The Gates were just a couple of the two dozen award recipients who the president honored last week. By awarding the founders of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – which has reportedly been instrumental in population control though its vaccines that have worked to sterilize multitudes of African women – the Obama administration is sending the message that working toward the elimination of preborn children is a noble cause.

Awarding abortion?

Pro-abortion advocates and other critics contend that the Microsoft founder and his wife – with their devotion to promote and move the abortion movement forward – do not benefit society by eliminating innocent preborn children.

According to the official language used to describe the award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is “presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

With Obama being a devout advocate of Planned Parenthood and its federal funding, many are not surprised by his adulation of the Gates.

The grant database of the Gates Foundation indicates that the nonprofit donated roughly $71 million to Planned Parenthood of America, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and Planned Parenthood of Western Washington from some time before 2009 through 2013. It is also noted that $46.1 million in contributions was given in 2012 alone to the pro-abortion organization, Marie Stopes International, by The Gates Foundation.

When introducing Bill and Melinda Gates, Obama gave them lofty accolades for their foundation’s humanitarian work in medicine – without mentioning its pro-abortion advocacy.

“For two decades, the Gates Foundation has worked to provide lifesaving medical care to millions – boosting clean water supplies, improving education for our children, rallying aggressive international action on climate change, cutting childhood mortality in half,” Obama announced. “The list could go on.”

Funding the abortion agenda worldwide

It is reported that the Gates Foundation plays an integral part in funding abortions on numerous continents around the world.

“Much of this giving is focused on Africa, Asia and Latin America, where abortion-providers like Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes, and Ipas seek to overturn pro-life laws and sometimes even provide illicit abortion drugs,” Life News reports.

The Gates, the media and the Obama administration have done a phenomenal job touting the Gates Foundation’s work to preserve life and hide the fact that it has spent untold millions to destroy it.

“While Gates Foundation funds cannot be earmarked for abortion, the fungibility of money makes it easier for these organizations to provide abortion internationally,” Life News’ Steven Ertelt explained. “In other words, every dollar the Gates Foundation gives to Planned Parenthood for distributing birth control or building an abortion-friendly clinic frees up a dollar in Planned Parenthood’s budget to spend elsewhere.”

Furthermore, the billionaire’s wife has been witnessed on numerous occasions forwarding the culture of death.

“In 2012, Melinda Gates was criticized for promoting abortion and population control at an international meeting,” Ertelt pointed out. “The same year, she was criticized for hosting a Family Planning Summit in London with two of the biggest pro-abortion groups in the world – the U.N. Population Fund and International Planned Parenthood Federation.”

The foundation’s willingness to step in with funding when the abortion industry is lacking is also noted.

“More recently, the Gates Foundation is funneling more money into global programs promoting population control and abortion after a group warned that international family planning goals are not being met,” Ertelt added.

In the name of “women’s reproductive rights,” the foundation based in the Seattle area pledged to give millions more toward abortion.

“[The Foundation promised an additional $120 million to Family Planning 2020 programs that support] the rights of women and girls to decide when and how many children they want to have,” the news website All Africa reported last year.

The pro-abortion initiative’s press release announced that two of the largest abortion businesses in the world – Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes International – are partners in the global Family Planning 2020 project.

Read more:  The Gates Foundation: Philanthropy Cloaked Abortion

This article was originally posted at OneNewsNow.com

Written by Melanie Israel

The American people have returned a pro-life majority to Congress and have elected a president committed to rolling back the Obama administration’s radical abortion policies and to appointing pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. This presents an incredible opportunity for defending innocent human life. Now is the time to act.

Executive Action

President-elect Donald Trump should act to defend life and conscience immediately after he takes the oath of office, and should:

• Reinstate the Mexico City Policy to ensure that federally funded nongovernmental organizations do not perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in foreign nations.

• Enforce the Weldon Amendment to stop states from unlawfully discriminating against health care entities that refuse to pay for or cover abortions.

• Reject a proposed parting gift to Planned Parenthood through new Title X regulations designed to lock in the abortion giant’s cut of federal funds.

• Nominate an U.S. Supreme Court justice that will respect the Constitution and the right to life.

• Repeal the Department of Health and Human Services mandate requiring insurance coverage of certain contraceptives and abortifacients. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has protected the consciences of closely held businesses and religious institutions, consciences of individual consumers and employees are still vulnerable absent full repeal.

• Reinstitute Bush administration conscience protections for health care providers.

• Reaffirm states’ freedom to exclude abortion providers from state Medicaid programs.

Congressional Action

With a pro-life majority in both the House and the Senate, pursuing a life-affirming agenda is a must. Congress should:

• Pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. The United States is one of only seven countries in the world that allows elective abortion past 20 weeks (5 months), at which point the baby is capable of feeling excruciating pain during an abortion procedure.

• Pass the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. Instead of relying on a patchwork of policy riders attached to appropriation bills each year, Congress should permanently end taxpayer funding for abortion once and for all.

• Defund Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers have disqualified themselves from federal funding due to their callous disregard for human life. The money should be redirected to comprehensive health centers not entangled with abortion.

• Pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. The disturbing case of Kermit Gosnell has shown there must be criminal consequences for abortionists who violate the law and refuse to provide medical care to infants born alive after abortions.

• Pass the Conscience Protection Act, which ensures that individuals get their day in court when their rights to conscience concerning abortion are violated by the government.

• End funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). President Barack Obama sent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to the UNFPA despite evidence of its involvement in China’s coercive two-child policy. This funding should end.

• Repeal Obamacare. Under Obamacare, tax subsidies are available for health plans that include coverage of elective abortion, and the HHS mandate requires coverage of certain abortion-inducing drugs and devices. Both anti-life policies would disappear with Obamacare’s repeal.

Promoting a Culture of Life

The success of pro-life candidates up and down the ballot is a victory for the pro-life movement. But more importantly, it is a victory for the most vulnerable and innocent among us. Since Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton effectively legalized abortion on demand, more than 56 million children have been denied the opportunity to live.

For over 40 years, the pro-life community has worked to counter the devastating impact abortion has had on mothers and their unborn babies, witnessing to the fundamental truth that from the moment of conception, a distinct human being with inherent worth and dignity has a right to life.

Congress and Trump have an opportunity to codify important policy riders, stop the flow of taxpayer dollars to organizations that perform or promote abortion, end the inhuman practice of late-term abortions on babies who are viable or capable of feeling pain, appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court, and much more.

They should take action with confidence, knowing that Americans have spoken for life at the ballot box.

This article was originally posted at the DailySignal.com

Written by Dustin Siggins

Last week, the Obama administration enacted a rule that prohibits the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from contracting with groups that engage in “discrimination” against people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. According to National Security Advisor Susan Rice in a speech on Wednesday:

This rule means that any organization that contracts with USAID must ensure that all people can benefit from its federally-funded programs, regardless of race, religion, disability — or sexual orientation and gender identity.  It’s a major step towards ensuring that American assistance is provided in a fair and equitable manner.

But “fair and equitable” have a specific meaning for the Obama administration. It doesn’t include the unborn. “Discrimination” is still permitted against the unborn — USAID has given tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups, and engaged in other anti-life policies.

It does include LGBT people. As Rice notes elsewhere in the talk, some countries punish homosexual acts with death, and a death penalty law was narrowly defeated in Uganda a few years ago. Her speech suggested that supporting the LGBT agenda is more important to the Obama administration than stopping the Syrian slaughter, preventing Russia’s advance internationally and protecting Christian refugees.

The Administration’s LBGT Pressure

Rice’s speech reflects how the administration has spent years blackmailing African nations over the LGBT agenda, demanding acquiescence in exchange for basic humanitarian aid. Many Christian leaders have refused to bow to the administration, but the pressure has continued. While some nations certainly have deplorable and inhuman policies, many times the administration has prioritized the LGBT agenda over fighting terrorism and stopping starvation.

She thanked the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and another group “who fight so admirably to promote equal rights and dignity for all.” Co-founded by Terrence Bean — who squirreled out of being found guilty in the alleged sexual abuse of a minor — HRC has targeted pro-marriage advocates to such a degree that a college professor told me he’s never sure if his family is safe.

