Written by Paula Ryan

In just a few short months, the U.S. Supreme Court will be handing down their decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, determining the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi law prohibiting women from accessing abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. This case is expected to determine the fate of Roe v. Wade, the infamous 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling preventing states from unduly restricting abortions before the point of viability.

It seems likely that the Court will issue a favorable ruling, which would allow for more extensive protections for the unborn at the state level without interference from the federal courts.  This would be good news. However, it would not be the end of the battle to protect all innocent babies from conception until birth. It also would not undo the damage caused over the past 49 years to families, communities, and individuals throughout the nation but particularly in the Black community.

Since 1973, over 63 million babies have been aborted in the United States, 20 million of whom were Black. According to a report published in January 2022 by the Center for Urban Reform and Education (CURE), while Black women made up 15 percent of the childbearing population in 2018, they obtained 33.6 percent of reported abortions. This translates into 335 abortions per 1,000 live births, which was the highest abortion ratio in the United States. In support of these statistics, the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), using abortion reporting data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported that for more than 30 years Black women have been experiencing abortions at a rate nearly four times that of white women.

And by the way, this is no accident. According to the aforementioned CURE report, 79 percent of the surgical facilities of Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s (PPFA), which is by far the largest abortion provider in the nation, are within walking distance of Black or Hispanic Communities. The Left claims that these facilities are there to provide health care for the members of these communities.  However, the cold hard truth is that they are taking the life of pre-born black babies for money and their own documents prove it.

In their 2016 Annual Report, PPFA claimed to provide “lifesaving care” and to be an irreplaceable component of the nation’s healthcare system. After careful evaluation and study, CLI issued a lengthy report proving that Planned Parenthood centers are primarily focused on contraceptive services, sexually transmitted infection testing, and abortions. Additionally, they noted that there is “little or no demonstrable capability for definitive diagnosis or a range of treatments for any disease or condition at Planned Parenthood centers.” In layman’s terms, this means that if a woman needs a mammogram or biopsy to detect breast cancer, she would NOT be able to receive these tests at any Planned Parenthood facility. In fact, there isn’t a single Planned Parenthood that has the resources to diagnose or treat any type of cancer. Indeed, with the exception of abortion, Planned Parenthood offers no services that cannot be easily found at alternative providers.

This is not surprising. From its founding by Margaret Sanger in the early 1900s, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) has been using abortion to target the Black community. Sanger was a leading proponent of controlling the birth rate of those individuals she deemed undesirable or unfit. Sanger laid out her extreme form of eugenics in a 1932 book entitled, “My Way to Peace” where she called for the sterilization of those with mental and physical disabilities, including “morons, mental defectives, epileptics.”

In 1939, Sanger put her plan into action by introducing the “Negro Project,” which was designed to help states with eliminating the “dysgenic horror story” of blacks who reproduced “carelessly and disastrously.” To increase the effectiveness of the project, Sanger even had the unmitigated gall to recruit Black leaders and Black pastors to sell the concepts of contraception and sterilization to the minority populations.

It wasn’t until April 2021 that PPFA even acknowledged the racist roots of the organization by admitting that Margaret Sanger had aligned herself with ideologies and organizations that were unequivocally white supremacist and in doing so had caused permanent damage to millions of people, including generations Black people. Of course, PPFA’s mea culpa was pure window dressing. PPFA is still targeting Black babies for extermination by sending out the same tired, old message that access to abortion in minority communities is a necessary form of health care.

According to Right to Life of Michigan statistics:

• On average, 900 black babies are aborted every day in the United States.

•  The abortion rate for Black women in the United States is almost four times that of White women, which according to CLI, exposes Black women to increased exposure to hemorrhage and infection, the two major causes of maternal mortality.

•  Since 1973, abortion has taken more Black American lives than every other cause of death combined.

Sadly, even when numbers like this clearly expose the determination of the abortion industry – and PPFA in particular – to abort Black babies, prominent Black leaders like former President Barack Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris continue to support them.

While this whole line of thought is frustrating and sad, the most appalling aspect is that the systematic extermination of 20 million Black babies over the past 49 years has happened in THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA…Land of the free…Home of the brave. We need to be better than this.

Regardless of what the U.S. Supreme Court decides in Dobbs, there’s no way to erase the damage that abortion has done to the Black community. However, we can build a better America by protecting the most vulnerable members of our society. After all, as Nelson Mandela pointed out, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

This article was originally published by The Family Foundation.

More than two dozen pro-family organizations signed onto an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court to oppose the Biden Administration’s tyrannical vaccine mandate. The brief, filed on Monday, January 3, 2022, urges the Court to protect religious liberty and oppose this sweeping and unchecked mandate, which requires COVID-19 vaccination in employers with 100 or more employees with little to no regard for the religious liberty interests of American citizens.

In November, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) under the Biden Administration issued an unilateral vaccine mandate for the aforementioned employers. It did so without the approval of the U.S. Congress and without even allowing for public comment, which is a key part of the rule-making process. Because the mandate circumvented these critical checks, the mandate “undermines rule-of-law values,” the brief argues, “for it puts important policy decisions in the hands of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats…”

More importantly, by placing this power in the hands of an unelected agency, there is a great threat to religious liberty. “In the last 20 years,” says the brief, “[the U.S. Supreme Court] has repeatedly had to step in to protect religious exercise from agency hostility.” The OSHA vaccine mandate is evidence of this continued hostility, as it did not offer any guidance for religious employers or employees. Rather, it creates a potential religious conflict with its mandate, and then “places responsibility for that conflict in the lap of the employer.”

Putting aside the many strong opinions Americans have on the vaccine issue, this sweeping mandate by OSHA both exceeds the agency’s authority, and backhands religious liberty, a bedrock value of our nation.

IFI Family will keep you informed on any action by the U.S. Supreme Court on this issue.

The fact that “progressives” in their opposition to constitutional textualists/originalists—whom leftists know approach the U.S. Constitution with more rigorous fidelity than do “progressive” Justices—focus almost exclusively on the possibility that Roe v. Wade may be overturned would seem a tacit admission that there exists no constitutional right of women to have their intrauterine offspring slaughtered. The infamous Roe v. Wade is on the chopping block, and leftists are more distraught over the possible decapitation of Roe than they are over the actual decapitations of tiny humans.

In their frenzied fear that human slaughter may be one day be illegal, leftists fume irrationally that the overturn of Roe threatens the constitutional right of stronger, more developed, and powerful humans (i.e., oppressors) to order the killings of weaker, imperfect, unwanted humans (i.e., the oppressed). Well, here’s some food for thought about Roe v. Wade from “progressives” who support the legal right of women to choose to have more vulnerable humans killed—quotes that shrieking feminists may find wholly unpalatable:

• “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” (Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School professor).

• “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose” (Edward Lazarus, former clerk to SCOTUS Justice Harry Blackmun).

• What, exactly, is the problem with Roe? The problem, I believe, is that it has little connection to the Constitutional right it purportedly interpreted. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent—at least, it does not if those sources are fairly described and reasonably faithfully followed” (Edward Lazarus).

• “[A]s a matter of constitutional interpretation, even most liberal jurisprudes — if you administer truth serum—will tell you it is basically indefensible” (Edward Lazarus).

• “Blackmun’s [Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference” (William Saletan, Slate magazine writer).

• Roe “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be…. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. Nor is it explainable in terms of the unusual political impotence of the group judicially protected vis-à-vis the interest that legislatively prevailed over it.… At times the inferences the Court has drawn from the values the Constitution marks for special protection have been controversial, even shaky, but never before has its sense of an obligation to draw one been so obviously lacking” (John Hart Ely, clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren).

