Melissa Manion has spoken of her deep “regret and remorse” after aborting her baby that the father wanted to keep: “Abortion hurt you too… I stole life from our child and fatherhood from you.”
“To the Father of the child I aborted”, Manion begins. “It has taken me over 3 years to write this letter…
“How does one apologize for robbing someone of their child? You wanted her. We wanted her. In the name of ‘choice’ I stole her away from you without a single care for your loss. The reality is, I didn’t get pregnant on my own. You were as much her father as I, her mother.”
Despite the “crippling pain” of writing the open letter, Manion says it’s important to “own” her choice and “shed light on the layers of pain and destruction abortion causes” – to men as well as women.
One of her aims, Manion writes, is “to help elevate the silent cries of men who were given no choice”.
Addressing the father, she continues: “I know society hasn’t provided much space for your kind of grief and loss. That’s wrong… I remember the look of sheer terror on your face as my choice was proclaimed…. I shattered your heart.”
A SPUC spokesperson said: “The devastating effects that abortion has on fathers often go unreported by a media indifferent to the plight of men. But Melissa’s brave and frank letter helps change the narrative, recognising that (good) men also suffer because of abortion.
“While abortion punishes good men who want to raise their children, abortion rewards bad men who, having already taken advantage of women for their own pleasure, selfishly pressure them into abortions.
“But there is absolutely no reason why good men shouldn’t have a voice and stand up to protect their children, and women, which is what fatherhood is about – if only society would allow men to be fathers, for the sake of everyone involved.”
LifeNews Note: Courtesy of SPUC. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children is a leading pro-life organization in the United Kingdom.
Tucker Carlson Blasts Democrats on Abortion: They’re “Promoting Human Sacrifice”
| Steven Ertelt | Feb 9, 2023 | 11:35AM | Washington, DC
Fox News host Tucker Carlson didn’t mince any words last night when it comes to Democrats and their love for abortion.
Carlson said on Wednesday’s edition of his nightly show that Democrats are “ghouls” who believe in “human sacrifice” because the party supports killing babies up to birth and literally wore lapel pins saying they love abortion.
There’s not a seal in the ocean or even at SeaWorld who would wear an ‘I love abortion’ pin. That is too low even for marine mammals. They may eat live fish, but they’re not ghouls. Congressional Democrats, by contrast, are ghouls.
Take a look at this pin, which has replaced the American flag on their lapels. Notice that the ‘O’ in abortion is in the shape of a heart. They literally love abortion. Now, let’s set aside the politics and ask an honest question, ‘Who loves abortion?’ Honestly, who loves abortion? Maybe you think abortion should be legal, but do you love abortion? Do you think abortion is a wonderful, affirming act you feel so proud of, you brag about it with jewelry? If you feel that way you should know that you are not defending a medical procedure, you wouldn’t say that about an appendectomy – no. You are promoting an ancient religious right called human sacrifice. That’s what this is, promoting human sacrifice. Let’s stop lying about it. It’s very obvious now.
Ahead of the speech, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, and U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pennsylvania, both posted photos of themselves on social media wearing golden lapel pins that read “ABORTION” with a stylized O with a heart inside.
“I say the word, I wear the word,” Dean wrote on Twitter. “Abortion care is health care. Abortion care saves lives.”
“I’m wearing my abortion pin from [Planned Parenthood] to tonight’s State of the Union address,” Markey wrote on Twitter. “Abortion is essential healthcare and we need to codify this right.”
Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that aborting unborn babies is not a constitutional right in the Dobbs v. Jackson case. Now, states may protect unborn babies’ right to life again, and 14 currently are enforcing laws that prohibit killing unborn babies in abortions.
Nicknamed the Abortion Without Limits Up to Birth Act, the bill would force states to legalize abortions for basically any reason up to birth and force taxpayers to pay for them. It also would end parental consent for minors and jeopardize conscience protections for doctors and nurses who refuse to abort unborn babies.
Dean and Markey both support the bill, as do almost all Democrats in Congress.
The lawmakers’ proud celebration of abortion Tuesday drew a lot of criticism online.
“Every abortion stops a beating heart. Pretty ghoulish to support violence in the womb,” The Federalist editor Mollie Hemingway wrote in response.
Planned Parenthood Arizona has joined several other providers that have restarted abortion care in the state — although it may only be temporary — after clinics ceased providing the service when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that women do not have a constitutional right to end a pregnancy.
The organization says it can perform the operations under a court injunction that blocks the near-total abortion ban.
Planned Parenthood Arizona this week began providing both medication and surgical abortions at its Tucson clinic, one of four in the state where it provided abortions. Those four and three others run by the group never halted other care, such as pap smears, contraception and other reproductive services. Planned Parenthood plans to begin offering vasectomies in the fall.
A Judge in Pima County lifted the injunction on Friday, and Arizona will now return to its pre-Roe law, which states,
A person who provides, supplies or administers to a pregnant woman, or procures such woman to take any medicine, drugs or substance, or uses or employs any instrument or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman, unless it is necessary to save her life, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than two years nor more than five years.
Trump-Endorsed Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers gave the following statement to The Gateway Pundit.
Rogers: Today’s ruling was fitting because the only reason it stood was because of Roe vs. Wade. Now we hearken back to our original pre-statehood Arizonans who knew back in the territorial days the precious value of life. The battle going forward will be for the people of Arizona to hold their elected officials accountable to enforce the law.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre chimed in on the ruling, referring to abortion as a healthcare worker’s “duty of care” and claiming that some women “would face dire health risks.”
However, Arizona’s pre-Roe abortion law allows a woman to get an abortion if “it is necessary to save her life.”
The White House condemned a Friday ruling in Arizona that allowed the state’s abortion ban to be enforced, saying that it will set women in the state back “more than a century.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement Saturday that the potential consequences of the ruling are “catastrophic, dangerous, and unacceptable.”
The ban, which was originally passed in the 1800s before Arizona became a state and has been blocked since the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, forbids abortion in all cases except for when the life of the pregnant person is at risk.
“If this decision stands, health care providers would face imprisonment of up to five years for fulfilling their duty of care; survivors of rape and incest would be forced to bear the children of their assaulters; and women with medical conditions would face dire health risks,” Jean-Pierre said.
What about women who face dire health risks after an abortion? The Lozier Institute previously reported, “a United States study examining 173,279 low-income California Medicaid patients found that women who underwent abortions had nearly double the chance of dying in the following two years, and ‘had a 154 percent higher risk of death from suicide than if they gave birth.”
They don’t care about the real facts on abortion.
Katie Hobbs also took part in the fear-mongering, vowing to block any pro-life legislation if she is elected Governor.
Like many Arizonans, I'm mourning today's decision out of Pima County upholding the 1901 abortion ban. This outcome is the product of a decades-long attack on reproductive freedom, and we now must turn our anger into motivation to win in November & restore our fundamental rights. pic.twitter.com/9cHY2zhNFI
Katie Hobbs has previously lied to the voters of Arizona, claiming that Kari Lake wants to criminalize lifesaving post-miscarriage treatments after claiming that she had a miscarriage.
Democrats can only justify their stance on abortion by lying.
Trump-Endorsed Kari Lake recently slammed Hobbs, calling her lies “sick,” during her “Ask Me Anything Tour” when asked whether or not she would criminalize D&C procedures after miscarriages.
Katie Hobbs has voted against legislation that requires doctors to maintain the life of a baby if they survive an abortion. Further, she voted against abortion limitations every chance she was given as a State Legislator.
