Life Advocacy Briefing

May 23, 2016

Breaking for Memorial Day / Obama Orders Healthcare Providers to Commit Abortion
Pathetic Bedfellows / Oklahoma Leading the Way? / Further Progress in the States
Evil Exposed

Breaking for Memorial Day

IN OBSERVANCE OF MEMORIAL DAY next Monday, May 30, Life Advocacy Briefing will not be published next week. Congress will be in recess as well. Expect to see us again in June, as we expect to resume publication with our June 6 edition. We extend to our readers our best wishes as we break to commemorate the sacrifices made by so many Americans to secure and preserve the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. And that includes the right to life of children yet unborn.

 

Obama Orders Healthcare Providers to Commit Abortion

THE NEWS MEDIA HAVE BEEN FULL OF THE OUTRAGEOUS THREAT by the Obama Regime to cut off federal funds to school districts which refuse to overturn privacy policies related to restrooms and locker rooms in the interest of promoting sexual identity fantasies.

But an even more sinister – and clearly illegal – order went out at the same time as the “transgender bathroom” policy outrage, an order which has received scant media attention.

“The Dept. of Health & Human Services (HHS) published the final rule for ObamaCare’s Section 1557 [May 13],” reports Lisa Bourne for LifeSiteNews.com, “requiring healthcare providers receiving federal funds to perform ‘gender transition’ services and abortions or face termination of government aid, along with possible referral to the Dept. of Justice for legal action.”

Reading that paragraph again, readers will find that the Obama Regime has just ordered healthcare institutions across America – any which receive federal funds, be it under Medicare or any other federal health subsidization – to commit abortions or risk losing their funds and, further, risk prosecution by the Justice Dept.

This final rule, reports Ms. Bourne, “encompasses any health program or activity, any part of which gets HHS funding, which would mean hospitals accepting Medicare and doctors who accept Medicaid and any HHS-administered health program, as well as health insurance marketplaces and issuers that take part in those marketplaces.

“The HHS claims,” writes Ms. Bourne, “the new rule ‘builds on prior federal civil rights laws to prohibit sex discrimination in health care’ and ‘also prohibits the denial of health care or health coverage based on an individual’s sex, including discrimination based on pregnancy, gender identity and sex stereotyping. The final rule,’” HHS wrote, according to Ms. Bourne, “‘also requires covered health programs and activities to treat individuals consistent with their gender identity.’”

Ms. Bourne reports sharp criticism of the ObamaCare rule from Family Research Council’s Government Affairs Vice President David Christensen, quoting from his statement: “‘HHS’s final rule concocts out of thin air a redefinition of sex discrimination to include both gender identity and abortion. … This intolerant and unjust rule, in turn,’” said Mr. Christensen, “‘threatens to force healthcare providers to participate in and perform services that substantially violate their consciences.’”

Relating the new healthcare mandate to the newly issued school bathroom mandate, Mr. Christensen said, writes Ms. Bourne: “‘This action erodes Americans’ freedom to believe and act in accordance with their beliefs, … not only as it relates to the privacy of the bathrooms but also now when it comes to the taking of innocent human life.’”

It is an outrage which Congress and the courts must step in to reverse. And to which Americans must raise loud and sustained objection. A line has been crossed which cannot be tolerated.

 

Pathetic Bedfellows

ABORTION FANATICS KNOW NO SHAME, even those who are Members of Congress who must stand for election every two years.

Six such radical officials signed a letter last week calling for the dissolution of the House Select Panel on Infant Lives, the committee investigating the possible violation of federal law in the baby-body-parts-trafficking scandal which has been rocking Planned Parenthood, some of its colleagues in the abortion racket and the tissue procurement middleman cabal since the Center for Medical Progress last summer began releasing video exposes in its undercover probe of the cartel.

Signing the latest demand to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) were Democratic Representatives Jackie Speier (CA), Diana DeGette (CO), Jan Schakowsky (IL), Bonnie Watson-Coleman (NJ), Jerrold Nadler (NY) and Suzan DelBene (WA), certainly a handful of radicals who could be expected to speak up for Planned Parenthood. All are members of the Select Panel; Ms. Schakowsky, who appears to have initiated the letter, is the Ranking Member of the bipartisan committee.

But the impetus for this letter and a central theme in it was the shameful-in-itself opprobrium with which this gaggle of extremists objected to the committee’s summoning of notorious late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart to give a deposition about his own possible involvement in furnishing baby body parts to the fetal tissue product stream.

