Life Advocacy Briefing

Blessed Christmas

WE WISH ALL OUR READERS ABUNDANT BLESSINGS in this season when we celebrate our Savior’s incarnation. We’ll be spending these next two weekends with family; please do not expect a Life Advocacy Briefing before our January 10, 2012, edition.

Please accept our apology that this edition has been delayed. Technical difficulties and illness prevented our meeting our usual publication schedule.  

Coming Up

FOR THOSE WATCHING FOR OUR ANNUAL VOTING RECORD INDEX, we plan to publish the 2011 roll call compilations from House and Senate in early January.

Pro-Life Advances in Spending Measure

THE OMNIBUS SPENDING BILL WHICH CLEARED CONGRESS last week had a couple of pro-life advances tucked into its multitude of pages. Besides a too-modest cut in funding to Planned Parenthood, the massive spending measure included $5 million for abstinence education, which had been defunded by the Obama Regime in the radical President’s first year in office.

A further provision drew fire from the Oval Office: the President warned lawmakers to excise language banning federal funding of abortions in the District of Columbia. Though the President blustered a veto threat over the DC provision, such an action is unlikely.

Net Tightening Around Gosnell

WHILE ABORTIONIST KERMIT GOSNELL SITS IN JAIL awaiting trial for murdering

babies who survived late-term abortions at his West Philadelphia “house of horrors,” one after another of his associates and former employees have pleaded guilty to a variety of crimes in his shop. The latest to plead guilty is his own wife, Pearl Gosnell, who admitted to participating in an illegal late-term abortion, conspiracy and helping operate a corrupt organization.

As much as Mr. Gosnell might be experiencing pain in seeing his wife called to justice, what might well pain him more is last week’s report that she has entered a plea deal which includes her agreement to testify against her husband. She will be confined to her home until after her anticipated testimony when Mr. Gosnell stands trial on charges of murder in the death of one abortion customer and of using medical instruments to sever the spines of babies born alive while being aborted.

Though the Gosnell murder charges and prosecutions against his staff members are proceeding in state court, the Gosnell horror is now moving into federal court as well.

Federal prosecutors brought forward allegations last week, reports the Associated Press, “that [Mr. Gosnell] ran a pill mill out of the now-closed business. Federal prosecutors say,” reports AP, “70-year-old Kermit Gosnell wrote thousands of prescriptions for painkillers and sedatives for  no legitimate medical purpose. Seven members of [Mr.] Gosnell’s staff were also charged [last] Wednesday in the drug conspiracy case.”

It was rumors of the pill-mill operation that brought investigators into the Philadelphia abortuary in February, 2010. Those federal agents, writes the AP staff, “reported deplorable and unsanitary conditions, including fetal parts in jars.”

Pennsylvania lawmakers are in the process of tightening abortuary regulatory statutes in the wake of the Gosnell horror. State inspections of abortuaries were suspended in Pennsylvania about 15 years ago under then-Gov. Tom Ridge, a GOP abortion advocate, for political reasons.

Obama Regime Threatens Women’s Health in Texas

TEXAS GOV. RICK PERRY LAST WEEK URGED THE OBAMA REGIME to grant a waiver so his state could continue receiving federal funds for its Medicaid Women’s Health Program while respecting state law barring funding to Planned Parenthood or other organizations which commit abortions.

“‘We are committed to protecting Life in Texas,’” said the GOP Presidential hopeful, quoted by Christine Dhanagom in LifeSiteNews.com, “‘and state law prohibits giving state dollars to abortion providers and affiliates, a fact the Obama Administration ignores.’”  Gov. Perry added, reports Ms. Dhanagom, “that Texas women were ‘pay[ing] the price’ for the administration’s ‘pro-abortion agenda.’”

When the director of the federal Center for Medicaid & CHIP Services “sent a letter to Texas officials,” writes Ms. Dhanagom, “claiming that attempting to block Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds violated the Social Security Act,” the executive commissioner of the state’s Health & Human Services Commission, Tom Suehs, reports LifeSiteNews, “said in a statement that the denial of funds was itself ‘inconsistent with federal law,’ since states have the right to ‘establish qualifications for Medicaid providers.’”

