FDA Rule On Chemical Abortion Drugs Challenged in Court
|
Attorneys general of 23 states have filed two amicus briefs in support of a lawsuit seeking the withdrawal of FDA approval of the drugs mifepristone (RU-486) and misoprostol for use in chemical abortions. Unfortunately, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul is not one of them. Success in this suit could make chemical abortion illegal even in states where abortion access remains legal.
Our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom filed the original suit in November 2022 and represent over 30,000 medical professionals from four national medical associations, and several more independent doctors. ADF argues that because the FDA has never tested the drug on the pediatric population, there is no science backing its safety for use in young women.
Dr. Christina Francis, the CEO-Elect of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a party in the suit, stated in an interview that Mifepristone is not only untested, but dangerous. She reports that 1 in 5 women have serious complications following chemical abortions including hemorrhage, life-threatening infection and fertility issues.
The AGs Arguments Against Mifepristone
In their brief, the attorneys general argue in part that the FDA’s approval of mifepristone for abortion has two legal flaws. The first is that it defies the agency’s own regulations since the section the FDA first approved the drug under, Subpart H, “does not permit the agency to greenlight elective abortions on a wide scale.”
The second is that allowing abortion medication to be sent via the mail is in direct contrast to a federal law that prohibits “using the mail to send or receive abortion-inducing drugs such as mifepristone.” They go on to state, “The FDA and the Administration as a whole have no intention to respect the Constitution, the Supreme Court, or the democratic process when it comes to abortion.”
The lawsuit is asking the court to revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone completely. If this does not happen, they are asking that laws and regulations be followed at all stages in regard to reviewing, approving, prescribing, dispensing, and administering chemical abortion drugs. If the judge doesn’t rule against mifepristone entirely, the lawsuit asks that current laws and regulations be followed in regard to these chemicals.
Where The Case Stands
The State of Missouri filed its own brief on Friday, February 10th, while Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed a brief on behalf of her state as well as Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.
The U.S. Justice Department argued in its court filing this lawsuit “is extraordinary and unprecedented.” The United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas will hear the case first. After this, an appeal would likely go to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and if a ruling in that court were to be appealed, it could go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Here in Illinois
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has made it clear that his office will not support efforts to restrict abortion or abortion-inducing drugs in our state.
Based on data from 2020 when there were 46,243 abortions reported in the state, and according to the Illinois Right to Life, “1,180 abortions were performed on minors and 88 were performed on girls younger than 15 years-old.”
Planned Parenthood’s own Guttmacher Institute released a report admitting that chemical abortions accounted for the majority of all abortions in the U.S.. According to this report, in 2020, abortion pills accounted for 54 percent of all U.S. abortions, an increase from 44 percent in 2019.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute reports that the percentage of chemical abortions in Illinois as of 2020 was 19.2 percent and trending higher. If this lawsuit results in the revocation of the approval of mifepristone, many lives will be saved. (20 percent of 46k abortions is 9,200.)
Quashing States’ Rights Gets Quashed!
|
Have you heard? Abortion cheerleaders were at it again! Earlier this week they attempted to overturn state legislative abortion restrictions. Their weapon? The so-called “Women’s Health Protection Act” (H.R. 3755) – led by U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and U.S. Representative Judy Chu (D-CA). The proposal passed the U.S. House by a vote of 218-211 on September 24, 2021. It was taken up by the U.S. Senate on Monday, February 28, 2022 where cloture was opposed by all Republicans and one Democrat: U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV). The motion failed by a vote of 46-48.
In spite of progress we have made since 2019 to reverse abortion on demand with the passage of heartbeat bills in Ohio, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Texas (the Guttmacher Institute predicts up to 25 more states may ban abortions if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roev.Wade), this bill had the potential to quash it all. It’s dastardly features included overturning:
Waiting periods before an abortion
Limits that abortions be performed by licensed physicians
Requirements to provide information about their unborn child to those seeking an abortion
Requirement to provide alternative to abortion to those seeking abortion
Federal limits on taxpayer funding of abortion
And while all of the above are heartbreaking, there’s more! It would also have banned:
Laws allowing medical professionals to opt-out of providing abortions (Conscience protection)
Laws that prohibit abortion after 20 weeks when an unborn child is capable of feeling pain
Laws that prohibit using abortion as a method of sex selection and abortions done based on a diagnosis of Down’s Syndrome
Parental consent or notification for minors seeking an abortion
And the power of this bill can hardly be overstated. It carried with it the potential to make all elective abortions inevitable and protected by federal law. Stomping all over the 10th Amendment, it would have become the weapon against which individual states became powerless to establish their own true protection for the mother and the unborn. True protection for a woman’s health, or anyone’s for that matter, assumes a respect for life and help in a time of need.