Rather than facing the reality that their embrace of LeRoy Carhart could be a source of public disapproval, the six radicals charged that, that by summoning Mr. Carhart, panel chairman Rep. Blackburn “is bringing dishonor and discredit on the House.” Sure.

 “The panel … asked for all documents,” reports Ben Johnson for LifeSiteNews.com, “showing money Dr. Carhart received for supplying fetal tissue and organs, his practices regarding babies who are born alive during botched abortions,” for which Mr. Carhart is notorious, “and all records of women who were forced to seek emergency care as a result of his shoddy abortion techniques,” principally at his Germantown, Maryland, shop.

“‘Republicans have not shared with Democrats any objective basis,’” Rep. Schakowsky and her fellow travelers wrote in the letter to Speaker Ryan, quoted by Mr. Johnson. “‘for targeting this individual,’” adding, writes Mr. Johnson, “that Carhart ‘has been the subject of anti-abortion violence for decades.’”

They did not cite any such incidents, though objective observers can cite disturbing numbers of Carhart “patients” who have suffered serious injuries or even death at his hands, not to mention the death toll among babies being cheated of their lives. Instead, the six letter signers, reports Mr. Johnson, “wrote that House Republicans show a ‘complete disregard for this doctor’s safety,’ which is ‘further evidence that this dangerous witch hunt [meaning the panel’s probe into baby-body-parts trafficking] must end.’ …

“Democrats, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,” writes Mr. Johnson, “held a press conference to draw attention to their outrage” and further associated themselves with one of the most notorious bottom-feeders of the abortion industry.

Leader Pelosi used the occasion, reports Lisa Bourne for LifeSiteNews.com, to charge that “investigating Planned Parenthood for its role trafficking in human remains is ‘un-American’ and likened the effort to get to the bottom of the abortion scandal to anti-Communist hearings in the US Senate prompted decades ago by Joseph McCarthy. ‘What’s going on in the Congress today is, to borrow a phrase, un-American,’ [Mrs.] Pelosi stated,” writes Ms. Bourne.

Anyone who can read the Declaration of Independence or the preamble to the US Constitution, together with Amendments 5 and 14, ought to recognize and acknowledge that what has been going on in the improperly legalized abortuaries of America since Jan. 22, 1973, is actually what is un-American.

For his own part, Speaker Ryan responded to media inquiries about the letter through spokesman AshLee Strong, who declared, according to Ms. Bourne: “‘Speaker Ryan supports the Select Committee’s continued efforts to protect infant lives.’” And that is, after all, the point.

 

Oklahoma Leading the Way?

OKLAHOMA’s LAWMAKERS ARE BREAKING NEW GROUND in challenging the now-43-year-old Roe v. Wade edict of the Supreme Court. Legislation sent by both houses of the state legislature to GOP Gov. Mary Fallin, a former two-term pro-life US Representative. The governor is currently withholding comment, pending staff review, according to the Associated Press (AP).

The proposal not only would outlaw abortion, defining it as a felony, but would disqualify anyone committing such a crime from holding or renewing a medical license in the state.

Senators passed the measure 33 to 12 last Tuesday; the House had earlier advanced the bill 59 to 9.

The pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights, according to AP, “says [the bill] is the first of its kind in the nation.”

The measure’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Nathan Dahm, “made it clear,” reports AP, “that he hopes his bill could lead to overturning Roe v. Wade. ‘Since I believe life begins at conception,’” said the Broken Arrow Republican in the AP report, “‘it should be protected, and I believe it’s a core function of state government to defend that life from the beginning of conception.’”

The Senate’s minority leader, Democratic Sen. John Sparks, was quoted by AP calling the proposal “‘an emotional distraction.’”

While the Senate was sending the abortion ban to the governor, the Oklahoma House, reports AP, “approved a bill that requires the state Dept. of Health to develop informational material ‘for the purpose of achieving an abortion-free society… . The measure, which now goes to the Senate, requires the Health Dept. to produce information about alternatives to abortion and the developmental stages of a fetus, but the bill’s sponsor,” notes AP, “says it cannot be implemented without any funding.” Funding was not approved for its implementation at the time of House passage. The legislature is working toward a late-May adjournment deadline.

 

Further Progress in the States

THIS IS THE TIME OF YEAR when state legislatures are at their busiest point in most states. In some, that means a season of legislation to protect innocent human life, among many other urgently pressing concerns.

