Life Advocacy Briefing

Abstinence Educators Get Funding Reprieve

THE U.S. SENATE THURSDAY PASSED A 3-MONTH EXTENSION of the Title V abstinence education program.

HR-3668 had already cleared the House and was advanced to the President by unanimous consent without a recorded Senate roll call. The extension is essentially a fallback measure to keep a wide network of abstinence education programs afloat while Congressional Democrats decide whether they can afford to side with their radical backers by letting critical federal funding for the abstinence movement expire.

Proclaiming Truth

NEXT SUNDAY, OCT. 7, WILL BE ‘LIFE-CHAIN SUNDAY’ across America. Organized locally and coordinated through an Internet website at www.lifechain.net, the first Sunday in October each year offers every pro-life family an opportunity to gather with others for an hour of prayer and public witness to the truths that abortion kills children and hurts women.

Typically, local coordinators choose high-visibility sites, lining busy intersections or encircling hospitals where abortions are committed. The concerted nationwide demonstration runs generally from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. in each time zone. Participants stand quietly, holding preprinted placards, sometimes worshipping together in song but typically not chanting or shouting. Information, including a city-by-city listing for each state, is available via the website or by calling
1-530/671-5500.

Unnerving Prayer?

THE 40 DAYS FOR LIFE PRAYER VIGIL has begun as of Sept. 26 in nearly 90 cities across America. Among the sites of the concerted prayer are the environs of some 39 Planned Parenthood abortuaries. House and locations of those vigils can be found on the Internet website of American Life League at www.all.org/stopp/wsr070926.htm.

A Planned Parenthood spokesman in Lufkin, Texas, reacted hysterically to the planned prayer vigil at her shop, telling the local newspaper she expected “harassment” and “intimidation” from peaceful Christians praying to their Lord over her deadly business.

Catholic University Subsidizing Abortion Lobby

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY IS ABANDONING A POLICY which has barred law students from university grants for internships at such anti-Life outfits as Planned Parenthood. The university is operated by the Jesuit Order of the Roman Catholic Church.

“The decision comes after the Law Center got flack,” writes John-Henry Westen for LifeSiteNews.com, “from pro-abortion students and faculty for directing student group Equal Justice Foundation, which received university funding, to refuse funding to a student who applied to funding to intern at Planned Parenthood.”

The Georgetown newspaper The Hoya reports, reports Mr. Westen, “that the University Law Center will no longer consider the mission of organizations in determining grants. … ‘In partnership with the Equal Justice Foundation,’” wrote Law Center dean Alexander Aleinikoff in The Hoya, quoted by LifeSiteNews, “‘the Law Center will provide grants to all students who work on law-related issues at a public interest organization or government agency.’”

The president of the Law Center’s pro-life group, Daniel Hughes, wrote to The Hoya, reports Mr. Westen, that Mr. Aleinikoff “‘and other administrators have crafted a dishonest, legalistic “compromise” that will allow students to gain assured, extensive Georgetown funding for pro-abortion legal work,’” including lobbying in Washington.

Good News from Aurora

PREGNANCY COUNSELING CENTERS IN THE VICINITY OF AURORA, Illinois, are reporting a sharp increase in calls from abortion-vulnerable mothers, apparently alarmed by the controversy besetting the still-closed Planned Parenthood megabortuary built in the western Chicago suburb by a front corporation whose deception about the planned use of the 22,000-square-foot building has touched off a sustained public demonstration at the site.

“Women who were considering abortion are calling up and choosing life,” protest organizer Eric Scheidler reported in an update memo circulated to pro-life media. “The news is, we’re saving babies!”  Mr. Scheidler, who lives in Aurora and formed Families Against Planned Parenthood to respond to the discovery of PP’s intention to use the massive new building as America’s largest abortuary, attributed the upsurge of pregnancy center inquiries to “the literature, the signs, the publicity and, above all, the more than 1,000 hours of prayer we’ve offered up on the sidewalk. It’s all paying off,” he said, calling on pro-life citizens to join him “in offering a prayer of thanks.”

Though Planned Parenthood is continuing to press federal Judge Charles Norgle for an order permitting PP to open for business, the city of Aurora is continuing to withhold the occupancy permit for the $7.5 million building while investigating claims of fraud and deception in the permitting process. PP used a front corporation to build the edifice as a “medical office” with no indication that abortions would be permitted or that PP was even involved. Judge Norgle has so far refused to order that the shop be allowed to operate; its scheduled opening date was to have been Sept. 18.

