What happens when people live in an abortion-complacent culture? Hold that thought; we’ll return to it shortly.

Nanfu Wang was born in China in 1985, six years after China instituted its one-child policy. The Chinese were told that if they averaged three children per family, there would be starvation by the middle of the next century, but if families limited themselves to only one child, their standard of living would double. The government used wall-to-wall propaganda to promote this message, and where messaging failed, it levied fines, destroyed property, or imposed forced abortions and sterilization to enforce it. It was put to the people as a “population war.” These measures, it was said, were necessary to prevent mass death in the future.

Nanfu never gave much thought to it all until she became a mother in 2017. She could hardly bear being separated from her newborn son. What was it like for people living under the one-child policy? By this time, she had moved to New York City and established herself as a filmmaker, so she did what any intellectually honest journalist might do–she started asking questions and chronicling the quest on camera.

She returned to China with her son in tow. The one-child restriction had been lifted in 2015, so presumably people were free to speak openly about it. She talked mostly with family members and hometown officials. Surprisingly, none of them were critical of it, though some (not all) who were charged with carrying it out did appear to feel troubled morally.

She documented her journey in One Child Nation, which has been shortlisted for the 2020 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature (but censored in China). It’s worth watching for the way it demonstrates several things: (1) the creepiness of the incessant propaganda that is part of the Chinese people’s daily life and how most of them seem to accept it, (2) people’s insidious, servile submission to government authority in violation of their own consciences, and (3) which I want to focus on here, the callous indifference toward human life that manifests itself in seemingly “nice” people among whom abortion is commonplace. Here are two examples:

• Chinese men and women tend to favor sons over daughters (if feminists care about real sexism, they should start overseas, but I digress). Nanfu’s mother recounted how she helped her younger brother abandon his infant daughter in the market so he could try again for a son. The baby girl remained there, getting eaten up by mosquitos, for two days until she died. Nanfu’s mother, a kindergarten teacher, related the incident nonchalantly, as if she were merely talking about yesterday’s shopping outing.

• Shuqin Jiang, a highly decorated family planning official, said that early in her career, she thought forcing abortions was an atrocity. But she got used to it. Many of the fetuses were eight or nine months along, she said, still alive when she aborted them. She talked about this affably, chuckling at one point when she recalled a pregnant mother who tried (unsuccessfully) to run away from an abortion naked. She affirmed the whole agenda as “absolutely correct–our leaders were prophetic. If not for this policy, our country would have perished.”

In all her interviews, Nanfu lets people speak for themselves, rarely pressing anyone to reflect on the horror of what they’re actually saying. In the end, she appears as confused and conflicted as at the beginning–as if she knows something was very wrong about it all, but can’t quite put her finger on what.

Okay, you might be thinking, those are matters for the Chinese to sort out. What do they have to do with us in America? I’m glad you asked. Consider the following, and see if you can spot some parallels:

• Ann McElhinney, who wrote a journalistic account of Kermit Gosnell’s crimes and trial and co-produced the movie, Gosnell, wrote about being especially disturbed at “the banality of evil” inside Gosnell’s clinic. For thirty years, seemingly “nice” people went about their daily work in a building where dead baby bodies literally cluttered up most every room. At the end of a day, there might be “bonuses” to be had (late-term abortions paid more), so they might go out for celebratory drinks afterward, like waitresses in a restaurant pooling their tips after a lucrative shift.

• Abby Johnson spoke similarly of the social atmosphere in the Texas Planned Parenthood clinic she directed. Jokes would be cracked, and camaraderie prevailed as it might in any ordinary office environment – all while sanitized killing took place under the same roof.

Surely you see the similarities. Abortion, since it is so egregious and deeply personal, seems to be especially damaging to people’s moral sensibilities. Where it is welcomed, it works a kind of dehumanizing moral erosion in those who welcome it.

The difference between abortion in China and America is noteworthy too. In China, its prevalence was national and imposed by government fiat. In America, it’s balkanizing–some states are pushing it out, others welcoming it in. You may have seen that Planned Parenthood just opened, stealthily (again!), another center in Illinois, accelerating Illinois’s race for the title of abortion capital of the Midwest. This is not at all to say that pro-life Illinois residents are culpable for abortions in their state–I am not saying that. What I am suggesting is that its clear and present spread will inevitably have effects.

Like cancer, sin is progressive and always degenerative. For that reason, if you live in one of the abortion magnet states, your pro-life presence may become harder to live out. But it is needed and has great potential as well. Abby Johnson said that the peaceful presence of people praying outside her clinic was extremely disturbing for the staff inside. She now knows (and is thankful for it in hindsight) that it’s disturbing because it rattles those complacent consciences that, for their own benefit, need to be rattled. More important, she said, when people are outside praying, the no-show rate for abortion appointments can go as high as 75 percent. (40 Days for Life is huge!)

So, I hope you’ll take courage, pro-life friends, and not grow weary in your well-doing. Ann, Abby, and Nanfu were all at one time either complacent or complicit in abortion. Ann and Abby are complacent no more, and it appears Nanfu is moving in the same direction. Each of their three films, One Child Nation, Gosnell, and Unplanned, presents a gripping portrayal of what abortion is and the effects it can have where it is tolerated. If you have the opportunity, share them with your friends or family who might be sitting on the fence regarding abortion. Whether or not they ever thank you for it, you will have at least dropped a stake in a certain piece of moral ground for the cause of life.