HRC has also attempted to bully Johns Hopkins University into denouncing a much-cited study that debunks LGBT talking points about sexuality, and has led the dishonest-yet-successful effort to tar North Carolina’s HB2 “bathroom” law as bigoted and hateful. (The Obama administration has also contributed to this misleading state of affairs, with Attorney General Loretta Lynch comparing the very modest bathroom law to racist Jim Crow laws.)

Finally, after referencing the Pulse nightclub shooting this summer, Rice compared HB2 and state-based religious liberty laws to unfair and sometimes inhumane treatment of people who identify as LGBT in other nations. She briefly mentioned the cultural and legal LGBT fight in Indonesia, “governments in Central Asia and Eastern Europe” that are passing anti-homosexual laws and how that “in as many as ten countries, same-sex acts are punishable by death.” She then said:

And, in Syria and Iraq, ISIL has unleashed a unique brutality on LGBT people — dragging gay men behind trucks, stoning them, and burning them alive. ISIL works with chilling efficiency, often going through the cell phones and social media accounts of their victims to identify more LGBT individuals for slaughter. As we speak, the United States is supporting Iraqi and Kurdish forces as they push to liberate Mosul, where ISIL fighters were taped hurling gay men off of buildings.  As one Iraqi man testified before the UN: “In my society, being gay means death.”

Again, some of these laws are downright horrifying, and ISIS’ actions are the same. The Obama administration is right to condemn them, and put pressure on nations to change those practices and laws. But Rice’s speech shows that the Obama administration’s ideology on LGBT “rights” continues to go above and beyond what is right and just, instead giving state-sanctioned preference to the LGBT agenda over the rights of business owners, women and children.

This article was originally posted at the Stream.org

When William “Bill” Henry Gates III was born to William Henry Gates II and Mary Maxwell Gates, in Seattle in 1955, little did they know he would grow up to be (reportedly) the world’s wealthiest man.

Bill III and Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft on April 4, 1975, and grew the fledgling company into an $85 billion multi-national computer software business. Bill transitioned from CEO to CSA (Chief Software Architect) in 2000, the year he and wife, Melinda, established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Then in 2006 Bill backed off, becoming part-time at Microsoft and full-time at BMGF.

Three trustees shepard BMGF, commonly called The Gates Foundation: Bill Gates III, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett. Buffett (Chairman/President/CEO of $65B Berkshire Hathaway Inc.) is ranked as one of the world’s wealthiest men (net worth of about $66 billion) and has vowed to disburse 99% of his fortune to charities and causes mostly via the Gates Foundation. One Buffett pet cause being the Democratic party; he endorsed Hillary Clinton in her run for president.

The Gates Foundation, by all appearances is a humanitarian endeavor, seeking to help the least of these throughout the world, and especially in Africa. As written on the opening page of the BMGF website:

WE BELIEVE

That by giving people the tools to lead healthy, productive lives, we can help them lift themselves out of poverty.

Every year, millions of people find ways to transition out of poverty—by adopting new farming technologies, investing in new business opportunities, or finding new jobs. We know women and girls have a unique power to reshape societies. When you invest in a woman’s health and empowerment, it has a ripple effect, helping families, communities, and countries achieve long-lasting benefits.

A “woman’s health and empowerment” — now that’s an interesting phrase. Just what might that mean?

Click on the link under A CLOSER LOOK Help women make informed family-planning decisions and more of the BMGF agenda is revealed:

The Challenge

Voluntary family planning is one of the great public health advances of the past century. Enabling women to make informed decisions about whether and when to have children reduces unintended pregnancies as well as maternal and newborn deaths. It also increases educational and economic opportunities for women and leads to healthier families and communities. Family planning is a smart, sensible, and vital component of global health and development.

However, more than 220 million women in developing countries who don’t want to get pregnant lack access to contraceptives and voluntary family planning information and services. Less than 20 percent of women in Sub-Saharan Africa and barely one-third of women in South Asia use modern contraceptives. In 2012, an estimated 80 million women in developing countries had an unintended pregnancy; of those women, at least one in four resorted to an unsafe abortion.

Significant challenges stand in the way of making contraceptives more widely available and accessible, including insufficient donor and developing country funding, lack of appropriate products that meet users’ needs, weak distribution systems, lack of reliable monitoring and data collection mechanisms, and cultural and knowledge barriers.

Farther down The Foundation Strategy is defined:

Our Strategy

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Family Planning program is working to bring access to high-quality contraceptive information, services, and supplies to an additional 120 million women and girls in the poorest countries by 2020 without coercion or discrimination, with the longer-term goal of universal access to voluntary family planning.

With our partners, we support national governments that have committed to the goals of FP2020 and are leading the development and implementation of their own country-specific plans.

Foundation support includes assessing family planning needs, particularly among the poorest and most vulnerable populations; identifying access barriers and funding gaps; developing and testing interventions; sharing evidence-based practices; promoting accountability through real-time performance monitoring and data collection; and fostering coordination among governments, partners, and donors.

The verbiage repeatedly refers to “contraceptive information” and “contraceptives and voluntary family planning” and then, tucked away, “at least one in four resorted to an unsafe abortion.”

So, a whole lot of talk about women and contraception information and worries about unsafe abortions. What is starkly missing from the page is any mention of “life” or “babies.”

Also of note, The Gates Foundation operates with entities aligned with FP2020: Family Planning 2020. What is the goal of that initiative?

FP2020 is an outcome of the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning where more than 20 governments made commitments to address the policy, financing, delivery and socio-cultural barriers to women accessing contraceptive information, services and supplies and donors pledged an additional US$2.6 billion in funding. Since then, the number of countries with FP2020 commitments has grown to 36 and, in 2014 alone, donors provided US $1.4 billion in bilateral funding for family planning—32 percent more than in 2012.

Led by an 18-member Reference Group, operated daily by a Secretariat, and hosted by the United Nations Foundation, FP2020 is based on the principle that all women, no matter where they live should have access to lifesaving contraceptives.

One of the FP2020 guiding principles:

• Universal access to voluntary contraceptive information, services and supplies, within the context of integrated programs to achieve sexual and reproductive health and rights and the health-related MDGs.

The website, like its partner the Gates Foundation, is full of mentions of contraceptive information and “sexual and reproductive health and rights.” And even more telling, the list of “Core Partners“:

• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• The Department for International Development (DFID)
• UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund
• USAID (The United States Agency for International Development)

Much has been made of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s investment in African charities, but a closer inspection yields something less of a true philanthropic effort to save lives, and more of an effort to advance family planning and abortion. And this pro-abortion, utilitarian worldview was cultivated in Bill Gates III from a young age.

In a 2003 interview, Bill Moyers questioned Gates about his interest in advancing “family planning”:

MOYER: But did you come to reproductive issues as an intellectual, philosophical pursuit? Or was there something that happened? Did you come upon… was there a revelation?

GATES: When I was growing up, my parents were always involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that. And so it’s fascinating. At the dinner table my parents are very good at sharing the things that they were doing. And almost treating us like adults, talking about that.

My mom was on the United Way group that decides how to allocate the money and looks at all the different charities and makes the very hard decisions about where that pool of funds is going to go. So I always knew there was something about really educating people and giving them choices in terms of family size.

Indeed, Bill Gates II, a prominent Seattle lawyer, also served on the board of Planned Parenthood. His wife, Mary, Bill III’s mother, was the first female president of King County’s United Way. The United Way shunts a portion of all donations, unless earmarked otherwise, to Planned Parenthood.

Gates Sr. is Co-Chair of the Board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

All of these connections explain Bill Gates’ implicit pro-abortion biases, they all add up. And The Foundation doesn’t dicker, it contributes major bucks to abortion providers. Live Action News’ Josh Craddock wrote in June 2014:

Fr. Boquet notes that, “The Gates Foundation has in the past and will continue to give tens of millions of dollars to the largest abortion providers in the world, including International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International. These large sums of money will undoubtedly expand the reach and influence of the abortion industry.”

According to the Gates Foundation grant database, the Foundation gave Planned Parenthood of America, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and Planned Parenthood of Western Washington about $71 million from before 2009 through 2013. Additionally, the Gates Foundation gave $46.1 million to Marie Stopes International in 2012 alone.

