The latest report for 2017 shows a 14-percent increase in euthanasia deaths over 2016 but a staggering 242-percent jump in seven years.

Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition says what bothers him most in the report is the expansion of the practice.

“They’ve added a new category called ‘conditions’ like sight or loss of incontinence,” he warns, “basically sold with elderly who are not terminally ill or might be disabled but have chronic conditions.”

Three children have been killed via euthanasia as well as the elderly, the mentally ill, and people who are autistic.

The latter hits home with Schadenberg because he has an autistic son.

Sadly, he says, the survey only quotes stats on euthanasia cases that are reported.

“And as those who follow the euthanasia debate realize that there’s been several studies in the last few years showing the high numbers of unreported euthanasia deaths in Belgium,” he says.

By comparison, he tells OneNewsNow, Netherlands has also become notorious for unreported euthanasia cases but Belgium has become the “king of unreporting” in Europe.

And he says that is the real danger: no one really knows how many cases, or the circumstances behind them, on what he calls a slippery slope of death.

This article was originally published at OneNewsNow.com.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services has issued a policy regarding allocation of $260 million for the Title X family planning program.

Americans United for Life attorney Deanna Wallace told OneNewsNow that the federal program is designed to provide for women what many existing organizations do not do.

“It emphasized not only the department’s focus on funding programs dealing with a broad range of life-affirming planning – such as preconception care, natural family planning and fertility care – but they also make it clear that none of that funding would be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning,” Wallace informed.

OneNewsNow has previously reported that Planned Parenthood services and the number of their clients have been dropping every year for some time – and their clinics reach a limited number of people … compared to the need.

“Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer prenatal care, they don’t offer infertility care, [and] they don’t offer well[ness] woman visits for the vast majority of Americans, so we think this funding should be rerouted to those comprehensive centers that can actually offer woman a lot more,” Wallace insisted.

The all-encompassing centers to which Wallace refers would essentially be the many thousands of local, federally qualified health clinics – ones that could provide vastly more efficient and varied assistance that Planned Parenthood does not offer women.

Read more HERE.

This article was originally published at OneNewsNow.com

SPLC, once a valued organization fighting for civil rights of minorities, refocused some time ago. Part of that “refocusing” resulted in the group’s publication of a “hate map” several years ago. James Wright, head of D. James Kennedy Ministries, is very familiar with the hate map.

“Initially it was related to the question of marriage and the gay agenda,” he shares. “[But] these days if you’re on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate map, it might be anything from your stand on immigration, to radical Islam, to the sanctity of human life, to marriage, to whatever.”

GuideStar has re-published the hate map and Amazon’s charitable contributions don’t go to those groups listed thereon. That includes D. James Kennedy Ministries, which has filed suit in Alabama federal court alleging discrimination and libel against all three organizations.

Wright argues that SPLC, GuideStar, and Amazon have labeled his organization and many others as hate groups for one simple reason: “To try to silence us,” he says. “They don’t want to deal with us on the issues. They want to silence us and make us a marginal voice in the culture.”

He goes on to say “their definition of hate is both morally and intellectually dishonest, unjustifiable” – and that the only way to deal with it is to have the three groups prove their definition of hate before a jury of peers. Thus, the lawsuit.

Apple’s profits going to the SPLC

A spokesman for another group on the “hate map” says it’s dangerous when people are so blinded by their ideology that they finance organizations such as the SPLC. That comment comes in the wake of Apple Corporation CEO Tim Cook announcing his company is donating $1 million to the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League.

Abraham Hamilton III, general counsel and policy analyst for the American Family Association, responds to the donation.

Hamilton offers a solution to deal with Apple’s announced plan to use profits from the sales of its products to support organizations like the SPLC – organizations he says “encourage hate” and are “radically, ideologically driven” and pro-abortion.

“[When] you see this happening, the best way to respond is to vote with your pocketbook,” he tells OneNewsNow.

In other words, consumers will decide whether Apple’s move is good for public relations.

Supporters for abstinence-based education are applauding a new report that sexual activity among teens is decreasing.

Nearly 70 percent of boys (68%) and girls (67%), ages 15-17, have never had sexual intercourse, according to a survey (2006-2008) released last week by the National Center for Health Statistics. In addition, 53 percent of boys and 58 percent of girls in the same age bracket have never had any type of sexual contact — up from 46 percent of boys and 49 percent of girls in 2002. The new study also shows that more young adults are choosing abstinence.

“It looks like truth is beginning to win the day when it comes to teens and sex,” responds ,Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association. “…I think [they] are beginning to learn that they need more than latex to protect themselves and they’re choosing to wait — [that’s] very good news.” And that data, she argues, renders “null and void” the typical claims by anti-abstinence advocacy groups that abstinence is unrealistic.

She tells OneNewsNow while trends are encouraging, she remains concerned. “…With Congress zeroing out all funds for community-based abstinence education programs, per the president’s request, I think we have to ask the question: who is supporting young people and these good decisions?” she wonders.

“With 170 programs around the country no longer able to provide the skills and the encouragement to those young people, it’s definitely time for us to take this data and make some policy corrections.”

Benefit being lost
Toward that end, young people from across America are meeting today with House and Senate members on Capital Hill, sharing how abstinence education has made a difference in their lives and urging lawmakers to reinstate federal funding for abstinence education. Huber contends that members of Congress are sending the wrong message to students by not giving federal priority to abstinence education.

“Are we encouraging them to engage in behaviors that are going to help them now and later? Or are we sending them messages that are detrimental on a number of different levels?” she asks. “…Right now we are using our federal dollars and our federal priorities in ways that are not helpful to them and, in fact, [are] counterproductive and harmful.”

The students are on Capitol Hill to make their message personal, says the abstinence advocate. “Here in Washington it can often become just a bantering of talking points over policy initiatives,” Huber acknowledges. “…What gets lost is the benefit of this program for young people. So they can put a real face and a real life story behind the need to change the priorities in the arena of sex education as a nation.”

She says while Congress is looking to tighten its fiscal belt, an investment in abstinence education could reap great economic, social, and personal rewards.