In June Medical Services v. Russo, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts again disappoints conservatives. Roberts voted with the politically “progressive”/morally regressive majority to strike down a Louisiana law requiring abortionists to have hospital privileges within 30 miles of the slaughterhouses in which they kill tiny humans and occasionally end up killing or maiming their mothers. This law would have required abortuaries in which surgical procedures are performed to adhere to the same safety regulations as all other ambulatory surgical centers.

Ironically, in a similar case out of Texas similarly decided, Roberts dissented, siding with conservatives. In June Medical Services v. Russo, Roberts concluded that following precedent (i.e., stare decisis) rather than sound reasoning is the absolute highest priority of any Justice. Good thing Roberts wasn’t sitting on the Supreme Court when Brown v. Board of Education overturned Plessy v. Ferguson or when Loving v. Virginia overturned Pace v. Alabama.

In his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas made clear that the abortionists pursuing this lawsuit lacked “standing”:

Their sole claim before this Court is that Louisiana’s law violates the purported substantive due process right of a woman to abort her unborn child. But they concede that this right does not belong to them, and they seek to vindicate no private rights of their own. Under a proper understanding of Article III, these plaintiffs lack standing to invoke our jurisdiction.

Despite the fact that we granted Louisiana’s petition specifically to address whether “abortion providers [can] be presumed to have third-party standing to challenge health and safety regulations on behalf of their patients,” a majority of the Court all but ignores the question. The plurality and THE CHIEF JUSTICE ultimately cast aside this jurisdictional barrier to conclude that Louisiana’s law is unconstitutional under our precedents.

Attorneys represent litigants in lawsuits, and litigants must be able to claim that they are in some way harmed by a law. The purported harmful effect is what gives them “standing” to pursue a lawsuit. Since feticidal profiteers have trouble getting women to argue against abortionists having hospital privileges, this lawsuit was pursued by “third parties” who would be “harmed” monetarily by a law requiring abortionists to have hospital privileges.

The ability of abortionists to serve as third-party litigants was secured in the 1976 case Singleton v. Wulff in which two feticide providers sued for the right to have Medicaid reimburse them for killing humans in “not ‘medically indicated’” abortions. It was determined by the liberal court that the feticide providers had “standing” because, according to Justice Blackmun, “they will benefit by receiving payment for the abortions.”

“The point is, Ladies and Gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works,” says Gordon Gekko.

‘Twas ever thus.

Justice Thomas goes on to remind America of the fundamental truth that Supreme Court precedents defending abortion lack even “a shred of support from the Constitution’s text”:

Our abortion precedents are grievously wrong and should be overruled.

He’s far from alone in his assessment of the precedents as “grievously wrong.” Here are some assessments of Roe v. Wade from liberals:

• “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” (Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School professor).

• “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose” (Edward Lazarus, former clerk to SCOTUS Justice Harry Blackmun).

• “[A]s a matter of constitutional interpretation, even most liberal jurisprudes — if you administer truth serum—will tell you it is basically indefensible” (Edward Lazarus).

• “Blackmun’s [U.S. Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference” (William Saletan, Slate magazine writer).

• Roe “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be…. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the U.S. Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure.” (John Hart Ely, clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren).

• “[T]he very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision—the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution—strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous. Whatever abortion may be, it cannot simply be a matter of privacy. … “[Roe] is a Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up. It seems more fiat than argument. … Still, a bad decision is a bad decision. If the best we can say for it is that the end justifies the means, then we have not only lost the argument—but a bit of our soul as well” (Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist).

• “Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy) …. [C]lear governing constitutional principles… are not present” (Alan Dershowitz, former Harvard Law School professor).

• “In short, 30 years later, it seems increasingly clear that this pro-choice magazine was correct in 1973 when it criticized Roe on constitutional grounds. … Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself. As a result, the pro-choice majority asks nominees to swear allegiance to the decision without being able to identify an intelligible principle to support it” (Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School professor, former clerk to Judge Abner Mikva).

• “Liberal judicial activism peaked with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion decision…. Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching” (Michael Kinsley, attorney, political journalist).

• “[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor. … who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. … As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether.” (Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania Law School professor).

• “The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations…. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution” (Archibald Cox, JFK’s Solicitor General, former Harvard Law School professor).

The super creepy pro-feticide organization Personal PAC, whose sole reason for its creepy existence is to protect the legal right of women to have their own offspring offed, is expressing only tepid kudos for this decision. Their enthusiasm is tempered by their correct assumption that pro-life activism will not cease:

While the Supreme Court’s decision in June Medical Services was a temporary reprieve from the assault on reproductive rights. … [d]on’t be fooled. … The anti-choice extremists are emboldened by today’s decision and it is to our great peril if we think it portends anything other than a reprieve by the Court Trump promised would end Roe.

“Choice” is an obvious and deceitful euphemism that is not up to the task for which it was created: it can’t conceal the truth about the unseemly nature of the choice leftists want women to have.

There exists no absolute or constitutional right “to choose.” Leftists exploit the word “choose” or “choice” because of its positive connotations. They exploit it because of the fondness everyone has for making choices in life. But not even leftists believe that a free-floating right “to choose” exists. There are a host of choices they want to proscribe:

• Leftists don’t believe parents should have school choice.

