Life Advocacy Briefing

Defending the Indefensible

WHEN HILLARY CLINTON (D) CAMPAIGNED IN INDIANA’s primary a week ago – which she lost – for her party’s Presidential nomination, one of her campaign pledges, according to Claire Chretien, writing for LifeSiteNews.com, was to vigorously defend abortion’s chief perpetrator.

“‘I will defend a woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions,’ said [Mrs.] Clinton at a campaign stop Sunday [May 1],” writes Ms. Chretien. “‘I’ll tell ya. I’ll defend Planned Parenthood against these attacks. And I commend the women of this state, young and old, for standing up against this governor and this legislature.’” Indiana’s governor is former US Rep. Mike Pence (R), who was a stalwart proponent of the right to life of unborn persons and who, in his later years in Congress, led the efforts to exclude Planned Parenthood from funding even before the recent revelations of the abortion outfit’s trafficking in baby body parts.

She promised specifically, according to the LifeSiteNews report, to “‘defend Planned Parenthood’ from Indiana’s new law banning abortion on the basis of a baby’s race, sex or disability diagnosis.”

Noting that some 90% of unborn babies in the US who are found to have Down syndrome are killed in the womb, Ms. Chretien reports that “the law, which is scheduled to take effect on July 1, makes it illegal for doctors to knowingly abort babies because they have a disability such as Down syndrome or because of their race, sex, national origin or ancestry.”

The new law also has provisions, reports LifeSiteNews, prohibiting “‘an individual from acquiring, receiving, selling or transferring fetal tissue’ and requir[ing]that aborted and miscarried babies’ bodies be cremated or buried.”

Further provisions, according to Ms. Chretien: “Women whose babies are diagnosed with fetal anomalies must be given information about prenatal hospice care and abortionists with hospital admitting privileges must renew them annually.”

Defending the Indefensible, II

NOT SURPRISINGLY, THE HOUSE PROBE OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD is making some of the Democrats in Congress uncomfortable. Ninety-eight of these elected Representatives signed a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan on April 28 asking him, reports Ben Johnson for LifeSiteNews.com, “to dissolve the special panel investigating allegations that the abortion industry is illegally profiting from the sale of human body parts.”

The signers, whose names we list at the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing, constitute only 22.5% of the House Members, according to American Life League’s Jim Sedlak, quoted by Mr. Johnson. “‘There was a time when Members of the House would be tripping all over themselves to sign a letter like this in support of Planned Parenthood,’” said Mr. Sedlak in the LifeSiteNews report. “‘Apparently, not anymore.’”

Their letter objects to the committee, led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), doing its job by issuing subpoenas to, as Mr. Johnson puts it, “abortion-linked organizations that had not cooperated with the investigation to date.” The issuance of subpoenas – a somewhat standard practice in Congressional probes being resisted by the investigatees – “was aimed at ‘personally intimidating the scientists who are engaged in this life-saving work.’” Life-saving work?

Planned Parenthood’s vice president for public policy was quoted by Mr. Johnson calling the official House probe a “‘witch hunt, led by Chairman Blackburn and Speaker Ryan.’” Dana Singiser went on to charge the investigation was “‘arguably worse than McCarthyism.’” In throwing that leftist grenade, the Planned Parenthood official was apparently echoing Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), a member of the panel’s Minority, who, Mr. Johnson reports, “said at the most recent set of panel hearings last month, ‘This committee is worse than McCarthy investigations, because McCarthy endangered … people’s jobs. This committee is knowingly endangering people’s lives.’”

Wait. Even former Sen. Hillary Clinton (D) recently referred to developing human babies as “unborn persons.” And enough is known about the business of harvesting and trafficking in fetal body parts to be clear (without even hearing from the Blackburn panel) that people’s lives are endangered – yea, destroyed – every day by the abortion industry and its fellow traffickers in the body-parts collection business.

Even without subpoena compliance, already “the panel’s discoveries have undoubtedly,” writes Mr. Johnson, “caused embarrassment and heartburn over potential legal issues to all parties involved. StemExpress even asked Democratic congressmen to suppress documents it believed had been procured by the Center for Medical Progress during the most recent hearings.”

Though getting information from the investigatees has presented a challenge to the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, the panel’s pro-life Members, notes Mr. Johnson, have “uncovered … invoices [which have] revealed that the organ procurement industry paid up to $11,365 a month to some abortion facilities.

