Life Advocacy Briefing

PP Pulling Back?

PLANNED PARENTHOOD APPEARS TO BE FEARING FINANCIAL DECAY even before the US Senate takes up the federal defunding proposal incorporated in the House-passed ObamaCare repeal/replacement proposal. Regional units of the abortion goliath are beginning to announce shop closures.

Wyoming’s only Planned Parenthood outpost is scheduled to close July 21, according to National Right to Life News Today writer Dave Andrusko, “join[ing] North Dakota,” he writes, “as the only state [in the region] without a Planned Parenthood presence.” Once the closure is secured, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains region, Mr. Andrusko reports, citing the Casper Star-Tribune as source, will occupy only Colorado, southern Nevada and New Mexico. The vice president/medical director of the Rocky Mountains subsidiary, notes Mr. Andrusko, was featured in two of the first videos released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) in 2015 showing her “alleged[ly] negotiat[ing] the sale of aborted baby parts.” Life Advocacy Briefing readers may recall that Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R) signed two pro-life regulatory measures, the first enacted in Wyoming in some 28 years; one criminalizes “the sale, transfer or distribution of aborted baby parts,” and the other requires abortionists to offer their customers the opportunity to view “an active ultrasound” of the unborn baby and to “hear the heartbeat” if it is audible – not exactly fitting Planned Parenthood’s way of doing business. 

Abortion-Free New Mexico (AFNM) spokesman Tara Shaver told Charlie Butts of OneNewsNow.com “her organization has learned [Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains] is shutting down three” of its six New Mexico “clinics by the end of September. … ‘The position that they’re in right now, closing half of their affiliates and struggling to even keep an abortionist on their staff,’” Ms. Shaver said in the OneNewsNow story, “‘is very telling that they’re certainly not strong right now.’”

And Planned Parenthood of the Heartland (P.P.H.) has announced the coming closure of three Iowa shops on June 30 and a fourth somewhat later; three of those shops are direct killing centers. Iowa has recently acted to defund abortionists from their “family planning” program and is sacrificing millions in federal dollars to achieve the purge. PPH president Suzanna deBaca was quoted by the Associated Press blaming “‘extreme Iowa politicians’” for the “‘devastating consequences’” being faced by her outfit. “The clinics set for closing,” reports AP, “are located in Sioux City in northwest Iowa, Bettendorf in eastern Iowa and Burlington and Keokuk in the southeast corner of the state. … More than 30 employees within the organization will be laid off,” reports AP, and “the closings will reduce the number of Planned Parenthood facilities in Iowa that provide abortions from eight to five.”

Hero to Address NRL Convention

NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE COMMITTEE ANNOUNCED last week that Planned Parenthood investigator David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress will address the NRL annual convention at downtown Milwaukee’s Hyatt Regency Hotel in Milwaukee on its opening day, June 29, between 12:20 and 2 p.m.

The convention will kick off at 10 a.m. and will close with a banquet on July 1. Also featured: a June 30 prayer breakfast led by pro-life champion Ryan Bomberger of the Radiance Foundation and a July 1 morning session presenting renowned bioethics commentator Wesley J. Smith, as well as a plethora of grassroots activists and experts offering a wide variety of workshops, and general session presentations by syndicated columnist Ben Shapiro and Gosnell movie producer Anne McElhinney.

Registration for the conference is available at the Internet website http://nrlconvention.com or by contacting NRL at 1-202/626-8800. The conference fee is $120, with breaks for couples, seniors, teens and students.

Abetting Incest

PRIESTS FOR LIFE HAS RELEASED THE DISTURBING RECORDING of a May 5 undercover telephone call which PfL undertook, along with Abortion Free New Mexico (AFNM), in which a woman posed as a teenaged incest victim 26 weeks into a pregnancy. The call was placed to Albuquerque’s already notorious Southwest Women’s Options abortuary, reports Fr. Mark Hodges for LifeSiteNews.com.

“The staff person assures the ‘girl’ that no one needs to know,” writes Fr. Hodges, “and informs her that a late-term abortion will cost $7,500. The staffer then refers the girl to Medicaid in order to get an abortion for free.

“‘New Mexico is the land of unrestricted abortion,’ AFNM spokeswoman Tara Shaver told LifeSiteNews. ‘In addition to having no limitations on abortion, the state lacks the most basic of laws that are intended to protect pregnant minors, many of whom suffer sexual abuse at the hands of older men and even family members.

“‘The abortion cartel has no interest in protecting these minors, and this latest call proves that,’ [Ms.] Shaver summarized” for LifeSiteNews. “‘It is appalling,’” she said, “‘that selling an abortion trumps preventing the continuation of sexual abuse in the life of a young person, but this is the reality of abortion in New Mexico.’”