• Leftists don’t believe parents should have the right to choose whether their minor gender dysphoric children are chemically sterilized or surgically mutilated.

• Leftists don’t believe parents should have the right to choose the type of sex education their children should receive.

• Leftists don’t believe minors who experience unchosen, unwanted homoerotic feelings should have counseling choice.

• Leftists don’t believe employers should have the right to choose whether to hire or fire cross-dressing men.

• Leftists don’t believe anyone should have the right to refer to cross-dressing men by male pronouns.

• Leftists don’t believe women have the right to choose to exclude all biological men from their private spaces or sports.

• Leftists—well, most leftists–don’t believe minors should have the right to choose to have sex with adults.

So many choices of which tyrannical leftists want to deprive Americans. Well, many Americans don’t believe women have a moral or constitutional right to order the killing of imperfect or inconvenient humans.

Feminist and family abolitionist Sophie Lewis cheerfully admits,

Abortion is … a form of killing. It’s a form of killing that we need to be able to defend. I am not interested in where a human life starts to exist.

Because science confirms that the product of conception between two humans is a human, abortion inarguably kills humans. At no point in the gestational process is the product of conception anything other than human. Since abortion kills humans, legalized human slaughter will never cease to divide America.

Anything that gnaws around the edges of the child-killing cultural tumor that we refer to as Roe v. Wade is a good thing. Chief Justice Roberts didn’t help babies, women, or America.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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In June Medical Services v. Russo, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts again disappoints conservatives. Roberts voted with the politically “progressive”/morally regressive majority to strike down a Louisiana law requiring abortionists to have hospital privileges within 30 miles of the slaughterhouse in which they kill tiny humans and occasionally end up killing or maiming their mothers. This law would have required abortuaries in which surgical procedures are performed to adhere to the same safety regulations as all other ambulatory surgical centers.

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If you have logged on to Netflix, Amazon, and other places recently, you have probably seen some of corporate America’s virtue signaling via banners in support of Black Lives Matter. By itself, it is a powerful slogan which no one can disagree with, even if you’d prefer to say all lives matter. However, there’s more to this than just a slogan.

The organization Black Lives Matter has some very specific goals and views that many casual observers may not know: it was founded to dramatically change America, and its leaders have not been shy about where they stand. Here are just a few of their policy positions with a couple of my comments in parentheses.

• Black Lives Matter supports abortion. It states: “We deserve and thus we demand reproductive justice that gives us autonomy over our bodies and our identities while ensuring that our children and families are supported, safe, and able to thrive.” (Aborted babies don’t thrive nor are they safe. Black babies are disproportionately terminated by the abortion industry which has racist roots stemming from Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood.)

• Black Lives Matter supports the radical LGBT agenda. It states: “We foster a queer-affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.” (Two of the three founders of BLM describe themselves as “queer,” a rather radical term for a homosexual activist.)

• Black Lives Matter opposes the traditional nuclear family which is a vital sociological part of overcoming crime and poverty. It states: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.” (Villages without fathers are poor [literally] substitutes for communities with intact families.)

• Black Lives Matter supports reparations. It states: “Reparations for full and free access for all Black people (including undocumented and currently and formerly incarcerated people) to lifetime education…retroactive forgiveness of student loans, and support for lifetime learning programs.”

• Black Lives Matter supports the abolishment of police. It states: “We believe that prisons, police and all other institutions that inflict violence on Black people must be abolished…”

• Black Lives Matter claims to oppose racism, but it is an organization with anti-Semitic leanings. In 2016 BLM adopted derogatory policy statements about Israel. It described the nation of Israel as an “apartheid state” committing “genocide” and supports the boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) movement against Israel. BLM opposes any support of Israel by the United States government.

• Black Lives Matter’s activism is helping the presidential campaign of Joe Biden. If one goes to the BLM website and chooses to donate, he is redirected to a site hosted by ActBlue and prompted with the message: “We appreciate your support of the movement and our ongoing fight to end state-sanctioned violence, liberate Black people, and end white supremacy forever.” Joe Biden is the top beneficiary of ActBlue’s fundraising efforts.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

Dear woke evangelical pastors,

What in the world is wrong with you? Why in God’s name would you stand in solidarity with an organization that seeks the destruction of Christianity?

You are supposed to believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the evangel, and it’s good news. You are supposed to believe in sola Scriptura and the inerrancy of the Word. You are supposed to believe in personal sin, personal confession, personal repentance and personal holiness.

What happened to you? When did you lose your conviction? When were you given over to a reprobate mind? When did your heart of flesh become a heart of stone? When did you lose your soul?

There was a time, oh, let’s say about five minutes ago when you were defined by preaching salvation, not social justice. The world knew you for your revivals, not your riots. You were characterized by your piety, not your politics. It seems like just yesterday that your belief in God distinguished you, not your worship of government.

How in the name of all that is right and holy could you possibly now march with an organization that laughs in the face of all that Jesus taught and died for? How could you be so ignorant? How could you be so arrogant? How could you be so wrong?

Have you not taken the time to do a 30-second Google search of the mission statement of the organization with which you now align?

