Life Advocacy Briefing

Thanking God for our Heroes

MEMORIAL DAY IS FOR REMEMBRANCE & FOR GRATITUDE. Thank you, Lord, for America and for those who have sacrificed so much to preserve our freedoms and opportunities. May we each exhibit their courage when our time comes to fight in whatever challenge comes before us.

Blowing the Whistle on Planned Parenthood Fraud

PLANNED PARENTHOOD GULF COAST IS FACING ANOTHER WHISTLEBLOWER lawsuit complaining, reports Ben Johnson for LifeSiteNews.com, PPCG “bilked state and federal taxpayers for 10 years by performing unnecessary medical procedures on incarcerated teens … .”

The lawsuit by a former accounts receivable manager, who resigned in 2012 after five years at PPCG, claims the outfit “‘targets an incarcerated population of minority youth exclusively for unnecessary testing and fraudulent claim billing,’” Mr. Johnson reports. She said the youth trade center “would furnish the local PP with a list of minors who were eligible for Medicaid. Then [a] PPGC employee …, who is not a physician, would perform two blood tests each on children incarcerated at the school, one for syphilis and another for HIV/AIDS. But PP billed Medicaid as though they were performed by Dr. Paul Fine in PP’s offices in Huntsville, Texas.

“The procedures were unnecessary on multiple levels,” the plaintiff said, according to Mr. Johnson. “‘The syphilis and HIV test can be done with the same blood sample,’” she said. But “‘PP takes blood twice from the residents in order to bill a second, higher level office visit code and additional, unnecessary laboratory tests.’ As a result,” claims the suit, as quoted by LifeSiteNews, “minority ‘youths were exposed to the risks of blood tests (such as hepatitis)’ for no reason except the center’s profit.”

Further, the lawsuit notes the incarceration facility “‘has medical staff onsite (at a higher clinical level than provided by the PP non-clinical staff member) that can provide the same testing and education at no cost.’”

The lawsuit states, reports Mr. Johnson, that “PPCG ‘received approximately $200 per youth on thousands of fraudulent, false and ineligible claims.’”

The whistleblower “contends,” writes Mr. Johnson, “that PPGC’s actions, which persisted between 2002 and 2012, provide it intended to game the state’s Medicaid system. ‘No services are provided to other schools or people in the Huntsville area,’” she said. And further, “‘No services are provided to residents in the school unless they have active Medicaid numbers.’” 

Kansas Defunding Law Stands

PLANNED PARENTHOOD HAS DECIDED to let Kansas strip two of its facilities from funding under the state’s administration of the federal Title X (Ten) “family planning” program.

Though Planned Parenthood of Kansas & Mid-Missouri has been fighting the defunding in US District Court, the abortion behemoth filed a brief earlier this month ending the litigation, making the Kansas defunding law a model state legislative proposal.

The state law, reports Associated Press (AP) writer Roxana Hegeman, “requires the state to first allocate Title X money to public health departments and hospitals, which leaves no funds for specialty family planning clinics like Planned Parenthood.”

Within the state’s response to the lawsuit was an assurance “that the state law restricting the distribution of federal family planning funds does not target Planned Parenthood,” reports Ms. Hegeman, “because the statute itself does not name the group or even mention abortion.” 

Abortion a Wedge Issue – in Dem Primaries?

IT ISN’t ENOUGH FOR THE ABORTION LOBBY and its Democratic Party allies to have banned a prominent Democratic governor from speaking at the party’s convention some years ago. It’s not enough to have made holding pro-life views so uncomfortable for the sitting Democratic Members of Congress that most of the pro-life Democrats have retired since Pres. Obama took the White House.

Now, reports Roll Call’s Nathan L. Gonzales, “some Democratic candidates from Maine to Hawaii are using choice [sic] as a key issue in primaries,” not just confining themselves to ads attacking their GOP opponents in general elections.

“One party is using abortion as a wedge issue in races all across the country,” he writes, “and it’s not the Republicans.”

The Roll Call report cites a Pennsylvania legislative primary, in which a Democratic State Senator accuses a State Representative, who is his Democratic opponent, of “‘oppos[ing] a woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions,’” going on to complain that the Representative had “‘sponsored and voted for Republican legislation to limit abortion rights for women – even got awards from pro-life groups. We need someone who’s for women’s rights … [who] knows women can make their own decisions, not politicians.’” A Democratic primary contest in Maine is also cited in the Roll Call report.

“Considering Republicans are usually the party that gets branded as being obsessed with social issues,” remarks Mr. Gonzales, “the Democrats’ wide use of abortion lately is striking.” 

