Author Archives: Matthew Wagner

Tom Wolf Endorsed by Radical Abortion Group NARAL

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By Maria Gallagher, Legislative/PAC Director

The Democratic candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Wolf, has the backing of the pro-abortion PAC known as NARAL.

Capitol-front-viewLargeA press release said that Wolf, whose TV ads portray him as an affable cabinet maker, “happily accepted” the endorsement.

“I am thankful to NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC for their support,” Wolf was quoted as saying.

NARAL supports abortion on demand for any reason during all nine months of pregnancy. The special interest group opposes all protective laws, including restrictions on late-term abortions and bans on taxpayer funding of abortion.

The endorsement clearly indicates that a Wolf administration would attempt to turn back the clock on the significant gains Pennsylvania has made in protecting women and children in the aftermath of the massive Kermit Gosnell tragedy. Gosnell was ultimately convicted of killing three full-term babies and causing the death of a female patient in his abortion center “House of Horrors.”

Back in the Gosnell era, abortion centers in the Keystone State went uninspected for 15 years or more. The Gosnell grand jury said the refusal to inspect resulted from the pro-abortion political stands of former Governors Ridge and Rendell.

Governor Tom Corbett took swift action in response to the Gosnell case, holding bureaucratic ideologues responsible, retooling the state health department, and insisting on inspections of abortion facilities.

Governor Corbett also signed into law Pennsylvania’s landmark abortion center regulation act, which placed the Commonwealth at the forefront of national efforts to safeguard the health and safety of women. At least a half-dozen abortion facilities closed because they either could not or would not abide by these basic safety standards.

The media should consider asking Wolf whether the NARAL endorsement means that he also rejects unannounced inspections of abortion facilities and the common sense safety standards that are now protecting women in Pennsylvania.

Yet Another Abortionist Is Convicted of Mistreating Women

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The law finally caught up with abortionist Charles Rossman this summer. The Georgia abortionist was sentenced to five years in prison for locking a woman in his office after she took a handful of abortion pills and went into labor, according to LifeNews.com.

The woman callGaveled 911, and police arrived and broke down Rossman’s office door right before she gave birth to a baby boy.

After this happened in 2003, Rossman fled the country to avoid charges. A decade later, he was captured in Germany and brought back to the U.S. to face charges.

These articles about abortionists’ horrible mistreatment of women seem so common on pro-life news sites.

As I was reading the article, I wondered what it would look like to compare the percentage of abortion doctors who have been charged with or convicted of crimes to doctors as a whole. I think we’d be shocked by what we’d find.

Sidewalk Counselor’s Compassion Touches Angry Father’s Heart

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Compassion is something I think about a lot. I strive to be compassionate and respectful to every human being – whether preborn baby or mother, elderly adult or teenager, pro-lifer or abortion advocate.

Yet, I struggle. It’s easy to throw compassion to the wayside when someone starts yelling. Unborn baby pictureOur natural urge is to defend ourselves. It takes a lot of self-control and compassion to keep calm, but it’s a virtue we must strive for as pro-lifers.

When we respond in love, not anger, we show that person that we care about them enough to put our anger and discomfort aside.

I was reminded of this the other day when I was talking to a dedicated sidewalk counselor in our area.

A few weeks ago, she approached a couple going into the abortion center. The father berated her and cursed at her as they walked by. She kept calm, assuring them she only wanted to offer free support to them and their baby. They ignored her and walked inside the building.

About 15 minutes later the father came out and approached her. First, he apologized for yelling at her, and then he confided that he did not want the abortion.

She encouraged him to talk to his partner and told him about the free help available at the local pregnancy center. As he walked back inside, she began praying. Soon, he came out again with his partner. They were beaming as they told her they were going to keep their baby.

I’m pretty sure it was her compassion that made all the difference to him. He could see that she genuinely cared about him and his family. If she had yelled back, I wonder if he would have confided in her the way he did. Probably not.

It’s hard to be compassionate when we know babies are being killed every single day in our towns. We should be upset that abortion is legal, but we’re not going to change minds by reacting in anger.

When we react in compassion and love, we demonstrate our ultimate purpose as pro-lifers – to ensure that every human life, born and preborn, is valued and protected.

Government Study May Have Put Premature Babies at Risk

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I always find it interesting how news stories seem to coincide.

