Pennsylvania’s pro-abortion Democratic Governor is being taken to task for alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis.
A group of Congressmen from Pennsylvania have sent a letter to the Commonwealth’s Attorney General, asking if he is investigating Gov. Tom Wolf for reportedly undercounting Coronavirus deaths in nursing homes. Similar allegations in New York have resulted in a major scandal for Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The PA letter is signed by pro-life Republican Congressmen John Joyce, Mike Kelly, Guy Reschenthaler, and Glenn Thompson.
Governor Wolf—a former clinic escort for abortion giant Planned Parenthood—is well-known for his pro-abortion stance. Now, he’s under fire for the way he’s been dealing with those in the twilight of life who populate the Commonwealth’s nursing homes.
Congressman Reschenthaler told PA news outlet KDKA, “I simply want to know if AG Shapiro is looking into whether Governor Wolf, like Governor Cuomo, is deflating the statistics and hiding the numbers in Pennsylvania.”
The Congressman added, “The fact that Governor Wolf has basically mimicked Governor Cuomo in the handling, I should say mishandling, of this pandemic makes me suspicious. And at the end of the day, we should all want transparency. Governor Wolf should be open.”
Attorney General Josh Shapiro responded that his office investigates criminal matters, and questions about data collection should be sent to the state’s Inspector General.
While the Governor indicated he would be open to that, his office also took the opportunity to blast the Republican Congressmen.
“These baseless, endemic insinuations by the GOP that Pennsylvania may have misrepresented nursing home deaths betray a significant lack of understanding of our reporting going back to the beginning of the pandemic.”
Still, significant questions about the PA Governor’s handling of the pandemic remain. Advocates for life wonder whether better decision-making by the Chief Executive could have resulted in fewer COVID-19-related deaths in the Commonwealth.
Somewhere in Pennsylvania in 2019, an abortion was
performed on a 12-year-old girl.
We don’t know her name. Or her story.
We do know she was not the only one. The 2020 PA Department of Health annual report on abortion reveals that three other 12-year-old girls also had abortions. And twelve 13-year-olds. Fifty-five 14-year-olds. One hundred sixteen 15-year-olds. All in our Commonwealth, all in one year.
We know nothing of the circumstances surrounding their
pregnancies, but we do know that each of these precious young women, many still
in middle school, have endured something they shouldn’t have.
They- and their unborn children-are more than a statistic.
Compounding the tragedy of ending an innocent life in
the sanctuary of the womb is the additional horror that abortion fails to
protect vulnerable young girls from trauma.
They too are victims and deserving of our help and protection.
What steps did the abortion business take to make sure
these young women were not being returned to a situation marked by unhealthy
relationships, abuse, molestation, or sex trafficking? What help did they offer to assure they are
not repeat customers?
Or was the abortion simply a financial transaction,
where problematic “evidence” is “erased” for a dollar amount while the root
problem itself remains unaddressed? Is
not abortion then the abuser’s tool, allowing for continued exploitation of
young women?
Abortion ends the life of a human already created, but it does not end the situation that may have given rise to that life. And so the cycle continues.
While many who support abortion claim it liberates women, the fact is abortion can enslave women to toxic relationships and perpetuate abuse. Coercion, whether strong or subtle, characterizes almost 2/3 of abortions as reported by the women who get them.
And yet, the abortion business seems to have no desire
to protect vulnerable women or reduce abortion, even among teens. In fact,
former abortion workers report that the industry actually aspires to have women
come back for multiple abortions. Some centers actually set abortion quotas for
a given year knowing it is their most profitable “service.”
It’s a most sinister business model, but, sadly, one that seems to work for the abortion industry. In 2019, 47.3% of abortions performed in Pennsylvania were repeat abortions. Of those, 4.6% (1,437) were to women having had four or more previous abortions and 5.5% (1726) to women having had three previous abortions.
These women-and girls- are so much more than a statistic or business transaction.
They deserve better from a society that claims to be “woke” and to fight for marginalized populations. We afford more legal protection to animals than to these precious human beings.
These women deserve to be helped out of difficult
situations and protected from harm. They deserve to be supported, encouraged,
and empowered. And their innocent children, no matter the circumstances of
their conception, deserve a chance at life, not the death penalty.
Behind each statistic is a true-life story with real people
in need. The pro-life movement is working hard to rewrite a better, brighter,
and life-affirming next chapter for all of them.
The fourth installment in our
weekly blog on Subverted: How I Helped
the Sexual Revolution to Highjack the Women’s Movement by Sue Ellen Browder.
