Life Advocacy Briefing

Our Apologies

WE WERE UNABLE TO PUBLISH LAST WEEK. Please accept our regrets.

Cha-Ching?

SOME PRO-LIFE CITIZENS ARE WONDERING … Was Pres. Obama’s debate performance last Monday actually a commercial for Planned Parenthood? Five times he mentioned – with obvious affection and admiration – the kingpin of the abortion cartel. No matter what the topic being discussed.

“The President pulled the abortion provider into issues as diverse,” notes Ben Johnson in a story for LifeSiteNews.com, “as Mitt Romney’s tax plan, women’s pay rates and a question about the George W. Bush Administration.” (We read one speculation that Planned Parenthood may have had a donor lined up who had pledged to donate a large sum every time the President mentioned the outfit that evening.)

Even more bemusing is the content of his admiring remarks. Here’s a sample, quoted from Mr. Johnson’s report: “‘When Gov. Romney says that we should eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, there are millions of women all across the country who rely on Planned Parenthood for, not just contraceptive care, they rely on it for mammograms, for cervical cancer screenings,’ he said.”

America’s women will be disappointed if they are actually “rely[ing] on Planned Parenthood … for mammograms.” Not a single PP shop is equipped to offer mammography, a fact which by now is well known to Americans who follow political news. “Just four months ago, in response to a Freedom of Information Act,” commented Mathew Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel Action in an LCA news release, “the Obama Administration admitted that Planned Parenthood facilities do not offer mammograms.”

Perhaps the most disturbing remark the President offered while embracing Planned Parenthood funding was when, Mr. Johnson reports, he “again invoked his daughters, Sasha and Malia, as he defended Planned Parenthood. ‘I’ve got two daughters,’” he reminded his audience, “‘and I want to make sure that they have the same opportunities that anybody’s sons have. That’s part of what I’m fighting for as President of the United States.’” One might almost conclude the President finds Planned Parenthood more essential to America’s future than our military, whose funding is on the chopping block.

Huh?

THE VICE PRESIDENT HAS HIS OWN INTERESTING VIEW of Planned Parenthood, according to Family Research Council Action’s Tony Perkins in his Oct. 16 FRC/Action Update.

While attacking GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney during a campaign stop at the University of Wisconsin’s LaCrosse campus Oct. 12, Mr. Perkins reports, Mr. Biden “told the crowd, ‘And now these guys pledge that they are going to defund Planned Parenthood, which, under law, cannot perform any abortion.’

“That might come as a surprise to Cecile Richards’s group,” comments Mr. Perkins, “whose own reports admit to performing almost a million abortions in the past three years. Even the organization’s website states, ‘Abortions are available at many Planned Parenthood health centers, clinics.’”

Floridians Can Vote for Life

A PRO-LIFE STATE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT will appear on ballots across Florida next month, proposed by the state legislature as Amendment 6. Adoption will require 60% approval.

“What’s at stake,” reports the Associated Press (AP), “is whether taxpayer money should fund abortions for public employees and whether minors should get parental consent to end a pregnancy.

“The amendment would prohibit the use of state tax money for abortions except as required by federal law,” reports AP, noting that Florida does not currently subsidize abortion.

“It would also overrule court decisions,” adds AP, “that say the privacy rights in the state constitution are greater than those in the US Constitution, possibly making it easier for state lawmakers to require minors seeking an abortion to get parental consent. Abortions for minors currently require parental notification” in Florida, notes AP, “not consent.”

The proposition is backed by popular former GOP Gov. Jeb Bush and opposed by sexual delinquency flack Sandra Fluke.

If ObamaCare Survives

A REPORT FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM OFFERS A CHILLING FORECAST of rationing and discrimination as the nationalizing of medical care reaches its logical conclusion.

A “comprehensive new study” of the British National Health Service [NHS], published by Age UK, the Royal College of Surgeons and MHP Health Mandate, “found older people are having disproportionate restrictions imposed on their care,” reports the Telegraph newspaper. “In some cases,” reports the Telegraph, “a patient may not even be referred for surgery because of perceptions that they are too old, or the symptoms of their disease are taken as part of aging, and so when they are diagnosed, it is too advanced for surgery.”

