Life Advocacy Briefing

What a Choice!

WE CANNOT THINK OF ANYONE MORE SUITED to roll up sleeves on “day one” and get about the business of sending ObamaCare to the dustbin of failed ideology than President-elect Donald Trump’s announced nominee for Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary. And ObamaCare repeal and replacement is just the beginning of our delight at the choice of US Rep. Tom Price (R-GA).

The current chairman of the House Budget Committee has certainly been able to assess the impact on the federal government’s budget not only of ObamaCare but also of the rest of the gargantuan spending programs of the massive bureaucratic and grant-doling department he soon, God willing, will superintend.

But most critical to us, Rep. Price is an orthopedic surgeon who has compiled a 100% pro-life voting record during his six terms in Congress. What a pick to oversee the spending, for example, of federal Title X (Ten) “family planning” dollars, should that pernicious program even remain a part of the federal budget. Title X is among the principal spigots of federal largesse so long gouging the American taxpayer to gorge the anti-family, anti-human elitists at Planned Parenthood. We fully anticipate expected Secretary Price will champion at least disqualification of abortionists from “family planning” grants and dare to hope he could even help lead the charge to do away with the Nixon-era interference of federal dollars in family formation.

H.H.S. is also the home of the federal Food & Drug Administration (FDA), which under then-President Bill Clinton (D) unleashed the French abortion drug RU-486 onto the American market, giving Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry as a whole a non-surgical tool by which to kill babies and endanger the lives and future fertility of their mothers.

And the federal government’s massive medical research establishment, whose grant-making and in-house agendas help drive the focus and field of such anti-Life initiatives as embryo stem-cell experimentation and cloning ventures – the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – also resides within the HHS leviathan, as does the often-off-base Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC).

Many critical issues will face the able and kindly lawmaker from Georgia, and his confirmation by the US Senate should be a top priority – through prayer and activism – both for the incoming Administration and for the pro-life community.

Getting back to the ObamaCare fight, Rep. Price has authored ObamaCare repeal-and-replacement legislation in every Congress since the massive federal takeover of America’s medical profession and healthcare delivery system was ushered in at the close of Barack Obama’s first year in office. Here is a prospective Cabinet official who is prepared to take up his most critical turn-around battles on his first day from confirmation; his endorsement by the US Senate cannot come soon enough!

Not So Pleased – Awww

PRO-LIFE CITIZENS ARE NOT THE ONLY ONES to have noticed HHS Secretary-designate Tom Price’s commitment to pro-life values. The horror being expressed by the abortion lobby underscores the need for strong pro-life advocacy in securing his confirmation by the likely-wobbly Senate when the new Administration takes office Jan. 20.

Planned Parenthood’s fundraising machine spat out an alarm via electronic mail to its support list last Tuesday, signed by PP executive vice president Dawn Laguens, reports LifeSiteNews.com, calling his expected nomination “a ‘direct threat’ to the abortion lobby’s agenda. …

“‘Rep. Price has a 0% rating – yes, 0% – from Planned Parenthood’s Action Fund,’” shouted the action-and-funds-raising message. “‘He’s voted against women’s health [sic] and reproductive rights [sic] at least 30 times,’” she wrote, quoted by LifeSiteNews, “‘against the Affordable Care Act [ObamaCare], against funding for Planned Parenthood health [sic] centers and against the right to access safe [sic], legal abortion. Time and time again, Rep. Price has proven himself to be a direct threat to women’s health and rights,’” screamed the Planned Parenthood exec. Sic, sic, sic!

And she continued, reports LifeSiteNews, “‘His record strongly suggests’ he won’t ‘protect and expand access to care,’ a euphemism for abortion” and something PP has come to expect and depend on during the eight long years of the Obama Regime.

Notes LifeSiteNews: As a Congressman, Dr. Price “has said ‘there is nothing more fundamental to our humanity than to defend life’ and that it is our ‘solemn duty to protect and defend the lives of the most innocent among us.’ He said,” reports LifeSite, “that the effort to defund Planned Parenthood is ‘about common, human decency’ given the abortion giant’s ‘barbaric’ baby-body-parts trafficking scandal.”

And the pro-life news site further quotes “an alarmed blog posted on the abortion business’s political site. … ‘We see a disturbing trend in [Pres.-elect] Trump’s Administration: Its leadership is shaping up to be anti-abortion, and it’s antithetical to everything Planned Parenthood and its supporters stand for.’”

In His Own Words

U.S. REP. TOM PRICE HAS NOT ‘JUST’ VOTED PRO-LIFE, he has also championed the cause of Life in speeches on behalf of the pro-life movement.