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To fulfill Governor J.B. Pritzker’s dream to make Illinois a slaughterhouse extraordinaire and the abortion mecca of the Midwest, that ever-reliable instigator of moral mayhem, State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago), has sponsored a bill that would put a twinkle in the eye of Kermit Gosnell. The absurdly named Reproductive Health Act—or as I call it, the Baby Butchery Bill, which has little to do with reproducing and nothing to do with health—was introduced in the Illinois House by Cassidy and now has 40 accomplices. Two days later Melinda Bush (D-Grayslake) introduced it in the Illinois Senate. She now has 4 accomplices.

For those unfamiliar with Cassidy, she’s a lesbian whose “spouse” is Newt Gingrich’s half-sister, “genderqueer” Candace Gingrich, an instigator of moral mayhem herself. She’s a leftist ideologue and Associate Director of the Youth and Campus Engagement Program of the Human Rights Campaign who refers to herself by plural pronouns. Cassidy, obsessed with using government resources to promote deviant sexuality, supports all sorts of lousy body-, soul-, family-, and culture-destroying legislation.

According to constitutional attorney Paul Linton, Cassidy’s nightmarish 120-page bill (HB 2495) will increase the numbers of weak, vulnerable humans who will have their bodies destroyed by adults who ironically claim to worship bodily autonomy. Here are some of the things Cassidy’s Baby Butchery Bill will do according to Linton:

• eliminate any restrictions on post-viability abortions and allow abortions for any reason whatsoever throughout all nine months of pregnancy

• eliminate any requirement that the person performing a post-viability abortion use a method of abortion that would enhance the chances of the unborn child surviving the abortion [thus providing evidence that women aren’t fighting for the right to terminate a pregnancy but rather to kill their babies]

• eliminate the requirement that a second physician be present to provide immediate medical care for any child born alive as a result of a post-viability abortion

• eliminate any restrictions on where abortions may be performed

• allow non-physicians to perform abortions, both surgical and medical

• allow women to attempt to abort their own pregnancies regardless of potential health risks

• undermine institutional and individual rights of conscience

• provide a basis to nullify regulations governing the operation of abortion clinics

• allow DCFS to use public funds to pay for abortions

• require health insurance policies to include coverage for all abortions, with no exemptions, even for churches and other religious organizations

• jeopardize enforcement of the Parental Notice of Abortion Act of 1995 (which is the subject of separate bills that would expressly repeal the Act)

• eliminate any requirement to investigate fetal deaths or maternal deaths resulting from abortions or to record fetal deaths resulting from abortions

• impose no restrictions on fetal experimentation

• provide a basis for barring any common law cause of action for prenatal injuries and any statutory action for the wrongful death of an unborn child

When it comes to the legalized slaughter of inconvenient or imperfect babies in their 6^th through 9^th month of life in the womb, eager Baby Butchery-Choice advocates like Cassidy and her 40 accomplices prefer to focus on percentages rather than numbers. They will exploit whatever tactic may help conceal the unmitigated evil of abortion. Instead of percentages, let’s look at numbers to help expose the truth.

In the United States, there have been 61,000,000 abortions committed since 1973—a year that will live in infamy. It is estimated that 1.3% of those babies were killed after 21 weeks gestation. That means 793,000 10-inch-long babies with fingers, toes, hearts, and brains have been killed since 1973.

Imagine the caterwauling of Leftists if, over the past 45 years, 793,000 guilty death row inmates had been executed and had been executed by having scissors inserted in the back of their skulls, their brains scrambled, and skulls crushed; or had their bodies torn into pieces; or had their hearts stopped via an injection of potassium chloride, all of which are done to babies after 21 weeks of gestation.

It’s important to note that the government does not permit the administration of potassium chloride to criminals guilty of heinous crimes without first administering powerful sedatives because, as pharmacologist and toxicologist David Kroll explains in Forbes Magazine, “If given alone without the other drugs, the high concentration of potassium chloride would be terribly painful, akin to fire or electricity coursing through the veins.”

It’s important to note also that experts say that by 20 weeks gestation or earlier, babies can experience pain and that fetal surgeons administer anesthesia and analgesics (i.e., painkillers) to unborn babies undergoing surgery.

Leftists relentlessly defend abortion by asserting that pregnant women have the absolute right to make decisions concerning their bodies. This, of course, requires proof that abortion involves only the bodies of pregnant women—a patently false, science-denying claim. If abortion really involves only one body and the owner of that body is entitled to do with it as she pleases, then shouldn’t “progressives” defend the moral right of women to take Accutane or drink alcohol throughout their pregnancies? Is it coherent to argue that while a woman has a right to kill the purportedly non-existent body within her body, she is ethically obligated not to ingest anything that would “harm” the purportedly non-existent body within her body? Either her bodily autonomy rights are absolute or they’re not. Either there are two bodies or there aren’t.