The longing for truth is etched on the human heart,
leading us to search in all kinds of places for it. Yet, often, we are left
dissatisfied.
Such was the case with two very different people, a
man and a woman, in the early 1970’s: a struggling freelance writer and an
accomplished Supreme Court Justice.
Unknown to one another, they were both exploring the
same questions regarding women and equality.
Sue Ellen Browder admits in her memoir Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution to Highjack the Women’s Movement that she sought answers in Abraham Maslow’s humanistic psychology of “self-as-God” and in Germaine Greer’s “fearlessness” as the path to true freedom. Consequently, with disregard to her own moral compass, she threw herself into her career, certain it was there she would find true self-fulfillment.
Around the same time, Justice Harry Blackmun, a
Republican, Methodist, and family man, struggled for months to write the majority
opinion for Roe vs. Wade. His first draft
was roundly rejected by liberal colleagues who considered it too weak an argument
for abortion. Blackmun vowed to come up with a stronger legal opinion.
His 28 year-old law clerk, known for his excellent
writing skills, would come to his rescue. He possessed a book that could be
used to bolster the case. Abortion: The
first authoritative and documented report on the laws and practices governing
abortion in the U.S. and around the world, and how-for the sake of women everywhere-they
can and must be reformed was written by National Association for the Repeal
of Abortion Laws co-founder Larry Lader.
This particular book had convinced National Organization for Women president Betty Friedan to insert an abortion platform into the women’s movement. It would be footnoted in Blackmun’s majority opinion no less than seven times. The problem, however, was that it was far more propaganda than fact.
Browder writes, “For when Blackmun accepted Larry
Lader, a mere magazine writer, as a reliable authority on history, philosophy,
and theology, he became a blind man following a blind guide.”
A newly crafted opinion was finalized on August 10,
1972 and in a highly unusual move, Blackmun’s law clerk circulated it to the
other justices before final oral arguments without being first fact-checked. He
believed that among other things, this step “might well influence voting.”
The strategy worked in that six other justices joined Blackmun in the final vote on Roe. However, the opinion itself was widely criticized in the legal world. One law professor and well-known abortion supporter, John Hart Ely, called the opinion “bad,” saying “it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”
Blackmun was accused by pro-abortion historian David Garrow
of ceding “far too much of his judicial authority to his clerks,” to a degree
that was “indefensible.”
Even Blackmun himself remained uneasy with the
decision, stating that the ruling might go down as one of the worst mistakes in
the court’s history.
He, like Browder, had searched for answers in places where truth could not be found.
And the consequences for both Browder and for our
country would be devastating.
We’re
doubling up for next week. Join us in reading Chapters 9-12.
Quotable Quotes
“Perhaps they realized that legal abortion could be
extremely helpful to men- enabling them to escape paternity suits, years of
child support, social embarrassment, and the wrath of betrayed wives.” (p. 93)
“Despite his best efforts, Harry failed to see he had
embraced a well-crafted verbal mirage, mistaking it for truth.” (p. 95)
It might seem implausible that a small number of people would wield such power, but truth, after all, is stranger than fiction.
And the truth about what happened
at New York City’s Mayflower Hotel on November 18, 1967 is not well known. So the story must be told.
In her expose Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual
Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement, Sue Ellen Browder uses transcribed
minutes of the National Organization for Women’s Second Convention to reveal
the tug of war between factions, the rising hostilities over abortion, and the
final vote that would drive one-third of the attendees to part ways with NOW.
Browder allows us to be “A Fly on the Wall of the Chinese Room,” witnessing the sabotage of a once-noble movement as the group carves out their own Bill of Rights. Eighty-nine people registered for the convention, including a handful of men, but 105 attend, the result of students and radicals showing up.
Two leaders sit side-by-side at the head table. One is 46 year-old author Betty Friedan, a flamboyant, combative atheist and mother to three children whose volatile marriage is headed for divorce. Only recently had she accepted abortion as an issue essential to women’s rights, thanks to the influence of friend Larry Lader.
Seated beside her as the parliamentarian charged with keeping peace is much older Marguerite Rawalt, a dignified, retired attorney. Known as a bridge builder and D.C. insider, her nationwide connections with professional women include long-time friend Alice Paul, leader of the suffragette movement. Widowed after 26 years of a happy marriage, Marguerite’s deep Presbyterian faith guides her world view.
While their style and life experience differ greatly, much unites Betty and Marguerite in their work for women’s rights: equal pay for equal work, increasing roles in the political arena, and expanding educational opportunities.
