“Roe v. Wade” turned 50 years old on Sunday, January 22nd. This is the infamous U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively gave us abortion on demand (when you add the impact of its companion decision of the same day, “Doe v. Bolton.”) Here are some comments from some pro-life leaders on the fallout from 50 years of “Roe.”

*Abby Johnson, former head of a Planned Parenthood clinic and one-time “Planned Parenthood Employee of the Year,” is strongly pro-life today because she saw a sonogram of an abortion in her own clinic. This wasn’t a blob of tissue fighting for his life—it was a baby.

She gave me a statement (through email to Jerry Newcombe on 1/20/23)  for this article on 50 years of legalized abortion in America:

“One of the biggest fallouts from Roe is that every woman’s bathroom will now become an abortion clinic if she decides to use the abortion pill to end her unwanted or unplanned pregnancy.”

These pills are marketed as safe. But she warns,

“The use of the abortion pill is about to skyrocket and I don’t think the nation is ready for both emotional and physical ramifications of such sweeping actions. I think it’s going to be horrific, and the pro-life movement needs to be there for these women who need love the most when they are considering abortion and in the aftermath of their decision.”

*Father Frank Pavone, founder and director of Priests for Life, who was recently “laicized” by the Vatican, told me through an email (1/22/23):

“Roe v. Wade has distorted our entire process of self-governance, replacing the will of the people with the imposition of a fake Constitutional right, and allowing abortion, as the only medical procedure with such a status, to grotesquely disfigure everything from city council meetings to Supreme Court confirmation processes.”

*Eric Scheidler, the son of long-time abortion foe Joe Scheidler, heads up the Pro-Life Action League in Aurora, Illinois. He sent me an email (1/23/23):

“The nearly 50 years of abortion on demand forced on the American people by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision have had a devastating impact on our culture. If Roe had been reversed much earlier — for example, in 1992 when the Casey v. Planned Parenthood case instead reaffirmed Roe — then it would have been much easier to repair that damage. But after two generations of abortion without limits, one of the most extreme policies on the face of the Earth, we have a scene of devastation on our hands. That means the Christians and all Americans of good will need to get involved in not just promoting pro-life laws, but in promoting such fundamentals as marriage, the blessings of children, and the rebuilding of our support communities.”

*“Abortion is bad for women and babies,” notes the niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. She admits she had two abortions—and now is so grateful for the forgiveness of Jesus in her life. She warns against others making this same mistake. In fact, Evangelist Alveda King of told me in a recent radio segment, “Life should be celebrated and acknowledged and appreciated from the womb to the tomb into eternity.” Alveda has now started the organization, “Speak for Life.”

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

In June of 2018, the body of a little baby was discovered floating in the ocean near an inlet in South Florida. One sheriff told NBC News that he had thought he had seen it all, but this corpse really tugged at his heart.

And now, more than 4 years later, through DNA technology, authorities have been able to isolate the mother. She’s been arrested and faces first-degree murder charges. So sad.

How could this type of thing take place in “the land of the free”? I believe that it’s not hard to draw the link between abortion and this type of story which is being repeated over and over. After 63 million abortions where it’s supposedly okay to kill the baby inside the womb, why does it suddenly become wrong to kill the baby outside of it?

Look at these tragic headlines in lifenews.com:

• Woman Abandoned Her Newborn Baby Outside in Freezing Cold, Lied to the Police About Baby’s Location

• Woman Stabs Her 3-Month-Old Baby, Puts Him in Plastic Bag, Throws Him in Dumpster

• Couple Used Poison to Kill Their Viable Unborn Baby, Then Dumped the Baby’s Body

One of the key writers who covers these and other abortion-related stories is Micaiah Bilger who pens articles for lifenews.com.

I asked her to comment on these frequent tragedies. She told me, “The shock never weakens when I hear about another case of infanticide. It’s difficult to imagine how any mother could kill her child, born or unborn, but even more so after seeing her newborn child for the first time. How can a mother hold her precious baby and then throw the child in a garbage bag or abandon it in the cold?”

As to the link between abortion and these cases, Bilger adds, “I suppose after so many years of it being ‘normal’ to kill a child before birth, it’s not surprising that children outside the womb are being devalued, too.”

What should be trumpeted throughout our culture is this: There are safe harbor or safe haven laws that exist in one form or another in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia.

Within a short time of delivering a baby, often 30 days, a mother can bring a baby over to a local fire department or police department or hospital and drop the child off—no questions asked, no charges filed.