Lake: D&C procedure is what happens after you have a miscarriage. I am from a family of nine. I think I’ve told you that some of you knew that. Eight girls one boy. Some of my own family, my own sisters had miscarriages. My mother, God rest her soul, had two miscarriages, and she loved those babies so much that she said that she really had eleven kids even though only nine of us were born. To equate a miscarriage with an abortion is sick. Any woman who’s had a miscarriage wants that baby so bad. To equate that with an abortion is sick. I would never keep D&C procedure from a woman having an ectopic pregnancy or a miscarriage. And I wish that Katie Hobbs had the gall, I wish she had the backbone to show up and debate this topic. The press never asks her about her abortion stance. I think everyone in this room would agree that nine months into a pregnancy is too late to have an abortion.
She’s okay with that. They think I’m controversial because I’m pro-life. She actually voted against a bill that would have required that a baby who survived an abortion get medical treatment. She voted against that. She wants that baby to die on a cold metal medical tray. This is controversial. This is outrageous. And I will not sit here and have the media, who is doing bidding for Katie Hobbs, tell me that she’s got a great plan when it comes to abortion. She’s using that because she knows, she absolutely knows that she’s wrong, that nine months is too late to have an abortion. It’s way too late. And so she’s trying to deflect her own stance on abortion, which is really horrendous in my opinion.
.@katiehobbs is going around trying to scare Arizona women, spreading one of the most reprehensible lies in the history of politics.
If she had a heart she would apologize to every woman who's ever had a miscarriage, for using their pain to score partisan political points. https://t.co/UaFkKru7GC
Radical leftist protestors are planning another protest on the Arizona Capitol tonight at 5 pm, hosted by “Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom” and “Arizona Human Rights Fighters.”
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that violent leftist insurrectionists attempted to breach the Arizona Capitol two nights in a row while rioting against the recent SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and give the power back to the states.
A father of seven and pro-life warrior was arrested this morning in Pennsylvania by 25-30 FBI agents for protecting his son from crude actions reportedly made against his son by an abortion escort.
A well-known pro-life author, sidewalk counselor, and father of seven was the latest victim of a U.S. Department of Justice-sponsored SWAT raid and arrest — for supposed “FACE Act” violations — at his rural home as his children looked on “screaming.”
Mark Houck is the founder and president of The King’s Men, which promotes healing for victims of pornography addiction and promotes Christian virtues among men in the United States and Europe…
…Ryan-Marie, who is a homeschool mother, explained the SWAT team of 25 to 30 FBI agents swarmed their property with around 15 vehicles at 7:05 a.m. this morning. Having quickly surrounded the house with rifles in firing position, “they started pounding on the door and yelling for us to open it.”
Before opening the door, she explained, her husband tried to calm them, saying, “‘Please, I’m going to open the door, but, please, my children are in the home. I have seven babies in the house.’ But they just kept pounding and screaming,” she said.
When he opened the door, “they had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,” Ryan-Marie described…
The FBI was there because of Mark’s work against abortion. Recently an abortion advocate and escort reportedly harassed his son at an abortion clinic and when Houck protected his son he was accused of harassing the escort.
…On several occasions when Mark went to sidewalk counsel last year, he took his eldest son, who was only 12 at the time, she explained. For “weeks and weeks,” a “pro-abortion protester” would speak to the boy saying “crude … inappropriate and disgusting things,” such as “you’re dad’s a fag,” and other statements that were too vulgar for her to convey.
Repeatedly, Mark would tell this pro-abortion man that he did not have permission to speak to his son and please refrain from doing so. And “he kept doing it and kind of came into [the son’s] personal space” obscenely ridiculing his father. At this point, “Mark shoved him away from his child, and the guy fell back.”
“He didn’t have any injuries or anything, but he tried to sue Mark,” and the case was thrown out of court in the early summer.
This is not the first time the FBI raided pro-lifer’s homes. In April, AG Merrick Garland’s FBI sent agents at gunpoint to the homes of anti-abortion protesters who uncovered a gruesome find. Some suspect the FBI’s raid was to prevent our counter the release of evidence of infanticide.
On Thursday, LifeSiteNews covered the arrest of nine pro-life activists for blocking the entrance to a D.C. abortion center in October 2020, as part of an effort to offer help to families seeking abortion, counsel them to change their minds, pray with them, and inform them about local resource centers.
The Biden DOJ alleges that they “engaged in a conspiracy to create a blockade at the reproductive health care clinic to prevent the clinic from providing, and patients from receiving, reproductive health services” when they “forcefully entered the clinic and set about blockading two clinic doors using their bodies, furniture, chains, and ropes.” The pro-lifers face up to 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $350,000…
…Later Thursday, it was reported that the organizer of the rescue, Lauren Handy, was arrested when the police received a tip leading to the discovery of the bodies of five aborted babies in her home, which quickly became a subject of rampant online speculation.
Now, Handy’s allies are beginning to speak out about her side of the story. The group Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), for which Handy is activism director, issued a press release Friday explaining that “prior to the arrest, one of the defendants privately arranged for the Metropolitan Washington D.C. Police homicide unit to pick up five recently discovered late-term aborted babies for forensic examination. Their late gestational ages as well as their apparent sustained injuries potentially show violations of the Partial Birth Abortion Act as well as the Born Alive Infants Protection Act which are federal crimes.”
Biden’s FBI is no better than the worst militant police entities in history.
A prayer rally is scheduled tomorrow (Saturday morning September 24) at the “Philadelphia Women’s Center” abortion facility at 777 Appletree St. from 10:30 a.m. to noon for the Houck family. All are invited to come and pray peacefully.
Sources tell the Todd Starnes Radio Show that dozens of agents surrounded the home of Mark Houck with weapons drawn — terrifying the man’s wife and seven children.
“They had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,” Ryan-Marie Houck told LifeSiteNews.com. “The kids were all just screaming. It was all just very scary and traumatic.”
Agents said they were arresting Houck because he reportedly shoved a pro-abortion activist who had confronted his 12-year-old son outside an abortion clinic last October.
On several occasions when Mark went to sidewalk counsel last year, he took his eldest son, who was only 12 at the time, she explained. For “weeks and weeks,” a “pro-abortion protester” would speak to the boy saying “crude … inappropriate and disgusting things,” such as “you’re dad’s a fag,” and other statements that were too vulgar for her to convey.
Repeatedly, Mark would tell this pro-abortion man that he did not have permission to speak to his son and please refrain from doing so. And “he kept doing it and kind of came into [the son’s] personal space” obscenely ridiculing his father. At this point, “Mark shoved him away from his child, and the guy fell back.”LifeSiteNews.com
The alleged victim tried to sue Houck, but the case was thrown out of court.
So, why, exactly did Attorney General Merrick Garland send a small army to arrest a prominent member of the pro-life community?
Catholic News Agency reports:
The FBI confirmed to CNA Friday that Houck was arrested outside his residence Friday morning “without incident.” In a press release, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said that Houck is being charged with a violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, more commonly referred to as the FACE Act.
The federal indictment says that Houck twice assaulted a 72-year-old man who was a patient escort at a Planned Parenthood clinic at 1144 Locust St. in Philadelphia on Oct. 13, 2021. First, Houck shoved the escort, identified only with the initials B.L., to the ground as B.L was attempting to escort two patients, the indictment says. Houck also “verbally confronted” and “forcefully shoved” B.L. to the ground in front of Planned Parenthood the same day, the indictment says. The indictment says that B.L. was injured and needed medical attention.
If he is convicted, Houck could face up to 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $350,000, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. CNA
Sources tell the Todd Starnes Show that Houck was placed in shackles as agents had guns pointed at his face. His terrified children were reportedly watching from a staircase.
