The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is poised to render a decision next year that will be its most significant ruling on the abortion issue in more than twenty years.  The SCOTUS has agreed to hear a challenge to a Texas law that establishes health and safety regulations for abortion clinics.

The Texas Legislature enacted the abortion regulation statute in 2013.  It required that all abortion clinics in the state meet the same medical operating standards as other outpatient surgery centers.  It also required that doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion clinic.

The Texas law gained national attention when a pro-abortion state senator named ngaged in a much-publicized filibuster in a failed attempt to block the law.  The ultraliberal media showcased Davis as a “courageous” advocate for women’s rights, despite the fact that she was opposing a law to protect women from the malpractice of shoddy abortionists.

The most significant provision of the Texas law mandates that abortionists have admitting privileges at a local hospital.  This helps guarantee that an abortionist can continue to provide proper obstetric care to a woman who has suffered “complications” from her abortion when she is transferred to an acute care setting.

The central purpose of these types of laws is to ensure that facilities providing surgical abortions are adequately equipped to deal with medical emergencies in the same fashion as other ambulatory surgical centers.  Very few hospital emergency rooms are staffed with specialists in obstetrics.

The passage of the new surgicenter health and safety law in Texas resulted in the closure of a majority of the abortion clinics in that state.  The reason for that is simple.  Numerous abortion facilities in Texas and throughout the nation are “served” by out-of-town abortionists who fly or drive into town to perform abortions in assembly-line fashion during concentrated periods of time.  They then quickly leave town to their next killing field in another community.

These drive-by, fly-by abortionists have absolutely no physician-patient relationship with the women whose children they are aborting, and are unavailable to provide any kind of followup care to women after the procedure.  Women who experience botched abortions are dumped by abortion clinic managers at the nearest emergency room with no physician of record to provide information about their “surgical outcomes.”

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the key provisions of the law in June, stating that the regulations served the legitimate purpose of “protecting the health and welfare of women seeking abortions.”  Within weeks, the SCOTUS issued a stay of the ruling until they could decide whether to hear the case themselves.

The Court has now decided to do just that.  Justice Anthony Kennedy joined the four liberal justices on the SCOTUS in agreeing to take up the case.  The other four more conservative justices on the Court voted to allow the law to stand.

The last time the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision on abortion was in 1992 in a Pennsylvania case known as Planned Parenthood v. Casey.  In that decision, the SCOTUS reaffirmed the central holding of Roe v. Wade that a woman has a “liberty interest” to obtain an abortion without interference from the state prior to viability.

The Court upheld Pennsylvania regulations providing for informed consent by a woman seeking an abortion.  The justices established this legal principle: State regulations providing for the health, safety, and informed decision-making of the pregnant woman are constitutional so long as they do not create an “undue burden” on the woman’s choice, or erect “absolute obstacles” to her access to abortion.   The modern-day Court will now decide whether the Texas law satisfies that legal standard, or whether to establish new standards governing abortion clinic regulation.

Pray that the Justices on this Court understand their duty before God and man.

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Written by Denise Shick

Denise Shick is author of “My Daddy’s Secret,” “When Hope Seems Lost,” and “Understanding Gender Confusion.” She serves on the academic council of the International Children’s Rights Institute and directs Help 4 Families Ministry.

Family Research Council (FRC) commends the U.S. House of Representatives for the passage of H.R. 3762, the Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act, and urges the U.S. Senate to take up and pass the bill. This bill will restrict for one year funding under several mandatory programs such as Medicaid to abortion entities such as Planned Parenthood and would also repeal key provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which encourage subsidies for abortion coverage and which threaten conscience protections.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins made the following statement about this legislation:

We thank the House for redirecting taxpayer money away from an abortion giant that engages in gruesome and unethical practices.

With a strong majority vote, the House passed a budget reconciliation bill that effectively removes the significant majority of federal funding of Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion chain in the country, responsible for killing an estimated 340,000 unborn children every year. This represents about one-third of all abortions in the United States.

Additionally, the reconciliation bill strikes a serious blow to Obamacare, the President’s failed healthcare plan, by repealing the individual and employer mandates as well as a government slush fund. This alleviates federal coercion of Americans who are forced to purchase health insurance they may object to because it contains elective abortion coverage, and removes the threat of punishing fines on employers who decline to violate their deeply held beliefs.

Republicans in the Senate now have the opportunity to work toward keeping the campaign promises that helped them secure the Congressional majority. For our friends in the Senate who think the House bill is not strong enough, we encourage them to try and make the measure even better. The House leadership has said they will accept any improvements the Senate makes to the bill that eliminates much of Planned Parenthood’s funding and removes the heart of Obamacare.

I’ve been saying that 2015 is the year of pushback, and this might be the most significant act of pushing back so far: A group of legal scholars, most of them university professors, have declared that the U.S. Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage this past June 26^th is not “the law of the land,” and they are calling on all office holders, together with all presidential candidates, to join them in rejecting the Court’s decision.

Make no mistake about it: This is really big news.

These scholars, who teach at schools like Princeton and Oxford and Notre Dame and Boston and Boston College and Michigan State and Kansas State and Vanderbilt and Hillsdale and the University of Toronto and the University of Nebraska, state that the Court’s decision “has no more claim” to being the law of the land “than Dred Scott v. Sandford had when President Abraham Lincoln condemned that pro-slavery decision as an offense against the very Constitution that the Supreme Court justices responsible for that atrocious ruling purported to be upholding.”

They note that “Lincoln warned that for the people and their elected leaders to treat unconstitutional decisions of the Supreme Court as creating a binding rule on anyone other than the parties to the particular case would be for ‘the people [to] have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.'”

