An Amazing Video of a Living, First Trimester Unborn Baby

Recently, I saw an amazing video in a post on the Nurses&Midwives4Life Ireland Facebook page showing a living, first trimester baby on a surgical field. The baby was moving its’ tiny head and limbs remarkably like a newborn baby. The image was both beautiful and heartbreaking since this little one could not survive.

The Speak Life video is covered with a warning that “This video may be sensitive to some people” and posted by Jonathan Van Maren, communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, with the caption ”This 8-second video of a first-trimester baby tells you everything you need to know about how wrong abortion is.”

I investigated further and it seems that the that the unborn baby was about 8 weeks old and that he or she had been removed after an ectopic pregnancy in which the unborn baby develops outside the womb.

Ectopic pregnancies can be life-threatening to both mother and child when the unborn baby develops in one of the Fallopian tubes leading to the womb, although there have been some rare cases where a baby develops in the abdomen and survives. Several years ago, I had an elderly patient who told me how her unborn baby survived decades ago when the doctors did not know that the baby was in the abdomen during her uneventful pregnancy until labor began. That is unlikely today since ultrasound images are routine during pregnancy.

A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

Although the baby in the video could not survive after he or she was removed, the video itself is powerful evidence that abortion takes the life of a real human person even in the first trimester.

Most abortions are performed in the first trimester when women and the public are often told by organizations like Planned Parenthood that the unborn baby is just a “clump of cells”. In the first trimester, most babies are aborted by either vacuum suction which destroys the little person or by medical abortion using pills to first disrupt the attachment of the unborn baby to the mother and then expel the baby. However, abortion reversal is possible after the first set of pills.

Women who have abortions rarely see their baby after a first trimester abortion but it has happened, especially with medical abortion. This can be very traumatic to the woman. Contrast the look of the deceased first trimester unborn baby in the article titled “She took the abortion pill, then saw her 7-week-old baby” with the living first trimester unborn baby in the video.

CONCLUSION

Years ago, my late daughter Marie became unexpectedly pregnant and found out that the unborn baby was growing in one of her Fallopian tubes rather than her womb. She had to have emergency surgery when the tube ruptured.

Afterwards, the surgeon showed me the picture he had taken (unasked) during the surgery to remove the then deceased baby, my grandchild. The picture was personally so sad to see but I was comforted that the surgeon cared enough to take a picture of this tiny person.

After so many years and so many experiences as a nurse and volunteer in the pro-life movement, I believe that all women should be given the opportunity to know the truth about their unborn baby’s humanity as part of informed consent before abortion.

And I believe the rest of us should also have the opportunity to learn the same truth before we support legalized abortion.

This video of a living, first trimester unborn baby speaks louder than mere words.

This article was originally published at NancyValko.com

Anti-Family Legislation in 2019

Legalizing high potency marijuana, more gambling, LGBT history in schools and taking aim at Illinois’ Parental Notification of Abortion law. Incoming Governor J.B. Pritzker and his fellow Democrats in the General Assembly will have the votes to make their agenda happen. Yet, some Republican leaders say Conservatives should be quiet on social issues.

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy

Written by John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera

Forty years ago, a group of evangelical leaders and scholars took a clear and unapologetic stand on a fundamental tenet of the faith.

This month marks the fortieth anniversary of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which was signed in October of 1978 by more than 200 evangelical leaders, including R.C. Sproul, J.I. Packer, and Francis Schaeffer.

The Chicago Statement was not only a landmark document in evangelical history, it played an important role in the work of the late Chuck Colson and our ongoing work at the Colson Center.

Here’s a bit of history to set the stage. If there was one phrase that summed up the ethos of the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was “Question Authority.” The phrase emerged out of opposition to the Vietnam War and Watergate, but then it spread well beyond the world of politics into various arenas of culture, even into the church.

We know, for example, the story of how liberal “mainline” churches doubted the Bible and its claims of supernatural miracles. But the culture-wide distrust of authority crept into Evangelicalism, as well, which has—given its diversity and independent congregations—kind of always struggled with ecclesial authority.

Phrases such as “Christianity isn’t a religion; it’s a relationship” entered the lexicon and became an excuse for some to radically privatize the faith, to reject historical teaching, and even embrace new ways of reading and interpreting the Bible.

For instance, a survey of students at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the mid-70s found that the longer a student attended the seminary, the less likely he was to agree with the statement “Jesus is the Divine Son of God and I have no doubts about it.”

In 1971, messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting passed a resolution that supported abortion, not only in cases of rape and incest, but also in cases where there is “clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

This was just two years before Roe v. Wade.

I don’t mean to pile on the SBC. First, by no means were they alone… this stuff was in the air. Second, the SBC has since experienced quite a renewal, which is at least partly due to the Chicago Statement.