• Roe “is a lousy opinion that disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.” (Benjamin Wittes, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution).

• “[T]he very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision—the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution—strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous. Whatever abortion may be, it cannot simply be a matter of privacy…. As a layman, it’s hard for me to raise profound constitutional objections to the decision. But it is not hard to say it confounds our common-sense understanding of what privacy is. If a Supreme Court ruling is going to affect so many people then it ought to rest on perfectly clear logic and up-to-date science. Roe, with its reliance on trimesters and viability, has a musty feel to it, and its argument about privacy raises more questions than it answers…. “[Roe] is a Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up. It seems more fiat than argument…. Still, a bad decision is a bad decision. If the best we can say for it is that the end justifies the means, then we have not only lost the argument—but a bit of our soul as well” (Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist).

• “Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy) …. [C]lear governing constitutional principles… are not present” (Alan Dershowitz, former Harvard Law School professor).

• “In short, 30 years later, it seems increasingly clear that this pro-choice magazine was correct in 1973 when it criticized Roe on constitutional grounds. Its overturning would be the best thing that could happen to the federal judiciary, the pro-choice movement, and the moderate majority of the American people…. Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself. As a result, the pro-choice majority asks nominees to swear allegiance to the decision without being able to identify an intelligible principle to support it” (Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School professor, former clerk to Judge Abner Mikva).

• “Liberal judicial activism peaked with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion decision…. Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching” (Michael Kinsley, attorney, political journalist).

• “[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. This is not surprising. As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether. It supported that right via a lengthy, but purposeless, cross-cultural historical review of abortion restrictions and a tidy but irrelevant refutation of the straw-man argument that a fetus is a constitutional ‘person’ entited [sic] to the protection of the 14th Amendment…. By declaring an inviolable fundamental right to abortion, Roe short-circuited the democratic deliberation that is the most reliable method of deciding questions of competing values” (Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania Law School professor).

• “The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations…. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution” (Archibald Cox, JFK’s Solicitor General, former Harvard Law School professor).

Roe v. Wade, my friends, is the SCOTUS decision that “progressives” argue absolute fidelity to precedent demands Justices uphold. If they think “lousy,” “indefensible,” “barely coherent,” unintelligible, a-constitutional non-reasoning must be honored in slavish service to the political end of allowing feticide, I hate to imagine what they would have thought about revisiting Dred Scott.

Written by Frederick W. Claybrook, Jr. 

The significance of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case cannot be overstated. Pro-life citizens across the nation were praying fervently for the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court as they heard oral arguments Wednesday morning.

The law at the center of this case is Mississippi’s late-term abortion ban for pre-born babies 15 weeks gestation and older. Many experts believe that the Court may overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, at least in part, returning the issue of abortion back to the states.

Oral arguments went much as one would expect. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and, to a lesser extent, Elena Kagan, all made clear that they thought stare decisis should rule the day because otherwise it would look like the Court caved to public opinion. There was also some talk about reliance interests built up over 50 years.

Chief Justice John Roberts cast doubt on how a viability rule makes sense in light of the interests supposed to be furthered for women, i.e., making her own decisions and her circumstances. He pointed out more than once that the only issue they granted cert on was whether to continue to adhere to the viability rule and whether a 15-week line could pass constitutional muster, so he might be angling for a middle ground of striking down the viability rule but not totally discarding the undue burden standard of Casey.

Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett didn’t seem to be following suit, though. Instead, Kavanaugh pointed out that in some of what are now considered the Court’s most important decisions, the Court overruled prior precedent. He seemed to stake out a position that the Court should be “scrupulously neutral” on this issue and leave it to state and federal legislatures. He said that the interests of the mother wanting to abort and of the fetus in living were irreconcilable, which makes this matter so hard and counsels for the Court to stay out of it.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Barrett raised some interesting questions about the purported interests of women on which Roe and Casey based their decisions. Barrett pressed on why laws that allow women to hand over their infants shortly after delivery, thereby terminating all parental responsibilities, do not eliminate talk in the decisions about women controlling their lives.

Thomas pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld a state prosecution for abuse of a pregnant mother for ingesting controlled substances and harming her child. He never got a straight answer to why, if the state could do that if the ingestion was post-viability, it could not also do it if it was pre-viability or whether the Roe/Casey viability line would call for a different result because, if a woman can kill her child pre-viability, why can’t she abuse it.

Near the end of the clinic’s counsel’s argument, she said the common law provided a right to abort early in the pregnancy at the time the U.S. Constitution was adopted. The U.S. Solicitor General in her argument made a similar statement. Justice Samuel Alito jumped on appellee’s counsel, saying that the American Historical Association’s brief admitted that many states prohibited abortion at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, so how could it be considered a fundamental right. He didn’t mention Joseph Dellapenna’s brief, which obliterates these claims about the common law allowing abortion, but it seemed as if Alito was up on the common-law issue. (It is shameful, though, that counsel continue to spout these “myths,” also known as lies, about the common law.)

No direct questions were asked about whether an unborn child is covered by the due process and equal protection guarantees for “any person,” but Mississippi’s counsel, especially in his rebuttal, spoke of the many lives killed on account of Roe and Casey, although his overriding argument was that the matter should be left to the states.

The audio recording of the arguments is available HERE, and the transcript is available HERE.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks’ gestation on Wednesday, December 1st. This important case is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Center.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynne Fitch headed up the pro-life position. Attorneys had 30 minutes to argue their points. This landmark case provides an opportunity to present medical evidence on the development and viability of the unborn child that was not available in 1973 and has the potential to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Over 100 amicus briefs have been filed from both sides, including one on behalf of Illinois Family Institute. These briefs are read by the Justices prior to oral arguments and have the potential to touch their hearts on the importance of their decision.

In an October article for First Things, Princeton University law professor Robert P. George predicts that the U.S. Supreme Court will–and should–decide that there is no constitutional right to elective abortions:

As I write—as you read—unborn children are being slain. As a practical matter, Roe and Casey must be reversed before any of these children can enjoy the full protection of the law. Abortion will not end overnight. Some states will continue to permit the procedure until the Court ­acknowledges that the unborn possess the right to life. Even women who live in states that prohibit the procedure will be free to cross state lines. But we know that even modest obstacles save lives. The denial of federal funding for elective abortions is estimated to save some sixty thousand unborn children each year. So let us be frank. There is a cost to delay, and that cost comes in innocent lives.

PRAYER ALERT

Please pray fervently today as the nine Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court hear and consider the arguments regarding significant abortion restrictions in Mississippi. Pray that God would touch the hearts of the Justices, their clerks, and the media covering the case. As the debate rages, pray too that eyes and ears would be opened to the abortion industry’s barbaric practices.

We urge you to please fast and pray today:

• Pray that an honest fear of God, His justice, and Spirit of wisdom would settle upon the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

• Pray that God would forgive His people for allowing innocent blood to fill our land. Deuteronomy 19:10; Deuteronomy 21:8-9

• Pray that God would convict us as a nation for allowing the savage practice of human abortion to continue for nearly five decades. May God fill our hearts with repentance so that we would seek His forgiveness and cry out to Him for mercy. Lamentations 3:22-23

• Pray for those on the pro-life legal team and for Mississippi Attorney General Lynne Fitch. Pray that the arguments she presents will turn the hearts of the Justices and compel them to vote favorably on the case before them today. Proverbs 21:1

• Pray that the Justices choose to protect the millions of innocent unborn lives that are put in jeopardy by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

• Pray that the arguments of abortion proponents would fall flat before the Court.