Here’s what Black Lives Matter explicitly says about itself on its own website:

“We … do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege. We build a space that … is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered. We dismantle patriarchal practices … We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure … We foster a queer-affirming network … with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking …” 

And they are rabidly anti-Semitic and pro-abortion to boot!

Have you not read this stuff? And if you have, do you not care?

How can you stand with an organization that mocks God, denies the Bible, belittles men, demeans women and subjugates generations of black children to the dysfunction of fatherless families?

You claim to be Christian leaders, but you stand in solidarity with a group that promotes anger and revenge, one that calls for revolution rather than repentance, one that waves a banner of pride rather than penitence, one that foments resentment and laughs at forgiveness.

How can you be so blind?

Have you not read your own Bibles?

The broken ideas of BLM are not godly, and they are not Christian, and any pastor suggesting otherwise diminishes the imago Dei to little more than a hyphenated construct of division rather than unity.

Your cooperation in the lie of intersectionality and racial conflict is sin, pure and simple.

Why aren’t you telling your followers that to be a Christian is to be born again, not born that way, that we have died to self, that we are new creations, that we are neither “Jew nor Greek,” and that we are all one Body in Christ?

Why aren’t you preaching that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God — not just whites and not just blacks — but all?

Why aren’t you telling people that the only solution to this mess is personal repentance rather than casting blame?

Why aren’t you preaching confession rather than conflict?

Why?

Your complicity in the enemy’s deceit has encouraged tens of thousands to play the “hater” card rather than confess their own hate. Your apostasy is rife. There is a reason that culture has cast you out and trampled you underfoot. Your salt has lost its savor. Your light is extinguished. There is a reason your churches are empty and dark.

What are you thinking? Jesus never told us to harbor resentment and stew in the emotions of how we’ve been wronged. In fact, he told us to do the exact opposite. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors is not about fixating on who has harmed us. It is about forgiveness and shame on you for preaching otherwise.

Archbishop Vigano recently said,

“There are [now] mercenary infidels who seek to scatter the flock and hand the sheep over to be devoured by ravenous wolves …; a deep church that betrays its duties and forswears its proper commitments before God.”

“Mercenary infidels … A deep church that betrays its duties and forswears its proper commitments before God.”

Hmm.

Someone else once suggested the same: “In the last days there will come … men who oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith … Their folly will be plain to all …” ~St. Paul

Dr. Everett Piper, a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Daycare: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery).

There’s nothing quite like a crisis to bring out the best in people. There’s also nothing quite like a crisis to bring out the worst in people. Case in point, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer’s idiotic defense of prohibiting doctors from performing “non-essential” surgical procedures, including joint replacements, while allowing doctors to continue to perform freely chosen, that is, elective abortions.

Before discussing Whitmer’s idiotic statement, let’s remember that abortion—i.e., the deliberate killing of a human prior to his or her delivery—is never necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman. While there are emergencies that require a pregnancy to be terminated to save the life of a mother, terminating a pregnancy never requires the prior and intentional killing of her baby—also known as human slaughter. To be clear, a pregnancy can be terminated via a Caesarean section, which does not involve the direct killing of a baby. Sometimes the emergency delivery of a baby prior to full gestation will result in its death, but such a death is not an abortion. Therefore, abortion is never necessary to save a mother’s life, and if it’s never necessary to save a woman’s life, abortion is by definition non-essential.

Governor Whitmer begs to differ, arguing irrationally the following after being asked about her pandemic regulations regarding abortion:

We stopped elective surgeries here in Michigan. Some people have tried to say that that type of a procedure is considered the same and that’s ridiculous. A woman’s health care, her whole future, her ability to decide if and when she starts a family is not an election, it is fundamental to her life. It is life sustaining and it’s something that government should not be getting in the middle of.

Whitmer, like so many other leftists, can’t even bring herself to say “abortion” (let alone the more fitting term “feticide”). Instead, she uses the cumbersome euphemism “that type of procedure.” Whitmer’s statement, dripping with irony that was apparently lost on the witless Whitmer, refers to the intentional slaughter of the unborn as a “life-sustaining” procedure.

Still avoiding the term “abortion,” Whitmer employs the strategically useful go-to term of cultural regressives everywhere: “woman’s health care.” Someone should ask Whitmer how the slaughter by abortion of 431,000 little women every year in the U.S. alone constitutes “health care” for those females.

While deciding whether or not to allow a human in the womb to continue to live may affect a woman’s “future,” affecting one’s future does not make a procedure essential. Nor does deciding “if and when” to start a family make a medical decision “essential.” In describing the “procedure” of feticide as deciding “if and when” to start a family,” Whitmer inadvertently reveals that feticide is, indeed, elective, and if it’s elective, it’s non-essential.

Whitmer must believe the entire country just fell off the turnip truck if she expects anyone to believe that joint replacements to end daily and often excruciating pain and disability are elective and must cease during the pandemic while freely chosen abortion—a procedure that leftists call “pro-choice”—is non-elective and essential.

And she must believe all Michiganders are dupes when she says government should not be “getting in the middle of” health care decisions as she—the government—gets in the middle of health care decisions.