In a video message mourning the 43rd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade/Doe v. Bolton edicts which decriminalized abortion across the United States, reports Claire Chretien for LifeSiteNews.com, Dr. Price said, “‘There’s nothing more precious or more worth defending than the sanctity of life. … Now, more than ever, the American people and the lives of countless Americans not yet born need folks who will stand up for Life.’” And the video, reports Ms. Chretien, expressly included a defense of the long-standing Hyde Amendment, “which,” she notes, “prevents taxpayer funding of Medicaid abortions” and which is to be enforced by the department to which he is being named as head.

Rep. Price also gave a hat-tip specifically to the organizers and participants of the March for Life which annually calls attention – in the streets of the nation’s capital – to the injustice and pain of legalized abortion. “‘The March for Life movement has for nearly four decades,’” he said in 2011, quoted by LifeSiteNews, “‘given a voice to those who have no voice. It is a privilege to stand together with thousands of Americans in solidarity and faithful commitment to our solemn duty to protect and defend the lives of the most innocent among us.’”

More recently, notes Ms. Chretien, Rep. Price “called the Center for Medical Progress [CMP] videos showing Planned Parenthood trafficking in human body parts ‘disturbing’ when he voted against funding the abortion giant. He called the effort to defund Planned Parenthood ‘about common human decency.’”

And he went on to say, reports Ms. Chretien: “‘Anyone who has not viewed the disturbing videos recently released should do so. … It is only with that knowledge than one can know, in horrific detail, the barbaric practices being committed with federal taxpayer dollars. These actions cross a moral line beyond comprehension,’” he asserted, reports Ms. Chretien. “‘The revealing picture is of a supported routine for abortion practices that result in the harvesting and sale of baby parts, some of which are secured in barbaric process. This, if seen,’” said Dr. Price, “‘will shake anyone’s conscience. Today,’” he declared, “‘I voted to end taxpayer funding for the organization responsible and add criminal penalties in the event of born-alive abortions.’”

Responding in his characteristically humble manner to the announcement of his soon-to-be-official nomination, Dr. Price said, reports LifeSiteNews, “‘It is an honor to be nominated to serve our nation as Secretary of Health & Human Services. Thanks to President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Pence for their confidence.’” He went on to say, reports Ms. Chretien, “‘I am humbled by the incredible challenges that lay ahead and enthusiastic for the opportunity to be a part of solving them on behalf of the American people.

“‘There is much work to be done,’” Rep. Price said, in an understatement quoted by Ms. Chretien, “‘to ensure we have a healthcare system that works for patients, families and doctors; that leads the world in the cure and prevention of illness, and that is based on sensible rules to protect the well-being of the country while embracing its innovative spirit.’”

DeVos a Plus, Too!

NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE COMMITTEE (N.R.L.) WAS QUICK TO EMBRACE the choice of Michigan philanthropist Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education in the new Administration, a post which the Obama Regime manipulated to engineer the values communicated to America’s schoolchildren. We join NRL in delight.

Though Mrs. DeVos does not have a voting record to point to, not having served in a legislative post, she and her husband Dick, son of conservative Amway Corp. founder Richard DeVos, “have long been dedicated supporters of the right-to-life cause,” noted Darla St. Martin, NRL’s co-executive director.

The new Education Secretary-designate is best known for leadership in the field of education policy, in which she has long been an advocate of parental choice. She is a former member of the Republican National Committee, first as National Committeewoman from Michigan and then, in the late 1990s, as the party’s state chairman.

Quoteworthy

We associate ourselves with the message sent to the Members of Congress by Susan B. Anthony (SBA) List president Marjorie Dannenfelser, quoted by Politico: “We must send a strong and early message to pro-life Americans across the country that the Republican-controlled Congress and White House are serious about saving lives of unborn children and ensuring our tax dollars do not fund organizations that kill hundreds of thousands of unborn babies each year and sell their body parts to the highest bidder.”

Leaving His East Coast Killing Field

EVEN BEFORE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE REBUFFED THE ABORTION INDUSTRY with its rejection of abortion devotee Hillary Clinton and scores of her party’s nominees down the ballot, one notorious abortionist headed for the hills, to the relief of pro-life Americans and any knowledgeable American who values the health and safety of women.