For example, here is what the Sunshine State says about its safe harbor law on its website: “Florida’s Safe Baby Law allows mothers and/or fathers, or whoever is in possession of an unharmed newborn approximately 7 days old or less, to leave them in the ‘arms’ of an employee at any Hospital or staffed 24/7 Fire Rescue Station, or Emergency Medical Station. No questions asked, totally anonymous, free from fear of prosecution.”

How much more humane to let the baby live and be placed in the arms of those who can bring the child to a safe future.

The U.S. Supreme Court even referred to these laws in their Dobbs v. Jackson decision from last June, overturning  Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion decision of January 22, 1973. Dobbs noted:

“…States have increasingly adopted ‘safe haven’ laws, which generally allow women to drop off babies anonymously; and…a woman who puts her newborn up for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home.”

I also asked Eric J. Scheidler, the executive director of the Pro-Life Action League, based in the Chicago area, for a comment on these laws. He told me, “Many women know nothing about this option, and as a result, newborn babies are abandoned and even murdered. We must do more to publicize this important way to save babies’ lives.”

America’s two founding documents have important bearing on the subject of abortion. The Declaration of Independence acknowledges that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. The first right enumerated is the “right to life.”

The founders didn’t grant this right. They simply acknowledged it and spelled it out in our founding documents. The U.S. Constitution begins,

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” [emphasis added]

Our posterity includes the promise for those yet unborn.

One could only wish that the mother in South Florida who apparently drowned her newborn had instead brought the child to a “safe haven.”  After a half-century of the abortion ethic, we have lost a lot of ground in cherishing the “right to life.” Raising awareness of these nationwide safe haven laws is a step in the right direction.

Why was a man named Ota Benga put in a display with an orangutan at the Bronx Zoo in 1906? What does this perverse act, part of our nation’s history, have to do with abortion? While the treatment of Benga and the atrocity of abortion are not identical, they do share a point in common – a refusal to recognize humanity, which leads to treating another person, or an unborn baby, as an object that can be taken, killed, or used in a way others deem acceptable.

Ota Benga, of the Mbuti people, was born in the Belgian Congo around 1881. He was a man of very short stature; as an adult he was only 4 feet 11 inches in height and weighed 103 pounds.

To those whose worldview was shaped by evolutionary thought, Benga was considered part of a primitive race, an earlier form of man on the evolutionary journey. This worldview justified the wicked and brutal actions that were taken towards these people.

Once, when Benga was out on a successful elephant hunt, his wife and children were murdered, along with others, by the Force Publique, a military group in Congo started by King Leopold II of Belgium. If this was not a sufficient trial, Benga was captured and sold into slavery. A former missionary turned explorer, Samuel Verner, purchased Benga and others to be part of a display for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. This display was intended to showcase the stages of evolution.

After the World’s Fair, Benga was taken back to the Congo where he remarried. Sadly, his second wife died. With the rest of his family and clan gone, he suffered the added blow of being rejected by his people. Benga was brought back to the U.S. Facing financial difficulties, Verner offered Benga to the director of the Bronx Zoo, William Temple Hornaday. Shaped by an evolutionary mindset, Hornaday had no issue with displaying Ota Benga like an animal. This proved to be a great publicity stunt. A New York Times headline from Sept. 9, 1906 read, “BUSHMAN SHARES A CAGE WITH BRONX PARK APES; Some Laugh Over His Antics, but Many Are Not Pleased. KEEPER FREES HIM AT TIMES Then, with Bow and Arrow, the Pygmy from the Congo Takes to the Woods.”

The next week, a medical doctor, M.S. Gabriel, wrote an editorial claiming that Ota Benga was having a fine time at the zoo; there was no reason for protesting his poor treatment.

Although Benga did draw crowds, African-American pastors properly raised alarms. The New York Times responded to one of the ministers with incredible arrogance saying: “One reverend coloured brother objects to the curious exhibition on the grounds that it is an impious effort to lend credibility to Darwin’s dreadful theories … the reverend coloured brother should be told that evolution … is now taught in the textbooks of all the schools, and that it is no more debatable than the multiplication table.”

Benga thankfully was set free from the display at the zoo and was helped by an orphanage. Later he moved to Lynchburg, VA and was baptized. He attended some elementary-level classes and ended up working at a tobacco factory. He longed to return to Africa, but World War I prevented him from returning. Sadly, on March 20, 1916, he ended his own life.

On December 17, 2021 Governor J. B. Pritzker signed House Bill 370, repealing the Illinois Parental Notification Act that was first passed in 1995, but not instituted until 2013. It is estimated that this law, once enforced, saved about 1000 lives a year and reduced the number of abortions performed on minors by 55%.