A year later, Micaiah Bilger writes for Life News:

The Gates Foundation promised to give an additional $120 million to Family Planning 2020 programs that support “the rights of women and girls to decide when and how many children they want to have,” the news website All Africa reported today.

. . .

Both Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes International, two of the largest abortion businesses in the world, are partners in the global Family Planning 2020 initiative, according to a press release from the initiative.

Now factor in BMGF Trustee Warren Buffett, Hillary Clinton’s BFF. Remember that Planned Parenthood awarded Hillary the Margaret Sanger Award in 2009 and the Democratic Presidential candidate has pledged to have “Planned Parenthood’s back if elected president.” In fact, not only is Mrs. Clinton pals with Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards, she was also good friends with Cecile’s mother, Ann Richards.

The mafia had a term to describe who they were, “cosa nostra,” translated that means “our thing.” And “our thing” to Bill and Melinda Gates, Bill Gates Sr., Mary Gates, Warren Buffett, Hillary Clinton, Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood, United Way, Marie Stopes International, and FP2020 is a desire to advance an abortion agenda around the globe.

And at its heart, abortion countermands the culture of life admonished in Deuteronomy:

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.

Yes indeed. Mainstream Media adores The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and touts their Progressive “Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA),” but that’s just one small endeavor and not the heart of what the Microsoft billionaire really does with his fortune.

The word Philanthropy comes from the Greek: philos loving + anthrōpos man. Alas, Philanthropy, Gates-style, has absolutely nothing to do with real love of human life.

Our get-out-the-vote campaign is up and running. We are distributing the IFI Voter Guide to hundreds of churches, civic groups and tea party organizations. Will you financially support our endeavor to educate Illinois voters and promote Judeo-Christian values?  Donate today.

P.S. Listen to recent IFA podcast episodes at : illinoisfamilyaction.org/podcast

Forty-three years ago the Warren Burger Supreme Court struck a mighty blow for the powers of darkness: In a 7-2 decision the Justices ruled in Roe v. Wade that the right to privacy was broad enough to “encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

With that one awful decision, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) declared Jane Roe (Norma McCorvey) the victor. McCorvey, a pawn of feminist activists, would later see the horror of Roe v. Wade, and with her decision to follow Jesus, picked up the gauntlet to fight for the unborn.

Over 57 million innocents have been sacrificed on the altar of convenience and the “right to privacy” since Roe was wrongly decided.

But today there’s a righteous spirit, gripping women young and old across America, compelling more and more victims of the abortion deception to come out of the shadows, tell the truth, and reinvigorate a love for the sanctity of life in our nation.

Ricki Giersch is one such woman. In a desperate place — 16 and pregnant — Ricki turned to a Champaign, Illinois Planned Parenthood to solve her dilemma. Then later as a junior in college, with a repeat crisis pregnancy, she turned again to Planned Parenthood.

At age 32 Giersch made a decision to follow Jesus, whose truth began to illuminate the evil of abortion, and whose grace and love began to heal her broken spirit and heart, the consequences post-abortive women often bear.

Now, years later, Ricki Giersch and Catherine Walker co-lead 40 Days for Life in Aurora, Illinois along with team members Katherine Woltering, Sabina Dahl, and Jenine Mehr. They are resolutely committed to this effort to overcome the darkness ushered in by the nefarious Roe v. Wade decision. These women understand this is a spiritual battle against principalities and powers and that the solution, the weapons necessary to defeat this evil, must be spiritual as well.

40 Days for Life, “The beginning of the end of abortion,” is:

A community-based campaign that takes a determined, peaceful approach to showing local communities the consequences of abortion in their own neighborhoods, for their own friends and families. It puts into action a desire to cooperate with God in the carrying out of His plan for the end of abortion. It draws attention to the evil of abortion through the use of a three-point program:

• Prayer and fasting
• Constant vigil
• Community outreach

The 40-day campaign tracks Biblical history, where God used 40-day periods to transform individuals, communities … and the entire world. From Noah in the flood to Moses on the mountain to the disciples after Christ’s resurrection, it is clear that God sees the transformative value of His people accepting and meeting a 40-day challenge.

The mission of the campaign is to bring together the body of Christ in a spirit of unity during a focused 40-day campaign of prayer, fasting, and peaceful activism, with the purpose of repentance, to seek God’s favor to turn hearts and minds from a culture of death to a culture of life, thus bringing an end to abortion.

The Aurora 40 Days for Life Kickoff Event is September 24, 2016, from 9:00AM – 10:30AM at the NE corner of New York Street and Oakhurst Street:

Ricki Giersch and Catherine Walker hope for a huge turnout for the kickoff event, and are praying that local believers and local churches will join in the effort: everyone attending the Kickoff Event can sign up to be part of 40 Days for Life.

Take ACTION:  Folks can sign up to be part of the prayer force on site at the Aurora Planned Parenthood daily while the facility is open from 7AM to 7PM daily. (click the picture below to sign up)

The “enemy of our souls” thought he had won the battle 43 years ago, but God’s people, moved to pray, can defeat this great evil and once again restore a culture of life in our nation.

40 Days for Life will fight quietly, with prayers, mindful of the words written by Moses:

This day I call the heavens & the earth as witnesses against you
that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.
Now choose life, so that you and your children may live. 
~Deuteronomy 30:19~

The pro-child-death regime seems to be kicking into high gear. It’s unclear whether they fear a rising tide of opposition to womb-killing or if they smell the blood swirling in the miasmic waters that envelop the world.

Children, always easy prey for uncivilized peoples, are perhaps at greater risk and more devalued than at any time in modern life. Homosexuals who choose sterile sex and yet believe they are entitled to children are acquiring them like chattel to be raised without mothers or fathers and in the midst of soul-killing sexual perversion masquerading as “love.” The Internet devours children in its black hole of child porn sewage. Muslim extremists starve, kidnap, sell, rape, and murder children. And baby-killing profiteers can taste the blood of children, and it tastes like money.

Let’s take a metaphorical boat-ride around these bloody waters.

The United Nations

On August 17, 2016, 435 baby-killing enthusiasts sent an open letter to United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and heads of all UN agencies announcing that they “support the proposal of the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion that you declare 28 September, International Safe Abortion Day, an official international UN Day.” Yes, nothing says “safety” quite like being slaughtered in utero.

One of the reasons feticide enthusiasts cite for an official International Safe Abortion Day is the increase in the number of annual abortions worldwide from 50.4 million every year between the years of 1990-94 to 56.3 million every year between the years 2010-14. Feticide enthusiasts want to ensure that the ghastly number of baby-killings each year won’t adversely affect the health of the babies’ mothers.

Planned Parenthood

Here in the Land of Lincoln, the baby-killing machine, euphemistically named Planned Parenthood, colludes with the perverse “Shout Your Abortion” (#SYA773) crowd to celebrate the so-called “right” of mothers to kill their unborn babies—oh, and to profit from the bodies of the dead.

Evidently, the $300 million Planned Parenthood gets from the government isn’t sufficient to sustain their “charitable” work, so there are several frolicsome fundraising events planned at the Empty Bottle in Chicago to make money for Planned Parenthood. The “Shout Your Abortion” peeps describe the collusion thusly:

The Chicago chapter of #ShoutYourAbortion (SYA773) and the Empty Bottle team up to raise money for Planned Parenthood, a vital American nonprofit.” [emphasis mine]

Just think, on November 4, 2016 at the Empty Bottle, you can enjoy an evening listening to the band Natural Child who are “Hellbent on finding the next beer, bong or girl to suck on” and make money for Planned Parenthood!

Or if you’re busy on November 4, on November 9, you can go hear MELKBELLY who “always turn that sh*t up to 11 whenever they hit the stage and we can’t wait to see how they kick this sh*tstorm into high gear tonight.” And in the midst of the “sh*tstorm,” you can help support the Planned Parenthood death squad. Sounds like a win-win to me.

“Catholics for Choice”

In case you missed it, on September 12, 2016, apostate Catholics spent a boatload of money for full-page ads in major cities across the country to promote the peculiar view that slaughtering babies in utero comports with Catholicism and with justice.