Whitmer tweeted a photo of herself wearing a pink hat that says in all caps, “PLANNED PARENTHOOD MAKES AMERICA GREAT,” accompanied by her words “The future is bright… and pink!” That photo encapsulates the depraved “progressive” vision of a “great” America. For “progressives,” slaughtering the unborn at any point from conception to birth for any or no reason and forcing taxpayers to subsidize this elective, non-essential human slaughter makes America great.

Whitmer’s hubris and  incompetence extend beyond her “getting in the middle of health care” by designating the practice of women freely hiring “doctors” to kill their offspring “health care.”  She also banned  “lawn and landscaping services, motor boating and golf. Large stores can’t sell paint, furniture or garden equipment. People aren’t allowed to travel between residences, which blocks them from visiting second homes and hunting cabins.” In so doing, Whitmer provided yet more evidence that regressives lack both moral compasses and an ability to think coherently. We should have learned through history that leaders who lack both morality and rationality use the exercise of raw power to achieve their destructive ends.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Leftists-Say-Freely-Choosing-Feticide-Is-Now-Non-Elective.mp3

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As the Coronavirus pandemic wears on, government officials have shut down schools and businesses while stressing social distancing. The work continues to get personal protective equipment (PPE) into the hands of medical personnel with even elective surgeries canceled for the foreseeable future. However, the pandemic hasn’t slowed down the abortion industry. Several states have tried to close abortion clinics, calling the procedure an elective surgery that would take up medical resources, and Planned Parenthood has fought back in the courts to keep their doors open.

Only the state of Texas placed an outright ban on abortions as elective surgeries until the end of the pandemic. On April 7, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ban that Texas governor Greg Abbott put in place categorizing an abortion as an elective surgery. Planned Parenthood has petitioned the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Other states that have deemed abortions to be elective surgeries are Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Ohio, and Oklahoma. The Oklahoma ban was blocked in court April 6.

In an April 3 letter to supporters, Jennifer Welch, president & CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois (PPIL), shared, “To best serve our patients during this crisis, we have temporarily consolidated into six ‘Mission Health Centers’ to provide essential services including medical and in-clinic abortion care.” The six centers are located in Aurora, Flossmoor, Peoria, Springfield, and two in Chicago. However, eyewitnesses have noted that the Planned Parenthood in Fairview Heights has continued to receive patients.

National Planned Parenthood as well as PPIL have also continued to fund-raise heavily during the pandemic. In an apparent reference to the states that that don’t consider abortions essential medical procedures, Welch wrote, “We are also taking action against those who attempt to use the pandemic as an excuse to restrict health care for millions of people across the country.”

Abortions continue in Metro East area

In Illinois, the abortion industry is still going strong. The 18,000-square-foot Planned Parenthood abortion clinic built in secrecy in Fairview Heights and just 13 miles away from downtown St. Louis, Mo., has been a source of controversy since it opened in October 2019.

Angela Michael is a pro-life activist and head of Small Victories Pregnancy Outreach. Michael, a former obstetrical nurse, protests regularly outside the clinic in Fairview Heights and a nearby clinic in Granite City, called Hope Clinic. The latter is a privately-owned women’s health clinic that mainly provides abortions and sits across the street from the city’s only hospital.

Hope Clinic tweeted Governor JB Pritzker to complain about, and called the local police to disband, a group of protestors outside the clinic March 27. The group consisted of Michael and three others. Four police officers arrived, and Michael shared in a Facebook message that, perhaps upon seeing the body camera she was wearing, they told the pro-life advocates to “Have a nice day.”

Michael publishes eyewitness accounts from the two clinics almost daily to the Small Victories Pregnancy Outreach Facebook page. She has been noting the large groups of people entering the clinics, failing to practice social distancing, and cars traveling there from as far away as Colorado.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 40 facilities providing abortions in Illinois in 2017, and 25 of those were abortion clinics.

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-and, please-

In the midst of the COVID-19 craziness, it is alarming to recognize there are many who are willing to use our current health crisis for their own gain and/or agenda. As these snollygosters and media types grandstand, I cannot help but think of Rahm Emanuel’s infamous quote, “never let a crisis go to waste.”

Ironically, Emanuel first used that phrase in 2008 during the nation’s financial crash and then again last week in response to our nation’s coronavirus emergency. Is it a repackaging of one of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, in which he writes “in the arena of action a threat or a crisis becomes almost a precondition to communication”? I’ll let you decide.

The truth is, the board and staff here at IFI are deeply disturbed to hear the incessant petty partisan criticisms of the Trump Administration by political leaders and media pundits who only seem interested in stoking anxiety and exacerbating division among the American people. In that regard, Illinois’ Governor JB Pritzker has made a name for himself as one of the nation’s chief nitpickers over the last several weeks.

In his first fourteen months as CEO of the state of Illinois, Gov. Pritzker hasn’t pursued policy solutions that would have helped Illinois prepare for a pandemic. Gov. Pritzker hasn’t tried to bolster Illinois’ rainy-day fund, which is now vitally needed to purchase respirators and other medical equipment. In fact, Illinois remains disadvantaged because of the billions of dollars in unpaid bills dragging us down. Instead, like a petulant child, Pritzker awaits bailouts from the federal government.