Texas Alliance for Life chief Dr. Joe Pojman weighed in on the issue, pointing out, according to Charlie Butts writing for OneNewsNow.com, “that hundreds of other facilities in Texas provide comprehensive preventative care and are capable of doing the job without selling abortions.” By threatening to cut off Medicaid funding, he said, “the Administration ‘is showing it would sooner deny tens of millions of dollars of medical services to low-income women rather than allow the state to cut off tax funding to Planned Parenthood.’”

Sebelius Blamed for Planned Parenthood Cover-Up

AMERICAN LIFE LEAGUE HAS POSTED A VIDEO on the YouTube Internet website tying Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to official actions abetting Planned Parenthood in covering up crimes in Kansas related to protecting child rapists from official intervention.

The production offers a good summary of the complex web woven by Kansas officials when Mrs. Sebelius was governor. We commend it to our readers and suggest sending the link around to others. The video is available here.

Komen Keeps Abetting Planned Parenthood

THOUGH SOME PRO-LIFE CITIZENS HAD HOPED hints from the Susan G. Komen Foundation might mean something, the prominent breast cancer advocacy group made very clear last week that the Komen donations to Planned Parenthood would continue.

“Within two days of the initial reports” of a change of policy, reports Susan Tyrrell for LifeSiteNews.com, “Komen in Orange County, California, confirmed it had given Planned Parenthood two more grants.”

When Ms. Tyrrell followed up with “Komen officials to ask if there was any verity to the potential defunding of Planned Parenthood, their answer, at least thus far, is that they have funded Planned Parenthood and will continue to fund Planned Parenthood.”

Here is the statement Ms. Tyrrell received from Komen: “Komen provides funding for local community health programs through our network of more than 120 affiliates … . Each affiliate is responsible for assessing the breast health service needs – including education, screening, treatment and support – for the residents within its region as well as identifying and providing funding to organizations that can meet those needs. … The decision to fund any breast health and screening program is based on a thorough assessment of a community’s breast health needs and resources. In some areas of the US, our affiliates have determined a Planned Parenthood clinic to be the best or only local place where women can receive breast health care.”

Citing the Orange County donation, Ms. Tyrrell asks, “Is Komen really saying it could not donate money to another women’s health agency in that hugely populated area that could serve women’s breast health without killing babies in the next room? That’s really unbelievable.

“What’s more astounding,” she writes, “is that the Orange County Planned Parenthood alone (and Komen has 18 others on the list) had a 2010 total revenue of $31,518,017. It’s hard to grasp with the human mind,” she writes, “how an agency with that kind of money coming in can be the place with the greatest need to reach out to ‘low-income, uninsured or medically underserved women.’

“Let’s also remember,” Ms. Tyrrell adds, “Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms.” Uh, yes; the true bottom line.

Survivor

A BABY GIRL, born Aug. 30 at 24 weeks gestation and weighing only 9.5 ounces, is expected to go home by New Year’s Day from the Los Angeles County USC Medical Center.

Melinda Star Guido is believed, reports Abby Sewell in the Los Angeles Times, to be “the third smallest baby in the world by gestational age and weight.” Though “doctors were concerned she would not survive,” writes Ms. Sewell, “she now weighs four pounds.”

Los Angeles County has posted a nearly-two-minute video report on the remarkable young lady on the Internet here.

Affirmation of a Role Model

IN YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE ABORTION LOBBY’s ADOLESCENT TACTICS, a writer for a pro-abortion Internet web-log last week mocked football hero Tim Tebow for his overt pro-life, Christian advocacy.

“For every touchdown [Mr.] Tebow throws next week,” wrote an anonymous blogger to her three or four fans, “donate $5 or $10 to your local pro-choice organization. … I figure,” the blogger wrote, “this is indeed the best way to enjoy football, support Tim Tebow [sic] …, and give, give, give to pro-choice organizations earning [sic] little to no glory [!], yet desperately in need of funds.”

Nice to know the popular role model is getting under the skin of the “thinkers” whose greatest passion in life is preserving access to the commercialized slaughter of babies.

Incapable of Rational Argument

Dec. 12, 2011, commentary by Marc Barnes for LifeSiteNews.com

Perhaps I was too naively raised on Tolkien, Lewis and all the rest, but as a child, I took for granted these two truths: That a man would have enemies and that his enemies would be frightening. He would, I assumed, have to muster up some semblance of courage to fight them.

