Life Advocacy Briefing

Get Ready!

LIFE ADVOCACY’s WINNING WITH LIFE SEMINAR is designed to equip pro-life candidates, officials and citizens for effective, strategic communication on Life issues. Information and credit card registration for the Aug. 23 session in Tinley Park, Illinois, is available at $40 by calling 1-888/344-LIFE or via electronic mail at [email protected]. Registration may also be accomplished via $40 “donation” at lifeadvocacy.com, completing all information requested.

The six-hour presentation features former Illinois State Rep. Penny Pullen, Life Advocacy’s president, and her seminar teammate Kevin Burnette, Texas-based marketing and campaign strategist.

Conscience Regs Could Need Boost

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS BELIEVED TO BE PREPARING still to issue rules implementing the statutory provisions protecting the conscience rights of medical personnel. The developing regulations respond, in part, to recent initiatives by the American College of Obstetrics & Gynecology (ACOG) to force obstetrician/gynecologists to participate in abortion or be seen as violating professional ethics, of all things.

Since word surfaced that Health & Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt is considering conscience protection rules, the abortion lobby has reacted with their usual hysteria and is pressuring the administration to abandon its plans.

On July 30, some 132 bipartisan Members of Congress, led by Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL) and Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-TN), sent Secy. Leavitt a letter urging him to adopt the rumored rules. And the next day, a coalition of pro-life/family groups sent him a similar letter. And the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Pro-Life Secretariat has sent a letter to the Members of Congress, noting that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) had already circulated a letter among his colleagues urging Pres. George W. Bush to reject regulations which have yet to be published. Additionally, abortion lobby groups have been encouraging their backers to lobby the administration and Congress against the still-unreleased rules.

Pro-life citizens and officials are asked to contact the White House comment line at 1-202/456-1111 and urge adoption of conscience protection regulations for health care personnel. Similar calls to Secy. Leavitt at 1-202/619-0257 are also in order and timely.

Infant Deaths Attributed to Prior Abortion

THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR HEALTH STATISTICS (N.C.H.S.) HAS ISSUED a new report implicating prematurity – “babies born too soon and too small,” writes Tim Waggoner for LifeSiteNews.com, “for a growing proportion of infant deaths.

“When linked with previous studies that have shown that abortion increases a woman’s chance of having a baby prematurely, the conclusion,” writes Mr. Waggoner, “is that women who have had abortions are more likely to bear children who die as infants or suffer from severe health issues.”

The data implicating prematurity are taken, according to Mr. Waggoner, from “‘Infant Mortality Statistics from the 2005 Period Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Set,’ Vol. 57, No. 2, of the National Vital Statistics Report, low birth weight and preterm birth are leading causes of infant mortality, and the rates of both have increased steadily since the mid-1980s.”

A report in a 2007 Journal of Reproductive Medicine concluded, reports LifeSiteNews, “that nearly 32% of ‘very preterm’ US births, that is, before 32 weeks gestation, are due to the mother having had a prior abortion.

“Furthermore, after analyzing data on 1,943 very preterm births,” writes Mr. Waggoner, “276 moderately preterm babies and 618 full-term controls, Dr. Caroline Moreau of Hopital de Bicetre and colleagues concluded in 2005 that women with a history of abortion were 1.5 times more likely to give birth very prematurely (under 33 weeks gestation), and 1.7 times more likely to have a baby born extremely (under 28 weeks gestation) preterm. Their findings were reported,” notes Mr. Waggoner, “in the April issue of the British Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, a peer-reviewed medical journal.”

Protest P.P. in Portland

PORTLAND PRO-LIFE CITIZENS ARE PROTESTING plans by Planned Parenthood to build another in its series of megabortuaries in a poor neighborhood in the Oregon city.

After succeeding in “pressuring a construction firm to pull out of a deal” to erect the monstrous building for the abortion business, reports American Life League in an ALL news release, Precious Children of Portland scheduled a noon march last Friday on the offices of the Portland Development Commission.

