Life Advocacy Briefing

April 2, 2018

Taking a Break / Bolton Appointment Attacked by Planned Parenthood
Call Now for Secretary Pompeo / Pro-Life Dems Making Waves in Louisiana
Kansas Senate Defends the Littlest Ones / Might Justice Prevail?
Turning Away from Evil

Taking a Break

WE ANTICIPATE A WEEK’s BREAK from publication of Life Advocacy Briefing, as we will be traveling during the coming week. Expect us to return with the April 16 edition. In the meantime, we join with many of our readers in celebrating the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Bolton Appointment Attacked by Planned Parenthood

IN NAMING FORMER U.N. AMBASSADOR JOHN BOLTON as his national security advisor (NSA), Pres. Donald Trump last week drew negative attention from Planned Parenthood, even though the post – which is not subject to Senate confirmation – does not pertain directly to the abortion cartel’s business.

Not long after the White House announced the change from Gen. H.R. McMaster on March 23, Planned Parenthood Action Fund “tweeted,” reports LifeSiteNews.com, “that [Amb.] Bolton was ‘yet another extreme ideologue in the Trump-Pence Administration’s ongoing parade of dangerous appointees.’ …

“In an interview with National Review’s Robert Costa,” reports LifeSiteNews, “he identified himself as a ‘Goldwater conservative’ who opposes abortion ‘except in the cases of rape, incest or the life of the mother.’” Doesn’t sound like an “extreme ideologue” to us!

The LifeSiteNews report goes on to cite comments in 2006 from “Focus on the Family’s Dr. James Dobson and Jim Daly after a private meeting with [Mr.] Bolton that Senate Democrats opposed his [then pending] nomination as [UN] ambassador because he was ‘pro-life, pro-family, pro-morality’ and agreed with conservatives on ‘condom distribution and abstinence and other things.’”

Reacting to the NSA appointment, reports LifeSiteNews, “Family Research Council president Tony Perkins called [Mr.] Bolton an ‘excellent pick.’ Twitchy reports that several other prominent conservatives also cheered the announcement, including commentator Ben Shapiro, National Review editor Rich Lowry, American Commitment president Phil Kerpen and author Brad Thor.”

For his part, notes LifeSiteNews, “[Gen.] McMaster has not taken public positions on issues such as abortion, marriage or religious freedom. But as LifeSiteNews has previously covered,” notes the pro-life news service, “many conservatives suspect that he, along with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, played a key role in purging conservatives from advisory positions in the White House.”

Call Now for Secretary Pompeo

ANOTHER RECENT APPOINTMENT – that of CIA chief and former Congressman Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State – will require Senate confirmation, and it is not too early for our readers to contact their home-state Senators to request their “yes” votes on the Pompeo nomination. (Capitol switchboard: 1-202/224-2131) With the Senate in a tight partisan split and with Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) determined to thwart the President and his nominees, the confirmation of this outstanding appointee is not guaranteed.

The State Dept. appointment clearly has Life implications, as the abortion lobby has long used the chief US foreign relations bureaucracy to press other countries to reverse their pro-life policies and to finance the international abortion industry via various instruments of foreign aid.

“As a Congressman,” notes Catholic Family & Human Rights (C-Fam) president Austin Ruse, “[Mr.] Pompeo said he believed life begins at conception and ends at natural death. He co-sponsored the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which said, ‘each human life begins with fertilization, cloning or its functional equivalent, at which time every human has all legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood …,” a measure which continues to be filed but has yet to receive a vote in either house on Capitol Hill.

Other Pompeo stands of note, cited by Mr. Ruse, include: He “co-sponsored the Title X [Ten] Abortion Provider Prohibition Act that called for the prohibition of federal funding to any group that performs abortions; … co-sponsored a bill that would have included the unborn child in 14th Amendment protections; … voted to prohibit abortion information at school health centers. He voted,” notes Mr. Ruse, “to prohibit federal funding for Planned Parenthood and voted to defund the UN Population Fund.”

Directly quoting Mr. Pompeo from a past statement, Mr. Ruse reports he said, “‘As a Kansan, I hold a deep reverence for the sanctity of life, the solidarity of family and the solemnity of marriage. I will continue the fight to uphold these fundamental ideals each and every day. I am and always will be pro-life and will defend Life from conception to natural death. I will continue to oppose any taxpayer funding for abortion. I also fully support the traditional institution of marriage. Strong families are the most important building block of our Republic, and we must preserve them for the sake of our community and our culture.’”