• Pray that God would confuse the pro-abortion side and confound their words during arguments. Psalm 55:9

• Pray that the media would be honest in their reporting of the facts of this case and the science of human life.

• Pray that our friends, family members, and neighbors would see through the lies and emotional rhetoric used by abortion cheerleaders.

(A decision on this case is not expect to be issued until June, 2022.)

Read MORE:

Three Things You Need to Know About the Dobbs Case and the Future of the Pro-Life Movement

7 Things to Know About the Dobbs Abortion Case Now Before the U.S. Supreme Court

10 Things You Can Do to Defend the Unborn Ahead of Dobbs

U.S. Supreme Court Has Its Best Chance in Decades to Overturn Roe v. Wade, Protect Unborn Children

‘History Is Clearly on the Pro-Life Side’: ADF Counsel Erin Hawley Breaks Down Upcoming Supreme Court Abortion Case

Roe v Wade: Unconstitutional and Unjust

We recently read a great little sermon illustration in which a young boy asked his father, “Dad, I was watching a TV show about marine biologists. Why do scuba-divers jump backwards into the water?” His father wittily responded, “Because if they jumped forward, they’d still be in the boat!”

Scuba divers jump out of boats to investigate marine life in the coastal waters and oceans of the world. It is a way of visiting another ecosystem on our vast planet. Whether it is sunken wreckage, lost treasure or coral reefs, I can see how these diving excursions are great ways to escape the stresses of daily life.

Yet today, there are many people in our culture, in our families and even in our churches who might be tempted to jump out of the boat when things get stressful, depressing or uncomfortable. Those of us who still live in Illinois understand the added frustration of wicked and foolish political leadership. The temptation to move out of this state and into “calmer, peaceful waters” is very real.

Yet we should consider what Scripture has to say about escaping trials and tribulation. Right before He was arrested, Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane. He prayed John 17:14:

“I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.”  

Jesus could have easily prayed that God would deliver us out of the troubled waters of our world, but He didn’t. He prayed that we would remain in the world and that we would be protected from the evil one. Why didn’t He pray for our complete rescue? His prayer continues in John 17:18:

“As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

Our Lord and Savior, the Son of God, prayed that we would remain so we could be on mission in this world for the advancement of the Kingdom of God.

Yes, our state and our culture is in trouble. But these troubles are a reminder that we are called to be salt and light to a dying world.  David Jeremiah once said, “Today is the day to be a light shining in a dark world, fueled by the joy of the Lord.” May we be that salt and light to a dark and decaying world, all to the glory of God.

PRAYER ALERT

We cannot stress the urgency of your fervent prayers this week as our state lawmakers return to the Capitol for the second half of the Veto Session. There are a number of bad proposals pending in Springfield. Prayer and action are vitally important.

Appeal to God for His Help

• Praise God that many pro-life activists and pastors are headed to Springfield to speak out against the efforts to repeal the Parental Notice of Abortion Act and the repeal of the Health Care Right of Conscience Act. Please pray that these activists would be seen and heard by lawmakers. Pray that their presence and dialogue would help them understand the importance of parental rights and conscience rights. (Read more HERE.)

• Pray that our state lawmakers would understand the wisdom in keeping qualified (or limited), immunity for police officers in Illinois. Pray that the anti-police agenda to dismantle, dishearten and make defenseless would fall short.

Abortion

• Pray for the members of the U.S. Supreme Court as they will be hearing arguments regarding significant abortion regulations in Mississippi and Texas. Pray that God would touch the hearts of the nine Justices on the Court. Pray too, as the debate rages, that eyes and ears would be opened to the abortion industry’s murderous barbaric practices.

• Please pray for the last week of this year’s 40 Days for Life campaign, which ends on Saturday, Oct. 30. Pray that many prayer warriors would take advantage of this opportunity to be a silent witness against the murderous practice of “choice.” Pray that workers at these abortuaries would have a change of heart about their work and leave.

• Pray that every leader in our nation would come to realize that these are real human babies in the womb who deserve protection.

• Pray that the agenda of Satan and his wicked disciples to kill pre-born babies in the womb and encourage immoral sexual activities to innocent young children in government schools would be exposed and stopped.

Public School Exit

• Please continue to pray for our Rescuing Our Children initiative to encourage an exodus from government indoctrination centers. Rev. Ceasar LeFlore, our field director for this project, is meeting with pastors throughout the City of Chicago and suburbs and has been getting favorable responses.

• Pray for Illinois Family Institute and our annual banquet which is scheduled for Friday evening. Pray that the event would be a success, and that our keynote speaker, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, would encourage and challenge us to live up to the high calling of our faith in Christ Jesus.

For Those in Authority

For the next several weeks, please pray for the political leaders listed below. Pray that they would seek God’s wisdom when they make decisions that affect the people they work for. Pray that God would turn their hearts to Himself. (Proverbs 21:1)

Of course, this includes praying for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, JB Pritzker and Julia Stratton and those who serve in these administrations. Pray also for our two U.S. Senators, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth.

Please pray for the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

In addition, please pray for the following officials:

• • U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal Bennet (D-Connecticut)
  • U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri)
  • U.S. Representative Bobby Rush (D-Illinois)
  • U.S. Representative Peter Aguilar (D-California)
  • U.S. Representative Rick Allen (R-Georgia)
  • State Senator Scott Bennett (D-Champaign)
  • State Senator Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro)
  • State Representative Lakesia Collins (D-Chicago)
  • State Representative Dan Caulkins (R-Decatur)
  • YOUR local City/Village/Township Officials

For those who have been enjoying the waning days of summer away from news and social media, basking maskless by a refreshing body of water or hiking in a cool forest with a face as naked as a newborn babe’s, here’s what set ablaze the perpetually burning neurons of leftists: Texas banned all abortions performed on small humans whose hearts are beating and made anyone who facilitates the illegal killing of humans with beating hearts open to litigation. Sounds reasonable to me, but then again, I’ve never been a fan of killing defenseless humans who have committed no crime.

Following Texas’ prohibition of human slaughter after the first six weeks of life, the left lost what’s left of their minds.

With their feticidal minds unhinged at the prospect of mothers not being free to hire hitmen who identify as “physicians” to off their offspring, leftists proved again why they’re not known for skill in the use of evidence, sound analogical thinking, respect for science, respect for human rights, coherence, consistency, or morality.

Let’s take a cursory look at the darn things cultural regressives are muttering, sputtering, and tweeting:

Joe Biden, the self-identifying Catholic who claims his “avocation” is theology, recently said,

I respect people who … don’t support Roe v. Wade. I respect their views. I respect … those who believe life begins at the moment of conception and all. I respect that. Don’t agree, but I respect that.

But wait, in 2015 Biden said,

I’m prepared to accept that at the moment of conception there’s human life and being, but I’m not prepared to say that to other God-fearing, non-God-fearing people that have a different view.

So, which is it? Does he believe that at the moment of conception a new human life comes into existence or does he not? If not, what new science convinced him between age 72 and 78 that the union of human egg and sperm no longer marks the beginning of the life of a new human being?

(As an aside, why can’t leftists who claim to believe that women can be born in men’s bodies and that men can menstruate and give birth be like Biden and respect the views of God-fearing and non-God-fearing people who disagree?)

Disgraceful CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, brother of disgraced former governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, tried to suggest that 6-week-old human fetuses don’t have heartbeats because they don’t have hearts. The Mayo Clinic dares to dissent:

Growth is rapid this week [sixth week]. Just four weeks after conception, the neural tube along your baby’s back is closing. The baby’s brain and spinal cord will develop from the neural tube. The heart and other organs also are starting to form and the heart begins to beat.