The report was excerpted by noted ethicist and blogger Wesley J. Smith in a commentary on National Review Online.  Mr. Smith comments the rationing and age discrimination found by the researchers “is the consequence of centralized health care, global budgets and top-down management. And it is coming here,” he warns, “if ObamaCare survives.”

Mr. Smith lists several Obama Regime figures who “have looked to NHS-style centralized, bureaucratized control as the model for the US” and adds, “This is what centralized healthcare planning does. In such a technocratic system, we cease to be individual patients and are instead reduced to merely being a categorical statistical assumption. When that happens,” he warns, “the vulnerable and politically unconnected become the first victims.”

Check Out Where Planned Parenthood Lurks

A PRO-LIFE OUTREACH TO THE BLACK COMMUNITY has posted an interactive online map featuring the location of Planned Parenthood facilities across the US and demonstrating the abortion behemoth’s targeting of racial minority neighborhoods in their siting decisions.

The map can be viewed on the Internet at www.ProtectingBlackLife.org/pp_targets. Protecting Black Life is an outreach of Life Issues Institute (LII).

Clicking on the symbols on the map opens a window giving demographics of the neighborhood within walking distance (two miles) of the chosen Planned Parenthood shop. Kirsten Andersen, writing for LifeSiteNews.com, notes the uniqueness of the map. “What’s unique,” she writes, “is the depth and immediacy of the information presented. Rather than depending on a handful of quotes or statistics that cover a population so large the numbers are difficult to grasp, the map breaks the facts down and illustrates them at nearly street level. Each dot,” she explains, “represents a real abortion mill, where real lives are ended daily. Users will likely recognize the locations and the neighborhoods shown … .”

“According to [LII’s] research,” writes Ms. Andersen, “79% of all Planned Parenthood abortion facilities are located within walking distance of black or Hispanic neighborhoods, or both. …

“Although there is no way to prove,” writes Ms. Andersen, “that Planned Parenthood intentionally targets blacks and Hispanics for abortion, the statistics paint a damning picture, which at the very least helps explain the sky-high abortion rate among some minority groups.”

One could well be forgiven for suspecting Planned Parenthood’s focus on racial-minority neighborhoods is intentional. “The abortion group’s foes have often pointed to Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s open involvement in the early 1900s’ eugenics movement as evidence of the group’s racist roots,” writes LifeSite’s reporter. “An entire page on the topic” can be found at www.BlackGenocide.com, a website posted by Life Dynamics.

Quoteworthy

Rep. Paul Ryan, GOP Vice Presidential nominee, at the Sept. 12, 2012, Values Voter Summit hosted by Family Research Council: “We don’t write anyone off in America, especially those without a voice. Every child has a place and purpose in this world. Everyone counts, and in a just society, the law should stand on the side of Life.”

Ryan Response a Pro-Life Model

Rep. Paul Ryan’s response to “the abortion question” during the Oct. 11 Vice Presidential debate, transcribed by Catholic Studies Senior Fellow George Weigel in a National Review Online blog

Moderator Raddatz: This debate is, indeed, historic. We have two Catholic candidates, first time on a stage such as this. And I would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views on abortion.

Rep. Ryan: None. (Ms. Raddatz’s jaw drops. The Vice President is rendered temporarily speechless. The audience gasps. Cong. Ryan lets his surprising answer sink in a moment and continues.)

Rep. Ryan: Let me explain, Martha. When I say “none,” I’m speaking about abortion, as I assume you were, as a public policy issue. My opposition to the abortion license that Roe v. Wade created is based on science and reason.

Biology and embryology teach us that the product of human conception is a human being – nothing more but certainly nothing less. No scientifically literate person denies that; it’s a fact, not an opinion. As for reason, well, an elementary sense of justice – of fairness – teaches us that innocent human life is inviolable and merits the protection of the laws. That’s the same sense of justice that tells us not to discriminate against another because she’s not a he, or because her pigmentation is different from mine, or because his parents came to this country from Belarus ten years ago; it’s the same sense of justice that has made America the most racially egalitarian society in human history. Science and reason have made me a pro-life public official. Science and reason are what the Supreme Court ignored in 1973 in Roe v. Wade and in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The so-called pro-choice position is the unscientific position, and it’s the unreasonable position.