The ad read, “Public funding for abortion is a Catholic social justice value.” Such a claim reveals the organization’s profound ignorance. Social means, “pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly relations” or more generally, “living together in communities.” There’s nothing less likely to foster good relations in a community than forcing community members to be complicit in killing developing humans in the womb.

Justice means “the principle of moral rightness; conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness.” I can think of few things less “righteous” than requiring citizens to fund feticide—well, except for feticide itself.

And since the Catholic Church opposes abortion, the claim of Catholics for Choice that public funding for abortion is a Catholic value is a bald-faced lie. But hey, if men can call themselves women, why can’t Catholic apostates call themselves Catholics?

“Luke, I am your…grandchild”: The myth of choice

An unsavory family drama is unfolding in Luke Skywalker’s family. The New York Post first reported that now-former girlfriend of Nathan Hamill, Mark Hamill’s son, has been pressured by Nathan and his parents to abort her and Nathan’s baby who is due in October.

After a failed attempt at a chemical abortion, the mother, Maegen Chen decided not to go through with another attempt, and the coercive efforts of the Hamills to have their first grandchild killed intensified, with Nathan’s mother Marilou telling Maegen that her relationship with Nathan would end if she didn’t kill Marilou’s grandchild: “With baby, you won’t see him; without baby, you will.”

As virtually everyone knows the word “choice” is a politically strategic euphemism exploited to conceal and sanitize what is being chosen: the unjust slaughter of a tiny human in the womb. Why not just say it.

The Hamill story exposes the myth that women are freely choosing to kill their offspring. The truth is that often parents, boyfriends, and husbands pressure women to kill their children.

Quite obviously the product of conception between two humans is a human, and no human has a moral right to end the life of another. Lack of full physical maturation on the part of one human doesn’t give other more developed humans the right to kill him or her. Neither does a human’s imperfections, geographic location, dependency status, nor “unwantedness” grant more developed humans a right to kill him or her.

Jeh Johnson’s family legacy

In researching the barbarous activities of the pseudo-civilized personalities stumping for baby-killing, I learned the sordid story of Dr. Kenneth Edelin, who died in 2014 and was the uncle of Jeh Johnson, President Barack Obama’s secretary of Homeland Security. Johnson, it turns out, comes from a line of  feticide-supporters and practitioners.

Johnson’s mother, Norma (Edelin) Johnson, was an associate director of a Planned Parenthood facility in Poughkeepsie, New York, and his uncle was the infamous Dr. Kenneth Edelin who was at the center of a famous court case over his gruesome 1973 (legal) slaughter of a baby boy during his 24^th week of development.

During  Edelin’s trial, it was revealed that the 17-year-old mother’s womb had been injected with a saline solution which ordinarily burns and poisons the baby and initiates uterine contractions that lead to the expulsion of the baby. The injections were unsuccessful, so Edelin performed a “hysterotomy” in which he made an incision in the womb (as in a caesarean section), reached in, and by hand separated the baby from the placental wall.

According to Edelin’s obituary in the Washington Post, “A doctor who witnessed the operation testified that Dr. Edelin had watched a clock for at least three minutes while holding the fetus inside the womb in order to ensure that the fetus had died before it was removed.”

Edelin disputed that claim and said that if the baby had been born alive, he “would have taken steps to get it to the nursery.”

Wow. Such compassion to be willing to take a baby whom he hadn’t successfully slaughtered to a nursery.

Edelin’s compassionate side was demonstrated again in 1975 when he told  the New York Times that “Nobody likes to do abortions…but the least we can do is make it safe and humane.”

Safe and humane for whom? For the baby boy pulled from the womb and suffocated?

Edelin, who became a hero to feticide fanatics, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to a year’s probation. Unfortunately, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court later overturned his conviction, arguing that “only when a fetus had been born alive outside its mother could it become a ‘person’ within the meaning of the statute.”

Edelin went on to become chairman of the board at Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

So, parents, teach your children well.

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Colin Kaepernick, NFL quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, has generated a dust-up over his refusal to stand during the “Star Spangled Banner.” Kaepernick said “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”

While some “progressives” are defending his stunt, arguing that a verse of the National Anthem that is never sung—anywhere—has a racist message, Kaepernick didn’t mention the National Anthem, he referred to the flag.

For those who don’t know, Colin Kaepernick was adopted by a white family after his destitute, 19-year-old, white birth mother gave him up. His black biological father abandoned him and his mother before his birth. Kaepernick excelled at basketball, baseball, and football in high school and in addition to a football scholarship, he was offered multiple scholarships to play collegiate baseball. He has made millions playing for the NFL since 2011.

So, some questions for Kaepernick:

When you say the country, what exactly do you mean? The government? Every branch of government? Every department? Every elected official? The Constitution? Laws? Which laws? The police? Every police department? Every police officer? Teachers in government schools?

Does your assessment of the unworthiness of America include the sacrifices of soldiers who have given their lives to defend and protect people all around the world? Does it include men like my father who served and suffered during WWII? Does it include missionaries and medical personnel like Jim Elliot and Natalie Bullock who sacrificed the comforts you enjoy and sometimes their lives because they love people of color?

Could it be that the “country” that oppresses people of color is primarily constituted by Democrats?

• After all, it was Democrats who supported Jim Crow laws in the South.

• It was only 23 percent of Democrats in Congress who supported the passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery, while 100 percent of Republicans supported it.

• It was Democrats who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

• It’s Democrats who have been promoting policies and laws that have incentivized fatherless families, which has long been known to be the central cause of poverty and anti-social behavior.

• It was Democrats who through their demand that homoerotic unions be legally recognized as “marriages” have now institutionalized fatherless (and motherless) families.

• It’s Democrats who for decades have controlled virtually every major American city where schools are failing people of color and where crime destroys lives.

• It’s Democrats like Barack Obama who, while sending their children to elite, expensive private schools, deny school vouchers for inner city families of color whose children are instead forced into underperforming and dangerous schools. And it’s Democrats who protect teachers unions that enable terrible teachers to keep their jobs.

• It’s Democrats who support Planned Parenthood, the baby-killing machine that profits from the deaths of far more babies of color than colorless babies.

One of the many problems with public schools today is the imbalanced and dishonest way they address the entwined issues of race and American history. Leftist “agents of change” (also known comically as teachers) present a lopsided view of American history, emphasizing the injustices that mar America’s history while de-emphasizing America’s social and political progress and acts of justice and compassion that ignite the imaginations of oppressed peoples around the world. America undeniably has a troubling history with regard to race, but that’s not the whole story.

America also has a remarkable history of racial and ethnic integration and an admirable history of self-correction. Is there a country on the planet that has as successfully integrated as many diverse racial, ethnic, and religious groups as America? Is it possible to walk through a mall or a public school in America without seeing interracial couples or interracial, inter-ethnic groups of teenagers chatting and laughing together? Can you enter a church without seeing families that are multiracial by choice through adoption?

This is a country whose founding principles and documents have made possible the kind of social progress that enabled a biracial baby to be adopted by a white family and go on to earn millions. This  is the country Kaepernick sees as “oppressive” and others see as a social and political marvel.

The American flag represents the greatest nation in history. It’s a country that countless people have died to defend or died in the attempt to arrive at its shores. While Kaepernick continues to publicly demonstrate his disappointment with our imperfect union, perhaps he could tell us which country’s flag he finds worthy of respect.

Presenting “Laurie’s Chinwags”

IFI is pleased to announce a new feature we are calling “Laurie’s Chinwags.” In light of changes in the way many Americans prefer to access information, we’re adding podcasts to our articles. Podcasts will accompany both our new articles as well as previous articles that are of particular importance and relevance. As we add podcasts to previous articles, we will republish them for our subscribers’ convenience.

We hope this new feature will serve the needs and desires of IFI subscribers, and we would appreciate any constructive feedback.

Written by Richard Wiley

In the waning quixotic campaign to compromise principle for the sake of convenience, the American Medical Association (AMA) has reaffirmed a 2005 study challenging the capacity of babies to feel pain at twenty weeks. Of particular significance is the fact that a former lawyer for NARAL, a former medical director for a Hospital in San Francisco that provides abortions, and a former consultant for Planned Parenthood contributed as three of the five authors to the study.