Rich Miller‘s Capitol Fax newsletter recorded the praise of perverse politicians and leaders of groups that savagely prey on the unborn and young people in need. The conclusion of Miller’s article from 12/17/21 noted that Illinois increased its number of abortions to out-of-state residents from 2,970 in 2014 to 7,534 in 2019. Business is booming in this grisly trade.

Thankfully there were a few politicians and other leaders in the fight for life who expressed their horror at the passage of this law. Most of the opposition focused on the rights of parents. Some spoke of the danger of this law with respect to the trafficking of minor girls. Save for Eric Scheidler‘s statement, none of the responses directly highlighted the plight of the unborn. Parental rights are part of the issue, but even deeper is the fundamental right to life that the unborn child possesses from the moment of conception.

In 2006, one hundred years after its initial article, the New York Times wrote a drastically different column on Ota Benga, “The Scandal at the Zoo.” Additionally, in 2020, the Times noted an apology from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the group that oversees the Bronx Zoo, for its treatment of Benga and the practice of eugenics that was endorsed by two of the Society’s founders.

May the Lord awaken the hearts of those who currently are in rebellion against His truth regarding the humanity of the unborn child. If our eyes have been opened to this truth, let us not boast, yet let us not be silent in the face of the continued slaughter.

Other Sources:

David Catchpoole. The Elusive Okapi, Living Fossil of the Congo. Creation Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 1 2022

Jerry Bergman. Ota Benga: the pygmy put on display in a zoo, April 19, 2007

Joe Scheidler, sometimes referred to as the “godfather of pro-life activism,” was laid to rest earlier this week. He passed away on Monday, January 18th at his home. He was 93 years old.

The founder of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League, Joe  was greatly admired by many in Illinois and across the country. He and his wife Ann were singularly focused on defending the sanctity of life. Winsome even in the face of withering personal and legal assaults, Joe was steadfast for the cause of life.

The left-wing New York Times published this about Joe:

His significance can be measured in the opposition he engendered. In 1986 the National Organization for Women sued him, arguing that by threatening to impede the work of abortion clinics, he was guilty of extortion and racketeering — one reason his allies and adversaries alike called him the “godfather” of the anti-abortion movement. The lawsuit, which he eventually won, lasted 20 years, one of the longest federal cases in history.

His oldest son, Eric Scheidler, told the Chicago Sun-Times that his father “devoted five decades of his long life to proclaiming the value of human life at its most vulnerable stage, the child in the womb.”

We will miss Joe and will continue to pray for his family and the vital work of the Pro-Life Action League. Joe and Ann have seven children,  27 grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter. May his pro-life legacy be passed down through the generations.

Amid new revelations of Planned Parenthood’s selling of baby organs, Eric Scheidler and the Pro-Life Action League are bringing the truth of abortion to the streets of Chicagoland with the Face the Truth tour. See video below:

Please support IFI as we fight for liberty & work to advance the truth
about the sanctity of life & importance of marriage in our culture!

Written by Bob Unruh

A developing effort in the United States to turn the organs of aborted babies into a commodity is  a technology bereft of morals, contend a number of pro-life leaders.

“This kind of Frankenscience could lead to more abortion because of the obvious profit motive,” said Leslie Hanks of Colorado Right to Life.

She warned it could be the first step to owning and patenting certain human DNA patterns or even actual human beings.

“Truly the stuff of science fiction, an abomination to Almighty God and sadly a further commodification of human beings,” she told WND.

WND reported this week on what the Genetic Literacy Project website calls xenotransplantation.

The process, being developed by the California company Ganogen, removes the organs from aborted babies, transplants them into a rat or pig and then allows them to grow so they can be transplanted into a human.

Work initially has been done on kidneys.

The Genetic Literacy Project suggested the biggest question would be, “Would you accept an organ from a pig, cow, baboon or a chimpanzee to save your child’s life, or your own?”

It published statistics making its case: More than 123,000 Americans require an organ transplant, but fewer than 30,000 will get one, leaving 21 people to die each day “waiting.”

But members of the pro-life community were alarmed at the reports.

Eric Scheidler is executive director of the Pro-Life Action League, which has been at the forefront of fighting abortion for a generation.

“It’s telling that Ganogen refers euphemistically to ‘discarded human organs’ – they know (that) admitting these organs are harvested from aborted babies will make people recoil. Is it worth it to extend your life with an aborted baby’s heart or kidneys?”

He continued: “But as macabre as this technology is, it does give the lie to the abortion industry’s claim that unborn children are not living human beings. Their humanity is precisely what makes these transplants possible.

