Abortion

PA House Bill 1500: One Small Step Towards Victory

June 21, 2021By

On June 9, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban abortions solely because of a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. This pro-life victory served as a small but significant step to promote the dignity of all human life.

The bill, known as House Bill 1500, was introduced by Rep. Kate Klunk, R-York, in December 2020.

“Most of us know of a family touched by a Down syndrome child, and know these children grow to lead joyful and fulfilling lives,” Klunk said when introducing the bill.

In current Pennsylvania law, it is legal for a woman toreceive an abortion prior to 24 weeks gestation for any reason deemed necessaryby a physician, with the exception of selecting the sex of the child. This billwill broaden that restriction through the same means in the case of a positiveDown syndrome diagnosis.

“People with Down syndrome are living longer than ever and they’re happier than most of us,” said Rep. Kathy Rapp. “So why are many of them being aborted, why? It’s a curious and heart-wrenching question, because there never has been a better time in all of history for people with Down syndrome.”

“We need to stand up for those who do not have a voice herein Pennsylvania,” added Klunk. “And that’s what this bill does. We have theresponsibility to stand up for those children who receive that Down Syndromediagnosis in the womb, and we shouldn’t allow them to be discriminated against becausethey have one extra chromosome.”

Rep. Paul Schemel acknowledged unborn babies with Down Syndrome as falling under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which protects the disabled from discrimination in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and public/private affairs. “The principle underlying the legally protected classes is that we don’t treat certain people differently because of their condition, be it race, sex, disability, etc. We don’t treat the disabled differently just because they are disabled. That would be wrong.”

The bill came through the House with a passing vote of 120-83,a major victory for the pro-life movement.  But why is it so significant?

The reason is not only because unborn babies with Down syndrome are receiving justice and protection, but the bill itself is one of the first steps to shift the focus of the abortion movement from the woman alone to the unborn child in her womb. Once we can shine a small light on the humanity and life of the unborn, we can open a door to complete, undeniable justice for them all.

May we continue to pray for our state senators, as they prepare to vote on the Down syndrome bill in the weeks to come. May we pray that Governor Wolf may also begin to see this bill in a different light. And may we continue, one small step at a time, to proclaim the humanity in all unborn life.

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Abortion

Roe’s Feeble Foundation Threatened by the Tide of Truth

May 26, 2021By

With the President, mainstream media, and Hollywood elites all in their corner, it would seem that the abortion lobby is living their misguided dream.

But recent news that the Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban has sent them into a tailspin. They’re panicked that not only will the ban be upheld by a more conservative Court, but that Roe itself may be reversed. If there is strong legal precedent and overwhelming public support for abortion, as activists often claim, what are they afraid of?

The truth. Many in the abortion industry know what many pro-lifers know: Roe v. Wade was a decision built on proverbial sand, a feeble foundation that has been steadily eroded by science, experience, and reason over the last 50 years.

Legal scholars on both sides of theissue acknowledge the shaky ground on which Justice Harry Blackmun’s majorityopinion was based. His own pro-abortion clerk, Edward Lazarus, admitted yearslater, “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicialmethod, Roe borders on the indefensible…Andin the years since Roe’sannouncement, no one has produced aconvincing defense of Roe on its ownterms.”

Whileabortion supporters often refer to the Constitutional right to abortion, the truthis there is no such thing, and there never was. Simply stated, there is no explicit right to abortion in theU.S. Constitution. So on what basis did the Court legalize abortion in 1973?

Roe said that a woman’s “right” to abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment. Yet, the amendment itself makes no mention of right to privacy.

“Nor shall any State deprive any person of life,liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person withinits jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The RoeCourt referred to a right to privacy that was invented in a 1965 caseabout contraception, Griswold vs.Connecticut. In that majority opinion, Justice William O. Douglas wrote of penumbras (shadows) formed by emanations (rays) of the Bill of Rights,and surmised that from these shadows andrays arose a “zone of privacy,” later referred by the court as the “right ofprivacy.”

In essence, Justice Douglas proposed that the Bill of Rights emanates other rights, and in the shadows of those other rights are additional rights, none of which are specifically declared in the Constitution.  It was on this precarious, ever-shifting bed of sand (and shadows) that the right to abortion as part of a right to privacy was founded. A fabricated, weak argument.