A blessing in disguise of the states’ right to prohibit abortion is the inconvenience inherent in this right for those seeking abortion. In some cases, this inconvenience can work in the mother and her baby’s favor. Finding out about an unplanned pregnancy can, admittedly, be unsettling causing some to rush to a solution that is not a solution at all. When an abortion is not easily and immediately obtained, the time to reflect can allow the mother to realize the actual blessings associated with the pregnancy. The blessings of not only carrying a life but allowing those in your family and community the opportunity to come alongside and support you.
However, not all can see the blessing of states’ ban on abortion. The CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, Adrienne Mansanares, recently bemoaned this in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun. She finds the “inconvenience” of having to travel to another state, facing fatigue from such travel, and finding childcare for other children while the “procedure” is performed a “heavy burden”. She also considers it a heavy burden on the states where the abortions are sought, “So that really puts a burden on the public health system of those states where reproductive health care is accessible and legal” as these states pick up the slack.
Which brings our thoughts to the irony of this bill’s name- -Women’s Health Protection. Not only is there nothing protective, for the mother or the baby, in assisting a woman to murder her unborn child. Neither is it healthcare.
According to experts, they are not safer than childbirth and women do not need them to be healthy. Nor do they suffer when they do not have easy access to abortion. Researchers (abortion activities) at the University of California San Francisco found that after 5 years, 96 percent of women who were denied abortions were glad they had not had one. The moral of the story, easy access to abortion, rather than being health care, is a disservice to women.
Praise the Lord! H.R. 3755 was stopped!
How did your U.S. Senator vote? If they opposed the bill, thank them. If they supported the bill, let them know your thoughts. Both U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth voted to end debate on this legislation. Contact your U.S. Senator using this link.
To view a longer analysis via the National Right to Life scorecard use this link.
In a 2020 interview with TheGuardian, Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks revealed her over-inflated sense of the importance of Fleetwood Mac in her rationalization of the decision to end the life of her unborn child:
If I had not had that abortion, I’m pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac. There’s just no way that I could have had a child then, working as hard as we worked constantly. And there were a lot of drugs, I was doing a lot of drugs … I would have had to walk away. … And I knew that the music we were going to bring to the world was going to heal so many people’s hearts and make people so happy. And I thought: you know what? That’s really important. There’s not another band in the world that has two lead women singers, two lead women writers. That was my world’s mission.
In Nicks’ view, drug use and the music of Fleetwood Mac are of more value than the life of her child. Somehow the omniscient Nicks just knew that Fleetwood Mac’s music would “heal” more hearts and make more people “happy” than her child would have. In Nicks’ view her world mission depended on the intentional killing of her child.
Here are some questions for anyone nodding in agreement with Nicks’ self-absorbed, grandiose claims:
Has anyone’s heart been healed more by Fleetwood Mac music—or any music—than by the ministrations and love of people?
Is there a human who would choose to spend their last days listening to Fleetwood Mac songs over sitting with their spouses, children, grandchildren, or siblings?
What kind of a narcissist or fool thinks the glass ceiling-tapping presence of two female lead singers and writers in a rock band is of greater value than the existence of a human being—any human being—including those deemed imperfect, inconvenient, or the least accomplished by worldly standards?
Nicks is not alone in her self-centered ignorance. Recently, the morally vacuous political animal and Catholic apostate U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was asked by a reporter,
Is an unborn baby at 15 weeks a human being?
Pelosi hissed evasively,
Let me just say that I am a big supporter of Roe v. Wade. I am a mother of five children in six years. I think I have some standing on this issue as to respecting a woman’s right to choose.
Perhaps she could enlighten people as to why having given birth to five children in six years grants her some special standing to decide which humans can be slaughtered.
Since her viperish response didn’t answer the question, the intrepid reporter tried again. This time the always-humble public servant Pelosi ignored the question entirely. The arrogant and powerful assume the right to refuse to justify their words and actions—actions that potentially affect the lives and existence of millions of people.
Friday Night Lights and Titans actress Minka Kelly rationalizes her abortion via prophecy:
When I was younger I had an abortion. It was the smartest decision I could’ve made, not only for myself & my boyfriend at the time, but also for this unborn fetus. … Having a baby at that time would have only perpetuated the cycle of poverty, chaos and dysfunction I was born into.
