Abortion Legislation, Pro-Life March in DC

On the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, tens of thousands gathered in Washington DC to March for Life from the National Mall to the steps of the Supreme Court—the largest of many marches in support of life in cities across the nation over the past weekend.

To coincide with the march, House GOP leaders had scheduled a vote on legislation, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, that would have banned elective abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy — the point at which unborn children can feel pain and survive premature birth.  A Quinnipiac poll on the issue in November reported 60% approval among Americans. That legislation was abruptly pulled, however, when female GOP members raised concerns about a provision in the bill that required rape victims to report the crime to law enforcement in order to qualify for an exemption.

In its place a lesser bill, "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," was passed the House in a 242-179 vote, reports the Washington Examiner.

The legislation would make it illegal for individuals to use the Affordable Care Act's insurance subsidies to buy plans that cover abortion services through the new health exchanges. Many states have already passed legislation limiting abortion coverage in exchange plans, but the measure the House approved would apply nationwide and possibly discourage insurers on the exchanges from offering abortion coverage at all.

The switch upset some who supported the stricter measure. Mollie Hemingway chastised Congress for not believing "it's competent enough to make a case against infanticide" when there is clear polling data showing broad support.

A Washington Post/ABC survey showed that 64 percent of Americans favor limiting abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy or earlier. When just women were asked, the figure jumped to 71 percent. Such measures are popular among independents and Americans of various income levels.

Quinnipiac even asked detailed questions about the bill last go-around ... Sixty percent of voters said they would support it, while 33 percent said they were opposed. Even Democrats were evenly divided (46 percent to 47 percent) on the question. We're one of just a small handful of countries, including notorious human rights violators North Korea and china, that allow late-term abortion.

Others were less critical. "While we are disappointed that the House will not be voting on the [20-week abortion ban] today, we are pleased that the House is moving forward to stop taxpayer funding of abortion," said a joint statement by the Susan B. Anthony List, the March for Life Education and Defense Fund and the Concerned women for America Legislative Action Committees.

Hasson: Five Lessons 2014's Conservative Women Taught MSM

The smashing victories of conservative women on election night "make this a teaching moment" for the mainstream media, argues Mary Hasson, who should adjust their stylebooks to these five lessons:

1. "Women" does not equate to "liberal women." Conservative women are women too. (Example: Don't say "women voters" when you really mean "liberal women voters.")
2. Delete "women's issues" from your lexicon. (Note: "women's issues" is a misnomer for the demeaning "lady parts" agenda of liberals who think women's priorities begin with birth control and end with abortion.)
3. Ditto the meaningless "war on women." (See the losing campaigns of "Mark Uterus" and John Foust.)
4. Do not say "women's rights" when you mean "abortion rights." (Iowas Senator-elect Joni Ernst and Virginia Representative-elect Barbara Comstock champion issues important to women — and passionately oppose abortion. Losing candidate Sandra Fluke champions abortion rights, not the rights of liberty-loving women.)
5. To take the pulse of women voters, try interviewing ordinary, hard-working women. (Hint: They don't loiter in pricey Manhattan gyms or at glitzy Democrat fundraisers in Los Angeles. Try the grocery store, in flyover country, at the end of a long workday.)

Read What 2014's Victories From GOP Taught Us for the lessons Hasson believes the GOP should have learned.

Harzani: 'War on Women' Schtick

Colorado proves the 'War on Women' schtick is coming for conservatives "whether you deserve it or not," writes David Harzani @ federalist.com. His post about the Colorado U.S. Senate race between challenger Cory Gardner and incumbent Mark Udall notes that the two are in a virtual tie, and 'War on Women' charges are flying.

As soon as Gardner cleared the GOP field, Udall ran an indictment against the Republican for imaginary crimes against women. The wonky Gardner, claimed Udall, has "championed a crusade" — a crusade — to "outlaw" birth control.

Now, I couldn’t find a single vote or speech or gaffe in which Gardner advocates for restrictions on birth control. Not during his time in congress or in the Colorado legislature or anywhere else, for that matter. Perhaps I missed something. Perhaps someone will soon unearth explosive video to share. Nothing in his record, though, indicates he’s a zealous culture warrior.  