In a recent letter in answer to an inquiry filed by James Agresti, the president of Just Facts, the AMA Journal’s Editor-in-chief Howard Bauchner diplomatically explained that the study would not be retracted because, according to him, the study’s authors complied with the AMA’s conflict of interest requirements and had accumulated all of the data without falsification or fabrication.

Although the study suggests that twenty-week-old babies cannot consciously perceive pain due to a still developing cerebral cortex, several studies have demonstrated that the lack of a cerebral cortex does not ensure the lack of pain receptors.  A study in 2012 proposes that while the dispute over conscious and emotional perception of pain in twenty-week infants remains in the air, there is no shortage of evidence demonstrating that babies have a nervous system sufficiently developed to drive responses to tissue injury as early as sixteen weeks into gestation.

According to a 2013 expert testimony before the U.S. Congress by Dr. Maureen Condic, Director of Human Embryology instruction for the School of Medicine at the University of Utah, “Multiple studies show that ‘the human fetus from 18-20 weeks elaborates pituitary-adrenal, sympatho-adrenal, and circulatory stress responses to physical insults.’” In order words, the baby responds to pain in several of the ways that humans normally do.

Because recent studies demonstrate at least motor faculties at that stage in development, it is unrealistic to propose that the matter is certain. The Kennedy Institute for Ethics Journal in 2012 states, “when a doubt of fact bears on settling whether an alternative under consideration should be excluded, one should presume one will cause the harm until the fact has been settled.”

Christian Communicators of the South East, a debate league that hosts rhetoric tournaments in the Virginia/North Carolina area, trains young homeschooled high school students to research and argue with professional poise. Novice debaters are taught from the beginning to avoid noncommittal modifiers like “could,” “might,” and “may” when researching for a topic. Lines such as: “[b]ecause pain perception probably does not function before the third trimester, discussions of fetal pain for abortions performed before the end of the second trimester should be noncompulsory […]”(emphasis added), would be enough to declaw the study.

And yet publications by New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Live Science  refer to the study as an authoritative source proving beyond a reasonable doubt that babies cannot experience pain at 20 weeks. Such blind adherence to outdated claims only proves one thing: the pro-abortion argument is starving for support. Those in favor of abortion, a group that likely includes members of the AMA, are at their wits end in the fight against the quickly growing Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. But there’s still work to be done. Fourteen states have passed the legislation, although the legality of the law in some states has been challenged.

Richard Wiley is the 2016 Policy Intern for The Family Foundation, and law student at Liberty University School of Law.

This article was originally posted at The Family Foundation blog.

For the past two decades, America’s slide down the slippery slope of atheist-flavored secular humanism has accelerated at breakneck speed.

Once upon a time Dr. Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop were scorned and ridiculed when they suggested such a “slippery slope” existed in terms of the devaluing of human life. In retrospect, Schaeffer and Koop were radically prescient in their predictions.

Almost daily we are assailed with ever more cases of individual Americans strong-armed to violate their sincerely-held religious beliefs. In fact, the only belief system afforded respect by the Progressives (Socialists) is the secular, utilitarian and humanistic worldview.

Since the days of Dewey and Wilson, Progressives have schemed and plotted and maneuvered, relentless in pursuit of the goal: a secular utopia administrated by so-called “enlightened elitists.”

Add to the mix, the eugenicist depravity of Margaret Sanger, founder of  “the American Birth Control League, which would eventually become Planned Parenthood,” and the final concoction is a godless set of mores where humans are just another entity in the animal kingdom.

I wrote of Sanger in the 2014 article, Margaret Sanger’s Dream Come True: Eugenics by Abortion:

And like the modern day organization, cloaking its true agenda in palatable verbiage such as “family planning” and “choice,” Margaret’s goal was far more evil than the respectable facade she presented.

Sanger waged a crusade for legal and safe contraceptives, and for legal and safe abortions. The Left and Planned Parenthood would have you believe she was a paragon, an angel of mercy for women in desperate need.

. . .

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

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

Think of this: Roe v. Wade pitted the right of privacy of the woman against the right to LIFE of her unborn child, and the Burger court ruled in favor of privacy.

I noted in my 2014 post, Roe v. Wade: The Shameful History of an Egregious SCOTUS Decision:

Justice Byron White wrote a stern dissent:

I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment.

The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes.

The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the woman, on the other hand.

Now, 43 years and 57 million slaughtered babies later, our nation suffers under the corporate burden of guilt and the predictable loss of public virtue.

And somehow this wrongly decided “right to privacy” ruling, this right to terminate the life of the unborn for all or any reason, with no support whatsoever in our U.S. Constitution, supersedes all other rights and worldviews. So much so that taxpayers, in spite of their biblical objections and abhorrence of this infanticide, are forced to pay for abortions and abortifacients.

But even worse, those who object and refuse to take part in abortions, abortion referrals, or abortifacient prescribing, are punished.

A recent case in Rockford, Illinois, Mendoza v. Martell, is illustrative of the tyranny of the pro-abortion movement and its leaders.

Sandra Mendoza, a Rockford nurse and devout, pro-life Catholic, informed Public Health Administrator “Dr. Sandra Martell, of her conscientious objection to participating in any way in abortions, or the distribution of abortifacients.” Nurse Mendoza quickly discovered that the right to abortion trumps her First Amendment-guaranteed religious liberty:

Dr. Martell gave Ms. Mendoza two weeks to either quit or accept a demotion to a temporary job as a food inspector. Mendoza refused the demotion and was forced to resign in July 2015.

The suit seeks damages under the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act which prohibits public officials from discriminating against a person in any manner because of their conscientious refusal to participate in any way in the provision of abortions.

Once again, the U.S. Constitution is being circumvented to bolster this hell-bent “right to privacy.”

The compelling argument in favor of Sandra Mendoza:

Mendoza’s attorney, Noel Sterett, a partner at Mauck & Baker, LLC, in Chicago, says, “Ms. Mendoza has spent her life serving children and protecting life. People disagree on whether abortions end human lives, but I’d hope we can all agree that pro-life doctors and nurses should not be forced out of employment on account of their faith or commitment to protecting life.”

Nurse Mendoza is to be commended for her pro-life conviction, even in the face of job loss. But the fact is, no American should ever have to face the loss of their livelihood because of their biblical convictions. The First Amendment allows for freedom of religion (NOT worship, as the Left would try to assert), an inalienable right which cannot be absconded by government.

However, Illinoisans are now seeing an effort to strengthen the tyranny of the abortion lobby via Senate Bill 1564:

…lawmakers in the General Assembly passed SB 1564 in an effort to expand abortion services in Illinois. This legislation would force medical professionals and many pregnancy care workers to violate their conscience by forcing them to refer patients for medical procedures they find morally objectionable such as abortion, sterilization and certain end-of-life care.

People of faith in Illinois, people of biblical worldviews, must not relent; they must vote and vote in record numbers to send this bill directly to the paper shredder.

The Left has brought us to this slippery slope of dehumanizing people in the womb, people at the end of life, and people in-between birth and natural death. The journey toward this broad road to destruction was approached stealthily, circuitously.

The time has come for conservatives, for Believers, to stop the descent down the slippery slope predicted by Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop.

The Bible is clear: we are told to choose life. The U.S. Constitution is clear: the First Amendment, codifies our God-given religious liberty and freedom of speech.  The Illinois State Constitution is clear: Article 3 forever guarantees the free exercise of religion and religious opinions.

Now it’s time to stand on that truth, one bill, one case, at a time, and never relent in OUR pursuit of what IS intrinsically, morally right.

Take ACTION: Click HERE and ask Governor Rauner to uphold conscience rights for Illinois medical personnel.  Urge him to veto this ominous proposal. No American should be forced by the government to violate his or her deeply held convictions.

Please also call Governor Rauner’s office at:

(217) 782-0244 — Springfield
(312) 814-2121 — Chicago

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Written by Casey Mattox

Whether you’re a painter, pastor, lawyer, or laborer (pro-life or pro-abortion), you work for Planned Parenthood. A portion of every paycheck goes to the world’s leading abortion business through the federal and state taxes allocated by your elected representatives and the unelected bureaucrats they empower.