They also cite James Madison, who in 1788 had this to say about the balance of powers: “The several departments being perfectly co-ordinate by the terms of their common commission, neither of them, it is evident, can pretend to an exclusive or superior right of settling the boundaries between their respective powers.”

But these professors and lawyers are not simply making a philosophical statement about the Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling.

They have issued a call for action, reminding “all officeholders in the United States that they are pledged to uphold the Constitution of the United States, not the will of five members of the Supreme Court.” They also call on “all federal and state officeholders” to “refuse to accept Obergefell as binding precedent for all but the specific plaintiffs in that case.”

They urge these officeholders to recognize the right of each state to define marriage, to “pledge full and mutual legal and political assistance to anyone who refuses to follow Obergefell for constitutionally protected reasons,” and to “open forthwith a broad and honest conversation on the means by which Americans may constitutionally resist and overturn the judicial usurpations evident in Obergefell.”

To repeat: This is big, and it gives further legal, moral, and Constitutional teeth to the first and fourth principles laid out in Outlasting the Gay Revolution: Never Compromise Your Convictions and Refuse to Redefine Marriage.

These scholars have also issued a fourfold call to all presidential candidates, urging them to:

1. treat Obergefell, not as “the law of the land,” but rather (to once again quote Justice Alito) as “an abuse of judicial power”
2. refuse to recognize Obergefell as creating a binding rule controlling other cases or their own conduct as President
3. appoint judges and justices who respect the constitutional limits of their power, and
4. support the First Amendment Defense Act to protect the conscience and free speech rights of those who hold fast to the conjugal understanding of marriage as the union of husband and wife.

To help send this critically important message to all the presidential candidates, join me in signing this statement here, and let’s pray for a continued spirit of revival in the Church and awakening in the society.

Preserving the meaning of marriage and restoring the sacredness of marriage must be among our top priorities if we want to see America become healthy, and as disciples of Jesus, we can do nothing less.

This landmark action by these scholars could be another spark that will help fan the flames of a gospel-based moral and cultural revolution.

On with it!

This article was originally posted at the ChristianPost.com

IFI’s opposition to, for example, a boy in a girls’ locker room is not based on fear that he may rape a girl—though that, of course, is a possibility.

Rather, our opposition emerges from the fact that physical embodiment per se has meaning. The fact that a gender-rejecting boy IS a boy has meaning for both him and the girls whose privacy he seeks to invade.

Privacy and modesty about one’s body and intimate bodily activities are related to one’s physical embodiment (i.e., one’s maleness and femaleness), which is why we have separate restrooms, locker rooms, and dressing rooms. We separate those areas by objective biological sex—not by subjective wishes about one’s objective biological sex.

When a gender-dysphoric boy demands to use the girls’ facilities, he is at once acknowledging the importance of privacy and modesty, which derive from physical embodiment (i.e., maleness or femaleness), and at the same time and incoherently denying the importance of privacy and modesty for the girls whose privacy he seeks to invade.

The desire for separation in locker rooms and restrooms grows out of objective biological and anatomical differences. Those differences are meaningful, and the desire for privacy and separation should be respected. The fact that a man thinks he feels like a woman (he can’t really know if he feels like a woman because he’s not a woman), or wants to be a woman, or thinks he was born in the wrong body does not change the fact that he IS a man, and women shouldn’t have to change their clothes in his presence or engage in showering or toileting in his presence. There is no difference between being forced to change clothes in the presence of a man who accepts his body and being forced to change in the presence of a man who rejects his body—none.

Not deep desire; cross-dressing; name-changes; puberty-blockers; cross-sex hormone-doping; universal compulsory misuse of pronouns; or even mutilating surgeries can turn a boy into girl. And both privacy and modesty, which derive from immutable, meaningful differences in physical embodiment, must be respected.

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Mahatma Gandhi once said, “There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.”

He was partly right. Liberty of conscience is indeed sacred. There is, however, a higher court before which Mr. Gandhi – before which we all – will ultimately stand. It is Kim Davis’ inevitable turn in the dock at this Supreme of all supreme courts that drives her steadfast refusal to mock God through mock “marriage.”

Let’s set aside for a moment all the legal and political wrangling over religious freedom. What is it about Kentucky’s Kim Davis that really has secularists, even some misguided and ill-informed church-goers, yanking their hair out in clumps? It seems many don’t merely dislike this accidental civil-rights stalwart; they hate her with a white-hot hatred reminiscent of that levied against blacks during another civil-rights struggle.

It was Rosa Parks then.

It’s Kim Davis now.

Even so, while it may feel personal to them, it’s not. The “throw-Kim-Davis-in-jail!” crowd doesn’t hate this humble, non-assuming Christian wife and mother of four so much for who she is (though many elitists insist upon sophomorically deriding her as some kind of intolerant, backwoods hick); they hate her more for what she represents – for Whom she represents – and, most especially, because, while making her stand, she has been, to date, immovable.

After nearly a week in jail, Kim still won’t budge. Neither will she resign. Neither should she resign. If she did resign, you see, the precedent would be set. They want the precedent set.

And that’s what’s got them steaming.

If Kim Davis steps down from her elected position as Rowan County clerk, it would represent exile through attrition for her and her fellow believers. Christ follower? Seeking elected office? Looking for a government job? Forget it. Christians need not apply. All the same, if you do apply, be sure to keep your mouth shut, your Bible closed and your First Amendment at home.

To Kim Davis and her supporters, this courageous stand represents unwavering faithfulness to the ultimate Law Giver. To her detractors, it represents stubborn indifference to the laws of man. (The law, incidentally, remains unchanged and on the books as codified. Sections 402.005 and 402.020 of the Kentucky Revised Statutes have yet to be amended by the legislature and, even now, restrict marriage to “the civil status, condition, or relation of one (1) man and one (1) woman”).

