Good news in the fight against abortion | the Cripplegate

If Wendy Davis and Planned Parenthood are the face of the pro-abortion movement, then there may yet be hope that this is the last generation for legal abortion in the United States.



First some background: Yesterday the 5^th-Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling and allowed Texas’ new restrictions on abortions to remain in effect. This case will certainly be heard by the US Supreme Court, and is probably the most significant case in the struggle to end legal abortion.

The case started last year when abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell was found guilty of eight counts of murder for botched abortions. Essentially, Gosnell ran what was described by a grand jury as a “house of horrors” where young women were drugged, labor was induced, and if any babies were old enough to survive delivery, they had their spines cut with scissors. He continuously infected patients with STD’s, reused dirty instruments, and misused drugs. Cats roamed the halls, and the place was a urine and blood-soaked mess.

More: Good news in the fight against abortion | the Cripplegate

Obamacare and Abortion: Forcing Individuals to Fund Elective Abortion Coverage

Because of legislative loopholes and onerous mandates, Obamacare will entangle taxpayer funds in abortion coverage offered on state exchanges and could force many Americans to unwittingly pay an abortion surcharge with private dollars. Additional taxpayer fund­ing and mandates on insurers could also provide increased funding and coverage for abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. To truly protect taxpayers, individuals, and families from subsidizing health plans that include coverage of abortion, Obamacare must be repealed in its entirety. Americans deserve health care reform that allows individuals and families to choose health care that meets their needs without violating their beliefs or subsidizing life-ending drugs and procedures.

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Obamacare and Abortion: Forcing Individuals to Fund Elective Abortion Coverage

Roe v. Wade's Days Are Numbered | Christianity Today

Forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roe v. Wade decision, a leading pro-life legal expert believes the decision has never been more vulnerable to being overturned.


In his new book, Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade, Clark Forsythe, senior legal counsel at Americans United for Life, details what he uncovered in examining the private papers of the justices, their case files, and oral arguments. After 20 years of research, Forsythe found that:

•The justices decided to hear Roe under a misunderstanding that it concerned state criminal prosecutions, not a constitutional right to abortion.

•They arbitrarily expanded fetal viability from 12 weeks to 28 weeks with little discussion or medical knowledge.

•The Court's majority relied heavily on popular, but unproved, '70s-era evidence that there was an urgent need for population control in the United States.

Since Roe, there have been 50 million abortions in the United States. Currently, there are about 1 million per year. But public opinion has slowly been shifting toward ending abortion on

MORE: Roe v. Wade's Days Are Numbered | Christianity Today

9 Things You Should Know About Planned Parenthood – The Gospel Coalition Blog

Today, President Obama will give a speech at Planned Parenthood Federation of America's 75th anniversary gala, making him the first sitting president to address the group. Here are nine things you should know about the nation's largest abortion provider.

1. Planned Parenthood Federation of America has 95 affiliates and 865 health centers, according to its latest annual report, which covers the 2008-09 fiscal year. They require that at least one clinic per affiliate must perform abortions. PP performs over 320,000 abortions a year.

2. The motto for this year's gala is "Our past is our prologue." Part of the past the organization will be celebrating includes its founding by the notorious racist and eugenicist Margaret Sanger. Sanger wanted to control the reproduction of immigrants, the poor, certain religious groups, and anyone else she thought was from an "unacceptable" heritage. Sanger referred to such people as reckless breeders who were "unceasingly spawning a class of human beings who never should have been born at all . . ." In 1939 Sanger started the "Negro Project" and attempted to get Christian ministers to aid her effort. As she wrote in a letter to a fellow eugenicist, "we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

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9 Things You Should Know About Planned Parenthood – The Gospel Coalition Blog

2013: Clinics close, abortions drop, an industry retrenches

MORE: 2013: Clinics close, abortions drop, an industry retrenches

January 2, 2014 (NRLN) - Despite the current occupant in the White House and the dominance of abortion sympathizers in the U.S. Senate, 2013 was a year of some notable successes for the pro-life movement.

Cruel and callous practices of the abortion industry were exposed, several clinics were closed, and media popularity campaigns notwithstanding, significant regulations and important pieces of pro-life legislation were passed. Confirmation of a considerable drop in the number of abortions arrived courtesy of the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

This hardly passed by unnoticed by the abortion industry. Losing customers, losing public support, and losing significant legislative battles, the industry fought back with media campaigns of its own. It created new celebrities, developed new marketing strategies, published slanted studies, and made some significant adjustments to its business model.

Despite the current occupant in the White House and the dominance of abortion sympathizers in the U.S. Senate, 2013 was a year of some notable successes for the pro-life movement.