For the fiscal year ending in June 2015 (just before the Center for Medical Progress videos were released), over $550 million of your hard-earned tax dollars went to Planned Parenthood.

But the states are taking the lead to end this forced partnership with “Big Abortion” and redirecting those funds to providers that better serve women and families.

Since the authenticated Center for Medical Progress videos were released showing Planned Parenthood officials bartering over the prices of baby body parts, 15 states have taken action to end or limit its taxpayer subsidies.

Here are just a few examples of what state legislatures and governors have done:

• New Hampshire canceled over $600,000 in annual state grants to Planned Parenthood.
• Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas moved to exclude Planned Parenthood from the states’ Medicaid programs “for cause,” citing its waste, abuse and potential fraud and the evidence of violations of the law and ethics demonstrated in the Center for Medical Progress videos.
• Wisconsin and Arizona have slashed the Medicaid reimbursement for certain drugs for entities like Planned Parenthood that receive them at artificially low rates under a federal government program, denying them windfall profits and making those funds available to more women and families.
• Ohio, Florida, Utah and Wisconsin have also eliminated Planned Parenthood from other federal and state grant programs administered by the state.

These actions have potentially eliminated tens of millions in annual taxpayer subsidies going to Planned Parenthood. This represents a small part of the hundreds of millions that it receives, but it is a solid start. And these efforts may at least cut into the $59 million in “excess revenue” the abortion outfit reported last year alone.

States have fought to defund the abortion industry before, but never has the effort to rid American taxpayers of their compelled support of Planned Parenthood been more purposeful and effective than the past several months.

Even Congress has heard the call to stop the flow of taxpayer funds to Planned Parenthood. Just five years ago, an effort to defund Planned Parenthood garnered only 42 votes in the Senate. But moved by the evidence against Planned Parenthood and the fact that other providers are simply better public health options for women and families, in January, Congress actually placed a bill on the president’s desk slashing Planned Parenthood’s access to our tax dollars.

The bill wasn’t perfect, and it was of course vetoed by President Barack Obama, but the progress is real. A different president, one not beholden to an entity that alone has spent tens of millions of dollars to elect him and others who will defend their access to the public trough, would make the difference.

But just as the states are not waiting on Congress to pass laws limiting abortions after five months, when the unborn child can feel pain, they are also not content to wait on Congress to finally stop their citizens’ tax dollars from going to the abortion industry. Governors and state legislators have worked to redirect our tax dollars away from the abortion industry before, but in the last 10 months they have shown a new leadership that should encourage pro-lifers and any advocate of federalism.

No one ever said that eliminating taxpayer subsidies to the abortion market leader and a key political friend to Democratic candidates would be easy. Planned Parenthood has sued several states, and the ultimate success of some states in defunding it may rest on the election of a pro-life president who will support their authority to make their own decisions about their state Medicaid programs.

But the results of the last 10 months should give us hope that this is a fight we can win. We don’t have to keep sending our hard-earned tax dollars to support a billion dollar abortion business. And the leaders in that fight are outside the beltway.

This article was originally published at DailySignal.com.

Written by Dr. Russell Moore

This year my organization joined with our Roman Catholic allies in filing a legal brief with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the court to uphold Texas’ laws regulating the abortion industry. That isn’t all that surprising. After all, Catholics and evangelicals have been working together for decades to uphold the sanctity of human life. What was surprising was that an opposing brief, filed by a Baptist church, argued that legal abortion is moral and just.

In a Baptist News Global article, the church’s senior minister Donna Schaper defended Planned Parenthood by saying that those of us who oppose abortion are “having a hard time dealing with women as moral agents and as adults.” I thought I recognized her name, and after I looked about I found that I had written about this pastor a decade ago, when she admitted that abortion is murder.

In 2006, Schaper wrote an article about the abortion she had. She wrote that her abortion was the right choice since she and her husband had young twins at the time. “Because women are mature sexual beings who make choices, birth control and abortion are positive moral forces in history,” she wrote. “They allow sex to be both procreational and recreational, for both men and women.”

What was striking to me at the time was that Schaper did not rely on the standard abortion advocacy arguments of the unborn child as a “clump of tissue” or a “mass of cells.” Instead, she called her abortion murder, and spoke of her unborn child as a child. She even named her “Alma,” which means “soul.”

“I happen to agree that abortion is a form of murder,” she wrote. “I think the quarrel about when life begins is disrespectful to the fetus. I know I murdered the life within me.”

“I could have loved that life but I chose not to,” she continued. “I did what men do all the time when they take us to war: they choose violence because, while they believe it is bad, it is still better than the alternatives.”

“When I made my choice to end Alma’s life, I was behaving as an adult,” the pastor concluded. “It was a human life. That’s why we named her, wanted her, but also knew we knew we did not want her enough.”

These words would be chilling coming from anyone. They are especially chilling coming from a pastor of a church. Add to the horror of it all that this church is named for the most beloved Baptist missionary couple of all time, Ann and Adoniram Judson. The Judsons sacrificed their very lives to take the gospel of life to those beyond the ocean. In the pulpit named for them stands a woman who speaks of violence to a defenseless infant in her womb, not in repentance but without apology.

The lessons to be learned here are not just one more reminder of what happens when doctrinal orthodoxy and ethical accountability are lost. We can see that all over the place. What is to be learned here, I think, is that the terms of the abortion debate are deeper than we think. We often assume that the debate is about when life begins. We marshal our scientific and philosophical and biblical arguments about the personhood of the unborn child. And we should continue to do so. But we should also remember that this alone will not end the debate, The problem, after all, is not one of information.

I suspect there are many who share this pastor’s views, though many would be loathe to say so publicly. They know the unborn child is just that: a child, a human being. They know that abortion is an act of violence. But they would rather this violence than the alternative. Behind that is a Nietzschean vision of morality, in which the will to power devours everything in its sight, especially the weak and the vulnerable.

To confront this, we must articulate and embody a different sort of universe, the one Jesus reveals and makes true. We must articulate and embody a kingdom where violence is not a sign of one being a “grown up,” a kingdom where one enters as a vulnerable child. When we refuse to define people in terms of their usefulness, when we bear witness to the image of God in all people, including the most vulnerable, we will find ourselves at odds with a world that sees power, and the violence that maintains it, as all that matters.

The Supreme Court will decide this particular case, of whether the abortion industry should be essentially self-regulating. But we should remember that, in the pile of briefs before them, there’s a church named for missionaries that stands, in its own words, on the side of violence. We must speak to those who hear in that sort of violence a kind of “good news,” a counter-gospel that is attractive to the spirit of the age. And we must hold out a witness for life and for peace and for justice, inside and outside the womb.

This article was originally posted at RussellMoore.com

So many organizations and entities have noble and good beginnings. For instance “The Ivies” and the Seven Sisters colleges, most of which were either Christian schools or seminaries that, over the last century, have departed faith moorings.

Other organizations have nothing but evil inceptions; case in point Planned Parenthood.

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

Planned Parenthood’s predecessor, The American Birth Control League, was founded by Nazi-inspiration Margaret Sanger, the godmother of modern eugenics, in 1921. As I wrote in the article, Margaret Sanger’s Dream Come True: Eugenics by Abortion:

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

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

“To deal with the problem of resistance among the black population, Sanger recruited black doctors, nurses, ministers and social workers ‘in order to gain black patients’ trust’ in order ‘to limit or even erase the black presence in America’.”

Many Americans found the name, The American Birth Control League, anti-family and distasteful. Thus, the name was changed to The Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942, with Sanger as president.

Just think about an entity whose stated goals included:

• Children should only begotten under conditions which render possible the heritage of health
• Sterilization of the insane and feebleminded
• To enlist the support and cooperation of legal advisers, statesmen and legislators in effecting the removal of state and federal statutes which encourage dysgenic breeding*

This was no family-friendly, baby-friendly organization; this was an entity designed from its inception to limit the breeding of inferior people, and to, inversely, encourage the breeding of “superior” humans.

Today Planned Parenthood performs approximately 300,000 abortions per year — about 1/3 the total number of abortions performed annually in the United States. Extrapolated out since Roe v. Wade in ’73, that would be approximately 13 million babies slaughtered by taxpayer-funded PP.

