Life Advocacy Briefing

Vote Approaching on 20-Week Abortion Ban

WHILE PRO-LIFE AMERICANS ARE RALLYING IN WASHINGTON for the Jan. 22 annual March for Life, the House of Representatives will be moving the ball forward toward restoring a culture of Life via legal reform and public debate.

We have received word from a Capitol Hill aide, confirmed by National Right to Life, that Jan. 22nd – the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton edicts by which the Supreme Court sought to strip away America’s embrace of the right to life – is the date which House Leadership have chosen as debate-and-vote day for the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a proposal which would forbid abortions on babies who have reached the 20-week mark in their gestation.

This landmark legislation, which helps Americans grasp the legality of late-term abortion, was passed by the House 228-to-196 in June of 2013 but was blocked from consideration in the US Senate by then-Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Pro-life Republican Mitch McConnell (KY) is now the Senate Majority Leader and has endorsed the measure.

National Right to Life’s Dave Andrusko notes the proposal “offers mounds of scientific data to tell the public what it already intuitively knows: that by 20 weeks fetal age, the unborn [boy or girl] is capable of experiencing excruciating pain as [the child] is yanked apart in an abortion.” Surely the voting records of House Members and Senators on this measure will define the sides in America’s war on vulnerable, innocent developing babies.

If HR-36 or its Senate copy is enacted, “as many as 18,000 unborn children could be saved from abortion,” writes Dustin Siggins for LifeSiteNews.com.

HR-36 bears 158 co-sponsors, including lead sponsor Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ). It has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary, chaired by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), where it was still pending at the time of this writing.

We urge our readers to contact their own Representative in Congress via the Capitol switchboard at 1-202/224-3121. Those who are already co-sponsoring HR-36 should be thanked; those who are not co-sponsors should be asked to vote “yes” on all motions advancing HR-36 and on final passage. We publish the names of the co-sponsors at the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing.

REP. DIANE BLACK (R-TN) HAS FILED A BILL TO DEFUND Planned Parenthood by barring Title X (Ten) family planning funds being spent on businesses or organizations which commit abortions.

The Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, HR-217, has been referred to the House Committee on Energy & Commerce and has 108 co-sponsors as of this writing.

Still Standing Tall for Life

CITING RESPECT FOR LIFE AS ‘THE FOUNDATION OF OUR SOCIETY,’ Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback delivered his second inaugural address last Monday, causing pro-life citizens across America to celebrate the hard-won victory of the former US Senator and life-long champion of Life.

 “America is facing a ‘crisis of the family’ that plunges children into poverty, undermines upward mobility and casts a lingering shadow over the nation’s future,” the GOP Governor said, as reported by Ben Johnson for LifeSiteNews.com.

The pro-life/family champion showed no reticence in his second inaugural address, though his 2014 re-election was a constant battle in which Gov. Brownback had to fight a powerful wing of his own party. As he did time and again in the Senate, Mr. Brownback called his fellow citizens to recognize the pitfalls before us as a nation and the principles and values that have brought us to the pinnacle of strength.

“Family breakdown is ‘a principle [or principal?] issue that must be addressed for us to move forward,’ he said after taking the oath of office for the second time in Topeka,” reports Mr. Johnson. He “warned that too many people had failed to prosper due to ‘an overly paternalistic big government. … No government should ever be big enough,’” he said in the LifeSiteNews report, “‘to substitute for the family.’ … While he promised his administration would be ‘second to none in addressing’ fiscal issues, ‘the reality is the solutions are principally cultural and moral. While it isn’t always easy to talk about, we should be talking about our culture and its renewal.’”

And he focused directly on “a strong commitment to human life,” saying, reports Mr. Johnson: “‘that starts by recognizing that everybody is a beautiful somebody. Our culture is at its best,’” he said, “‘when we protect and encourage the weakest. Every life – at every stage, in every place – has a dignity beyond our imagining. Every human – especially the most vulnerable, the unborn, the infirm, those ravaged by age and those desperate in despair,’” said Gov. Brownback, “‘should be protected in law, loved and told repeatedly of their incredible beauty and worth.

“‘The equal and immense dignity of every person, all the time, is the foundation of our society. Kansas is great, and great for America, when more and more we honor every human life everywhere.’” Amen, Governor. May it be.

Appeals Moving

TWO MAJOR STATE PRO-LIFE LAWS ARE BACK IN COURT, this time before a three-judge panel of the 8^th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis.

Oral arguments were presented last Tuesday in state attempts to reinstate a North Dakota law which banned abortion when a fetal heartbeat can be detected and an Arkansas statute banning abortions on babies who have already developed for 12 gestational weeks.