Whatever your perspective, Kim’s stand is bold. It is that boldness that has at once encouraged biblical Christians and terrified secular-”progressives.” These things have a way of catching on, you see. This is how movements are born.

Before she was arrested, shackled and imprisoned by U.S. Marshals for her “crime” of conscience, Brian Beutler, senior editor of the New Republic, was among the torch-waving leftists demanding the government “throw Kentucky clerk Kim Davis in jail.”

“Any attempt to force her hand risks making her a bigger martyr on the religious right than she already is,” he wrote, “but that risk is small compared to the risk that allowing her to continue abusing her power without consequence will create a terrible precedent.”

And so she was thrown in jail.

It backfired magnificently. So much so, in fact, that Judge David Bunning suddenly and inexplicably walked back his contempt order and released her with no indication by Kim or her legal team that she intends to change her position one iota.

They aimed to make an example of her.

Instead, they made martyr of her.

And she set the example for others to follow.

So, if jail won’t do it – if being thrown in jail won’t compel this brave woman to disobey God and violate her conscience, then what will?

They’ll have to burn her at the stake.

To be sure, and based on the scores of death threats both Kim and her attorneys continue to receive, it seems many would love to see just that. In fact, it’s exactly what the Week Magazine senior correspondent Michael Brendan Dougherty has suggested, if only satirically, in a column headlined, “Burn Kim Davis!”

“Any normal punishment [i.e., jail] rewards her with the comfort of solidarity from right-wing Christians, or her own sense of moral self-approval,” he writes. “Therefore the only way to avoid granting her such ‘martyrdom’ is to actually martyr her. That’s the really perverse thing about Christians who make a spectacle like this. The only way the state can really punish them is to inform them that their suffering is meaningless and proving that God doesn’t exist by sending them to the darkness of oblivion in torment. Justice Kennedy has issued his theological bull; let Kentucky officials in defiance of it be put on a pyre.”

Mr. Dougherty, a practicing Catholic, is being facetious, of course, and illustrating his point via reductio ad absurdum. Still, his point is well taken. Throughout the history of both Christendom and the United States, Christians have, with full knowledge and acceptance of the potential consequences, exercised a rich legacy of peaceful civil resistance to tyranny over conscience (e.g., Daniel, Mordecai, Christ’s apostles, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Martin Luther King Jr., et al.).

That’s exactly what Kim Davis has done. I suspect, as she sees it, she would sooner be burned at the stake than face the flames of hell. For that, she is to be both admired and emulated. Imagine the possibilities if thousands of clerks, judges, pastors, photographers, bakers, inn keepers, florists, parents and other believers across this great nation came together, dug in their heels and said, “No! I will not violate my Christian conscience. Do as you may. Throw me in jail if you must, but I will not call evil good and good evil.”

Indeed, throughout history Christianity has been shown to both blossom and flourish when Christ followers are persecuted – when others attempt to quash their free exercise of faith.

In his “letter from the Birmingham jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. famously declared, “One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God,” he explained. “An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”

As it was with the national sin of systemic racism, there can be few things more “out of harmony with the moral law” than the inherently immoral notion of sodomy-based “marriage.”

We are at an impasse.

Something has to give.

And something will.

A revolution of passive resistance is at hand – another great awakening.

Christians will, once again, be “free at last.”

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The federal judge who threw Christian clerk Kim Davis in jail previously “oversaw a legal settlement that included anti-harassment sessions” for students in Boyd County, Kentucky, The New York Times reports. In fact, the judge, David Bunning, had denied free speech rights to those students.

The so-called “anti-harassment sessions” in the Boyd County case were actually designed to instruct students “to withhold Christian viewpoints about homosexual behavior,” the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), the legal group representing the students, reported.

Bunning’s ruling against the students, a direct ban on free speech, was overturned on appeal.

The Times admitted this fact only later in the story, noting that Bunning’s ruling forcing students into the “anti-harassment sessions” was “overruled by an appellate court.”

The fact that he “was overruled by an appellate case” demonstrates how wrong his ruling was.

It is this out-of-control judge who is at the center of the Kim Davis case. Ironically, the media are reporting that Bunning is a Christian. If so, he has no fundamental understanding of how Christians helped create this nation, and are entitled to the rights and liberties guaranteed to them under the Constitution.

The Times’ handling of this case reflects how the actions of Davis have also been distorted by most of the media. The Times said Bunning sent Davis to jail for “refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses.” In fact, she had simply exercised her religious rights and liberties in refusing to sign the gay marriage licenses.

Her attorneys at Liberty Counsel noted, “Davis only asked that the Kentucky marriage license forms be changed so her name would not appear on them.” This simple request was deemed to be “contempt” and she was thrown in jail.

What we see in the case of Judge Bunning, under pressure from the gay lobby, is a pattern of discrimination against Christians, a pattern we also see in the coverage of the cases in which he has ruled. The media have refused to respect the rights of free speech and freedom of religion that Americans are supposed to have under the Constitution.

A rally in support of county clerk Kim Davis has been announced for Tuesday, September 8, at the Carter County Detention Center in Grayson, Kentucky at 3:00 p.m. The address is 13 Crossbar Road, Grayson, Kentucky.

Heather Clark of the Christian News Network first noted that Bunning, appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, had, in the Boyd County case, “ordered Kentucky students to be re-educated about homosexuality despite their objections.”

In the case, she noted, a number of students objected to being forced to watch a video that asserted that it is wrong to oppose homosexuality and that a person’s sexuality cannot be changed. Clark reported, “They discovered that they could not opt-out of the training without being penalized, and contacted the legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) for assistance.”

