Author Archives: Matthew Wagner

Women Headed to Congress Will Work to Protect Preborn Babies

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I have to chuckle when a politician says something that is meant to push abortion but ends up sounding very pro-life — and it backfires on them.

joniernst

U.S. Senator-elect Joni Ernst from Iowa

For example, this morning I was reading an article in the National Review about a wonderful group of pro-life women who will be heading to Congress next year. The article included a quote from Hillary Clinton, who was campaigning in Iowa right before the election.

Clinton attacked pro-life Senate candidate Joni Ernst, saying: “It’s not enough to be a woman. You have to be committed to expand rights and opportunities for all women.”

Expanding rights for all women sounds good when you consider preborn females in the womb. But we know Clinton was only referring to born women.

Iowans heard Clinton’s message and chose Ernst instead. They recognized the candidate who is truly committed to expanding rights for all women – born and preborn.

It’s an exciting time for pro-lifers. A strong group of women will be in our U.S. House and Senate next year, fighting for the rights of preborn babies.

Read more about Ernst, Elise Stefanik, Mia Love, Barbara Comstock, Mimi Walters and others who will be new voices in Washington for the rights of all women – born and preborn.

PA Pro-Lifers Scored Victories amid Losses in 2014 Election

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By Maria Gallagher, Legislative/PAC Director

The untold story of Election 2014 in Pennsylvania is how well pro-lifers fared in legislative contests.

Capitol-front-viewLargeThe Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation PAC endorsed 12 candidates for Congress, 69 candidates for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, and five candidates for the Pennsylvania Senate. Every single PAC-endorsed legislative candidate won his or her race.

Noteworthy is the fact that the pro-life endorsements crossed party lines—a number of pro-life Democrats won their contests. Female pro-life candidates also scored exceptionally well, shattering the myth that all women in Pennsylvania politics stand on a pro-abortion platform.

Of course, this welcome news for preborn children and their mothers will receive little airplay, since Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion operation, is playing up the fact that their Executive Branch candidates—pro-abortion Gubernatorial candidate Tom Wolf and his flip-flopping running mate, Lieutenant Governor candidate Mike Stack—defeated pro-life Governor Tom Corbett and Lieutenant Governor Jim Cawley.

Yet, nothing was as touching as the Election Night moment when Governor Corbett, in a graceful concession speech, praised Chloe Kondrich, a special needs child who successfully won passage of a law to ensure that parents of unborn babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome receive helpful information and referrals. The legislation was especially significant, since statistics indicate as many as 90 percent of unborn children diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted.

Sadly and tragically, such legislation would have had scarce chance of becoming law under the incoming Wolf/Stack regime.

History will show that, in just four years, Governor Corbett made tremendous progress in the fight for life, answering the Kermit Gosnell tragedy with swift and decisive action. Abortion facilities that went uninspected for more than 15 years finally are subject to regular health inspections…abortion operations must follow basic safety standards…and no taxpayer dollars will be used for abortion under the health insurance exchange created in Pennsylvania through Obamacare.

It will be up to the pro-life General Assembly to keep Wolf’s rabid abortion policies in check, so that protections for unborn children and their mothers will not disappear in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

How to Explain Why We Believe What We Believe about Life

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Last Saturday, I participated in a very encouraging youth event organized by the St. Gabriel Respect Life Committee in Carlisle.

CupcakeOne thing that really struck me about the event – from the speaker’s talk to the students’ comments — was the vital importance of teaching young pro-lifers to understand and articulate our position on life.

Guest speaker Missy Martinez from Students for Life said many young people are in the “mushy middle” when it comes to abortion. Many haven’t thought a lot about the issue.

Martinez encouraged students to start conversations with their peers about abortion. She laid out the basic pro-life position and discussed how pro-lifers can have civil, reasonable conversations with people around us. Here are the basics of the pro-life position:

We believe every human being has an equal right to life. Modern science has proven that from the moment of conception preborn babies are distinct human beings. Therefore, we believe preborn babies also should have an equal right to life.

We believe there is no significant difference between a preborn human being and a born human being that makes it ok to kill the preborn human. A preborn baby is different from an adult in size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency; however, the differences are not significant enough to make it ok to kill a preborn baby. Born humans also have these differences.

We believe that circumstances such as poverty or wantedness are not good reasons to kill a preborn baby in the same way that circumstances are not a good reason to kill a toddler. Both the preborn baby and the toddler are human beings who should have an equal right to life.