A Grand Forks, North Dakota, private attorney who has been engaged to represent the state, Daniel Gaustad, “urged the judges to redefine the legal standard set in Roe that permits abortions until a fetus is viable outside the womb, generally at 22 to 24 weeks,” reports Associated Press (AP) writer Alan Scher Zagier. “‘There is a centuries-old basis to determine life,’ he said, referring,” writes Mr. Zagier, “to the fetal heartbeat.”

Arkansas’s law is being defended by Assistant Attorney General Colin Jorgensen, whom Mr. Zagier quotes: “‘The standards have changed dramatically,’ … citing more recent Supreme Court rulings that upheld a state’s right to mandate a 24-hour waiting period and parental consent requirements as well as a 2003 federal law banning partial-birth abortions. ‘You can’t look at those laws under Roe v. Wade in a vacuum any more,’” he said, reported by AP.

Real Life

A SOUTH AFRICAN MAN HAS WRITTEN HIS OWN SHOCKING STORY in a memoir titled “Ghost Boy: My Escape from a Life Locked Inside My Own Body.” It is a startling story of hope.

Interviewed recently by National Public Radio (NPR), notes Thaddeus Baklinski, Martin Pistorius was aged only 12 when he “came down,” writes the LifeSiteNews.com reporter, “with an illness that baffled doctors and that eventually resulted in him losing his ability to move his limbs, then to make eye contact and finally to speak. His parents,” writes Mr. Baklinski, “were told that he was a ‘vegetable’ and the best thing for them to do was take him home and keep him comfortable until he died.”

Not only did young Martin Pistorius continue to live, but it turns out that in his supposed vegetative state, he was aware of everything around him. “After about two years,” writes Mr. Baklinski, “he started waking up, eventually becoming fully conscious of everything around him,” while still appearing to be comatose.

Though his father devoted every waking hour to caring for his son, “Martin remembers,” reports LifeSiteNews, citing NPR as source, “that his mom at one point lost hope and while gazing at her son and thinking he could not hear her said, ‘I hope you die.’ But he did hear her.

“‘Yes, I was there,’” Martin said,” quoted by LifeSiteNews. “‘Not from the very beginning but about two years into my vegetative state, I began to wake up. … I was aware of everything, just like any normal person. Everyone was so used to me not being there that they didn’t notice when I began to be present again The stark reality hit me that I was going to spend the rest of my life like that – totally alone.’” Martin fell into depression with his realization of his circumstances, but he recalled, “‘You don’t really think about anything. … You simply exist. It’s a very dark place to find yourself because, in a sense, you are allowing yourself to vanish. My mind was trapped inside a useless body, my arms and legs weren’t mine to control and my voice was mute. I couldn’t make a sign or sounds to let anyone know I’d become aware again,’” he explained, quoted by Mr. Baklinski. “‘I was invisible; the ghost boy.’ ….

“Eventually  Martin’s body began to catch up to his mind and inexplicably began to heal,” writes Mr. Baklinski. “He learned to communicate using a computer and began to expand his world beyond the confines that had encumbered him.”

He has since married and moved to England, where since 2010, he has been operating his own business and, according to LifeSiteNews, “lives a fully functional and normal life.”

Cases like that of Martin Pistorius, notes Mr. Baklinski, “are fueling a growing debate about the accuracy of ‘vegetative state’ and ‘brain death’ diagnoses.” He cites a “particularly chilling case [of] a young man, Zach Dunlap, [who] revealed that he was fully conscious,” writes Mr. Baklinski, “as doctors and his family members discussed how they would donate his organs. Only moments before he was scheduled to be wheeled into the operating room to have his organs removed, a family member dug a fingernail under his toenail, causing a sudden reaction. The surgery was called off,” reports LifeSiteNews, and Zach recovered.” Praise the Lord!

Abortion Backers Still Running from A-Word

Jan. 6, 2015, commentary by Jill Stanek, pro-life champion, speaker and blogger at JillStanek.com

Recently abortion proponents decided if you can’t beat, join ’em, and began urging their people to counter post-abortive stories of regret with post-abortive stories of relief. They launched the 1-in-3 Campaign and began writing articles explaining the importance of coming out.

Even Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards finally admitted to having an abortion skeleton in her closet, claiming it was easy-peasy, even if something about it kept her from sharing the good news beyond her inner circle for years and years.

Abortion proponents now say it is wrong to connect abortions with sob stories, which further stigmatize the deed as something sought only in dire circumstances or for catastrophic reasons.

So they exalt the “freedom to f*** up,” lauding those like post-abortive Merritt Tierce, who bragged about not one but two! abortions in the New York Times, one garnered after an affair in which she was unsure of paternity and the other sought after her attempt to trap a man via pregnancy failed. Tramps trump tragedy.

But do they practice what they preach? Only when convenient. Despite the charade, the industry knows everyone but them thinks abortion is skanky, to say the least. So while Planned Parenthood committed nearly one million of the three million US abortions of the past three years, it continues to use math gimmicks to insist abortion accounts for a minuscule portion of its business.