That began the process of filing suit, and eventually the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Bunning’s ruling in October 2007.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has sided with Davis, saying she not only has the right to object on religious grounds to signing gay marriage licenses, but that the Supreme Court did not in any sense make gay marriage the “law of the land.”

Numerous experts have pointed out that, under the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court cannot make law. The U.S. Supreme Court’s “power to offer opinion does not equal the power to make law,” notes the Tenth Amendment Center. Generally speaking, experts say, the Supreme Court can overturn laws and executive actions but it cannot enforce its rulings. The power to make law is given to the representatives of the people in the national and state legislatures.

Huckabee says Davis, a county official elected as a Democrat, should be immediately released from federal custody. “Exercising religious liberty should never be a crime in America,” he says. “This is a direct attack on our God-given, constitutional rights.”

Huckabee said, “Kim is asking the perfect question: ‘Under what law am I authorized to issue homosexual couples a marriage license?’ The Supreme Court cannot and did not make a law. They only made a ruling on a law. Congress makes the laws. Because Congress has made no law allowing for same sex marriage, Kim does not have the Constitutional authority to issue a marriage license to homosexual couples.”

Kentucky passed Amendment 1 in 2004, prohibiting recognition of same-sex marriages. It passed by a 75-25 percent margin.

Another Republican presidential candidate, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, called the order issued by Bunning to use federal marshals to arrest and jail Davis “judicial lawlessness [which] crossed into judicial tyranny.” He explained that “the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America.”

He added, “I stand with Kim Davis. Unequivocally. I stand with every American that the Obama administration is trying to force to choose between honoring his or her faith or complying with a lawless court opinion.”

Cruz went on, “In dissent, Chief Justice Roberts rightly observed that the Court’s marriage opinion has nothing to do with the Constitution. Justice Scalia observed that the Court’s opinion was so contrary to law that state and local officials would choose to defy it.”

Indeed, as AIM reported, Scalia had called the Supreme Court decision in the same-sex marriage case a judicial “Putsch,” an attempt to overthrow our form of government. Scalia said the court was a “threat to American democracy.”

In the face of this emerging judicial dictatorship, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis exercised her religious rights and liberties, only to be sent to prison.

Her attorney, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, reports, “Despite being held as a prisoner for her religious beliefs, her conscience remains unshackled. Liberty Counsel will challenge Judge Bunning’s contempt order and her unlawful confinement. Kim is resolute in her decision to challenge the issuance of any marriage certificate bearing her name without her authority.”

As the coverage by The New York Times indicates, however, Judge Bunning is being greeted with fawning attention in the Davis case because he had muzzled Christians previously for standing up for their faith. The coverage demonstrates that there is a pattern of anti-Christian activity on the federal bench and in the media.

This article was originally posted at the Accuracy in Media blog.

Early Bird Specials Expire on August 31st!

The Illinois Family Institute’s annual fall banquet is just five weeks away! This important event will be held Friday, September 18th at 7:00 p.m. at The Stonegate Conference Center in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.

Our theme this year is “Cultural Cataclysm & Advancing the Truth.” And for the first time ever, IFI will be hosting two remarkable speakers, both of whom are prolific authors. (Click HERE for more information about our special guests.) Pastor Douglas Wilson and Professor Anthony Esolen demonstrate the kind of wisdom, courage, and boldness required for such a time as this.

It’s not too late to become a banquet benefactor. For more information on helping us underwrite our largest pro-family gathering of the year, please contact Kathy Valente at the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  As always, we are pleased to recognize in our program all of our benefactors.

Event Details:

Illinois Family Institute
Faith, Family and Freedom Banquet

Friday, September 18 , 2015
The Stonegate Banquet & Conference Center (Map)
Click HERE for a banquet flyer.

Secure your tickets now – click here or call (708) 781-9328.

Program advertisements & banquet sponsorships available.

By Eric Mataxes

Given all the grisly and disturbing news we’ve been getting about Planned Parenthood — which is the nation’s largest provider of abortion, and presumably, the body parts of unborn babies — would it surprise you at all to know that there’s also a quiet campaign to rehabilitate Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger as a champion of women’s dignity and human rights?

No less a public figure than Hillary Clinton has said, “I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision . . . And when I think about what she did all those years ago in Brooklyn, taking … attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am really in awe of her.”

Well, okay then.

In one sense, of course, it’s not news when a pro-abortion progressive such as Mrs. Clinton attempts to lionize Sanger, who founded the organization that became Planned Parenthood. But it sure was news—and created a firestorm—when Christianity Today gave a platform for a columnist to do the same thing. In an online piece, Rachel Marie Stone—while acknowledging that Sanger “did hold eugenicist ideas”—invited us to see the bigger picture.

Stone noted that Sanger actually opposed abortion in her day as the taking of life and said Sanger’s emphasis on providing poor women access to birth control saved countless lives around the world.

Isn’t it ironic, though, that although Planned Parenthood rejected its founder’s position on abortion, it absorbed Sanger’s fully formed racism. That’s because there’s an inescapable logic flowing from Sanger’s racist worldview last century and the naked barbarism we see from Planned Parenthood today.

Sanger wrote about the “deterioration in the human stock” and “the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents, and dependents.” Lest you have any doubt about what this woman of so-called “courage, … tenacity, [and] vision” meant, Sanger was committed to reducing the number of African Americans through contraception. Quoth Sanger: “We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

Isn’t it amazing that a woman who said what Sanger did isn’t vilified more generally as a racist intent on eliminating African Americans?