These points are foundational to our cause. Every pro-lifer should memorize them and be willing to discuss them. They explain what we believe and why it’s so important.

Please consider sharing this article. Or share this short video “Defending Your Pro-Life Views in Two Minutes or Less,” which explains the same points.

Planned Parenthood Abortions — 3 Percent or 93 Percent?

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Abortion advocates spin their deadly trade to make themselves look friendly and appealing. Even Planned Parenthood, our nation’s largest abortion provider, prefers to promote its other, non-abortion services to make itself look better.

PP3percentPlanned Parenthood claims that abortion makes up only 3 percent of its services, but Students for Life is calling out this deceptive abortion statistic in a new video. Watch here as Students for Life explains how the group manipulates its numbers to come up with 3 percent.

In the video, Students for Life breaks down Planned Parenthood’s annual report numbers and finds: Of all pregnant women who went to Planned Parenthood in 2012-2013, 93.78 percent had an abortion.

Planned Parenthood works hard and spends a lot of money (our tax dollars) to promote itself as a kind, caring women’s health organization. But its numbers point to Planned Parenthood’s true priority – abortion.

Planned Parenthood: Care. (About Abortion.) No Matter What.

Dear Magazine Publisher, Abortion Is Bad for Business

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By Maria Gallagher, Legislative Director
gallagher@paprolife.org

I recently felt tempted to subscribe to a fashion magazine in which a famous pop star graced the cover.

Image of a baby at seven weeksBut, when I happened upon the magazine’s website, I discovered an article claiming that having an abortion was not a difficult decision.

Not only did I not subscribe — but I let the publisher know why.

Abortion is, in fact, bad for business — but some business leaders are not getting the message. That’s why it’s important for us to communicate our view that abortion is not a trifling subject — it is a matter of life and death.

I think far too often we sell ourselves short, thinking our opinions don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. In fact, they do — and so do our decisions about where and how we spend our hard-earned money.

Businesses that promote abortion on demand for any reason during all nine months of pregnancy need to be taken to task. They need to be reminded that the radical agenda they are pushing is out of the mainstream.

In the end, money does talk — and it should talk in defense of the helpless baby and her mother.

Assisted Suicide, Quick Fixes, and a Lesson from My Dad

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Growing up, my dad always impressed upon us the importance of doing a job well.

He didn’t believe in quick fixes. When we worked with him, we were expected to finish the job right. If we made a mistake, he helped us repeat the task until it was correct.

OldwomanPerhaps the biggest test of this work ethic came when my father took on the huge task of building a home for us. I remember when my siblings and I helped him measure and lay the cinder block foundation. I was about 14 at the time, and I remember thinking he was being very fussy about measurements. He told us, if the foundation was even a fraction of an inch off, it would cause major problems as we built the rest of the house.

Throughout the building process, he strongly emphasized that we must not take short cuts or try to quick-fix a mistake we had made. He promised that he wouldn’t be angry if we made a mistake, but he would be upset if we tried to cover it up. And he was true to his word. If we made a mistake, he was patient with us. He took the time to teach us how to do it correctly, though it created more work for him.

Now as I look back, I realize how vitally important that lesson is to my work today. A recent episode of 60 Minutes reminded me of the newest quick fix being proposed in our society – legalized assisted suicide.

The show focused on the case of Barbara Mancini, a Schuylkill County woman who was arrested after allegedly helping her 93-year-old father, Joseph Yourshaw, commit suicide. Mancini later was exonerated due to the lack of evidence.

Still, Mancini told 60 Minutes that her father should have had the option to commit assisted suicide. She said her father was in pain, and he told people he wanted to die. Mancini now is working with the pro-euthanasia group Compassion and Choices to push for legalized assisted suicide.

But Dr. Ira Byock, who was interviewed later in the show, exposed assisted suicide as a quick-fix solution that ignores the real issue.

Byock, a Dartmouth College professor and a medical expert in end of life care, reviewed Yourshaw’s medical and hospice records and discovered that he was not receiving adequate care for his pain. Byock explained that almost all pain can be managed with modern medicine, but many health care providers aren’t trained well in pain management.

He also pointed out that the elderly and terminally ill are often made to feel that they are burdens on society, and Yourshaw felt he was being a burden, according to his medical records.

Byock emphasized that the solution for people like Yourshaw is not assisted suicide but better end-of-life care and the assurance that their lives still matter.

