Monthly Archives: November 2013

Mary Spaudling Balch, JD, director, NRLC Department of State Legislation

WASHINGTON (November 20, 2013) – A large group of pro-abortion members of Congress have introduced sweeping new legislation that is intended to nullify virtually all state and federal limitations on abortion, at any point in pregnancy.

Major pro-abortion groups, including the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), NARAL Pro-choice America, and the Center for Reproductive Rights, immediately began promoting the bill in communications to pro-abortion activists and in their fundraising appeals.

The bill reflects the alarm in pro-abortion activist ranks at the legislative successes of the pro-life movement in many state legislatures in recent years – including, for example, enactment of the NRLC-crafted Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act in 10 states.

The new 15-page proposal is formally titled the “Women’s Health Protection Act.” It was introduced on November 13 in the Senate as S. 1696 by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Ct.) and 30 cosponsors, all Democrats. Identical companion legislation (H.R. 3471) was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Judy Chu (D-Ca.) and 59 cosponsors, all Democrats.

Blumenthal called it “a clear and certain response to” a “cascading wave of restrictions” on abortion enacted by state legislatures over the past several years.

In a letter promoting the bill released November 13, PPFA, NARAL, and numerous other pro-abortion groups asserted that “states enacted a recordbreaking 92 restrictions on abortion in 2011, and over 100 additional dangerous and unnecessary measures have passed into law since then.”

Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

In a November 19 fundraising solicitation on the bill, Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said “it’s become crystal clear that we need to go on the offensive.”

NRLC State Legislation Director Mary Spaulding Balch commented, “As early as 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court, including three justices who supported Roe v. Wade, wrote, ‘Abortion is inherently different from other medical procedures, because no other procedure involves the purposeful termination of a potential life.’ But this bill would impose the extreme doctrine that there is nothing at all different about abortion – the unborn child is an absolute non-entity, a zero, under this bill. The bill would also effectively leave women at the unregulated mercy of the most incompetent, mercenary, or biased abortion practitioners – and this is the real ‘war on women.’”

NRLC Federal Legislative Director Douglas Johnson commented, “The new bill is labeled the ‘Women’s Health Protection Act,’ but it would more accurately be titled the ‘Abortion on Demand Until Birth Protection Act.’ Under this bill, the unborn child has no more rights, from conception until birth, than a malignant tumor. This is an extreme pro-abortion ideology far removed from the views of the majority of Americans.”

Read More: http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/11/pro-abortion-coalition-unveils-sweeping-new-national-abortion-on-demand-legislation-in-congress

By Dave Andrusko

This will be a very short post. There is only so much one can say about the pro-abortionist’s irrational hatred of crisis pregnancy centers.

Of course, in one way, it makes perfect sense. Every child that escapes the clutches of your friendly Planned Parenthood abortion clinic is lost revenue. And even in a non-profit that rakes in over $1 billion a year in revenue, you can’t be too careful. A saved baby here, a saved baby there and, darn, Planned Parenthood’s income might be down to a mere $1 billion.

The latest all-out assault was posted (of course) at Rhrealitycheck.org. Andrea Grimes, Senior Political Reporter, is incensed. The first two paragraphs simply explain how the money was raised and where it is going:

“Tens of thousands of dollars raised from sales of newly authorized ‘Choose Life’ license plates in Texas will go to 13 crisis pregnancy centers and adoption agencies, as part of an effort ‘to encourage adoption as an alternative to abortion.’

“The state attorney general’s office will award a total of $46,100 to the recipients, including $10,000 to the Gladney Center for Adoption and $7,500 to the Houston Pregnancy Help Center, according to a press release sent Monday. The grants are awarded for purposes that include ‘[m]edia advertising to promote adoption,’ ‘material assistance for pregnant mothers considering adoption,’ ‘adoption training for staff,’ and ‘educational and training materials on adoption.’”

Read More: http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/11/the-vicious-unceasing-pro-abortion-attack-on-cpcs

That’s what a Democratic campaign operative is quoted asking about the White House in yesterday’s National Journal. The implied answer is that no, this White House – and the president who occupies it – can’t be trusted.

National Right to Life knew that years ago. When Barack Obama first ran for president, we disclosed that he had voted as an Illinois state senator against a bill that would give children born alive in an abortion certain rights to receive care. We said the bill was identical to the national Born-Alive Infants Protection Act – a bill so popular that even pro-abortion senators voted to pass it unanimously in the U.S. Senate in 2002.

Obama denied it, even said we were “lying” about his vote, but the record proved us right, as an Obama campaign worker later publicly admitted.

Barack Obama’s penchant for obfuscating the truth whenever it suited him led us to create a new term.

Obamafuscation: Untruths or obfuscation told by the president. See also Kathleen Sebelius, Mainstream Media

The president’s record of Obamafuscating has only grown since taking office.

In September 2009, President Obama solemnly assured a joint session of Congress that his health care law would not cover abortion.

It wasn’t true. His Obamacare exchanges subsidize plans that cover abortion.

On at least 24 separate occasions, the president looked us in the eye and promised that if we liked our health insurance, we’d be able to keep it.

That wasn’t true, either. Even his so-called “fix” won’t help most policyholders who were promised they could keep their plans.

He assured us we’d be able to keep our doctors.

Strike three.