Please note, the Mayo Clinic refers to the baby as a “baby.”

CNN’s Joy Reid fretted that the Texas law signals the Handmaid’s Tale is coming to America—you know, the story of fertile breeding women being forced to have sex with ruling elite men while their wives watch. Reid’s guest, failed presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, nodding in agreement, fretted about the law’s impact on the “most vulnerable among us”:

This law is about bearing down on the most vulnerable among us. It’s bearing down on the woman, or the transperson, or the nonbinary who’s workin’ three jobs.

Warren views pregnant “transpersons” who are workin’ three jobs as more vulnerable than the babies whom they seek to kill.

Bette Midler tweeted,

I suggest that all women refuse to have sex with men until they are guaranteed the right to choose by Congress.

Midler forgot to specify the direct object of the transitive verb “choose.” To be clear, she means the right to choose to have incipient human life killed.

I completely agree with Midler that if a woman plans to chemically starve her baby fetus or have her fetus dismembered as her back-up contraception plan, it’s best she not have sex.

Millionaire leftist co-founders of the ridesharing company Lyft, Logan Green and John Zimmer, have gone all out in support of killing tiny humans:

Lyft is donating $1 million to Planned Parenthood to help ensure that transportation is never a barrier to healthcare access.

Killing humans is not “healthcare” no matter how many times leftists use this Newspeakian euphemism. Anyone who cares about the health of womb-dwellers ought not use Lyft.

And any leftist who believes that practices that have a “disparate impact” on persons of color are racist practices should know that black babies are killed in utero at much higher rates than are white babies:

Black women have been experiencing induced abortions at a rate nearly 4 times that of White women for at least 3 decades, and likely much longer. … In the current unfolding environment, there may be no better metric for the value of Black lives.

The millions of dollars donated by racists Green and Zimmer are going to facilitate the racist practices of Planned Parenthood.

The ever-snippy White House spokesperson Jen Psaki scolded a reporter for asking about how Biden reconciles his Catholic faith with his support for human slaughter. Psaki’s retort was revelatory in that it demonstrated how un-woke she is.

Without even asking for the reporter’s pronouns, Psaki just assumed the reporter was a man, presumably because he looks like a man and sounds like a man. Psaki asserted presumptuously that the reporter has never been pregnant. How does she know? Doesn’t Psaki know that in the woke playbook, some women have men’s bodies, and some men have women’s bodies and can get pregnant? I guess Psaki is an intolerant, hateful, ignorant bigot.

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin claimed that the refusal of the U.S. Supreme Court to block the Texas law constitutes “a real blow against the U.S. Supreme Court’s institutional reputation.”  It’s strange to hear Toobin, who pleasured himself on a work Zoom call, express concern over “reputation.” But then again, Toobin has a vested interest in keeping abortion legal: He pressured a former paramour with whom he had had an extramarital affair to abort their now 12-year-old son. Toobin may be planning for his future “needs.”

Toobin also described Roe v. Wade as the “second most famous opinion of the last 100 years.” He should have said “most infamous opinion of the last 150 years.” Here’s what liberal legal scholars and pundits have said about the infamous Roe v. Wade opinion:

• “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” (Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School professor)

• “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible.” (Edward Lazarus, former clerk to SCOTUS Justice Harry Blackmun)

• “Blackmun’s [U.S. Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference.” (William Saletan, Slate magazine writer)

• Roe “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” (John Hart Ely, former law professor at Yale, Harvard, and Stanford universities)

• “[T]he very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision—the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution—strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous.” (Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist)

• “[T]he finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself.” (Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School professor)

• “Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching.” (Michael Kinsley, attorney, political journalist).

• As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether” (Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania Law School professor)

• “Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution.” (Archibald Cox, JFK’s Solicitor General, former Harvard Law School professor)

One law professor who has no need of constitutional grounding for abortion is UC Irvine law professor and cheerleader for legalized human slaughter, Michele Goodwin. Goodwin is a long-time and influential advocate of the legal right to kill the preborn. She and co-author Erwin Chemerinsky set forth their goals in a 2017 paper titled, “Abortion: a Woman’s Private Choice”:

We begin by justifying the protection of rights not found in the text of the Constitution. … Foremost among these rights is control over one’s body and over one’s reproduction. … Finally in Part III we discuss what it would mean for abortion to be regarded as a private choice. In this Part, we identify three implications: a) restoring strict scrutiny to examining laws regulating abortions, which would mean that the government must be neutral between childbirth and abortion; b) preventing the government from denying funding for abortions when it pays for childbirth; and c) invalidating the countless types of restrictions on abortion. (emphasis added)

Goodwin rightly condemns the “notorious eugenics period in the United States,” in which allegedly defective preborn babies were forcibly killed by the government. Goodwin fails, however, to acknowledge the difference between the government mandating that a doctor perform a surgical procedure on the body of a woman without her consent and the government prohibiting a doctor from dismembering or in other ways destroying the body of a human fetus without his or her consent.

Goodwin also believes the Texas bill to preserve human life is analogous to the Fugitive Slave Act. She believes that the grotesque law that incentivized citizens to help send humans into bondage is analogous to a law that incentivizes citizens to help prevent the slaughter of humans. Some might counter that the Texas law is more akin to laws that offer rewards for the capture of killers than it is to the Fugitive Slave Act.

Now that leftists have lost control of the U.S. Supreme Court, they’re stomping their angry feet and demanding the Court be jampacked with leftists, something conservatives have not called for to repair the grievous harm done by seven Justices in 1973. Neither the Constitution nor the will of the people matters to “progressives.”

There is no constitutional or moral right to have humans killed because of their dependency status, location, absence of self-consciousness, lack of full development, disabilities, anticipated future, maternal inconvenience, insufficient maternal finances, or crimes of their fathers. A civilized, compassionate, moral, and just society does not find the final solution to poverty, disease, disability, or any other form of human suffering in the killing of others. And in the Constitution, there is no free-floating absolute right to privacy in which humans can do anything they feel like doing to other human beings. Leftist U.S. Supreme Court Justices invented such a “right” out of whole blood-stained cloth.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Progressives-Say-the-Darndest-Things-About-Killing-Tiny-Humans.mp3

Written by Rick Claybrook, Esq.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Hosanna-Tabor (2012) and Our Lady of Guadalupe (2020) embraced what Justice Samuel Alito described as the “so-called ministerial exception,” a doctrine that exempts religious organizations from discrimination laws when dealing with certain employees. Why “so-called”? Because the exemption covers more than just ministers or the top officials of a religious organization. It also covers some teachers in church elementary schools, as the U.S. Supreme Court held in both of those cases. The cutting issues now are how to define other employees who will be covered and who will decide which individuals qualify.

The majority of justices are advancing a loose definition that weighs the employee’s religious duties and functions. But that leads to decisions like the recent one of the highest court in Massachusetts, which, after sifting the evidence, ruled that a social work faculty member of Gordon College, a forthrightly Christian college, was not a “minister.” Yes, the court reasoned, the college required her to integrate a Christian worldview into her teaching and to be a moral exemplar and counselor for her students, but the court could not see what social work had to do with religion.

The problem on the surface is that most state court judges went to secular colleges and “just don’t get it.” The deeper problem is that no secular judge (even U.S. Supreme Court justices) should even be trying to determine whether a faculty member at a Christian college must conform to the college’s statement of faith and practice for the college to best carry out its mission.  That should solely be the decision of the college.