“‘The goal is for the people of Portland to say no to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion chain in the country,’ said Bill Diss, leader of Precious Children, quoted by ALL. “‘We won’t let Planned Parenthood kill thousands of babies at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.’ … The new abortion facility,” notes ALL, “will move from a neighborhood with a black population of about one percent to a neighborhood with a black population of 43%. …

“‘It’s time that people everywhere understand that Planned Parenthood is not good for any community,’” said ALL vice president Jim Sedlak in the release. “‘The opening of megabortuaries in minority areas,’” he said, “‘demonstrates that Planned Parenthood is continuing the legacy of its founder Margaret Sanger, who took pride in her talks given to the Ku Klux Klan.’”

Abortion Every Day & Now Theft, Too

SOME APPARENT PLANNED PARENTHOOD BACKERS HAVE STRUCK BACK at pro-life citizens who are protesting the opening of a PP branch office on Cincinnati’s west side.

Yard signs posted on private property have been swiped in such a thorough campaign, reports Thaddeus M. Baklinski for LifeSiteNews.com, that “‘only a few (signs) are [still] visible,’” according to a news release from Protect Cincinnati, quoted by Mr. Baklinski. “‘Those stored in an alternate location have also been stolen,’” reports the news release cited in the LifeSiteNews story, “‘along with an additional supply of picketers’ signs, t-shirts and brochures.’” The signs read “Save Our Children, Stop Planned Parenthood.”

The chicanery is especially painful because the project being protested was born in chicanery. “Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Ohio recently bought the property at 2016 Ferguson Road in Western Hills under the name Mount Auburn Parking LLC,” reports Mr. Baklinski. “Planned Parenthood,” he notes, “frequently uses the deception of acquiring property under a false name in order to deflect attention from its plans to enter a community.

“This new PP branch office,” writes Mr. Baklinski, “is located in a residential area within a block of Western Hills High School. Students are bused to Western Hills High School from other areas of the city, and the student population,” he notes, “is predominantly African American.”

Intelligent Guess

Late July 2008 commentary by Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice

“Among the starkest contrasts between John McCain and Barack Obama is the dramatic difference in their promised approaches to judicial appointments, especially to the closely divided Supreme Court.”

So begins the cover story in this week’s National Journal, which analyzes what an Obama and McCain Supreme Court would look like. We focus here on the article’s observation that Barak Obama “exudes determination to move the [Supreme] Court sharply to the left.” That warning has been heard before, but the stature and nonpartisan reputation of the article’s author, former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Stuart Taylor, gives the warning added credibility. Taylor is no conservative.

The virtual certainty of an increased post-election Democratic majority in the Senate means that Obama is “far more likely [than McCain] to get the Senate to confirm just about anyone he chose,” says Taylor. As a result, “The door would be open for Obama, if he were so inclined, to appoint the kind of crusading liberal that the Court has not seen since Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall retired in 1990 and 1991 – or, for that matter, to appoint Hillary Rodham Clinton if she wanted the job.”

Taylor notes that Obama might “disappoint” some of his most fervent supporters by appointing a “moderate-liberal consensus builder” to the Court. But that possibility rings hollow when Taylor reminds us that Obama cited former Chief Justice Earl Warren, the father of liberal judicial activism, “as a model for the kind of Justice he would pick.” If we take Obama at his word, a likely pick would be Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who Taylor lists among “the most talked about prospects” for an Obama Supreme Court. A bright but ultra-liberal Hispanic woman, Sotomayor would allow Obama to check three boxes with a single pick. The mere mention of her name brings fear to in-the-know conservatives.

Were Sotomayor to replace 88-year-old liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, the Court’s shift to the left would be muted. However, “[a] Scalia or Kennedy retirement would enable Obama to move the Court dramatically to the left, creating a solid liberal majority for the first time since Chief Justice Earl Warren retired in 1969.”

That very real possibility should frighten conservatives all the more when they consider that 1) by the end of an eight-year Obama presidency, Justices Scalia and Kennedy would be 80 years old, an age most men never reach, and 2) given the damage the Supreme Court has done to the rule of law since 1969, imagine what the Court would do if it regained a “solid liberal majority.”