The Statement was about more than a particular way of reading and interpreting the Bible: It was an unequivocal assertion of biblical authority over the lives of believers and the Church, in an age when all authority was being questioned.

It was an unequivocal assertion that Christianity, while it does involve a relationship with God, is also a “religion,” in the original sense of the Latin word “religio,” which means “bond,” “obligation,” and “reverence.” It’s a faith, in other words, with content, not just a warm fuzzy feeling.

Anyone who followed Chuck Colson can see how he was indebted to this effort. For him, Christianity was objectively true, and that truth could be communicated to others, both inside and outside the Church.

And the primary way God had revealed truth to His Church was the Scriptures. Not personal experience, and certainly not popular intellectual fads.

The need to reassert biblical authority may be more urgent today than it was forty years ago. When we hear things like “the Gospel is about radical inclusivity,” that just means the Gospel is being defined without Scripture. When we hear that “Jesus would’ve baked the cake,” that Jesus is not the Jesus of Scripture. When we hear, “It’s a relationship, not a religion” still, that often means we are ignoring the significant portions of Scripture that describe the people God is calling out to restore and activate for His Kingdom.

This article originally posted at BreakPoint.org

Biblical and Free, or Secular and Statist?

It’s election time, many Christians will be voting for candidates who are pro-life and support a conservative judiciary.

Online voter guide

The Most Important Movie You’ve Never Heard Of

Written by Michele Malkin

It’s here.

“Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer” debuts in theaters nationwide on Oct. 12. I do believe this groundbreaking film by indie producers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney is the most important movie in America right now — a true-life saga of good vs. evil, deadly medical malpractice, systemic government malfeasance and cultural apathy toward the most vulnerable members of our society.

I first reported on this real-life horror story nearly eight years ago, but you’ve probably not heard or read a word about “Gosnell” in the mainstream press, TV news or online. The conspiracy of silence is the result of both malign neglect and active suppression of inconvenient truths:

—One CNN commentator flippantly explained that the network’s lack of interest was a “business decision,” not bias.

—Pro-abortion censors at crowdsourcing giant Kickstarter banned McAleer and McElhinney from raising money for the project — leading small donors across the country to help conduct the largest-ever crowdfunded movie on Indiegogo. (Full disclosure: I put my money where my principles are and donated three times, in addition to using my social media platforms to lend a hand.)

—Taxpayer-supported National Public Radio refused to run sponsored ads describing Gosnell as an “abortionist” because its legal department determined the accurate description violated the left-leaning network’s “value neutral” platform. LOL.

—And this past week, Facebook banned advertising for the movie — a continuation of its systemic crackdown on conservative speech.

What are they trying to hide?

Philadelphia abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell is behind bars, serving three consecutive life sentences for a murderous crime spree that places him in the same infamous pantheon of homicidal maniacs as Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy. But because his victims were hundreds of poor minority women and their children, Hollywood, women’s groups and the media — who usually never hesitate to sensationalize criminal masterminds — are AWOL.

Why? Because radical leftists zealously believe that abortion must be defended at all costs, even if it means whitewashing its bloody, half-century legacy of mass genocide in our nation’s inner cities.

Operating under the cover of providing “reproductive health services,” death doc Gosnell brutally executed hundreds of healthy, living, breathing, squirming, viable babies by stabbing them in their necks and severing spinal cords with scissors and knives. This twisted murderer kept newborn baby feet in specimen jars, which he crammed into the grisly refrigerators of his filthy “clinic” for “research.”

In 2013, Gosnell was convicted of murdering three babies born alive in his death factory and found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of 41-year-old Bhutanese refugee Karnamaya Mongar, who died of a inhumanely administered drug overdose at Gosnell’s “Women’s Medical Society.”

For 15 years, public officials at the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Department of State, and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health officials did nothing to stop Gosnell. Nearby hospital administrators and “women’s health” advocates at the National Abortion Federation knew he was a butcher, but also sat on their hands.

In their 2017 Regnery book on Gosnell, which they adapted into the new movie, McAleer and McElhinney exposed the monster and his enablers with painstaking dedication to original documentation and investigative journalism. The PG-13 film stays true to the trial record without having to resort to gratuitous graphic imagery.

Actors Dean Cain, Sarah Jane Morris, Nick Searcy, Earl Billings, Alfonzo Rachel, and the entire cast bring the courtroom drama — and more importantly, the human drama — to life. Parents with teenage children can and should bring them. We cannot afford to shield them from the truth and leave them vulnerable to the pervasive propaganda of the culture of death.

Whatever your position on abortion, this brave, independent film is an eye-opener that will change hearts and minds. Perhaps what the speech-suppressers who don’t want you to know about “Gosnell” fear most is this chilling conclusion: Deadly indifference to protecting life isn’t tangential to the abortion industry’s barbaric practices — but at its very core.

