Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives supported the $1.3 trillion dollar “omnibus” budget bill which included hundreds of millions of dollars for Planned Parenthood.

Yes, federal lawmakers continue to fund what Daniel John Sobieski described in an op/ed as the Planned Parenthood “Chop Shop”–a business that is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice for “engaging in the illegal sale of aborted baby remains for profit.” According to Planned Parenthood, “the more fully-formed the baby body parts, the more valuable those parts are.”

The same writer noted the irony that funding to fight the opioid addiction epidemic was also in the bill. This means “the government is simultaneously paying for the saving and destruction of human life.”

Sobieski’s devastating critique is worth repeating:

Defunding Planned Parenthood is something more than a campaign promise. Life is supposed to be the first unalienable right conferred on us by our Creator. Liberals are also supposed to be in favor of “safe spaces.” One would think the womb should be the safest space of all. It is not so considered on K Street.

While opiod overdoses killed about 64,000 people last year, the “leading cause of death for Americans under 50 years old is abortion, the single largest practitioner of which is Planned Parenthood.”

Yet far too many “pro-life” members of Congress voted to fund what is “by far the nation’s largest abortion provider.”  God forgive us!

Here is another morally repugnant fact that should sear the consciences of all decent people: “An analysis of the 2016-2017 report along with Planned Parenthood’s previous reports shows that Planned Parenthood is responsible for the deaths of over 7.6 million human babies.”

Congress will have another chance to defund the barbaric, feticidal Planned Parenthood in September. Pro-life voters must make their voices heard before Congress returns to Washington D.C. after Labor Day.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send an email to your U.S. Representative to urge him/her to reject any spending bill that includes tax funds for Planned Parenthood. Neither taxpayers nor their elected representatives should be complicit in the intentional killing of innocent humans in the womb.

You can also call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be transferred to your Congressman’s office to leave a message.

Planned Parenthood receives roughly $500 million in taxpayer dollars each year. Roughly 86 percent of these funds are provided through Medicaid reimbursements. The remaining 14 percent is provided through Title X family planning grants. All of this money is authorized by Congress.

Please pray that thousands of emails and calls will flood in to the U.S. Capitol and that our political leaders in Washington D.C. will respond in the affirmative.  It is long past time to defund Planned Parenthood.

Please also take time to pray for the upcoming elections as well as for the spiritual and moral healing of our nation.

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Written by Walker Wildmon

When I was in high school, I sat next to a young lady in class who quietly mentioned to her friend that she’d had an abortion. At the time I didn’t completely grasp the heartache that she must have been experiencing though I could see the pain in her eyes. The only other detail I remember is that she said it was physically painful. It was a haunting conversation.

In March of 2017, it was reported that Planned Parenthood executives were making as much money as some professional athletes. To be specific, Planned Parenthood’s CEO, Cecile Richards, receives over $950,000 a year in compensation. For those who don’t know, Planned Parenthood is America’s largest abortion provider. Planned Parenthood was subsidized by over $543,000,000 in taxpayer dollars last year, according to their own 2016-2017 annual report. The report also revealed that Planned Parenthood performed 321,384 abortions with only 3,889 adoption referrals. This is a shocking number. Planned Parenthood is portrayed by the media and liberals as vital to women’s healthcare.  What this reveals is that Planned Parenthood is not only committing cruel and evil acts, its bosses are well compensated for providing them.

One claim you’ll hear regarding abortion is that it is only a small percentage of what Planned Parenthood provides. From a biblical perspective, this is a non-starter. Killing as many as one child is one too many. More than 321,000 abortions cannot be defined as a “small percent” of Planned Parenthood’s work. Nonetheless, in the early months of his presidency, President Trump offered to allow Planned Parenthood to keep its federal funds if they would cease performing abortions. Their executives denied this offer claiming abortion was vital in order for their organization to continue. You’d think if abortion was such as small part of what Planned Parenthood does then its leaders wouldn’t mind ceasing the practice in order to keep the federal funds coming in. But Planned Parenthood is absolutely committed to killing babies and misdirecting that reality by referring to it as women’s healthcare.