The U.S. Supreme Court in both Hosanna-Tabor and Our Lady of Guadalupe correctly observed that the “ministerial exception” grows out of the larger doctrine of so-called “church autonomy,” so-called because it covers all sincerely religious organizations, not just churches. A key principle of that doctrine is that secular officials have neither the competence nor authority to decide religious questions, and hence, they must keep hands off the internal governance of religious organizations in any way that affects their religious ministry or involves examining religious doctrine.

Since a person employed by an organization is central to its internal governance, it follows that religious organizations must be the ones to decide which of its employees must comply with its faith and conduct principles. This is the position Justice Clarence Thomas took when concurring in both cases, and he was joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch in Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The Massachusetts court worried that if it adopted such a principle, a religious organization could abuse the process by saying that a janitor was protected by the ministerial exception. The implications that motivated the court are all false: religious organizations will not, as a general matter, try to abuse their legal privileges; janitors will not always be outside the proper scope of the exception (they too may offer prayers and provide worship content); and, more broadly, there is a well-accepted check on potential abuse that secular courts can administer.

This check is the requirement that a religious organization’s assertion of who is a “minister” must be “sincere” or “in good faith.” In the case of a janitor, a court could look to see whether the religious organization had consistently imposed faith and practice requirements on those performing the task. Secular courts have applied this limiting principle of good faith for years in cases involving religious claims, and it should be applied in the ministerial exception context as well.

The Illinois Family Institute is filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court requesting that they review the Gordon College case and to adopt that rule.

Between now and Labor Day, you can double the impact of your tax deductible donations to IFI!

A group of donors are working with us to offer a $40,000 dollar-for-dollar matching challenge
to help us raise $80,000 for “Rescuing the Children” initiative here in Illinois!

A nationwide group of state legislators and attorneys have crafted an amicus (friend of the court) legal brief in support of the State of Mississippi in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, seeking to overturn the unlawful Roe v. Wade decision.

The Mississippi law being challenged, with a few exceptions, prohibits abortions within the State, including even the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, when modern medicine is still incapable of supporting life outside the womb.

The U.S. Supreme Court, on May 17^th, granted a hearing on the following question raised by Dobbs: “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”

Of course, we know the truth that no prohibitions on elective abortion are unconstitutional. [1]

This brief contains three great strengths:

• It represents the group who has truly suffered the greatest harm: the States and the People, whose right to justly govern, reserved to them in the 10^th Amendment, has been taken by the Federal Government’s egregious Roe v. Wade decision,

• It represents the opinion of a statistical majority of U.S. citizens and legislators, and

• It affords legislators in the political minority in their own States, such as Illinois, a voice equal to, or possibly greater than, all legislators throughout the nation.

Republican lawmakers in Illinois are severely outnumbered (a “super-minority”) in both the Illinois House (45/118) and Illinois Senate (18/59), and are therefore typically unable to advance (or stop) meaningful (or harmful) legislation.  As friends of the Court, they can now have the same voice as all other legislators.

There are currently 7,383 [2] state legislators in the United States, duly elected by a majority of 168.31 million U.S. voters [3], of whom 3,977 (or 54%) are members of the pro-life, Republican Party, and have been invited to join the brief.

What did Roe really do?  It announced a new right, which removed Legislators’ (and thereby, the People’s) ability to protect unwanted humans from being murdered.

As stated in the brief, “State legislatures exist to protect the health and welfare of their States’ respective citizens.  This includes the creation of standards and regulations that protect the most vulnerable in society.  However, as demonstrated by the Fifth Circuit’s decision below, flawed precedent [4] interferes with this constitutionally delegated duty.”

“Substantive Due Process”: The Court’s Tool of Federal Tyranny Against the States.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. ~Judges 17:6

Substantive Due Process is the underlying legal concept used in Roe and others to justify the Court’s remaking of the U.S. Constitution to its own liking.

This logically inconsistent concept was invented in law school textbooks in the 1930s and not embraced by the U.S. Supreme Court prior to 1952 [5].

Of course, ordinary citizens and their children, possessing even the most basic grasp of logic, understand by the redundant term “procedural due process,” (Show me a “process” that isn’t “procedural,” and I’ll show you a bridge that is for sale.) that “substantive due process” is merely a cleverly-worded legal oxymoron which enables judges to justify making the law themselves (i.e., Positive Law, or law made by custom or convention, which can be changed as desired by those in power).

Substantive Due Process, as demonstrated by cases such as Roe, opens a wide door for an unelected committee of nine Ivy League lawyers to selectively remove virtually any topic from the political process (i.e., the States and the People) that it, in its great moral wisdom, sees fit.

From the beginning, the Rule of Law in the United States has been “Natural Law,” or existing law that applies consistently to everyone; certain unalienable rights, endowed to all mankind by their Creator (i.e., Jehovah of the Bible).

The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord;
He turns it wherever He will. ~Proverbs 21:1

Please pray fervently that God would:

1. Continue to strengthen the resolve of the two Justices (Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) who have unwaveringly upheld their oath to support and defend the Constitutional Rule of Law,

2. Give great courage to four Justices (Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts) to understand that it is their duty to finally overturn this unlawful decision, and

3. Forcibly turn the hearts of the three Justices (Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor) whose previous positions have contributed to the tyrannous legalized murder of tens of millions.

Footnotes

[1]In the 105 years between the ratification of the 14^th Amendment in 1868 and Roe’s 1973 judicial fiat that it was unconstitutional, 46 states prohibited abortion, either entirely or with exceptions.  Illinois passed the 2^nd such law in 1833.  During the 1866-1868 legislative sessions, several states passed criminal abortion laws while the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was circulating among them.  No one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. “That resolves these cases. When it comes to determining the meaning of a vague constitutional provision—such as ‘due process of law’ or ‘equal protection of the laws’—it is unquestionable that the People who ratified that provision did not understand it to prohibit a practice that remained both universal and uncontroversial in the years after ratification. We have no basis for striking down a practice that is not expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment’s text, and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread, and unchallenged use dating back to the Amendment’s ratification.” – Antonin Scalia, dissenting from Obergefell v. Hodges (2015, creating a right to same-sex “marriage”).

[2]https://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/partisan-composition.aspx

[3]https://www.statista.com/statistics/273743/number-of-registered-voters-in-the-united-states/

[4]I.e., Roe v. Wade.

[5]https://humandefense.com/criminal-abortion-before-the-fourteenth-amendment/

Last week many news story headlines made it sound as if the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. In reality, this moderate court again avoided taking a strong stand on a politically charged issue, and simply ruled that the Plaintiffs had no standing to bring the case. You could call this a dodge on a technicality, and it was, but even Justice Clarence Thomas, a critic of Obamacare, who criticized the court for not following through logically with past decisions, particularly on the individual mandate, agreed with the lack of standing.

President Joe Biden used the opportunity to mischaracterize the ruling as a sweeping affirmation of the terrible program and called for its expansion. “Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision is a major victory for all Americans benefitting from this groundbreaking and life-changing law,” Biden’s handlers wrote in a statement for him.

Are Americans really benefiting from the Affordable Care Act? Not according to a new state-by-state study. Many Americans are paying a lot more, with fewer choices, than they were before the politicians “fixed” health care for us.  (Democrat leaders, specifically own this failure, as no Republican voted for the ACA – 34 Democrats also voted against it.)

The horrifically misnamed “Affordable Care Act” is one of the biggest frauds ever committed against the American people. In Indiana, Hoosiers, are now paying twice the amount for individual health insurance than they paid before Obamacare was passed.  As the Heritage Foundation notes, “Hoosiers paid an average $484 a month for coverage in 2019. That is $243 more than what they paid in 2013, the last year before Obamacare took effect. Additionally, Indiana has 8 fewer health insurers offering Obamacare exchange plans in 2021 than offered individual market plans in 2013.”