Michelle Malkin is host of “Michelle Malkin Investigates” on CRTV.com. Her email address is writemalkin@gmail.com.

This article originally posted at Creators.com.

Life-Terminators

Abortion is much in the news lately as Judge Brett Kavanaugh—who many abortion-cheerleaders fear will overturn Roe v. Wade—stands poised to become the newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Their protestations to the contrary, abortion supporters—who call themselves euphemistically “pro-choice”—are, in reality, pro-death. Women who seek abortions do not seek centrally to terminate a pregnancy. They seek to terminate a human life.

Here’s a thought experiment that might help reveal the ugly truth hiding behind euphemisms: Imagine if all these past 45 bloody years, it had been technologically possible to extract tiny humans from the wombs of their mothers at the earliest stages of pregnancy and incubate and nourish them until they reached full development at which point they could have been placed for adoption. The pregnancy would have been terminated but the lives of babies spared. Does anyone really believe many women would have chosen to terminate their unwanted pregnancies without terminating the lives of their children whom they didn’t want?

Even without such technology, women could have chosen to allow the termination of their pregnancies to occur naturally and without killing their human offspring. All they had to do was wait 1-8 months and voilà, pregnancy terminated, babies’ lives spared. But the termination of a pregnancy was not the ultimate goal. Death of a new human life—the product of conception between two humans and one with unique DNA—was the ultimate goal. The incomprehensible truth is that women who choose to “terminate their pregnancies” prefer the ignoble choice of death for their children over the noble choice to give their children life in the arms of women and men who want them.

Defending abortion in such a way as to mask the barbarism of the act requires recasting incipient human life as either non-life or life unworthy of any rights (The non-life argument is challenging because of, well, science). Since ideas have consequences, we’re seeing that what was once considered shameful and tragic—that is, killing one’s own offspring—is now celebrated by the rich and famous. Actress Martha Plimpton encourages women to “shout their abortions,” Hollywood made a romantic comedy about abortion, and comedienne-manqué Michelle Wolf performed an abortion-celebrating comedy sketch titled “Salute to Abortion” for her now-canceled show.

The idea that because tiny womb-inhabiting humans are not fully developed, lack self-awareness, depend on others for survival, have physical anomalies that will cause suffering, are afflicted with conditions “incompatible with life,” or are inconvenient to their mothers, those mothers have the right to have them killed has far-reaching, tragic, and predictable consequences.

As I wrote prior to HB 40 being signed into law, there are no criteria that Leftists can manufacture to defend the right of some humans to snuff out the lives of other humans that apply only to incipient human lives. Whether those criteria are intrinsic or extrinsic to humans in the womb, they can be applied to humans who escaped the torture chamber that the womb has become.

Intrinsic criteria such as immature development, dependency status, lack of sentience, or lack of perfection apply to humans outside the womb as well. Extrinsic criteria such as being considered a financial or emotional burden also apply to humans outside the womb. And so, we’re seeing the mission creep of death supporters.

Unethical Princeton University bioethics professor Peter Singer wants to extend killing “rights” 30 days post-natally to allow parents to ascertain the health status of their conditionally wanted children. After all, some imperfect humans may have escaped all the currently available tests for determining human perfection and, therefore, “wantedness.”

As I wrote earlier, Leftists who believe that more developed, self-aware, able-bodied, and cognitively superior humans have the right to exterminate less-developed, or cognitively or physically impaired humans whose self-awareness is diminished or absent are kindred spirits with Singer.

The infamous Singer himself acknowledges in his book Practical Ethics that we have already started down the unctuous slope:

I do not deny that if one accepts abortion on the grounds provided in Chapter 6, the case for killing other human beings, in certain circumstances, is strong. As I shall try to show… this is not something to be regarded with horror…. [O]nce we abandon those doctrines about the sanctity of human life that… collapse as soon as they are questioned, it is the refusal to accept killing that, in some cases, is horrific.

Then in 2011, two philosophers at the University of Melbourne, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, published a paper in which they advocated for “after-birth abortion”:

[W]e argue that, when circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.

One of the many grotesque arguments “progressives” use to rationalize human slaughter is to suggest that in order to prevent adult women from choosing to have back-alley abortions, we must keep the slaughter of humans in the womb legal.

Let’s add some perspective. Here’s from the liberal pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute:

In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women…. The death toll had declined to just under 1,700 by 1940, and to just over 300 by 1950 (most likely because of the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, which permitted more effective treatment of the infections that frequently developed after illegal abortion). By 1965, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion had fallen to just under 200.

Compare those numbers of accidental deaths to the 647,000 intentional killings of humans in the womb just this year.