For the most part, Pritzker’s political priorities have concerned the “social issues.” Working with the “Progressive” Caucus in Springfield, he followed through on his pledge to “make Illinois the most progressive state in the nation” for killing babies through abortion. He helped pass the mandate to indoctrinate young children through teaching positively about “LGBT” history in government schools (K-12). He helped pass an expansion of gambling and increased both gasoline taxes and the cost of doing business with a hike in the minimum wage.

Pritzker’s involvement in getting recreational marijuana passed in the state cannot be over-emphasized. This foolish policy will only exacerbates our current national/international health predicament, as marijuana consumption has been proven to suppress the immune system, leaving users more vulnerable to sickness. He did a great disservice to Illinois’ families, the healthcare system and first responders. BTW, who do you suppose will be paying for these unintended consequences of legal pot? Regarding the “stay-at-home” order, which has now been extended through April 30th, why are abortuaries, liquor and pot stores considered “essential businesses”?

In all of this, Christians should not forget the centrality of prayer and worship to the only One who can heal our land of the myriad forms of suffering people are experiencing. We owe Jehovah-Rapha (i.e., the God who heals) all of our love and devotion (Psalm 41:3). It is imperative to acknowledge that “that the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind …” and to recognize that He works in miraculous ways through doctors, nurses and medicine.

Let us not be like the insolent King Nebuchadnezzar who foolishly took credit for building up Babylon the Great. Instead, it is far wiser to humbly and with great lament seek God in worship, praying fervently for His merciful hand of healing and restoration (See Daniel 4:28-37).

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to Gov. Pritzker to ask him respectfully to stop using this national crisis to divide the American people. Ask him to stop grandstanding and instead focus on responsible policies that will shore up our foundation. These priorities have been neglected for far too long, and it is past time that we address them instead of focusing on petty politics.

If you appreciate the work and ministry of IFI, please consider a tax-deductible donation to sustain our endeavors.  It does make a difference.

Written by Charles Snow 

Written by Patricia Mosley

As part of their COVID-19 response, the U.K. initially approved new measures to allow women to take the complete abortion pill regimen at home. Now, it appears that this measure has been reversed. The reasoning given was, “This was published in error. There will be no changes to abortion regulations.”

The abortion pill is a two-drug regimen that is basically a do-it-yourself method anyways, but normally, the woman would have some type of interaction with a physician by taking the first pill (mifepristone) under their supervision at the clinic and then going home to take the second drug (misoprostol) 24-48 hours later.

Because the U.K. considers abortion an “essential service” amid the pandemic, their response was to completely place the burden of abortion on women. These women would have been popping both pills at home with no physician oversight.

But this is what the abortion industry all over the world has been calling for even before the current pandemic—for abortions to be unrestricted, unregulated, and do-it-yourself. Gone are the days when they were calling for “safe, legal, and rare” to protect against desperate women performing their own “back-alley” abortions. Now abortion pills are the new back-alley method, credentialed by the world’s most prestigious medical institutions.

Because the U.S. has FDA restrictions (REMs) on the abortion pill (U.S. brand “Mifeprex”), it cannot be a “complete” DIY method, but either way, restrictions or no restrictions, the abortion pill method is set up to be an at-home, multi-day, traumatic process that comes with the risk of serious complications.

Chemical abortions carry four times the rate of complications compared to surgical abortions. The two side effects observed to be more prevalent during chemical abortions than surgical abortions were hemorrhage and incomplete abortion. An incomplete abortion means there needed to be surgical intervention to extract any remaining parts of the unborn child from the woman’s uterus. Prolonged hemorrhage requiring blood transfusion can occur. It’s already been reported to the FDA that over 500 blood transfusions, over a thousand hospitalizations, and 24 deaths took place as result of Mifeprex. And that is just what’s been reported.

Fortunately right now, the U.S. has strong pro-life leadership from the top down, so at a national level it’s unlikely that we will see abortion be declared an “essential service” at a time like this. However, that will not stop the abortion industry from demanding that it should be. Some states have already deemed abortion “essential.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and their allies have already put out a statement complaining that abortions are being left out of essential health care services that need to remain open at this time. Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio is at war with the state Attorney General and Health Department as they continue to perform abortions even though they have been directly ordered not to.

Planned Parenthood claims they can still achieve the goal of conserving medical resources for essential health care personnel combatting COVID-19 by remaining open. How would they do this? They didn’t explain.

It doesn’t take a lot of time to deduce that the abortion industry is likely dispensing abortion pills to pregnant women who are past the FDA-approved gestational age limit of 10 weeks. The abortion industry has already been experimenting with performing abortions past 13 weeks on vulnerable women in Burkina Faso, Columbia, and Mexico.

Even the once abortion-neutral humanitarian aid group Doctors Without Borders (DWB), with the approval of the World Health Organization, has instructional guidelines on how women can perform their own drug-based abortion up to 22 weeks!

Although they claim these instructional videos are for training their medical workers, they acknowledge that they expect women to go to the site in order to learn how to induce their own abortions.

The fact that chemical abortions already carry significant complications and that the rate of those complications only increase as the gestational age of the pregnancy increases shows that Doctors Without Borders are bordering on medical malpractice.

The complications that can arise from taking the abortion pill place women in life-threatening situations that may require follow-up visits to the abortion clinic and the emergency room. We are now likely to see scenarios where women who have taken the abortion pill regimen will need blood transfusions, treatment for infections, and possible follow-up surgery to complete the abortion, which means they will need to go to the emergency room and wait for treatment next to possible victims of the coronavirus pandemic. How is this conserving medical resources? How is this protecting the safety and health of women?