Hoosiers have fewer choices and higher costs, (and probably less coverage with higher deductibles) but in a weird way, it could be even worse.  Nationally, the average monthly premium paid by consumers in 2019 was 129 percent higher than before Obamacare took effect. Indiana has seen only a 101 percent increase in insurance costs.

Citizens in five states (Alabama, Nebraska, Missouri, West Virginia, and Wyoming) have seen their average monthly premiums triple in price. Only one state, Massachusetts, saw insurance premiums decline since Obamacare became law. Nationally, there are now 142 fewer insurance providers than there were before Obamacare. Less competition means higher prices and fewer choices.

On at least 15 different occasions, President Barak Obama claimed that premiums would go down. He specifically said that the average savings would be $2500 a year for a family. Rather than decreasing $200 a month as promised, Hoosiers have paid that much more each month.

This reminds me of what economist Milton Friedman who once said, “The government’s solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.”

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Written by Liberty McArtor

Proponents of court-packing argue that adding more judges to our nation’s judiciary is the magical solution to urgent problems, and even paint the picture that doing so is an act of goodwill. But far from being a necessity, court-packing is a brazen power-grab by one political party to fix the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices or federal judges to get the political results they want.

And when we look at the history of court-packing across the world, there’s no way around it: Court-packing is a dangerous scheme with severe implications that would erase freedom and rights for future generations and destroy America’s constitutional order.

To equip you—and all Americans—in exposing the lie and the radical plan to overthrow America’s court system, here are four common (or rather, bogus) court-packing claims debunked with facts and logic.

1. Myth: The Supreme Court has been stolen.

Fact: The U.S. Supreme Court currently has nine highly qualified, legitimately appointed and confirmed justices. The far Left just doesn’t like some of them.

The reason court-packing advocates say the U.S. Supreme Court was “stolen” is because they disagree with the political party and the president who appointed the latest three justices (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett). For instance, they claimed that Justice Barrett’s confirmation happened too quickly. But as First Liberty President and CEO Kelly Shackelford has noted, justices have been confirmed in the same fashion nearly thirty (30) times. In fact, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom Justice Barrett replaced, was confirmed in a similar time frame.

Ironically, stealing the U.S. Supreme Court is exactly what would happen if the coup attempt to add two, four or even six more justices were to succeed.

2. Myth: Court-packing has popular support.

Fact: Court-packing is widely unpopular—and historically has been within both parties. 

Polls conducted in the last few years show the majority of Americans oppose court-packing.

• In 2020, a New York Times-Siena College poll found that fifty-eight percent (58%) of likely voters opposed packing the U.S. Supreme Court.
  
• In 2019, Rasmussen polls found that only twenty-seven percent (27%) of Americans favor packing the U.S> Supreme Court with additional justices.

What’s more, opposition to court-packing is prevalent across the political spectrum.

Here are some quotes from several politicians and prominent figures on both sides of the political aisle, starting with the current president:

• President Joe Biden (D):

In 1983: “President Roosevelt clearly had the right to send to the United States Senate and the United States Congress a proposal to pack the court. … But it was a bonehead idea. It was a terrible, terrible mistake to make.”

In 2020: “I’m not a fan of court packing.”

• Ted Cruz (R-TX)

In 2020: “Packing the Court means one very specific thing: expanding the number of justices to achieve a political outcome. It is wrong. It is an abuse of power.”

• Joe Manchin (D-WV)

In 2020: “I want to allay those fears, I want to rest those fears for you right now because when they talk about whether it be packing the courts, or ending the filibuster, I will not vote to do that.”

• Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

In 2020: “I can’t think of a more destabilizing event for America than changing the number of [justices] on the Supreme Court every election cycle, because it becomes a winner take all for the Court.”

• Jon Ossoff (D-GA):

In 2020: “We shouldn’t expand the Supreme Court just because a justice may be confirmed with whom we disagree on policy.”

• Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933 – 2020):

In 2019: “If anything would make the court look partisan…it would be that—one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.’”

The truth is both parties have long opposed court-packing, and the sudden flip by a select group of elites on the Democratic side on this issue exposes this scheme for what it really is: a barefaced power grab.

3. Myth: Court-packing is a routine procedure.

Fact: Changes to the size of the U.S. Supreme Court are very rare in America’s history, and the few partisan attempts at court-packing have been failures.

Congress has changed the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices only a total of seven times in American history. The radical Left distorts this fact to make you think court-packing is normal. But in nearly 250 years and 120 Congresses, the seven prior changes (many of them due to workloads and the addition of states to the Republic) do not offer a justification for packing the Court today. On the contrary, the seven changes show how rare court-packing is in America. What’s more, the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices hasn’t changed at all since 1869—that’s over 150 years!

4. Myth: Court-packing will save democracy.

Fact: Court packing will crush civil liberties by making the U.S. Supreme Court a partisan tool of whoever holds power.  

Using a baseball metaphor, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts once said of a judge’s role, “It’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.”

What would happen if several partisan justices were added to the U.S. Supreme Court—justices who were instructed to “pitch” and “bat” for the team that appointed them? The U.S. Supreme Court would become an extension of the party currently in power. The fundamental principle of the “separation of powers” would be destroyed.

If more and more partisan judges are added to courts every election cycle, those in the minority—people who don’t agree with the current ruling party—would have their freedom squashed under the weight of a rigged judiciary. Civil liberties like religious freedom would have no stable protection.

Far from saving the principles of our democratic republic, court-packing would lead to the demolition of constitutional rights—just like it happened in other nations, such as Venezuela and Argentina.

This article was originally published at FirstLiberty.org.

Written by Terence P. Jeffrey

Back in 1994, a worried Delaware taxpayer sent a message to his senator. “Please don’t force me to pay for abortions against my conscience,” he said.

Joe Biden sent an unambiguous response.

“I will continue to abide by the same principle that has guided me throughout my 21 years in the Senate: those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them,” he wrote.

“As you may know,” Biden continued, “I have consistently — on no fewer than 50 occasions — voted against federal funding of abortions.”

“(T)he government,” Biden said, “should not tell those with strong convictions against abortion, such as you and I, that we must pay for them.”

Today, Biden is the most powerful man in the United States government — and he is demanding that Americans “with strong convictions against abortion” must pay for them with their tax dollars.

This is the moral price Biden was willing to pay to become vice president and then president as the nominee of a party that will not tolerate leaders who insist on defending the innocent unborn.

When Biden ran for president in 2020, he made clear on his campaign website that he favored not only nationwide abortion on demand but also federal funding of it.

“Vice President Biden favors repealing the Hyde Amendment,” his website said. This is the amendment Congress has habitually added to annual appropriations bills over more than four decades to prohibit funding of abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is endangered.

“Biden will work to codify Roe v. Wade,” said his website, “and his Justice Department will do everything in its power to stop the rash of state laws that so blatantly violate Roe v. Wade.”

Roe, of course, is the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared abortion a “right.”

Biden — in 2020 — also said he would: “Restore federal funding for Planned Parenthood.” In 2019, according to its annual report, Planned Parenthood performed 354,871 abortions.

When Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 bill — the so-called American Rescue Plan — was being considered in the U.S. House, Reps. Jackie Walorski (R-IN), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), and Virginia Foxx (R-NC), offered a Hyde-type amendment to prevent it from funding abortions. This amendment was co-sponsored by 203 of their colleagues.