Someone recently asked me who would care for and how we could afford all the “unwanted children” that would result from the abolition of legalized human slaughter (well, that’s not exactly what he called it). It’s important to note that not all of the babies who are currently in the death chute, destined by their mothers to be killed would become wards of the state or dependent on social services. Moreover, the $500 million dollars that we currently give to Planned Parenthood for their bloody business could be re-allocated to organizations that help needy families—including faith-based organizations.

If legalized feticide were abolished, the very real possibility exists that some—perhaps many—women would use their “reproductive rights”—rights that don’t include killing other humans—more responsibly. There are reasons we have a million abortions every year, and one of those reasons is we’ve made it cheap and easy.

Some women would use birth control more consistently. Some would become less promiscuous. More would allow their offspring to live and place them up for adoption. More would allow their children to live and would raise them themselves.

And some would freely choose to have back-alley abortions. If infections followed, they would be treated with antibiotics. None of these women would have their hearts injected with digoxin, their skin burned off, their brains scrambled and sucked out, or their limbs torn off. Let’s remember that none of the over 60 million humans slaughtered in the womb since 1973 chose her or his own slaughter.

But most important, no amount of public expense can ever justify the deliberate killing of innocent humans.

Once humans arrogate the right to determine the value of the lives of others or, as with abortion, when humans predict the future value or experiences of the lives of others or the costs to others of the lives of weaker humans, we have launched ourselves down a slippery slope that will end in involuntary euthanasia (also known as murder) of those who are deemed unworthy. Once we say that a person’s unwantedness or presumed unwantedness or physical imperfections rob her of her right to exist and justifies her killing, how is it possible to prevent the killings of others whom the powerful deem unworthy? Once we rid ourselves of that pesky notion about the “sanctity of life,” who among us is safe?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Life-Terminators.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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The Kavanaugh Hearings Should Focus on Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Not Roe v. Wade

In the first few days of his confirmation hearings,Judge Brett Kavanaugh has already been doggedly questioned on his views on abortion, specifically whether he will overturn Roe v. Wade. The attention on his views is warranted. If Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the 5-4 conservative majority will have the ability to overturn the court-protected “right” to abortion.

But contrary to conventional wisdom, Roe v. Wade is no longer the main constitutional guardian for abortion access. While Roe established that the constitutional right to privacy extends to the choice of whether to abort a baby, most of Roe’s jurisprudence has been replaced by another U.S. Supreme Court case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. It is Casey, not Roe that governs most of abortion jurisprudence today.

When Roe was first heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973, few on either side of the abortion debate thought the case would produce a far-reaching decision on the issue. The case was initially taken up by the Court to decide a technical civil procedure issue. As a result, the Court did not have a factual record of the medical, social, and legal effects of abortion restrictions (Roe’s questionable background is excellently documented in Clarke Forsythe’s book Abuse of Discretion). This left Justice Harry Blackman without much guidance and the freedom to be creative.

The result was ugly and not just due to Roe’s tragic consequences for millions of unborn children. Justice Blackman’s unwieldy legal reasoning made legal scholars of all viewpoints blush for its broad scope and legislative-like assertions. The Court found that the U.S. Constitution’s implied right to privacy (based on the famous birth control case of Griswold v. Connecticut) extends to a woman’s decision to choose abortion, though the state had legitimate state interests in protecting the mother’s health and “potential life” of the child.

To balance these interests, Justice Blackman created a statute-like three-trimester system outlining what aspects of the abortion procedure the state can regulate at each of the three stages. In the first trimester, the decision whether to abort the child was left completely to the mother. In the second trimester, the only regulation on the procedure had to be necessary to protect the mother’s health. It was only after the point of fetal viability—which Justice Blackman also chose without any substantive legal basis—that the state could prohibit abortion altogether. The decision was disjointed, ill-informed, and without a grounded basis in constitutional law, making it vulnerable to being overruled.

In 1992, Roe was put on trial in the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But instead of overruling Roe, the Court decided to keep the outcome yet overhaul its legal structure. Gone was Roe’s clunky trimester system. In its place, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor implemented a more judicially scrupulous standard, known as the “undue burden test.” Now when reviewing a law restricting access to abortion, a court must ask whether the law has the purpose or effect of placing an undue burden on the woman deciding whether to seek an abortion. For example, in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 2015 Texas law that placed new health and safety standards on abortion clinics that would have caused 21 of the 40 clinics in the state to close due to their inability to comply with it. The Court found that the health and safety concerns of mothers were not valid enough concerns compared to the decreased access to abortion. Therefore, the law was unconstitutional under Casey because it placed an undue burden on access to abortion.

With Casey, the path to overrule Roe becomes more difficult for several reasons. First, Casey’s undue burden standard is widely considered to be a more judicially acceptable constitutional standard than Roe’s unusual trimester system. Before Casey, if the U.S. Supreme Court wanted to overrule to right to abortion access, they could have said that Roe was simply a poorly conceived decision and should be overruled in its entirety. However, under the undue burden test, the Court loses that justification.