Kelly employs the classic and relentlessly employed fallacy of the false dichotomy. She implies there are only two choices: abortion or a life of poverty, chaos, and dysfunction. But there’s a third choice: adoption. Moreover, it’s grotesque to suggest that it’s better for a human to be dead than poor.
Kelly continued, saying,
outlawing abortion has never stopped women from attempting it.
True, and outlawing murder, theft, and rape hasn’t stopped people from murdering, stealing, and raping either, so should we apply Kelly’s principle consistently?
Here are some surprising and relevant statistics from the pro-human slaughter 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 tragic accidental deaths to the intentional slaughter of 63,000,000 humans in the womb in the United States since 1973. Every one of the 200 accidental deaths of women in 1965 could have been prevented by those women not choosing to pursue the murder of their unborn children. The 63,000,000 humans intentionally slaughtered since 1973 had no choice about what was done to their bodies.
In discussing her decision to have the child she conceived with Warren Beatty in 1961 killed, actress Joan Collins demonstrated the worldly values that impel child sacrifice:
It would have been absolute career death for me to have done that. … it would have been unthinkable to have a child.
[Warren Beatty] didn’t have any money, I had nothing, and I believe if you are going to bring a child into the world that you have to have a responsibility to that child.
I’m so happy that [Collins’ daughter] Tara … was my first child, I love her dearly and it would not have been the same had I had another child.
Collins’ warped view of familial responsibility apparently includes killing members of impoverished families. (Never mind that Collins had appeared in 22 movies between 1952 and 1961; that in 1961 Warren Beatty starred in the award-winning, box office blockbuster Splendor in the Grass; and that his sister Shirley MacLaine had been a Hollywood star for six years. Maybe Collins was using the phrase “didn’t have any money” figuratively. Or maybe Hollywood actors aren’t good at sharing or helping loved ones in need.)
What kind of moral compass leads a woman to conclude that the best solution to presumed future poverty is having her child killed? What kind of person believes her love for her second child would have been diminished had she not had her first child killed?
Perhaps feminist icon Gloria Steinem’s reason for having an illegal abortion in 1956 when she was 22 best illustrates the self-worship that impels the human slaughter movement:
I just knew that if I went home and married, which I would’ve had to do, it would be to the wrong person; it would be to a life that wasn’t mine, that wasn’t mine at all.
Like so many other cultural movements since the sexual revolution, the human-slaughter movement is shaped and impelled by self-worship and its necessary corollary, self-indulgence. Career aspirations, alleged lack of money, and a distorted understanding of love justify feticide for the selfish and self-absorbed.
Leftist entertainers pontificate endlessly about the value and importance of their “craft,” while denying the value and importance of their children, deeming them unworthy of even a drop of the sustaining milk of human kindness.
Tragically, in our idolatrous culture, these are our “influencers.”
Jan Schakowsky Wants Americans to Fund the Offing of Babies of Color Everywhere
|
Jan Schakowsky, the U.S. Representative from Evanston, Illinois, diminutive in intellectual and moral stature, has sponsored a bill to repeal the Helms Act. Her bill, H.R.1670, is titled “Abortion is Health Care Everywhere Act,” and if passed, would open the floodgates of American money to fund abortions overseas.
According to the liberal Guttmacher Institute, the repeal of the Helms Act will result in Americans funding the slaughter of 19 million babies every year, mostly black and brown babies. And Schakowsky has the audacity of a lifelong politician whose conscience has shriveled up to call the Helms Amendment “racist.” Just think about that: a privileged white woman is calling her bill that will fund the slaughter of 19 million black and brown babies every year an anti-racist bill.
Schakowsky and her collaborators emphasize the health risks for mothers in third world countries, which we know is just a sham. We already know the health of humans doesn’t concern them because the sponsors of this bill support abortion through all nine months of pregnancy for any or no reason.
Moreover, the ethical solution to maternal mortality risks, or the general health risks that accompany life in third world countries, or poverty is not a grotesque proposal to fund the slaughter of humans while in the womb. Word to Schakowsky, even poor people are created in the image and likeness of God and have a right to live—including poor black and brown people.
In 2015, Schakowsky exposed her intellectual and moral deficits–again–saying,
There’s nothing very pretty about any kind of medical procedure. Frankly, a conversation about exactly what happened in heart surgery would probably make people squeamish as well.
The reason all decent people recoil from images of aborted humans is not that the photos lack prettiness or even that they’re bloody. The reason tiny, severed human arms and legs make people squeamish is that they’re severed human arms and legs.