As science continues to prove the falsity of their claims, Baby Butchery-Choice advocates are being forced to move away from hard science for the foundation of their arguments and move into metaphysics. Now, they argue that, sure, the product of conception between two humans is a human, but it’s not a person with rights until…

Yeah, we’re all waiting on pins and needles for morally-compromised metaphysician Cassidy et al to explain that. Is the product of conception a person with rights when she can feel pain? Breathe on her own? Show evidence of self-awareness? Are her rights dependent on her anatomical wholeness, her physiological health, or on how others feel about her? Are her rights dependent on her cost to others? Shouldn’t Cassidy and her colluders answer these questions before they make Baby Butchery even easier?

Already, Illinois permits abortion through all nine months if a doctor concludes that a woman’s “health” is jeopardized by the continuation of a pregnancy, with “health” defined so elastically as to include virtually any reason. But that’s not enough for the self-centered and amoral among us. Everyone with the capacity to think through the logical implications of an argument knows where we’re headed. If late-term abortions of babies—not fetuses—are ethically justified by the presence of physical anomalies, terminal conditions, the emotional state of their mothers, or their mothers’ fiscal concerns, why aren’t post-natal abortions (i.e., infanticide) of newborns or week-old or month-old babies justified by those same factors?

Every Republican who claims that the reductively called “social issues” are less important than tax rates or pension reform is culpable for the noxious political and moral climate that is killing us. Every Republican who defers to GOP leaders who claim that party unity and political “wins” demand silence and capitulation on the “social issues” is culpable for the increasingly brazen and foul demands for de facto infanticide. Every Republican who has skittered nervously away from saying it is evil to permit the intentional killing of babies in the womb who were conceived via criminal acts is culpable for the political power of the intellectually incoherent and morally vacuous whose consciences are so seared they cheer and shout for death.

Take ACTION:  Please speak out!  Click HERE to send a message to your state senator, state representative and to Gov. Pritzker. Ask them to stop targeting innocent pre-born children and vulnerable women in Illinois. Ask them to vote against HB 2495 and HB 2467.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/IL-abortion-article.mp3

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Written by Michele Malkin

It’s here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are they trying to hide?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally posted at Creators.com.

In what is already a controversial session due to the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on many cases in the upcoming months that will have wide-reaching effects in American life. Here are three decisions that Christians should know about.

Health Standards: Protecting or Burdening Women?

Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt (formerly v. Cole) 

Pro-lifers across the country will want to pay close attention to this case arising out of Texas. In light of the haunting Kermit Gosnell story in 2013, the Texas state legislature enacted safety measures for abortion clinics. The law would require abortion clinics to adhere to the same standards as outpatient surgical centers and would require abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles in case health complications for the mother arise. If enforced, approximately three quarters of Texas abortion clinics now in operation would close.

Abortion advocates say this law violates the “undue burden” standard of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a doctrine which says any law that places a substantial obstacle to abortion is unconstitutional. In contrast, Texas argues that these are commonsense health regulations and that women are not burdened because the remaining abortion facilities are within reasonable driving distances throughout the state.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Texas law saying that it is not the role of the judiciary to consider the extent a state’s health laws have on restricting abortion access. The Supreme Court will now determine whether the Fifth Circuit properly used the “undue burden” standard in making its decision.

Of Nuns and Birth Control

Zubik v. Burwell 

What wins? Freedom of conscience or government interests? In Zubik v. Burwell, religious employers, such as Christian universities and Little Sisters of the Poor, are fighting Obamacare’s HHS mandate which requires them to cover the costs of “all FDA-approved contraceptives,” including abortion-inducing drugs, for their employees.

This may sound similar to last year’s Hobby Lobby case where the Court ruled the government cannot force employers with longstanding religious beliefs to pay for coverage that violates their conscience. To comply with Hobby Lobby, the Obama administration created an exception for religious employers that excludes the objectionable content from their insurance plans.

However, the federal government is still forcing the employers’ insurance companies and other third-party administrators to cover the costs of their employees who seek to obtain abortion pills. This means employers are still actively involved in providing drugs in their healthcare plans that violate their conscience.

The Court will weigh whether Obamacare’s HHS mandate and its “accommodation” violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Court’s decision will depend on whether the government can prove that this is the least restrictive way of advancing a compelling public interest.

A Separation between State and Playgrounds

Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Pauley

The state of Missouri prevented pre-school and daycare centers from using a government program that provides recycled tires for safer playground surfaces. The reason? The pre-school is run by a church. Missouri claims that allowing the program to serve a church-run daycare will violate the principle of separation of church and state.

The Court will determine whether excluding churches from an otherwise neutral government program constitutes a violation of the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses.

This article was originally posted at Mauck & Baker, LLC.

Humans have an astonishing capacity for embracing deception in the service of selfish and disordered desires. There is no more apt illustration of that truth than Planned Parenthood which has developed a ghastly organization that depends on deception to advance its gruesome practice of profiting from the tortured bodies of helpless babies.

Here is a must-see undercover video of Senior Director of Medical Services for Planned Parenthood, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, nonchalantly describing how doctors with deformed consciences carefully kill babies in order to preserve intact tiny body parts to sell to a “fetal tissue procurement company”:

As she lunches and munches, Nucatola explains that procurement firms want baby hearts, lungs, limbs, and livers, with “per specimen” payments of between “$30-100 depending on the facility and what’s involved.”