Second, courts have a general rule of respecting prior decisions in a doctrine known as stare decisis. The more case law that backs a certain position, the less likely the Court is to be willing to overturn that precedent. Having two major U.S. Supreme Court decisions supporting a precedent will make a future court wary to change it.

This is not to say all hope for protecting the lives of the unborn is lost. It is unlikely, however, that the Court will overrule the right to abortion in one bold stroke in a single case. More realistically, the Court’s conservative majority will slowly chip away at past precedent by upholding pro-life laws. Ironically, the conservative majority could do this by using the flexibility of Casey’s undue burden standard. What comprises an undue burden on abortion access can mean essentially anything the Court wants it to mean. The Court could say that few or even no government restrictions on abortion would constitute an undue burden on abortion access. For example, a health and safety law that closes abortion clinics like that in Hellerstedt does not place an undue burden on abortion access, because it merely insures the safety of the mother, and any clinic closures are simply an incidental effect. Roe would not be explicitly overturned but effectively undermined.

Some argue that the undue burden standard is already weaker than what it was in Casey. In the 2007 case Carhartt v. Gonzalez, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a congressional ban on partial-birth abortion, a procedure that kills the child once he or she is partially outside the body of the mother. The Court ruled that simply banning a certain form of abortion does not place an undue burden on abortion access.

With Judge Kavanaugh on the U.S. Supreme Court bench, the pro-life movement has reason for hope that legal protections for the unborn will not be struck down. With, however, all the attention focusing on whether Judge Kavanaugh will strike down Roe, a more poignant question is how stringently he will apply the undue burden standard of Casey.

IFI’s Annual
Faith, Family & Freedom Fall Banquet

Friday, October 5, 2018
The Stonegate in Hoffman Estates

Featuring special guest, George Barna

The early bird special expires on Sept. 14th

Secure your tickets or table now – click here or call (708) 781-9328.

Dianne Feinstein’s Big Fat Abortion Lie

In Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s U.S. Senate confirmation hearing earlier today, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) made a mind-blowing—make that head-exploding—statement. Citing the liberal Guttmacher Institute, Feinstein said, “In the 1950s and ’60s, the two decades before Roe, death from illegal abortions in this country ran between 200,000 to 1.2 million [emphasis added].”

That is not what the Guttmacher Institute says. The Guttmacher Institute says, “Estimates of the number of illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year.” Please note, this statement does not mention death. Feinstein’s numbers would have been correct if she had been referring to humans in the womb, but she wasn’t.

Here’s what Feinstein omitted, also from the Guttmacher Institute:

In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women—nearly one-fifth (18%) of maternal deaths recorded in that year. The death toll had declined to just under 1,700 by 1940, and to just over 300 by 1950 (most likely because of the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, which permitted more effective treatment of the infections that frequently developed after illegal abortion). By 1965, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion had fallen to just under 200.”

The number of (accidental) deaths of women caused by illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s doesn’t come close to 200,000, let alone 1.2 million. Compare the number of actual deaths of women from illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960’s to the almost 61 MILLION intentional killings of humans in the womb since 1973, or the almost 630,000 humans intentionally killed in the womb just this year.

The “Conservative Millennial” Allie Stuckey recently wrote this:

The most impressive feat the Left has accomplished is convincing millions of people that decapitating a child inside the womb is worthy of celebration. That alone should teach us to never underestimate the power of a lie and the willingness of ignorant people to believe it.

The success of the Left can be attributed in no small measure to their repugnant willingness to lie in the service of evil.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Diane-Feinsteins-Big-Fat-Abortion-Lie.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.

Aurora Prayer Warriors Need Your Help

Four hundred – that’s the approximate number of human lives ended by abortion each month at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Aurora. If the local animal shelter euthanized 200 dogs and cats each month, that would be sad. The fact that this huge Planned Parenthood abortion mill kills close to 400 babies each month is an abomination of epic proportion which demands our attention.

Please take two minutes to watch this short video appeal from the prayer warriors leading the prayer vigil efforts at this location:

The 40 Days For Life campaign gives pro-life men and women the opportunity to make an impact locally through a 40-day, around-the-clock, peaceful vigil of prayer and presence. Please share this video with your pastor, church leaders, small group members, family, and friends. We need every believer to come to Aurora for an hour or two and take a stand for the sanctity of life!

Take ACTION: For more information and to sign up to participate, please click HERE.

More ACTION: Please ask your pastor and/or church leadership to make this bulletin insert available to attendees to help build awareness of this important campaign.

Oprah Shouts for Abortion

Written by L. Brent Bozell III

Over the years, Oprah Winfrey has seemingly evolved into America’s mom. After her TV career, she sounds like an evangelist preaching a feminist substitute to replace religion in her monthly Oprah Magazine. Her August issue carries this motivational nugget of Oprah wisdom on the cover: “We all want to feel radiant, joyful, and alive. It starts with choosing love — in any form.” No mention of faith, but no surprise there.