“One of the panel’s charts showed the phenomenal growth of StemExpress, the procurement agency that pays Planned Parenthood and abortion facilities for the limbs, organs, tissue and blood of aborted babies and in turn supplies it to purchasers.” StemExpress is among the outfits which have resisted cooperation with the Blackburn committee, but Rep. Blackburn made clear last week that she and the committee are prepared to take legal action to enforce subpoenas and uncover the truth.

For more on StemExpress, we reprint near the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing a revealing report on the explosive growth of StemExpress, a tissue and blood procurement company, during the development of its linkage with Planned Parenthood as the source of its “product.”

Affirming Motherhood by Rejecting ‘Planned Parenthood’

KANSAS GOV. SAM BROWNBACK (R) IS SET TO RECEIVE a fine Mother’s Day gift on his desk – the opportunity to permanently block Planned Parenthood from eligibility for federal family planning funds administered through his state.

Lawmakers and the governor have been acting each year to disqualify Planned Parenthood from Title X (Ten) funding in Kansas in the annual budget process beginning in 2011, but a bill to block the abortion purveyor from such funds permanently – without being subject to appropriations battles each year – has now passed both houses of the legislature by votes of 87 to 34 in the House and 32 to 8 in the State Senate.

Coinciding with that move toward justice, mercy and common sense was a bill approved May 1 to specify that midwives cannot legally “perform, induce or prescribe drugs for an abortion.” That measure, which is also expected to receive Gov. Brownback’s signature, passed the House 115 to 7 and cleared the Senate on a unanimous 40-to-0 vote.

Kansans for Life “noted the existence of a document created by the National Abortion Federation,” reports Ben Johnson for LifeSiteNews.com, “to facilitate midwives who wish to perform abortion: ‘Providing Abortion Care: A Professional Tool Kit for Nurse-Midwives, Nurse Practitioners & Physician Assistants.’”

Dropping Another Shoe

PLANNED PARENTHOOD GOT THE NEWS last Tuesday from the Kansas Dept. of Health & Environment: Official notification that the abortion goliath “will no longer be eligible for Medicaid funding,” writes LifeSiteNews.com reporter Ben Johnson.

The disqualification action will protect taxpayers from forking over some $61,000 each year through Medicaid. “That comes in addition,” notes Mr. Johnson, “to $370,000 a year the state has deprived Planned Parenthood by reprioritizing Title X (Ten) family planning funds away from Planned Parenthood.”

The LifeSiteNews story reprints quotes from Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s State of the State message in January of this year, in which “he said he would ‘ensure that not a single dollar of taxpayer money goes to Planned Parenthood,’ saying,” writes Mr. Johnson, “‘Planned Parenthood’s trafficking of baby body parts is antithetical to our belief in human dignity.’”

Big Abortion = Big Bucks for Growing Partner

May 2, 2016, report by Ben Johnson for LifeSiteNews.com

StemExpress – the corporate partner that paid Planned Parenthood for aborted babies’ body parts and tissue – grew by a whopping 1,316% in three years, and its revenue more than doubled in a single year, according to business authorities.

The tissue and blood procurement company went into business in 2010, generating barely $100,000, according to reports. By 2013, the company had $2.2 million in revenues. A year later, StemExpress reported $4.5 million in revenue – more than a 100% increase in funds in one year.

StemExpress grew by a whopping 1,316% during the previous three years, according to the website Inc.com. The firm’s business acumen garnered a spot as #35 on Inc.com’s list of fastest growing women-led companies last August – and #363 on the “Inc. 5,000.” Its description says the company “[s]upplies biomedical researchers with human blood, tissue products, bone marrow, primary cells and the clinical specimens they need to perform their research.”

StemExpress noted the honor on its website.

That fall, the Center for Medical Progress released footage of StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer telling undercover investigators that her company shipped “a lot” of “intact” aborted babies’ bodies to researchers nationwide. “Their lab techs freak out and have meltdowns” when they open the boxes, Dyer said, giggling and reenacting their shocked expressions as they open containers containing complete fetal cadavers.

Documents released by Congress last month show that in 2015, StemExpress was positioned to push into new territory, maximizing its relationship with abortion facilities to gather a larger number of unborn children’s organs and tissue.

According to the documents released by the House Select Panel on Infant Lives late last month, the number of abortion facilities that have agreed to furnish what the industry terms “products of conception” to StemExpress more than doubled between 2014 and 2015, … from less than 100 to 250 abortion facilities.

The company’s explosive growth has ignited legal controversy. Its brochures promise a new revenue stream to abortion facilities that partner with the company, which is headquartered in Placerville, California. But federal law forbids exchanging human organs of any sort for “valuable consideration” – legally defined as any amount of money that would constitute a profit.