Bye-Bye, Ms. Schwartz

CONGRESSWOMAN ALLYSON SCHWARTZ LOST HER BID for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Pennsylvania last week, despite – or because of? – backing by Planned Parenthood and EMILY’s List, reports Dustin Siggins for LifeSiteNews.com.

Though the winner of the primary is also pro-abortion, Tom Wolfe’s defeat of Rep. Schwartz is particularly significant because she is well known in Pennsylvania – and the US House – as founder in 1975 of an abortuary, which she directed until 1988. Her bid for the gubernatorial nomination means she will no longer occupy the 13th district Pennsylvania House seat after the 113th Congress closes next January, nor will she continue after that to wield a vote on the powerful Committee on Ways & Means.

Proudly Pro-Life

ONE G.O.P. STATE REPRESENTATIVE GOT A HUGE SURPRISE in the mid-May West Virginia primary. The two-term incumbent was upset for nomination by 17-year-old Saira Blair, whose signs read, reports Teresa Platt in LifeSiteNews.com: “‘I am a fiscal conservative. I’m pro-life. I’m pro-marriage. I’m pro-family. I’m pro-2nd Amendment. I’m pro-business. I’m pro-jobs. I’m pro-West Virginia. These are my personal and political beliefs!’

“On another campaign sign she repeated those same stances,” reports Ms. Platt, “adding, ‘I will not compromise on these beliefs.’”

The defeated incumbent was not the only one to be surprised by the young lady’s 872-to-728 victory. Her father, who is a state senator, “was surprised by the result,” reports Ms. Platt, “figuring that his daughter’s age would negatively affect her chances.”

But she actually used her youth as part of her message. On her campaign card, reprinted by LifeSiteNews, she included this message: “One of the reasons that I’m running … is to show young people that we shouldn’t wait until we’re 40, 50 or 60 to realize that conservative principles are the pathway to prosperity and success. I am living proof,” her card read, “that you can get a good education in West Virginia but you can’t get a good paying job. I want to change that, and I can do the job!” Now, if she overcomes her Democratic opponent in this traditionally GOP district, she will get the chance to prove that yes, she can. And that being proud of being pro-life, pro-marriage and conservative can be a winning formula for electoral success, at any age.

Colleges Beat Regime in Court

TWO MORE CHRISTIAN COLLEGES LAST WEDNESDAY WON judicial relief from the ObamaCare contraception/abortifacient mandate.

Iowa-based US District Judge Mark Bennett issued an order halting enforcement, reports Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), “in a lawsuit challenging the Administration’s mandate that forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions and under threat of heavy penalties, to provide insurance coverage for pills and procedures that many Christians oppose.”

Plaintiffs in the suit are Dordt College of Sioux Center, Iowa, and Cornerstone University, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Judge Bennett’s order is preliminary and gives relief to the plaintiffs while their petition makes its way through the courts.

“‘With full knowledge that many religious organizations hold the same or similar beliefs,’” the plaintiffs’ lawsuit states, as quoted in the ADF release, “‘the defendants [of the Obama Regime] issued regulations that … trample on the freedom of the schools and millions of other American organizations and individuals to abide by their religious convictions and comply with moral imperatives they believe are decreed by God Himself,’ … adding that the mandate ‘illegally and unconstitutionally coerces the schools to violate’ those imperatives ‘under threat of heavy fines and penalties.’”

Another Abortuary Closes

ANOTHER TEXAS ABORTUARY HAS SHUT DOWN under the state’s effective new law subjecting abortuaries to standard health-and-safety regulations.

Dallas’s Northpark Medical Group – actually an abortuary – has closed its doors after failing to secure hospital admitting privileges for any of the abortionists who have been plying their trade there. It is the 20th Texas abortion mill to have closed since the admitting privileges requirement took effect.

Citing OneNewsNow.com as source, LifeSiteNews.com’s Ben Johnson quotes Kyleen Wright, president of Texans for Life Coalition, expressing “‘shock’” at “‘how many [abortionists] can’t get hospital privileges.’ … The requirement, which is fiercely opposed by the abortion industry,” writes Mr. Johnson, “is ‘an extra credentialing process that other doctors routinely have to go through – surgeons in particular,’” Ms. Wright noted, “‘and ensures continuity of care for women who have undergone an abortion.’” Eminently reasonable, and at the same time, eminently effective.

“In 2011, the state had 44 abortion facilities,” notes Mr. Johnson. “By September, when new state requirements that abortion facilities meet the same health standards as other ambulatory surgical centers, that number could plummet to just six.

“‘Not only are their doctors substandard,’” commented Ms. Wright, “‘but many of their facilities are as well.’”