Controversy over improper procedures for a new abortuary in Monrovia, California, in 2001, noted Jim Sedlak, vice president of American Life League for its Stop Planned Praenthood (STOPP) subsidiary, resulted in the building’s demolition. “Local citizens filed lawsuits against the city,” he reported in an ALL news release, “and after a two-year battle, the PP facility was bulldozed and turned into a parking lot. This is what Aurora citizens are demanding,” he said in the ALL release, “and it’s perfectly reasonable. The Aurora city council should immediately order PP to vacate the building and begin the process of having it torn down.”

Denver Protests Building

PRO-LIFE ACTIVISTS IN COLORADO ARE STEPPING UP EFFORTS to prevent Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains from carrying through on building a 50,000-square-foot abortuary in a predominantly black neighborhood of Denver.

Groundbreaking on the massive mill is set for November. PP’s plans surfaced recently, though the outfit had bought the property under another name, repeating the stealthy tactics that have embroiled their new Aurora, Illinois, facility in controversy and litigation.

Colorado Right to Life is planning to picket the office of the Denver site’s general contractor, whose senior vice president’s home is already being picketed on weekends.

The neighborhood surrounding the proposed PP abortuary site is also being visited by pro-life citizens, who are distributing a brochure, writes Jill Stanek in her WorldNetDaily.com (WND) column, which “informed residents that PP is racist (95% of abortion mills are located in urban areas, according to the Guttmacher Institute, research arm of PP), and PP’s founder Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist who hung out at KKK rallies.” Truth can hurt those who should know shame.

Another Abortuary Gives In

AN ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY, ABORTUARY, closed temporarily by the state in June because of filthy conditions, has now surrendered its license.

“A New Jersey Health Dept. spokesman confirmed [last] Tuesday,” reports Michael Clark in The Press of Atlantic City, “that the Alternatives abortion clinic has opted to surrender its license to the state instead of correcting the myriad violations detailed in a report that caused the sudden closing of the clinic.”

“The situation at Alternatives is a snapshot of the condition at abortion mills across the country,” said Operation Rescue spokesman Cheryl Sullenger in an OR news release reporting the license surrender. “Clinics have been recently closed for filthy and unsafe conditions in Ohio, Alabama, Florida and Kansas. … The fact that these clinics would rather close than clean illustrates in a dramatic way,” said Ms. Sullenger, “just how dangerous abortion mills really are” to their customers. The danger to their progeny is self-evident.

Self-evident Truth

It is not our policy, usually, to reprint first-person monographs from Internet websites, but this story, posted Sept. 21, 2007, at www.FamiliesAgainstPlannedParenthood.org, maintained by and for the volunteer prayer warriors of Aurora, Illinois, seems to us a model of understanding of the fundamental injustice of commercialized abortion. We expect our readers will enjoy it and can employ it with others to aid their understanding. We reprint “Andrea’s” story with a few edits for grammar.

—-I was on my way home from our annual back-to-school shopping trip to [a nearby] mall and surrounding shoe stores when I remembered that there was a Planned Parenthood being built along New York Street. I had passed the intersection of New York & Eola about 1,000 times in my lifetime and could not picture where the building would be located.

—-I had my four children with me: a 4th-grade girl, a kindergarten boy, a preschool boy and a 2-year-old boy, and I decided to take a quick detour and drive by to see where the Planned Parenthood building was. We turned onto Oakhurst, and I saw five women standing on the sidewalk, walking slowly back and forth. Since we were already there, I decided to park and walk with my children to get a closer look.

—-When we got back into the mini-van after our visit, I suddenly found myself being pelted with questions for the next 10 minutes. What was that building for? Why were people praying? What was happening in that building? I did my best to avoid answering their questions, but they just kept asking and asking.

—-I had to tell them something, so I said that something was going to be happening in that building that people are very worried about. This only increased the questions and persistence. They had to know what was going on in the building, and they were not going to let me off the hook.

—- As a parent, I can say that I have been dreading conversations like this, and I was shocked that I was suddenly involved in one. I was completely unprepared and would have preferred to have had time to plan and memorize stock answers that I had discussed with my husband prior to the conversation. Since that was not going to happen, I came up with an answer that I thought would be simple and end the questions.

—-My children have an understanding that babies grow in their mother’s tummy and that the mothers know a long, long time before the baby comes out that there is a baby growing in the tummy. I told them that the building was a medical building and the people who work there were going to be taking babies out of a mother’s tummy before the babies were ready to come out.

—-I thought that this would end the conversation. Unfortunately, this brief statement set off a day-long interrogation session such as I have never in my many years of parenting endured before.

—-Once the statement left my lips, they started firing away at me. “Are they making women do this? Are they paying women to do this? Why would women do this?” I answered with, “Women are paying the workers to do this.”