It is with surprise – and a vague disappointment, even – that, while I certainly find an enemy in the pro-abortion movement, their most striking characteristic turns out to be not frightfulness but snobbery.

The pro-abortion movement represents an aristocracy far before they represent any coherent ideology. They’ve devolved into such a desperate spiral of inside jokes, memes, slogans and bitter rants that the average human being is immediately excluded from their ranks. The current tactic of Planned Parenthood & Co. is not to fight the culture wars but to remain so out of touch with humanity that their opponents are embarrassed into submission. It is not a battle plan; it is a pose.

This was painfully illustrated by the pro-abortion movement’s defense of Nicola Moore, a traveling abortionist who wears a troll mask (in fairness it could be an orc mask or a severely-malformed-old-man mask) to avoid identification. Her name and face were revealed by the pro-life group Operation Rescue, who were promptly denounced as “anti-choice terrorists” by the feminist website Jezebel [!] for their actions.

So caught up was Jezebel in their lofty denouncement of pro-lifers as “homicidal weirdos” and “gun-toting … activists” that they missed the most ridiculously obvious problem with the whole situation: the woman was dressed as a troll! So engrossed were they in their own elitism, they could not understand the most simple, human desire to unmask the devil. They could not even begin to fathom a natural disinclination towards orcs. To which the only response is laugher and mild pity, for these elitists have never read a fairy tale.

Or take, if you will, the odd protest against laws requiring women [to] view ultrasound pictures before an abortion. The logic behind these laws has always seemed to me sensible to the point of redundancy, like being shown the bottom of a cliff before you jump or what is inside a house before you demolish it. Some say the fetus is a human life. Others say it is a blob of cells. The average member of the human family, any, the most uninvolved, unconcerned bystander in the universe would say, “Look and see.”

But the pro-abortion aristocracy cannot understand the simplicity of the commoners. And thus Kelcie McCrae, the editor-in-chief at North Carolina A & T’s paper, in her attack on these laws, writes that “having an abortion was one of the hardest things one of my closest friends has ever done, and to imagine looking at the ultrasound moments before the procedure, according to her, would have been unbearable.”

The pro-abortion movement’s attack on ultrasound laws are the raison d’etre of ultrasound laws. The question never answered is why such a thing would be unbearable – clearly, for the same reason that demolishing a house would be unbearable after seeing a child in its upstairs window! Only a man entirely out of touch with human reason would argue, “Therefore do not look through the windows.”

Most Americans support these ultrasound laws, according to a recent Gallup poll, and the pro-abortion movement, true to form, resists most Americans.

The rejection of the sensibleness of the common people is prevalent in the language of the pro-abortion movement. It is not so much nasty as it is isolating. One need not spend a good deal of time flicking back and forth between pro-life outlets and pro-abortion outlets to see the difference in conversation. [Here Mr. Barnes cites an example of “the current inside joke” from the pro-abortion side; as it relates to callousness in the matter of cannibalism, we find it too revolting to quote here.]

What perhaps began as a hyperbolic method of displaying the belief [in] a lack of humanity in the fetus – I can only hope there was a method to the madness – has spiraled into a bland offensiveness, an obligatorily told joke that speaks the following message: We [the abortion claque] are above and beyond such human concerns as decency. This was struck home to me when the first result I came across searching for “pro-abortion forums” was the recommendation to “… do it like they did back in the times of discount abortions and punch her in the stomach really hard. … Relieves built-up tension and gets rid of the ‘little …’.”

I print these messages not out of a blithe desire to reveal the offensiveness bred whenever abortion advocates are granted the anonymity of the Internet but to point out a simple truth: These vulgarities are pathetic. They are not arguments or even challenges. They are sneers. They don’t revel in reason; they wallow in the ability to embarrass and offend.

The fight we are fighting is not one of arguments or rational complaints. We are fighting against an aristocracy that believes itself beyond reproach. We are fighting against the culture of death, truly, for this is ideological suicide.

What else can we say of an ideology whose members converse in such foul, isolating terms, who defend the indefensible and who have forsaken common sense for uncommon nonsense? What man of decency would throw in his lot with such an aristocracy? It is true, I am disappointed by the lack of fight my enemies offer. But I will remain content watching them destroy themselves.