“It’s horrifying to think that a company would exploit the deaths of these children in this way, or that sick people would be willing to purchase more years of life at such a moral cost.”

Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, also has been a prominent foe of abortion, once buying a building that had housed an abortion business to make sure it was shut down.

“They kill [a baby] in order to grow and harvest organs, and then make a profit,” he said.

He suggested that in such research, there no longer really are any ethics.

“The only thing unethical is to fail to make a profit. It’s anything-goes, full-speed, lead-foot-on-the-gas pedal.”

He cited science fiction movies such as “Coma,” which depicted organs harvested from humans.

“The present has moved beyond science fiction,” he said.

Newman, along with co-worker Cheryl Sullenger, compiled the results of their work to remove abortion from communities in “Abortion Free: Your Manual for Building a Pro-Life American One Community at a Time.”

The book outlines how to find out who does abortions, learn if they are licensed and expose any criminal activities.

WND’s report noted a statement from Eugene Gu, the CEO of Ganogen in Redwood City, California: “Our long-term goal is to grow human organs in animals, to end the human donor shortage.”

But even science publications immediately recognized the ethical problem. For each organ obtained to transplant into a rat or a pig to later help a needy adult, an unborn baby must be killed.

The dilemma is similar to the controversial and so far largely unsuccessful use of embryonic stem cells.

Jim Sedlak, spokesman for the American Life League, the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life movement in the U.S., called the transplant program “totally immoral” and “another outlandish use of aborted babies to produce results that humans think are good.”

“We are totally opposed to any use of aborted cells from human beings to grow organs or for any other purpose,” he said. “Someone died in order for these organs to be grown.”

A video by Ganogen glosses over the source of the organs by euphemistically calling them “discarded.” But obtaining viable human organs requires working in concert with abortion businesses.

The company video explains it is working to end the donor shortage “through organ engineering.”

The science website Natural News addressed the controversy, reporting Ganogen founder Gu took human fetal kidneys and implanted them into rats bred without immune systems.

“This technology is applicable not just to the kidney, but to every kind of organ in the body,” Gu told Natural News.

Natural News said that if the process proves to be successful on a larger scale, “it forebodes a future in which aborted human babies become a commercial commodity for companies to capitalize on artificial organ development.”

CBS News reported the research raises the ethical questions of whether it is acceptable to use human fetal organs in research or to transplant human organs into animals.

Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at Langone Medical Center in New York, told CBS there really isn’t any debate to be had.

“American society is morally uncomfortable enough about abortion that growing organs from fetal remains will never be accepted, and will be banned in state after state.”

WND reported several years ago on the developments in the embryonic stem cell controversy, a procedure created at Johns Hopkins to obtain stem cells, the basic building blocks of human life, without destroying embryonic life.

“Taking a cell from an adult and converting it all the way back to when that person was a 6-day-old embryo creates a completely new biology toward our understanding of how cells age and what happens when things go wrong, as in cancer development,” Elias Zambidis, an assistant professor of oncology and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering and the Kimmel Cancer Center, said at the time.

Just this week, a report from the Christian Institute in the United Kingdom revealed how much progress has been made on using adult stem cells, which unlike embryonic stem cell research, does not require death.

“Researchers at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield used a new technique known as autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation to treat patients aged between early 20s and late 50s.”

The report said the treatment had uses a patient’s own stem cells and “enabled some wheelchair-bound sufferers to walk, run and even dance again,” and enabled “one partially sighted man” to recover his sight.

Originally posted at WND.com.

This morning, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) handed down a highly anticipated ruling that affirmed First Amendment  protections of religious liberty and freedom of conscience.  In this particular ruling it means that our government does not have the authority to force family businesses like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Woods to provide abortifacient drugs and contraceptives in their health care plans.

The Illinois Family Institute celebrates this important decision in favor of religious liberty and freedom of conscience. The Court ruled that private companies cannot be forced to comply with onerous federal government mandates that violate their religious beliefs. 

Read or download the entire SCOTUS decision HERE.

No one in America should be forced to violate their deeply held beliefs in order to keep their jobs or run a business.  We should be free to live and work according to our religious beliefs, not the government’s religion.  To put it more bluntly, our government has no business compelling pro-life citizens to bow at the altar of Leftism.  It is a foundational principle on which this country was founded.

In a free, diverse and tolerant society, the government should respect the freedom of citizens to live out their convictions, not just in private but in the way citizens conduct their lives in public as well. 