How do you feel “radiant, joyful, and alive”? Winfrey has the answer. In this very issue, she devotes a full-page ad to promote — ready? — the hashtag ShoutYourAbortion. According to Oprah Winfrey, a good way to show you’re “choosing love” is to murder your unborn baby.

This is a major reason most women don’t accept the term “feminist.” A new poll by the feminist site Refinery29 and CBS News found 54 percent of millennial women do not describe themselves as “feminists.” Of women over 36, only 34 percent identify as feminist. If you’re not a radical leftist, you decline the term. Only someone truly evil feels joy about an abortion, regardless of her (or his) position or predicament.

But Oprah Magazine editors put this under the category of “Inspiration.” Amelia Bonow was so horrified at the prospect of taking taxpayer funding away from the Democratic Party underwriters at Planned Parenthood that she touted and shouted her abortion, and now the hashtag has been “tweeted more than 300,000 times.” Ironically, that’s about a tweet for every life ended before it began in an average year of Planned Parenthood business.

This is not just a hashtag but an entire Twitter account and a website with video testimonials. One video is headlined “My abortion was gentle, irreverent, and empowering.” Gentle … for whom? Gentle, irreverent … for whom?

A woman from Seattle with badly overdone makeup and green hair discusses her three-day pharmaceutical abortion as not just “gentle” and “spiritually empowering” but “loving” and “joyful,” and, of course, “badass.” She explains how during this drawn-out procedure, she got drunk and had “brutal, metal sex,” which “you’re not supposed to do.” Somehow it wasn’t in the headline that she summarized it all as “female power-witchy s—-.”

The viewer is also treated to 10 gallons of the usual “pro-choice” boilerplate. It’s “like going to the dentist.” It’s not a difficult decision when a woman is “very single,” so she avoids ever getting “emotionally complicated.” When you’re “very spiritual, but … not religious,” an abortion is “something of a sacred act” of “taking one’s power,” a “sacred taking of agency.”

It’s sacred. Ponder that.

After these vague declarations of feminist dogma, the woman documents the entire abortion process. She shoves her urine sample into the camera but doesn’t show her ultrasound. “I didn’t look at it. … I didn’t look at the little speck,” she declares. They told her the pregnancy wasn’t far along — four weeks, six days. “I caught it really early,” she says. “I say it like a disease!”

At the end of the video, you hear the woman humming, and this text comes on screen: “I never did think of the cell cluster as ‘my baby,’ nor the sperm donor as ‘the father.’ … My whole view on the thing was quite neutral. Scientific.” Somehow it’s “neutral” and “scientific” to deny the humanity of “the thing.”

But behind this “science,” emotion dribbled out — and a sense of gravity. The video ended with this text: “It was a full moon, and I’m a sentimental, spiritual type. … So I sang a song to the spark.” She whispered, “I let go of you with love tomorrow.”

George Orwell, call your office. An abortion is letting go of the baby “with love.” That inspirational message of “female empowerment” is brought to you by Oprah Winfrey and her magazine.

We cannot avoid this truth: It is satanic. And if you think it’s not, then please tell us what is.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center.

This article was originally published by Creators Syndicate.

Do Not Resuscitate: Illinois SB 1564

There’s uncertainty surrounding the future of an Illinois law now that the Supreme Court has ruled against a similar statute in California requiring pro-life pregnancy care centers to inform expecting mothers about the availability of abortions.

Legal Abortion At Risk?

Truth is, abortion is not health care. And the truth is the number of taxpayer funded abortions is increasing dramatically in Illinois following Governor Rauner’s signature on House Bill 40.

Pew Research Reveals Stark Differences On Abortion Among Religious Groups

A majority of Americans including many mainline Christians support legal abortion, but many religious conservatives say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, according to the Pew Research Center.

Those religious conservatives are now hoping that Roe v. Wade will be overturned in light of President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, a practicing Catholic, to the U.S. Supreme Court. They’re optimistic that having a fifth conservative on the bench could lead to a reversal of the 1973 landmark case that made abortion a constitutional right. Kavanaugh gave a speech last year in which he praised former Chief Justice William Rehnquist for dissenting in Roe v. Wade.

A Pew survey last year showed that 57 percent of Americans support legal abortion, while 40 percent believe it should be illegal in most or all cases. A Pew 2014 Religious Landscape Study found that evangelicals tend to oppose legal abortion while people in mainline Protestant churches, as well as Jews, atheists, and agnostics, tend to support it. While Catholics are divided, the Roman Catholic Church continues to speak out against abortion.

Sixty-six percent of Southern Baptists are opposed to legal abortion, compared to only 8 percent of Unitarian Universalists and 18 percent of Episcopalians. Other religious groups with a high percentage opposed include Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christians affiliated with the Assemblies of God.