But making that solution a reality takes a lot of hard work. Our job as pro-lifers isn’t easy, just as my dad’s job wasn’t easy. It takes patience and perseverance to help an elderly or ill person through their day to day life. It takes hard work and dedication for health care professionals to learn the additional skills necessary to help relieve patients’ pain.

But without hard work, what do we get? The quick fixes of assisted suicide and abortion. They take away something valuable that we can never get back, no matter how hard we work — an individual person’s life.

Generation Y and Why They Are Naturally Pro-Life

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By Maria Gallagher, Legislative Director
gallagher@paprolife.org

“You’ve got to be taughtClassroom
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.”

— From the Broadway musical “South Pacific”

The lyrics above explored discrimination — but I think the sentiment also applies to the pro-abortion cause. I think you have to be carefully taught to deny the humanity of the unborn child and to accept Roe v. Wade.

I was reminded of this truism during a recent talk I gave to 7th and 8th grade religion students. I started by asking them how many abortions they thought took place in the U.S. each year. When I told them the number was estimated at more than a million, a look of incredulity crossed their faces — as if I had informed them their parents were throwing out their cell phones.

When we ventured onto the topic of euthanasia, their bewilderment increased. They could not understand why anyone would intentionally kill anyone — especially an elderly person or a person with a disability — under the guise of compassion. They were astounded.

I suppose someone on the pro-abortion side might argue that these students lacked the maturity to fully understand the issue of abortion. Yet, the same individual would probably argue that the female students would be mature enough to go before a judge and obtain a judicial bypass for an abortion.

Which is it — are young people not thoughtful enough to grasp Roe? Or are they so mature that they no longer need parental input in their decisions?

I would argue that a young person’s tendency is to treasure life — especially the lives of people younger than themselves. It is only when society brainwashes them into believing that life is random, dependent upon another’s whims, and disposable that they veer off into pro-abortion land.

After all, you have to be carefully taught.

Abortion Advocates, What Are You Doing to Protect Women from Other Gosnells?

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It’s time that we ask abortion advocates what they are doing to protect women from abortionists like Kermit Gosnell.

gosnell40These groups claim to advocate for women’s health. Yet they have not taken action to protect women after witnessing perhaps the most horrific treatment of women and babies at an abortion practice in modern history.

Abortion advocates joined pro-lifers in condemning Gosnell’s horrible practice. They were horrified by the case. But that’s where their actions stopped.

It’s clear that these groups do not believe abortion center regulations will meet their goals. Abortion advocates are vehemently opposed to laws such as those passed in Pennsylvania and Texas in response to Kermit Gosnell and the women and babies who he hurt and killed.

It’s time that we call them out and ask: what are they doing to protect women from abortionists who abuse and misuse their patients? And what do they believe our nation should do? If not abortion center regulations, what?

Some may say: “Gosnell certainly was terrible, and he deserves to be in prison. But he was just an outlier, an anomaly.”

The Kermit Gosnell case certainly was unlike anything America had ever witnessed before. Gosnell maimed and murdered women and babies for decades before authorities discovered him.

But there is evidence that Gosnell isn’t the only abortionist who is abusing women and babies. Consider Steven Brigham, Douglas Karpen, James Pendegraft, Charles Rossman. I could go on.

How are we to know whether there aren’t other abortionists like them? Gosnell got away with murder for decades due to the lack of abortion center regulations. The grand jury in Gosnell’s case recommended abortion center regulation laws so that other Gosnells wouldn’t be able to practice undetected.

Others may say: “We should do something, but abortion center regulations are doing more harm than good. These new laws are just shutting down women’s access to abortion. These laws will drive women to the back alley.”

But without abortion center regulations, couldn’t back alley abortionists be practicing on main street? Kermit Gosnell was.

Also, these laws are not stopping abortion advocates from opening new centers or upgrading their current ones to meet the basic health and safety standards required by the new laws. Sure, it takes time and money to build or upgrade anything, but isn’t the money worth it to ensure women’s health and safety?

Still others may say: “Abortion center regulations are just thinly veiled attempts to shut down abortion centers. Anti-abortionists want to take away a woman’s right to abortion.”

Unfortunately, the mainstream media has perpetuated the lie that pro-lifers could care less about women. We only care about babies.

The truth is that pro-lifers are stepping up where abortion advocates are not. We are fighting to protect women from abortionists like Gosnell. We work to pass abortion center regulations because women deserve better.

