Life Advocacy Briefing

Tyranny Continues

NOW THAT SIX MEMBERS OF THE SUPREME COURT HAVE TWISTED the English language to force federal taxpayers to subsidize health insurance premiums in states which have refused to participate in socialized medicine, it is more critical than ever that Congress take up its duty to undo the unconstitutional law known as ObamaCare.

We ask our readers to call upon Congress (1-202/224-3121, Capitol switchboard) to repeal ObamaCare and its continued undermining of the God-given rights to Life and Liberty acknowledged by our Declaration of Independence.

President Obama declared gleefully on Thursday: “The Affordable Care Act is here to stay.” May that never be.

Celebration of Hope, Courage & Determination

LOOKING TO THE WEEKEND, with heart in hand we wish our readers a glorious celebration of America’s Independence Day, cherishing our history of freedom. At the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing we have retyped, word for word, the Declaration of Independence as published by the National Archives. May God forgive America and bless her. Amen.

Late-term Abortion Ban Filed in Senate

THE PAIN-CAPABLE UNBORN CHILD PROTECTION ACT HAS BEEN FILED in the Senate under the bill number S-1L553 and referred to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, chaired by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

Chief sponsor is Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who announced he has been promised by Senate Leadership that the proposal will move to a vote sometime this year. The measure had 45 co-sponsors at the time of its filing on June 11.

Co-sponsoring S-1553 are Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and GOP Senators Jeff Sessions & Richard Shelby (AL), Dan Sullivan (AK), Jeff Flake & John McCain (AZ), John Boozman & Tom Cotton (AR), Marco Rubio (FL), Johnny Isakson & David Perdue (GA), Mike Crapo & James Risch (ID), Daniel Coats (IN), Joni Ernst & Chuck Grassley (IA), Jerry Moran & Pat Roberts (KS), Rand Paul (KY), Bill Cassidy & David Vitter (LA), Thad Cochran & Roger Wicker (MS), Roy Blunt (MO), Steve Daines (MT), Deb Fischer & Ben Sasse (NE), Richard Burr & Thom Tillis (NC), John Hoeven (ND), Rob Portman (OH), James Inhofe & James Lankford (OK), Pat Toomey (PA), Tim Scott (SC), Mike Rounds & John Thune (SD), Bob Corker (TN), John Cornyn & Ted Cruz (TX), Orrin Hatch & Mike Lee (UT), Ron Johnson (WI), and John Barrasso & Michael Enzi (WY).

Readers are asked to contact home-state Senators and thank those who are co-sponsoring the measure or urge those who have not yet signed onto the bill to support S-1553 and even to add their names to its sponsor list. Senators may be reached via the Capitol switchboard at 1-202/224-3121.

Dominoes on July 1?

WHILE MOURNING THURSDAY’s SUPREME COURT OBAMINATION, we continue to watch for a high court announcement as to whether the Justices will take up an appeal of the 5th Appellate Circuit’s ruling upholding Texas’s landmark abortuary regulation law.

The Texas abortuary standards statute is due to take effect July 1 and will do so if the high court turns down the abortion industry’s desperate appeal.

Though major media dwelt, as of Thursday, on the six-Justice ObamaCare ruling, the Associated Press characterized the Texas case as “the biggest case on the hot-button subject [of abortion law] in nearly a quarter-century. … The Court is considering an emergency appeal from abortion providers in Texas,” continues the AP report, “who want the Justices to block two provisions of a state law that already has forced the closure of roughly half the licensed abortion clinics in the state. Ten of the remaining 19 clinics,” reports AP, “will have to shut their doors by July 1, without an order from the Supreme Court.”

Already one of the remaining abortuaries – which Operation Rescue numbers as 16 – has closed while the abortion cartel awaits word from the Court. Dallas’s Routh Street Women’s Clinic went out of business early this month, according to a June 22 OR news release. “At least six other Texas abortion facilities that are expected to shut down, barring last-minute help from the US Supreme Court,” notes OR, “include Austin Women’s Health Center, Austin; Hilltop Women’s Reproductive Center, El Paso; Houston Women’s Clinic, Houston; Suburban Women’s Clinic, Houston; Suburban Women’s Medical Center, Houston; [and] Planned Parenthood Babcock Health Center, San Antonio.” These facilities are known to be unable to comply with health-and-safety standards enacted by Texas to protect their customers.