It must be noted that this was a 5 to 4 vote on ideological lines, which means that barely a majority of the Justices understand that government shouldn’t suppress religious freedom.  On some level it is distressing to know that it took three years and millions of dollars of legal action to affirm what the First Amendment clearly states: that people have a right to live by the dictates of their faith. And in this case, the right not to partake in the destruction of an innocent human life.   While the victory is important and one for which we should be thankful, the fact is that we were within one vote of a significant loss of religious liberty for individuals who own their own business. Don’t misunderstand, I’m very grateful for this victory, but his vote was too close for comfort.

Key to the decision was the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).  This federal law does not give license to discrimination, as many on the Left have mistakenly claimed.  Today, the SCOTUS directly repudiated this false notion and specifically reiterated that RFRA provides no defense to discriminate in hiring. No federal or state RFRA has ever been used to discriminate against someone.  In fact, RFRA is actually about preventing discrimination against any American due to their religious beliefs.

Locally, reaction was swift and jubilant.   “I am proud that our Supreme Court has upheld the fundamental religious liberties of American citizens to engage in the free exercise of their religious beliefs, not only in their houses of worship, but also in their day to day lives, in business as well as at home,” said Thomas Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society.  “Our Justices have affirmed that Americans must not be compelled to put aside their religious beliefs and values as a pre-condition to their entering into the sphere of commerce and making a living for themselves and their families.”

“This ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby is a victory for all who cherish religious freedom,” said Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League and one of the national directors of the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rallies. “The movement that began with hundreds of protest rallies outside federal court buildings has just won a great victory inside the nation’s highest Court.”

Response from national organizations was no less enthusiastic.  Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council had this to say:

The Supreme Court has delivered one of the most significant victories for religious freedom in our generation. We are thankful the Supreme Court agreed that the government went too far by mandating that family businesses owners must violate their consciences under threat of crippling fines.

All Americans can be thankful that the Court reaffirmed that freedom of conscience is a long-held American tradition and that the government cannot impose a law on American men and women that forces them to violate their beliefs in order to hold a job, own a business, or purchase health insurance.

The unfair HHS mandate gave family businesses two non-choices: either violate your deeply held moral beliefs and comply by paying for drugs and services to which you object, or pay crippling fines of up to $100 per day, per employee, for non-compliance. This mandate threatened the jobs, livelihood and healthcare of millions of Americans and forced those who stood up for their conscience, like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood, to either comply or be punished.

Thankfully, the threat the HHS mandate imposed on Americans has been deemed unlawful today as a violation of core religious freedom rights.  While we celebrate this landmark decision, it is our hope that lower courts will follow the Supreme Court’s lead and protect non-profits like Little Sisters of the Poor, Priests for Life, and Wheaton College from the unfair HHS Mandate.

Dr. Russell Moore of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission sums it up well, “Hobby Lobby [and Conestoga Wood Specialities] refused to render to Caesar what belongs to God: their consciences. The Supreme Court agreed.” 

Help us be your voice for pro-family values! 

The Pro-Life Action League Face the Truth Tour 2012 kicked off Friday, July 7, in Joliet and Shorewood with pictures representing the nearly 4,000 children whose lives are legally terminated through abortion every day. With its 13th annual tour, organizers say they are “eager for participants to join us on the front lines showing our fellow citizens the truth about abortion.”

 Face the Truth has spread across the nation since the League launched its first tour in 1999 in Wisconsin. Established under the inspiration of Pastor Matt Trewhella, pro-life activists across the nation have eagerly adopted this method of educating the public about the horror of abortion. 

Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League, reports that past Face the Truth tours have generated immediate positive results.

“We’ve had women come to us and thank us,” he explained. “With their abortions already scheduled, they saw our pictures and it changed their hearts.”

Scheidler said that is why the Pro-Life Action League continues to organize what he calls, “an important public education campaign.”

The Pro-Life Action League uses graphic pictures to get out its message. Some people express concern that the images may cause emotional harm to young children.

“We too wish it were possible for children to be shielded from the reality not only of abortion but of so many of life’s tragedies,” the Pro-Life Action League website states. “Many of us who hold these pictures first saw them as children. We found the pictures gruesome and saddening, but their only lasting effect was to impress us with a deep sense of the injustice of abortion.”

Scheidler notes the organizations controversial tactic has consistently generated some level of offended opposition. 

“The reality is that if people see the horrible truth of abortion it makes them uncomfortable and upset, and they are more likely to do something to try and prevent it,” said Scheidler.

Pro-life witnesses will line the roads at selected locations through the month of July, displaying pictures of healthy newborn babies juxtaposed with huge graphic photographs of aborted babies, visually exposing the tragedy of their tiny broken bodies.

See www.prolifeaction.org/truth/tours.php for a complete list of tour locations in Illinois and elsewhere in the U.S.

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