Some reminders for Schakowsky and her unwomanly original co-sponsors Diana DeGette (D-CO), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Nita Lowey (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Jackie Speier (D-CA), and Norma Torres (D-CA):
The product of conception between two humans is inarguably a human.
Killing innocent humans is not health care.
Having the slaughter of one’s offspring paid for by others is not a “right.”
Black and brown babies are no less valuable than white babies.
Babies born into poverty are no less valuable than babies born into wealth.
Schakowsky is the second wife to her second husband, Robert (Bob) Creamer, a Saul Alinsky-trained community organizer, which should tell you everything you need to know about their ability to create communities conducive to human flourishing.
Creamer served time in prison for tax violations and bank fraud committed when he ran the Illinois Public Action Fund on whose board sat Jan Schakowsky. During his trial, other shady Illinois characters sent letters of support for Creamer, including the morally vacuous Dick Durbin, racism profiteer “Rev.” Jesse Jackson, and Barack Obama’s accomplice David Axelrod.
More recently Creamer was the subject of a Project Veritasexposé that revealed his involvement in Clinton campaign/DNC-coordinated schemes to sabotage the 2016 presidential election by hiring people—including mentally ill and homeless people—to agitate at Trump rallies in order to elicit reactions that the press could use to criticize Trump.
If the wealthy Schakowsky wants to kill black and brown babies in foreign countries, she, her corrupt husband, and their political cronies should use their own filthy lucre to do it.
Using the language of “rights,” feticide-defenders like Schakowsky are appealing to the respect Americans have for “negative rights”—also known as liberties—(e.g., the right to vote, assemble, exercise one’s religion, and speak freely), which are not accompanied by any obligation for others to subsidize them.
What feticide-defenders are really suggesting—without explicitly saying—is that women have a “positive right” (i.e., an entitlement) to abortion, which imposes a duty on others to subsidize it.
Abortion, however, is not an entitlement, and society has no obligation to pay for women to get them. Neither wanting something; nor really, really wanting something; nor experiencing suffering from not obtaining this desperately desired thing means the public has an obligation to provide it.
No matter how many times feticide-defenders call the killing of incipient human life “health care,” it’s not. Killing human fetuses is neither health care nor reproduction. It’s death facilitation and anti-reproduction. If leftists want to help poor women in other countries kill their offspring, leftists have the choice and negative right to do so.
[T]he language of the “reproductive health center” … is deliberately designed to obscure reality; it allow us to pretend that nothing disruptive is happening inside these sinister, functional buildings. … The language doesn’t really deceive, but it somehow gives permission to those who want to keep up the charade, to make-believe that the incinerators are only burning garage, to make-believe that the people in white coats are in the business of healing, not killing.
Our task, Father Mankowski argued, is to “call a spade a spade”:
To give things their proper names. To replace euphemism with the stark truth. To speak about what goes on inside those brick walls. To call evil evil—no matter how foolish or awkward it makes us appear, no matter how chilly or furious our fellow citizens become. And, above all, to work with every resource at our disposal to hinder, frustrate, and bring to a standstill the engines of human destruction.
Like Planned Parenthood which targets babies of color for profit, Schakowsky and her co-conspirators should rename her bill the “Killing Babies of Color Everywhere Act.” That way at least everyone everywhere will know what the bill is really about.
Take ACTION:Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative to ask him/her to vote against H.R.1670. Despite what “progressives” claim, abortion is not health care. Abortion is the intentional destruction of an innocent pre-born human being.
Your tax-deductible donation is greatly appreciated!
Black Pro-Life Coalition Calls on Government to Investigate Planned Parenthood for Racial Discrimination
|
Planned Parenthood has been called out by the National Black Pro-Life Coalition for “systemic racism” and targeting pregnant Black women in a racial discrimination claim filed against the organization.
According to Catherine Davis, president of the Georgia-based Restoration Project, “Systemic racism and abortion intersect at the door of Planned Parenthood, an organization that has targeted Black women and their babies for almost five decades. These intentional actions violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which made it illegal for recipients of federal assistance to discriminate on the basis of race.”
In a claim filed in early October with Office of Civil Rights (OCR), U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the Coalition contends the discrimination has been taking place for close to half a century. The amount of federal assistance Planned Parenthood’s received over that time is no small sum. In the 2018-2019 fiscal year alone, it received $616.8 million in government revenue per its most recent report. The majority of assistance is said to cover Medicaid reimbursements for contraceptives and preventative services to low income and disadvantaged women.