But the abortion issue, saved for the final resolution of the convention, divides them. To the shock of many, Betty presses for full repeal of all abortion laws, sparking fiery debate among NOW members. Further, she fails to show equal treatment to opposing sides, frequently shutting people down. Dr. Shepherd Aaronson, the only doctor in the room, was “shut up in no uncertain terms” while women who knew nothing of abortion were allowed to speak.
Many press for a delay in making a statement on abortion until further study, but a small group of radicals grows increasingly vocal. When a revised statement about abortion is offered, Friedan scoffs. “We should not compromise,” she declares. “We must pioneer.”
A furious Marguerite Rawalt fears that abortion will take over NOW’s agenda and replace the “genuine legal battles for equality.” She is far from alone.
When a vote is taken, a “Mere 57” members call for the total repeal of all abortion laws as part of NOW’s platform. In that moment “the women’s movement and the sexual revolution became united as one in the eyes of the media and the world. The unholy marriage was consummated.”
While Friedan was able to secure a majority, Browder reports a discrepancy between the number of people voting and the number of people in attendance, a mystery that to this day remains.
Many members felt that Betty “rammed through the vote for abortion in a totally undemocratic process.” Television broadcaster and NOW official Paige Palmer accused Friedan of “overbearing behavior during the abortion debate” and “railroading.” Attorney Elizabeth Boyer quit NOW’s board of directors, later founding the Women’s Equality Action League (WEAL), an organization focused on ending sex discrimination and staying out of the abortion debate.
Overtime, Friedan expressed regrets at this division in the women’s movement. In the 1980’s she observed that “women of childbearing years were dividing into bitter antagonistic camps as they were forced into no-win, either-or choices, motherhood vs. career.”
In her book The Second Stage, she called for the women’s movement to stop overemphasizing abortion rights and reaffirm the importance of the family, noting that “The women’s movement…has come to a dead end…Our failure was our blind spot about the family.”
But as Browder states, “The dirty deed was done and there was no turning back…Working mothers and single women of child-bearing age had been betrayed.”
All because of a Mere 57.
(Please join us in reading Chapters 7 and 8 for next week.)
Quotable quotes
“Whenever human rights are divided, hate and violence
erupt, as one person’s rights are pitted against another’s.” (p. 65)
“NOW’s abortion plank gave the U.S. government,
universities, and all of corporate America (including major media monopolies) a
convenient, expedient way to escape from having to provide day care, parental
leave, and other benefits for mothers and families.” (p. 73)
The investigative research, the historical perspective, the eloquent writing…there is a lot to admire in Sue Ellen Browder’s book Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement. But perhaps most powerful is her own journey as mom and young professional that parallels and echoes the women’s movement. She wasn’t just an observer of a cultural phenomenon, she was immersed in it.
In Chapter 3, Making Up a Revolution, Browder recalls looking for journalism work and being forced to conceal having a child in order to get a job. Motherhood was frowned upon as it limited a woman’s freedom to devote herself completely to other endeavors. The irony of this “woke feminism” is that women were only trading one prejudice for another. As Browder says, “Freedom for women was in the air. But mothers were still in chains.”
Promoting this untethered
working woman identity was Browder’s boss, Cosmopolitan’s
editor-in-chief, Helen Gurley Brown. She believed what held women back from
career success was the “built-in mechanism in their bodies that allows them to
have babies.” In other words, she viewed a woman’s natural gift of fertility as
her single biggest detriment.
Through her magazine and specifically
the fictional Cosmo Girl, Helen
Gurley Brown advanced the propaganda of the sexual revolution, endorsing unmarried
sex free from motherhood. Hence contraception, and hence, abortion as “backup.”
To make her articles
palatable to Brown, Browder invented story lines to suit that agenda, describing
herself as “a mercenary, a literary soldier for hire.” Little by little, journalistic
ethics were abandoned. Eventually,
Browder felt the disconnect between her professional persona and her life as a
loving wife and mother. And it made her sick, physically sick.
Yet, like many others, Browder was drawn to a movement that fought for greater opportunities. She looked to feminist leaders like Betty Friedan and the newly formed National Organization of Women (NOW) as signposts of hope and “scrambled to climb aboard NOW’s freedom train.” It would be many years before learning the backstory of NOW and realizing that Browder herself was not only a purveyor of propaganda but a victim of it.
In Chapter 4 The Deceiver Becomes the DeceivedBrowder introduces us to Lawrence Lader, “a Harvard grad, heir to old
money, and close friend to Betty Friedan.” Lader wrote the biography of
Margaret Sanger, whom he considered the greatest influence of his life. A
secondary influence was Hugh Moore, author of “The Population Bomb” who
believed “too many babies were the root cause of poverty, crime, and wars.” Lader also penned Moore’s biography, warning
that “We are on the way to breeding ourselves to death.”