Amazingly, as recently as Nov. 7th, the White House web site was still claiming you could keep your health insurance if you wanted to, even as tallies of those who had already received letters cancelling their health insurance because of the law skyrocketed to more than four million families and individuals! And now, as those people kicked off their plans go to the exchanges to find replacement policies, they’ll find another Obamafuscation : The information insurance companies are allowed to give them makes it very difficult to determine which plans cover abortion!

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi famously said “we have to pass the law for you to find out what’s in it.”

Now Americans are finding out.

And it will only get worse. When we start hearing stories about the rationing of needed care that’s built into the law, the more pertinent question will be: “Would you trust them . . . with your life?”

Read More: http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/11/would-you-trust-them/

Strong pro-lifer who authored “The Blessing of the Child in the Womb”

By Ernie Ohlhoff, Director of Outreach

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, right, of New York, outgoing president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, congratulates Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, after he was elected the new USCCB president.
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

When Joseph E. Kurtz, Archbishop of Louisville, Kentucky, was elected President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, one strong pro-lifer replaced another. Archbishop Kurtz, who served as vice president of the USCCB for three years, succeeds Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York.

Archbishop Kurtz is a long time pro-life supporter who authored “The Rite For Blessing Of The Child In The Womb” in 2008 while he was bishop of Knoxville, Tennessee.

In accepting the position as president, Archbishop Kurtz wrote, “I am deeply honored that the body of bishops has elected me to serve as President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. As our Holy Father, Pope Francis, calls us to witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I look forward to serving my brother bishops as together we seek to serve our Lord.”

In an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal that appeared November 1, Archbishop Kurtz told reporter Peter Smith

“In a nation founded on the self-evident truth that all are created with an inalienable right to life, the deliberate destruction of unborn children at their most vulnerable stage is a travesty. It is a violent response that does not serve women, children, families or the common good.”

More: http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/11/louisville-archbishop-elected-president-of-united-states-conference-of-catholic-bishops

By Dave Andrusko

There is “trending”—stuff that people are following en masse—and then there is TRENDING.

As of 2:49 this afternoon, an incredible 9,483,192 people have already watched an adorable video of newborn twins who, although already born, “might not know it yet.”

That’s how Dylan Dreyer, reporting for TODAY’s “Mom,” described watching two very young babies serenely enjoying a bath together. The video (which can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY-d46-gPMI) “is offering an amazing look at what life must like for twins in the womb, with the babies cuddling and embracing as if they were still in their mom’s belly.”

And it’s not to come away with that conclusion. As one viewer put it, “[T]heir closeness, their movements, their facial expression, and their feeling of completeness provides viewers with an amazing insight into what life in the womb must have been like for the newborn twins.”

The twins—a boy and a girl—were only a few days old when the video was shot last month at the maternity clinic where Sonia Rochel, a maternity nurse at the Clinique de la Muette in Paris, France, works.

Rochel, we learn, invented the bathing technique, called the Thalasso Baby Bath.

View the Video and more: http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/11/video-of-newborn-twins-goes-viral-offers-amazing-look-at-what-life-must-be-like-for-twins-in-the-womb

By Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D. NRL-ETF Director of Education & Research

Pro-abortion President Barack Obama

They were in on it from the beginning, so it is hardly surprising to see Planned Parenthood now not just promoting, but standing poised to reap the financial benefits of ObamaCare.

After working and spending a great deal to get Obama elected, Planned Parenthood was one of the privileged groups invited to the President’s “health care summit” at the White House early in Obama’s first term in March of 2009. Though it was unknown what final shape the healthcare plan would take at the time, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards offered her organization as a model of what the Planned Parenthood website termed “a safety-net health care provider and entry point into the health care system for millions of men and women.”

Planned Parenthood fought for and defended the health plan, pushing to get it passed in March of 2010, and then helping to keep in office the politicians needed to keep it from being modified in any significant way that would threaten either the plan or their abortion empire. Obama and his Senate allies responded in kind, defending and promoting the abortion giant and making federal funding of Planned Parenthood the one non-negotiable in high stakes budget talks.

It has been a very profitable relationship for Planned Parenthood.

Today, as ObamaCare begins it rollout, Planned Parenthood stands poised to bring in hordes of new customers, rake in even more money, and further expand its already massive abortion empire.

Lest anyone forget, Planned Parenthood is already America’s largest abortion chain and is flush with cash, much of it taken from the pockets of taxpayers, performing 333,964 abortions in 2011, more than a quarter of all abortions done in the U.S., and bringing in nearly $1.2 billion in revenues for the fiscal year ending 6/30/12.

Planned Parenthood is, of course, doing the standard thing that political groups do, issuing press releases, sending spokespeople out to talk to the press, penning op-ed pieces, but as someone who stands to gain from new legislation, has gone much further.

Go to the website today and you’ll see a box in the main graphic on the front page declaring “OBAMACARE + PLANNED PARENTHOOD HEALTH CENTERS A perfect match!” You can click a link to “GET THE FACTS.” Before leaving the front page, though, just below the place where you can enter information to “Find a Health Center” in your area, there is a box where you are offered the opportunity to “Find a HEALTH PLAN in the marketplace that includes Planned Parenthood.” All you need to do is type in your Zip Code.

Read more: http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/11/obamacare-key-to-planned-parenthood-expansion