But my faith does shape my thinking on these questions, and let me tell you how. What my faith adds to the mix is a deep sense of compassion and an urgent sense of responsibility for women caught in the dilemma of a crisis pregnancy. My faith teaches me that those women in crisis pregnancies should not be left alone, clinging to some spurious “right.” My faith, and the experience of the pastors of many denominations with whom I’ve discussed this, teach me that the termination of a pregnancy by abortion often multiplies the trauma of unwanted or unplanned pregnancy. My faith teaches me that I have an obligation, not only to that unborn child but also to his or her mother.

My faith, which instructs me to honor the dignity of every human person, helps me understand the implications of what science and reason teach me. And one “dignitarian” implication of science and reason is that the pro-life position is the pro-feminist position, because abortion on demand has been a great deal for irresponsible and predatory men – and a very bad deal for women.

And I’m not alone in this, Martha. There are thousands of crisis pregnancy centers across our country, where women who have been abandoned by those irresponsible or predatory men can find the compassion and care they deserve from people who take the unique dignity of women seriously – people who are eager to help a woman in a crisis pregnancy bring a child to term and then put that child up for adoption, or bring a child to term and then raise it with love in a caring community. In all the arguing about abortion these past 40 years, the tens of thousands of volunteers who staff those crisis pregnancy centers are almost never mentioned. But they are real American heroes, offering women in crisis something more – something more humane – than a technological quick fix to a terrible problem.

No woman in America has to face a crisis pregnancy alone. That’s something we should all be proud of. And we should thank God for inspiring men and women across America with the faith to go beyond the obvious facts of science and the obvious dictates of reason in offering compassionate care to women in crisis pregnancies.

Amazing!

Message from Msgr. Eric Barr, vicar general and chancellor, Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockford [IL], published throughout the diocese in the Sept. 21, 2012, Observer newspaper, reprinted by www.McHenryCountyBlog.com

Step with me into the area of controversy and consider the provocative question of whether Pres. Barack Obama is an opponent of Catholicism and its values. As our government bent upwards and sideways last week to appease the darkness that is radical Islam, apologizing and even going wobbly on the issue of free speech, I thought a bit about how the President and his government is treating Catholics and their views. For your consideration:

First, abortion rights.

Not only is the President a fierce proponent of abortion on demand, he is also for something that should horrify not only Catholics but all people of good will. Not once, not twice, but three times as an Illinois Senator, Obama opposed the “Born-Alive Infant’s Protection Act,” which stated that babies born after abortions are persons and must be given care.

His opposition was a patent endorsement of infanticide – the murder of children. There has never been an abortion restriction that he has endorsed. He is not simply pro-choice; rather, he is an activist in the strongest sense, diametrically opposed to the most obvious moral stance taken by Catholicism.

Second, the humiliation of Cardinal Dolan over the Healthcare Act.

During a White House meeting between the Cardinal and the President, Obama promised the Cardinal that he would protect churches and religions and the consciences of those in ObamaCare, not forcing them to go against their beliefs in any way.

The HHS mandate forcing Catholics and others to pay for birth control abortifacients and sterilization in their employees’ healthcare plans showed his promise to be false and the “compromise” he suggested simply doubled down on his belief that the Constitution provides only for freedom of worship (inside church buildings) and not freedom of religion (a broader concept that allows people of faith to act publicly).

Third, his continued prevarication – i.e., lying – about freedom of religion.

Just this past Monday, the President made a video on religious liberty. The Hill reports that Obama “made a campaign pitch to ‘people of faith’ in which he reaffirmed his ‘commitment’ to this value saying, ‘The American people should know this: In a changing world, my commitment to protecting religious liberty is and always will be unwavering.’” He goes on talking about protecting people’s consciences – something he has no intention of ever doing. Meanwhile, ObamaCare marches on, steamrolling Catholic morality and the First Amendment under its weight. How can that be tolerated by citizens?

These statements and attitudes by the President become even more breathtaking when weighed with the passion and determination the Administration has shown trying to soothe outraged Muslims who are not even citizens of our country.

The rioting mobs around the world are kowtowed to, and the precious sensibilities of their beliefs are put on the front burner, even as they kill and harm others. Nothing justifies this peculiar and unreal stance of the President.

But these are the times we live in, when truth is sacrificed for expediency and a hostile stance – we could even call it a hatred – toward religion and Catholicism in particular grows in our country. It’s persecution without rack and pyre, but perhaps those are coming too, if men and women of integrity, regardless of faith, do not stand up for religious liberty.