Michigan Governor Unveils New York-Like Abortion Law

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer

On October 29, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and pro-abortion allies unveiled the “Reproductive Health Act.” This bill, if passed, would allow unlimited abortions in the state of Michigan up to the moment of birth

Although it has not yet been introduced to a legislative body, it has been confirmed that the bill would:

• Allow minor teens to have secret abortions without their parents’ consent—or even knowledge.
• Allow abortion facilities to ignore health and safety regulations that other medical clinics follow.
• Allow abortion facilities to refuse to provide informed consent to women.
• Allow walk-in abortions with no waiting period.

The bill may also allow taxpayer dollars to fund abortions and allow nurses and physician assistants to perform surgical abortions.

“They’ve already passed a bill to ban a safe procedure that has saved women’s lives,” Governor Whitmer said, referring to a bill that outlaws abortion procedures in which doctors forcibly tear a baby apart limb from limb in order to remove it from its mother's womb. “And as they know, I’m going to veto those bills if they ever have the backbone to send them to my desk.”

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4 Year Old UK Girl Told ‘You should have been aborted!’

While walking her two children to school, Emma Ross was confronted by a man who noticed her four-year-old's wheelchair. “The man was yelling in her face, saying she shouldn’t have been born, she was a drain on the NHS, a drain on society and that I should have had her aborted if I’d known she was going to be disabled,” Emma said according to the Mirror. Hertfordshire Police are investigating the incident as a hate crime.

Quinn Ross, the four-year-old girl, suffers from Perthes disease, a hip condition which makes walking painful. She can only walk 10-15 steps at a time without the wheelchair, but after the incident, her mother says that Quinn is afraid to leave her home in her wheelchair. In the United Kingdom, disabilities are frowned upon to the point that parents can get the permission of judges to "put down" their children after they are born.

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Paralympic Champion Follows Through with Euthanasia Plans

Marieke Vervoort, a gold medal winner in the 2012 London Paralympic Games for the 100-meter wheelchair sprint, recently followed through on an announcement that she would have a medically-assisted suicide. After the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro, she told fans that she would not only be retiring but also looking into euthanasia due to the progression of her neuromuscular condition. Her athleticism was her career, so, understandably, she would find it difficult to adapt to losing that part of her life, but for her to take this drastic action is saddening, to say the least.

It shows her hopelessness at the idea of living out her life with this condition and communicates to others that medically-assisted suicide might be a viable option if they feel similarly about medical difficulties in their own lives. People surrounding those facing medical difficulties need to facilitate their emotional and medical needs with meaningful relationships and palliative care so that they are not left feeling hopeless.

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Joe Biden Denied Communion Over Abortion Stance.

Credit: Marc Nozell / Flickr

A Catholic Priest in North Carolina denied communion to former Vice President and current presidential candidate Joe Biden because of the candidate's support for legal abortion.

“Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other and the Church. Our actions should reflect that. Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching,” Fr. Robert Morey, pastor of St. Anthony Catholic Church in the Diocese of Charleston, South Carolina said to the Catholic News Agency.

Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law states that “Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.”

Joe Biden has stated that he would increase funding to Planned Parenthood while during his campaign for the 2020 presidential election, flipping on his previous stance that taxpayer dollars should not be used to fund abortions.

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Alabama Abortion Ban Blocked by Courts. Legislators Welcome Decision and Plan to Challenge Roe v. Wade.

Credit: Nicolas Michaud / Flickr

An Alabama law that was planned to go into effect November 15 was blocked by a preliminary injunction from U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson after the ACLU went to court to stop it. Alabama legislators welcome the decision and plan to use the injunction to take the abortion issue up to the Supreme Court to challenge Roe v. Wade.

Alabama passed the Human Life Protection Act in May; a law that banned abortion at all gestational ages except to “avert (a mother’s) death or to avert serious risk of substantial physical impairment of a major bodily function.” There is also an exception if a licensed psychiatrist diagnoses a mental illness and has a “reasonable medical judgment that she will engage in conduct that could result in her death or the death of her unborn child.”

Republican state Rep. Terri Collins said in a statement,

“Our law was designed to overturn Roe v. Wade at the Supreme Court level, and today’s ruling is merely the first of many steps on that legal journey. I remain confident that our mission will be successful and appreciate the support of millions of citizens who support our effort to preserve unborn life.”

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has also declared that he will work to bring the case all the way to the supreme court.

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Judge Allows Student Attacked in Washington Post Article to Sue

US District Judge William Bertelsman partially reversed his ruling which prevented a defamation suit against the Washington Post from progressing further. This decision moves a young student one step closer to having his day in court against the news giant and bodes well for lawsuits against other outlets.