A few days ago, I read about a Time magazine cover story featuring the wonderful medical technology now available to help premature babies survive and thrive.LiveActionvideo

Today, I read about an investigation into a government study of premature babies that may have put the babies’ lives at greater risk.

The Daily Signal reports that some parents were encouraged to sign up for the study without receiving details about what it was or how it could risk their babies’ already fragile health.

According to the article, “It was a national, government-funded experiment on 1,316 extremely premature infants in which their fate may as well have rested with the flip of a coin.”

The study researched the effects of oxygen given at different levels to premature babies. When a premature baby’s lungs are still developing, too much or too little oxygen can cause serious damage. Researches wanted to find the perfect amount for these babies.

Sounds good, right? The problem was that “there were key differences in how researchers treated babies in the study compared with those not in the study.”

“Normally, medical personnel constantly adjust oxygen as preemies’ conditions change, based on their individual needs. But the SUPPORT study was designed to keep infants in their randomly assigned range, despite a baby’s individual needs.
“And in a decision that one government source says shocked seasoned researchers when they learned of it, the babies’ oxygen monitors intentionally were altered to provide false readings. The reason: so medical staff wouldn’t be tempted to adjust oxygen out of the babies’ study-assigned range.”

Why are some babies treated with the utmost care and value, while others are being used as objects for research? Why this inequality?

Our abortion-minded culture has allowed us to devalue certain human beings, to treat them as objects because they are sick or poor or unwanted.

Through stories like these, we as pro-lifers can help others to see how critically important it is to treat every single human life equally.

Rape Victims Hurt by Assumption That They Want Abortion

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Victims of rape deserve our utmost compassion and support, but they’re not getting it in today’s abortion-minded society.

Mom-and-ChildAn article this week in the Christian Science Monitor explores a major problem that’s never addressed in debates about abortion and rape: People automatically assume that rape victims who become pregnant want to have an abortion.

The assumption is very dangerous because, first, it denies the fact that there is a second victim involved, the preborn child, and, second, it pressures these victimized women toward abortion.

Analyn Megison, a mother in Florida who was raped and had a daughter as a result, explained how she was criticized and condemned for choosing life.

“People ridicule you and distrust you because you chose to have your child – ‘Oh, you must not have been raped,’ ” Megison says. “It’s such a strange world we live in where you have to be questioned as a mother why you love the child that … you nurse and play with and pray with and read stories with.” Read the rest of the report here.

What has our society become that we fail to protect and support the most victimized among us?

Gosnell Case Continues as Staffer Faces Sentencing

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The case of Kermit Gosnell’s “house of horrors” abortion center continues, and most of the media is back to ignoring it.

Karnamaya Mongar

Karnamaya Mongar

Lynda Williams, one of Gosnell’s staffers, was sentenced last week for her involvement in his criminal drug distribution, according to the Philadelphia Daily News.

Gosnell and his staff made money off of selling prescription pain killers illegally. It was Gosnell’s “pill mill” and not his deathly abortion practices that first led investigators to his West Philadelphia facility.

This week, Williams is expected to be sentenced for her role in the deaths of a newborn baby and female patient Karnamaya Mongar. She already pled guilty to third-degree murder for their deaths. Williams, like most of Gosnell’s staff, was not a licensed medical professional.

The mainstream media would prefer that we forget about Williams and Gosnell and the Philadelphia “house of horrors” abortion center. Though the case continues more than a year after Kermit Gosnell’s murder convictions, we hear almost nothing in the news about it.

I share this update on the case so that we as pro-lifers don’t forget.

When Life Begins According to Embryology Textbooks

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I just wanted to follow up my post yesterday with this link to scientific evidence about the beginning of life.

Baby feetThis LifeNews.com article lists nine academic sources showing scientific proof that a new human life begins at the moment of fertilization.

Here is just one for you: “The fusion of sperm and egg membranes initiates the life of a sexually reproducing organism.” — Marsden et al., Model systems for membrane fusion, CHEM. SOC. REV. 40(3):1572 (Mar. 2011)

Despite what the deniers may say, scientific evidence is on our side. Keep this article handy, so the next time someone denies the truth about when life begins you can point them to these sources.