Houck leads a Catholic men’s group called, “The King’s Men.” He also engages in sidewalk counseling outside abortion clinics.
The Biden Administration needs to explain why they are sending armored carriers and squads of agents to bully and harass pro-lifers.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano released a statement yesterday condemning the recent comments of Pope Francis’s President of the Pontifical Academy for Life Vicenzo Paglia, who shared that the law legalizing abortion is “a pillar of our social life”.
Archbishop Vigano’s exclusive message is as follows:
The President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Vincenzo Paglia, in the course of an interview given to Italian television channel RaiTre on August 26 (here), referred to the infamous Law 194 legalizing abortion as “a pillar of our social life,” scandalizing millions of Italian Catholics who are faithful to the Magisterium and are still mindful of the fiery words of John Paul II against that horrible crime, which in Italy alone has sacrificed over six million innocent children on the altar of selfishness and liberal antichristic ideology.
The just indignation of the ecclesial body in response to the statements of the President of an Academy founded by John Paul II precisely in order to oppose abortion is accompanied by the applause of the advocates of “reproductive health” and the “interruption of pregnancy,” who are always ready to accuse the Church of interference when she speaks with the voice of Christ, but yet offer praise as soon as her worst exponents prostitute themselves to the aligned thought of the world and adopt the dishuman principles of neomalthusianism as their own.
As Shepherd and Successor of the Apostles, I am unable not to condemn with the greatest force Paglia’s scandalous words, which contradict the Gospel and the teaching of the Roman Pontiffs.
The New World Order, the United Nations, the WHO, the European Union, the World Economic Forum, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Club, and all the organizations which follow the Agenda 2030 consider the barbaric killing of the innocent child in the mother’s womb as a right, as a “pillar of social life.” It is emblematic and revealing that the sect of apostates who infest the Catholic Hierarchy and have occupied its highest levels find themselves aligned with the ideological positions of the enemies of Christ, not only on issues that are seemingly unconnected – like the psychopandemic narrative and green ideology – but also in the denial of the very foundations of the Natural Law, including respect for life from conception to natural death.
Here is a picture of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Vincenzo Paglia, with Pope Francis:
Julie Burkhart, who worked many years ago with late-term abortionist George Tiller, recently appeared on MSNBC to discuss abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade. After Tiller was murdered in 2009, Burkhart purchased the building and reopened the South Wind Women’s Center on-site — another abortion business. She also founded the Trust Women Foundation, and has worked as an abortion activist for decades. But, in a new interview, she complained that despite nearly 50 years of Roe v. Wade, abortion still doesn’t garner any respect in the medical community.
Ali Velshi interviewed Burkhart about abortion today. He began by noting that, during a recent visit to Alabama, abortionists said they got little respect, something he said Tiller had complained of as well. “You often feel like you occupy the lowest rung of medicine, in terms of the way you’re treated by the outside world, but the highest rung when it comes to your patients who need reproductive health care,” he said. “Is that true?”
Burkhart has previously complained about a lack of respect from the medical community, and it seems her tune hasn’t changed.
“I would say that that is absolutely true,” she responded, adding, “Within this realm of abortion provision, within reproductive rights, oftentimes physicians are ostracized from their own medical professions, they are ostracized politically, but Dr. Tiller … was absolutely correct, that the women who are coming in for procedures, the people who need procedures, they will tell you what is really in their hearts and what’s on their minds.”
But while the abortion industry has engaged in a near-deification of Tiller since his death, actual patient reviews tell a different story. Women have spoken of being coerced into abortions by Tiller’s staff, and treated with callous disregard.
Ann Kristin Neuhaus, another of Tiller’s associates, had her license to practice medicine revoked due to a scheme she participated in with Tiller, rubber-stamping mental health forms for underage girls, claiming they were “suicidal” without ever conducting actual mental health evaluations.
Tiller also saw numerous young girls as clients, yet only notified police about an incidence of child rape once. There is also evidence to show that Neuhaus and Tiller were committing illegal abortions together. Tiller and his staff, which at the time included notorious late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart, also allowed Christin Gilbert, a young woman with Down syndrome, to suffer for days after a horrifically botched abortion. She tragically died. The 911 call even showed how staff delayed emergency care for Gilbert, further contributing to her death.
It seems clear that Tiller and his protégés were hardly the saviors of women they paint themselves to be.
Burkhart is also not alone in describing the negative mindset the medical community has towards abortion. Carol Joffe, a professor at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) within UCSF’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, which trains abortionists, has also complained about this very issue. Joffe has also served on the board of the National Abortion Federation, with a program for the Abortion Care Network (a membership organization of independent abortionists), on the Advisory Board for Planned Parenthood of New York’s Clinician Training Initiatives, and as a member of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals (ARHP):
Nearly 50 years after legalization nationwide, the majority of obstetrician gynecologists and primary-care doctors do not provide abortions — even though 1 out of 4 American women will have an abortion in her lifetime … Only 4 percent of abortions take place in a hospital and only 1 percent of abortions take place in private doctors’ offices. The remaining 95 percent occur in free-standing clinics, which offer excellent care, but are largely isolated from other medical institutions.
One third-generation OB/GYN told me, “In my family, the worst thing that could be said about anybody was that he was an abortionist.” His relatives did not object morally to abortion, but rather they held the assumption that illegal abortion doctors were “losers.” … Even after Roe, a physician who supported freedom of choice, commenting on the small number of doctors doing abortions in New York City, remarked: “The rest of the staff regards these doctors with esteem not markedly higher than that previously reserved for the back street abortionist.”
Susan Robinson, one of the few late-term abortionists in the country, has also said abortionists feel stigmatized. “If you do abortions, it is very hard to get the privilege to work in a hospital, because they don’t like abortion providers,” she said. “They are almost all done in outpatient clinics, free-standing clinics, in this country. Being an abortion provider is very stigmatized. Other doctors look down on you and think of you as like the lowest of the low.”
Warren Hern, another late-term abortionist, had similar complaints. “Increasingly, doctors have been made to feel irrelevant,” he said. “Feminist abortion clinics treat doctors like technicians and are especially contemptuous of male physicians. Entrepreneurs who treat abortion strictly as a retail business also tend to treat doctors as technicians. Doctors who perform abortions have usually acquiesced in these roles, and their status has plummeted lower than that of physicians who do insurance company examinations.”
Another abortion facility owner, Diane Derzis, said in an interview that even among abortion supporters, abortionists are seen as “dirty.”
Abortionists make a very lucrative living by taking innocent lives. Perhaps the reason the medical community shuns abortionists is because most doctors went into medicine to save lives, not take them.
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]
The Bible never specifically addresses the issue of abortion. However, there are numerous teachings in Scripture that make it abundantly clear what God’s view of abortion is.
Jeremiah 1:5 tells us that God knows us before He forms us in the womb. Psalm 139:13–16 speaks of God’s active role in our creation and formation in the womb. Exodus 21:22–25 prescribes the same penalty—death—for someone who causes the death of a baby in the womb as for someone who commits murder. This law and its punishment clearly indicate that God considers a baby in the womb to be just as much a human being as a full-grown adult. For the Christian, abortion is not a matter of a woman’s right to choose to have a baby. The baby is already present and living. Abortion is a matter of the life or death of a human being made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26–27; 9:6).
What does the Bible say about abortion? Simply put, abortion is murder. It is the killing of a human being created in the image of God.