Abortion advocates have failed to protect women from abusive abortionists like Gosnell. It’s time we call them out and ask them: If you care about women, as you say you do, what are you doing to protect women from other Gosnells?

Doula Struggles with Saying 11-Year-Old’s Abortion, Sex-Selection Abortion Are Wrong

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I read a lot of terrible abortion stories for my job, but some break my heart more than others.

Mom-and-ChildA few weeks ago, I came across a column in the New York Magazine written by an abortion doula. Curious, I clicked on the story and read about the young woman, who provides emotional support for women as they have abortions.

I began to feel more and more horrified as I read about her work and her attempts to justify really terrible things. She writes:

“A year ago, when I was just starting out, Mitchell met with me and the other trainees to talk about the job. We sat in the park, eating pie. She gave us a sheet with situations so exaggeratedly horrible they seemed unreal: An 11-year-old in for an abortion who asks for birth control when she’s alone with the doctor. Her mother works nights; she’d been left with a friend who has a twentysomething son. She calls him her boyfriend; he will go to jail. A woman who says she’d like to do another ultrasound to see if it’s definitely a girl, because she’ll only keep it if it isn’t. …
“’What do you assume?’ Mitchell asked of each case. ‘How can you be supportive?’ We talked about what would be hard for us to overcome, things we might say or do and how we might feel. I felt embarrassed by my assumptions, and the limits of my compassion. I judged these women on the worthiness of their reasons (‘Would she really only keep a boy?’ I wondered) and found myself questioning why those who come in for late-term abortions had waited so long to decide. Later, I learned from Mahoney that all the examples were real cases that had come from her first six months working as an abortion doula.” (You can read the full article here. Parts of it are graphic.)

I hung my head in anger and shame as I read about this young woman from my own generation, a young woman so caught up in the net of moral relativism that she believes it is compassionate to dismiss the rape of an 11-year-old or condone the woman who is aborting her baby simply because she’s a girl.

My generation place high moral value on the idea of acceptance and non-judgment. I think it comes from college, where we’ve been taught moral relativism – your morals aren’t better than mine, and mine aren’t better than yours. We have no right to judge someone else’s actions or beliefs. There is no right or wrong.

Acceptance, inclusiveness, a judgment-free attitude – these are all good things. But when these concepts are taken to the extreme of moral relativism, they become dangerous, and this article is a perfect example of it. Acceptance and non-judgment are no excuse for ignoring things that are truly terrible.

Sometimes people are wrong. Rape is wrong. Taking advantage of a child is wrong. Sex trafficking is wrong. Ignoring the victim of a crime is wrong. Killing an innocent person is wrong.

I could feel the columnist struggling with right and wrong throughout her column. Some situations seemed wrong to her, and rightly so. Yet, moral relativism won the hour.

Let’s not let it win the day. Abortion is wrong. We must never shy away from saying it – though we also must be compassionate when we do. Contrary to what moral relativists would have us believe, realizing that something is wrong opens the doors for us to extend a hand of compassion and love to those who are hurting. And that is true compassion.

How One Student’s Pro-Life Speech Impacted Millions for Life

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In 2009, 12-year-old Lia Mills wowed the pro-life community with a simple YouTube video of her school speech about abortion.

Lia spoke so articulately and passionate about protecting life that her video immediately spread across the globe. Watch it here. LiaMills1

“What if I told you that, right now, someone was choosing if you were going to live or die?” she says in the video. “Thousands of children are right now in that very situation. That someone is their mother. And that choice is abortion.”

Today, her video has more than 2.4 million views on YouTube, but her impact has been so much more than mere numbers.

According to a 2012 article in Toronto Life, Lia has received many “thank you” notes from pregnant women who watched her video and decided not to have an abortion. She also travels throughout the U.S. and Canada speaking and inspiring thousands of pro-lifers.

Lia’s exceptional story is an example of why our organization hosts an annual Pro-Life Oratory Contest for students. We believe in encouraging young people to use their voice for life. When young people speak up with passion and sincerity, people listen, and babies and their moms are spared from the pain of abortion.

Our contest is open to students in 9th to 12th grades. Students must write their own original speeches on the topic of abortion, euthanasia, or stem cell research, videotape the speech, and submit it to us by April 15, 2015. For details, email lifelines@paprolife.org or click here.

Please encourage students you know to participate. Like Lia, they can make a big impact for life!