Harzani has his own ideas on "meeting these sorts of attacks head on."

...it’ll be worth reminding Coloradans (often) that Udall, who allegedly believes the brave women of America have an enduring right to make their own health-care decisions, is a cheerleader of coerced participation in a state-run program that has separated thousands of Colorado women from their doctors. This not only highlights his hypocrisy, but makes him defend Obamacare.

And since this is a war, Gardner can do better. Instead of running from the debate, it would also be worth pointing out that as Udall is himself an extremist on the issue of abortion; a supporter of late-term abortions — a position that most Americans find repugnant. In fact, some polls show that the 20-week abortion ban is more popular among women than men. A Quinnipiac poll found that 60 percent of women support unrestricted abortions for only the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. Only 50 percent of men support the 20-week limit.  Other polls found similar results. [snip]

The War on Women shtick will be branching out to include the minimum wage and immigration, as well as income equality – and everything  else, really. And Colorado proves that it’s coming for you whether you deserve it or or not. Because even if you’re not Todd Akin, they know you really are.

2014 March for Life

Despite bitter cold temperatures and a government shut down by snow, thousands of pro-lifers gathered to March for Life this week in Washington DC.

Politico has a photo gallery, which shows large numbers of young people participating this year, not so surprising given Americans' trend toward life over abortion.

Michael Barone looks at the controversy and confusion that began with the Roe v. Wade decision, and Brit Hume offered this eloquent and insightful assessment on the moral case for defending life:




Kathryn Jean Lopez reports that, according to the new Marist poll, "an overwhelming number of Americans support restrictions on abortion."

• 74% favor a ban on abortions after 20 weeks except to save the life of the mother; 
• 53% believe life begins at conception; 
• 62% think abortion is morally wrong; 
• 80% support parental notification before a minor can obtain an abortion; 
• 79% support a 24-hour waiting period prior to having an abortion; 
• 76% oppose allowing abortions to be performed by non-doctors; 
• 62% want to change laws to allow for some restrictions on abortion; 
• 55% — including 6 in 10 Millennials — want continued debate on the abortion issue.

FRC: Abortion Myths and Facts

The Family Research Council will host a family policy lecture at noon on Friday, Jan 15, to discuss Abortion Myths and Facts: New Research Challenges Abortion Advocates' Claims. Those outside the Washington DC area can attend via Live Webcast.

Among the research details previewed to the Washington Examiner:

• Almost 3/4 of abortions are to women who initiated sex at age 16 or younger.
• 40% of women who begin sexual intercourse very early (ages 12-13-14) will have abortions.
• Only about 1/6 of women have obtained an abortion — not 1/3 as commonly cited by abortion supporters.

Meta-Analysis: Abortion-Breast Cancer Linked

China's one-child policy has yielded a huge data base of information about the effects of abortion:  China has "an average 8.2 million pregnancy terminations ever year, and 40 abortions for ever 100 live births," writes Dr. Mary L. Davenport, immediate past president of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

In the US we are used to abortion advocates claiming that the risk of elective abortion is relatively trivial, and major medical organizations denying any link between abortion and breast cancer.

Now a powerful new study from China published last week by Yubei Huang and colleagues suggests otherwise. The article, a meta-analysis pooling 36 studies from 14 provinces in China, showed that abortion increased the risk of breast cancer by 44% with one abortion, and 76% and 89% with two and three abortions.

Huang's study shows an even stronger increase than the 30% higher risk found in the 1996 meta-analysis by Joel Brind and colleagues on abortion as an independent risk factor for breast cancer. The Brind meta-analysis, combining the results of 23 studies, gave a more complete view than any single study. But even though it was the most comprehensive study on the topic at the time, it was disregarded by establishment medical groups.

Dr. Davenport argues it is a "disgrace that a more honest discourse about difficult medical topics can be found inthe People's Republic of China than in the USA."

Chinese researchers and physicians are unencumbered by abortion politics, and do not cover up data showing long term effects of induced abortion, as do their US counterparts in governmental, professional and consumer organizations.

Full study available here.