Nick Sandmann, who was portrayed in numerous media outlets after a charged confrontation between a Native American man and students from Covington Catholic High School. The students were at the Lincoln Memorial waiting for a bus after participating in the January March for Life in Washington, D.C. when the man walked up to the group while beating a drum. The students were trying to drown out racist taunts from the nearby Black Hebrew Israelites when the event occurred. Nick was captured on video looking the man in the eye while he beat his drum, and the media jumped to conclusions about the short clip without waiting for context.

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Missouri's Last Abortion Clinic Facing Closure due to Health Violations

Credit: American Life League

The Missouri Department of Health denied the renewal of the St. Louis Planned Parenthood clinic's license, the only remaining abortion facility in the state after it did not comply with health protocols.

The Department of Health cited “unprecedented lack of cooperation” and “failure to meet basic standards of patient care, and refusal to comply with state law and regulations protecting women’s health and safety that resulted in numerous serious and extensive unresolved deficiencies including multiple that involved life-threatening conditions for patients.”

The Planned Parenthood clinic would not perform required pelvic examinations as a “preoperative health requirement,” according to the state. In addition, doctors refused to provide interviews and the clinic was not prepared for a case of "extreme hemorrhaging."

A judge and the Administration Hearing Commission both granted a temporary stay of the health department’s decision while the case is reviewed. The clinic will be allowed to stay open during that time.

The Fairview Heights Planned Parenthood facility was created in preparation for a situation such as this since Illinois' liberal abortion legislation facilitates women crossing the border to obtain abortions there.

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Planned Parenthood Publishes Book to Answer Teens' Questions about Sex

Planned Parenthood released a book designed to inform young people about sex titled “In case you’re curious: Questions about sex from young people with answers from the experts.” The book was written by Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM) as a continuation of its In Case You're Curious (ICYC) project. Using its ICYC branding, PPRM provided a phone number that young people could text to ask questions about sex, and Planned Parenthood would respond with answers. Planned Parenthood claimed that it responded to 14,176 texts by 2017.

The book features nine chapters, each with different groups of similar questions. Many of these important questions are presented as part of illustrations that seem to be designed for children. An illustrated elephant couple, for example, asks “When should I start having sex?” An owl asks, “Is emergency contraception an abortion?” This is paired with fairly mature material and explicit illustrations of the human body.

Parents should be aware that materials like this are becoming increasingly accessible to children. They should take action to inform their children about human sexuality in a responsible way before others (like Planned Parenthood) take that opportunity away. If Planned Parenthood answers questions like “When should I start having sex?” or “Is twelve too young to know I’m Bi?” before a parent does, those parents will have missed out on an incredibly important teaching moment for their children.

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San Francisco Mayor Bans City Employees from Travelling to States with Pro-Life Legislation on Business

Effective January 1, 2020, San Fransisco public employees will not be allowed to conduct business with or embark on work-related travel to states that ban abortion between 20 and 24 weeks.

In total, this list includes Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. This is very similar to a recently-announced Illinois bill that would prevent state workers from traveling to states with abortion restrictions.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed called the move a stand “against states that put women’s health at risk and that are actively working to limit reproductive freedoms,” and said that while “tax revenue from San Francisco alone may not be sufficient to encourage states to rethink their laws, if other cities and states follow San Francisco’s lead, the financial pressure might be enough to prompt policy changes.”

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Jury Sees Screenshots of Delivery Form for Fetal Body Parts

Among many other things, jurors in the ongoing legal battle between Planned Parenthood and undercover journalists saw 2012 screenshots from a website which detailed a variety of options for ordering fetal body parts.

“You have one drop-down menu for the kind of body part you wanted. They had about 50 to a hundred different body parts listed. You could get a heart, you could get a heart with veins and arteries still attached, you could get a brain, you could get kidneys, you could get genitals. You could get the scalp. Really, anything you could imagine,” Daleiden said.

The website had menus for specifying gestational age, the number of specimens, and shipping methods. One could receive the body parts with same-day, overnight, or ground Fed-Ex shipping.

The testimony helps show that Daleiden was focused on exposing violent actions of abortion facilities which were altering abortion procedures in order to obtain intact body parts. A California privacy law that Daleiden is accused of breaking also says that someone who records others while trying to expose violent activities is exempt from punishment.

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9th Circuit Court of Appeals Rules Against Freedom of Conscience

Credit: Becket Law Press Release

Little Sisters of the Poor, an organization made up of nuns who assist the impoverished near the end of their lives with nowhere else to go, lost in a battle against the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for their freedom of conscience in the face of the Affordable Care Act.

In its ruling, the 9th circuit stated, “the statute delegates to HRSA [Health Resources and Services Administration, a component of Health and Human Services] the discretion to determine which types of preventative care are covered, but the statute does not delegate to HRSA or any other agency the discretion to exempt who must meet the obligation.”

