from the Supreme Court today," said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.

Meanwhile, Sister Constance Viet of Little Sisters of the Poor, which opposed the mandate, told FOX News she was equally pleased. "Today was a very good day, and we're very happy with the result," she stated.

Is it possible the two sides have stumbled into a legitimate compromise?

Click here for more from OneNewsNow.

Don't let the ILGOP Remove the Pro-Life Plank from the Party Platform

Pro-life leaders and activists are concerned that there may be an attempt to remove the pro-life plank of the Republican Party Platform when the by-laws committee meets at the Republican Party Convention this week.  

We must not allow that to happen so please take action now!

The Illinois Republican Party Convention takes place May 19th through the 21st, so time is of the essence, act now.

Click here to make your voice heard.  Tell the Illinois Republican Party to include the pro-life plank in the Republican Party Platform.  Just fill out this simple form.  In your message include your request to "Please continue to include the Pro-Life plank in the Republican Party Platform."

Next, call your State Representatives and State Senators and ask them to also support the pro-life plank in the Republican Platform.

Click here to find your State Representatives' and State Senators' contact information.

The racial targeting of abortion

Decades after the Civil War, America continues to deal with race relations. Joe Langfeld of Human Life Alliance tells OneNewsNow that one of the new beginnings in that arena occurred 62 years ago – on May 17, 1954 – when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered an end to segregation in public schools when it ruled in Brown v. Board of Education.

"And [even now] we're still dealing with the issues of difficulties in race relations," Langfeld shares. "In terms of abortion, African-Americans by far have more abortions than any other segment of the U.S. population."

According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Guttmacher Institute, more than 30 percent of the nation's abortions occur in the black population – which is estimated at 13 percent of the total population. Similarly, Hispanics comprise about 15 percent of the population, yet have 25 percent of the abortions.

Click here for more from OneNewsNow.

Pro-life Groups Call for the Republican Party to Defund Planned Parenthood in the 2016 Republican Party Platform

Several pro-life organizations are planning major demonstrations just before the Republican National Convention to ensure the pro-life message is heard by the Platform Committee.

Activists will request that $540,000,000 currently given to Planned Parenthood be redirected to 13,000 federally licensed health clinics which provide true comprehensive women's health care. These clinics provide a greater variety of services and choices to women than Planned Parenthood and are not under federal investigation.

The groups leading the demonstrations are also conducting a five-city tour through Ohio on June 16-17 in preparation for their campaign in Cleveland.

Click here for more from ChristianNewswire.

Dylan Rizzo’s recovery further evidence a “vegetative state may not be as persistent as it was once thought”

Even in an era of seemingly endless media sources, when an item appears on one of the networks, it has traction. Take CBS Sunday Morning.

Correspondent Lee Cowan does a terrific job in telling the more- common-than-we-think story, in this case of Dylan Rizzo, who was involved in a devastating car crash in 2011 when he was 19.

Rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, “Within an hour neurosurgeons had removed the left side of his skull and part of the right to make room for his brain to swell,” Cowan explained.

Not unexpectedly he slipped into a deep coma. When he did awake he “had transitioned into what’s called a vegetative state,” where his eyes were open but he was unaware (or seemed unaware) of his surroundings.

Spoiler alert. Five years later Dylan has made tremendous progress in his recovery. But what makes the story so powerful is the larger lesson his recovery illustrates.



Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Iowa parents tell Planned Parenthood to get lost

The Obama administration has handed over $5 million in taxpayers' dollars so Planned Parenthood can pump its version of sex education into children, some as young as five, in Southwest Iowa.

Ricky A. Rohrig of the Pregnancy Center of Southwest Iowa says Planned Parenthood was booted from Iowa schools many years ago when parents learned they were graphically teaching children about condom use and using stuffed animals to demonstrate sexual positions.

"And the parents were not informed prior to their youth being taught this," he tells OneNewsNow.

Click here for more from OneNewsNow.

Report: Rate of Abortions Performed on Girls under 20 Falls

According to the Guttmacher Institute report released earlier this week, the percentage of total abortions performed on girls under age 20 fell by 32 percent between 2008 and 2014.

Click here to read more from the report.

Click here for more from Illinois Review.

Mum who rejected abortion displays quintuplet babies

An Australian mother who gave birth to quintuplets in January has released a photo shoot of her five new babies.

It took Kim Tucci, 26, just two minutes to give birth to the massive set of new arrivals – four daughters and one son – who were conceived naturally.

Doctors had advised Kim to abort some of her five unborn children on health grounds but she refused, going on to give birth to all five babies.

Click here for more from National Right to Life.

Indiana installs first ‘safe haven’ boxes to save abandoned newborns

With newborns increasingly abandoned, sometimes literally thrown in trash bins or flushed down toilets, one Indiana pro-life organization is installing "baby boxes" for mothers who feel they cannot care for their baby to ensure the child's safety.

When a mother opens the box – which is climate-controlled, padded, and circulates fresh air inside – a call is made to 911.  The box automatically locks once the mother shuts its door.  Motion sensors trigger a second, backup call to 911. Within three to five minutes, paramedics arrive and take the baby to the hospital for care. Indiana's Child Protective Services then takes custody of the child.

Click here for more from LifeSiteNews.com