Thankfully, there are still some reputable medical leaders, such as AAPLOG, who refuse to put women in this type of danger by categorizing abortion as an “essential service.”

Killing innocent children in the womb should never be considered any type of “service,” in the midst of a pandemic or not. By encouraging women to self-manage an abortion up to 22 weeks and calling do-it-yourself abortion a “paid” service, the abortion industry has been and is currently showing us that they have no regard for human dignity whatsoever—for the child or the mother.

This article was originally published at the FRCblog.com.

Plan to march with us through the streets of Chicago once again!

Saturday, January 11th, 2020

– Plan a bus trip to the March! We have changed the day of the March to a Saturday to accommodate more groups traveling from across the Midwest. Register your group here!

– Display a March for Life Table at your Church or organization during October’s Respect Life Month! We would be happy to send you promotional materials. Facebook Message us!

– Become a sponsor of the March. Visit our website for sponsorship levels and benefits. If we hear back from you by August 15th, your organization’s logo could be on our official MFLC flier that will be distributed to all our supporters.

To become a sponsor, please send a check to:

March for Life Chicago
6160 N. Cicero Ave. Ste. 600
Chicago, IL 60646

We mark with deep sadness the great tragedy of the legalization of abortion in the United States along with the devastating social, moral, and legal consequences that have followed. Our vision is that, marching together in hope, we call upon religious, civic, and community leaders to renew every effort to build a nation that affirms the authentic dignity of women and men, the gift of children, and a culture dedicated to protecting life at every stage of development in law and love.

Our purpose is to provide an annual public event composed of people from diverse ethnic, social, and religious backgrounds dedicated to defending and protecting all human life.

“The fight for the right to life is not the cause of a special few, but the cause of every man,
woman and child who cares not only about his or her own family,
but the whole family of man.” ~Dr. Mildred Jefferson, Pro-Life Activist & Heroine

The Trump Administration has rolled back a number of federal rules instituted by the Obama Administration and has instituted others, including these amazing pro-family policy victories:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) began enforcing the new rule, which “prohibits the use of Title X funds to perform, promote, refer for, or support abortion as a method of family planning.” As a result, nearly 900 abortion clinics have lost taxpayer funding. This is a great first step toward the goal of completely defunding abortion businesses (like Planned Parenthood) of our tax dollars.

HHS has also rescinded Obama administration guidance that prevented states from taking actions against providers that may be necessary to prevent Medicaid funds from going to fund abortion.

HHS has created a Conscience and Religious Freedom Division for the purpose of protecting the fundamental and unalienable rights of conscience and religious liberty for physicians and other medical professionals.

HHS has also proposed defining sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and identified at birth. In addition, agency staff—including those at the Centers for Disease Control—have been instructed to stop using the word “transgender” in official reports.

The U.S. Department of Defense has banned persons suffering from gender dysphoria from serving in the military.

The U.S. State Department is refusing visas for same-sex partners of some diplomats and U.N. workers if they are not “married.”

The U.S. Departments of Education and Justice eliminated Obama Administration “guidance” that told government schools to treat “trans”-identifying students as if they were the sex they are not.

The U.S. National Institute of Food and Agriculture rescinded guidance for 4-H programs, removing a policy specifically welcoming LGBTQ children in the program, which led to the firing of an official who protested.

The U.S. Department of Education refuses to respond to civil complaints filed by “trans”-identifying students, including those who were barred from using opposite-sex bathrooms.

The U.S. Department of Justice rolled back Obama-era LGBT interpretations of the Civil Rights Act that gave special rights to “trans”-identifying and “non-binary” workers from employment discrimination and ceased enforcing non-discrimination protections.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons rolled back an Obama-era policy that housed “trans”-identifying prisoners with opposite-sex prisoners.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed a rule to permit homeless shelters to house “trans”-identifying and/or cross-dressing homeless persons in shelters based on their biological sex.

The Trump Administration has interpreted immigration rules specifically so the child of a same-sex couple born abroad via surrogate would be considered “born out of wedlock,” thereby making it more difficult to obtain U.S. citizenship.

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Bioethicist Ruth Faden penned an irony-filled screed in which she whines about the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear a challenge to Kentucky’s Ultrasound Informed Consent Act (H.B. 2), which requires that prior to the killing of humans in the womb, a doctor or technician must perform an ultrasound and explain to mothers gestators what the ultrasound shows…

read more

Written by Dr. Paul Kengor

My family just visited Chocolate World at Hershey Park in Hershey, Pennsylvania—the so-called “sweetest place on earth.” For those unfamiliar, it’s a giant candy-land. The primary attraction is a tour where visitors ride in self-guided vehicles through an exhibit learning about the history of Hershey’s chocolate.

At the end of the tour stands a Hershey’s employee who hands everyone a complimentary chocolate bar. It’s a highlight. The last several times we’ve done the tour, the boy handing out chocolate has been a kid with Down Syndrome—a job he does without a hitch. It’s an added sweet thing that makes you smile. In fact, everyone smiles. I observe a mom who looks him in the eye and says very deliberately, “Thank you very much.” I generally say something like, “Thank you, sir!”