Louisiana’s new governor, Democrat John Bel Edwards, will soon have presented for his expected approval a measure which would increase the state’s abortion waiting period requirement from 24 hours to 72. After adoption by the House on an 83-to-0 vote, HB-386 passed the Senate 34 to 4.

Louisiana’s legislature has also sent to the governor HB-1081, which bars the dismemberment of unborn children, the most-used killing technique in second-trimester abortions. Louisiana’s annual death toll by dismemberment exceeds 1,000 precious lives, according to the executive director of Louisiana Right to Life, quoted by National Right to Life News Today columnist Dave Andrusko. The bill passed the Senate 36 to 2 just last week, having passed the House unanimously on April 28, 83 to 0. Since the governor’s chief of staff testified in favor of the bill in the Senate committee, Gov. Edwards is expected to sign the measure.

A similar Dismemberment Prohibition Act was signed May 12 by Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R), having passed first the Senate by a vote of 30 to 2 and then the House on a 74-to-26 roll call.

South Carolina’s GOP governor, Nikki Haley, is expected soon to sign her state’s proposed Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which bars abortions after 20 weeks, the point at which gestating babies are known to experience pain. The measure passed the State Senate on a strong vote last Tuesday, having already cleared the House.

 

Evil Exposed

May 12, 2016, BreakPoint commentary by John Stonestreet

The most important story of last year, in my view, was the exposure of Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in infant organs. But with the indictment of David Daleiden, the undercover journalist behind the incriminating videos, it seemed as if those responsible for the grisly exposed practices would not face any consequences.

All that may be changing, however. Last month, lawmakers took a major step toward holding the abortion giant and its allies accountable. The Select Panel on Infant Lives, chaired by Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, held a hearing on April 20th to review the evidence. And what they uncovered was stomach-turning.

It’s important to know that a 1993 federal statute prohibits the sale of fetal tissue. However, witnesses called during this month’s hearing say abortion providers have ignored that law for decades, encouraging and profiting from a market in human body parts.

Here’s how the process works: Researchers at companies like StemExpress pay procurement technicians to shop around abortion clinics for suitable specimens. They obtain consent from the patients and inform the clinic staff, who kill the unborn child and harvest its tissue. The technician then packages and transports the body parts to the customer, records invoices and makes sure the clinic is paid.

Of course, it’s an indictment on our civilization that only the last step is under investigation. But at least it is.

Planned Parenthood and purchasers of fetal tissue have insisted for months that the money discussed in the undercover videos was “reimbursement for reasonable costs.” But testimony before the panel reveals that there’s no evidence clinics incurred any cost while harvesting fetal tissue. Third-party procurement technicians covered the costs, right down to shipping and handling. “When income exceeds costs,” writes Mollie Hemingway at m>The Federalist, “that’s profit.”

Far more damning are the marketing materials distributed by procurement companies, some of which advertise “financial profits” and a “financial benefit to your clinic.”

And who can forget the gut-wrenching videos of Planned Parenthood officials negotiating the prices of organs over lunch with undercover investigators, with one even joking, “I want a Lamborghini!”

Among the documents presented at the hearing were invoices for the sale and transfer of fetal organs. Hemingway writes that one customer paid over $3,000 for a fetal brain. Another opted for a bulk discount, buying 38 tiny brains for $22,000. And one procurement website entered as evidence during the hearing shows a drop-down menu order form where researchers can purchase “heart, lungs, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, esophagus, tongue [and] scalp.”

“You don’t need to be a lawyer to see what’s going on here,” remarked Rep. Blackburn. “This does not sound to me like tissue donation for research. This sounds like someone who wants to make money – a lot of money – selling baby body parts.”

Of course, Planned Parenthood denies all of it, despite evidence that one procurement company was negotiating with as many as 250 clinics nationwide. But in the end, even abortion supporters on the committee admitted that it’s time to subpoena full financial records on these gruesome transactions.

In response to all of this, David Daleiden warns that his videos “only scratch the surface.” But an evil once hidden is now exposed, “that Planned Parenthood profited from trafficking fetal organs” and that this “criminal trade in body parts spread nationwide.” It’s hard to take in, but we must – after all, hidden evil always flourishes. Exposing evil is what love sometimes must do.

I’m praying – and I hope you will, too – that this is a turning point in the debate, not just over whether selling fetal organs is okay but over killing babies in the first place.