Present day Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards has remarked that “abortion is key to women’s opportunity.”

Opportunity? How is killing one’s own child the key to any opportunity?

The post-abortive women I’ve spoken to found abortion key to only guilt, overwhelming shame, and brokenheartedness, and only found reprieve via the grace and forgiveness of God.

Think on this; we are instructed in Deuteronomy 30:

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

But Planned Parenthood was founded and conceived as a means to choose death and cursing, and should not receive one dime of taxpayer assistance.

Unfortunately, currently the taxpayer moneys fund $528 million of PP’s budget per annum. Is it any wonder God’s hand of protection around America seems to be departing?

And contrary to the noisy, incessant arguments made by Planned Parenthood and the radical pro-aborts, there is a viable alternative, Community Health Centers, which actually help, rather than harm, women, men, and children.

there are over 1,200 Community Health Centers serving more than 24 million people at over 9,200 sites located throughout all 50 states and U.S. territories.

Every day, health centers meet escalating health needs and bring good health to needy communities, without regard to family income, health insurance status, race, culture or health condition. In communities fortunate enough to have a health center, fewer babies die, emergency room lines are shorter and people live longer, healthier lives.

Three words in the descriptive trump all else: “fewer babies die.”

The ancient Hippocratic Oath includes:

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.

Though physicians in the 21st century typically take the oath of their particular medical school upon graduation, and not a standardized oath, the content of such oaths points toward “healing arts” rather than ghoulish methods of death and dismemberment of innocents.

Planned Parenthood was, and is, a nefarious organization, conceived by wicked woman. Thanks to PP and other abortion providers, over 57 million babies have been murdered in 43 years: over 57 million infants are in heaven, and Margaret Sanger, barring a Paul-like, deathbed conversion, is paying the due recompense in hell.

Given the REAL choice of Planned Parenthood OR Community Health Centers, the former snuffing out lives, the latter saving lives, America should choose Community Health Centers.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send Governor Bruce Rauner an email or fax asking him to cease all state business with Planned Parenthood in Illinois.

Let’s demolish once and for all the Planned Parenthood facade of “health provider” and choose better: let’s choose life, and insist our elected officials understand the consequences of not supporting our choice.

*The belief that deterioration of the human gene pool occurs by the increased survival and reproduction of people with undesirable traits.

The Illinois Family Institute is completely dependent on the voluntary contributions of individuals just like you.  Without you, we would be unable to fight the radical agenda being pushed by the godless Left.

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Abortion and promiscuity. Planned Parenthood and “slut shaming.” I was reminded on this, the 43rd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s disgraceful Roe v. Wade abortion-on-demand opinion, how inexorably linked are America’s abortion death culture and her ongoing sexual revolution.

As the story goes, Winston Churchill was talking with a socialite: “Madam, would you sleep with me for 5 million pounds?” he asked. “My goodness, Mr. Churchill,” she replied. “Well, I suppose we would have to discuss terms, of course.” Churchill: “Would you sleep with me for 5 pounds?” Socialite: “Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!” Churchill: “Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.”

Today’s “progressives” would accuse Churchill of “slut shaming.” That’s a relatively new euphemism wherein liberals paradoxically try to shame into silence those who call a spade a spade.

While she would certainly frame the demonstrable connection between abortion and promiscuity in different terms, feminist author and psychologist Valerie Tarico is well aware of the correlation. She boasts of it, in fact. In an October opinion piece at the Huffington Post, Tarico, who also served on Planned Parenthood’s Board of Advocates, writes:

“The most lasting effect of the smear campaign against Planned Parenthood may be this: Young women are done – beyond done – with being shamed for the fact that they are sexual beings, with sexual bodies that have t*ts and as*es and tw*ts and vaginas and uteruses … and they are done being forced to have babies when they choose to have sex.”

Pure class.

The “smear campaign” to which Tarico refers ostensibly denotes the groundbreaking investigative journalism of The Center for Medical Progress (CMP), which exposed smoking-gun proof that Planned Parenthood intentionally and illegally profits, in the millions, by “crushing,” dismembering alive and otherwise torturing to death our most innocent fellow human beings, and then selling their body parts for Mengelesque “medical research.”

“I remember sitting in my psychotherapy office a few years back, listening to a mother complain about her teen daughter’s attire,” Tarico continues. “‘She looks like a prostitute,’ the mother said.

“‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Like a prostitute – or a teenager.’”

Tarico and many pro-abort feminists like her encourage young women to look like prostitutes, or “sluts.” These days “slut walks,” wherein scantily clad, topless or fully nude gals march together in courageous, slutty unity, are all the rage – and Planned Parenthood has a revolving door through which they stream. It goes “ka-ching!” with every spin. Indeed, the abortion/STD giant manipulates young girls into “values neutral,” “consequence free sex” – something that does not exist – and then, when they get knocked up, takes their money, slaughters their babies and coldly sends them on their way.

Mix and repeat.

In an article on her own website titled, “Thirty Signs You’re a Slut,” Tarico brags of inspiring her own middle school-aged daughter into “sluthood” (the URL ends with “proud-mom-of-two-teenage-sluts”). “These days, it’s getting rather hard to hold your head high as a female if you aren’t willing to be seen as part of the slut sisterhood,” she opines.

That’s right. In the upside-down world of secular-leftism, sexual promiscuity is a badge of honor – and abortion, a rite of passage – for the upwardly mobile babe. Tarico hammers this home with a score-based inventory of benchmarks needed to “hold your head high as a female.” Among them:

• I have condoms in my purse – or bra.
• I like sex.
• I am unmarried, and I’m not a virgin.
• I wasn’t a virgin on my wedding night.
• I stand with Planned Parenthood.
• My cat is a person; a fertilized egg isn’t.
• You can count me among the 1 in 3 women who have had an abortion.
• I told my abortion story at the 1 in 3 Campaign.
• I believe sex can be rich and intimate without marriage.
• I find people of my own gender sexy.
• Submission (except, maybe, in bed) is not my thing.

Only a dying culture lionizes women who publicly impugn – with pride – their own honor and virtue, and brag about killing their own flesh and blood. Yet, to the left, Valerie Tarico represents “progress.” She’s a hero – a bold voice for “women’s rights.”

This is by design. Secular-progressives have worked hard to deconstruct traditional sexual morality for generations. The goal is to impose – under penalty of law – their own moral relativist, sexual anarchist worldview. (Hence, the unconstitutional Obamacare mandate requiring that Christian groups cast aside millennia-old church doctrine, get with the postmodern program and capitulate to funding abortion homicide.)

Indeed, like other feminist radicals, Tarico demands that the rest of us underwrite her stated immoral practices by paying for her and other women’s birth control and child sacrifice. Fornication and abortion, of course, are considered “mortal sins” in Christianity. Catholic doctrine further bars the church from providing contraception, but to anti-Christian liberals like Tarico, religious liberty and freedom of conscience are things of the past, and the First Amendment represents an obstacle to their dystopian future.

Seriously. Can someone please explain to me how and why a woman’s “right” to be promiscuous and snuff-out her resulting offspring is my financial responsibility? If you refuse to buy your own “preventative medicine,” gals, why not hit up the fellas? Last I heard it takes two to do the fornication Fandango. It seems to me that public groveling for free contraception, abortifacients and surgical abortion reinforces the sexist stereotype that women can’t survive without welfare – without men. Women’s empowerment? More like patriarchal governmental dependency.

In another column last week on the “social stigma” surrounding abortion and female promiscuity, Tarico writes, “If the wall of shame and stigma ruptures, abortion foes may find themselves up against something even more powerful: Love.”

Yep, nothing says “I love you” like ripping your baby limb-from-limb.

“Slut shame” indeed.

Pro-life activist David Daleiden and an associate from the Center for Medical Progress, whose undercover exposés of Planned Parenthood abortionists’ cavalier discussions of the careful crushing and distribution of human body parts created a furor last summer, have been indicted. Both have been charged with tampering with government documents, and Daleiden has also been indicted for violating a Texas state law that says “a person commits an offense if he or she knowingly or intentionally offers to buy, offers to sell, acquires, receives, sells, or otherwise transfers any human organ for valuable consideration.”