And here’s another ugly truth behind Planned Parenthood: the disproportionate number of minorities this organization kills and how it sets up shop in poor neighborhoods. According to a report by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, in 2012, far more African American babies were killed by abortion—31,328—than were born—24,758.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that in New York City, where my wife runs a pregnancy care center, 78 percent of the abortions in 2011 were to black and Hispanic children.

By the way, one minister who is not going along is the redoubtable Walter Hoye of Oakland, California. Hoye notes that abortion kills more black Americans in three days than the Klan killed under Jim Crow in 86 years. That is the real legacy of Margaret Sanger, and Planned Parenthood. And now you know.

Download a Planned Parenthood Fact Sheet or a Church Bulletin Insert.

This article was originally posted at BreakPoint.org

By Ryan T. Anderson

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of gay marriage, a question arises: Should we protect the rights of Orthodox Jews, Roman Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Latter-day Saints, and Muslims who believe that marriage is a union of husband and wife? Two bills recently introduced in Congress show diverging answers. One seeks to promote tolerance and peaceful coexistence, the other adds fuel to a culture war by treating that traditional belief as racism.

Last week, Representative David Cicilline (D., R.I.) and Senators Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.), Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.), and Cory Booker (D., N.J.) introduced what they call the “Equality Act.” The legislation would add “sexual orientation and gender identity” to more or less every federal law that protects against racism.

Do we really need the federal government to coerce every last baker, florist, and adoption agency to violate their beliefs about marriage? The market is already sorting these things out. The Human Rights Campaign reports, for example, that 88 percent of Fortune 500 companies voluntarily do not consider sexual orientation in employment decisions.

The bill also requires that biological males who identify as women be able to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms. Shouldn’t these decisions be made closer to the ground? By parents, teachers, principals — not federal bureaucrats?

Most outrageously, the bill specifies that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act cannot be used to defend people against its requirements. Rather, it treats decent people of faith as irrational bigots, simply for believing that we’re created male and female, and that male and female are created for each other in marriage.

Whether you agree with this belief or not, it’s easy to see that the “Equality Act” is bad public policy. It fuels the culture war rather than seeking peaceful coexistence.

There is an alternative.

The First Amendment Defense Act would prevent the federal government from discriminating against any citizen or organization because they believe marriage is the union of husband and wife. It would ensure that no federal agency will ever revoke non-profit tax-exempt status or deny grants, contracts, accreditation, or licenses to individuals or institutions for following their belief that marriage is a union between a man and a woman.

This bill simply continues the practice of the United States for all of our history. It takes nothing away from anyone. It changes nothing. It protects pluralism amid disagreement.

The First Amendment Defense Act protects pluralism amid disagreement.

And it is necessary. In the oral arguments before the Supreme Court earlier this year, Justice Samuel Alito asked Solicitor General Donald Verrilli whether a school might lose its tax-exempt status because of its conviction that marriage is the union of husband and wife. Verrilli’s response was chilling: “It’s certainly going to be an issue. I — I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is — it is going to be an issue.”

This shouldn’t be an issue. Schools should be eligible for non-profit tax status, government contracts, student loans, and other forms of support as long as they meet the relevant educational criteria.

Government policy should not trample on the consciences of citizens who dissent from official policies on sexuality. Government discrimination against social-service providers who believe marriage is a male-female relationship undermines our nation’s commitment to reasonable pluralism and diversity. The First Amendment Defense Act would prevent this.

Predictably, the Left has attacked this bill. The Sunday after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Mark Oppenheimer wrote a column for Time magazine headlined “Now’s the Time to End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions.” Oppenheimer, the New York Times’ religion columnist, argued: “Rather than try to rescue tax-exempt status for organizations that dissent from settled public policy on matters of race or sexuality, we need to take a more radical step. It’s time to abolish, or greatly diminish, their tax-exempt statuses.”

But it has long been understood that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Americans who believe that marriage is a union of husband and wife should be free to live and work in accord with their convictions.

When he “evolved” on the issue in 2012, President Barack Obama insisted that there were reasonable people of goodwill on both sides of the marriage debate. Supporters of marriage as the union of a man and a woman “are not coming at it from a mean-spirited perspective,” he insisted. “They’re coming at it because they care about families.”

He added that “a bunch of ’em are friends of mine . . . you know, people who I deeply respect.” But as the stories of bakers, florists, photographers, and adoption agencies show, there’s good reason to worry about the government’s respect for the beliefs of all Americans.

America is in a time of transition. The court has redefined marriage, and beliefs about human sexuality are changing. Will the right to dissent be protected? Will our right to speak and act in accord with what Americans have always believed about marriage — that it’s a union of husband and wife — be tolerated?

Most Americans say yes, they want ours to be a tolerant, pluralistic nation. They want peaceful coexistence. We must work together to protect these cherished American values, despite the ideologues and activists who would sow disharmony by having the government coerce those with whom they disagree.

The First Amendment Defense Act is one way of achieving civil peace even amid disagreement. To protect pluralism and the rights of all Americans, liberals should forswear coercion and embrace tolerance.

– Ryan T. Anderson is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and author of the just-released book Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom, from which portions of this article are adapted.

This article was originally posted on the nationalreview.com

On July 28, 2015, Illinois State Senator Kyle McCarter (R-Vandalia) introduced the Religious Freedom Defense Act, SB 2164, in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to redefine marriage for all fifty states.

In a press release, Senator McCarter stated:

“Faith traditions that hold to a millennia-old understanding of marriage that is part of the very fabric of their beliefs should not be forced to comply with a decision that undermines that faith, said McCarter. “The intent of this Act is to protect the ‘free exercise of religion’ in Illinois as it is stated in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

TAKE ACTION: Call your state senator’s office and urge him/her to support and co-sponsor SB 2164. Look up your state senator HERE. You can also send them an email by clicking HERE.