“Without Hyde protections in the reconciliation package, over $414 billion in taxpayer dollars could potentially be used to pay for elective abortions or plans that cover elective abortions,” said a statement from Walorski’s office.

But Democrats on the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee rejected the amendment and the House Rules Committee refused to allow it to be considered on the U.S. House floor.

U.S. Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ), co-chair of the Bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, then noted in the U.S. House debate on the bill how Biden had flip-flopped on federal funding of abortion. Smith demonstrated this point by quoting from and linking to the letter Biden had written to his constituent in 1994 and a similar letter Biden had authored in 1977.

“Mr. Biden once wrote to constituents explaining his support for laws against funding for abortion by saying it would ‘protect both the woman and her unborn child,'” Smith said.

“I agree,” said Smith.

But Biden no longer agrees with himself.

At the White House press briefing on Feb. 16, Owen Jensen of EWTN asked Biden press secretary Jen Psaki: “We know where President Biden stands on the Hyde Amendment, but that being said, can this administration right now guarantee, if the American Rescue Plan is passed, that no taxpayer dollars will go to the abortion industry?”

“Well, the president’s view of the Hyde Amendment is well known, as you have stated in your question,” Psaki responded in part of her answer.

“He’s shared his view on the Hyde Amendment,” she went on to say. “I don’t think I have anything new for you.”

Jensen pressed her for a direct answer. “Can the administration guarantee those tax dollars won’t be used for abortions?” he asked.

“Well, I think, Owen, as I’ve just noted,” she responded, “three-quarters of the public supports the components of the package, wants to see the pandemic get under control, wants to see people put back to work, vaccines in arms. So, I think that answers your question.”

Psaki would not directly state the plain truth: Yes, Biden’s COVID-19 bill will use tax dollars to pay for abortions.

But she could not deny it — because it does.

When the bill came up in the U.S. Senate on Friday, U.S. Senator James Lankford (R-OK), (for whom this writer’s daughter works) offered a Hyde-type amendment to prevent it from funding abortion. As a procedural matter, the amendment needed 60 votes. It won only 52.

Thus, the U.S. Senate version of the bill funds abortion, too.

As the U.S. Senate was considering it, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, joined eight other leading bishops in issuing a statement.

“For 45 years, the United States Congress — whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans — has maintained that taxpayers should not be forced against their conscience to pay for abortions,” these bishops said.

“We ask all Members of Congress to include the same protections against abortion funding that have been present in every COVID relief bill to date, and every annual spending bill for almost half a century,” they said.

Biden, this nation’s second Catholic president, is now poised to sign a bill that defies this request and forces all American taxpayers to pay for abortions.

Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor in chief of CNSnews.com.
To find out more about him, visit the Creators Syndicate web page.

While a number of cases have reached the U.S. Supreme Court challenging government pandemic restrictions that limit churches’ and members free exercise of religion, Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church v. Pritzker presents direct legal conflict between jurisdictions (traditionally the primary basis for Supreme Court hearing) and raises crucial additional questions that need resolution by the U.S. Supreme Court, to re-protect and strengthen our first and most important liberty.

For these reasons, IFI has joined an Amicus Brief in support of Elim Romanian.

Until 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court had rightly afforded the highest level of protection to our first freedom, the free exercise of religion.  In order for actions of government to restrict free exercise of religion, the U.S. Supreme Court applied a standard called strict scrutiny, under which the government had to prove: 1) a compelling state interest, and 2) that any restriction was narrowly tailored to actually accomplish that interest.

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.  In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens.  ~George Washington.

In addition to other law, such as tax exemption, and housing allowance for “ministers of the gospel”, the Church’s freedom to gather and worship is protected no less than four times in the First Amendment alone, forbidding government from: establishment of religion, and prohibition of free exercise, speech and assembly.

However, in its decision in Employment Division v. Smith, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the Constitution meant something different than it had for over a century, and reduced the standard to “facially neutral and generally applied,” which demoted free exercise of religion to the same level as any other government restriction on freedom.

In response, Congress and 21 states including Illinois (but not California, Nevada or New York, the subjects of the cases related to Elim) passed Religious Freedom Restoration Acts to restore the strict scrutiny standard.  In the following 30 years, these laws have been challenged and weakened, and the Church in 29 other states has gone without this important extra protection.

Several Justices; a potential majority, have recently signaled the desire to correct this error. Elim is the best current vehicle for the Court to restore this most important freedom.

Earlier in the pandemic, a number of challenges to government restriction on free exercise rights were presented in multiple federal circuits, and largely rejected (e.g., Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley, Nevada v. Sisolak).  Unwilling to intervene the U.S. Supreme Court denied appeals, even in an earlier version of Elim v. Pritzker (which has been renewed in this case).

“…this Court, which consists of only nine men and women, all of them successful lawyers who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School…Not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans), or even a Protestant of any denomination.”  ~Justice Antonin Scalia, Dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges

The make-up of the High Court has changed for the better since Justice Scalia’s assertion that there was “not a single evangelical Christian,” (including himself), and even since this recent unwillingness to defend the Church’s Constitutional liberty amidst often onerous COVID restrictions.  To God’s glory, President Donald J. Trump was able to make 3 apparently sound appointments, including one protestant (Gorsuch, Episcopal – replacing Scalia) and possibly even an evangelical Catholic, in Justice Amy Barrett.

Accordingly, the U.S. Supreme Court has changed course in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn vs. Cuomo and Southbay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, from owing “significant deference to politically accountable officials,” to now even Chief Justice John Roberts (for a 6-3 majority in Southbay) conceding that such “deference, though broad, has its limits.”

This change creates a conflict between rulings and federal jurisdictions, which is one of the primary reasons for the U.S. Supreme Court to grant a hearing (the request for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case is called a “Writ of Certiorari”).

The amicus meaning “friend,” (of the court) brief IFI has joined, encourages a ruling on several additional key issues, including:

• Religious liberty should be applied to the community, or the Church corporately, not just to individuals. This element of religious exercise has greatly eroded to the extent that the Court has been unwilling to even define “religion.”
• Churches must have the same exceptions as “essential” services.
• Exceptions to restrictions, even with a compelling interest (i.e., reducing COVID spread), must be no worse for religious practice and organizations than for comparable “secular” ones. (Really, such exceptions should be even greater for First Amendment protected classes. One might say that the U.S. Constitution has pre-determined them to be “essential.”)
• Limits on religious practices and institutions should require the least restrictive means possible, and that means should be rationally calculated to actually achieve the compelling state interest. This is a request to return completely to the strict scrutiny test.

In the more recent COVID cases, the majority signaled a potential return to the historic strict scrutiny standard (maximum Constitutional protection) for free exercise of religion, requiring that New York and California prove their regulations, which obviously target religion for differential treatment, are narrowly tailored to achieving a compelling government interest (reducing COVID spread).

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice;
but when a wicked man rules, the people groan. ~Proverbs 29:2

While the 6-3 majority coalition in Southbay is very fragmented, with five different opinions on the outcome (4 separate concurrences from the majority: Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, and one dissent by the usual liberal justices: Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer), it appears that 5 to 6 Justices may favor a return to the strict scrutiny standard. 

In this case, these new Justices have already established a desperately needed check upon the ultra-liberal extremist control in the executive and legislative branches.  Also encouraging is the Chief Justice’s affirmation of his loyalty to the Constitutional text in refusal to preside over a proceeding to remove a former president from his former office.

Nonetheless, all but two of the members of this same Court have also shown a willingness to punt the Constitution in the face of pressure in the Texas v. Pennsylvania election challenge.