What strikes me about the moment, however, is something much less happy; nonetheless, I think it should be expressed, especially at this time of year, October, when America quietly marks Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and when many religious believers also happen to mark Respect Life Month.

While probably 80-90% of the people passing through that line at Hershey happily accept a chocolate bar from that Down Syndrome child (actually, the number is probably more like 100%), it’s tragic that upwards of 80-90% of women in America who receive a prenatal identification of a Down Syndrome child choose to abort. In Denmark, the rate is 98%. And in Iceland, officials assert that they have almost completely “eliminated” Down Syndrome.

“My understanding is that we have basically eradicated, almost, Down Syndrome from our society,” says Kari Stefansson, a geneticist in Iceland, “that there is hardly ever a child with Down Syndrome in Iceland anymore.”

How so? A magic pill? Surgery in the womb? Chromosomal engineering? No, they’ve done so by so thoroughly identifying Down Syndrome in utero, and creating a culture that embraces abortion, that Down Syndrome children are not born to begin with.

Only one or two Down Syndrome children are born per year in Iceland. Oftentimes, those one or two result from parents having received inaccurate pre-screenings.

“Babies with Down Syndrome are still being born in Iceland,” concedes the head of the nation’s leading Prenatal Diagnosis Unit. “We didn’t find them in our screening.” They’re the lucky ones. The others are aborted.

“We don’t look at abortion as a murder,” shrugs another “health” official in Iceland. “We look at it as a thing we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication … preventing suffering for the child and the family.”

Some solution, eh?

But what millions of Down Syndrome children like that boy at Chocolate World show us is that these children are not a thing to be ended. They are lives to be welcomed. And as anyone with a Down Syndrome child will tell you, they are happy. They are, literally, among the happiest people on the planet, bereft of the anxieties and complexities that afflict so many others.

One of my favorite testimonies to such human beings, and how they can bring out the best in us, is a letter that Ronald Reagan received from New York’s Cardinal Terence Cooke, which Reagan shared in a July 1987 talk to pro-life leaders. “I’d like to leave with you a quotation that means a great deal to me,” said Reagan. “These are the words of my friend, the late Terence Cardinal Cooke, of New York. ‘The gift of life, God’s special gift, is no less beautiful when it is accompanied by illness or weakness, hunger or poverty, mental or physical handicaps, loneliness or old age. Indeed, at these times, human life gains extra splendor as it requires our special care, concern, and reverence. It is in and through the weakest of human vessels that the Lord continues to reveal the power of His love.’”

Yes, the gift of life is God’s special gift, and it’s no less beautiful when it involves a Down Syndrome person. Quite the contrary, it’s in caring for such people that human life carries extra splendor and can bring out the best in us. Through these human vessels, we can mirror God’s love for His creatures.

I shared this message from Cooke-Reagan with a former student who is the proud, loving parent of a daughter with Down Syndrome. He smiled and said, “Ah, that’s so true. So true.”

It’s also so counter-cultural in modern Western society, from Iceland to the United States. Here in America, the largest abortion provider is Planned Parenthood, founded by Margaret Sanger, who began her work precisely for purposes of eugenics and “race improvement,” to rid America of what she termed “imbeciles” and “idiots” and “morons.” Sanger insisted that “the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.” In her 1922 book, The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger urged that “every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period. Otherwise, she is almost certain to bear imbecile children, who in turn are just as certain to breed other defectives.”

For Sanger and many of her disciples, these weakest vessels (her “moron class”) were to be lamented, prevented, eliminated. Iceland is achieving Margaret Sanger’s dream.

Again, this month of October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and Respect Life Month. Unlike, say, Pride Month, every June, now unmistakable by the profusion of rainbow flags in every major city, few will see visible reminders of Down Syndrome Awareness Month. The month is not marked by any signature symbols, nor by the Down Syndrome children who were eliminated. Their lives were erased before they were born. We should take pride, however, in those who are here, and we should not fear or halt those yet to be born.

This article was published by The Institute for Faith & Freedom.

“For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”  Matthew 6:21

Where is your treasure?

With the passage of the Illinois Reproductive Health Law there was a blatant attempt to declare life worthless, having absolutely no value.  If life in the womb can be thrown away up until the moment of birth, then all life is made cheap, meaningless, and worthless.  Yet that same law has had an unintended effect;  we have seen an awakening of the pro-life community as never before.  We are rallying together, working to unite, combining our time, treasure, and talent for a common cause.  What about you?  If you treasure God’s gift of life, put your heart into it and unite with the Greater Chicago-land pro-life community for an afternoon you won’t soon forget!

Download and print a flier to share with others here.

Come get informed, get energized and bear witness that all human life from conception until natural death is a gift from God to be treasured. 

Our lineup of speakers includes:

– Serena Dyksen, Save the 1, will share her inspiring story of redemption after succumbing to pressure to abort after rape.  Her child may be one of those recently recovered from the home of abortionist Ulrich Klopfer

– Joe Scheidler, Pro Life Action League , knows the secrets of effective pro-life activism and he’ll be letting us in on the secret!