No Tax Dollars for Organizations that Offer Abortions
A few days ago, Senator McCarter also introduced SB 2165.  This legislation would prohibits the state government from providing tax dollars from going to an organization that performs abortions or maintains or operates a facility where abortions are performed. The new law would also affect state contracts and grants.

In a press release, Senator McCarter stated:

“The plain fact of the matter is, if we are funding a group that does abortions, we are funding abortion,” said McCarter. “If Planned Parenthood or other entities that perform abortions are receiving taxpayer dollars, those tax dollars free up the other money these groups receive that can be used for abortion. Funding them with taxpayer dollars supports abortion.”

TAKE ACTION: Call your state senator’s office and urge him/her to support and co-sponsor SB 2165. Look up your state senator HERE. You can also send them an email by clicking HERE.

Sign the Petition to President Obama to Investigate  PLANNED  PARENTHOOD.
A petition from Americans United for Life’s calls upon President Obama to order Attorney General Loretta Lynch to fully investigate Planned Parenthood in light of the recent videos exposing their barbaric practice of selling aborted baby parts. If they collect 100,000 signatures by August 15, 2015, then the Obama administration must issue a response to this petition.

TAKE ACTION: Please click HERE to sign the AUL petition.

National Day of Protest against Planned Parenthood
Saturday, August 22, 9:00 to 11:00 A.M.
Planned Parenthood, 3051 E New York St, Aurora (map)
Lead by the Pro-Life Action League

Written by Ross Douthat

I’m hoping to do something broader about the abortion issue in this space soon, given the prominence that the debate over Planned Parenthood funding has suddenly assumed. But for this week a word (well, a few words) on the argument inthis Dana Milbank column, which was also basically the argument in this earlier Milbank column, which is also roughly the argument in this Ruth Marcus column, which is also the argument in this Damon Linker column, which is also a case that Slate’s Will Saletan has made repeatedly in the past, which … well, you get the idea. The claim they’re all making, in different ways, is that even though Planned Parenthood performs hundreds of thousands of abortions every year (while lobbying constantly against any restriction on the practice), to oppose channeling public dollars to its family planning operations is to be objectively pro-abortion, because those operations objectively prevent many more abortions still.

This claim has understandable appeal to the pro-choice-but-uneasy- about-it side of the abortion debate, which is why it’s repeated so often and accepted so uncritically. But as I’ve had reason to argue before (going back years and years), it also runs into some empirical difficulties. Here are a few of them.

First, whether you go state by state in the U.S. or make comparisons across developed countries (within Europe as well as North America), there is very little evidence for the kind of correlation between liberal social policies and lower abortion rates that the alleged “pro-life” case for Planned Parenthood assumes. In the U.S. especially, as I’ve noted before, the correlation often runs the other way: Abortion rates are generally lower in (conservative) states that have more abortion restrictions and fewer publicly funded family planning programs, and higher in (liberal) states where public policy is friendlier to Planned Parenthood, comprehensive sex education, public provision of contraception, etc. Indeed, to the (highly debatable) extent that there exists a “red”/”blue” divide in rates of out-of-wedlock births, it seems to be primarily driven by higher blue-state abortion rates rather than lower blue-state rates of unplanned pregnancy — which is the opposite of what the alleged “pro-life” case for Planned Parenthood would lead one to expect.

Now, this red/blue abortion correlation is not an iron law. In one of the columns cited above, Milbank notes that the ongoing decline in the nation’s abortion rate has been steeper in some liberal states than in conservatives ones over the last few years. I would note that declines are often steeper when there’s more room to fall, but leave that aside for the moment, since all by itself that data actually creates a bigger problem for his argument: The steep decline coincides with the very sort of reduction in federal funding that he claims will lead to more abortions overall. Compare Milbank here …

The Ernst legislation says that “all funds no longer available to Planned Parenthood will continue to be made available to other eligible entities.” But … congressional Republicans’ assurances are suspect, Coleman notes, because they’ve already cut Title X funds by 13 percent, or $40 million, since 2010 — resulting in a loss of 667,000 family-planning patients annually.

… to Milbank here:

… in an Associated Press survey this week of state-by-state changes in abortions since 2010 … states that have passed the most stringent antiabortion laws in recent years, including Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and Oklahoma, have seen their abortions drop by more than 15 percent. But states with virtually unrestricted abortions such as New York, Oregon and Washington have had similar declines. Indeed, five of the six states with the biggest declines — Hawaii (30 percent), New Mexico (24 percent), Nevada and Rhode Island (22 percent) and Connecticut (21 percent) have had no recent laws restricting abortions.

So to be clear: In 2010 Congressional Republicans enacted a more modest version of the policy that Milbank believes will lead to many more abortions, and since 2010 the abortion rate has … fallen in almost every state in the union.

And you don’t have to just look at the 2010-2013 period. Depending on how you calculate things, the nationwide abortion rate has been in steady decline since either the 1980s or the early 1990s. Over that same period, inflation-adjusted Title X funding — again, the funding that is allegedly essential to keeping the abortion rate low — has dropped by 60 percent, according to the Guttmacher Institute’s estimate. So again, Congressional Republicans have been following precisely the policy course that Milbank insists will drive up the abortion rate, not for a few years, but for more than a generation … and the results have been, again, the opposite of what he predicts.

You can also see a related problem with this argument if you look, not just at abortion, but at rates of unplanned pregnancy, which the alleged “pro-life” case for Planned Parenthood stresses as the key to abortion reduction overall. Between 2010 and 2013, as Milbank notes, the rate of unplanned pregnancy and abortion fell in tandem — with the former being an indicator, probably, of recession-driven sexual caution. But if you look at those rates across a longer time horizon, as Michael New noted in an earlier response to Milbank, the unintended pregnancy rate actually rose somewhat from the 1990s until the Great Recession … which is, once again, the same period in which the overall abortion rate precipitously declined.

