Life Advocacy Briefing

March 31, 2014

Kudos to Texas! / Mr. Obama’s Private War
Court OKs Defunding Planned Parenthood / Another Shoe Drops
Progress – at the U.N.? / Strange Bedfellows / Quoteworthy
Assault on Religious Liberty / Leading for Life

Kudos to Texas!

A PANEL OF JUDGES IN THE 5th CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS late last Thursday handed down a ruling upholding the Texas abortion law enacted last summer, ruling as constitutional the requirement that abortionists have admitting privileges within 30 miles of their shops.

The law has already resulted in the closure of one-third of the state’s abortuaries since last summer, “leaving 19,” reports Reuters, “for a population of 26 million.” Nineteen too many, but a good start.

 

Mr. Obama’s Private War

WHEN THE PRESIDENT BLACKLISTED CERTAIN RUSSIANS in what he called “Ukraine-Related Sanctions” in his first stumble-step response to the Putin invasion of Crimea, the persona-non-grata list included a Russian Duma member whose duties appear unrelated to her homeland’s military incursions or even foreign policy.

“One name on Pres. Obama’s original executive order sanctioning Russian leaders,” notes Gualberto Garcia Jones JD, writing for LifeSiteNews.com, “stands out above all others: Yelena Mizulina.

“Ms. Mizulina chairs the Russian Duma’s Committee on Family, Women & Children’s Affairs,” reports Dr. Jones. Her legislative duties, he asserts, “have absolutely nothing to do with Crimea, the Russian military, Russian diplomacy or anything remotely connected to the current international crisis.”

“There is one thing that Ms. Mizulina is known for,” writes Dr. Jones, “and that is her Christian views on marriage, adoption, the family and the right to life. A search on her Wikipedia page,” he writes, “lists Ms. Mizulina’s legislative projects as: bills in 2010 and 2012 seeking to protect children from inappropriate information on the Internet, a 2013 law denying United States citizens from adopting Russian children because of the harm that the children might suffer from being adopted by homosexual partners, laws limiting taxpayer funded abortion and imposing waiting periods and other restrictions on abortion, as well as several other proposed measures to encourage the strengthening of Russian families from a Christian perspective.

“‘Pres. Obama is using the economic sanctions against Yelena Mizulina to send a very clear message to Russian Christians,’ Fr. Maxim Obukhov, the father of the Russian pro-life movement, told LifeSiteNews,” writes Dr. Jones. “‘There is much talk about a cold war, but Pres. Obama has openly declared war upon Christians who oppose the culture of death both at home and abroad.’”

 

Court OKs Defunding Planned Parenthood

A PANEL OF THE 10th CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS HAS OVERTURNED a federal district judge’s injunction against a 2011 Kansas state law, reports David Bailey for Reuters News Service, that “stop[s] federal family planning money the state receives from flowing to two Planned Parenthood clinics.”

The nation’s chief purveyor of abortion “has said,” reports Mr. Bailey, “they would lose more than $330,000 in funding [and] their eligibility for a low-cost drug-purchasing program … .” Planned Parenthood of Kansas & Mid-Missouri also complained the appellate ruling “likely would lead,” reports Reuters, to the shuttering of its shop in Hays, a town of 20,000 located at the intersection of I-70 and US-183, about 180 miles northwest of Wichita, site of the second affected shop.

The statute itself, according to Reuters, “limits the entities that can receive funding” allocated by the state from federal subsidies to “family planning services to low-income residents.” Planned Parenthood does not limit its business to poverty clients, rendering it ineligible for the grants.

“The law redirected the [state-administered federal Title X] monies to hospitals and public health organizations which do not perform abortions,” reports Ben Johnson for LifeSiteNews.com, “leaving Planned Parenthood at the bottom of the list to receive” the funds.

The 2011 Planned Parenthood lawsuit, Mr. Johnson reports, was based on the argument “that its affiliates that do not perform abortions were being denied their free speech rights for associating with an organization that performs abortions. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled,” writes Mr. Johnson, “that argument was invalid.

“Planned Parenthood,” he noted, “had objected that its ‘feeder’ offices [in Wichita and Hays], they argued, only referred women for abortion.

“‘To say that the feeder clinics don’t have anything to do with abortions is an outrageous misrepresentation of the truth,’ said Troy Newman, president of the Kansas-based Operation Rescue,” quoted by LifeSiteNews. “‘The Wichita and Hays clinics actually solicit abortion business for their Overland Park counterpart and serve as partners in the abortion business. Blocking funding to them,’” he said, “‘is consistent with the federal law against spending tax money for abortions.’”