In fact, not much imagination is necessary, because Taylor lays out the possible agenda of an Obama Supreme Court. For easy reference, we have transformed Taylor’s “conservative nightmare” scenario into a Top Ten List (while retaining his wording).

Top Ten Things to Expect from an Obama Supreme Court

#10 – expanding and perpetuating the use of racial preferences

#9 – creating new constitutional rights to physician-assisted suicide and human cloning

#8 – expanding judicial oversight of military detentions and CIA interrogations

#7 – prohibiting tuition vouchers for religious schools

#6 – banning the death penalty

#5 – requiring taxpayers to fund essentially unlimited abortion rights

#4 – creating new constitutional rights to massive government welfare and medical care programs

#3 – stripping “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance

#2 – eroding property rights

#1 – ordering all 50 states to bless gay marriage

Of course, this “conservative nightmare” is a “liberal dream” for Obama’s most enthusiastic supporters.

Making the Case for the Pence Amendment

July 9, 2008, special order speeches in the U.S. House; source: Congressional Record. Please note: We at Life Advocacy Briefing are not expecting that this Congress will actually take up the Pence Amendment to defund Planned Parenthood in this election year; nevertheless, we find the “special order” speeches a compelling tool for educating the American people about the injustice in the massive subsidies taxpayers are forced to remit to Planned Parenthood.

REP. MICHELLE BACHMANN (R-MN): … I’ll be referring to … a shocking article that many of us in this Congress read just a few weeks ago, and I commend the American people to pick this up on the Internet or go find it at your local library. June 23, 2008, the Wall Street Journal newspaper, it’s on page 1. It’s an article by Stephanie Simon called “Abortion Provider Goes Upscale; Aid for Poor Questioned.” And here is the bottom line of this article: Not only does this organization not pay taxes like other businesses do, but … almost one-third of what they receive comes in the form of your tax money, federal tax money, state tax money. But get this: … The non-profit ended the year with a surplus of $115 million.

So they had your money, your money that you’re paying in taxes. They had an extra $115 million cash in hand at the year end. A $1 billion budget, and they had that much cash on hand, about 11% of its revenue, net assets of $952 million, almost a billion dollars in net assets.

So the article asks, Why are we giving them so much money? That’s exactly right. Why are they receiving, as Congressman Mike Pence asked, why are we giving them so much tax money? They have 882 clinics [nation-]wide, and they quietly dropped their statement that said no matter what a person’s income, we’re going to be helping those people.

Well, let me tell you, they’ve made a decision – Planned Parenthood – that they are going to go after the affluent. How do I know that? It’s happening in my district, and it was detailed in this article. It said three express centers [are opening] in wealthy Minnesota suburbs and shopping centers and malls, places where women are already doing their grocery shopping, picking up their Starbucks, living their daily lives.

Do we understand what this is? This is to promote women, to promote that women intentionally take the lives of their unborn children. We are asking God-fearing Americans to subsidize this brutal and bloody procedure on a regular business in upscale shopping malls all across the United States.

Not only are they not paying taxes but we are giving them over $330 million a year to do this dastardly deed. And when they do this, do you realize they could take this money and … use it for political functions? …

And all across the country, we have very poor, struggling life care centers – organizations that are trying to give positive alternatives to women. They don’t get these grants; they don’t get them. They get local donations to try to help women make a decision about saving lives and choosing life.

I just want to end with the fact that if we can agree on nothing else, it should be that the United States taxpayer shouldn’t have to pay taxes to an organization that uses your money to politicize, yes, in upcoming elections candidates who give them more of your tax money. This is unconscionable. … You bet we should defund Planned Parenthood. …

Steve Trombley is a top executive director of Planned Parenthood in Illinois, and he said, “I would like to think of Planned Parenthood as the Lens Crafters of family planning.” If you’ve got 882 clinics, you have $1 billion a year in annual revenue and $330 of that comes from taxpayer funding. I think that shows pretty clearly they are big business. They are the Wal-Mart of big abortion. They’re the big-box retailer.

It is time to end their tax-exempt status. It’s a fraud. And it’s time to stop the public financing of Planned Parenthood. It’s the right thing to do.