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Though it wasn’t until May that Kermit Gosnell was officially convicted on three counts of first-degree murder, news of the barbarity that went on at his Philadelphia abortion clinic had already gradually seeped out. While media coverage before and after the trial was underwhelming, the public learned something about what goes on in the abortion industry. Not just filthy, appalling clinic conditions tolerated by local and state authorities (not to mention industry groups that were supposed to uphold basic health and treatment standards) but also of the general callous disregard one of the nation’s preeminent abortionists had for the welfare of his patients—mother and child.

MORE: 2013: Clinics close, abortions drop, an industry retrenches

Abortion Clinics Closing at Record Rate | Gleanings | ChristianityToday.com

(BP) For Abby Johnson, the closing of a single Planned Parenthood center demonstrated her dramatic reversal from abortion clinic director to leading pro-life advocate.




But for pro-lifers throughout the United States, it marked another exhibit in a hopeful trend—abortion centers are shutting down at an unprecedented rate. The total so far this year is 44, according to a pro-life organization that tracks clinic operations.

None was more telling for Johnson than the mid-July closing of the Planned Parenthood center in Bryan, Texas. It came less than four years after Johnson, burdened by her involvement with abortion, walked out of that clinic as its director and into the offices of the Coalition for Life.

MORE: Abortion Clinics Closing at Record Rate | Gleanings | ChristianityToday.com

Is the Abortion Battle a War On Women or a War Between Women? – Trevin Wax

The War on Women has become a political catchphrase, popular enough to warrant its own entry on Wikipedia, which defines it as “an expression in United States politics, used to describe Republican Party initiatives in federal and state legislatures that restrict women’s rights, especially reproductive rights.” The definition continues:

The term is often used when targeting policies that reduce or eliminate taxpayer funding for women’s health organizations, like Planned Parenthood… Prominent Democrats and feminists have used the phrase to criticize conservative actions as trying to force their social views and religious beliefs on a general public by legal legislation.

Add to “prominent Democrats” and “feminists” the mainstream media. Read news articles or watch the talking heads discuss abortion and you’ll find the “War on Women” description used again and again.
MORE: Is the Abortion Battle a War On Women or a War Between Women? – Trevin Wax

The damning euphemism called “selective reduction” | Denny Burk

The video above features a woman named Amy Richards telling her story about “selective reduction” (HT: @drmoore). If you are unfamiliar with the term, it’s a euphemism for killing one or more unborn babies when there are multiples in a womb. In Richards’ case, she found out that she was pregnant with triplets. In the video above, she describes her fateful decision to have two of her triplets killed. In a 2004 Op-Ed for The New York Times, she describes why she refused to allow all of her children to live: MORE: The damning euphemism called “selective reduction” | Denny Burk

Gosnell trial: Location, location, location - The Hill's Congress Blog

It will be downright unfair if Dr. Kermit Gosnell is found guilty of murder this week at his abortion-infanticide trial in Philadelphia. His defense attorney made a convincing case in closing arguments that abortion doctors end pregnancies every day, so why single out Gosnell? Perhaps he operated under particularly unsanitary conditions, was singularly incompetent, and committed medical malpractice, but, really, murder?


In fact, the judge in Gosnell’s case has already dropped three of the murder charges because the medical examiner said he could not prove those babies were alive after birth. The murder case against Gosnell rests entirely on the location of the victim (in inches, mind you) at the time of death, not in the fact that the victim was killed. The main difference between Gosnell and other abortion doctors is that he couldn’t get the job done before the baby came out. He tried doing it like his peers at Planned Parenthood --the industry leader which is worthy of half a billion dollars annually in tax-payer funds. Standard practice for later-term abortions at Planned Parenthood is to inject the drug Digoxin into the baby’s heart, while it’s still inside the mother, inducing fetal demise before the procedure begins. Or the D&E (dilation and evacuation) method, which is the in-utero dismemberment of the fetus (done “gently,” thank goodness).

Baby killed inside the mother – legal abortion. Very same baby killed seconds later on the other side of the birth canal – murder. In abortion, as in real estate, it’s location, location, location.


Dr. Gosnell tried the legal methods, but he failed at pinpointing the baby’s heart – it requires skill he doesn’t have to delicately guide the needle through a pregnant woman’s belly into the stubbornly beating heart of the unborn baby.
He apparently also tried the industry approved D&E method (as the severed baby feet found in the jar would indicate). With this method, as a doctor at Family Planning Associates of Phoenix explained to a woman 23 weeks pregnant, “it comes out in pieces.”