The Supreme Court overturned the original lower court ruling against the Little Sisters of the Poor in 2016, and President Trump issued an executive order which provided religious entities with exemptions to covering contraception. Pennsylvania and California responded to the latter by suing the federal government, however.

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Heartbeat Bill Advanced in South Carolina House

South Carolina's Senate Medical Affairs Subcommittee passed a bill in a 4-3 vote which would, if passed, ban abortion after a heartbeat is detected. Doctors who commit abortions after a heartbeat can be detected could face criminal charges if this were to become law.

House Bill 3020 requires that abortionists have mothers listen to their childrens' heartbeats and doesn't include exceptions to the rule for cases of incest or rape, per an amendment introduced by Sen. Richard Cash.

“Whether you mean to or not, you are punishing a person wrongfully for something he or she had nothing to do with," he said.

The bill passed in the House earlier this year, but will soon be voted on in the full Senate Medical Affairs Committee before it gets to the Senate floor. If it passes both votes, it will be sent back to the House of Representatives before going to Gov. Henry McMaster, who has already voiced his support.

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Oklahoma Judge Issues Temporary Injunction Against Abortion Pill Reversal Law

An abortion clinic in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with the help of the Center for Reproductive Rights, persuaded Oklahoma County Judge Don Andrews to issue a temporary injunction against SB 614, a law that would require abortionists to tell their patients about abortion pill reversal at least 72 hours before her scheduled abortion. Judge Andrews said that he wanted to hear additional arguments at trial before he would allow the law to take effect.

There are two kinds of pills involved in chemical abortions. In the days after a pregnant woman takes the first kind of pill, taking abortion reversal pills can counteract the effects and save a pregnancy. Oklahoma would join Arizona, Arkansas, South Dakota, Utah, Idaho, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Kentucky in the list of states with abortion pill reversal notification laws.

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Daleiden Defense Shows "20/20" Report Including Undercover Journalism of Fetal Tissue Sales

October 24ths proceedings of the Planned Parenthood vs. Center for Medical Progress ended with the jury watching an episode of ABC's "20/20", in which an undercover producer spoke with a businessman involved with the sale of fetal tissue. David Daleiden, an undercover journalist for the Center for Medical Progress, said that the report was the inspiration for the videos he produced with the CMP. He exposed Planned Parenthood's sale of fetal body parts with a series of videos including undercover footage of discussions with abortionists who even admitted to altering abortion procedures to collect intact fetal body parts.

The "20/20" report, which you can watch above, is extremely similar to the content Daleiden is currently being sued for producing. In an ironic moment, then-President of Planned Parenthood Gloria Feldt was interviewed by Chris Wallace. She told him "It seems totally inappropriate. Where there is wrongdoing, it should be prosecuted and people who are doing that kind of thing should be brought to justice."

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Simone Biles, Once a Foster Child, is Now the Most Decorated Gymnast of All Time

Drawing of Simone Biles
Credit: Denish C / Flickr

Simone Biles broke records and barriers to become the most decorated gymnast ever. She won five out of the six available gold medals at the World Championship in Germany on October 13. When she was only three years old, however, she was put into foster care due to her mother's addiction problems. She bounced between foster homes for years before her grandfather and his wife finally stepped forward. 

“Although I was young when my foster care ordeal began, I remember how it felt to be passed off and overlooked,” she wrote. “Like nobody knew me or wanted to know me. Like my talents didn’t count, and my voice didn’t matter." 

“Finding a family made me feel like I matter. Finding a passion, something I loved and was really good at, made me feel like I mattered.”

With that motivation, Simone went on to be the greatest gymnast of all time. With her platform, she wants others to know the importance of adoption. “[…] My road to success began the day my grandfather and his wife officially adopted my sister and me.”

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13 Oz Baby Born 15 Weeks Premature Survives to Go Home with Family

The Bender Family
Credit: Ebonie Bender

Kallie Bender was born 15 weeks early, but not because her mother went into labor naturally. Skilled doctors noticed during an ultrasound that her mother, Ebonie Bender, had a condition that reduced blood flow and nutrients to the baby. Rather than giving up on the pregnancy and aborting the child, St. Joseph's hospital in Pheonix, Arizona took the steps to deliver Kallie immediately and give her the highest chance possible to survive.

Kallie spent 150 days in St. Joseph’s Nursery Intensive Care Unit according to Fox 5 in Pheonix. She can now be with the rest of her mother, father, and three brothers.

CBS 5 reported:

"She also recovered from a complex heart procedure, which was performed by a team of skilled surgeons from St. Joseph’s, after she was diagnosed with a heart defect common among micro-preemies."