Planned Parenthood, always at the forefront of public celebrations of perversity, rejoices:

The Center for Medical Progress operatives spent nearly three years creating a fake company, creating fake identities (including fake government IDs), obtaining a credit card using a fake name, and engaged in a series of lies to worm their way into private events, to trespass onto private property, and to illegally record conversations without consent.

“The people behind this fraud lied and broke the law in order to spread malicious lies about Planned Parenthood to advance their extreme anti-abortion political agenda….As the dust settles and the truth comes out, it’s become totally clear that the only people who engaged in wrongdoing are the criminals behind this fraud, and we’re glad they are being held accountable.”

The indictment drips with irony. Daleiden, who everyone in the universe knows was trying to expose and stop the sale of human body parts acquired via abortion, is charged with offering to buy human organs, while Planned Parenthood, who actually does sell—oops, I mean “donate”—body parts is in the clear.

Since liberals have been whining that the “highly edited” undercover videos were profoundly unethical, enquiring minds want to know if liberals would object on similar grounds to Nellie Bly’s undercover exposé of the barbaric treatment of patients at a New York insane asylum decades ago, the result of which was a grand jury investigation and ultimately changes in the way patients were treated.

What about the NBC television show “To Catch a Predator” in which both fake identities and secret video recordings were used to expose child predators?

And then there’s the case of cattle cruelty. Just last August a federal judge struck down an Idaho “ag-gag” law that banned undercover videos at factory farms—videos which are used by animal rights activists to expose mistreatment of farm animals.

According to the L.A. Times, U.S. Chief Judge B. Lynn Winmill argued that “‘the law violated the 1st Amendment and selectively targeted activists or journalists who might be critical of factory farm practices.’” In his decision, Winmill further stated that “‘The effect of the statute will be to suppress speech by undercover investigators and whistleblowers concerning topics of great public importance: …the treatment and health of farm animals, and the impact of business activities on the environment.’”

And who is making and vigorously defending the use of undercover videos to ensure that farm animals are treated humanely? “Progressives”—the same people who oppose the use of undercover videos to try to ensure that humans are treated humanely during and after their legalized slaughter.

Here’s more about the undercover video of bovine-abuse :

…Los Angeles-based animal rights group, Mercy for Animals, released undercover video that showed dairy workers at one Idaho farm beating and abusing cows.

One clip showed workers at Bettencourt Dairies’ Dry Creek Dairy in Hansen, Idaho, dragging a cow with a tractor after attaching a chain to her neck. 

Although the video resulted in criminal charges against some of the workers, many Idaho lawmakers appeared more piqued by the animal rights activists who produced the highly edited footage.

Lawmakers likened it to propaganda or worse. One lawmaker called the undercover videos “farm terrorism” intended to damage the agricultural industry. Another compared activists to ancient invaders who destroyed crops to starve enemies into submission.

Idaho’s law made it a misdemeanor — punishable by up to a year in prison, plus potentially steep damages — to make secret recordings or misrepresent one’s identity to gain entrance to an agricultural facility.

After the law was passed, a broad coalition of animal rights activists, journalists and civil liberties advocates sued Idaho in federal court. Plaintiffs included the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho and left-wing news magazine CounterPunch.

…

Winmill said that if farm owners were concerned about highly edited activist videos, they could mount their own public relations campaigns.

“The remedy for misleading speech, or speech we do not like, is more speech, not enforced silence,” Winmill wrote.

Mercy for Animals hailed the ruling, saying it was looking forward to producing more undercover videos in Idaho.

“Idaho’s lawmakers should be ashamed of wasting precious time and valuable resources enacting unconstitutional laws that threaten animal welfare….” Nathan Runkle, president of Mercy for Animals….

“We hope they will now focus their efforts on improving animal welfare and rewarding the brave whistleblowers who uncover criminal activity in Idaho’s agricultural operation,” Runkle said. [emphasis added]

If a whistle-blower seeking to protect cows from abuse should be rewarded, then a whistle-blower seeking to protect tiny vulnerable humans from dismemberment, death, and sale should at least not be indicted.

The Poynter Institute, a non-profit journalism school, defends the use of undercover reporting:

Hidden cameras and any form of deception should be used judiciously and rarely. They should be reserved for those exceptional stories of great public interest involving great harm to individuals or system failure at the highest levels.

If the re-positioning or careful crushing of small humans during their killing in order to maximize their “donation” compensation and utility for research doesn’t constitute great harm to individuals or system failure at the highest levels, nothing does.

It boggles the mind that moral regressives find the dragging of a cow by its neck (a moral offense, indeed) to be a greater moral offense than dismembering or sucking the brains out of a human.

Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem
We are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington.

Click HERE to register today!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

Click HERE for a flyer.

Written by Andrew Kloster

Last year, a number of academics penned a letter to the Obama administration demanding a criminal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation into those who disagree with man-made global warming, following the lead of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.

As we wrote at the time, this would be an abuse of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law—a law designed to go after organized crime, such as drug cartels and the Mafia.

Well, as the late, great New York Yankee Yogi Berra once quipped, “it’s déjà vu all over again.”

This time, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates (the nation’s largest abortion provider, which is government-subsidized) are now trying to use RICO to sue various individuals and organizations who helped expose the attempted sale of fetal body parts for cash by various Planned Parenthood employees. Planned Parenthood has denied any wrongdoing.

In case you haven’t seen the video, take a look. What is on that video has spurred Congress to investigate Planned Parenthood and given rise to fresh calls to defund the abortion provider.

But rather than handle what’s actually on the video, Planned Parenthood is suing, claiming, among other things, that the undercover videographers violated RICO and federal wiretapping laws. This is an attempt to divert attention from the horrific and potentially illegal acts of Planned Parenthood.

As in the global warming case, this attempted use of RICO also raises serious First Amendment concerns—all the more so because this use of RICO is specifically targeting media activity.

This use of RICO could backfire, for multiple reasons.

First, this case brings to mind the RICO case of National Organization of Women v. Scheidler. There were multiple legal issues in that case, but it involved similar plaintiffs (a pro-abortion group, NOW) and defendants (anti-abortion protesters), and a similar set of facts (the use of RICO to intimidate pro-lifers engaged in fundamental First Amendment activity). After a 28-year legal saga and three trips to the U.S. Supreme Court, the pro-life group won over $60,000 from the pro-abortion group, NOW.

Planned Parenthood’s tactic and misuse of the RICO law could also backfire because its legal theory of RICO is incredibly broad and could harm all sorts of advocacy groups in the future.

The theory is that the videographers who caught Planned Parenthood red-handed violated RICO because they intended to harm Planned Parenthood’s business and because their video caused Planned Parenthood to have to spend money on security and other things. But if this legal theory were correct, RICO could apply to routine corporate intelligence and marketing decisions, or the undercover work done by reporters all over the country. CBS’ “60 Minutes” made its reputation with such work.

Often, private businesses choose where to locate a new store based on a desire to harm competitors. One restaurant chain might choose to park next door to a competitor not only to capture the consumers, but also to force the competitor to spend time and money responding to the new business threat. This is not to say that such harm to a business can’t count under RICO if there is other evidence of “racketeering activity,” and certainly, there is a point at which such behavior could might raise questions under the antitrust laws.

But simply causing economic harm to a business by doing something otherwise legal, such as exposing illegal action, cannot qualify under RICO. If it did, everyone from Fox News to MSNBC and other news outlets would be on the hook. PETA would be on the hook. So would a host of other advocacy groups.

It cannot possibly be that Planned Parenthood hopes to actually win the lawsuit. More likely, they hope to harass the whistleblowers, making this a perfect case for California’s anti-SLAPP law, at least with respect to the California state law claims.

Anti-SLAPP laws are intended to stop vexatious lawsuits of this type whose only intent is to shut up the other side. Another reason for Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit strategy may to be give friendly media outlets an ability to stop having to justify the unjustifiable conduct exposed in the videos and go on the offensive—”let’s not talk about the videos; let’s talk about how they obtained the footage!”

Hopefully the lawsuit will be quickly dismissed, and not drag on for 28 years!

This article was originally posted at DailySignal.com