Life Advocacy Briefing

A Week Off

BECAUSE OF TRAVEL PLANS, we will not be publishing Life Advocacy Briefing next week. We expect to be back after a one-week break, in time for the resumption of the Congressional session.

The Horror Escalates

THE RELEASE LAST WEEK OF ANOTHER VIDEO in the ongoing Planned Parenthood scandal has gone a step further in documenting Nazistic practices at the nation’s chief abortion behemoth.

The video features an interview with a former employee of StemExpress, a human tissue middleman company which procures organs from such sources as Planned Parenthood and delivers them to labcoated researchers. The woman interviewed is obviously disturbed by the experiences she recounts to the video team.

As Operation Rescue’s Cheryl Sullenger describes the interview, the woman “struggles to keep down her emotion as she recalls her worst experience at Planned Parenthood while working as a procurement technician for StemExpress. [She] recounts a day at the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in The Alameda in SanJose, California,” writes Ms. Sullenger, “that will forever haunt her memories.”

She recalls the abortionist “emerg[ing] from the delivery room,” writes Ms. Sullenger, “‘really frustrated’ that one distraught woman could not be calmed down enough to do the abortion procedure. The patient could not be ‘medicated’ because her fetus had been selected for organ harvesting. Certain drugs,” notes Ms. Sullenger, “render fetal ‘specimens’ useless to researchers.

“‘Finally the [aborting] woman,’” recalled the interview subject, quoted by Ms. Sullenger, “‘calmed down and the doctor went in to perform the abortion. It takes a little while, and I’m in the hallway,’” said the StemExpress technician interviewed by the Center for Medical Progress video crew. “‘I see the jar come out. Goes into the path lab.’” She next recalled, reports Ms. Sullenger, hearing her supervisor “‘preparing it.’”

We will not continue to quote the distraught former StemExpress technician, who relates her horror at witnessing a beating heart and the harvesting of a baby’s brain; she did declare, according to Ms. Sullenger, “‘This is the most gestated fetus and closest thing to a ‘baby’ that I’ve seen.’”

No wonder Operation Rescue leads its report with the subhead: “Operation Rescue calls on police to conduct murder investigations of Planned Parenthood for Gosnell-like killings of babies born alive during abortions,” referring to convicted West Philadelphia murderer/abortionist Kermit Gosnell.

We urge our readers to view the video and the earlier entries in the expose’ series at the Internet website www.centerformedicalprogress.org. Warning: the content is deeply disturbing. We further urge our readers to seek appointments with their Members of Congress and Senators and to show them this week’s video and request their comments and intentions.

Ask them, too, what they plan to do about the seeming admissions – including on this video – that Planned Parenthood’s abortion methods include breech delivery in order to harvest brains; ask them, Isn’t that partial-birth abortion? Isn’t that against federal law?

Victory for Truth

IT’s NOT OFTEN THAT A JUDGE REVERSES HIS/HER OWN RESTRAINING ORDER in cases relating to abortion in general or Planned Parenthood in particular. But that is what California Judge Joanne O’Donnell has done in lifting a restraining order on the Center for Medical Progress which had barred CMP from releasing – in California, anyway – any more videos “featuring high-level StemExpress employees.” StemExpress had sought the injunction to avoid being nailed as Planned Parenthood’s middleman in the processing of baby body parts and their delivery to researchers.

Some two weeks after Judge O’Donnell granted StemExpress a temporary restraining order, she tossed out StemExpress’s motion for an actual injunction, stating, reports Nick Arnold for American Principles in Action, “that StemExpress was highly unlikely to prevail in its efforts” and refusing to grant the plaintiff’s request for discovery of evidence.

“‘Plaintiff does not persuade the court,’” Judge O’Donnell wrote in her order, “‘that the discovery it seeks is necessary to obtain the preliminary injunction. That is because,’” she said, as quoted by Mr. Arnold, “‘it appears highly unlikely that the court is going to grant the preliminary injunction.’”

Said Casey Mattox, senior counsel Americans Defending Freedom (ADF), responding to the ruling in Mr. Arnold’s report: “‘Americans have a right to know the truth about Planned Parenthood and its business deals with StemExpress. This decision brings us one step closer to the day StemExpress and Planned Parenthood have been dreading.’”

Perhaps as a result of the judicial setback, StemExpress last week ended its business dealings with Planned Parenthood and is now reportedly seeking to emphasize procurement of adult human tissues for the researchers to whom it delivers specimens. Time – no, past time – for the House and Senate to end the federal government’s business dealings with America’s leading abortionist.

