HARRISBURG, Pa. – The U.S. Supreme Court has dealt a tragic blow to the health and safety of women with its ruling striking down provisions of a common sense Texas law regulating abortion centers and abortionists.

“The Supreme Court has sided with abortionists over women in this disturbing decision,” said Maria Gallagher, legislative director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, the Pennsylvania affiliate of National Right to Life. “Women’s health and safety could be severely compromised as a result of this ruling.”

The Texas law required abortion facilities to follow basic health and safety standards and for abortionists to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. States have moved to more closely scrutinize abortion centers in the wake of the Kermit Gosnell tragedy. Gosnell was a West Philadelphia abortionist who was convicted of killing three full-term babies and causing the death of a female patient in what prosecutors called a “House of Horrors.”

“Before the revelations about Gosnell, hair and nail salons were more stringently regulated than abortion facilities. The Gosnell case clearly showed that the abortion industry has not been policing itself—that the state needs to step in to protect women. We are saddened that the Supreme Court has issued a ruling that could prevent future Gosnells from being put out of business,” Gallagher said.

“This is a tremendous loss for the women of America,” Gallagher added.

This is a great piece that compares presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump and presumptive Democrat Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on abortion. Please share this on your social media pages, give a copy to your pro-life friends, and have as a handout at fairs, festivals, and carnivals at your pro-life booth.

2016 Presidential Candidate Comparison Piece

The Pennsylvania Pro Life Federation would like to congratulate the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for passing, in a bipartisan vote of 132 to 65, House Bill 1948 a common sense piece of legislation which bans brutal dismemberment abortions.

“These common abortions are performed on fully developed, preborn babies at their most vulnerable, and when they should be the safest,” said Maria Gallagher, Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation Legislative Director. “In a dismemberment abortion, fully-formed babies are brutally torn apart limb from limb. We’ve seen ultrasound images of these babies clapping, dancing, and reacting to stimuli from outside the womb. Surely we can all agree that they do not deserve to be torn apart in the most horrific and gruesome way possible,” Gallagher added.
Dismemberment abortions have been described by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in Gonzales v. Carhart as a procedure that is “laden with the power to devalue human life.” Of the approximately 1 million abortions performed annually in this country, almost 9% are performed by dismemberment. Approximately 1,550 Pennsylvanians died from this abortion method in 2014.
Former abortionist Dr. George Flesh has been quoted as saying:
“Tearing a developed fetus apart, limb by limb, is an act of depravity that society should not permit. We cannot afford such a devaluation of human life, nor the desensitization of medical personnel it requires. This is not based on what the fetus might feel but on what we should feel in watching an exquisite, partly formed human being dismembered.”
“Most countries are civilized enough to realize pre-born babies should not be torn apart. There are only seven countries in the world, including human rights-violating countries such as North Korea and China, that allow this terrible act. Pennsylvanians deserve better,” stated Michael Ciccocioppo, executive director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, the Pennsylvania affiliate of National Right to Life. “This is an important first step in removing us from that stigma. Now we call on the Pennsylvania Senate to act quickly to concur and on Governor Wolf to sign the bill to protect his most vulnerable constituents.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                                       CONTACT:  MARIA GALLAGHER, PA PRO-LIFE                                                               717-541-0034

June 20, 2016                                                                                                                         

HARRISBURG, Pa. –Presumptive GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump has won the support of Pennsylvania’s largest single issue pro-life organization.

The Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation voted unanimously in State College this past weekend to give its political action committee’s support to Mr. Trump.

“Donald Trump will be a dedicated defender of innocent human life in the White House,” said Maria Gallagher, PAC Director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. “He has pledged to appoint Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who will interpret the law, rather than aggressively making laws from the bench. In sharp contrast, his opponent, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, would have a radically pro-abortion litmus test for judicial nominees,” Gallagher added.

Mr. Trump also supports a ban on gruesome late-term abortions, in which fully-developed, living babies are killed in their mothers’ wombs. Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Act, which was supported by a vast majority of Americans.

In addition, Mr. Trump will safeguard our hard-earned taxpayer dollars from being used to support organizations that perform abortions. Mrs. Clinton, in contrast, opposes a ban on tax funding of abortions, despite national public opinion polls which show that nearly seven in 10 Americans, including Millennials and women, oppose taxpayer funding of abortion.

“When it comes to safeguarding precious babies and their mothers from harm, Donald Trump is the clear choice for President,” Gallagher said. “He recognizes the distinct value of human life and has pledged to protect it from its earliest stages—something that Mrs. Clinton, sadly and tragically, refuses to do.”

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The Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation is a grassroots right-to-life organization with members statewide.  PPLF is committed to promoting the dignity and value of human life from conception to natural death and to restoring legal protection for preborn children.

 

 

Infanticide. Dictionary.com defines it as “the act of killing an infant”.

It isn’t something we like to think about in “polite” circles. If we do, we consider it something that happens “over there” in “less civilized” countries. After all, we would never kill a baby once he or she has been born…they need our protection and love, right?

The unfortunate and gruesome reality is, infanticide is happening right here in the United States, many times every day, maybe even right in your community.