The Governor, using Illinois taxpayer dollars (i.e., the Attorney General’s office – they should be defending the people) to defend his restriction of their rights, has stalled this case at every turn by:

• delaying response until the last possible deadline (i.e., at 10:00 p.m. on the night before the Supreme Court was to rule on Elim Pentecostal Church’s emergency appeal to open for Easter)
• not responding to Elim’s petition for Certiorari, until the Court ordered him to file a response
• re-using arguments of mootness already rejected by the Court in Roman Catholic Diocese (the Governor changed his Executive Order at the last moment and then responded that Elim was no longer being harmed).

There will no doubt be numerous other attacks, both philosophical and political, every step of the way, against this Court, with a majority who has expressed a philosophy of solid textual interpretation of the Constitution, compatible with this Nation’s historic religious heritage.

This is major progress, but there is yet a long way to go for a Court which has for the past 48 (out of 245) years enshrined a right to murder children before they are born.

We must, must, must constantly uphold them in prayer.

Pray every day that:

• God will change the hearts of those Justices who have been unwilling to protect and defend the broad freedom of religion clearly given in the First Amendment,
• He will influence changes of bad legal reasoning,
• He will give great courage to stand to those on the Court who already agree,
• Elim will become the ultimate Religious Freedom Restoration Act, correcting previous wrong denial of freedom by the Court, and
• Such a reversal will lead to other reversals of bad law, such as Roe v. Wade.

Please consider supporting the good work of Illinois Family Institute.

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.

Written by Greg Burt

Joe Biden has announced his intent to nominate California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). But Becerra raises deep concerns among religious conservatives fighting to protect their First Amendment free speech and religious liberty rights. They are leary of Becerra because he defended the anti-free speech California law (AB 775), struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, that forced pro-life care centers to promote state-sponsored abortions. They are also alarmed over comments he made before the state Assembly three years ago when he said religious liberty is only for “individuals,” not “institutions.”

California Family Council President Jonathan Keller had this to say about the nomination. “On November 7, Joe Biden claimed victory in the presidential race, saying ‘we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy.’ But his nomination of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to lead the Department of Health and Human Services raises grave concerns,” Keller said. “The Secretary of HHS is one of the most important positions in the federal government. But Mr. Becerra is a radical ideologue who rejects First Amendment protections for religious organizations, even earning a rebuke from the U.S. Supreme Court. It’s hard to see how nominating such an activist is consistent with Mr. Biden’s pledge to be a president for all Americans.”

Becerra made his views on religious liberty known in response to questions from California Assemblyman James Gallagher during his confirmation hearing for California Attorney General on January 10, 2017. Gallagher asked Becerra what he thought about AB 775 and another proposed bill, SB 1146, which would have forced religious universities to change their housing policies and moral behavior codes to avoid punishment.

“On religious protections, the protection for religion is for the individual,” Becerra explained.  “I think it is important to distinguish between protections that you are affording to the individual to exercise his or her religion freely, versus protections you are giving to some institution or entity who is essentially bootstrapping the first amendment protections on behalf of somebody else.”

Gallagher took great exception to Becerra’s statement saying it reflected a “fundamental misunderstanding of the freedom of religion and freedom of association.” Gallagher expressed his objections on the floor of the State Assembly when he explained why he opposed Becerra’s nomination as California’s next Attorney General.

“The freedom of religion and the First Amendment applies just as much to the mosque as it does to the Muslim; it applies just as much to the gurdwara as it does to the Sikh; it applies just as much to the church as it does to the Christian,” Gallagher said.  “It applies just as much to religious non-profits, universities, and places of education. Their religious rights need to be protected just as much.”

Watch the full Gallagher/Becerra exchange here.

This article was originally published at CaliforniaFamily.org.

Written by Kelle Berry

Recently, an activist group known as the Secular Democrats of America (SDA) sent a document to the president and the administration with a directive “to take back the mantle of religious freedom and pluralism.”

On the surface, the title—Restoring Constitutional Secularism and Patriotic Pluralism in the White House—makes the SDA’s mission sound appealing. The document calls to:

“…Oppose discrimination against atheists, agnostics, humanists, seekers, religious and nonreligious persons and to champion the value of freedom of thought and conscience…”

This even makes it sound harmonious with First Liberty’s own mission of protecting religious freedom for all Americans. After all, the First Amendment grants everyone the right to freely exercise their religious beliefs, convictions and to act according to their conscience without government censorship, threat, or coercion.

However, scratching beneath the surface, one sees that the SDA’s demands are much more dangerous. Inside the document, one finds a detailed “blueprint” redefining religious freedom in a way that would be unrecognizable to America’s Founders.

Building a Higher Wall of Separation?

Invoking America’s third president, the SDA implores a return to a “Jeffersonian approach to governance.” In other words, the SDA is petitioning to fortify a higher “wall of separation” between church and state.

Many high school civics students are undoubtedly familiar with those words from Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. But what may not be known is that Jefferson wrote them to reassure the church that the First Amendment ensured the government would not interfere in their religious activities. At no time did Jefferson believe that religion and government could not mix.

Indeed, one need look no further than Jefferson’s attendance at church services held inside the U.S. Capitol itself as evidence of his approval of strong church-state relations.

Jefferson and a vast majority of our nation’s Founders understood that faith is not only permissible in the public square, but also beneficial. Houses of worship and religious organizations all faiths care for the sick, feed the hungry, and shelter the homeless. And the benefits don’t stop with charity. A recent study reports that religion contributes $1.2 trillion to the U.S. economy.

In stark contrast to the Founders’ constitutional intent, the SDA commands employees “to separate their personal religious beliefs from their work.” Sadly, some government officials have completely bought into this unconstitutional view.

First Liberty continues to protect Coach Joe Kennedy’s right as a high school football coach to pray alone after games. If the SDA gets its way, Coach Kennedy and millions of other Americans who are government employees will suffer irreparable harm to their First Amendment rights—putting them in the untenable position of choosing between their faith and their job.

Government employees are not the only ones who will suffer under the SDA’s aggressive plan.

Private religious organizations who have historically been able to work with the government are also threatened. In the case of Fulton v. City of Pennsylvania, currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, Catholic adoption agencies that have, for decades, worked with the government to provide loving homes for adoptive children have been told to sacrifice their religious identity in order to continue their work.

Unsurprisingly, the SDA opposes the right of the adoption agencies: “[n]o institution, religious or secular, is entitled to access taxpayer funding.” If the SDA gets its way, it won’t just be orphans in need of loving homes who suffer. Millions of Americans who benefit from the benevolent partnership between church and state will also suffer.

Legislation Already Under Way

It’s tempting to quickly dismiss the SDA’s demands. However, people of faith must realize that some in positions of power who sympathize with the SDA’s message are already acting to implement its agenda.

For example, look at the effort on Capitol Hill to pass the so-called Equality Act, which if signed into law, would effectively overturn the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) which, as its name suggests, was intended to restore religious freedom.

The Equality Act may sound appealing in name, but the only equality it seeks to achieve is to eradicate any religious beliefs that do not conform to the government’s preferred orthodoxy. It’s a law that would squash dissent and differing viewpoints from the public sphere. The sad irony is that the Equality Act is actually antithetical to the SDA’s stated principles and its championing of pluralism.

At a time when the SDA and many other activist groups are pushing to recreate the U.S. Constitution, First Liberty remains vigilant and undeterred in our mission to protect and defend religious freedom consistent with the vision of America’s Founders. And regardless of who resides in the White House or controls the U.S. Congress, we will continue being the best hope for victory for Americans of all faiths.

This article was originally published at FirstLiberty.org.