A common argument against the Christian stance on abortion is “What about cases of rape and/or incest?” As difficult as it would be to become pregnant as a result of rape or incest, is the murder of a baby the solution? Two wrongs do not make a right. Intentionally killing the unborn child is not the answer. Also, keep in mind that having an abortion is a traumatic experience. It seems nonsensical to add an additional trauma to the woman. Too, abortion can be a means of rapists covering up their crimes. For example, if a minor is molested and becomes pregnant and then is taken to have an abortion, the molestation could continue without penalty. Abortion will never erase the pain of rape or incest, but it very well may add to it.
A child who is conceived through rape or incest is as much made in the image of God as any other human. That child’s life should be protected just as much as the life of any other human being. The circumstances of conception never determine the worth of a person or that person’s future. The baby in this situation is completely innocent and should not be punished for the evil act of his or her father. Depending on the situation, the mother might choose to raise the child. If she does not already have a community of support, there are many organizations and local churches ready to walk alongside her. Or she might place the child for adoption. There are many families, some unable to have children on their own, who stand ready to receive and love a child from any background.
It’s also important to keep in mind that abortions due to rape or incest account for a very small percentage of total abortions: only 1 percent of abortions can be traced to cases of rape or incest (Torres and Forrest, cited by Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health and the Alan Guttmacher Institute in An Overview of Abortion in the United States, October 2001, http://www.abortionfacts.com/facts/8#cite-1, accessed 9/9/21).
Another argument often used against the Christian stance on abortion is “What about when the life of the mother is at risk?” Honestly, this is the most difficult question to answer on the issue of abortion. First, let’s remember that such a situation is exceedingly rare. Dr. Landrum Shettles, a pioneer in the field of in vitro fertilization, wrote, “Less than 1 percent of all abortions are performed to save the mother’s life” (Landrum Shettles and David Rorvik, Rites of Life, Zondervan Publishing House, 1983, p. 129). Dr. Irving Cushner, Professor of Obstetrics at the UCLA School of Medicine, when testifying before the U. S. Senate, was asked how often abortions are necessary to save the life of the mother or to preserve her physical health. His response: “In this country, about 1 percent” (testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution of the United States on October 14, 1981, quoted in The Village Voice, July 16, 1985).
Other medical professionals go further, stating that abortion is never necessary to save the mother’s life. Over 1,000 OB-GYNs and maternal healthcare experts signed a statement in 2012, saying, in part, “As experienced practitioners and researchers in obstetrics and gynaecology, we affirm that direct abortion—the purposeful destruction of the unborn child—is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman” (Dublin Declaration on Maternal Health, http://www.dublindeclaration.com, accessed 9/9/21). Further, in 2019, “medical leaders representing more than 30,000 doctors said intentionally killing a late-term unborn baby in an abortion is never necessary to save a mother’s life” (www.lifenews.com/2019/03/05/30000-doctors-say-abortion-is-never-medically-necessary-to-save-a-mothers-life, accessed 9/9/21).
Second, let’s remember that God is a God of miracles. He can preserve the life of a mother and her child despite all the medical odds being against it. Third, even in the small percentage of abortions performed to save the life of the mother, most of those abortions can be prevented by an early induced delivery of the baby or a C-section. It is extremely rare that a baby must be actively aborted in order to save the life of the mother. Ultimately, if the life of the mother is genuinely at risk, the course of action can only be decided by the woman, her doctor, oftentimes the father of the child, and God. Any woman facing this extremely difficult situation should pray to the Lord for wisdom (James 1:5) as to what He would have her do.
The overwhelming majority of abortions performed today involve women who simply do not want to have the baby. As indicated above, just 2 percent of abortions are for the reason of rape, incest, or the mother’s life being at risk. Even in these more difficult 2 percent of instances, abortion should never be the first option. The life of a human being in the womb is worth every effort to preserve.
For those who have had an abortion, remember that the sin of abortion is no less forgivable than any other sin. Through faith in Christ, all sins can be forgiven (John 3:16; Romans 8:1; Colossians 1:14). A woman who has had an abortion, a man who has encouraged an abortion, and a doctor who has performed an abortion—all can be forgiven by faith in Jesus Christ.
“Abortion then contributed to the development of a sexual culture that benefited men and harmed women,” Federalist Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky said on The Hill’s “Rising.” “Now, none of this is to say the second wave was entirely regressive. I’m personally grateful to it and probably here in some sense because of it as well. But the left really doesn’t want to talk about how abortion allows male partners and bosses to exploit women. Why are corporations eagerly jumping at the opportunity to pay for their employees’ abortions? Because it makes women more productive and efficient workers.”
While I was perusing pro-life news outlets this Thursday, Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s name came up quite a few times. He’s an important figure in the abortion debate, especially since he played a crucial part to both sides. I certainly knew who he was. But I also thought he was just some figure who died years ago.
It turns out that he hasn’t been dead for very long. February 21, 2013 actually marks only the two-year anniversary of his death from cancer. But regardless of whether he’s been dead two years or two decades, Dr. Nathanson is a remarkable figure.
Dr. Nathanson was a co-founder of NARAL, which at the time stood for National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. He was also the organization’s first president. Nathanson was crucial to framing abortion as a medical issue rather than a moral issue, all while coming up with “some sexy, catchy slogans to capture public opinion.”
But changing the conversation about abortion and coming up with “some sexy, catchy slogans” was not the only way in which Dr. Nathanson got the public’s attention. The number of women who died from illegal abortion was actually falsified by Nathanson, for, once again, the sake of generating public support for abortion. In his 1979 book, Aborting America, Dr. Nathanson said this:
How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In NARAL, we generally emphasized the frame of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter, it was always 5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year. I confess that I knew that the figures were totally false and I suppose that others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the ‘morality’ of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics? The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason that had to be done was permissible.
Not only were such numbers a flat-out lie, but they were also knowingly promoted for the sake of doing one thing: making abortion legal. Dr. Nathanson frames this so clearly in the last sentence. The National Right to Life provided this quote from an article which has other helpful information as to how to respond to the argument that women will die without legalized abortion.
Dr. Nathanson was an abortionist and the director for the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health (CRASH), which was the world’s largest abortion clinic (he was also the director there). He presided over 60,000 abortions at the CRASH. He also personally instructed those who performed 15,000 more abortions, and he performed 5,000 abortions himself. He even aborted his own child.
Only a year after Roe v. Wade, though, Dr. Nathanson began to have doubts about abortion. By 1980, medical technology convinced him to no longer provide abortions. He then came to dedicate himself to the pro-life movement and correcting the falsehoods he had helped spread.
Clinicquotes.com has a post by Live Action’s own Sarah Terzo, which includes a quote from Dr. Bernard Nathanson as to why he became pro-life:
I ran the largest abortion clinic in the world for 2 years. I had no conflicts whatsoever at the time I was doing the abortions. I changed my mind because the new scientific data which we were getting from advanced technology persuaded me that we could not indiscriminately continue to slaughter what was demonstrably a human being.
That quote is from 1986, 27 years ago. A man who was involved in over 75,000 abortions came to see that science shows that the unborn child is “demonstrably a human being.” Yet, even with such technology as we have today, people still sadly deny the humanity of the unborn child right in front of them.
In 1984, Dr. Nathanson produced the famous documentary The Silent Scream, which graphically shows a twelve-week-old baby being aborted. Through new fetal imagery technology, Dr. Nathanson effectively portrayed the humanity of the unborn child, as well as demonstrated that an abortion is surely murdering a human being.
This kind of abortion can be seen in a more modern video below, narrated by OBGYN and former abortionist, Dr. Anthony Levatino:
Dr. Nathanson changed his mind on abortion not for religious reasons, but rather for scientific ones. He was born Jewish, though he professed to being an atheist and even was so for a time after his change of heart on abortion. He eventually converted to Catholicism, though, and was baptized and received into the Church in 1996.