Under virtually no scenario is abortion the provision of healthcare. We must not grant validity to such a falsehood. Ending the life of a child is anything but healthcare as women often suffer emotional and physical harm from having an abortion.

A recent poll showed that 58 percent of likely voters oppose government subsidizing of Planned Parenthood. Even with the majority of Americans feeling this way, Congress has repeatedly failed to end the taxpayer funds to those who carry out the barbaric act that is abortion. Although I’m angry that Congress is complicit in this, I believe that abortion is likely to be ruled on at the Supreme Court in our lifetime. If the court were to hear a pro-life case, it is likely that it would overturn Roe v. Wade. Especially if President Trump adds another judge to the Supreme Court.

Over 1,000 babies’ lives are ended each day in Planned Parenthood facilities across America. This is terribly wrong.  At a minimum, we should stop sending our tax dollars to such an organization.

America will be judged by God for the way we treat the most vulnerable among us. Whether it be the elderly or infants. My prayer is that this generation will be remembered as the one that not only ended the taxpayer funds to abortion providers but ended the horrific practice altogether.

This article was originally posted at AFA.net

Heroism is usefully defined as an act of selflessness — sacrificing oneself for the life of another. Medal of Honor recipients perform acts of true heroism, often giving their life to save their brothers in arms.

But what is the opposite of heroism? What would you call an organization and its leader who brag about killing the most innocent among us and killing in a barbaric, painful manner for selfish reasons?

Planned Parenthood and its leader, Cecile Richards, are responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of babies annually and brag about just that.

Found within the Planned Parenthood Annual Report, a quote by President Cecile Richards:

We are here today to thank generations of organizers, troublemakers, and hell-raisers who formed secret sisterhoods, who opened Planned Parenthood health centers in their communities, and demanded the right to control their own bodies.

Cecile Richards
Women’s March 2017

Breathtaking! Ms. Richards is proud of generations of “organizers, troublemakers, and hell-raisers who formed secret sisterhoods, who opened Planned Parenthood health centers in their communities, and demanded the right to control their own bodies.”

Of course women should have the right to protect and control their own body. But should not the innocent child in the womb have the same right to life written in our Declaration of Independence and admonished in the Bible?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (Declaration of Independence)

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live. (Deuteronomy 30)

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. (Jeremiah 1:5a)

I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. (Psalm 139:14a)

Scripture is abundantly clear that we face a battle between death and life. Jesus said: “…I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6) We’re told to choose life.

But Cecile Richards boasts about her abortions and her agency that chooses death for millions of babies — over seven million, six hundred thousand unborn children murdered through Planned Parenthood alone since Roe v. Wade.

Richards wrote in a 2014 Elle column:

I had an abortion. It was the right decision for me and my husband, and it wasn’t a difficult decision. Before becoming president of Planned Parenthood eight years ago, I hadn’t really talked about it beyond family and close friends. But I’m here to say, when politicians argue and shout about abortion, they’re talking about me—and millions of other women around the country.

And in an Katie Couric interview Cecile expands:

It was a decision my husband and I made. It was a personal decision. And we have three children that we adore and that are the center of my life. And we decided that was as big as our family needed to be. It wasn’t anything more dramatic than that.

Let those words sink in.

“It was a decision my husband and I made.”

“And we have three children that we adore and that are the center of my life.”

“And we decided that was as big as our family needed to be. It wasn’t anything more dramatic than that. ”

It was just a decision. Like whether to have cable or dish network, whether to have beef or chicken for dinner. No big deal.

And think about Richards comment “we have three children that we adore and that are the center of my life.” How must those children feel? They are only adored because they happened to be number one, two and three. Had they been number four or more, they would have been killed. That’s a pretty calloused and capricious selection process.