What is undeniably explicit in the 14th amendment are guaranteed fundamental rights: no State shall make a law depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny equal protection of law. The 14th amendment, first and foremost, upholds the right to life.  And yet this amendment is used to imply a right to privacy that is prioritized over an explicit right to life.

But what about the word person, another frequent protest of abortion supporters? Are fetuses persons?  Even Justice Blackmun himself conceded in his opinion that the right to abortion would not exist if the humanity of the fetus could be proved.  “If this suggestion of personhood is established, [Roe’s] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment,” he wrote.

What would a 2021 Blackmun say about this? Hidden in the womb, invisible to the human eye, the fetus was somewhat easier to de-humanize in 1973. But with the revelations of ultrasound, the evolving sciences of embryology and genetics, and the advancements of in utero-fetal surgery, it’s disingenuous to do so today.  Fetuses are as human as infants, toddlers, and senior citizens. Clearly, both science and technology have shown us the irrefutable proof that Blackmun sought. Those unwilling to admit to this obvious truth deliberately turn a blind eye to the evidence and begin playing language games in an effort to justify abortion.

The decision to legalize abortion was rooted in not just poor legal interpretation, but also deception. Roe was based onhttps://www.lifenews.com/2022/07/29/planned-parenthood-vp-caught-selling-aborted-baby-parts-named-ceo-of-new-abortion-biz/ the lie that Jane Roe (Norma McCorvey) was raped.  Roe was supported by then-abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s grossly inflated, yet unquestioned numbers that thousands of women died in back alley abortions each year.  Roe’s majority opinion cited Larry Lader’s non-scientific book Abortion seven times, essentially using a piece of propaganda to justify a legal decision.

Roe is not immune to being overturned. As Justice Amy Coney Barret explained in her nomination hearings, Roe is not a super-precedent like the de-segregation case Brown vs. the Board of Education because it still faces many legal challenges in courts around the country. This vulnerability is what has the abortion lobby so worried. A tide of truth is creeping ever closer to washing Roe away.

Overturning Roe will not suddenly make abortion illegal across this county. The abortion decision would go back to each state, and we all must be ready for such a pivotal moment in history, to rebuild a culture of life that is on solid legal ground.

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Abortion

The Pill that Kills, Delivered by Mail

April 26, 2021By

If a vaccine were to kill 24 people and injure 3,000 more, would that vaccine remain available?

What about an abortion drug?

Despite the recognized danger of the drug Mifeprex (mifepristone), the Biden Administration has lifted safety restrictions on the abortion pill, erasing medically-necessary precautions that have been in place since FDA approval in 2000.

By tossing out these needed safeguards, the administration and the abortion industry are playing Russian roulette with women’s lives, handing them “a loaded gun” in the form of chemical abortion.

According to a statement released by the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), which represents approximately 7,000 women’s healthcare practitioners, the abortion pill has led to at least 24 deaths and 3,000 injuries, with 500 more women at risk of dying had they not reached emergency medical care in time.

Since the FDA stopped collecting data on the adverse effects of the drug in 2016, the complication rate could be much higher.  Death due to abortion often goes unreported, so it is difficult to determine the true fatality rate of the drug.

Earlier this month, a 23-year-old Argentinian woman died from a chemical abortion after it was made legal in her country.

Now, in our country, the most pro-abortion President in history jeopardizes the lives of unsuspecting young women as they are misled into believing they can safely abort at home.

No longer will an in-person exam be required to confirm the gestational age of the child or to rule out an ectopic pregnancy or multiple babies or other complicating conditions or to determine if a woman is RH negative and in need of a Rhogam injection.

Rather, the potent drugs can be delivered to a mailbox or pharmacy simply through a tele-health visit with an abortion provider. Planned Parenthood Keystone is already enthusiastically promoting this “service” on their website.

The two-pill abortion procedure is only approved up through10 weeks, but many young women are frequently uncertain as to how far along they are. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology estimates that about 50% of women are wrong about their gestational age when relying on recall of their last cycle, which is why determining the baby’s age by ultrasound had been standard practice in the past. Taking the drugs past 10 weeks significantly increases the chance of complications.