Well Said!

Commentary written by a Life Advocacy support team member in response to the baseless abortion gaffe by Donald Trump which we covered in the April 4 Life Advocacy Briefing, signing it “One Republican Mother & Nurse”

Years ago I learned that if you ask the wrong question, the answers you get or the information you receive is worthless. Wrong questions focus attention on some side issue but don’t get to the heart of the matter. That was illustrated recently when Donald Trump was asked what should be done to women who have an abortion if abortion is outlawed.

That question was designed to change the focus from abortion by refocusing it on punishment for women. The real question that needs to be asked, however, is “should we continue to allow a particular segment of our society – abortionists – to legally make their living by killing unborn children?”

Although the United States Supreme Court has authorized all doctors to kill any person as long as they still reside in their mother’s womb, most do not. Most doctors do everything in their power to heal all who seek their care despite their age or place of residence, even though they know that some patients will die despite their best efforts.

Some doctors, however, choose to be abortionists. They make their living by killing helpless babies who have not yet been born. Instead of helping women understand the possible consequences to their health and their future ability to have a child, as well as the risk to their own life from an abortion, abortionists lie, either directly or through their silence.

Pregnancy lasts nine months. There are thousands of pregnancy assistance centers in this country where help is available to women to think through their options and decide what is truly best for themselves and their child or children.

But abortionists lose money when women seek help with their pregnancies. They prefer that women act in haste, seek an abortion and deal with the consequences later – after the abortionist has “fixed” her problem and been paid for his/her “services.”

But as Frederica Matthewes-Green wrote in “Abortion: Women’s Rights and Wrongs” in Sisterlife (Winter 1994), “For the question remains, do women want abortion? Not like she wants a Porsche or an ice cream cone. Like an animal caught in a trap, trying to gnaw off its own leg, a woman who seeks abortion is trying to escape a desperate situation by an act of violence and self-loss. Abortion is not a sign that women are free but a sign that they are desperate.”

If we want to become a nation that honors and respects women, shouldn’t we protect them from those who seek to become wealthy by preying on them when they are most vulnerable?

Signers of House Letter Protesting Harvesting Probe

Illinois Democratic Rep. Bill Foster, joined by Democratic Representatives Ruben Gallego, Raul Grijalva & Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ); Julia Brownley, Tony Cardenas, Judy Chu, Mark DeSaulnier, Anna Eshoo, Sam Farr, Janice Hahn, Michael Honda, Jared Huffman, Barbara Lee, Ted Lieu, Zoe Lofgren, Alan Lowenthal, Doris Matsui, Grace Napolitano, Scott Peters, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Raul Ruiz, Linda Sanchez, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Mark Takano & Mike Thompson (CA); Earl Perlmutter & Jared Polis (CO); Rosa DeLauro, Elizabeth Esty & Jim Himes (CT).

Also, Democratic Representatives Corrine Brown, Kathy Castor, Ted Deutch, Lois Frankel, Alan Grayson, Alcee Hastings, Patrick Murphy, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz & Frederica Wilson (FL); John Lewis (GA); Danny Davis & Mike Quigley (IL); Andre Carson (IN); John Yarmuth (KY); Chellie Pingree (ME); Elijah Cummings, Donna Edwards & Chris VanHollen (MD); Katherine Clark, William Keating, Joseph Kennedy, James McGovern, Seth Moulton & Niki Tsongas (MA); John Conyers, Debbie Dingell, Dan Kildee, Brenda Lawrence & Sander Levin (MI); Keith Ellison & Betty McCollum (MN); Dina Titus (NV); Ann Kuster (NH); Donald Norcross, Bill Pascrell & Donald Payne (NJ).

And Democratic Representatives Michelle Lujan-Grisham (NM); Yvette Clarke, Joseph Crowley, Eliot Engel, Steve Israel, Nita Lowey, Carolyn Maloney, Gregory Meeks, Grace Meng, Kathleen Rice, Louise Slaughter & Paul Tonko (NY); Alma Adams (NC); Earl Blumenauer, Suzanne Bonamici & Peter DeFazio (OR); Robert Brady & Chaka Fattah (PA); Steve Cohen (TN); E.B. Johnson & Marc Veasey (TX); Peter Welch (VT); Donald Beyer, Gerald Connolly & Robert Scott (VA); Jim McDermott & Adam Smith (WA); Gwen Moore & Mark Pocan (WI). Also Delegate Eleanor Norton (DC), who is not a Representative.