Planned Parenthood Bounced from State Contracts

ARKANSAS GOV. ASA HUTCHINSON (R) LAST WEEK CANCELED the state’s contracts with Planned Parenthood, amid growing threats from the Obama Regime to punish states which take such action. The state joins Louisiana and Alabama in executive actions disqualifying the abortion behemoth from state funding.

“‘It is apparent,’” said Gov. Hutchinson in a statement quoted by IllinoisReview.com, “‘that after the recent revelations on the actions of Planned Parenthood, that this organization does not represent the values of the people of our state, and Arkansas,’” he declared, “‘is better served by terminating any and all existing contracts with them.’”

Mr. Hutchinson is a former pro-life Member of Congress and served as US Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, as well as US Drug Enforcement Administrator and the first Undersecretary for Border & Transportation Security at the US Dept. of Homeland Security.

Trying to Weasel

THREE FLORIDA PLANNED PARENTHOOD SHOPS ARE IN COURT, reports Cheryl Sullenger for Operation Rescue, seeking permission (via “emergency injunction”) to permit continued executions of “illegal second-trimester abortions.”

The abortuaries in St. Petersburg, Ft. Myers and Naples were notified by Aug. 5 letter of the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration, reports Ms. Sullenger, “that they needed to immediately halt abortions done after 12 weeks.” None of the three is licensed for abortions beyond 12 weeks, but, notes Ms. Sullenger, “Records discovered during facility inspections showed that all three abortion facilities were [committing] abortions two weeks into the second trimester of pregnancy.”

The inspections which uncovered the violations were ordered by Gov. Rick Scott (R) after the baby-body-parts trafficking scandal hit in July. Though none of Planned Parenthood’s Florida operations were found to be harvesting baby organs and tissues, the inspectors did not limit their examinations of the businesses to the question which touched off the investigations.

“Planned Parenthood admits,” writes Ms. Sullenger, “that it does abortions through 13 weeks/6 days gestation as counted from the [aborting mother’s] last menstrual period but claims those abortions are still considered first-trimester procedures.” Maybe by Planned Parenthood, but not by Florida!

Of course, as Operation Rescue president Troy Newman notes in the Sullenger story, “‘Planned Parenthood makes a lot of money doing the more expensive second-trimester abortions, so … every day they are blocked from doing them means money out of PP’s pockets.’”

Sustaining the Cause

THE COALITION ON ABORTION/BREAST CANCER HAS ANNOUNCED the successor to founding president Karen Malec, who passed away recently. Joining the board and agreeing to serve as the new president is Dr. Gerard Nadal, who has served as distinguished professor at St. John’s University, New York, specializing in microbiology, immunology, genetics, anatomy and physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology; his experience also includes a visiting professorship at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York, and a professorship in biology at Holy Apostles College & Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut, where he has also served as academic dean.

Dr. Nadal writes a blog called “Coming Home” at a website labeled www.gerardnadal.com, writing extensively about the connection between abortion and breast cancer and the link between oral contraceptives and breast cancer.

We extend to Dr. Nadal and his excellent, devoted board our best wishes on their determination to carry forward the ground-breaking, courageous, critically important work of the late Mrs. Malec, and we encourage our readers to contact the A/BC Coalition at 1-877/803-0102 and request their educational materials to warn our sisters about the connection between induced abortion and breast cancer. The group also offers helpful information through an Internet website at www.abortionbreastcancer.com.

Wisdom in the Senate

Major excerpt from Aug. 3, 2015, Senate floor speech by Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN), transcribed by Life Advocacy Briefing

William Wilberforce is a man that, over the years, I have looked to as a role model and an example of what public service should be and what public servants should be. Wilberforce served as a member of the British Parliament from 1784-1812. This followed an early career marked by what he described as doing nothing of purpose. Wilberforce then went through a transformational period of self-reflection and emerged with a deepened faith, a greater moral courage, and an unshakable passion for ending the slave trade. He said that, and I quote, “So enormous, so dreadful, so immediate did the slave trade’s wickedness appear that my whole mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would. I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.” It took Wilberforce 20 years of blood, sweat, and tears and even death threats. But he succeeded in pushing the House of Commons and the House of Lords to put abolition into the law when the Slave Trade Act of 1807 passed. I believe today, just two hours from now, we will have a William Wilberforce moment facing the United States Senate.