The Coalition, a network of Pro-Life and Pro-Family organizations that embrace the biblical model, wants the federal government to “investigate and hold Planned Parenthood accountable for their continuing violations of civil rights laws as their services have had a tremendously negative and lasting impact on Black women and children–and overall, the Black family.” Several studies appear to back up the Coalitions claims. A study by the Guttmacher Institute found as many as 37% of abortions are obtained by Black women. In addition, a 2015 study found “nearly 80% of the organization’s surgical abortion facilities are located within walking distance of minority neighborhoods.”
In July, the American Conservativereported, one third of abortions in the U.S. “happen to black babies, despite the fact that black women comprise less than 15% of our population. Indeed, the rate of growth in black communities is slower than among most other major U.S. race and ethnic groups.”
The consequences of this were borne out in a statement released by the Coalition from Walter Hoye, founder of the Issues4Life Foundation. “Abortion has been grown into the leading cause of death for Blacks resulting in a fertility rate (1.8) that is less than the required number (2.1) to replace the population,” Hoye said. “At this rate, by 2050 the total Black fertility rate will be 1.3 or lower, a rate that is irreversible.”
For anyone who doubts Planned Parenthood’s ultimate agenda the Coalition makes it clear. According to its media release, “The 2008 FORM 990, PART III, LINE 1, filed by Planned Parenthood, they described their mission in these terms: to achieve ‘…a U.S. population of stable size in an optimum environment.’” It also noted a tweet from former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, proclaiming abortion is as “vital to their mission as birth control or cancer screenings.” The statements are faithful to the organization’s roots.
Planned Parenthood was founded in 1916 in New York by Margaret Sanger who was open about her plans for population control, primarily among those she deemed “unfit.” Now rarely discussed, Sanger’s “Negro Project” was a plan to control the Black birth rate. “To this day, by executing the agenda of their white supremacist founder, Planned Parenthood has developed what I consider to be a method of womb lynching,” said Johnny Hunter, of the Coalition member’s Founder of the Life Education and Resource Network. “That lynching has resulted in the termination of more than twenty million Black lives.”
Stephen Broden of Protect Life and Marriage Texas calls abortion “a brutal form of population control.” He shared, “Abortion has and continues to be a devastating and permanent blow to the Black community. Our children in the womb are decimated. Women are scarred mentally, emotionally and physically–its malicious application disintegrates our families.”
Members of the Coalition appear to view the claim against Planned Parenthood as an extension of the fight for civil rights and social justice. “As my Uncle Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded the nation in 1963, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,’” shared Evangelist Alveda C. King, Director of Civil Rights for the Unborn. “It is my prayer that the arc of the universe will now impact HHS, igniting justice for our children in the womb. Now is the time!”
In 2018 (the most recent year reports are available), there were 42,441 abortions committed in the state of Illinois, 15,278 of which were on Black women, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.
To learn more, please visit the National Black Pro-Life Coalition website.
HELP: Our get-out-the-vote campaign is up and running.
We are distributing the IFI Voter Guide to hundreds of churches and civic groups throughout the state..
Will you financially support our endeavor to educate Illinois voters and promote Christian family values?
Abortion Battle Continues as Pandemic Rages
|
As the Coronavirus pandemic wears on, government officials have shut down schools and businesses while stressing social distancing. The work continues to get personal protective equipment (PPE) into the hands of medical personnel with even elective surgeries canceled for the foreseeable future. However, the pandemic hasn’t slowed down the abortion industry. Several states have tried to close abortion clinics, calling the procedure an elective surgery that would take up medical resources, and Planned Parenthood has fought back in the courts to keep their doors open.
Only the state of Texas placed an outright ban on abortions as elective surgeries until the end of the pandemic. On April 7, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ban that Texas governor Greg Abbott put in place categorizing an abortion as an elective surgery. Planned Parenthood has petitioned the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Other states that have deemed abortions to be elective surgeries are Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Ohio, and Oklahoma. The Oklahoma ban was blocked in court April 6.
In an April 3 letter to supporters, Jennifer Welch, president & CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois (PPIL), shared, “To best serve our patients during this crisis, we have temporarily consolidated into six ‘Mission Health Centers’ to provide essential services including medical and in-clinic abortion care.” The six centers are located in Aurora, Flossmoor, Peoria, Springfield, and two in Chicago. However, eyewitnesses have noted that the Planned Parenthood in Fairview Heights has continued to receive patients.
National Planned Parenthood as well as PPIL have also continued to fund-raise heavily during the pandemic. In an apparent reference to the states that that don’t consider abortions essential medical procedures, Welch wrote, “We are also taking action against those who attempt to use the pandemic as an excuse to restrict health care for millions of people across the country.”