Further, Cecile and her husband, Kirk Adams (who was vice president of the Service Employees International Union, and is now executive director of the Healthcare Education Project in New York), made that choice — a married, power couple. There was no hardship and no threat to Cecile’s life. Just the virulently selfish decision to use abortion as birth control. By any other name that would be called wickedness.

Looking on page 31 of the Annual Report, we see the total abortions performed by Planned Parenthood in 2017:

That’s 321,384 babies whose lives were ended at Planned Parenthood abortion mills in 2017. Consider that taxpayers contribute $500 million per annum to that vile organization, and try not to lose your cool.

Richards deceitfully explains that federal tax dollars do not go toward abortions, but that’s a misleading argument. The government money received by Planned Parenthood is fungible and frees up their other resources to promote their abortion services, lobby state and federal lawmakers, pay rent and the electric bill among other things. The notion that taxpayer money does not fund their abortion services is a ruse.

We should review the inception of Planned Parenthood to understand the true nature of this organization. Most worthy entities have great beginnings, such as the Ivy League Schools which were founded as seminaries. Over the decades, the original intent has degraded and the universities transformed into centers of Progressive propaganda, in direct opposition to a Judeo-Christian worldview.

Unlike the Ivies, Planned Parenthood was founded by an evil eugenicist, Margaret Sanger. As I wrote in 2014:

The real Margaret Sanger espoused sinister motives for advancing birth control and abortion: she fully endorsed eugenics for the betterment of race and society.

Sanger was a Darwinist who embraced a utilitarian view of human life, and proposed to rid our nation of the criminal element and “inferior races” through abortion and breeding programs.

And as noted in the 2016 article, “Planned Parenthood, An Unnecessary Evil“:

The original intent of Planned Parenthood has been veiled with a facade of honorable work, but the truth is despicable to the core.

Planned Parenthood’s predecessor, The American Birth Control League, was founded by Nazi-inspiration Margaret Sanger, the godmother of modern eugenics, in 1921.

So, this behemoth baby-killing business had a nefarious founding and mission, and an anti-biblical, anti-Christ goal of convincing teenaged and older females to choose death rather than life.

And notice, the “other services” touted so frequently by abortion-lover Richards have been dwindling as the main cash crop — killing the unborn and then selling the baby body parts — has increased.

As written at the Daily Wire by Paul Bois:

Feminists love to throw out the “but Planned Parenthood provides other valuable services” line when discussing the organization’s lucrative war against the unborn in the practice of abortion.

It turns out, according to the organization’s 2016-17 Annual Report, those “other services” have been steadily dropping since 2008 while their abortions remain stable, making it PP’s most reliable revenue stream — other than the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars it receives from the government, of course.

As noted by LifeNews, Planned Parenthood’s revenue has increased since 2009, from $1.1 billion to roughly $1.4 billion in 2017. That Planned Parenthood’s overall services have decreased rather increased makes this all the more puzzling. LifeNews provides a summary of the report’s findings:

In 2008, PPFA affiliates were seeing 3 million patients a year. Today, they see only 2.4 million—a huge drop of 20%.

PPFA’s highly publicized ‘cancer screenings’ fell by almost 2/3rds–from 1,830,811 in 2009 to just 660,777 in 2016.

What about contraception services? They dropped from 3,868,901 in 2009 to 2,701,866 in 2016—a 30% tumble.

How about their much vaunted (but barely existent) prenatal services? From 40,489 in 2009 to just 7,762 in 2016—a decline of more than 3/4s.

Bottom line: Planned Parenthood is a vile organization that should be defunded and its president, Cecile Richards, should be out of a job.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send an email or fax to your U.S. lawmakers in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, urging them  to defund Planned Parenthood. Let them know that you strongly believe that businesses which profits from the wholesale killing of babies and the (illegal) selling of baby body parts should be shuttered and never receive another penny of taxpayer money.