"Someone Has to Die"

Let’s imagine for a moment that you find yourself in a difficult position — one that has led to abject panic about your future career, the fate of a valued relationship, or whether you’ll even be able to make ends meet. Let’s also stipulate that your difficulty is largely your fault. You made some short-sighted, bad decisions that precipitated the crisis, but questions of responsibility are moot now — all that exists is the crisis, the stress that has overtaken your life. To be sure, there’s a way forward, a way out of the crisis, but even the most attractive options will require considerable commitment for most of a year — with potential for prolonged heartache.

Then, one evening you’re offered a way out. Your most recent troubles can go away, for the cost of a few hundred dollars and most of an afternoon. The catch? Someone has to die.

Oh, it’s not anyone you know or will ever know. They don’t have family that knows them, they don’t have spouses or children, and they’ll be so thoroughly unmourned that no one will even have to pay for a funeral. Decide now, and they might not even feel pain. Wait longer, and they’ll feel pain — but only for a little while.

You don’t have to see the body. You won’t know the person’s name. No one will have to know what you did. Indeed, the law strictly protects your confidentiality. An anonymous kill . . . then you’re free.

Ask the vast majority of rational people if they’d kill another person to change their own circumstances for the better, and they’d quickly answer no. Put them in the actual situation, and we know that millions answer yes. We know because of abortion.

Read the rest of David French's article, Abortion and the Idol of Self, at National Review Online.

Parker: How Abortion Has Changed America

"Let’s be clear that pro-aborts and pro-lifers differ on far more than technicalities about when life begins. They differ about what life is," writes Star Parker.

20-week baby in utero (WEBMD)

In the state of Pennsylvania, where Gosnell was doing his dirty business, abortion is legal until the developing child is 24 weeks - 6 months - old. Among Gosnell’s many transgressions was performing abortions after 24 weeks.

But Planned Parenthood, and their guest speaker, our president, oppose that 24-week limit. They believe abortion should be legal until the child is born.

[snip]

Justice Kennedy, who wrote the [Partial Birth Abortion Ban] decision, included a description of one of these procedures on a 26-week-old infant. It takes a certain deadening of the heart, of the soul to read the description of the little baby clasping his fingers and toes as the doctor jams his scissors into his skull, and still believe this should be permitted.

Since Roe v Wade, we’ve given birth to a new materialistic culture of narcissism where reverence for life itself is gone. Life has become a commodity and people use each other as cavalierly as they destroy innocent young life.

As our reverence for life has diminished, so has our reverence for the institutions that surround and support it.

Scholars at the Brookings Institution observed in 1996 that Roe v Wade contributed to the collapse of marriage and the dramatic increase in out-of-wedlock births. The idea that children were part of a sacred institution called marriage started disappearing.

The sense of honor, the sense of shame disappears in this culture of self.

Abortionist Gosnell Means Libs Lose their 'War Against Women'

Remember the 'war against women' ... and the 'women's health' mantra? Both were blown to bits, argues Noemie Emery, by the Grand Jury's report on abortionist Kermit Gosnell: "one patient 'was left lying in place after Gosnell tore her cervix and colon,' another 'was held for several hours after Gosnell punctured her uterus' ... a third 'went into convulsions ... fell off the procedure table, and hit her head on the floor.'

All this was covered up or ignored by pro-choice supporters, by the state, and by a representative of the National Abortion Federation who inspected the clinic, was disgusted.

Other clinics knew Gosnell's reputation and referred clients to him, the health of women being less important than the unfettered right to abort past delivery. Any "choice" advocate who uses the word "health" in this context after these horrors deserves to be stoned off the stage.

Slapping the 'Bitter Clinger' Label on Liberals

"Mr. Obama's remark about rural Pennsylvanians clinging to guns and religion is the coin of the realm in his crowd," writes Daniel Henninger in the WSJ.

But let's put their shared consensus another way: Somehow it became a conventional view in contemporary American politics that it is non-urban conservatives who in every case have to accommodate their beliefs to a national culture created by people who live somewhere else. "They" must adjust on abortion, guns, school prayer, sexual mores and all the rest of it. Liberals, meanwhile, not only feel no need to concede anything but use the commanding heights of the press and academia to define anyone who dissents from their ever-evolving national culture as a political fringe obsessed with people, one might say, who aren't like them.