The closing of Northpark is particularly gratifying to Texas pro-life activists, who have been trying to secure closure because of its affiliation with Texas’s own Gosnell, abortionist Douglas Karpen, who, notes Mr. Johnson, “stands accused of performing late-term ‘abortions’ on newborn babies outside the womb.

“News of the Northpark closure comes almost exactly one year after three former employees … accused [Mr.] Karpen of twisting the heads off living babies. ‘Most of the time the fetus [sic] would come all the way out before he either cut the spinal cord or introduced one of the instruments into the soft-spot of the fetus in order to kill the fetus,’” one of the three complainants “said in a videotaped interview with the Texas-based Life Dynamics Inc.,” writes Mr. Johnson. “‘Either that or twisting the head off the neck with his own bare hands,’” the complainant said. “Despite the allegations,” notes Mr. Johnson, “a Houston grand jury declined to indict [Mr.] Karpen last December.” He is now under civil suit for a botched abortion in February, and the closure of Northpark gives him one fewer shop in which to ply his deadly trade.

Abetting Rape

PLANNED PARENTHOOD IN PINAL COUNTY, ARIZONA, IS BEING PROBED by police for “failing to report the rape of a 15-year-old girl,” reports Kirsten Andersen for LifeSiteNews.com. “As a result, they say,” writes Ms. Andersen, “accused rapist Tyler Kost, 18, remained free for nearly six months before he was finally apprehended” earlier in May.

This does not appear to be a boyfriend/girlfriend situation, as the 18-year-old “is accused,” reports Ms. Andersen, “of violating at least 18 under-age girls, some as young as 12. He is being held without bail at the Pinal County jail,” she notes, “on 29 separate charges of sexual abuse of minors and facing the equivalent of several lifetime sentences.

“The 15-year-old girl told detectives,” writes Ms. Andersen, “that a counselor at the [Planned Parenthood] facility knew she was raped but insisted on recording the encounter as consensual in order to avoid the ‘hassle’ of dealing with the authorities. ‘The counselor intentionally miscoded the assault as a consensual encounter,’ according to a report from the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office. ‘The counselor told them that they did not want the hassle of having to report the assault to law enforcement as they were a mandatory reporter.’”

Calling Planned Parenthood “‘a rapist’s best friend,’” Operation Rescue president Troy Newman told LifeSiteNews his group’s “‘research shows that abortionists routinely neglect to report cases of rape. … We know cases where young girls were subjected to needless years of abuse,’” he said, “‘sometimes resulting in multiple pregnancies.’”

Sustaining the Fight

May 9, 2014, Washington Update commentary by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins

While the Hill is knee-deep in the President’s latest disgraces, conservatives are focused on another White House scandal: the HHS mandate. Benghazi, the IRS, NSA, EPA and DOJ may hog all the headlines, but the four-year drumbeat against the White House’s war on religious liberty goes on. For most Americans, time hasn’t dulled the outrage over employers’ forced participation in the President’s sexual agenda. No amount of sound bites or accounting gimmicks seems to have softened voters’ stance on the greatest attack on conscience rights our nation has ever seen.

In fact, the needle has barely budged on people’s opposition to the mandate, which orders organizations, businesses, even faith-based groups to pay for pills or procedures that violate their beliefs. Our latest survey, commissioned nationally just last week through WPA Opinion, shows a strong majority of Americans aren’t buying the administration’s talking points on the debate. Fifty-three percent oppose the HHS mandate – a sentiment that crosses age, income, party, gender and ethnicity lines.

WPA’s conclusion is a blunt one for candidates this November: “There is broad opposition to the health care mandate. … Democrats should be wary about being on the wrong side of this issue, as voters that typically support them tend to oppose the mandate.” Regardless of what the Administration has thrown at them, conservatives continue to maintain their edge on a critical issue headed into the midterm elections. This is a flawed mandate within a flawed law. Now that the Supreme Court has agreed to decide the debate, faithful Americans hope the Justices will grant what the White House won’t: Freedom.

Yesterday, Family Research Council and FRC Action tried to drive those points home in a special Priests for Life Rally against the mandate. Both Josh Duggar and Cathy Ruse took the opportunity to stand alongside yet another group suing the administration for the right to exercise their most fundamental rights. “The Obama administration has already let tens of millions of plans off the hook, yet it’s fighting tooth-and-nail to force religious non-profits like Priests for Life to violate their beliefs or pay crippling fines. Forcing these religious groups to obey, even against their sincere beliefs, is not only intolerant but threatens the long-standing American tradition of respect for conscience.

“If the administration is so keen on giving away free birth control and abortion pills, it should pay for them itself. Leave the priests and nuns and Christian family business owners out of it.”