More ACTION:  Please pray that our state and nation will repent from supporting this moral, political, and financial evil. Pray that your “pro-choice” family members, friends, and neighbors will finally understand that abortion is barbaric and indefensible in every situation — not just when tax dollars are being spent to support it. Pray that our state and nation will mourn the legalization of abortion, which has eradicated 60+ million innocent lives.

Spread the word! Ask your friends to speak out to their federal lawmakers also by forwarding this email or by posting it on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #DefundPP.

Be heroic! Take a strong stand in defense of the unborn! Join Illinois Family Institute in its battle to call for the complete defunding of tax dollars for Planned Parenthood!

March for Life Chicago!

Join thousands at March for Life Chicago 2018 as we come together from across Chicago, the Midwest and the U.S. to defend, protect and celebrate LIFE this Sunday at the Federal Plaza from 2 PM to 4 PM.  For more information, click HERE.

Our goal is to serve as a visual and vocal reminder that the people of Chicago and the Midwest stand for LIFE.  We come together to change perceptions in a society that thinks abortion is the answer. We call upon religious, civic and community leaders to renew every effort to build a nation and culture dedicated to protecting life at every stage and eliminating the violence of abortion. Our women, men, children and families deserve better than abortion!

Join us and choose life and blessing for our nation and the unborn!

Planned Parenthood is having a fundraiser in Chicago at a restaurant called Revolution Brewing next Tuesday, August 29th.

Because Planned Parenthood aborts over 300,000 unborn humans each year, pro-life advocates wrote negative reviews on the Revolution Brewing Facebook page on August 21st. The response was so great, Revolution Brewing took down the entire review section of their Facebook page!

There are two action steps we can take as we demand Revolution Brewing CANCEL this Planned Parenthood fundraiser.  Please stand for LIFE by taking these steps, and share this with your pro-life friends:

Take ACTION: Click HERE to give Revolution Brewing a negative review on Yelp!, demanding that they cancel this fundraiser.  Yelp is similar to the Yellow Pages but is an online business directory with social elements. Customers can leave feedback on their experiences with that business which does two things. It informs future customers of what they might expect and it keeps standards high, or forces an improvement of those standards to prevent negative feedback.

More ACTION: Please join the Pro-life Action League’s protest on Tuesday, August 29th

TIME:  5:30 PM – 7:00 PM
ADDRESS: Revolution Brewing, 2323 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago (map)

This event is also listed on Facebook.

Not long ago we reminded people that scientific evidence proves that unborn babies feel pain when being aborted. As an extension of that question, we asked: In light of continuing federal funding of abortion (despite GOP promises to end it) — what do those 535 members of the United States Congress feel?

Below is a video that runs less than five minutes. We challenge you to not feel anything while watching it.

Operation Rescue has documented a total of 48 medical emergencies at Planned Parenthood abortion mills across America since January 2016 — twenty-one of which took place within the first five months of 2017.

Appropriately, one of the emergencies featured in this short video is from earlier this year at the “Margaret Sanger Planned Parenthood” in New York City.

The video is straightforward, featuring recordings of call after call from Planned Parenthood facilities to 911 for emergency medical assistance.

Call after call. The pain felt watching and listening to them is nothing compared to the pain felt by the babies. Or by the mothers who often suffer physically and emotionally following an abortion.

Early on the video documents the 59th documented emergency transport from a Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, Missouri. Spoiler alert: more from the same facility follow.

The next one is the 911 call from a mother finding her daughter dead in her home following an abortion at a Planned Parenthood facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

That call should put congressional budget bargaining in perspective. Will it?

Later a 911 call is heard regarding a patient that is hemorrhaging in a Planned Parenthood facility in Annapolis, Maryland.

The video is horrendous. But you need to watch it anyway.

Here is the video’s introduction on the YouTube page:

Every day, women are placed at risk of injury, hospitalization, and death at Planned Parenthood abortion facilities around the nation. Think that is hyperbole? Watch this video then contact your Congressmen and demand that they #DEFUNDPLANNEDPARENTHOOD NOW!