Through a series of video releases over the past few weeks, the American people have learned about the shocking and barbaric practices Planned Parenthood uses to terminate innocent human life. In several different videos, senior Planned Parenthood officials openly and candidly discuss the organ harvesting of fetuses. In one video the senior director of medical research – the senior director of medical research – for Planned Parenthood explained the process by which aborted body parts are harvested. I’m not going to describe that process on the [Senate] floor. I talked about it last week, but those who’ve seen the video, those who’ve read about this practice – it’s abhorrent. To hear the cold, calculating consideration of how best to disassemble – to tear apart, to rip apart – a growing life so that they could harvest certain body parts and then sell them for research. And negotiating prices – the calculated, inhuman lack of any kind of emotion. It’s like describing to somebody how they can go to Home Depot and how to pick things off the shelf. Let’s see, what does this cost? Okay, no, maybe we’d get a better price for this. In this case we’re talking about living human tissue being taken and harvested and sold.

So let’s consider for a second: What’s the bottom line here? The bottom line is we’re talking about an organization that is embracing the dismembering of a human life with taxpayer support. Millions of Americans who’ve seen these videos and heard these orations are rightly outraged by these videos and the cavalier attitude that Planned Parenthood has toward precious human life. Americans in all walks of life, Americans of different faiths and maybe even different political parties abhor this. And then we learn that our tax dollars – our hard-earned tax dollars – are sent to an organization that practices these methods. Surely, surely, we can come to the conclusion that this is not something – which violates the faith and beliefs of many millions of Americans – that this has to be subsidized by the federal taxpayer? …

The barbaric practice of conducting abortions in a way that promotes harvesting fetal organs or profiting from such practices has no place in a modern society. Planned Parenthood’s practices, I would suggest, should not receive a dime of taxpayer money. The question is, do we want taxpayer dollars to support an organization that treats human body parts like a product on the shelves of a store. And today the Senate will decide, will we fight for what we believe is morally right or will we stand by and allow the trivialization of life to continue? So I’m here to urge my colleagues to vote yes on this vitally important legislation that we’ll be taking up in just less than two hours.

The Legacy of Margaret Sanger

August 3, 2015, BreakPoint commentary by Eric Metaxas, reprinted from BreakPoint.org

Given all the grisly and disturbing news we’ve been getting about Planned Parenthood – which is the nation’s largest provider of abortions and, presumably, the body parts of unborn babies – would it surprise you at all to know that there’s also a quiet campaign to rehabilitate Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger as a champion of women’s dignity and human rights?

No less a public figure than Hillary Clinton has said, “I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision. … And when I think about what she did all those years ago in Brooklyn, taking … attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am really in awe of her.”

Well, okay then.

In one sense, of course, it’s not news when a pro-abortion progressive such as Mrs. Clinton attempts to lionize Sanger, who founded the organization that became Planned Parenthood. But it sure was news – and created a firestorm – when Christianity Today gave a platform for a columnist to do the same thing. In an online piece, Rachel Marie Stone – while acknowledging that Sanger “did hold eugenicist ideas” – invited us to see the bigger picture.

Stone noted that Sanger actually opposed abortion in her day as the taking of life and said Sanger’s emphasis on providing poor women access to birth control saved countless lives around the world. Isn’t it ironic, though, that although Planned Parenthood rejected its founder’s position on abortion, it absorbed Sanger’s fully formed racism. That’s because there’s an inescapable logic flowing from Sanger’s racist worldview last century and the naked barbarism we see from Planned Parenthood today.

Sanger wrote about the “deterioration in the human stock” and “the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents.” Lest you have any doubt about what this woman of so-called “courage, … tenacity [and] vision” meant, Sanger was committed to reducing the number of African Americans through contraception. Quoth Sanger: “We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

Isn’t it amazing that a woman who said what Sanger did isn’t vilified more generally as a racist intent on eliminating African Americans?

And here’s another ugly truth behind Planned Parenthood: the disproportionate number of minorities this organization kills and how it sets up shop in poor neighborhoods. According to a report by the New York City Dept. of Health & Mental Hygiene, in 2012, far more African American babies were killed by abortion – 31,328 – than were born – 24,758.

Meanwhile, the Center for Disease Control & Prevention reports that in New York City, where my wife runs a pregnancy care center, 78% of the abortions in 2011 were to black and Hispanic children.

By the way, one minister who is not going along is the redoubtable Walter Hoye of Oakland, California. Hoye notes that abortion kills more black Americans in three days than the Klan killed under Jim Crow in 86 years. That is the real legacy of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood. And now you know.