In 1996, Dr. Nathanson wrote his autobiography, The Hand of God, which details his experiences and his journey of becoming a pro-life activist after advocating for and promoting abortion.
Bernard Nathanson is undeniably an important figure in the pro-life movement, on whom much has been written. On the day of his death in 2011, LifeNews published an article to remember him, which quotes Live Action president Lila Rose. A week after his death, a friend of Nathanson, Robert P. George, also wrote a piece, which contains a lot of helpful experiences and information in learning about the kind of man Nathanson really was. Priests for Life has a page with several links about the doctor as well. There is also a short video of a confession from Dr. Nathanson. One of the places it can be found is through Bound 4 Life.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson truly has a lasting legacy as a founder of what is now NARAL Pro-Choice America. People still shout his slogans and revert to his argument that women will die without legalized abortion, that the issue is a medical, not a moral one. They are not laughing as he was, though, and they are so very blind to the truth. Meanwhile, Dr. Nathanson himself died a pro-life and Catholic convert. If he is able to reform and have a conversion, truly anyone is.
The last abortion clinic in Mississippi officially shut down Wednesday, a day before a trigger ban against almost all abortion procedures is poised to take effect in the state, following the Supreme Court’s decision last month to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Shannon Brewer, the clinic’s director, told The Washington Post in May about plans to relocate to New Mexico, where abortion procedures are still legal.
Dubbed “The Pink House” for its bubblegum-pink exterior walls, the clinic has been the epicenter of the nation’s fight over abortion and the last abortion center in operation in the state.
The Pink House has now provided the last legal abortion in Mississippi.
The Clinic Escorts and Pink House Defenders have packed up.
The anti-abortion preachers have departed. The media circus is over.
Opening in 1995, the clinic offered the baby-killing procedure to women across Mississippi and neighboring states. Since 2004, it has been the only abortion clinic in the state.
After a judge refused Jackson Women’s Health Organization’s request for a temporary block on the Mississippi trigger ban, Brewer told The Texas Tribune that her team is relocating services to Las Cruces, N.M. Abortions are restricted in Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Utah, which border New Mexico.
Since the reversal of Roe V Wade, the power to regulate abortion now falls to individual states, resulting in many women seeking abortions crossing state borders.
The last #abortion clinic in #Mississippi saw its last patients today. Opponents and supporters clashed outside the facility best known as the Pink House. A law taking effect Thursday will ban most abortions in the state. #msleg#msgovpic.twitter.com/BgvBYd1MIW
— Emily Wagster Pettus (@EWagsterPettus) July 7, 2022
On Thursday, Mississippi becomes the latest in a growing number of states in the South where nearly all abortion care is banned. The only exceptions to the ban are if a patient’s life is in danger or if a patient was raped and reported the assault to law enforcement.
Many companies have promised to pay for such travel for employees, while Democrat led states have sought to enact protections for those crossing state lines to access the procedure.
Here’s the Surprising Backstory of the Downfall of Roe v. Wade
By Mark Hemingway, RealClearInvestigations July 6, 2022
Erin Hawley didn’t know that she would help make history when she took a job in February with the conservative legal group, Alliance Defending Freedom. Two months later, the former law professor was on a plane to Mississippi to serve as co-counsel with the state’s attorney general, Lynn Fitch, and its solicitor general, Scott Stewart, to win the most momentous Supreme Court case in half a century – the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“I think it was really meaningful for me because I had a 6-month-old that I actually took to Mississippi to that meeting,” Hawley said of her efforts to end the constitutional right to abortion. “It made why Dobbs matters really concrete, to be talking about this legal strategy and these issues with a baby in tow.”
The role of Hawley, wife of Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, and the central role played by the Alliance Defending Freedom, are part of the untold story behind the case that overturned Roe and Thomas E. Dobbs, State Health Officer of the Mississippi Department of Health, et al. v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Their relative anonymity was not an oversight, but instead part of a deliberate strategy reflecting the political sensitivities of today’s partisan political landscape.
Though Erin Hawley was a Supreme Court clerk under Chief Justice John Roberts and her legal acumen is not in doubt, her husband, a former state attorney general, is a bête noire of abortion activists and other liberals. Knowledge of her involvement behind the scenes would have been an unwelcome distraction to her legal team.
Alliance Defending Freedom
And although the Alliance Defending Freedom has won 14 victories at the Supreme Court since 2011 – including affirming Christian bakers’ right to refuse making custom cakes for gay weddings and the right of churches to receive taxpayer-funded state grants – it kept its role under wraps for fear of attacks to undermine its case from progressive groups such as Southern Poverty Law Center, which has designated it a “hate group” for defending traditional Christian sexual ethics.
As the state of Mississippi publicly litigated the case, it strategized closely with the alliance, which conceived of the successful legal reasoning behind Dobbs. In interviews with RealClearInvestigations, the group’s leaders detailed their internal deliberations – and the deep concerns among pro-life allies about the principles and arguments ultimately presented to the court.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade can be traced back to the day the court ruled in 1973 that there was a constitutional right to abortion. Through the decades, pro-life forces embraced various strategies to challenge that ruling with limited success.
Starting in 2016, the ADF began to focus on challenging a core foundation of Roe – the issue of fetal viability. In Roe, the high court established that abortion was legal until the unborn child “has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother’s womb,” wrote Justice Blackmun in the majority opinion. In 1992, another Supreme Court decision on abortion, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, allowed states to place some restrictions on abortion while still embracing the concept that women have a right to get an abortion before viability. At the time, it was hard to define when such viability occurred, leading some abortion-rights advocates to claim it does not occur until birth.
But ongoing scientific advances have repeatedly redefined viability in the 50 years since Roe and the 30 years since Casey. It’s now generally agreed that children can survive outside the womb after as few as 20 weeks. Along the way, the viability standard had come to be seen as beneficial for pro-life legislatures’ attempts to restrict abortion to earlier in pregnancy.
Erin Hawley: “We know that at 15 weeks that a baby can do things like open and close her hands. … Can stretch and move and quite likely feel pain. So why can’t a state protect her life at that point when they can a few weeks later?”
But if many in the pro-life movement came to rely on the viability standard to make incremental gains in abortion restrictions, viability remained controversial as a legal and ethical matter. “We know that at 15 weeks that a baby can do things like open and close her hands. … Can stretch and move and quite likely feel pain,” says Hawley. “So why can’t a state protect her life at that point when they can a few weeks later? It doesn’t make a lot of sense legally as a constitutional matter. It’s just junk that’s totally made up.”
At meetings in 2016, the alliance tried to get the pro-life cause on board with a new strategy. It wasn’t easy. “Candidly, it was it was difficult to get support from a number of life groups, because the consensus was, you know, you should stick with 22-week limitations or 20-week limitations,” says Kristen Waggoner, general counsel for the ADF and one of the most experienced Supreme Court lawyers in the country. “That was the strong consensus, but it was very clear that Planned Parenthood wasn’t challenging 20-week laws, because that was too close to the viability line.”
There was another challenge. Cases don’t just magically appear at the Supreme Court. There would have to be a legal conflict for the court to take up, and that conflict would have to be created. A state legislature would have to essentially pass a law restricting abortion before viability, wait for that law to be challenged under the viability standard established in Roe and Casey and then hope it would be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. Even then, there was no guarantee the court would hear the case, let alone rule in their favor.
“[We were] looking at specific courts, Attorney General’s offices, looking at the legislatures in the states to try to figure out where to go,” says Waggoner. “When you think about, it’s not just a campaign that you would run as a case is going through the courts. It’s also campaign that you would run to get a bill passed.”