Abortions continue in Metro East area
In Illinois, the abortion industry is still going strong. The 18,000-square-foot Planned Parenthood abortion clinic built in secrecy in Fairview Heights and just 13 miles away from downtown St. Louis, Mo., has been a source of controversy since it opened in October 2019.
Angela Michael is a pro-life activist and head of Small Victories Pregnancy Outreach. Michael, a former obstetrical nurse, protests regularly outside the clinic in Fairview Heights and a nearby clinic in Granite City, called Hope Clinic. The latter is a privately-owned women’s health clinic that mainly provides abortions and sits across the street from the city’s only hospital.
Hope Clinic tweeted Governor JB Pritzker to complain about, and called the local police to disband, a group of protestors outside the clinic March 27. The group consisted of Michael and three others. Four police officers arrived, and Michael shared in a Facebook message that, perhaps upon seeing the body camera she was wearing, they told the pro-life advocates to “Have a nice day.”
Michael publishes eyewitness accounts from the two clinics almost daily to the Small Victories Pregnancy Outreach Facebook page. She has been noting the large groups of people entering the clinics, failing to practice social distancing, and cars traveling there from as far away as Colorado.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 40 facilities providing abortions in Illinois in 2017, and 25 of those were abortion clinics.
IFI depends on the support of concerned-citizens like you. Donate now
-and, please-
Progressives Seek to Rush Human Slaughter Bill Through House
|
With a cringe-worthy, faux-earnest expression, State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) explained at Thursday’s press conference to promote her radical abortion bill the meaning of the necklace she prominently wore—a necklace adorned with a coat hanger:
My necklace is a little gold wire hanger…. It’s a reminder of what can happen in a post-Roe world.
Her little gold coat hanger symbolizes the illegal abortions she fears will kill women if they are prohibited from legally offing their offspring. So, let’s examine the issue of pre-Roe, voluntarily sought illegal abortions that occasionally resulted in maternal deaths—as distinct from abortions that almost always result in the deaths of human “fetuses,” none of whom had a say in their mother’s choice to have them killed.
As cited in an article on the website Abort73, the CDC reported that,
In 1972 (the year before abortion was federally legalized), a total of 24 women died from causes known to be associated with legal abortions, and 39 died as a result of known illegal abortions.
Here’s more interesting information from the pro-human slaughter, gangrenous 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 tragic accidental deaths to the intentional slaughter of 61,000,000 humans in the womb in the United States since 1973 or the 368,000 humans killed in the womb so far in 2019—including 5,520 killings after 21 weeks gestation. I wonder if Cassidy and her accomplices in promoting feticide will shout that stat.
If killing humans in the womb isn’t obscene enough, Springfield regressives decided to add insult to death and dismemberment by having a black woman, State Representative Carol Ammons (D-Champaign) introduce their press conference.
It was obscene—not to mention tone deaf—to have Ammons lead the feticidal charge because as most know, Planned Parenthood (PP)—like its racist, eugenicist founder Margaret Sanger—has set its sights on black babies. A study conducted by the Life Issues Institute “found that 79 percent of abortion-offering Planned Parenthood facilities are within walking distance of black or Hispanic neighborhoods. Sixty-two percent are near black neighborhoods.” While blacks constituted about 13.3 percent of the population in 2014, 36 percent of all abortions were performed on black women.
The difference between Sanger’s goal to rid the world of blacks and Planned Parenthood’s decision to target the babies of women of color is that PP is motivated by greed rather than racism.
Yeah, that’s sooo much better.
At the press conference, Cassidy, the morally vacuous lesbian, “wife” of Candace Gingrich, and sponsor of every culturally destructive legislation to come down and go up the crumbling pike from Springfield said this:
As opponents of reproductive freedom have stepped up their attacks on our access to reproductive health care, it has become very, very clear that Illinois must respond in kind with equal energy behind defending reproductive freedom…. We had a pledge from the speaker that we will be able to move the bill forward, so I am uh looking forward to advancing this bill and getting it over to the Senate.
Slapping the words “freedom” (or “choice”) on to an issue with nary a mention of the nature of the acts being freely chosen is dishonest and opaque. All decent people know that freedom is not absolute, that not all choices are moral, and that not all choices should be legal.