Consider the case of Kermit Gosnell, the abortion “doctor” who specialized in late-term “abortions”.  Since Gosnell wasn’t a very good doctor, he didn’t want to go through the trouble of killing the baby in utero (an actual abortion).  Instead, he would anesthetize the mother, induce labor, and after the baby was born, kill him or her…..usually by snipping their spinal cord at the base of their neck with a pair of scissors. Make no mistake about it, these were babies who would have survived with the proper care, but Gosnell lied to his victims and killed their babies.

I can hear the naysayers now…Gosnell was a monster, an outlier…those cases do not happen every day!

The unfortunate, and brutal, reality, is that these cases happen more often than you may think. Granted, most abortionists try to make sure the baby is dead before being removed from the womb, either by pulling the child apart limb from limb, as in a dismemberment abortion, or by burning the baby to death with an injection of saline.  However, there are many stories of babies who survived their abortion.  Worse are the stories now coming out of babies who survive the abortion procedure, but the abortionist takes matters into his or her own hands and kills the baby…either by stabbing the baby to death, strangling the baby, or in most cases, cutting the baby’s spinal cord, as Mr. Gosnell did.  In recent Congressional testimony, current and former abortion workers admit that, at best, if a baby is born alive, they will ignore him or her until he or she dies on his or her own.

None of this is to say an abortion is better than infanticide.  In either case, the life of a living human being is ended against his or her will. The larger point is, we need to realize the horrors of all pro-life issues—abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide, and euthanasia and work to help those around us to always choose life

 

Much outrage has been expressed recently over the death of a silverback gorilla at a Cincinnati zoo.  For those unfamiliar with the story, a four year old boy fell into the gorilla’s cage and the gorilla was shot because he was manhandling the child and did not respond to calls from his handlers to leave the boy alone.

Since the event, there has been a great deal of outrage over the decision to shoot the animal instead of tranquilizing it.  Whomever is to blame (and there is probably more than enough to go around), this incident provides an opportunity to share a pro-life message with abortion advocates.

The outrage over the shooting of the gorilla implies that the gorilla’s life had some level of intrinsic value.  The gorilla’s value comes from his species’ general ability to socialize and empathize.  It is the same intrinsic value that we all have, despite race, gender, intelligence, or any other attribute or quality.  This value is what makes us all equal.

Unfortunately, some don’t recognize that everyone has that intrinsic value.  Abortion advocates would contend that preborn babies don’t have the same value as the rest of the human race, and therefore it is acceptable to kill them if their existence would cause an inconvenience for others.

The death of Harambe is an excellent opportunity to talk about the intrinsic value of all living things.  I would encourage you, when you come across someone outraged over the death of this beautiful animal, talk to them about how their outrage should also be directed to those who callously devalue human life.  Your conversation may be the one to help someone choose life!

When most people think about pro-life issues, their thoughts turn immediately to the issue of abortion. However, at the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation we also believe that end of life issues such as euthanasia and assisted suicide are equally important, and we are very active in protecting the Pennsylvania law that prevents assisted suicide. However, recent legislation in New York serves as a reminder that we need to be ever vigilant against assisted suicide in Pennsylvania.

It is important to understand that assisted suicide is really doctor-prescribed suicide. Where assisted suicide has been legalized, there is no assistance. The way it works is a doctor provides his or her patient who has a prognosis of less than 6 months to live with a prescription for a lethal dose of pills. That person then just takes that prescription to their local pharmacist who fills it like any other prescription, puts it in a bag, and wishes them a great day. They then take death home and ingest the pills when they feel like it. There is no oversight…no doctor assisting the patient…there is no assistance at all…just a person who has been given horrible news and a bottle of instant death.

It is also important to understand that the number one reason people give for wanting to commit doctor prescribed suicide is not severe pain as most assisted suicide advocates would have you believe; it is not even a lack of ability to take care of yourself, but it is simply the fear that you will someday not be able to care for yourself anymore. People who are considering suicide don’t need a bunch of pills, what they need is someone to be there for them and help them through a difficult time.

As if doctor prescribed suicide isn’t bad enough, it is only an interim step towards its advocates’ ultimate goal. The main group advocating for these horrible laws is called Compassion and Choices. That all sounds well and good, until you realize that Compassion and Choices is nothing more than the old Hemlock Society rebranded. They are not going to stop with doctor-prescribed suicide, what they really want is euthanasia…the ability for the state to decide that someone’s life isn’t worth continuing and kill them…even if it is against their will. Euthanasia advocates know theirs is not a popular opinion right now, but they also know if they can get people to accept assisted suicide, euthanasia is the next logical step. All you have to do is consider what is going on in Belgium where people are going to other countries for medical care because they are afraid their doctor will decide their life is not worth continuing anymore. Belgians are even wearing bracelets that say “please don’t euthanize me”. If we want to ensure that doesn’t happen in the United States and especially here in Pennsylvania, it starts with preventing assisted suicide laws such as what was recently approved by a New York assembly health committee, and what has been introduced in the Pennsylvania legislature, from becoming law.

To help make sure Pennsylvania does not approve doctor-prescribed suicide, the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation has joined a coalition of like-minded organizations such as disability rights groups and others who are scared to death of the implications of assisted suicide and euthanasia. You can learn more about the Pennsylvania Coalition to Stop Doctor-Prescribed Suicide, and sign up for email updates, at noassistedsuicidePA.org.  Help us show people that no matter what their circumstances, there is always a reason to choose life.