"Miraculously, Kallie didn’t suffer any brain bleeds or blindness due to her early arrival. Those are conditions that can occur in babies born around Kallie’s size and gestational age."

In cases where pregnancy seems hopeless or endangers the mother, more hospitals should adopt the policy of delivering the child and helping it have the greatest chance of survival possible.

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Daleiden Trial: David Testifies that he "Held Fetal Organs" and Judges Redacts Image of Fetal Heart

David Daleiden
Credit: American Life League / Flickr

The ongoing prosecution of the Center for Medical Progress along with two undercover journalists, David Daleiden and Sandra Merrit, reached its eleventh day on Monday, October 21. The CMP and the undercover journalists have been sued by Planned Parenthood for recording supposedly private conversations which exposed the abortion industry's sale of human body parts.

Monday's session began with the prosecution asking to redact parts of the defense's evidence from the record. Judge William Orrick continued to show his bias by agreeing to some of these requests. The most notable of these, as pointed out by Sr. Counsel Peter Breen, was “a picture of a little fetal heart hooked up to a Langendorff machine.” This is significant because this machine can only be used with fetal hearts harvested from children who were born alive. Daleiden's knowledge of this shows his intent to expose violent activity, which is protected under a California privacy law for which he is accused of violating.

Additionally, there was a tense moment on the courtroom floor when prosecution called Daleiden to the stand to ask him if he “ever procured tissue prior to the time that you released the very first video in July of 2015,” to which he replied, “I -- I held human fetal organs in my hands.” The questioning was designed to show that the company CMP created to discuss fetal tissue procurement with abortion clinics wasn't in good faith, which is, of course, intentional and obvious. The line was purely intended to portray Daleiden in a negative light in front of the jury.

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Thomas More Society Files Civil Complaint Against Illinois' Reproductive Health Act

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker
Photo: Chi Hack Night

On October 21, the Thomas More Society filed a civil complaint against Governor Pritzker's radical abortion policy with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights. Illinois’ Reproductive Health Act requires health insurance policies to cover abortions without offering religious exemptions. This violates the federal Weldon Amendment and the Affordable Care Act according to the Thomas More Society. If the federal government agrees, Illinois could lose billions of dollars in federal funding.

The Weldon Amendment ensures that federal appropriations to the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education may not be issued to any government that discriminates against a “health care entity,” including an insurance plan sponsor, on the basis that it does not provide health insurance coverage of abortion.

“We are confident that the Office for Civil Rights will take our complaint seriously,” Thomas More Society attorney Michael McHale said. “Federal law clearly prohibits this brazen attempt to encroach upon our rights conscience. We urge immediate intervention to halt this illegal mandate.”

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$9 Million Awarded to Parents of Alabama Student who Died From Birth Control Complications

Credit: Beatrice Murch / Flickr

Hope Johnson died from complications resulting from a birth control prescription she shouldn't have received and failure on the part of urgent care doctors to use her medical history to diagnose the problem. Hope's gynecologist prescribed hormonal birth control despite her blood test showing that she was at high risk for blood clots. Doctors did not file the test correctly, so she took the prescribed medication.

About a month later, she arrived at urgent care with shortness of breath, chest pain, headache, and a sore throat. She was diagnosed with bronchitis and given antibiotics. She came back the next day with worse symptoms and was given an inhaler. The doctor treating her was not given login credentials and was told to treat patients without using their medical histories. Hope died the following day.

Brett Turnbull, the attorney representing Johnson's family in the medical malpractice lawsuit, said, “Hope’s death is tragic because it was entirely preventable. We don’t know the exact number of patients seen that day, but it was too many. Patient well-being, not profits, should be the primary goal of healthcare.”

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Abortion Legalized in Northern Ireland Without Representation

On October 22, legislation passed by Westminster's government came into effect that legalized both abortion and gay marriage in Northern Ireland. Westminster's legislation required that Northern Ireland's government reconvene by midnight on October 21st, or else it would be subject to Westminster's liberal legislation. That date has come and gone, and a large enough number of legislators refused to reconvene that Westminster's legislation can take effect. Conservative lawmakers attempted to convene and write legislation blocking this action, but they did not have the numbers required to make it official.

Northern Ireland has been a conservative island of sorts in the United Kingdom, and the forced legislation is a major blow to the religious culture and freedoms of those who live there. The law replaces existing pro-life legislation protecting women and children from the dangers of abortion with one of the most extensive abortion laws in existence. Abortion is legalized through 28 weeks of pregnancy. Partial-birth abortion has no consequences. Children who survive abortion can be killed without a second thought. It is far more dangerous to be a preborn child in Northern Ireland today than it was Monday.

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