 

Another Shoe Drops

THOUGH UNABLE TO SECURE A WAIVER from the Obama Regime, two Catholic-affiliated organizations in Georgia have won exemption from ObamaCare’s abortifacient contraception/sterilization mandate from US District Judge William Duffey, reports Kate Brumback for the Associated Press (AP).

Judge Duffey “ruled [last] Wednesday,” writes Ms. Brumback, “that the federal government cannot enforce the mandate against Catholic Education of North Georgia, Inc., which operates five Catholic schools, and Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, Inc.”

The plaintiffs had “said the mandate would require them to pay for and refer women to get abortion drugs and contraception,” reports AP, “which they say is prohibited by their religious beliefs.”

 

Progress – at the U.N.?

WE WOULD BET U.N. OFFICIALS & BUREAUCRATS WERE NOT EXPECTING such an outcome for the 25th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, in mid-March.

An “informal group” was founded “immediately prior” to Human Rights Council proceedings by “many UN member countries sick and tired of the constant bombardment from European and other first-world member states [which no doubt include the United States] about same-sex marriage, contraception and abortion,” writes John Smeaton of Britain’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) in a report published by LifeSiteNews.com.

The group’s name: Friends of the Family. Its membership: 112 member countries.

In response to such a development, “‘one has to sit up and take notice,’” commented Pat Buckley, whom Mr. Smeaton identifies as “one of SPUC’s veteran lobbyists at the UN.” The lobbyist cautioned, “‘This new initiative will no doubt be stiffly resisted by the nations that promote the anti-life and family ideology, but it represents the “winds of change” in international relations and has the potential to lead to genuine appreciation of and support for the family.’”

The new group hosted a panel discussion in Geneva “on the role of the family as a vehicle in the fight against poverty,” reports Mr. Smeaton. “The event was arranged by the new group together with the permanent [UN] delegations of the African Union, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Permanent Observer of the Holy See and Mrs. Sharon Slater, president of Family Watch International.” It was chaired, notes the SPUC chief, “by H.E. Ambassador Jean Marie Ehouzou, Permanent Representative of the African Union.”

 

Strange Bedfellows

THE WIFE & SISTER-IN-LAW OF ATTY. GEN. ERIC HOLDER will not be losing a tenant in the office building they co-own in College Park, Georgia.

Tenant Tyrone Cecil Malloy can no longer prey on women through his Old National Gynecology business in the building owned by obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Sharon Malone Holder and her sister Margie Malone Tuckson, but he has engaged a substitute abortionist to carry on the business.

Mr. Malloy is no longer on the premises because he was sentenced last week to four years in prison plus six months probation and “some restitution,” reports Ben Johnson for LifeSiteNews.com – not because of his shoddy medical practice as an abortionist but because he was convicted March 10 on two counts of Medicaid fraud, having “charged the state Medicaid program $255,000 for ultrasounds that he never performed,” reports Mr. Johnson, plus “$132,000 for abortion office consultations and procedures” despite both state law and the Hyde Amendment barring taxpayer funding for abortions.

The prosecution was brought by Georgia officials, not by the US Justice Dept.

Mr. Malloy’s lawyers claimed, quoted by Mr. Johnson, “‘The state [was] using its vast police powers to harass, persecute and undermine one of its citizens to further an obvious political agenda.’”

Presiding Judge Hugh Thompson wrote in his ruling, reports Mr. Johnson, “‘An ordinary person can easily understand that knowingly taking money from Medicaid to which one is not entitled is prohibited conduct.’”

The prosecution, notes Mr. Johnson, “comes too late for a 23-year-old woman who died of a botched abortion at [Mr. Malloy’s] facility in March, 2008. The woman, who had anemia and a trait of sickle-cell, came to Malloy for an abortion at 25 weeks. She suffered a heart attack after the procedure,” reports Mr. Johnson, “and emergency room surgeons found she had suffered a punctured uterus. The young woman … died shortly afterward. In January, 2009, the State Board of Medical Examiners reprimanded Malloy for his role in the death but allowed him to continue practicing.”

 

Quoteworthy

The World Health Organization, in an editorial titled “From Concept to Measurement: Operationalizing WHO’s Definition of Unsafe Abortion” and published in its March, 2014, bulletin, quoted by Pat Buckley of European Life Network: “‘… The termination of pregnancy is neither as simple nor as safe as some advocates of abortion would have the public believe. Moreover, the incidence of such complications as infertility, recurrent miscarriages, premature labor, ruptured uterus or emotional manifestations cannot be assessed at this stage.’”