But the abortion drug is dangerous earlier in pregnancy too. AAPLOG notes, “A Finnish study involving nearly 50,000 women who had abortions at 9 weeks or less showed that immediate adverse events were four times more likely with chemical abortion than surgical.”

That is why the safety regulations, known as REMs(Risk Evaluation and Mitigation), were enacted in the first place.  There is significant risk of hemorrhaging,infection, incomplete abortion, and more that can threaten a young woman’slife.

“This requirement is not restrictive-it is protective,” states AAPLOG.

And while there is a definite physical risk to women, there is also a tremendous emotional and psychological impact.  Young women are left alone to endure hours of severe cramping and bleeding to deliver and dispose of a dead child.

It’s hard to understand that anyone could possibly think such trauma is part of empowering women. Rather than given authentic support at a difficult moment, women are given a pill to kill, one that might kill them as well as their baby.

But under the misleading title of “reproductive justice,” that’s a risk the Biden Administration is willing to take.

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Abortion

A Film Too Important to Not See

March 12, 2021By

Where were you in 1973?

Perhaps you remember it well. Perhaps you weren’t evenborn.

I was five years old, blissfully unaware of thevolatile changes occurring in our culture.

It would be many years before I would know what Roe v. Wade was. By that time, an abortion narrative had been carefully crafted and a misleading lexicon taken hold, phrases like “pro-choice”, “reproductive rights”, and even “access to health care.”

Which is why the movie Roe v Wade is so fascinating and so very relevant. It offers a fast-paced, fact-checked depiction of events leading to the most controversial court case of our time, a historical moment that preceded many Americans alive today.

For those familiar with the history of abortion inthis country, this movie smoothly ties together main players and events, helpingthe viewer to see the big picture. For others, the film will expose how the truestory of Roe has been omitted from decadesof abortion propaganda.

Told through the lens of Dr. Bernard Nathanson (played by co-producer Nick Loeb), the movie captures his evolving relationship with abortion: from paying for a girlfriend’s abortion to co-founding the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) to becoming New York’s busiest abortionist. With over 70,000 deaths attributed to his practice, he became known as “The  King of Abortion” and “The Scraper.” But as the film depicts, Nathanson experiences a heart-wrenching epiphany that leads him to abandon his lucrative work and become an outspoken pro-life activist.

As Nathanson narrates his journey, we meet hissidekick Lader, who has authored a book called Abortion. He recruits friend and feminist Betty Friedan to theabortion cause. Reluctant to make abortion the focus of the women’s rightsmovement, Friedan does ultimately bring the National Organization for Women(NOW) into the fight, but observes, “You boys are only in favor of abortionbecause it’s cheaper than child support.”

For Larry Lader allies are not enough. He believesevery cause has to identify an enemy, and for the abortion movement, he shrewdlychooses the biggest defender of the unborn, the Catholic Church. A master mediamanipulator, Lader is able to vilify the Church while promoting his newly-coinedterm “pro-choice” and his “abortion-on-demand” agenda in major publications.

Today’s viewers may be shocked to see the dominant role that men, not women, actually played in legalizing abortion.  In addition, to Nathanson and Lader, the Supreme Court at that time was all male, none of whom could have ever felt the flutter of life in their belly or witnessed an ultrasound image of that life.  The movie reveals that two justices, Potter Stewart and Harry Blackmun, actually had family members who volunteered at Planned Parenthood while Roe was in the courts, yet they didn’t recuse themselves.

A little-known fact explained in the movie is thatarguments for Roe were heard twice,once in 1971 and then again in 1973. Justice Warren Burger (played by JohnVoight) insisted on the second hearing since two seats on the Court had been vacantthe first time around. With a case as controversial as Roe, he felt a decision shouldbe made by a full court. Tragically, in the time between oral arguments, Burgerand Blackmun would switch their votes to be in favor of Roe, likely a result ofmedia and family pressure.

An outstanding woman in the film is the poised and brilliant Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School. Recognizing that abortion violates the Hippocratic Oath she took, she decides she cannot sit on the sidelines.  “Life begins at conception. As a physician, I know this.” She goes on to become President of the newly formed National Right to Life Committee, now the oldest and largest pro-life organization in our country.