Truth About Abortion Makes Media Sick, Silent

"Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A child screaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven't heard about these sickening accusations? It's not your fault," writes liberal commentator Kirsten Powers in USA Today. "Since the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell began March 18, there has been precious little coverage of the case that should be on every news show and front page. The revolting revelations of Gosnell's former staff, who have been testifying to what they witnessed and did during late-term abortions, should shock anyone with a heart."

Powers lambastes the mainstream press for ignoring the Gosnell murder trial.

NBC-10 Philadelphia reported that, Stephen Massof, a former Gosnell worker, "described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, 'literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body." One former worker, Adrienne Moton, testified that Gosnell taught her his "snipping" technique to use on infants born alive.

Massof, who, like other witnesses, has himself pleaded guilty to serious crimes, testified "It would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place." Here is the headline the Associated Press put on a story about his testimony that he saw 100 babies born and then snipped: "Staffer describes chaos at PA abortion clinic."

"Chaos" isn't really the story here. Butchering babies that were already born and were older than the state's 24-week limit for abortions is the story. There is a reason the late Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan called this procedure infanticide.

She doesn't let the abortion industry off the hook, either.

Planned Parenthood recently claimed that the possibility of infants surviving late-term abortions was "highly unusual." The Gosnell case suggests otherwise.

Regardless of such quibbles, about whether Gosnell was killing the infants one second after they left the womb instead of partially inside or completely inside the womb — as in a routine late-term abortion — is merely a matter of geography. That one is murder and the other is a legal procedure is morally irreconcilable.

The truth is that the Gosnell trial makes everyone sick. (The full Grand Jury report is here, but don't read it on a full stomach.) In the end the only differences in the barbarianism of the Boston Marathon terrorist and Kermit Gosnell are the ages of their slaughtered victims and the duration of their atrocities (Gosnell has been doing his evil deeds for 40 years).

Concludes Powers: "The deafening silence of too much of the media, once a force for justice in America, is a disgrace."

Why Are We Not Outraged by This?

That's the last question Barkha Herman asks at ricochet.com, but she has many more leading up to it:

I own my own business, travel and entertain a lot, have many hobbies that I don't always get enough time for, and am considering writing a memoir. I donate money and time to causes I believe in. Birth control has never occupied more than one percent of my time ever in my life. I suspect the actual lifetime number is much lower than that.

So what is up with the entire birth control debate?  Am I just a walking vagina? Is this insulting just to me or others?

Read her full post.

Woman Dies From Abortion at Planned Parenthood Clinic

This Chicago Sun-Times news report debunks the myth that "legal abortions are safe" — and it happened at a Planned Parenthood clinic no less:

Woman Dies After Abortion at Planned Parenthood Clinic

Updated: July 24, 2012 5:16AM

A woman died of injuries she received during an abortion at a local Planned Parenthood clinic Friday.

Tonya Reaves, 24, of the 1500 block of N. Kildare, was pronounced dead at 11:20 p.m. Friday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. She was taken to the hospital from the Planned Parenthood clinic at 18 S. Michigan Ave.

An autopsy done Saturday listed the woman’s cause of death to be hemorrhage, with a cervical dilation and evacuation, as well as an intrauterine pregnancy as contributing causes, according to the medical examiner’s office. Her death was ruled an accident.

Calls to local and national Planned Parenthood offices were not returned.

NRO: What Would Reagan Do?

The Catholic backlash over government's new "mandate to force Catholics to offer and purchase health-insurance plans that violate their consciences" is the focus of NRO online editor-at-large Kathryn Jean Lopez's insightful interview with Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College and author of two books on President Reagan. The two explore what Reagan would do (and did do) with this controversial matter, and how his wisdom might inform modern-day conservatives engaged in the battle.

A Yale Student Defends Life

"Welcome to Yale, a university that values tolerance and diversity," writes sophomore Elizabeth Gray Henry in the Yale Daily News, adding, "Well, as long as you have the correct beliefs..."  Miss Henry does an outstanding job of defending her beliefs about abortion in the article and calls for an open, tolerant dialogue on both sides. Read the article.