– Morgan Jayne Hill, aka “Baby Mary Grace”, will offer her heartwarming journey from being abandoned in a dumpster to adoption into a loving home to finding out that she was the catalyst for Illinois’ Safe Haven Law – all before she turned 20 years old!

– Jeanne Ives, Former IL State Representative, will tell her beautiful story of choosing life despite her doctor’s advice to abort a child with a prenatal diagnosis.

– Tom Morrison, IL State Representative, will educate us about what the disastrous “Reproductive Health Law” contains and what our next steps should be.

– Fr. Nathan Caswell, St. Peter Volo, leader of the Crusaders for Life Youth Group.

– Pastor Warren Schilf, Immanuel Lutheran in Palatine

…and MORE!

TIMELINE:

• 12:30 pm:  Doors open for T-shirt sales. Get one before they’re gone!

• 1:00 pm:Gather for prayer, song, & inspirational speakers inside St. Theresa Dolan Center Gym (455 N. Benton, Palatine). Same location as last year behind the church.

• 1:45 pm:  Procession along Northwest Highway with Life-affirming signs to the plaza at Hicks & NW Hwy (1/2 mile) to share the love of LIFE!   The energetic teens from Crusaders for Life will be back to lead us with drumming, dancing, and cheers!
• 2:15 pm:  Rally at the plaza with more prayer, songs, and words of hope.
• Immediately following the March:  Join us back at St. Theresa for FREE refreshments courtesy of the Knights of Columbus Ladies Auxiliary.

Bring the whole family!

I’m all for environmental stewardship, and there’s something to be said for a biblically-based ecology. But I find it beyond ironic that a staunchly liberal seminary which supports a woman’s “right” to abortion held a special chapel service to confess to plants. So, it’s fine to take the lives of unborn babies in the womb, but we must confess our sins to the plants. May God help us.

On September 17, Union Theological Seminary tweeted, “Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.

“What do you confess to the plants in your life?”

What, exactly, did these confessions sound like?

One seminarian tweeted, “Here was my confession. ‘I confess that even as I’ve waxed poetic and theological about how indispensable you are, I’ve privileged my own comfort and convenience over your wellbeing.’”

So, it’s not just a matter of white privilege. It’s now a matter of human privilege. How unkind we have been to the plants!

In sarcastic response to the chapel service, singer and songwriter Bob Bennett penned a penitent hymn, beginning with,

I confess my unbelief

To my leafy brethren

I’ve given you such grief

While you give me oxygen

Like a prodigal come home

An errant journey I was on

Now no more to roam

I’ll no longer mow my lawn.

But the seminary was taking this quite seriously, releasing a series of 10 tweets defending their plant confessional.

The first tweet stated, “We’ve had many questions about yesterday’s chapel, conducted as part of @ccarvalhaes’ class, ‘Extractivism: A Ritual/Liturgical Response.’ In worship, our community confessed the harm we’ve done to plants, speaking directly in repentance.

“This is a beautiful ritual.”

Interestingly, although I’ve served as a visiting or adjunct professor at 7 leading seminaries, I don’t recall ever hearing of a class on “Extractivism: A Ritual/Liturgical Response.”

In fact, I don’t recall encountering the word “extractivism” before. (It looks like my spell checker never saw it either.) I guess I’m still in the theological dark ages. Really, a pity.

Others, however, chimed in their support of Union, including Kaitlyn Curtice, a Native American Christian author. She tweeted:

“Christians have historically mocked/punished Indigenous peoples for having a relationship to Segmekwe, Mother Earth, and our creature kin.

“It hasn’t changed much.

“I’m grateful to @UnionSeminary for stepping into this space.

“Church, there is so much learning & unlearning to do.”

Well, here’s the thing.

I’m all for caring for our plants and wildlife. And I’m all for responsible environmentalism. But I’m not going to pray to Mother Earth. And I’m not going to confess to plants. Nor will I look to plants as “the beings who sustain us.”

There is one Being who sustains us (and the plants), and I will make my confession to Him.

But the purpose of this article is not primarily to mock what took place in this chapel service. Instead, it is to point out the theological (and moral) bankruptcy of a seminary once it throws out the full inspiration of Scripture and denies the uniqueness of Jesus’ work of redemption.

Accordingly, a seminary spokesperson explained that, at their chapel services, you might encounter a Muslim prayer service one day, a traditional Anglican service another day, then a Buddhist meditation the next. Yes, “given the incredible diversity of our community, that means worship looks different every day!”

That’s why, back in 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who attended Union and then briefly taught there, could note that, the students

“are completely clueless with respect to what dogmatics is really about. They are not familiar with even the most basic questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, are amused at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level.”

And that was 1939!

Bonhoeffer remembered that “students ‘openly [laughed]’ at a lecture on sin and forgiveness, and accused the seminary of having ‘forgotten what Christian theology in its very essence stands for.’”

What would Bonhoeffer think today?

Not surprisingly, and in keeping with the radical left ideology that esteems the life of a tree above the life of an unborn baby, Union Seminary tweeted this message on July 1:

“‘In Numbers 5 you actually have an account about how a priest is supposed to assist an abortion…In Jesus’ time, women used all sorts of means—as they have throughout history—to deal with unwanted pregnancies.’ – @SereneJones on abortion and the Bible.”

This article was originally published at Townhall.com.