That decline, in other words, didn’t happen primarily because fewer women were getting pregnant; it happened because fewer pregnant women decided to have abortions. And if the question is whether, a resource for already- pregnant women, Planned Parenthood effectively encourages abortions, I’m not sure that you need to watch that many videos or read that widely to have that question answered; a glance at the PP ratio of abortions to adoption referrals (for 2014 it was — officially — 149:1) tells you most of what you need to know.

Now: Does all of the foregoing mean that no contraceptive-oriented public policy can possibly reduce the abortion rate? No, probably some can, and do: You can find evidence, when other variables are screened out, that certain discrete measures — including the oversold but still noteworthy recent Colorado experiment with long-acting contraception, which I promise to give longer treatment at some point — can in some cases have an impact on abortion rates on the margins. The overall evidence here isn’t quite as straightforward as liberals insist, but it’s stronger than some social conservatives want to believe, and it deserves a role in the debate about what sort of interventions the government should support.

But given how much larger so many other variables (legal, cultural, economic, mysterious) seem to loom, and how little evidence there is overall for some sort of successful “blue model” of abortion reduction in the post-Roe, post-Casey U.S.A., the case for a strictly contraceptive approach to reducing the abortion rate is not strong enough, not nearly strong enough, not anywhere close to strong enough to justify the kind of moral blackmail that moderate liberals keep trying to deploy against pro-lifers to keep money flowing to the nation’s largest purveyor of abortion.

Instead, by any reasonable assessment the moral pressure ought to run the other way. If, like many of the moderate-liberal columnists writing on this issue, you are 1) made at least somewhat uncomfortable by the dismemberment of living human beings in utero but 2) are convinced that Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion-related services are essential to the common good, why not write a column urging Planned Parenthood to, I dunno, get out of the dismemberment business? If all these other services are such a great, crucial, and (allegedly) abortion-reducing good, why do you, center-left journalist, want them perpetually held hostage to the possibility of public outrage over the crushing of tiny bodies in the womb? If a publicly-funded institution does one set of things you really like, and another thing that makes you morally uncomfortable, why are you constantly attacking that organization’s critics and telling them that they just have to live with the combination, instead of urging the organization itself to refocus on the non-lethal, non-dismembering portions of its business?

Because here’s the thing: The cultural consensus in favor of contraception and contraceptive access in this country – in favor, that is, of Milbank’s view of family planning policy, and Marcus’s, and Linker’s, and Saletan’s — is really very, very strong. Separated from the abortion question, as a pro-contraception argument alone, their argument would mostly be a political winner. Yes, many conservatives oppose certain forms of public funding for birth control on limited-government grounds; yes, many religious conservatives fear that contraception and abortion are bound together in a kind of socio-cultural unity, in which no matter what happens on the margins with this program or that one, in the aggregate acceptance of one necessarily feeds the prevalence of the other. But whether or not those fears are justified (here’s my provisional case for why some of them might not be), those combined conservative sentiments matter politically, and increasingly so, primarily because the pro-contraceptive case is wedded, and intimately, to pro-abortion politics. And they would have much, much less influence over our health care debates if the contraception-providing institution constantly defended by liberals as the embodiment of All That Is Worthy of Support were not also … an industrial-scale purveyor of abortion!

So let’s be clear about what’s really going on here. It is not the pro-life movement that’s forced Planned Parenthood to unite actual family planning and mass feticide under one institutional umbrella. It is not the Catholic Church or the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles or the Southern Baptist Convention or the Republican Party that have bundled pap smears and pregnancy tests and HPV vaccines with the kind of grisly business being conducted on those videos. This is Planned Parenthood’s choice; it is liberalism’s choice; it is the respectable center-left of Dana Milbank and Ruth Marcus and Will Saletan that’s telling pro-life and pro-choice Americans alike that contraceptive access and fetal dismemberment are just a package deal, that if you want to fund an institution that makes contraception widely available then you just have to live with those “it’s another boy!” fetal corpses in said institution’s freezer, that’s just the price of women’s health care and contraceptive access, and who are you to complain about paying it, since after all the abortion arm of Planned Parenthood is actually pretty profitable and doesn’t need your tax dollars?

This is a frankly terrible argument, rooted in a form of self-deception that would be recognized as such in any other context. Tell me anything but this, liberals: Tell me that you aren’t just pro-choice but pro-abortion, tell me that abortion is morally necessary and praiseworthy, tell me that it’s as morally neutral as snuffing out a rabbit, tell me that a fetus is just a clump of cells and that pro-lifers are all unhinged zealots. Those arguments, as much as I disagree with them, have a real consistency, a moral logic that actually makes sense and actually justifies the continued funding of Planned Parenthood.

But to concede that pro-lifers might be somewhat right to be troubled by abortion, to shudder along with us just a little bit at the crushing of the unborn human body, and then turn around and still demand the funding of an institution that actually does the quease-inducing killing on the grounds that what’s being funded will help stop that organization from having to crush quite so often, kill quite so prolifically – no, spare me. Spare me. Tell the allegedly “pro-life” institution you support to set down the forceps, put away the vacuum, and then we’ll talk about what kind of family planning programs deserve funding. But don’t bring your worldview’s bloody hands to me and demand my dollars to pay for soap enough to maybe wash a few flecks off.

Download a Planned Parenthood Fact Sheet or a Church Bulletin Insert.

This article was originally posted at The New York Times blog.