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Today’s fiscal and social conservatives are feeling what the late baseball legend Yogi Berra described as “deja vu all over again.”

The Daily Signal is reporting that “Congressional negotiators agreed late Sunday on a broad spending plan to fund the government through September,” and a vote is expected within days.

The “makeshift spending agreement” is business as usual. We’ve been here before. But there’s a big problem: the GOP-led Congress did not remove funding for Planned Parenthood. That’s $500 million dollars!

The Washington Times reports:

The spending deal congressional negotiators hammered out early Monday morning runs 1,665 pages, and spends $700 million per page — the cost of keeping the basic operations of the government running for a year.

Deja vu, anyone?

After watching the Republicans in Washington, D.C. for the past 100 days, most conservatives of all stripes are coming to grips with the fact that the GOP isn’t quite ready to be a governing party.

President Donald Trump and U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan continue to promise that they will fulfill their promises regarding repealing and replacing Obamacare, enacting tax reform, and starting to build a wall on the southern border.

Governing the United States is a massive job, and healthcare and taxes and a border wall are difficult issues to deal with. Defunding Planned Parenthood is not.

The omnibus spending bill continues to use your tax money to take the lives of the unborn. That, despite the fact that Republicans now hold the White House and majorities in both houses in Congress. Scientific evidence proves those babies feel the pain of abortion. What do our elected Republicans feel?

How is this possible? A clue might be the excuse used for failing to spend money on a border wall. The Daily Signal reported this:

Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have said they prefer to put off a fight with Democrats over beginning to pay for the wall until the fall, rather than as part of funding the government for the rest of the current fiscal year.

Is that their excuse for failing to defund Planned Parenthood? Preferring to put off a fight with Democrats? Republicans cannot find the intestinal fortitude to stop spending taxpayers money on abortions — not a good sign for the other battles to come.

No doubt many Americans who voted for Republicans have put Congress and the White House on probation, and will for a time, give them the benefit of the doubt. Funding Planned Parenthood through September is another matter.

The abortion industry is rejoicing. U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-New York) is “boasting” about what Democrats were able to accomplish in this GOP-led Congress.

Your U.S. Representative need to hear from you. Tell them to vote against any spending bill that funds Planned Parenthood.

Here is something they should vote for, however:

[U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz,] said he was preparing an amendment to defund Planned Parenthood for inclusion in the omnibus spending bill. He said it mirrors Vice President Mike Pence’s amendment to defund Planned Parenthood that the House passed in 2011, when Pence was a Republican congressman from Indiana.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to urge your U.S. Representative to vote for the Biggs amendment — if it doesn’t pass — then vote no on the spending bill.

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A politically dramatic scene occurred on March 30^th. U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia), recovering from back surgery, and Vice President Mike Pence arrived in the U.S. Senate to cast votes for a bill that reverses an abortion-clinic Obama-era rule. The rule enacted by the previous administration forced all states to allocate Title X money to abortion clinics.

The vote was tied, with 50 United States Senators voting for the bill and 50 against. Vice President Mike Pence broke the tie, and the bill is now going to President Donald Trump. He is expected to sign it.

Once the bill is signed into law, states will once again be able to exclude abortion clinic chains (like Planned Parenthood) from receiving Title X tax dollars. There is, however, another layer to this unfolding drama.

Current law requires Medicaid dollars to be allocated to any qualified healthcare organization, which includes Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion clinic chain in the nation. The pro-life movement wants to take Medicaid dollars–which constitute about 40 percent of Planned Parenthood’s budget–away from them. Such a funding loss would cripple Planned Parenthood.

To change that law requires 60 votes in the U.S. Senate. This recent vote signals strongly that it’s not currently possible to get 60 U.S. Senators to support taking Medicaid dollars away from Planned Parenthood. Therefore, a different strategy is being employed. With these 50 U.S. Senators and the vice president’s tie-breaking vote, Planned Parenthood can be stripped of Medicaid funding for a period of one year by using the reconciliation process in the U.S. Senate.