Kristen Waggoner: Surprised that opposing lawyers “basically told the court it’s one way or the other here, you either have to reverse Roe and Casey or you don’t.”
Alliance Defending Freedom
The ADF found leaders in three states were amenable to the idea. Arkansas and Utah expressed interest in passing laws to challenge the viability standard, and both states eventually passed laws restricting abortion before 18 weeks in 2019. But Mississippi moved more quickly. After reaching out in December 2017, the ADF soon found leaders in Mississippi were also open to the idea. “We had some allies on the ground and the governor’s office down there, which was Governor [Phil] Bryant at the time, so the legislation took off. The legislators loved it,” says the alliance’s director of government affairs, Kellie Fiedorek.
Pro-life politicians in Mississippi had already been working on legal challenges to abortion. In April 2012 the state passed a law requiring doctors performing abortions to be board-certified obstetrician-gynecologists and have admitting privileges at an area hospital. The law was effectively struck down when the Supreme Court in 2016 refused to hear the case. Given another opportunity to overturn Roe, Mississippi leaders jumped at the chance.
In March 2018, the state legislature passed the Gestational Age Act, restricting abortions in Mississippi after 15 weeks – well before the accepted viability line. Right after signing the bill, Bryant remarked: “We’ll probably be sued here in about a half hour, and that’ll be fine with me. It is worth fighting over.”
The state was, in fact, promptly sued by the state’s only abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In November 2018, a federal judge in the Southern District of Mississippi invalidated the Gestational Age Act, and that ruling was appealed. In December 2019, the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s ruling on the ground that the law violated the viability standard created by Roe and Casey. There was only one place left to appeal. The plan to get Dobbs v. Jackson before the Supreme Court was afoot.
Still, in the years a case winds its way through the legal system there is plenty of time for things to go wrong. Of particular concern was a lack of continuity between state officials charged with defending the Gestational Age Act, given that the state’s defense of the law depended on elected officials who come and go.
The Fifth Circuit had ruled against the state in December 2019 – and the following month in Mississippi a new governor, Tate Reeves, and a new attorney general, Lynn Fitch, would take office.
The new officials pursued the conservative legal strategy they inherited with equal zeal. Fitch’s office petitioned the Supreme Court to hear Mississippi’s case in June 2020. Three months later, liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. A Republican Senate quickly confirmed Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett, and suddenly Republican-appointed justices comprised a solid 6-3 majority on the court. The possibility of the Dobbs case overturning Roe started to seem real.
Scott Stewart: Mississippi’s lead litigator in Dobbs v. Jackson oral arguments before the Supreme Court.
AP
With a lot riding on the case, Fitch appointed Scott Stewart as solicitor general, a role which would ultimately make him the lead litigator in Dobbs v. Jackson and responsible for conducting the oral arguments before the Supreme Court.
Aside from being a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Stewart was notable for being at the center of an earlier controversy when he was working for the Justice Department. A 17-year-old illegal immigrant who was staying in a federal shelter had obtained a court order to get an abortion, and the Trump administration’s Justice Department told the girl she would have to go through with the pregnancy or leave the country. Stewart was the Justice lawyer tasked with defending the government’s position, which was rejected by a federal judge, who allowed the underage girl to go through with the abortion.
Now, the Supreme Court having granted a petition for its review of the Mississippi law on May 17, 2021, it limited the review to only one question presented in the state’s appeal: “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”
Sherif Girgis: “The biggest mistake I think the opponents of the Mississippi law made was to refuse to give the court a middle ground.”
University of Notre Dame Law School
As the stakes for the case rose, so did the internal pressure and second-guessing. “I can tell you without naming names that many, many people who were advising Mississippi informally said that they were crazy to ask for Roe to be overturned in full – that this could backfire and lead the court to strike down the law under existing precedent. And that the most they could hope for was a slight tweak to existing precedent to allow 15-week laws, but not much more,” says Sherif Girgis, a law professor at Notre Dame. “We can easily forget that just a few months ago, it seemed to a lot of seasoned court watchers to be insane for Mississippi to ask for this.”
In spite of the pressure, Mississippi never wavered from questioning the viability standard as the basis for legal abortion. “The Attorney General of Mississippi Lynn Fitch, and the SG Scott Stewart as well, I think they both deserve a huge amount of credit for going whole hog,” says Ryan T. Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “I think it was a good strategy of bringing the Mississippi law limiting abortion to 15 weeks, to make them realize how radical [our abortion] law is – 15 weeks puts us in line with [abortion restrictions] in Europe, and no one thinks Europe is like the religious right.”
With a 6-3 conservative majority on the court, it might be tempting to reduce the outcome of Dobbs v. Jackson to GOP machinations in the appointment and confirmation of Supreme Court justices. But the legal team defending Dobbs also benefited from a widespread sentiment even among liberal legal scholars that Roe v. Wade rested on shaky legal ground. Harvard law professor and prominent constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe has said, “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” Even Justice Ginsburg – a pro-choice advocate who remains an icon among the progressive left – described Roe as a “heavy-handed judicial intervention [that] was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.”
Given that defending existing abortion precedents on the legal merits was a difficult task, the opposing litigators tasked with defending the right to an abortion also adopted a maximalist position that didn’t leave the court room for compromise.
“The biggest mistake I think the opponents of the Mississippi law made was to refuse to give the court a middle ground,” says Girgis, “to refuse to give the court a way to uphold the regulation while still leaving intact some right to an abortion. Obviously they didn’t want to give the court a way to strike down a way to uphold the regulation period. But the fact that they kept saying there’s no middle ground made it easier for the court to say: ‘Look, our hands are tied. We just have to decide thumbs up/thumbs down on Roe and on the constitutional rights on abortion.’ ”
Waggoner, who’s set to present oral arguments before the court for the third time this fall, was also taken aback. “I was surprised that the lawyers basically told the court it’s one way or the other here, you either have to reverse Roe and Casey or you don’t,” she says.
Phil Bryant: Ex-Mississippi governor: “When the Alliance Defending Freedom came in, it was the emphasis that we needed to begin this process. You need outside legal review.”
AP
Facing the weakness of the legal arguments underpinning Roe and the conservative majority on the court, Girgis thinks that the opposing lawyers in the case may not have even tried to preserve the existing precedent. “The calculation there seems to be that for the sake of the pro-choice cause, it’s better to lose big than to lose small,” he says. “If Roe and Casey are overturned in full, and the American people know that there’s now no constitutional right to an abortion, that has a better chance of rallying people to restore the right [to an abortion] politically.”
The Center for Reproductive Rights, which tried the case for the opposing side, did not respond to a request for comment.
With neither side presenting an argument that pointed the way to a compromise that would allow the court to uphold the existing abortion precedents, the conservative majority on the court went ahead and overturned a 49-year-old precedent. A legal victory that had been doggedly pursued by two generations of conservative legal scholars and pro-life activists had been achieved.
The Dobbs victory, which is a product of outside groups working with elected officials to engineer a favorable Supreme Court outcome, may also have a lasting effect on the legal strategy for the conservative movement going forward.
Former Governor Bryant observes that the ADF’s efforts to aid Mississippi were of tremendous value in Dobbs. “When the Alliance Defending Freedom came in, it was the emphasis that we needed to begin this process,” he says. “You need outside legal review… and [someone] watching the [legislative] language, understanding what judicial scrutiny it’s going to come under, and understanding that the media are going to hype this.”
As for the efforts to prod the court, that strategy seems vindicated as well. “The left has filed preemptive litigation at least since the civil rights era and they have effectively advocated in the public square for their position, not just to defend the truth, but to be assertive about it. And I think that [the Dobbs victory] vindicates that on the conservative side as well,” says Waggoner.