Though the state does not have laws specific to abortuaries, it does have laws on the books outlawing incest as a third-degree felony, reports Fr. Hodges. “State law,” he writes, “also requires mandatory reporting even merely suspected sexual abuse of a minor. The law states that notifying the authorities is mandatory even for a ‘physician, psychotherapist and state or nationally licensed mental health therapist.’

“Every abortion provider ‘has a duty to report possible incest regarding a 16-year-old minor seeking an abortion,’ AFNM senior legal counsel Angelo Artuso explained in a released statement” quoted by Fr. Hodges. “‘Under the mandatory reporting law, physicians and nurses have a duty to report suspected child abuse,’” he explained.

Mrs. Shaver noted that pro-life counselors outside the Southwestern Women’s Options shop “‘have spoken to several minors over the past seven years … . Many of them came to New Mexico seeking abortions to evade their own states’ laws,’” she added in the LifeSiteNews report. “‘The reality is that the New Mexico abortion cartel is more concerned about how much money they can make off of selling an abortion – especially lucrative late-term abortions – instead of adhering to the laws that were passed to protect minors from sexual abuse.’ …

“Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life said covering up incest is par for the course among abortion workers,” writes Fr. Hodges. “‘This latest undercover call continues to rip the veil off the abortion industry and show our nation what even most “pro-choice” people oppose: late-term abortion of healthy babies, paid for by taxpayers and conducted by an industry which provides cover for sexual predators. … What we need to know to end abortion is found in the abortion industry itself,’ Fr. Pavone pointed out” in the LifeSiteNews story. “‘We just need to continue exposing it,’” he said, “‘and we will.’”

Nice Point!

IF ABORTION IS SUCH A PRECIOUS ‘RIGHT,’ and if the abortion industry is such a legitimate segment of the “medical profession” as so many in our news media would like us to believe, how come, asks Jay Hobbs of Pregnancy Help News, the word “abortion” is so scarce in the public face of the industry?

“Out of 1,800 abortion clinics in the US, including 730 stand-alone mills,” he asks, “how many would you expect to include the word ‘abortion’ in their name?

“Try one: the Abortion Surgery Center in Norman, Oklahoma,” he announces, adding, “Not even dishonest euphemisms like ‘reproductive health’ make the cut.”

It Just Gets Worse!

May 25, 2017, Washington Update commentary by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins

            Today, never-before-seen video footage from inside the National Abortion Federation conference has been released by the lawyers for David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress. In 2015, Daleiden shocked the world with footage of Planned Parenthood executives and other abortion industry leaders discussing the sale and trafficking of baby body parts.

            In this newly released video, top abortion leaders joke about how “gross” it is when eyeballs from aborted babies roll down into their laps. This is followed by an eerie laughter from the crowd. An ACLU deputy director of its Reproductive Health Freedom Project, Talcott Camp, exclaims that broken skulls are really sharp.

            Lisa Harris, the medical director of Planned Parenthood of Michigan, admits the unborn baby is a person and that abortion is the violent killing of a person, saying, “Let’s just give them all the violence, it’s a person, it’s killing; let’s just give them all that.”

            Another Planned Parenthood abortionist, Ann Schutt-Aine, who is the director of abortion services for Planned Parenthood of Gulf Coast, describes how she manipulates the baby so it’s not partial-birth abortion, saying, “I might ask for a second set of forceps to hold the body at the cervix and pull off a leg or two, so it’s not PBA [partial-birth abortion].”

            Leslie Drummond, abortionist at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, discusses how StemExpress – one of the biotech companies at the center of the controversy that harvests organs for sale – is looking for livers and limbs.

            This shocking footage should make anyone sick. It’s no wonder that the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood wanted to block it.

            Every Senator should look at this footage and decide once and for all to defund Planned Parenthood, an organization that is currently funded to the tune of over half-a-billion dollars with taxpayer money, and instead redirect funds to the thousands of health clinics that provide a broader array of services to Americans.

            Further, federal, state and local authorities should take action on the 15 criminal and regulatory referrals made by the [US House’s] Select Investigative Panel [on Infants’ Lives]. These horrible practices of the abortion industry must end in America, and all involved in violating the law must be prosecuted.

Time for the Senate to Act

May 30, 2017, Washington Update commentary by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins

            It’s a good thing the House and Senate are out this week. Judging by the headlines, they’ll need their rest to navigate choppy waters of the healthcare repeal when they return. Like Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), who managed to hold the shakiest of coalitions together for a May 4 vote, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell [R-KY] has his hands full juggling the personalities and agendas of 52 very different Republicans.