The vote Thursday signaled that the political will is present in Washington D.C. to defund Planned Parenthood for one year. This is an area where gridlock can be overcome. A budget battle is likely to start in April, and another attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare may also come up soon. These are both political moments where historic pro-life victories are possible.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a fax or an email message to your state representative, urging him/her to vote NO on HB 40. Don’t overlook the need to communicate your opinion about HB 40, which is designed to force Illinois taxpayers to fund thousands of additional abortions year after year. Planned Parenthood is afraid of losing federal tax dollars, and they’re trying to make part of that up by getting more state tax revenue. We need to tell our lawmakers no!

More ACTION: Join the second nationwide #DefundPP rally. The events are happening on April 28^th and 29^th.  The last rally earlier this year received amazing news coverage. Join a rally location at the end of April to tell the nation it’s time to end taxpayer subsidization of Planned Parenthood! Learn more HERE.

>>Text Alerts: Text IFI to 555888 or click HERE to fill in a short form to enlist. You will receive a prompt reply thanking you for subscribing. Of course, you can easily opt out at any time.

We urge you to join today.

This time of year is usually extremely busy as lawmakers in Springfield and Washington D.C. introduce a many new legislative proposals. Over the next several weeks, IFI will be sending out email alerts asking for your responses to a variety of pro-family concerns. We not only ask for your patience but also for your perseverance and diligence in speaking out on these matters. Your voice in the public square and in the inboxes of your elected officials is absolutely vital.

Today, we have three items regrading the sanctity of life to bring to your attention:

Taxpayer Funding of Abortion

The most urgent matter: Click HERE to send a message to your state representative asking him/her to vote “no” to HB 40, the bill that would have our taxes pay for abortions under public aid and through state government insurance policies.

Passage of HB 40 would translate into tens of thousands of additional abortions in Illinois every year. More than 40,000 abortions are performed in Illinois annually.  HB 40 would push that number to well over 50,000 annual abortions.

This legislation may be voted on this week, so your state representative needs to hear from you right away.  Please let him/her know that you do not want your tax dollars funding abortion.  (Read more HERE.)

Defund Planned Parenthood

As you know, last year through the release of undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress, we learned of the likelihood that Planned Parenthood has been committing the horrific and illegal practice of mutilating babies “born alive” for the purpose of selling their body parts for profit. (Read more here, here and here.)

Despite these gruesome revelations, the U.S. Congress has yet to respond.

This year we have an enormous opportunity that we cannot waste. We have a strong pro-life majority in Washington D.C., and a new pro-life president in the White House! Now there is absolutely no excuse for the continued funding of this despicable organization.

In order to stop the flow of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into Planned Parenthood–the nation’s large abortion provider–we must make our voices heard and put immense pressure on our federal lawmakers to act.

Within the next few weeks, IFI will be delivering thousands of petitions to our United States Congress to demand an end to the use of our tax dollars to fund abortions.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to sign our petition to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, urging them to take whatever steps are necessary to defund this deceptive abortion-provider. Our tax dollars should not be used to subsidize any so-called “health” organization that  provides abortions, harvests organs, or traffics in human body parts.

Pro-Life Billboards

Illinois Family Institute is partnering with other pro-life advocates to reach and challenge millions of our neighbors about abortion. We are putting up pro-life billboards with the simple and bold statement “Abortion Takes Human Life,” but we need your financial partnership to make this a success.

In 2016, pro-life advocates reached 8.8 million views in Cook and DuPage Counties with this message. These billboards circumvent the biased media, going straight to the people and receiving an overwhelmingly positive response from the public. We want to build on that success in 2017. This is an opportunity to lead our culture away from abortion and toward life. Changing our culture requires bold and clear communication that reaches a large audience. This is an opportunity to save mothers and babies from abortion. Many who see these billboards will someday play a role in deciding whether or not they will abort an innocent baby. We can reach them before they’re tempted by abortion.