Why single out his client, the defense attorney argued, since “Gosnell is not the only one doing abortions in Philadelphia.” No, he isn’t. Ten minutes away from Gosnell’s clinic is the Philadelphia Women’s Center, where they advertise dismemberment abortions through 24 weeks and 6 days, right at the edge of Pennsylvania’s 24 -week age limit.

The grand jury report said that most of Gosnell’s victims were under Pennsylvania’s 24-week limit. But some were older. Again though, the problem is merely one of real estate. Gosnell could have moved his clinic 15 minutes away, across the river to New Jersey, which doesn’t have those pesky limits on late-term abortions (limits opposed by pro-choice groups). Just over the Ben Franklin Bridge, a quick Google search reveals seven New Jersey clinics that do late-term abortions.
Oh, the injustice of it all. Doctor in Pennsylvania is charged with a crime for aborting a 25-week baby; doctor in New Jersey gets a good fee for aborting a 25-week fetus. Location, location, location.

Gosnell trial: Location, location, location - The Hill's Congress Blog

AlbertMohler.com – Can Christians Use Birth Control?

The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age–and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm.
Most evangelical Protestants greeted the advent of modern birth control technologies with applause and relief. Lacking any substantial theology of marriage, sex, or the family, evangelicals welcomed the development of “The Pill” much as the world celebrated the discovery of penicillin — as one more milestone in the inevitable march of human progress, and the conquest of nature.

AlbertMohler.com – Can Christians Use Birth Control?

Why Should Evangelicals Care About the Contraceptive-Abortifacient Mandate?

(Joe Carter) Currently, there are 42 lawsuits across the country that are challenging the Obama administration's contraceptive-abortifacient mandate as a violation of Christian conscience, making 2013 a particularly important year for religious liberty. For good or for ill, these cases will play an unusually important role in defining our national commitment to religious liberty

To better understand the implications of the mandate, TGC interviewed Daniel Blomberg, the legal counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Blomberg, the son of an ordained evangelical minister, earned a degree in Bible from Columbia International University before graduating magna cum laude from the University of South Carolina School of Law. Before joining Becket, he clerked for Chief Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and, before that, served as litigation counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom.

What is the mission and purpose of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty?  MORE

Life, Liberty, and HHS

(Breakpoint - John Stonestreet) It’s a venerable Washington tradition to save controversial and/or embarrassing announcements for Friday afternoons, hoping that when Monday rolls around, people’s attention will be elsewhere.

And what better time to try and slip one past the American people than the Friday before the Super Bowl? Thus, last Friday, the Obama administration announced some further modifications to the HHS mandate. This is version 3.0 of that part of Obamacare that requires employers to pay for contraception, sterilization and abortifacients, irrespective of their religious convictions.
What was announced on Friday was an attempt to mollify critics while remaining true to the worldview that— pun fully intended — gave birth to these new regulations in the first place.  MORE

America’s Abortion Provider: What Everyone Should Know About Planned Parenthood

On February 18, 2011, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to end federal funding of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA). The bill later failed to pass the Senate, by a margin of 42-58. Despite its demise, this legislative act reflected a monumental shift in America’s attitude—a shift against the nation’s largest abortion provider. Had the bill become law, it would have had a significant impact upon the abortion giant’s finances: PPFA receives roughly 46 percent of its budget from federal and state grants and contracts.

Leading up to the House’s vote, a pro-life activist group released videotapes of an undercover sting. Video footage showed employees at a variety of Planned Parenthood clinics who were willing to aid and abet the sex trafficking of minors, a federal criminal offense.

1 While the federal attempts to defund the abortion provider have stalled, state legislators and governors have withheld state dollars from Planned Parenthood. At the time of publication, as many as nine states had taken such action.

Yet to many Americans, the PPFA.... More

Media Misleads on Reasons Behind Abortion Decline

(by Michael New) Last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released abortion statistics for calendar year 2009. The news was good for pro-lifers as the CDC statistics indicate the number of abortions decreased by approximately 5 percent between 2008 and 2009. Overall, the abortion rate has been declining fairly steadily since the early 1990s, but has leveled off somewhat during the current decade. Furthermore, some research indicates that the incidence of abortion increases when the economy slows down. As such, this reported decline in the abortion rate was somewhat unexpected.

 

Unsurprisingly, most of the mainstream-media coverage of the abortion decline was quick to credit contraception use. The Associated Press story on the abortion decline cited two professors and a Guttmacher Institute analyst. They each credited contraception use, even though they were unable to provide any actual evidence of increased contraception use in 2009. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no one representing a pro-life group was quoted or cited in the article.