In a January 2018 news release, Pew reported:

Among those who do identify with a religion, the majority view about abortion among members of a particular group often mirrors that group’s official policy on abortion. This is the case with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon church) and the Southern Baptist Convention – both churches oppose abortion, as do most members of those churches. And the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Unitarian Universalist Association, and Reform and Conservative Judaism, for example, all support abortion rights, in line with most of their adherents.

There are, however, cases where the views of a church’s members don’t align with its teachings on abortion. For instance, while the Roman Catholic Church is an outspoken critic of abortion, U.S. Catholics were divided on the issue in the 2014 survey, with 48% supportive of legal abortion and 47% opposed. (See chart HERE.)

In June 2017, the Southern Baptist Convention at its annual meeting denounced Planned Parenthood and called on Congress to fully defund it. The convention passed a resolution that called out the “immoral agenda and practices of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates, especially their role in the unjust killing each year of more than 300,000 precious unborn babies, its use of particularly gruesome illegal abortion methods, and its profiteering from harvesting unborn babies’ tissues and organs.”

By contrast, representatives of mainline denominations have been vocal in support of legal abortion. This past March, 68 faith leaders in Iowa wrote a letter published in the Des Moines Register criticizing a bill in the state legislature that would make it illegal for a woman to get an abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected. The letter said in part:

Every person has the right to their own personal and religious beliefs and to live their life how they determine is best for them. The government does not have the right to infringe on the freedoms or privacy of Iowa women based on those religious beliefs. Every woman deserves to consult her values, faith, and doctor when making a decision about her body and her pregnancy. Any law that strips a woman of her faith and tries instead to legislate her values for her is immoral.

Republican state lawmakers in Iowa were able to pass the fetal heartbeat bill despite objections from Democrats. No Democrats supported the bill. It was signed into law by Republican Governor Kim Reynolds, but a judge blocked it from taking effect July 1 as a result of a lawsuit filed by abortion activists.

The Chicago Tribune has reported that more out-of-state women have been coming to Illinois for abortions because of less restrictive laws compared to those in surrounding states. The overall number of abortions had dropped, however, but is now on the rise, an increase attributed to a state law passed last year that expands taxpayer subsidies for abortions. Under the new law, which took effect January 1, Medicaid recipients and state employees and their dependents covered by state employee insurance can get taxpayer-subsidized abortions.

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Important U.S. Supreme Court Decision Summaries (and Some Much-Needed Good News)

Many pro-family conservatives ask, “Isn’t there any good news to report?” Yes, there is. Some examples are the growing national economy, record low unemployment numbers for minorities, foreign policy changes from the G.W. Bush and Obama years, and, lately, even some positive decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court.

June is traditionally a big month for announcing decisions from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), and this year is no exception. Below are a few of the cases decided and a few still pending.

It can take a lot of work to search out short case summaries put into non-legal language, but the New York Times and the SCOTUS Blog are useful resources. The SCOTUS Blog has a helpful page titled “Plain English / Cases Made Simple” — “This is our archive of posts in Plain English,” the page explains. In addition, each case page includes a list of links to analysis posted at their website.

For those interested in statistics, the SCOTUS Blog also has a page that includes sporting event-like stats for the current term on “dispositions by sitting, majority opinions authored by sitting, pace of grants, pace of decisions, the circuit scorecard and justice agreement.”

(The text beneath the bolded subject lines are from the New York Times, and the case names link to their SCOTUS Blog page.)

Several of the cases below were included in a Times article “The Supreme Court’s Biggest Decisions in 2018.” The article opened with this:

“The nation’s highest court, now at full strength with the appointment of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch last year, faces a far-reaching list of cases that renew its central role in American life.”

This first case, of course, has been well covered by the conservative press. It has also generated a debate on whether the ruling was too narrow or not. You can find arguments on both sides here, here and here.

Gay Rights and Religion

Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission

The court ruled 7-2 in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a gay couple. The court said the baker had been mistreated by a state civil rights commission based on remarks of one of its members indicating hostility to religion.

The Alliance Defending Freedom provides a good write-up on the Masterpiece case background here.

In the next two cases, addressing partisan gerrymandering, the court didn’t rule on the question in either case. In one, no harm was shown, in the other, the court ruled that those bringing the case didn’t have standing. Next term, however, the court will hear a case from North Carolina where it may well decide on the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering.

For more on the court’s action in these two cases, read “The Supremes put off deciding whether politics violates the Constitution” by the Heritage Foundation’s Hans A. von Spakovsky.

Partisan Gerrymandering (2 cases)

Gill v. Whitford

The court sent back the challenge to Wisconsin’s legislative map to the lower courts.