            That job didn’t get any easier this week when the Congressional Budget Office released its score of the House bill, the American Health Care Act (AHCA). Both sides usually lean on the non-partisan group to give a ballpark estimate of how much their proposals will cost. But, like most forecasters, CBO isn’t always right. Predicting something as enormous as one-sixth of the US economy is tricky business, especially when there are so many factors outstanding. “If you’re looking at the CBO for accuracy,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer pointed out, “you’re looking in the wrong place.”

            Despite its wobbly track record, the Left seized on the CBO analysis of the GOP-passed bill as proof that the plan is doomed. Far from it, experts at the Wall Street Journal explain. Writing that this week’s “panic attack” should have been “diminished by the CBO’s [unreliability]”, the editors go on to highlight the report’s biggest straw man: the 23 million who will supposedly be “uninsured” by 2026 as a result of the AHCA. At first glance, that’s an eye-popping number. But it doesn’t tell the whole story. Under the House bill, there’s no government-imposed mandate for people to buy insurance. And if they aren’t being fined for forgoing health care, guess what? Millions of Americans will once again choose to be uninsured. “CBO decided to classify these people as ‘uninsured,’ though without identifying who accepts ObamaCare’s definition of standardized health benefits and why they deserve to substitute their judgment for the choices of individual consumers.”

            Liberals have also latched on to the CBO’s [phrase] “with ‘high-cost medical events.’” But, as the WSJ debunked, “under the House reform, Americans won’t have any problem insuring against a bad health event, even if CBO won’t admit it. The House bill is designed to create more alternatives that can accommodate the diverse needs and preferences of a nation of some 320 million people. CBO has become a fear factory because it prefers having the government decide for everybody.”

            And look at where that failed philosophy has gotten us. The ObamaCare exchanges are imploding. Premiums have skyrocketed an average of 105% – if you’re lucky. And if you’re not, you’re staring down $12,000 premiums like Alaskans. Thanks to Pres. Obama, “the average American on the individual market is paying almost $3,000 more in premiums this year than 2013. Insurance companies are racing for the exits, which means people have even fewer choices. In the states with just one option for coverage, there’s no competitive incentive to drive down costs. Doing nothing is no longer an option. From a practical and political standpoint, the GOP has to act.”

            And soon. With just seven weeks until the August recess, the Senate would be wise to lean into the positive parts of the House plan, which is that it would lower premiums starting in 2020, reduce spending by $119 billion and save something even more precious: lives. After the latest batch of undercover videos on Planned Parenthood, a horrifying collection that ought to have every American clamoring for the end of taxpayer funding for the abortion giant, Republicans can save themselves some work by leaving the House’s pro-life provisions alone.

            Frankly, it’s a national scandal that taxpayers have been forced into partnership with an organization who jokes about how “gross” it is when eyeballs from aborted babies roll down into their laps. Or a group who brags about ignoring the law against partial-birth abortion, saying “I might ask for a second set of forceps to hold the body at the cervix and pull off a leg or two, so it’s not PBA [partial-birth abortion].” For once, Congress ought to listen to Planned Parenthood’s Lisa Harris, who doesn’t shy away from the truth about abortion. “Let’s just give them all the violence. It’s a person. It’s killing. Let’s just give them all that.”

            Every Senator who watches this footage should come to the same conclusion as the majority of Americans: It’s time to end the federal gravy train to Planned Parenthood and redirect those dollars to the thousands of community health centers that provide more services to more women. Now is the time to act – no more excuses!

What Will It Take?

Excerpt from May 30, 2017, commentary by Gary Bauer in his End of Day Memo to supporters of his Campaign for Working Families

            Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in baby body parts is making headlines again. A video released late last week showed abortionists talking about evading the law against partial-birth abortion, how difficult it is to take a baby apart and “how gross” it was when “an eyeball just fell down into my lap.” Not surprisingly, YouTube has pulled the video.

            The Left never questions its support for the abortion industry. Its immediate reaction is to cover up the moral bankruptcy of abortion on demand while accusing conservatives of supporting “gag rules.” The real gag rule is the Left’s censorship – whether it is prosecuting journalists who expose the truth or the progressive media’s refusing to report it.

            News like this helps to explain why so many Americans are apprehensive about the state of moral values in our country today. A recent Gallup poll found that only 1% of Americans consider the nation’s moral values to be “excellent,” while 77% say moral values in America are getting worse. Of course, the Left has been attacking the concept of right and wrong and moral values for decades.