Despite his obsession
with abortion “as the royal road to sexual freedom,” Lader’s friend and fellow
writer, Betty Friedan, remained unconvinced for many years. Ultimately, however, she was won over. And we
know how from the first-hand testimony of Dr. Bernard Nathanson.
Nathanson directed one of
the largest abortion clinics in the world and partnered with Lader to found the
National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL). On a car trip in 1967, Lader declared his
intention of recruiting feminists for his abortion crusade.
He also revealed his plan
to identify the common enemy of the “revolution”—the Catholic Church hierarchy.
And he shared the slogan that would further abortion propaganda: No woman can call herself free who does not
own and control her own body. Lader would credit Sanger with that slogan,
but if it were hers, it’s unlikely she meant to promote abortion. Sanger called
abortion “barbaric” with the issue dividing her and Lader until her death.
Lader’s carefully crafted
1966 book Abortion finally swayed Friedan to embrace the issue as part of
the women’s movement. However, she would
meet with opposition within NOW, a story told in later chapters.
Lader’s book also greatly
influenced Justice Harry Blackmum. Abortion, along with bogus
history supplied by NARAL attorney Cyril Chestnut Means, Jr., was cited fourteen
times in the majority opinions he wrote for Roe
and Doe.
Statistics in Lader’s
book and in later NARAL press releases were fabricated, an admission later made
known by Nathanson, a pro-life convert. “Knowing that if a true poll were taken
we would be soundly defeated, we simply fabricated the results of fictional
polls,” he confessed.
In addition, Lader and
Nathanson also fabricated the number of illegal abortions and the number of women
who died from illegal abortions. These lies “took root in the consciousness of
Americans” convincing many that “we needed to crack the abortion law.”
But many feminists were not on board with the abortion
agenda, as Betty Friedan would soon learn.
Join us in reading Chapters 5 and 6 for next week’s
installment.
Quotable quotes:
“Laced with partial truth, propaganda’s bitter poison become more difficult to detect and sweeter to swallow.” (p. 39)
“The fantasy of a woman as a radical individualist who belongs only to herself and is disconnected from others-betrays the truth of women’s lives.” (p. 44)
With so many books, so little time, few books tempt me into a second reading. However, our Winter Lit for Life book recommendation is one of them. The first time I read it, I eagerly gulped down page after page, trying to digest all the revelations. But Sue Ellen Browder’s Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement merits a slow, deliberate re-read, one that allows us to ponder the true story of the feminist movement and the forces within and around it. One that challenges the prevailing cultural narrative.
For that reason, we are reading two chapters a week
and posting a blog that will include intriguing quotations. We invite you to
read along with us and to share your reactions on social media.
In the opening chapter to the book entitled The
Inside Witness, Browder introduces herself as the small-town girl looking
for big city action after graduating with a journalism degree. She “succeeds”
when she lands a job at Cosmopolitan in 1970 as a freelance writer, securing a front
row seat to New York City’s cultural revolution for 24 years.
That transformation included two movements that
Browder says were not originally united. “In the beginning, the women’s
movement and the sexual revolution were distinctly separate cultural
phenomena.”
Browder confesses that much of what she and others at
Cosmopolitan wrote was fabricated, calling herself “one of the propagandists
who helped sell single women on the notion that sex outside of marriage would
set them free.”
And she reveals that the 1960’s women’s movement was
hijacked largely due to the efforts of one man devoted to making abortion
legal. Larry Lader, considered a “hidden
persuader,” will figure prominently in future chapters.
The title of the second chapter The Problem that
Had No Name comes from the “mother of the women’s movement,” Betty Friedan.
In her revolutionary 1963 publication The Feminine Mystique, Friedan speculated
on the deep dissatisfaction of the American housewife who had been limited by
“the deeply engrained cultural belief that the only path to feminine
fulfillment was to be a wife and mother.”
While Friedan is considered a trailblazer for women’s
rights, Browder points out what has been lost in the feminist narrative—that
Friedan was not anti-marriage or anti-family. She disliked the phrase “women’s
liberation,” preferring to characterize the women’s movement as a fight for
equality.
Browder and Betty Friedan had a shared experience–both
were fired for being pregnant, a not uncommon practice back then,
unfortunately. Even so, Browder points out that the first edition of The
Feminine Mystique never mentioned abortion or the Pill.