She provides a description of how Planned Parenthood professional hit doctors carefully crush baby bodies above and below the desired anatomical part so as to preserve it for maximum utility and monetary gain. Nucatola obscenely explains her method:

We’ve been getting very good at getting heart, lung, liver…so I’m not going to crush that part. I’m basically going to crush below, I’m going to crush above [the thorax], and I’m going to see if I can get it all intact….Some people want lower extremities too. That’s simple.”

Profiteering doctors are ever so careful with baby bodies as they kill them.

In order to preserve babies’ heads during an abortion, doctors will flip babies around in utero to deliver them in the breech position, which, if the baby is still alive when the baby emerges, constitutes a violation of federal law. When Nucatola mentions the challenges of delivering babies’ heads, she’s careful to refer to them euphemistically as “calvarium.” “Progressives” depend on euphemisms to cover a multitude of evils.

Nucatola also makes this not-surprising statement:

The federal [partial-birth] abortion ban is a law, and laws are up to interpretation. So, if I say on day one that I do not intend to do this, what ultimately happens doesn’t matter. [emphasis added]

Vice President of Communications for Planned Parenthood Eric Ferraro responded, offering this disingenuous rationalization:

In health care, patients sometimes want to donate tissue to scientific research that can help lead to medical breakthroughs, treatments and cures for serious diseases. Women at Planned Parenthood who have abortions are no different. At several of our health centers, we help patients who want to donate tissue for scientific research, and we do this just like every other high-quality health care provider does — with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards. There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or Planned Parenthood. In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, which is standard across the medical field.

A well-funded group established for the purpose of damaging Planned Parenthood’s mission and services has promoted a heavily edited, secretly recorded videotape that falsely portrays Planned Parenthood’s participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research.

First, it is illegal to sell or purchase “human fetal tissue.”

Second, it at least appears that selling and purchasing were being discussed—not donations.

Third, “other high-quality health care” providers do not intentionally kill healthy patients whose tissue is then “donated” for research.

Fourth, Planned Parenthood has the audacity to try to impugn the integrity of the Center for Medical Progress that produced the video by describing it as “a well-funded group established for the purpose of damaging Planned Parenthood’s mission and services.” Well, if well-funded efforts to damage Planned Parenthood’s mission and services are dubious, then what about Planned Parenthood’s well-funded mission, which includes killing babies.

Here’s what Breitbart explained back in January about Planned Parenthood’s funding: “In fiscal year 2013-2014, Planned Parenthood was provided with more than $528 million – or 41 percent of its total revenue – in taxpayer funds in the form of government grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements.”

I wonder what the total revenue for the Center for Medical Progress is and if any of its revenue comes from government sources.

This appalling video may force the bloodstained merchants at Planned Feticide Federation of America to cease selling–I mean, donating–body parts of babies, but in a country awash in body and soul-destroying deception, they will likely be allowed to continue the murderous practice that makes body-snatching and selling possible. And let’s not forget in the justifiable outrage and heated discussions that are taking place that slaughtering babies is even more demonic than selling their dismembered parts.

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Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives will hold a vote on or around the anniversary of the murder conviction of late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell on a marquee bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy because unborn children feel intense pain in abortions. This is the second time Republicans have planned a vote on the major pro-life bill — and this vote is expected to take place this week, possibly Wednesday, the anniversary of Gosnell’s conviction.

U.S. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a pro-life California Congressman, confirmed the vote to the Weekly Standard.

“Life is precious and we must do everything we can to fight for it and protect it,” said McCarthy, a California Republican. “Our commitment for the House to consider this important legislation has been steadfast and I am proud of the work of our members to prepare this bill for House consideration next week.”

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative asking them to support H.R. 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

You can also call the Capitol Switchboard to ask to be connected to your U.S. Representative’s office at (202) 224-3121.

In January, Congresswoman Renee Ellmers led the charge to sabotage the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act — a move that ultimately forced Republicans to pull the bill from the House floor — because she disagreed with a requirement in the bill that rape be reported to a law enforcement agency before an abortion is performed for rape.

Republican leaders in the U.S. House had planned to hold a monumental vote on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade in January on the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, legislation that bans abortions after 20 weeks based in part on the compelling scientific evidence showing unborn babies feel intense pain at that point, if not earlier.

However, several Republicans who have pro-life voting records and voted for the bill the last time around, publicly led by Rep. Renee Ellmers, sabotaged the bill by objecting to the provision allowing abortions in cases of rape or incest only if the rape were reported to law enforcement. Ellmers and the lawmakers who worked with her, threatened to vote against the bill or kill it by siding with Democrats to kill it. Although Ellmers publicly indicated she would vote for the bill, privately she painted another picture and she and other members forced House Republican leaders to pull the bill and rework the language.

After months of wrangling over language, with Ellmers and some other members of Congress siding with her for language that was a more expansive rape exception, House Republicans have finalized the language of the bill in a way that has the support of Ellmers and her colleagues, the backing of pro-life groups and in a manner that should result in a strong pro-life vote that paves the way for Senate consideration.

According to pro-life sources who spoke with LifeNews, the rape exception language will be airtight by requiring some sort of documented medical treatment or counseling 48 hours prior to the abortion (so hopefully the mother has a further chance to weigh abortion alternatives). In addition, such treatment or counseling must be provided by physicians or counselors that are outside of the abortion industry. In cases of rape or incest of a minor, the abuse must first be reported to either social service or law enforcement.