In the service of sorting truth from the evil Cassidy’s murky euphemistic language is designed to cloak, I will translate her dishonest, opaque words into plain English:
Opponents of the legal right of mothers to hire people to kill their offspring in the womb are having some success and, therefore, Illinois regressives must attack them and their efforts. Regressives must intensify their efforts to defend a legal right to feticide and de facto infanticide. Regressives got a pledge from the thoroughly corrupt Mike Madigan, who rules Madiganistan with a blood-stained fist, to speedily advance this bill by any unethical means possible, preventing due deliberation and preventing those who defend life a chance to marshal their forces against it.
It should be very, very clear that Cassidy and her morally contemptible cronies are mustering their energy to, among other things,
Legalize the womb-killing of viable, full-term babies for any or no reason
Compel the public to subsidize human slaughter
Compel health care providers to facilitate this moral outrage even when doing so violates their consciences and their religious beliefs
Rob parents of the right to be involved in the life-changing and health-risking decisions of their daughters to have their offspring killed
I wonder what morally regressive Springfield swampsters would say to Nik Hoot whose limbs were ripped off during a botched abortion—you know, when he was a “fetus,” as opposed to a human person. (It’s so weird that the once-bodily-whole human person Nik has a damaged body so like the damaged body of the fetus Nik. I wonder how that happened?)
Maybe pro-life advocates everywhere should wear necklaces from which dangle tiny severed limbs and crushed skulls forged in gold to represent their intrinsic and infinite value—value that regressives in Springfield are too blind to see.
Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state senator, state representative and to Gov. Pritzker. Urge them to stop targeting innocent pre-born children and vulnerable women in Illinois. Ask them to vote against the grotesquely misnamed “Reproductive Health Act.”
Then call their offices. Click HERE to find their contact information. Your state senator and state rep. are the last two on the page. Please call today!
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 Plimptonencourages 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?
Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.
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.
Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.
Abortion is What Planned Parenthood Does
|
When I say “Colgate,” what comes to mind? Well, toothpaste, of course. Too bad no one in the 1980s explained that to Colgate when they launched a line of frozen dinners named “Colgate Kitchen Entrees.” Understandably, customers found the idea of eating food from a toothpaste company less than appetizing, and the whole experiment bit the dust.
But there’s another brand today trying very hard to convince the public that it sells more than one product. Planned Parenthood has spent the last few years insisting that its clinics offer all kinds of services besides abortions. As the latest stunt in this ongoing campaign, they’ve partnered with “Avengers” director Joss Whedon to produce a high-budget ad titled “Unlocked.”
In this three-minute propaganda piece, Whedon depicts a world without Planned Parenthood. It’s a dark and scary place where a mother dies of cancer because she can’t get screenings, where a couple breaks up because of a sexually transmitted disease, and where a young woman’s dreams of college are crushed by a positive pregnancy test.
Speaking with TIME magazine, Whedon said that if Planned Parenthood shuts down, “millions of people lose access to basic health services” like contraception, cancer screenings, and sex ed. In other words, he’s parroting the talking points we’ve heard non-stop from Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richardsand others who insist that the organization “does so much more than abortion.”
But as our friends at Save the Storks point out, Planned Parenthood’s 2014-15 annual report shows that they perform a meager 1 percent of the nation’s pap smears, and less than 2 percent of all clinical breast exams. The pro-choice Guttmacher Institute reports that over 80 percent of teens receive sex ed instruction from somewhere besides an abortion clinic, and contrary to repeated claims by Planned Parenthood’s leadership and advocates, they perform a grand total of zero mammograms.
In other words, all 650 Planned Parenthood-affiliated clinics in the U.S. barely participate in real healthcare. In fact, Americans so rarely choose this abortion giant for other services, we hardly notice when the few clinics not offering abortions close.
LiveAction News reports that Planned Parenthood quietly shuttered three of its six New Mexico facilities, all of which were dedicated to those “other services.” Apparently, they weren’t covering expenses. Waving off the closures as no big deal, a Planned Parenthood regional official said—get this—that community health centers could pick up the slack. She might as well have admitted her organization’s services were not needed.
Colgate sells toothpaste, and Planned Parenthood sells abortions—more than anyone else in the business. In fact, it’s where over a third of all abortions in America happen. We know how Planned Parenthood’s bread is buttered, and Planned Parenthood employees know it, too.
Recent footage from undercover investigator David Daleiden captured affiliates at the National Abortion Federation conference who spoke openly of Planned Parenthood “selling” fetal body parts to “increase revenue.” Some also joked about pulling unborn babies apart and how “gross” it is when tiny eyeballs fall into their laps.
YouTube quickly removed the video, and now U.S. District Judge William Orrick is considering contempt sanctions against Daleiden, who’s already facing fifteen felony charges for taking this undercover footage in the first place.