Although dense with people, events, and information, the movie flows easily, thanks to Nathanson’s retrospective voice framing the story. The extensive, detailed research that underscores the film is impressive, making this an excellent educational tool not only for today but for generations to come.

Many scenes will give the viewer pause: the arrest of clergy involved in a secret abortion-referral network, Planned Parenthood fundraising at the Playboy Mansion, Nathanson’s overseas training in “assembly-line” abortion methods, the emotional recitation of the diary of the unborn, and the stirring closing argument offered by Robert Flowers.

Many of the lines are thought-provoking. Throughout the film, Constitutional law professor Robert M. Byrn offers bits of wisdom, quotations from historical figures like Benjamin Franklin and John Marshall.

But perhaps it is his own words to his students that should resonate with us long after viewing the movie, impelling us to never stop advocating for the innocent, vulnerable child in the womb.

“Don’t you think someone’s hopelessness should motivate us to protect them, not destroy them?”

(For $12.99 plus tax, you can stream Roe v Wade to any device by clicking here.)

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Abortion

The Difference a Law Can Make

March 4, 2021By

A happily married woman who delights in her twochildren may not seem like someone who would get an abortion.

Yet, Sue Ellen Browder did.  In her book Subverted: How I Helped theSexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement, she reveals the mindset thatled her to a decision she would later regret.

It’s a mindset that, decades later, still lures womento abort. At its core is the universal emotion of fear.

Browder feared that she and her husband, struggling writers working temp jobs to keep the lights on, could not afford another child. The 1970’s Cosmo culture in which she was steeped validated that fear and gave her “permission” to act on it. “In my mind, abortion was an integral part of the women’s movement, a right as fundamental as equal pay for equal work,” she writes. As “watered-down Christians,” she says her husband even tried to find justification for abortion in the Bible.

But Browder admits that she would never have considered abortion were it not legal in 1974. “Looking up some sleazy criminal abortionist in a back alley would be too hideous a prospect for words.” An important admission that we need to bear in mind today as we seek to change laws to protect life.

Getting a legal abortion in the “bright, clean hospital” where she had already given birth, however, gave it an air of legitimacy, as though it were just like any other medical procedure. “I didn’t think of myself as killing a child. I thought of myself as solving a problem.”

The abortion was excruciatingly painful, both physicallyand emotionally. In an act of self-preservation, Browder blocked much of thedetails from her mind, rendering the memory a blur.

Afterward, she numbly returned to work. “I have justsnuffed out a tiny life over my lunch hour. I have betrayed the bond of love that holds the universe together. Andno one I work with seems any the wiser.”

To prevent any possible feelings from surfacing, Browderburied herself in distractions. She blamed the persistent angst and depression shefelt on the couple’s continually volatile finances.  Her husband struggled emotionally as well, andthey chose to stifle their pain by never speaking of the abortion.

One day, however, Browder found herself offering a gestureof atonement. She spontaneously purchased a brand new wooden crib and mattressand donated it to a pro-life center for “some struggling mother who, despiteher poverty, had chosen to keep her baby and to reach out humbly to others forhelp.” Something she wished she had done.

Browder’s thinking shifted and she questioned the fauxfeminism that portrayed abortion as the great liberator. She recognized thatshe herself was deceived by the very propaganda she helped disseminate as awriter for Cosmopolitan.

Her entry into the Episcopal Church, coinciding with herwork on a book about human interactions, resulted in a new understanding of personhood.She realized an interconnectedness between all humans, especially mother andchild.

It gradually became clear to Browder that the women’smovement embodied by Betty Friedan and the National Organization for Women wasrooted in flawed thinking that “falsely isolates a woman from God, from a truerelationship of love with a man, and even from the dance of life in her ownbody.”

Browder had succumbed to fear in getting her abortion, but she would no longer succumb to the lies that pitted women against their children.

Her journey was taking a new turn, one that would leadher to a surprising place.

(Please join us in reading Chapter 13-18 and theEpilogue for next week.)

Quotable quotes:

“It’s not only a tiny little life who dies on thisgurney. Part of my heart dies along with him.” (p. 105)

“Men, stripped of the maturity than comes withresponsible fatherhood, were becoming self-absorbed Peter Pans who couldn’tgrow up.” (p. 122)

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