MSNBC Says Life Isn’t a Scientific Term

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I rarely read MSNBC anymore, but curiosity got the better of me. I clicked on their response to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s comment about liberals denying the science of life and abortion.

Handsholdingfetus

Baby at 6-8 weeks

The MSNBC headline read, “Marco Rubio’s scientific blunder on abortion.”

Here’s what the third paragraph said, “In fact, ‘life’ and ‘conception’ aren’t scientific terms, and the rights of a blastocyst, embryo or fetus compared to the pregnant woman aren’t up to scientists; they’re subjective, based on personal, religious, or political commitments.”

I couldn’t help but scoff at that sentence. It made me wonder how journalism has sunk to this new low. (My background is in journalism, by the way.)

Their statement that life and conception aren’t scientific terms is ridiculous (and I don’t use that word lightly). Even the determination of when life begins is a scientific fact, as Sen. Rubio stated.

Life, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is “an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction.”

These terms are not subjective. If they were subjective, then how could scientists look for life on Mars or in the Mariana Trench? If they were subjective, how can we determine whether you or I are alive?

Sometimes I think our head-to-the-iPhone culture saturates our minds with so much information that we forget to think about what we’re reading.

As pro-lifers, we need to step up and be critical thinkers – whether we’re reading an article from a pro-life perspective or a pro-abortion perspective.

Our mission is too critical. We are fighting against 40-plus years of legalized abortion. We are fighting for the 56 million babies who lost their lives as a result, and the millions more who are vulnerable to the threat.

Woman Shares Her Journey to Healing after Eight Abortions

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When I met Tammi Morris for the first time, she helped me to understand something I’ve struggled with many times – why a woman would have multiple abortions.

Tammi had eight.

Tammi came from a difficult background. She grew up in a very poor neighborhood. Her mother was battling substance abuse.35a420_d8ea7fbe3e57414eb756db83b7bdcbda

Tammi found herself pregnant at 16, and people looked down on her for it. Not long after giving birth to her baby girl, everyone around Tammi basically abandoned her, and she became homeless. When she was just 17, she had to battle her in-laws to keep custody of her baby daughter. She was young, frightened, and all alone.

It was then that she found herself pregnant again. Already at her whits end, she didn’t see any way she could have another baby. So, Tammi had an abortion.

“They say there’s no fate worse than death, but it my mind there was – and that was me being your mother,” Tammi told me. “And I would go on to believe that for 13 years.”

Tammi was determined to change her life. She got her GED, went to college, and worked multiple jobs. She eventually gained the success that she had dreamed of: a good job, house in the suburbs, SUV, and pool in the backyard. But inside, she was still broken. She continued to have abortions.

One day, Tammi said God touched her broken heart in a powerful way. She cleaned up her life and eventually found healing and forgiveness for aborting eight of her children.

Now, she is sharing her story publicly because she wants to help other post-abortive women know that there is forgiveness in Christ. She also has a strong desire to encourage pregnant women to choose life.

There is much more to Tammi’s story, and I would strongly encourage you to listen to her tell it on our April LifeLines podcast. Or visit Tammi’s website.

Tammi, in her humility, helped me to understand how her brokenness and desperation led to her abortions, and how desperately pregnant and new moms need our encouragement and support and post-abortive women need our forgiveness and compassion.

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If you or someone you know is pregnant and needs help, contact the Pennsylvania pregnancy hotline at 1-888-LIFE-AID or click here to find a pregnancy center near you.

If you or someone you know is seeking healing after an abortion, contact Rachel’s Vineyard here.

Our New Website Is Here – Same Location, New Look

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Our new website is here! We’ve been working on updating our old site for quite a while now, and thanks to the talent and hard work of our IT Director Bill and graphics designer Keith, it’s finally ready to launch.

The site launched on Sunday, May 11, in honor of Mother’s Day.NewWebsite

We’re still at the same address, www.paprolife.org, but we have introduced a whole new look – with new features, updated content and easy-to-access pro-life information. The site was designed to be compatible with today’s browsers and mobile devices, so it’s easier to navigate, too.

We want paprolife.org to be the go-to place for Pennsylvanians seeking answers about life. Please visit our new site and send us your feedback at lifelines@paprolife.org.

And keep checking in. We will be adding more new content in the coming weeks.