 

The Assault on Religious Liberty

March 26, 2014, Breakpoint Commentary by John Stonestreet, first published at www.Breakpoint.org

On Tuesday, March 25, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Hobby Lobby case. In the days leading up to the arguments, two of the nation’s leading newspapers, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, ran pieces that illustrate what’s at stake in the case and why religious freedom is threatened.

The Times piece got off to an inauspicious start by telling readers that Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores and its companion case, Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius, “pits religious liberty against women’s rights.”

Apparently the Times is unaware that many of the people opposing the HHS mandate, most famously the Little Sisters of the Poor, are women. Or if they are aware, they must believe that these women are “fronts” for “patriarchal forces” who are calling the shots.

It gets better. And by that I mean worse. The Times then tells readers that the ruling could potentially have consequences for “laws barring discrimination against gay men and lesbians.” It quotes former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger who says that “A win for Hobby Lobby could turn out to be a significant setback for gay rights.”

Now it’s true that if Hobby Lobby prevails, a sufficiently broad ruling might apply to cases like the one in New Mexico involving a Christian wedding photographer. But to call this a “significant setback” tells us more about the mindset of gay rights supporters – that it’s all about them—than it does about the possible impact of a favorable ruling.

As Richard Garnett of Notre Dame Law School put it, views like Dellinger’s are “unfounded.”

As Garnett says, the case isn’t about “discrimination or denial of service.” Instead, it’s about “deeply held views regarding the sanctity of life” and how our polity accommodates those who hold these views.

The ability to accommodate these beliefs, as Robby George and Hamza Yusuf wrote at the Wall Street Journal, has created “one of the most religiously diverse nations on earth,” where people of diverse faiths live together “in a harmony that would have been unthinkable in most of the world for most of human history.”

Throughout American history, they tell us, this accommodation has taken the form of “exemptions to people who need them in order to be true to their religious faith.” These “exemptions protect people in situations where legislative or executive acts might otherwise unnecessarily force them to violate their consciences.”

This tolerance that has served American society so well is what’s at stake in the cases before the Supreme Court. Many supporters of the HHS mandate aren’t content with making Hobby Lobby pay for abortifacients; they want to do away with religious exemptions altogether. They have actually argued in their amicus briefs that the exemptions violate the constitutional prohibition against the establishment of religion!

While George and Yusuf point out just how wrong, legally speaking, that idea is, the fact that its proponents feel that it might fall on receptive ears at the Court shows us just how threatened religious freedom is.

Which is why we should all be praying for a favorable outcome at the Court.

 

Leading for Life

Major excerpt from March 25, 2014, Washington Update by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins

… Last night, House conservatives left little doubt where they stood on the [ObamaCare abortifacient mandate] issue, thanks to a special order on the floor organized by Missouri Congresswoman [and Life Advocacy seminar graduate] Vicky Hartzler (R). Joined by 17 of her colleagues, the Members piggybacked on House Speaker John Boehner’s comments earlier in the day urging the Supreme Court to strike down the mandate: “Religious freedom is not for some people under some circumstances; it is for one and all. … This case concerns every American who cherishes that first line in the Bill of Rights where it states our government will never come between us and our faith.”

Rep. Hartzler kicked off the night by saying, “My colleagues and I are here tonight to share the concerns we have as we stand up for the people that we represent and for what our Founders started this country on and why we want to stand for future generations, to protect those freedoms that those who have gone before us stood up and fought for us, for our generation.”

Just days ago, said Rep. James Lankford (R-OK), “the President spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast about the cornerstone right of the free expression of religion. That includes Americans who believe that children are a gift of God and they should be nurtured and cared for, not discarded as tissue. Washington is not the boss of every American. Our Constitution matters, freedom of religion matters, and, quite frankly, children matter.”

Our deepest thanks to all the Members who participated, including: Representatives Bob Latta (R-OH), Kerry Bentivolio (R-MI), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Ann Wagner (R-MO), Joe Pitts (R-PA), Chris Smith (R-NJ), Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE), Dan Lipinski (D-IL), Andy Harris (R-MD), Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), Keith Rothfus (R-PA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Doug Collins (R-CO), Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Ted Yoho (R-FL) and Steve Scalise (R-LA).