—-“But why would women do this? What happens to the baby?” they asked. I said that since they were taking the baby out before it was ready, the baby would die.

—-“So they are making the baby die on purpose? Do the mothers know ahead of time?” they asked. I said that the workers tell the mothers that it is not really a baby so the mothers will not worry about doing it. With that, the car erupted with cries of disbelief, even laughter.

—-They said, “If a mother knows that she is pregnant and is having a baby, then how could it not be a baby?” they asked. They just could not get over that women would just believe the workers like that.

—-Luckily for me, we were about to pass a McDonalds, and the 2-year-old noticed. He started talking about wanting McDonalds, which changed the conversation at last.

—- However, my break from interrogation was short. Later that day, when we were back in the car, the 4th-grade girl asked, “Is it illegal to kill someone?” I said yes. She asked, “Then is what those medical workers in the building are doing illegal?”

—-Before I had a chance to answer, the kindergarten boy piped up, “Yeah, do the police know about this?” he asked. I said that the police know about this and that it is legal to do what they are doing. Then the kindergartner asked, “Does the Fox News know about this?” I said that reporters do know about it and are talking about it.

—-Later, when my kindergarten son and I were alone in the kitchen, he asked, “What does God think about this?” I said that I thought that God would not like it.

—-Then the kindergartner got an idea. He decided that we have to warn people about the building. He said, “We have to make three signs that say, Tell your wives and mothers not to go into this building.” Since the kindergartner had been to the building, he must have thought that three signs would be enough to get the message out.

—-Finally, he said, “When you see Auntie Lori at the shower this weekend, be sure to tell her not to go into that building.” When I saw my pregnant sister-in-law at her baby shower, I delivered the message from my kindergarten son about the building. She said that she had heard about the Planned Parenthood building in Aurora, and she said to tell my son that she would be very careful not to go into the building.

—-My son was very relieved to hear this. Now he just has to make sure that everyone else knows about it.

Senate Victory & Vote

TRAVELING LAST WEEK, OUR EDITOR MISSED TIMELY REPORTING of a victory in the US Senate, so we are pleased to report it today.

It was on a motion to invoke cloture – that is, to end debate and move to a vote on passage – to bring forward patently unconstitutional legislation to grant the Delegate from the District of Columbia a full voting seat in the US House. Though such a vote is not directly a Life-related measure, the likelihood of its passage leading to a near-automatic additional vote for every pro-abortion measure ever to be proposed leads us to count this vote as such, to publish the voting record here and to include it in our annual Senate Voting Record Index, to be compiled and published later this autumn. Here, then, is the Senate vote:

Motion to bring to a vote S-1257, DC House Voting Rights Act of 2007 – Sept. 18, 2007 – Rejected 57-42, needing 60 to pass (Democrats in italics; “Independents” indicated with “I”)

Voting “no” / pro-life: AL/Sessions & Shelby, AK/Murkowski & Stevens, AZ/Kyl & McCain, CO/Allard, FL/Martinez, GA/Chambliss & Isakson, ID/Craig & Crapo, IA/Grassley, KS/Brownback & Roberts, KY/Bunning & McConnell, LA/Vitter, MS/Cochran & Lott, MO/Bond, MT/Baucus, NE/Hagel, NV/Ensign, NH/Gregg & Sununu, NM/Domenici, NC/Burr & Dole, OK/Coburn & Inhofe, OR/Smith, SC/DeMint & Graham, SD/Thune, TN/Alexander & Corker, TX/Cornyn & Hutchison, VA/Warner, WY/Barrasso & Enzi

Voting “yes” / pro-abortion: AR/Lincoln & Pryor, CA/Boxer & Feinstein, CO/Salazar, CT/Dodd & Lieberman (I), DE/Biden & Carper, FL/Nelson, HI/Akaka & Inouye, IL/Durbin & Obama, IN/Bayh & Lugar, IA/Harkin, LA/Landrieu, ME/Collins & Snowe, MD/Cardin & Mikulski, MA/Kennedy & Kerry, MI/Levin & Stabenow, MN/Coleman & Klobuchar, MO/McCaskill, MT/Tester, NE/Nelson, NV/Reid, NJ/Lautenberg & Menendez, NM/Bingaman, NY/Clinton & Schumer, ND/Conrad & Dorgan, OH/Brown & Voinovich, OR/Wyden, PA/Casey & Specter, RI/Reed & Whitehouse, SD/Johnson, UT/Bennett & Hatch, VT/Leahy & Sanders (I), VA/Webb, WA/Cantwell & Murray, WV/Rockefeller, WI/Feingold & Kohl

Not voting: WV/Byrd