And in a Cosmo puff piece a few days ago – “How to Get Hired at Planned Parenthood” – senior HR officer Gaitre Lorick failed to ever bring up the a-word. It came up only once, in the article’s intro. Abortion is obviously not an employment magnet.

Lorick wrote candidates are expected to have “a basic understanding” of the organization and to check out Planned Parenthood’s website for details. But there is no a-word at the supplied link. Lorick also touted Planned Parenthood’s internship program, but that link omits the a-word as well.

At the Washington Post, 16 “influential” feminists submitted what they hope to accomplish in 2015, and again, the a-word never came up. The closest was one invocation of the vague term “reproductive rights.”

Everyone knows you can’t be a feminist if you’re not pro-abortion. It’s the litmus test.

But the feminists listed just about everything but abortion as important agenda items for the new year – living wages, gender equality, police brutality, domestic violence, LGBT justice, digital dualism, online harassment, hate speech, rape, quality childcare, queer and trans people of color in media, campus violence, immigration, incarceration and even women in online game development.

Is abortion that secure? Hardly.

Amanda Marcotte blames the “anti-choice movement’s relentless propaganda about ‘abortion regret’” and the “ever-misogynistic gossip press” for a stigma against abortion that just won’t die. Marcotte needs to talk to her own, for instance, Michael Odenthal of Highbrow Magazine.

Odenthal just wrote a laudably pro-abortion piece (“Conservative America’s Dangerous War on Abortion”) wherein he promoted the a-word 21 times, except, strangely, within the three paragraphs where he sympathetically told the story of a now incarcerated Pennsylvania mother who illegally ordered pills online to “terminate” her pregnant 16-year-old daughter’s “pregnancy,” which landed the hemorrhaging girl in the hospital. “The daughter had a miscarriage,” wrote Odenthal, “as the pills were intended to induce.”

Um, no. The daughter had an abortion. Why not say it straight? Because in this case the a-word doesn’t play well?

Mixed messaging from abortion advocates, often subconscious, betrays the reality they may not even realize they know – this because the abortion stigma is inborn, pardon the pun.

Abortion is unnatural. Abortion is violent. It is inherently abhorrent to kill one’s own offspring. The fact is, abortion stigma will never die, simply because of that which does.

Co-sponsors of Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act

As of Jan. 15, 2015

Along with chief sponsor Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), GOP Representatives Aderholt, Brooks, Byrne, Palmer, Roby, Rogers (AL); Gosar, Salmon, Schweikert (AZ); Crawford, Hill, Westerman, Womack (AR); Cook, Hunter, LaMalfa (CA); Buck, Lamborn (CO); Bilirakis, Buchanan, Clawson, Crenshaw, Curbelo, DeSantis, Diaz-Balart, Jolly, Miller, Nugent, Posey, Ros-Lehtinen, Webster, Yoho (FL); Allen, Collins, Graves, Hice, Westmoreland (GA); Roskam, Schock, Shimkus (IL); Bucshon, Messer, Rokita, Stutzman, Walorski, Young (IN); Blum, King (IA); Huelskamp, Jenkins, Pompeo, Yoder (KS); Barr, Guthrie, Rogers (KY); Boustany, Fleming (LA); Harris (MD); Amash, Benishek, Huizenga, Miller, Walberg (MI); Emmer, Kline (MN); Graves, Long, Luetkemeyer, Smith (MO); Harper, Nunnelee, Palazzo (MS); Zinke (MT);

Also, GOP Representatives Fortenberry, Smith (NE); Amodei (NV); Garrett, Smith (NJ); Pearce (NM); Reed (NY); Ellmers, Foxx, Hudson, Jones, McHenry, Meadows, Pittenger, Rouzer, Walker (NC); Cramer (ND); Chabot, Gibbs, Johnson, Jordan, Joyce, Latta, Stivers, Tiberi, Turner (OH); Bridenstine, Cole, Lucas, Mullen, Russell (OK); Barletta, Kelly, Marino, Murphy, Pitts, Rothfus, Thompson (PA); Duncan, Mulvaney, Rice, Sanford, Wilson (SC); Black, Blackburn, DesJarlais, Duncan, Fincher, Fleischmann, Roe (TN); Babin, Brady, Burgess, Conaway, Culberson, Farenthold, Flores, Sam Johnson, Marchant, McCaul, Neugebauer, Olson, Poe, Ratcliffe, Sessions, Smith, Williams (TX); Bishop, Stewart (UT); Brat, Forbes, Goodlatte, Griffith, Hurt, Wittman (VA); Jenkins, McKinley, Mooney (WV); and Duffy, Grothman, Ribble, Sensenbrenner (WI).

And, Democratic Representatives Dan Lipinski (IL) and Collin Peterson (MN).