By Genevieve Wood

Serious questions have been raised as to whether Planned Parenthood is selling tissue and body parts of unborn babies for profit. So serious that Congress is planning to hold investigations this fall.

But apparently not serious enough to get 60 members of the U.S. Senate to be willing to vote Monday to take taxpayer dollars away from the abortion giant and redirect them to other health clinics that don’t perform abortions.

There is some good news. The fact that there were 53 votes to defund Planned Parenthood Monday will be a very important number when Congress returns in September.

Here’s why.

Because Congress hasn’t passed individual appropriation bills to fund various government agencies, departments and programs, it will have to put all those appropriations into one big continuing resolution this fall, and pass it, to keep the entire government operating.

Monday’s vote in the Senate to defund Planned Parenthood shows that there aren’t 60 votes to pass that continuing resolution if Planned Parenthood funding is included in it.

The question is, do the 46 senators who voted for continuing to fund Planned Parenthood believe it is so important to continue giving taxpayer dollars to the nation’s largest abortion provider, especially in light of the current scandal, that they will refuse to pass a continuing resolution that doesn’t fund Planned Parenthood? Are they willing to shut down the government rather than pass such a continuing resolution?

Sadly, the answer to that question is likely yes. But it doesn’t have to be.

It is not unprecedented for both political parties to come together to defund organizations found committing activities that are unethical at best and illegal at worst.

Remember the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known as ACORN? It too found itself in hot water when an undercover video investigation exposed the group’s fraudulent behavior. The House and Senate, by large majorities, voted in 2009 to strip the group of all federal funding.

What Planned Parenthood is accused of is far worse than the scandals surrounding ACORN. But while ACORN didn’t make political contributions to political candidates, Planned Parenthood does. The vast majority, over $675,000 in 2014, of its campaign contributions goes to Democrats.

Most of the action to limit abortions has been taking place at the state level in recent years, but now the opportunity for a pro-life victory has found its way to the national stage—and just in time for Congress’s August recess.

Members of Congress, especially those who claim to be pro-life, have a choice to make. It shouldn’t be a hard one.

There are many other ways to make sure women have access to health care besides funding Planned Parenthood.

According to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, there are over 9,000 federally qualified health centers operating around the country. Each year they provide 21.1 million Americans, in both rural and urban areas, with many of the same health services, with the exception of abortion, Planned Parenthood claims it provides. By comparison, Planned Parenthood operates only 700 centers and serves only 2.8 million people.

And for the record, Planned Parenthood does not have a license to perform mammograms at any of its facilities. Not one. But that doesn’t mean American women have nowhere to turn—according to the Food and Drug Administration, there are over 8,000 licensed mammogram facilities operating across the country as of July 2015.

And yet, even with those facts (and the videos featuring Planned Parenthood staff negotiating pricing for the sale of tissue and body parts) staring them in the face, the Senate is currently unable to defund the scandal-riddenorganization.

Supporters of defunding Planned Parenthood, which included almost all Republican senators (Mark Kirk of Illinois voted against the measure) and two Democrats (Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana voted for it), didn’t have the 60 votes they needed to get the bill on the floor of the Senate this week.

That’s a shame. But this battle is far from over.

This article has been corrected to reflect that Joe Donnelly represents Indiana, not Pennsylvania. 

Download a Planned Parenthood Fact Sheet or a Church Bulletin Insert.

This article was originally posted the dailysignal.com

Written by Michael J. New

The recent undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress which show Planned Parenthood physicians discussing the sale of fetal body parts have put the organization’s mainstream-media allies in a difficult position. Of course, that has not prevented them from trying to rally support for Planned Parenthood. In his Friday Washington Postcolumn, Dana Milbank dubs Monday’s Senate vote to cut off federal funding from Planned Parenthood “The Abortion Promotion Act of 2015.” He argues that political efforts to defund Planned Parenthood are “sure to increase the number of abortions.”

Milbank first claims that that there isn’t a national network of health-care providers capable of providing contraceptives if Planned Parenthood were to be denied funding. But a recent analysis by Genevieve Plaster of the Charlotte Lozier Institute finds that there are over 13 times as many Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) as there are Planned Parenthood facilities. These FQHCs serve eight times more individuals than Planned Parenthood. Steering more money to them might actually improve the availability of health care to women who live in rural areas, as a disproportionately high number of Planned Parenthood facilities are located in blue states and in cities.

Milbank also argues that if contraception were less available, the unintended-pregnancy rate would increase. But there’s an impressive body of academic research which shows that sexual activity increases with the increased availability of contraception. A 2003 Guttmacher Institute study showed that contraception use and abortion rates rose simultaneously in several countries. A 1996 Quarterly Journal of Economics Study, which was co-authored by Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, found that the advent of the birth-control pill led to more sexual activity and more unintended pregnancies. And a University of Michigan study analyzed what happened when the 2005 Federal Deficit Reduction Act led to a sharp increase in the price of birth-control pills at college health centers. It found that there were statistically significant decreases in both the frequency of sexual intercourse and the number of sex partners. The unintended-pregnancy rate remained about the same.

Toward the end of his column, Milbank commends House speaker John Boehner for conducting an investigation and holding hearings on Planned Parenthood. Milbank concludes by stating “Facts First — what a novel — and refreshing — notion.” Unfortunately, Milbank doesn’t appear interested in facts that fail to fit his narrative. If he were, he’d recognize that Planned Parenthood’s aggressive promotion of contraception has led to a culture of sexual promiscuity and high rates of both unintended pregnancies and abortions.

Download a Planned Parenthood Fact Sheet or a Church Bulletin Insert.

This article was originally posted at the NationalReviewOnline.com.