Secretary-designate Pompeo, concludes Mr. Ruse, “graduated first in his class at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and he took a degree from the Harvard Law School, where he edited the Law Review. He came out of the very conservative Tea Party political movement and becomes the second prominent and socially conservative Kansan to take a top spot at the State Dept. Former Kansas Governor Sam Brownback now serves as US Ambassador for Religious Freedom.”

Pro-Life Dems Making Waves in Louisiana

AT LEAST IN SOME STATES, the Democratic Party is not, evidently, as monolithically pro-abortion as the abortion cartel – and national Democratic leaders – would like to claim.

That abortion-friendly crowd that controlled the outlandishly radical abortion plank of the party’s national platform in 2016 – and ensured the loss of a “personally pro-life” Democratic mayoral candidate in Omaha last year – must be nearing hysterics over the pronouncement last week by Louisiana’s Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, that he would “‘be inclined to sign’” a 15-week abortion ban bill “‘if it hits my desk,’” reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews.com. “‘I am very much a pro-life individual.’”

It did not take long after Mississippi’s first-in-the-nation 15-week abortion ban was blocked by a temporary restraining order issued by federal District Judge Carlton Reeves for Gov. Edwards to give his soft endorsement of Louisiana SB-181, which is awaiting action by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Currently, Louisiana is among 17 states which ban abortion after 20 weeks.

Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast was not happy with the governor’s intercession and, writes Mr. Freiburger, “has vowed to mobilize opposition to the bill. ‘The idea that Gov. Edwards would say that he was inclined to sign it is shocking,’ Rochelle Tafolla, the affiliate’s vice president of communications and marketing, said,” quoted by Mr. Freiburger.

The governor’s comment gave an opportunity for a public assertion by the bill’s lead sponsor, State Sen. John Milkovich, who is also, notes Mr. Freiburger, “a pro-life Democrat.” Said Sen. Milkovich: “‘The abortionists are relentless in their assault against the unborn. … We intend to fight three times harder and end the scourge of abortion in Louisiana,’” he declared in the LifeSiteNews report.

Kansas Senate Defends the Littlest Ones

WHILE WORKING THEIR WAY THROUGH ADOPTING THE STATE BUDGET, Kansas state senators are keeping in mind their responsibility to defend innocent unborn even in their spending deliberations.

In giving first-round approval to the legislation making “modifications to the budget for fiscal years 2018 and 2019,” reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews.com, a GOP senator named Steve Fitzgerald “successfully added language barring state agencies from using public funds on research using fetal tissue obtained from abortions, as well,” he writes, “as on research that involves the destruction of human embryos. It would not apply to fetal tissue obtained from miscarriages.”

Citing the Topeka Capital-Journal as source, Mr. Freiburger quotes State Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook (R), explaining “that Kansas currently allows both fetal-tissue research and embryo-destructive research, though there is a $25 limit on compensation for the use of fetal tissue. ‘Which is really too bad,’ she added,” quoted by Mr. Freiburger, “‘because we need to be a state that protects human life at its most vulnerable.’”

Barbara Bollier, a Republican senator “who went on to vote against the bill,” writes Mr. Freiburger, “said she wasn’t ‘comfortable’ with the amendment’s justification of protecting life because abortion was legal.” The amendment’s sponsor, Sen. Steve Fitzgerald (R), responded by calling experimentation of human beings ‘abhorrent’ and ‘discredited,’ drawing parallels to Nazi scientist Josef Mengele. ‘Are we opposed to medical research? No,’ he clarified,” writes Mr. Freiburger. “‘Are we opposed to killing humans in order to further that research? Exactly.’”

In further debate with Sen. Bollier, Sen. Fitzgerald noted, reports LifeSiteNews, “‘It’s interesting that it’s just tissue when we don’t want it, but it’s a baby when we do – all in the same sentence.’ … He also,” writes Mr. Freiburger, “doubled down on the Holocaust comparison, equating Nazis’ use of euphemisms such as ‘untermensch’ (less than human) with pro-abortion rhetoric claiming fetuses are ‘not really human.’”

For such insightful debate, Sen. Fitzgerald was excoriated by Planned Parenthood’s Great Plains Kansas affiliate, “blast[ing Sen.] Fitzgerald for ‘inflammatory language’ and claim[ing] the amendment ‘adds to the shame and stigmatization of safe, legal abortion.’”

In a news release cited by Mr. Freiburger, Sen. Fitzgerald declared, “‘I find it amazing that we still have so many legislators that don’t understand the sanctity of human life. … The shame is on the nation’s largest abortion provider and its minions,’” he stated, urging, “‘Abortion is never safe for the child!’”