Benisek v. Lamone

The court ruled in an unsigned opinion against Republican voters who had challenged the congressional map drawn by Democratic lawmakers in Maryland.

In the next case, involving voting rights, the above-linked Times article examines an Ohio program that removed “voters from its list of registered voters if they don’t respond to a notification after four years… Critics said federal law prevents states from removing people from voter registration rolls for not voting.

Voting Rights

Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute

The court upheld Ohio’s aggressive program to purge its voting rolls.

The next case was obviously not viewed as positive by many social conservatives:

Sports Betting

Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association

The court struck down a federal law that effectively banned commercial sports betting in most states, clearing the way for legal wagering.

SCOTUS Blog noted that the holding of the next case, involving immigration, per federal law does “not give detained aliens the right to periodic bond hearings during the course of their detention”:

Immigration

Jennings v. Rodriguez

The court ruled that immigrants held in detention facilities have no rights under a federal law to periodic hearings to decide whether they may be released on bail.

Among the cases still pending is Arlene’s Flowers Inc. v. Washington — here is the summary from the SCOTUS Blog page:

Issues: (1) Whether the creation and sale of custom floral arrangements to celebrate a wedding ceremony is artistic expression, and, if so, whether compelling their creation violates the free speech clause; and (2) whether the compelled creation and sale of custom floral arrangements to celebrate a wedding and attendance of that wedding against one’s religious beliefs violates the free exercise clause.

Here are a few other cases where the decisions have not yet been announced:

Travel Ban

Trump v. Hawaii

The court will decide whether President Trump had the legal authority to restrict travel from several mostly Muslim countries.

Digital Privacy

Carpenter v. United States

The court will decide whether the government needs a warrant to obtain information from cellphone companies showing their customers’ locations.

Labor Unions

Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees

The court will decide whether states may require government workers who choose not to join unions to pay fees for collective bargaining.

Pregnancy Centers and Abortion

National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra

The court will decide whether California may require “crisis pregnancy centers” to provide information about abortion.

Internet Sales Taxes

South Dakota v. Wayfair

The court will decide whether states can require internet retailers to collect sales taxes in states where they have no physical presence.

If what you’ve read so far doesn’t strike you as all that positive, you can be happy you don’t live in Canada. Dr. Michael Brown details what their high court did this week:

Canada’s Supreme Court Rules Against Trinity Western and the Bible

In a ruling that is sure to send shock waves through the nation, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled 7-2 against Trinity Western University’s (TWU) Law School. In effect, what the court declared is that universities must choose between biblical standards and accreditation. Put another way, the court ruled that Christianity and higher education are incompatible. I am not exaggerating in the least.

Here’s a brief summary of the case for those who are not familiar with it. Trinity Western is a Christian university that requires its students and faculty to live by basic Christian standards. This means that to be a student or faculty member in good standing, you can’t commit fornication or adultery, nor can you engage in homosexual relationships . . .

And if it could happen in Canada, it could happen in America.

Honestly, I don’t know where TWU goes from here. And I don’t know how the believers in Canada will respond.

But I can say this to my friends and colleagues and fellow-educators and communicators here in America: We either use our liberties or lose them. We either stand fast and stand tall and stand strong, or we cower in a corner. We either do what’s right today, or we apologize to our children tomorrow.

It’s time to push back.

America Is Split Right Down the Middle on Abortion, Poll Shows

Written by Grace Carr

Americans are split evenly down the middle on whether abortion should remain legal, a Gallup poll published Monday reveals.

Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs poll shows that 48 percent of Americans identify as pro-choice while 48 percent identify as pro-life. While roughly half of Americans are pro-choice, more Americans believe that aborting unborn babies is morally wrong than morally acceptable, the poll shows.

Forty-eight to 43 percent of Americans find abortion morally wrong, according to Gallup’s poll. Since Gallup began conducting polls on abortion in the 1990s, the percentage of Americans who find abortion to be morally acceptable has never been greater than those who find it morally repugnant.

Of Americans who think that abortion should be legal in some circumstances, a majority believe that abortions should be legal in a “few” circumstances rather than in “most” cases. Examples of limited circumstances can include cases of fetal abnormality, rape or where the mother’s life is in danger.

The split in pro-life and pro-choice beliefs reveals a rise in pro-life attitudes that has been escalating since the 1990s. Multiple states have banned abortions after 15 weeks into pregnancy, and Iowa banned abortions after six weeks into pregnancy on May 4.

These pro-active measures to protect life reflect Americans’ changing opinions about abortion: Forty-seven percent of Americans identified as pro-choice while 46 percent identified as pro-life in 2000. Only 40 percent of Americans identified as “pro-life” while 51 percent identified as “pro-choice” in 1990.

Gallup conducted their poll by conducting telephone interviews between May 1 and May 10. Gallup spoke with 1,024 persons age 18 and older in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

This article originally posted at Stream.org.