Late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart, reports Operation Rescue through an OR news release, “will no longer be conducting abortions at Germantown [Maryland] Reproductive Health Services [sic].” With Mr. Carhart at the helm, GRHS “has until now,” notes OR, “provided abortions throughout all nine months of pregnancy. …

“According to local sources,” reports OR, “Carhart’s last abortions in Maryland took place during the week of Oct. 30, 2016. He returned to GRHS on Nov. 8 but stayed only a few hours,” notes the pro-life organization, “sending several very late-term patients home without abortions. He left later in the afternoon,” observes OR, “and never returned. …

“‘We congratulate our co-laborers at the Maryland Coalition for Life for their hard work that has made this day a reality,’ said OR president Troy Newman” in the news release. “‘Carhart’s brand of very late-term abortions are morally reprehensible and very dangerous, having taken the lives of countless viable babies and two of his patients. We have worked for years to end this atrocity,’” he declared, “‘and today, Maryland is free from the dangers posed by Carhart.’”

Unfortunately, GRHS itself has not closed but has pulled back its abortion business to commit such acts up to 19 weeks of a baby’s gestation rather than up to the moment of birth.

Mr. Carhart himself is still committing abortions but now limits his business to the killing of babies gestated up to 20 weeks. He is operating an abortuary in Bellevue, Nebraska, and no longer commuting to Maryland for the fly-by abortion practice which landed him in federal court earlier this year and has put him into the crosshairs of the US House Select Panel on Infant Lives.

“‘At age 75 and not in the best of health, we believe it is a great time for Carhart to retire,’ said [Mr.] Newman. ‘We pray that before next Thanksgiving, he will make the decision to quit the killing business for good.’” Literally.

Hatching a New Scheme

LOOMING ON THE HORIZON in the abortion fight is a new method of delivering abortions in a manner that helps the abortion industry dodge restrictions on killing-by-surgery.

Perhaps recognizing that legislation outlawing “dismemberment abortions” – a growing priority at the state level, where pro-life political dominance grew even deeper for the 2017 legislative season – will be very difficult to argue against with any of its accustomed success, the abortion industry is now studying a potentially high-profit extension of its burgeoning “tel-abortion” tactic for low-overhead penetration of the rural market.

It goes back to the application of “telemedicine” to abortion, initiated in Iowa but resisted there by the state medical practice board. Telemed abortions began with rural “clinics” in which customers sit at a desktop computer and are interviewed by a supposed doctor via video and voice, never touched or directly observed, and then furnished abortion pills, usually via a pop-out drawer in the computer desk.

The “advance” being studied in Hawaii, New York, Oregon and Washington State adds delivery of the abortion chemicals by mail rather than the instant pop-out device. Presumably this home-based abortion method would facilitate abortion “prescriptions” without the customer having to leave the convenience of her own webcamera-equipped home, without even the personal attendance of a nurse nor even the rental of a so-called clinic.

Dr. Randall O’Bannon of National Right to Life (NRL) revealed the development in an interview with OneNewsNow.com reporter Charlie Butts, in which Dr. O’Bannon “argue[d],” writes Mr. Butts, “the study is a way of increasing the scope of profit for abortion businesses.

“‘… The abortion industry has been struggling with clinics that have been closing,’” he said, “‘[with] doctors who have been trying or are getting out of the business because they’ve gotten involved in scandals or who had some major problems.’” Dr. O’Bannon observed the abortion industry is facing “‘a real shortage of abortionists in the United States.’”

The NRL research director surmised, writes Mr. Butts, “the study is to determine if the availability of abortions can be expanded to include rural locations where abortionists and their clinics won’t go because they can’t make money. Under the study,” Mr. Butts summarizes, “abortion-minded women will chat with an abortionist via webcam, and chemical abortion pills will be mailed to them, all in the name of making a profit.

“‘Some of these women [in the study] we know have hemorrhaged, ended up in the hospital with severe infections, even some that are normally rare,’” warned Dr. O’Bannon in the Butts report. “‘And there are women who’ve had ectopic pregnancies that went undetected that ruptured, and some of these women have died.’”

Mr. Butts also quotes from the TelAbortion Study website, where the so-called researchers post the question “‘Is a TelAbortion Safe?,’ [answering] as follows: ‘A TelAbortion uses the same evaluation procedures and administers the same abortion medications as an in-person medical abortion.’” A statement which is manifestly a lie. The so-called answer continues, quotes Mr. Butts: “‘Therefore, if you follow the instructions, we expect that it will be equally effective and safe.’”

Perhaps equally, but therein lies the rub, for as Dr. O’Bannon notes in the OneNewsNow story, “People need to understand that RU-486 [chemical] abortions aren’t as safe or simple as abortionists would like for them to believe, and gaining proper emergency medical help in rural communities, he adds, isn’t guaranteed.”

Of course, furthermore, chemical abortions are never “safe” for the target.