A Supreme Court order this week, should it come, would simply stay enforcement of the law while the appeal pends at the high court; it would not constitute an actual ruling on the Texas statute until after the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in its coming term. Preferably, the Court will let the Circuit ruling stand, but we are watching for that announcement before July 1.

The Texas statute, notes AP, “require[s] clinics to meet hospital-like surgical standards and also call[s] on doctors who work in the clinics to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital” – eminently reasonable requirements for a business which claims to be providing “medical service” and which is employing surgery as one of its principal tactics.

The clear common sense of the Texas statute causes some on the pro-life side of the question to welcome the potential of a Supreme Court review, even though that could keep some of the more shabby Texas abortion shops in business while the Court mulls the law’s validity.

“Some abortion opponents,” notes AP, “see the case as a strong candidate for Supreme Court review. ‘The likelihood of this case getting to the Supreme Court is very high, and I think that’s a good thing,’ said Mike Norton, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom [ADF], a Christian-oriented public interest law firm,” reports AP.

Abortuary regulation laws are increasingly popular among the state legislatures. Notes AP: “The [Texas] case could be attractive to the Justices, because it might allow them to give more definition to the key phrase from their last big abortion ruling, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in 1992. States generally can regulate abortion,” acknowledges AP, “unless doing so places ‘an undue burden’ on a woman’s right to get an abortion.” An eventually favorable ruling in the Texas case could open the floodgates to state-level clinic-reg legislation across the country.

Remote Abortions Upheld by Iowa Court

THE IOWA STATE SUPREME COURT in mid-June struck down the state Board of Medicine’s ban on webcam abortions, reopening the floodgates of abortion cartel penetration into the state’s rural communities.

The ruling invalidated a lower court ruling which had upheld the authority of the medical regulatory board to require that medical doctors personally examine “patients” before prescribing abortion-inducing drugs.

In one small concession to common sense, the high court did uphold the medical board’s requirement that parents be notified before a minor can undergo an Internet-engineered chemical abortion.

Klopfer on Way Out?

NOTORIOUS INDIANA ABORTIONIST ULRICH KLOPFER LOST HIS BID last Thursday to escape further disciplinary proceedings before the state Medical Licensing Board. Now that the board has voted to dismiss the 73-year-old abortionist’s motion to end the case pending against him, notes Cheryl Sullenger for Operation Rescue (OR), “a full disciplinary hearing will now take place at a later date and could result in the revocation of his medical license.”

The Indiana licensing board “filed an administrative complaint against [Mr.] Klopfer on Sept. 17, 2014,” notes Ms. Sullenger, “accusing him of committing over 1,800 violations [of state law] between July 2012 and November 2013. …

“In seeking sanctions against [Mr.] Klopfer, the Indiana Medical Licensing Board noted,” writes Ms. Sullenger, “that he is ‘unfit to practice due to professional incompetence.’  The Board complaint,” she notes, “listed nine categories of violations,” including failure to provide required information on some 1,818 Termination of Pregnancy reports submitted to the state.

“[Mr.] Klopfer’s pattern of omitting critical information on the state-mandated reporting forms,” writes Ms. Sullenger, “served to cover up for child rapists and made it nearly impossible for the State to investigate suspected cases of child sex abuse or determine whether the abortions done by Klopfer were within the legal gestational limits in Indiana. … ‘We have no idea,’” said OR president Troy Newman, quoted in the release, “‘how many little girls were handed back to their abusers by Klopfer. He did everything he could to protect the rapists at the expense of the safety of little girls that depended on him to save them. He really belongs in prison.’”

The under-fire abortionist has been plying his trade at three Indiana abortuaries, but pressure from local governments has closed his facility in Fort Wayne last year and prompted him earlier this month to surrender the license of his Gary shop. All he has left to fight over is his South Bend operation.

America’s Declaration of Independence

In Congress, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. – Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences[:] For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.