Might Justice Prevail?

March 21, 2018, BreakPoint commentary by John Stonestreet & Roberto Rivera

            On Tuesday [March 20], the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in what might be the most important religious freedom case of this term. Now you’re probably thinking, “Wait – didn’t the Court already hear arguments in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case?” Yes, it did. But I’m talking about the other most important religious freedom case of this term: National Institute of Family & Life Advocates v. Becerra.

            The case involves the California law that requires facilities licensed to provide ultrasounds and pregnancy tests to “disseminate a notice to all clients … stating, among other things, that California has public programs that provide immediate free or low-cost access to comprehensive family planning services, prenatal care and abortion for eligible women.” In addition, “unlicensed covered facilities” must declare that they do not provide medical services.

            … [T]his Act was squarely aimed at only one kind of facility: pro-life pregnancy centers. Pro-life pregnancy centers are being required to display this notice prominently in their facilities and in their advertisements. The law even dictates the size of the font to be used. California’s attempt to muzzle a message it disagrees with couldn’t be plainer. Yet, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, “whose reasoning,” as George Will wrote, “is frequently novel and whose rulings are frequently overturned,” upheld the law.

            Yesterday, it was the Supreme Court’s turn to hear the case. In the words of the New York Times, the California law “met a skeptical reception” at First Street, Northeast DC.

            The word of the day – “burdensome.” Justice Kennedy called the statute’s notice requirement an “undue burden” on the right to free speech. Justice Sotomayor called [it] “burdensome and wrong.”

            California’s Deputy Solicitor General, who represented the state, was asked if, under the law, a group that put up a billboard that only read “Choose Life” would be required to include the notice. After [a] series of evasive answers that exasperated some of the Justices, he finally had to admit “yes.”

            The Justices were also skeptical of the claim that the law was a neutral exercise in consumer protection and did not single out pregnancy centers. Justice Elena Kagan used the word “gerrymandered” to describe the law’s drafting and application, “something,” she said, [which] “would be a serious First Amendment problem.”

            In fact, in some way or another, just about all of the Justices seemed to agree with Justice Kennedy that the law’s goal was to “alter the content of [the centers’] message.” This was in keeping with the argument made by Alliance Defending Freedom CEO and General Counsel Michael Farris that with this law, the state had targeted “disfavored speakers,” whose message it disagrees with.

            While Becerra is primarily a free speech case, losing it would be disastrous. Not only would pregnancy centers be impaired, it would grant hostile governments the ability to target religiously-based dissent. Farris summed up the stakes when he said that, “When the government decides what people should and should not say, other freedoms are sure to disappear soon after. The government exists to serve its people, and not the other way around.”

            That’s why, as Farris reminds us, “Even if you are not pro-life, [you don’t want] the government setting up its own advertising mandates for nonprofit organizations and then punishing any who disagree.”

            Thankfully, at least from what we saw yesterday, it looks like a majority of the Justices will agree with him. But we shouldn’t let down our guard. The unconstitutionality of this law should have been obvious from the very start.

            That’s a reminder that, as Justice Scalia said two decades ago, pro-lifers are “currently a disfavored class” in the courts and many legislatures. Little since then has changed. So please, keep on praying.

Turning Away from Evil

March 20, 2018, commentary by Michael W. Chapman, reprinted from CNSNews.com

            Dr. Kathi Aultman, who used to perform abortions early in her career but stopped after converting to Christianity and realizing the evil parallels between abortion and the Holocaust, said that she had “probably murdered more people than Ted Bundy or any other mass murderers.”

            She added that she is thankful to God for using her to “save babies now when once I used to kill them.”

            During a March 19 interview with CBN News’s Charlene Aaron, the host said, “Part of that [Christian] transformation included no longer doing abortions. Still, Aultman held onto her belief that a woman had the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Two years later, after reading an article comparing abortion with the Nazi Holocaust, she saw herself as a mass murderer.”

            “I probably murdered more people than Ted Bundy or any of the mass murderers, if you consider all the abortions that I did,” said Dr. Aultman.

            Later, she said, “One of the most wonderful things for an OB-GYN is to meet a child they delivered or that child’s child. That is such a joy. But it’s bittersweet, because I think about all the people I will never meet because I aborted them.”

            At the end of the interview, Dr. Aultman expressed her gratitude to God.

            “I don’t know that I can put it into words,” she said. “I’m just thankful every day that we have a Savior, that He does forgive us and that He can take what the locust has destroyed and restore it. I’m so thankful that He’s using me to save babies now, when once I used to kill them, and that’s very healing and restorative in itself,” she said.