Click HERE to make a donation to raise funds to place these billboards throughout the Chicagoland area and then throughout the state of Illinois. We need your help to reach our culture with this life-affirming message.

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The U.S. abortion rate is the lowest in recorded history! The Guttmacher Institute found that there were 14.6 abortions for every 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 2014. That’s lower than the abortion rate in 1973 (when the Roe v. Wade case was decided) and every year since then.

We’re receiving this news just as we celebrated Sanctity Of Human Life Sunday, the great March for Life events across the country (including Chicago), and the news that President Donald J. Trump reinstated the Mexico City policy — which bans taxpayer funds from being used to pay for international abortions.

Next on the pro-life agenda is a determined push to defund Planned Parenthood at the Federal level, including a nationwide protest of Planned Parenthood on Saturday, February 11^th.

Abortion Statistics

The abortion rate is the lowest it’s been since 1973, during the post-Roe era. However, because our population is higher now than it was in the 70’s, the number of abortions is the lowest it’s been since 1975.  In 2014, there were 926,200 abortions. That’s lower than the 1 million in 1975, but higher than the 898,570 in 1974 and higher than the 744,610 in 1973.

A higher share of abortions are now being done with abortion pills and a lower share are done as surgical abortions. In 2014, the abortion pill accounted for “31% of nonhospital abortions, up from 24% in 2011.”

The study highlighted pro-life laws as a major reason for a decrease in abortions.  Laws that shut down abortion clinics or otherwise make abortion less accessible result in fewer abortions. In years past, pro-choice groups claimed pro-life laws didn’t reduce the number of abortions, but as the number of life-affirming laws increase and the number of abortions decrease, the data is becoming too difficult to ignore.

Guttmacher found that Illinois is #6 in the nation for number of abortions.

Guttmacher also reports that Illinois has the 11^th highest abortion rate, at 16.3%.

More detail on Illinois abortions can be found here.

These statistics do not include the sale of abortifacient drugs and devices which result in newly created humans dying, including birth control, the patch, minipill, NuvaRing, Yaz, Yasmin, IUD’s, Plan B, and Ella. They also do not include the number of unborn humans frozen in IVF clinics and how many of those humans died. Lastly, they do not include any data on embryonic stem cell research where newly created humans are destroyed for the purpose of experimentation.

The abortion statistics come from the Guttmacher Institute, which is a pro-choice organization. Their data matches the trends from the CDC (Center for Disease Control). Since Guttmacher relies on multiple sources of data, its reports are widely viewed as closer to the actual number of abortions than the CDC (the CDC relies on incomplete data because of varying reporting requirements in each state).

The reduction in abortion is good news. However, we know that abortion is still the leading cause of death, by far.

Next: Defund Planned Parenthood

The pro-life movement has the edge right now, and we need to use it! If we can defund Planned Parenthood at the federal level, it will be one of the biggest pro-life victories we have ever experienced.

Planned Parenthood receives over $500 million in tax dollars each year. Over $400 million of those tax dollars come from the federal government and the rest comes from the states. While the Hyde Amendment prevents federal tax dollars from paying directly for abortion, money is fungible.  The federal tax dollars Planned Parenthood receives are used to free up other money to use for abortion.

Planned Parenthood was an ardent opponent of Donald Trump in the election, and they continue to oppose Trump. Multiple times during his campaign, Trump promised to defund Planned Parenthood (here, here, and here). It’s not only a campaign promise, it’s in Trump’s moral interest since Planned Parenthood aborts more humans than anyone else and has a long history of scandals.  It’s also in Trump’s political interest because Planned Parenthood will certainly oppose him in 2020 as they did in this last election, endorsing Hillary and spending tens of millions against him.

Recently, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan committed to defunding Planned Parenthood during a CNN Town Hall on January 12, 2017. The wheels are in motion for a major pro-life victory, but the votes are very close! We can defund by using a reconciliation process in the U.S. Senate to prevent pro-choice Senators from filibustering, but we must get every pro-life vote in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate to make that happen.