In this respect, the Dobbs victory is the result of embracing an activist legal strategy that many conservatives who care about constitutional order haven’t been entirely at ease with. But other conservative activists have long argued the pro-life movement was a moral cause on par with the civil rights movement – and ignoring the strategies commonly used to get the Supreme Court’s attention would amount to unilateral disarmament in a lot of important legal battles. “The fact that you’re percolating those issues up to the Supreme Court is sending a message to the court, this is coming, this is coming, this is coming, you’ve got to deal with this,” says Waggoner. “And it creates this momentum, that isn’t just a momentum in the law, but a momentum in the culture.”
Whatever Dobbs portends for the future of conservative legal strategy, after six years of careful legal maneuvering it’s hard to argue with winning the biggest Supreme Court case in five decades. “I lost a lot of sleep,” says Waggoner. “I think it felt like a dream in certain moments – an almost unrealistic dream that was too big to even imagine.”
Correction, Friday, July 8, 2022, 11:50 AM A quotation in an earlier version of this article included a mischaracterization of a fetus at 15 weeks, an error acknowledged after publication by the speaker, Erin Hawley. A fetus at that stage has eyes and eyelids, she says, not the ability to “open and close her eyes.” That part of the quotation has been removed.
This July we continue to Celebrate Life and Freedom. June ended with three OUTSTANDING decisions from the United States Supreme Court confirming there is still hope.
Freedom and Life come from God. Those who deny or hate God also deny or hate Freedom and Life for anyone other than themselves.
In 1976…..
I was stabbed four times while working at a part time job. The stabbings were: in the back, a quarter inch from the heart; the head; the hand; and the leg. Scars of those stabs and chest tubes are present today. I was rushed to the hospital in the back of a police cruiser. They called my wife to hurry to the hospital as they did not expect me to make it another half hour. Two brand new doctors attended to me. There was nothing they could do. I left my body to the edge of the wall and ceiling and saw them working on me. I heard a voice say: “It is not your time”. Then I returned to my body and felt pain and heard the two brand new Doctors… in there second week…yell “He’s back.”
This is not a subject that is regularly talked about in the family. At the time I had one daughter, who could have ended up being an only child, however God had other plans and made sure that did not happen.
June 25th this year seemed to be good day to share the events of that day in 1976. This happened at 11:30 PM and I was dead for twenty minutes, yet I was not saved until 1980.
I often say my two other children are miracle children. All three of them are precious to me as well as to God
This shows how precious you are. God knows the future and had you planned from the beginning.
Well, they are definitely glad I came back and still here!!! So am I.
This gives an added meaning to; this the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.
My oldest remembers her mother definitely telling her that story, and she definitely remembers me mentioning it as well… It just seems very surreal!
Some people who experience trauma suffer for years with a whole host of problems such as anxiety, depression and even PTSD. Some self medicate with prescription, alcohol or illegal drugs. By God’s Grace I never had those issues.
Some people had abortions suffer from regret, shame, guilt, anxiety, depression, self loathing, and even PTSD. Some self medicate with prescription, alcohol or illegal drugs.
“No matter what it was caused by, shame can hurt us for many years and may become a “nourishment” for the opinions that we have about ourselves. Under the influence of conditional love or rude and abusive treatment, a person, consciously or not, assimilates a certain “disordered pack” of ideas about their own personality. You may find many women say about themselves: “There is nothing good in me”, “I am stupid”, “It’s my own fault that I became pregnant”, “I need to hide this for the rest of my life”, “I am not worthy (or capable) to be a mother”, “I am not worthy to have normal relations with a man”, “I had one abortion already, why shouldn’t I have one more?”, “I need to punish myself or let other people treat me badly because I don’t deserve anything else.”
While feeling of guilt can be corrected, in some instances rather quickly, by asking forgiveness for our mistakes, feeling of shame can only be healed by love and truth and may require much longer time.
In freeing yourself from the power of shame, a woman needs to remember that who she is, is not defined by actions or opinions of other people. No matter how many mistakes she personally made, she is a human being that deserves love and respect for her dignity. Since feeling of shame may have its roots in very early childhood or due to rude and abusive treatments, this woman may need strong reassurance from friends and family, that no matter how bad her mistakes were she is loved unconditionally. (4)
On the day I shared the events of 1976 I did not know God had been orchestrating events that would culminate in affirming: our right to defend ourselves (1); our right to determine how we govern ourselves (2); our right to pray (3). God was orchestrating these events as He did in providing the tree Zacchaeus the Tax Collector would climb on to see Jesus (Luke 19:1-10); and providing that Joseph would be in charge in Egypt after being sold into slavery by his brothers. Joseph’s brothers meant it for evil but God meant it for good (Genesis 50:20). Joseph saved many lives.
Another time God was orchestrating events, according to Kelvin Cochran; slavery saved many lives and was good for African Americans in long run (5). You can watch his testimony in Freedom Sunday video below. Kelvin Cochran was fired as the Fire Chief for writing and publishing his Christian family book “How did you know I was naked”. Kelvin Cochran also shared how his faith sustained him. The city of Atlanta settled with Kelvin Cochran for $1.5M. He shares how his faith in Jesus carried him through.
The church has a tremendous opportunity to walk with everyone who hurts or have hurt others, no matter the circumstances, to help each one of them become the whole, healthy, joyful people God intended them to be.
Freedom Sunday | June 26, 2022
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(1) Download and read the actual ruling:
NEW YORK STATE RIFLE & PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., ET AL. v. BRUEN, SUPERINTENDENT OF NEW YORK STATE POLICE, ET AL. (Second Amendment)
Brilliant Constitutional scholars in the government came up with ideas for providing for abortions in states where abortions will be made illegal. These ideas were ignorant of a major obstacle.
With the Supreme Court’s decision to push the legality of abortion back to the states, many pro-abortion politicians freaked out and started coming up with their ideas for continuing abortions in states that outlaw the act.
Elizabeth Warren suggested putting up tents on federal land to perform abortions.
US House member from Florida, Representative Byron Donalds discussed the left’s position with abortion when compared to oil.
During an interview with Newsmax TV on Monday, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) reacted to Democratic proposals for the Biden administration to use federal lands to conduct abortion by pointing out that many Democrats have tried to block oil drilling on federal lands, something that would “help every mom in America. It’ll help every dad in America. They won’t do that, but they’ll open it up for abortion.”
Despite demands from several prominent Democrats, the federal government is prohibited from using taxpayer dollars to fund abortions.
The Hyde Amendment, first included in federal appropriations bills in 1976, prohibits the federal government from funding abortions unless “the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term or where the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest.” Activists estimate that the Hyde Amendment prevents at least 60,000 abortions every year.
The amendment is named for Republican Illinois Rep. Henry Hyde, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who championed it.
Although support for the amendment was initially bipartisan, Democrats in recent years have attempted to pass federal budgets that do not include the provision. President Joe Biden flip-flopped on support for the amendment during his 2020 presidential campaign, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi attempted to jettison the provision for an early COVID-19 relief package. Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s demand that the Hyde Amendment be included in a social spending package was a key factor in the breakdown in Build Back Better negotiations.
It looks like Liawatha has some studying up to do.
U.S. Supreme Court throws out rulings that invalidated abortion laws
Lawrence Hurley June 30, 2022
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court, in the aftermath of its decision last week to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, on Thursday threw out lower court rulings that invalidated three abortion laws at the state level.
All three laws – from Arizona, Arkansas and Indiana – were blocked by lower courts based on Roe and the subsequent 1992 ruling that reaffirmed it. That decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, was also overturned as part of the court’s June 24 ruling that upheld a law in Mississippi that bans abortion after 15 weeks.