As pro-life sources have informed LifeNews, other new provisions of the bill that strengthen in include a born-alive infant protection requirement that requires a second doctor be present and prepared to provide  care to the child if he or she is born alive and that the child must receive the same level of care as would any other premature infant. The baby must then be transported and admitted to a hospital.  The woman is also empowered with a right to sue if the law is not followed, and is provided with an informed consent form that notifies her of the age of her baby and the requirements under the law.

Abortionists are explicitly required to follow state mandatory reporting laws and state parental involvement laws.  Finally, abortionists are required to report any late abortions done under the exceptions to the Center for Disease Control and such data will be compiled into an annual public report to ensure accountability.

Top pro-life advocates are strongly supporting the final version of the bill up for a vote next week, according to the Weekly Standard. Two major pro-life groups have already signed off on the revised bill.

“We will have even stronger support than we did in the last Congress,” said Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, a leading pro-life advocate in the House. “It will be good to have a truly unified pro-life conference.”

National Right to Life Committee president Carol Tobias worked closely with Republican leadership staff members and met Thursday with McCarthy. “I felt very comfortable working with leadership staff,” said Tobias. “We were working as allies.”

“We are thankful to our pro-life allies on the Hill, including House GOP leadership and the Congressional Pro-Life Women’s Caucus, who have tirelessly worked to bring this bill to a vote,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List. “This process has yielded a strong bill which we expect to pass next week with enthusiastic bipartisan support.”

Sponsoring Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona says the bill has the potential to save thousands of babies from abortion.

In a statement, Franks told LifeNews: “More than 18,000 ‘very late term’ abortions are performed every year on perfectly healthy unborn babies in America. These are innocent and defenseless children who can not only feel pain, but who can survive outside of the womb in most cases, and who are torturously killed without even basic anesthesia.   Many of them cry and scream as they die, but because it is amniotic fluid going over their vocal cords instead of air, we don’t hear them.”

Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee says several states have already passed the bill.

“The Franks-Blackburn bill is based on the NRLC model legislation that has been enacted in 10 states, and it reflects a policy that is broadly supported in national public opinion polls.  In the new Congress, every member of the House and Senate will go on record on whether to permit the continued killing of pain-capable unborn children, in the sixth month and later,” he told LifeNews.

A national poll by The Polling Company found that, after being informed that there is scientific evidence that unborn children are capable of feeling pain at least by 20 weeks, 64% would support a law banning abortion after 20 weeks, unless the mother’s life was in danger.   Only 30% said they would oppose such a law.

A November 2014 poll from Quinnipiac found that 60 percent of Americans support legislation limiting abortions after 20 weeks, including 56 percent of Independents and 46 percent of Democrats.

During the hearing on the 20-week ban when the U.S. House approved it previously, former abortion practitioner Anthony Levatino told members of the committee the gruesome details of his former abortion practice and how he became pro-life following the tragic automobile accident of his child.

Another bombshell dropped during the hearing came from Dr. Maureen Condic, who is Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Utah School of Medicine. She testified that the unborn child is capable of reacting to pain as early as 8-10 weeks. This is when most abortions in America take place.

The bill relies on the science of fetal pain to establish a Constitutional reason for Congress to ban abortions late in pregnancy. The science behind the concept of fetal pain is fully established and Dr. Steven Zielinski, an internal medicine physician from Oregon, is one of the leading researchers into it. He first published reports in the 1980s to validate research showing evidence for it.

He has testified before Congress that an unborn child could feel pain at “eight-and-a-half weeks and possibly earlier” and that a baby before birth “under the right circumstances, is capable of crying.”

He and his colleagues Dr. Vincent J. Collins and Thomas J. Marzen were the top researchers to point to fetal pain decades ago. Collins, before his death, was Professor of Anesthesiology at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois and author of Principles of Anesthesiology, one of the leading medical texts on the control of pain.

“The functioning neurological structures necessary to suffer pain are developed early in a child’s development in the womb,” they wrote.

“Functioning neurological structures necessary for pain sensation are in place as early as 8 weeks, but certainly by 13 1/2 weeks of gestation. Sensory nerves, including nociceptors, reach the skin of the fetus before the 9th week of gestation. The first detectable brain activity occurs in the thalamus between the 8th and 10th weeks. The movement of electrical impulses through the neural fibers and spinal column takes place between 8 and 9 weeks gestation. By 13 1/2 weeks, the entire sensory nervous system functions as a whole in all parts of the body,” they continued.

With Zielinski and his colleagues the first to provide the scientific basis for the concept of fetal pain, Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand has provided further research to substantiate their work.

One leading expert in the field of fetal pain, Dr. Kanwaljeet S. Anand at the University of Tennessee, stated in his expert report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice, “It is my opinion that the human fetus possesses the ability to experience pain from 20 weeks of gestation, if not earlier, and the pain perceived by a fetus is possibly more intense than that perceived by term newborns or older children.”

“The neural pathways are present for pain to be experienced quite early by unborn babies,” explains Steven Calvin, M.D., perinatologist, chair of the Program in Human Rights Medicine, University of Minnesota, where he teaches obstetrics.