Planned Parenthood wants to be known for nicer, less horrifying, less controversial services. But ladies and gentlemen, at the end of the day, their name means one thing: abortion. And lives depend on putting this big-name brand out of business.
This article was originally published at Breakpoint.org
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.
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 11th 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 Ryancommitted 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.
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.
We can make this happen together. We can defund Planned Parenthood. We can save mothers and babies from abortion.
Please subscribe to the IFI YouTube Channel to get timely
video reports & other special presentations!
Things That Make You Say, “Huh?”
|
According to a recent study in the American Public Health Journal, kids who identify as “LGBTQ” are not only getting pregnant, even though they claim to identify with sexual behaviors which are non-procreative same-sex interactions, they are getting pregnant at MORE THAN TWICE the rate of their heterosexual peers!
The study comes out of New York. Liberals have been quick to blame abstinence education. However, according the Guttmacher Institute, New York doesn’t even require abstinence as a part of their sex education, nor are parents required to give consent regarding their child’s sex education instruction.
Ironically, the Centers for Disease Control has reported that LGBTQ youth are much more likely to engage in unsafe sexual behaviors than heterosexual youth. So abstinence messages might be extremely beneficial to youth claiming to be homosexual.
This higher incidence of pregnancy raises the question of sexual desire and the idea of unchangeable or exclusive homosexuality. It would seem that many young people who externally identify with homosexuality are betraying the group with which they choose to identify. In other words, they identified as a certain lifestyle for reasons that may not have been due to their real sexual attractions, but because society is so intent upon embracing LGBTQ causes as the vogue rage of our age.
CDC Reports Show Increase in Abstinence
|
By Leigh Jones, World Magazine
Sexual activity and pregnancy among teens is declining
Two reports recently released by the Centers for Disease Control show teens are embracing abstinence, despite the prevalence of promiscuity portrayed in music, movies and on television.
Abstinence advocates say the new statistics on sexual activity and birth rates among teens are an encouraging sign that young people understand the risks associated with having sex, even though most of them have been taught that taking the right precautions makes it safe. The new numbers also disprove one of the main arguments used by advocates of sex education, said Cindy Hopkins, vice president for center services at Care Net, which operates pro-life pregnancy centers across the country.
“The message we hear from the other side is that teenagers cannot control their hormones, so they need to be taught about safe or safer sex,” she said. “It’s encouraging to know they can control themselves. When they hear the truth, they can assess it and make wise decisions.”
The increasing rates of abstinence also show teens are capable of making wise decisions even though many of the adults around them are sending them messages that normalize teen sex, said Valerie Huber, president of the National Abstinence Education Association.
According to a report on teen sexual activity released in October, the number of girls having sex between the ages of 15 and 19 dropped 8 percent between 1988 and 2010, from 51 percent to 43 percent. The number of boys having sex dropped 18 percent, from 60 percent to 42 percent.
The rates of abstinence were highest among 15- to 17-year-olds, with only 27 percent of girls and 28 percent of boys reporting sexual activity. In 1988, 37 percent of girls and 50 percent of boys in the same age range told researchers they already had started having sex.
Huber called the declines good news, especially for parents and mentors who encourage teens to wait.
“Abstinence is a life choice that is resonating with teens,” she said. “They are not ashamed of it. They are embracing it.”
Another report released earlier this month showed birth rates for teens also are declining. In 2010, the number of babies born to mothers between 15 and 19 years old dropped to the lowest level ever recorded in the United States, a 9 percent decrease from the previous year. Births to teens younger than 20 declined 10 percent, reaching the lowest level recorded since 1946.
Statistics released by the liberal Guttmacher Institute show a corresponding decline in abortions.
According to a report released last year, the number of teens who chose to terminate their pregnancies dropped 55 percent between 1988 and 2006, from 45 to 20 abortions per 1,000 women. But Hopkins warned those numbers might not show the full picture. More women are choosing medical abortions in the early stages of pregnancy, taking a pill to induce an abortion instead of going to a clinic for a surgical procedure, she said. Because medical abortions are universally acknowledged to be underreported, it’s hard to know for sure how many pregnancies are being terminated, she said.
Huber, who will spend Friday briefing lawmakers on a bill that would bring renewed emphasis and funding to abstinence education efforts, said the government’s own research proves that the current messaging about safe sex isn’t working. And the choices teens are making prove the message isn’t even relevant, Huber said.
“The current messaging, culturally and in sex ed classes, is one that normalizes teen sex,” she said. “It’s communicating that if everyone isn’t doing it, everyone will soon. But that’s not necessarily the case.”