In one case, the court on Thursday threw out a ruling that blocked an Arizona law that bans abortions performed because of fetal genetic abnormalities such as Down syndrome.
The court did the same with a similar law in Arkansas that bans abortions performed due to fetal evidence of Down syndrome and with an appeal brought by Indiana seeking to expand the scope of a state law that requires parents of minors seeking abortions to be notified.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
The nation erupted in cries of joy and tears of frustration on Friday when the ruling from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was delivered, overturning the 1972 Roe V Wade ruling on abortion.
In his opinion, Alito highlighted many rights and freedoms expressly given to the American people. He also pointed out that the Court was returning the power to the people to influence the future.
But, Friday’s news revealed a deeper issue in America. It highlighted the presence of pure ignorance and the absence of personal responsibility. The headlines, statements, social media posts, protests, and broadcasts highlighted a problem infecting the nation faster than the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
Democrats, celebrities, and the mainstream media have led the way as they continue to decry the ruling, calling it a revocation of the Constitutional rights of the American people. Many claim Alito’s ruling diminishes such rights and freedoms.
Former Disney Child Star Selena Gomez amplified this narrative on Friday, posting on Twitter that she felt rights were being removed.
Watching a Constitutional right be stripped away is horrific. A woman should have the right to CHOOSE what she wants to do with her own body. End of story.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also shared this misinformation when she said, “American women today have less freedom than their mothers.”
If you read the opinion issued by the Court, those claims can be refuted and clarified as an act of empowering the American people, despite claims from President Biden and others.
Alito said, “Roe was on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided, Casey perpetuated its errors, and those errors do not concern some arcane corner of the law of little importance to the American people. Rather, wielding nothing but “raw judicial power,”… the Court usurped the power to address a question of profound moral and social importance that the Constitution unequivocally leaves for the people.”
It was his way of pointing out that the Court was not the arbiter of access to life-altering decisions such as abortion, nor the body to determine the right to oversee such choices. The Court decided to return the right of people to govern such things within their state of residence, powered by the impact of their votes.
Alito clarified this by saying, “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
Alito goes on to clarify that in returning to the basis of the Constitution if the Court is to uphold the right of abortion, it then forces a specific theory on the question, what is life?
“Our opinion is not based on any view about if and when prenatal life is entitled to any of the rights enjoyed after birth. The dissent, by contrast, would impose on the people a particular theory about when the rights of personhood begin. According to the dissent, the Constitution requires the States to regard a fetus as lacking even the most basic human right—to live—at least until an arbitrary point in a pregnancy has passed. Nothing in the Constitution or in our Nation’s legal traditions authorizes the Court to adopt that ‘theory of life,’” Alito stated.
He noted that neither the Constitution nor any legal tradition allows the Supreme Court to adopt a “theory of life” which would constitute the exact moment a fetus is declared a person. In essence, the Court does not want to be tasked to hold to a moral position that requires them to determine if a specific life does or does not have value.
Alito clearly stated throughout his opinion that the “theory of life,” or the decision of when a life becomes viable and eligible for rights, is not defined nor supported in the U.S. Constitution.
“We therefore hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
Despite Alito’s clear and defined details, the government and the media continue to push a narrative that says that abortion is a “constitutional right.”
On Friday, President Biden made the false claim while addressing the nation, spreading misinformation and stoking heavy emotional responses from Americans.
President Biden delivers remarks on the Supreme Court decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade. https://t.co/nUiI79bxrE
Others claim that this ruling is nothing more than a gateway to end access to contraception, same-sex marriage, and other rights. While there is never a guarantee that those rights would not face opposition in the Court, Alito addresses these concerns directly.
Robert Reich, a professor at Berkely, amplified those claims that the removal of other rights will directly follow this ruling.
What rights will be stripped away next?
Contraception. Same-sex marriage. Consensual same-sex sexual activity.
Clarence Thomas said it himself: the Supreme Court is coming for your right to privacy. pic.twitter.com/PXeMr9d6dR
Alito refutes this directly within his written opinion.
Alito writes, “Finally, the dissent suggests that our decision calls into question Griswold, Eisenstadt, Lawrence, and Obergefell. But we have stated unequivocally that ‘[n]othing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.’ We have also explained why that is so: rights regarding contraception and same-sex relationships are inherently different from the right to abortion because the latter (as we have stressed) uniquely involves what Roe and Casey termed ‘potential life.’”
He clarifies that the ruling that overturned Roe V Wade was based upon the term potential life. Alito makes clear again that the Court is not willing to accept a position as a demigod responsible for adjudicating what constitutes the beginning of life.
Others claim that Court’s ruling removes power from women, demeaning their value and authority over their bodies. California Congressman Eric Swalwell tried to allude that the ruling set women’s rights back 50 years!
Congressman Adam Schiff said, “The Court’s decision to overturn Roe endangers women everywhere, by taking away their right to make their own health care choices.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Alito writes, “Our decision returns the issue of abortion to those legislative bodies, and it allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting, and running for office. Women are not without electoral or political power. It is noteworthy that the percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so.”
Throughout the entire opinion of Roe, Alito is clear that his intent, along with the other Justices, is to return the power to the citizens of the United States. He is returning the Constitutional right to vote, lobby, and legislate at the state level.
The delivery of this ruling and the public response have exposed a problem with most Americans. That problem is evident at every level, from the government to the media, with celebrities and the general public. There is general laziness that pervades Americans. Very few have been willing to read the ruling or the rulings that this decision affects.
The lack of moral foundations, and a missing sense of honor for others, have empowered those in Washington, on television, and in leadership to take advantage of the people. They can create headlines, publish ideas and spark a national debate that is a departure from the truth and far from being anchored in facts. Sadly, the American people have allowed them to abuse that weakness in order to remain in power.
This ruling is not a reduction of rights and freedoms; it is an empowerment of the people and a return to the Constitutional foundation on which this nation was built.
Harmeet Dhillon Gives a Pragmatic Legal Perspective on Supreme Court Ruling
June 24, 2022 by Sundance
Ms. Harmeet Dhillon appears on the Tucker Carlson show to discuss the Supreme Court ruling that sends the issue of abortion back to the individual states for determinations of legal issue by the legislative bodies closest to the people. {Direct Rumble Link} Dhillon provides a clear-eyed and pragmatic review of the Roe -vs- Wade case nuance overall. WATCH:
Mayra Flores, the first Mexican-born woman elected to Congress celebrated the overturning of Roe v Wade during a speech with her GOP colleagues.
“Hallelujah, I woke up this morning praying for this and I never thought that it would happen. This was a big win not only for South Texas because we are Pro-life…Somos pro-vida…but it is also a big win for our country. If we want to see a real change in bringing crime down we need to raise a generation to respect life.”
Texas Democrat Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, who’s running against Republican Rep. Mayra Flores — the first Mexican-born woman elected to Congress — in November, resorted to “sexist” and “xenophobic” attacks against the newly sworn-in incumbent.
…
Newsweek’s Adrian Carrasquillo noted that he wanted to “cast himself as the traditional Texan in the race” while degrading Flores as “an immigrant outsider.”
Gonzalez, fighting to be a member of Congress after November, claimed that he also supports “God, family, country” and “come[s] from a patriotic family,” saying, “I wasn’t born in Mexico, I was born in South Texas, the son of a Korean war veteran.”
The congressman went further by saying, “I didn’t come here through chain migration, I didn’t come through asylum or amnesty or whatever.”
RINOs are losing – Pro-MAGA Republicans are winning!
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