Dr. Colleen A. Malloy, Assistant Professor, Division of Neonatology at Northwestern University in her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in May 2012 said, “[w]hen we speak of infants at 22 weeks LMP [Note: this is 20 weeks post fertilization], for example, we no longer have to rely solely on inferences or ultrasound imagery, because such premature patients are kicking, moving, reacting, and developing right before our eyes in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.”

“In today’s medical arena, we resuscitate patients at this age and are able to witness their ex-utero growth and development. Medical advancement and technology have enabled us to improve our ability to care for these infants…In fact, standard of care for neonatal intensive care units requires attention to and treatment of neonatal pain,” Dr. Malloy testified. She continued, “[t]hus, the difference between fetal and neonatal pain is simply the locale in which the pain occurs. The receiver’s experience of the pain is the same. I could never imagine subjecting my tiny patients to horrific procedures such as those that involve limb detachment or cardiac injection.”

This article was originally posted at the LifeNews.com website.

It’s been a revolting year on the fetal front.

Recently, pro-abortion activists chanting “Hail Satan” in the Texas State house worked feverishly to protect the ghastly legal right of women to kill their preborn babies even after these babies can feel pain.

A few months back Kermit Gosnell’s filthy fetal abattoir was exposed, forcing feticide-facilitator Nancy Pelosi to try to distance herself from Gosnell with a completely incoherent statement:

What was done in Philadelphia was reprehensible, and everybody condemned it. For them [those proposing pro-life legislation] to decide to disrespect the judgment a woman makes about her reproductive health is reprehensible….As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when you talk about this. I don’t think it should have anything to do with politics, and that’s where you’re taking it, and I’m not gonna go there.  [Emphasis added.]

Let’s see if we can untangle the miasmic confusion that animates Pelosi:

• She believes that killing a live baby who’s just exited the womb is “reprehensible,” but opposition to killing a live baby yet in the womb is reprehensible.
• As a “practicing Catholic,” the issue of prenatal life is sacred to her, but she endorses abortion, a practice which the Catholic Church views as an unmitigated evil.
• She believes that the sacred ground of prenatal life shouldn’t have anything to do with politics, but she supports legislation that secures the legal right of women to destroy prenatal life.

Nope, can’t untangle it.

Light, however, is beginning to pierce the darkness. It’s possible to imagine a world in which more babies will be lucky enough to survive the treacherous waters of the womb. Maybe we can even hope for a day when the genocide being perpetrated against Down Syndrome babies who are murdered for no reason other than their physical imperfections and cognitive limitations will end. 

And maybe this father’s inspiring story of transformation can contribute in some small way to the transformation of the culture: 

 “The guilty charge of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, dethroned ruler of  ‘Gosnell’s House of Horrors’ may spark justice for more women and babies across America,” said Dr. Alveda King, Director of African American Outreach for Gospel of Life Ministries. “Justice is served with this verdict, but injustice will continue unless we end abortion in this country. Gosnell was not the only abortionist who killed mothers and their born babies, he was just the one who got caught. Now we have to turn out attention to charging, trying and convicting others like him.”

Gosnell was convicted of three counts of murder of three babies aborted in his 3801 Lancaster abortion clinic in Philadelphia. He is also convicted of death by involuntary manslaughter of Karnamaya Mongar, who died from drug complications during her abortion procedure in Gosnell’s den.

Tomorrow, King will join host Star Parker of CURE along with Day Gardner of the National Black Prolife Union, Catherine Davis and other African American leaders of the National Black Prolife Coalition in Washington, D. C. for a press conference and briefing. The leaders are asking the question: “Abortion and the impact on Black America…is there a Gosnell in your community?” Like King, the Black Leaders say that Gosnell isn’t an exception, that there are abortion horrors happening in 2013 in abortion facilities all across America. They blame lack of regulations and strong arm lobbying efforts of Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates for allowing Gosnell and “others like him” to operate and commit horrors that are now being exposed.

King also believes that “once the Cleveland abductions by the Castro brothers are investigated, America will begin to clearly understand that women are often victims of coerced abortion and should be protected from predators. These rescued girls are not the only ones in America who have been forcibly subjected to abortion. Abortion by coercion should be thoroughly investigated and outlawed. For instance, in the Gosnell situation, there is a case of a teenage girl who claims to have been forcibly taken to Gosnell’s clinic and held down by force during a traumatic abortion,” King said, referring to the reports that the abducted girls in Cleveland were hit in the stomach until they aborted babies conceived during their brutal captivity.

“Cases like the Gosnell case and now pending Castro case all go to prove that there is a dehumanization of women and children not just across the globe but here at home that has been swept under the rug for far too long,” King told a group today at a conference on human trafficking held in Atlanta. “Let’s just pray that this Gosnell conviction will spark more justice for women and babies in America as time goes on.”

As a side note, King added: “Charles Ramsey, the ‘hero’ for saving the kidnapped girls in Cleveland is an African American. Finally a black man is noted for doing a good deed. The media just needs to highlight more of these type of human interest reports, not just for African Americans, but for everyone.”

What’s the big deal?

I mean, why are we surprised that an abortionist and his staff would, behind the walls of an always-lethal abortion clinic, commit one of the most horrific serial killings in American history? What did you think abortionists do, heal people?