Therefore, major national pro-life organizations from the political and advocacy arenas are calling on the pro-life community to hold a nationwide protest of Planned Parenthood on Saturday, February 11, 2017.  We all need to get involved! We’re on the verge of a huge victory, and our involvement can make the difference.

In Illinois, there are 17 Planned Parenthood locations, but at the time this article is published, only 4 of those clinics have a protest scheduled.

Take ACTION:  You can lead an event. It can be a protest, a picket, a prayer vigil, etc.  Click HERE to select one of the Planned Parenthood locations that does not have an event yet, and sign up at this website to lead an event at that location.

You can purchase signs HERE:

We can make this happen together. We can defund Planned Parenthood. We can save mothers and babies from abortion.

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Planned Parenthood – America’s largest abortion provider – is in an outright panic over the prospect of being stripped of federal funds.

Annually, the abortion giant gets more $500,000,000 from taxpayers. This is why they are predicting the end of the world if lawmakers in DC cut them off the federal dole.

Here’s what Cecil Richards, Planned Parenthood’s CEO had to say about the prospect:

Yet the reality of cutting Planned Parenthood off is good for pretty much everyone. Here are 4 really good things that would happen if Congress defunds Planned Parenthood:

1.)  Community Health Care Clinics would get more funding. According to the Charlotte Lozier Institute and Alliance Defending Freedom, in Illinois, Community Health Clinics outnumber Planned Parenthood 670-18. Nationally, they outnumber Planned Parenthood 13,540-665. The plan to defund Planned Parenthood would redirect that money to these important centers, and the relatively few people that go to Planned Parenthood would have plenty of options to get healthcare.

2.)  Women would get better, more comprehensive care. Remember when Planned Parenthood pretended they provide mammograms? The truth is the organization provides very few services. This means if a low-income woman needs a mammogram or medical attention at a Planned Parenthood clinic, they most likely will be sent to a hospital or a health clinic. Let’s just cut out the middleman.

3.)  Taxpayers would no longer fund abortions. Planned Parenthood likes to say taxpayer dollars don’t pay for abortions because the money they get from the feds is for Medicaid reimbursements. But Planned Parenthood uses the same facility, the same staff, and the same equipment to provide their other (limited) services that they use to perform abortions. Money is fungible, and their argument is weak.

4.)  America would value life a little more. We should never forget the horrible things we witnessed in the David Daleiden undercover videos. It is to our great national shame that we allow these atrocities to continue.

This article was originally posted at CCV.org

Family Research Council (FRC) commends the U.S. House of Representatives for the passage of H.R. 3762, the Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act, and urges the U.S. Senate to take up and pass the bill. This bill will restrict for one year funding under several mandatory programs such as Medicaid to abortion entities such as Planned Parenthood and would also repeal key provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which encourage subsidies for abortion coverage and which threaten conscience protections.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins made the following statement about this legislation:

We thank the House for redirecting taxpayer money away from an abortion giant that engages in gruesome and unethical practices.

With a strong majority vote, the House passed a budget reconciliation bill that effectively removes the significant majority of federal funding of Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion chain in the country, responsible for killing an estimated 340,000 unborn children every year. This represents about one-third of all abortions in the United States.

Additionally, the reconciliation bill strikes a serious blow to Obamacare, the President’s failed healthcare plan, by repealing the individual and employer mandates as well as a government slush fund. This alleviates federal coercion of Americans who are forced to purchase health insurance they may object to because it contains elective abortion coverage, and removes the threat of punishing fines on employers who decline to violate their deeply held beliefs.

Republicans in the Senate now have the opportunity to work toward keeping the campaign promises that helped them secure the Congressional majority. For our friends in the Senate who think the House bill is not strong enough, we encourage them to try and make the measure even better. The House leadership has said they will accept any improvements the Senate makes to the bill that eliminates much of Planned Parenthood’s funding and removes the heart of Obamacare.