Sandy Hook and Abortion

Baptist Press (Kelly Boggs)
ALEXANDRIA, La. (BP) -- On Friday morning, Dec. 14, a gunman shot his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. He gunned down 20 precious children and six adults before taking his own life. Earlier that same day, the shooter fired several shots into his mother, killing her while she slept in her home.

The death toll of the murderous rampage that shocked the nation was 28. In the ensuing days memorials were held all over the country. People wept and wondered how someone could be so calloused as to murder children in cold blood.

Amid all the discussions, one question is repeatedly posed: "Why?" Pundits, psychologists and politicians all have suggested possible reasons or motives for why Adam Lanza, the shooter, went on his deadly rampage. But the truth is that no one really knows what motivated Lanza to perpetrate his crime; it was probably a combination of factors. One of which is that sin, the selfish, self-centered reality that stains human DNA, was part of his makeup. MORE

Ten Best and Worst States for Protecting Unborn

(Life Site News, by Ben Johnson)
WASHINGTON, D.C., January 16, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – After a year of pro-life triumphs that was rated the second highest in modern U.S. history, Americans United for Life (AUL) has ranked all 50 states over how well they protect the unborn.

The newly released report also provides 50 individual blueprints for how each state can advance the cause of life in the new year.

The effective pro-life organization examined 50 states and the District of Columbia's laws on abortion, protecting the unborn in the womb, and conscience rights for health care workers, as well as end-of-life and bioethical issues.

Researchers rated Louisiana the best for the second year in a row, after the legislature capped off the most successful pro-life session in memory.

AUL notes that the state “has a decades-long history of enacting.... MORE

40 Years After Roe? Time Hails Abortion Rights

(Al Mohler) The 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade will bring the nation face to face with the abortion question once again. More accurately, it will serve as an opportunity for activists and supporters on both sides of the abortion controversy in America to consider where the nation stands, four decades after Roe.
Roe was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on January 22, 1973. The divided Court handed down a confusing and complex decision, constructed by Justice Harry Blackmun in an effort to put the abortion controversy to rest. The decision was simple enough in its main point — that a woman had a constitutional right to an abortion for any reason or for no reason within the first trimester of her pregnancy. The effect was to legalize abortion on demand nationwide.  MORE

Why You Should Care About the Hobby Lobby Case

(Kevin DeYoung) The facts are well known: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) requires employers to provide insurance for their employees. As part of the mandated health coverage, businesses must include contraceptives and abortifacient drugs in their insurance plans. Hobby Lobby, owned by the Green family (strong Christians and generous philanthropists), is refusing to comply with the HHS mandate, believing that the government is requiring what is unethical and infringing upon their religious liberty. Perhaps it is tragically fitting that Justice Sotomayor denied Hobby Lobby judicial relief on December 26—St. Stephen’s Day, the day the church remembers its first martyr.  MORE

Pride, Obama, and Hobby Lobby's Conviction

(Doug Wilson) 
In a constitutional republic, the normal ways for an arrogant politician to come a cropper would be through personal scandal and resignation, and/or repudiation at the polls. That's the way we do. Very few pols, however much they may deserve it, are struck by lightning bolts or small meteorites.
Not to probe old wounds, there really were sound reasons for thinking Obama was going to be rejected decisively in this last election (as I and a bunch of other wrong people thought). For me one of those reasons was the self-evident nature of the president's high-octane arrogance. Pride really does go before destruction, and a haughty spirit really does go before a fall (Prov. 16:18). But as the results of the election testify, Mencken was right, at least in this instance. He said no one ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American people. Hubris radiates from the president like heat from an oil drum stove, and it is astonishing to me that so many people are blind to it.
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Planned Parenthood Election Spending Highly Effective

(Religion Today)

The country's top abortion provider received a great return on the money it spent in this year's election, according to an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation, Baptist Press reports. The analysis showed that more than 98 percent of Planned Parenthood Action Fund's spending in election races produced the desired result, making Planned Parenthood No. 1 for effectiveness in the 2012 election cycle. Planned Parenthood, which spent about $15 million in the election, succeeded with a two-part approach, pollsters and strategists told The Washington Post. It used Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's words against him, and it identified about 1 million women voters, mostly in swing states, who were especially open to its message. "Those were the women that we were going to relentlessly target over and over again between June and November," said Dawn Laguens, Planned Parenthood's executive vice president. Planned Parenthood used Romney's opposition to Roe v. Wade and federal funding of Planned Parenthood to influence those voters -- part of a dramatic shift by campaigns and outside groups, which spent $39 million on advertising related to abortion. "There was a huge increase in the number of spots on these issues in 2012 versus 2008," said Ken Goldstein, president of the media tracking company Kantar Media. "Overall, the Democrats aired over six times as many spots on abortion as Republicans."   MORE