Why are we taken aback that there was no oversight, no regulation, or that Planned Parenthood, though privy to the clinic’s filthy, medieval conditions, refused to report it to the Department of Health? After all, Planned Parenthood, Barack Obama and the DNC have vehemently opposed all laws – such as those in Virginia, Mississippi and elsewhere – designed to prevent exactly the same kind of squalid conditions found in Gosnell’s clinic (and others), laws that simply direct abortion mills to meet the same minimal safety standards required of all other medical facilities.

You didn’t really buy that whole “women’s health” nonsense, did you?

Sucker.

Seriously, there are so few sociopathic doctors left willing to hack alive those inconvenient little buggers; so you anti-choice nuts need to just chill. Who cares about “blood smeared walls,” or babies left to drown in toilets, or snipped spinal cords, or dismembered body parts kept in jars, or screaming, crying newborns silenced by decapitation? What did you think women were “choosing” with abortion, some kind of medical treatment? We’re not removing a tumor here. You’ve got to kill a few babies to make a “reproductive freedom” omelette. Besides, there’s billions to be made in the death racket.

Let’s keep it real. The only difference between what happened in Gosnell’s Philadelphia clinic and what happens every day in Planned Parenthoods across the country can be measured by a matter of inches – by the child’s proximity to her mother in the room. Whether the baby is in the womb or 12 inches removed, a dead baby is a dead baby, right? So why all the drama? Relax. You know, Roe v. Wade and all.

Besides, what’s an abortionist to do (wink, wink) if that resilient little pest does survive, if she’s born alive? I appreciate President Obama’s candor on the matter. Like he said, laws preventing abortionists like Gosnell from finishing her off are “really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.” Snippety-snip, eh, Barack? You know, choice and all.

Or, as Gosnell attorney Jack McMahon noted during the trial, it’s “ludicrous … to say a baby is born alive because it moves one time.” You anti-choice zealots don’t get to define the terms here. One man’s “alive” is another woman’s “unwanted pregnancy.” Potato, potahto.

And why are we stunned that the mainstream media have spiked a story with all the bloody and salacious newsworthy trappings that – had abortion not been involved – would have filled the news cycle 24/7?

You think some now-barren, 40-something copy editor who’s had five abortions wants to draw attention to its grisly reality? You think she wants to be reminded of her own string of dismembered little choices? No, better to sip appletinis with the boys down at the National Press Club and pretend it never happened.

Now that’s reproductive freedom! That’s freedom of the press!

In reality, to the media, this stuff is old news. Gosnell is on trial for doing something nearly indistinguishable from partial-birth abortion – a “never necessary” procedure (according to the AMA) Obama vocally endorsed. He said that banning it was part of a concerted effort “to steadily roll back the hard-won rights of American women.”

Furthermore, why are we surprised that this rush-to-judgment-when-it-suits-his-political-agenda president suddenly “can’t comment” on Gosnell “because it’s an active trial”? Remember? This is the same race-baiting “community organizer” who said that Cambridge police “acted stupidly” when arresting a combative black Harvard professor who, as it turned out, was himself acting stupidly. Don’t forget; this is the same president who had no problem laying guilt on a “presumed innocent” George Zimmerman, saying, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

Funny, I actually do have a son and, when he was born, he looked a lot like those little boys Gosnell and Planned Parenthood kill every day. Come to think of it, most of them looked almost identical to Trayvon, skin color and all.

Curious.

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., called Obama out on his refusal to address Gosnell: “Mr. President, your silence on this issue is deafening,” he said.

I agree. The left’s silence – to include the mainstream media – speaks volumes. It’s a tacit endorsement of Gosnell’s gruesome practices. And why shouldn’t it be?

To “pro-choicers” it’s not that old Kermit did anything wrong; it’s just that he got caught doing it. He was careless. He pulled back the curtain of “reproductive freedom” to reveal abortion’s house of horrors. Kermit Gosnell is liberalism personified, and liberalism relies on deceit. The “progressive” culture is a culture of death. Moral relativism is as moral relativism does.

Speaking of moral relativism, on Friday the first sitting president in United States history gave the keynote address at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser. Nice timing. Even as the Gosnell mass-murder trial wraps up, Obama was lending the full weight of his presidency to a mass-murder celebration.

His message? All you Planned Parenthood-hating, anti-Gosnell right-wingers better listen up: “No matter how great the challenge, no matter how fierce the opposition, there’s one thing that the past few years have shown,” he promised. “That Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere. It’s not going anywhere today. It’s not going anywhere tomorrow.”

Yeah, we’ll see about that, slick.

The wife of the highly controversial late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell has plead guilty in the performance of ghastly illegal abortions on viable unborn children at a Philadelphia abortion clinic.

Pearl Gosnell entered guilty pleas in federal court on charges of participating in an illegal late-term abortion, conspiracy, and participating in a corrupt organization.

Gosnell’s husband was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of first-degree murder in the killing of seven viable preborn children and the death of a woman who underwent a botched abortion.

Gosnell, who has no formal obstetrical training, has been accused of delivering viable children alive in the sixth, seventh, and eighth months of pregnancy. He then allegedly killed the children by using a scissors to sever their spinal cords.

Federal prosecutors described Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society clinic as a “house of horrors.” Investigators discovered the remains of aborted children in milk jugs and cat food containers. They also found shelves lined with jars containing the severed feet of unborn children. They also found blood-stained floors and furniture, and said the facility smelled of urine.

Gosnell’s wife acknowledged that she assisted Gosnell with abortions on Sundays. She admitted that she “helped do the instruments” in the operating room despite having no medical training. Pearl Gosnell joins six other employees who have plead guilty to various charges involving the late-term abortion mill.

One of those employees, Tina Baldwin, plead guilty to having her fifteen year-old daughter administer anesthetics to women receiving abortions despite the fact that neither one had any medical training.

Yet another employee who plead guilty, Lynda Williams, was hired by Gosnell to clean operating room instruments. Soon she was performing ultrasounds and anesthetizing abortion patients. She was charged with administering lethal doses of Demerol and other drugs to Karnamaya Mongar, who died of cardiac arrest.

Gosnell’s clinic had not been inspected by Pennsylvania health officials for seventeen years. The Pennsylvania General Assembly has advanced new legislation to strengthen regulation of the state’s abortion facilities.

LifeNews.com reports that one of the legislators, Pennsylvania State Representative Margo Davidson (D-Upper Darby), offered some personal testimony during the debate. Representative Davidson shared that her 22-year old cousin, Semika Shaw, died as a result of another botched abortion at Gosnell’s clinic.

This is why it is so very important to support legislation to require that abortion clinics in Illinois meet basic safety regulations of other similar outpatient treatment centers.  (They have never been regulated.)

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An abortion doctor in Philadelphia has been charged with the gruesome murders of seven babies, babies born alive whom the doctor then killed with a pair of scissors.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SUN6CHSICE)

Dr. Kermit Gosnell induced labor and forced the births of viable babies in their sixth, seventh and eighth months of pregnancy. After the newborns drew their first breath, he stuck a pair of scissors into the back of their necks and severed their spinal cords. Gosnell cavalierly referred to the practice as “snipping,” as if he were pruning flowers in his garden.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said hundreds of other babies likely died in the squalid clinic that Gosnell ran from 1979 to 2010. The grand jury report said, “These killings became so routine that no one could put an exact number on them. They were considered ‘standard procedure.'”

According to the DA, the state agencies charged with overseeing individual physicians flatly refused to do anything despite knowing that 46 lawsuits had been filed against him and being presented repeatedly with evidence of wrongdoing in Dr. Gosnell’s clinic. The clinic had not been visited by oversight officials since 1993, after pro-life Democrat governor Bob Casey left office, and was not in fact visited again at all until February of 2010 in connection with a drug investigation.

The DA said the doctor demonstrated “disregard of the law (note: abortions after 24 weeks are illegal in Pennsylvania), and the disdain for the lives and health of mothers and infants.”

Gosnell charged his clients, most of whom were poor, between $1,625 and $3,000 for these illegal abortions, and authorities found $240,000 in cash in his home. He has become a millionaire by murdering babies in their first moments of life. The DA said he had cleared $1.8 million in one recent year alone through his grisly and gruesome dungeon. He is America’s Dr. Mengele.

Williams says the doctor “cut short the lives of living, breathing babies who would have survived with proper medical attention.” In the understatement of the year, he went on to say, “A doctor who cuts into the necks severing the spinal cords of living, breathing babies, who would survive with proper medical attention, is committing murder under the law.”

Added Williams, “My comprehension of the English language can’t adequately describe the barbaric nature of Dr. Gosnell.”

Bags and bottles holding aborted babies were found scattered throughout the building. One shelf was lined with jars containing the severed feet of babies. Gosnell used unsterilized instruments, re-used disposable medical supplies, and performed procedures in filthy rooms which reeked of cat urine.

No wonder local officials described his clinic as a “house of horrors.”

Another murder charge has been filed on behalf of the family of an adult immigrant woman, who was killed through an overdose of anesthesia administrated by an untrained high school student when Dr. Gosnell was not even on the premises.

Who has made this kind of barbarity possible? For an accomplice, look no further than the Oval Office. The sitting president of the United States used his influence no less than four times as an Illinois state senator to prevent newborn babies from receiving medical care that could have saved their lives.

He used his political power to make sure that babies born alive in Illinois after surviving an abortion attempt were tossed in a corner of the room and left to die.

What is the moral difference between discarding a baby and allowing it to die with no care, no comfort, no medical attention, and killing the same baby with a pair of scissors? Perhaps there is a difference in savagery, but there is no difference in barbarity.

I submit that the president of the United States shares moral culpability for creating a climate in which this kind of Mayan-era butchery could take place. He too, just like Dr. Gosnell, has shown a “disdain for the lives and health of … infants.”

Utter moral failure can be found on all fronts. One cannot imagine the darkness of a man’s heart who could enrich himself by sticking scissors into the necks of newborn babies, or fathom the conscience of government officials who deliberately refuse to exercise accountability. They could have saved the lives of these seven babies, but were absent without leave for at least 17 years.

And yet even worse, the man who sits in the most powerful office in the world does not believe in the sanctity of newborn human life. If he doesn’t, why should a butcher in Philadelphia?

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