Rather than change women and their child-bearing ability, Friedan aimed to change society, “to take the actions needed to bring women into the mainstream of American society, now, fully equality for women, in fully equal partnership with men.” That, says Browder, was the “original rallying cry” of the modern women’s movement.
So how did the women’s movement, an admittedly noble
cause for social justice aimed at equal education and employment opportunities,
become so enmeshed with abortion?
Stay tuned as we read Chapters 3 and 4 for this
Friday.
Quotable
quotes:
Chapter 1: “Propaganda-withheld truths-cuts off
democratic discourse, blocks genuine dialogue, and keeps the public from
participating in reality.”
Chapter 2: “Women are the people who give birth to
children, and that is a necessary value in society…Feminism was not opposed to
marriage and motherhood…You want a feminism that includes women who have
children and want children because that’s the majority of women.” -Betty
Friedan
At an intersection of both history
and numbers, that is where we are.
Historically, we mark one
year since coronavirus surfaced in the United States, while also observing the
48th anniversary of legalized abortion.
Numerically, we mourn the
400,000 lives claimed by the pandemic of 2020, while also grieving more than
800,000 lives that perished last year in a much more enduring plague.
While applauding extraordinary efforts to save lives touched by a hostile virus, we lament everyday efforts to take smaller, completely helpless lives.
While eagerly welcoming a COVID
vaccine produced in record time, we yearn for a long-awaited vaccine that will
end prenatal dismemberment.
What we need is a cure for the sickness that has caused the premature demise of 62.5 million unique individuals.
For decades, the pro-life
movement has been working toward a vaccination of sorts. One that fights not a
petri dish viral culture but instead a culture of death that has gone viral.
Our antidote to abortion is comprised of scientific facts, fundamental civil rights, respect for natural law, abundant compassion, and practical resources. We inoculate the public with our witness and testimony, dialogue and debate, passion and prayers.
And the more we inject the culture with truth, the more we build an immunity to the lies that feed the abortion virus. The more we combat the insidious belief that any one life is disposable, the healthier we become as a human family.
Our efforts strengthen women
and men who feel weakened by distortions and deceptions, empowering them to choose
life.
Our pro-life “vaccine” creates a society welcoming to life no matter the circumstances because even the most difficult circumstances do not erase our humanity.
Once we achieve herd immunity we will realize that there is no crisis that calls for killing and no crisis that can’t be overcome with love and understanding, help and hope.
We will have made abortion unthinkable.
That is the medicine we need to administer in ending the deadliest pandemic our country has ever known. That is the vaccine for abortion.
HARRISBURG, Pa. –The U.S. Supreme Court should be applauded for its landmark ruling banning abortion facilities from mailing abortion drugs to women.
“This is a victory for women and their children, in Pennsylvania and throughout the country,” said Maria V. Gallagher, legislative director for the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, an affiliate of National Right to Life.
“Abortions-by-mail violate the very idea of sound medical practice and high-quality care for patients,” Gallagher said. “By pushing this dangerous practice, the abortion industry had demonstrated once again it is far more concerned about expanding abortion rather than safeguarding the health and safety of women,” Gallagher added.
A recently released report by the Pennsylvania Department of Health shows that, in 2019, 285 abortion complications were reported, an astronomical increase of 59 percent from the 2018 totals. The vast majority of the complications involved baby body parts being left in the mother’s womb, followed by bleeding and infection.
A Pennsylvania abortion operation announced this week it was expanding abortion in the Keystone State by offering abortion drugs by mail. Planned Parenthood Keystone’s website stated individuals could receive the drugs at home “instead of coming into one of our health centers.”
Since the Supreme Court ruling, the page of the website detailing the abortions by mail program has been removed.
************************************************************************The Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation is a grassroots right-to-life organization with members statewide. As the state affiliate of National Right to Life, 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.
Miracles never get old. And we are on the verge of one. A nine-month mystery will soon be revealed when we meet the grandchild we first learned about last spring.
We know not the gender nor the size nor the eye color,
all determined from the very moment of conception. We know not the abilities, personality,
or future of this life hidden from our view but just as alive as you and I.
We do know our amazing daughter has been busy doing what only women can do, something I described in another blog:
It
is no small thing that we women are the life-bearers of the entire species. We
alone can grow human beings in our bodies, craft a cerebral cortex, knit a
network of veins, erect a skeletal system.
We alone can nourish this life with a perfect food forged by our
miraculous bodies. We literally make the
men and women of tomorrow with our very own cells. Now that’s power. A power
given no man.
But even as I marvel at this feminine super power, and
celebrate its manifestation in our own daughter, I am cognizant of a sobering
fact, one that is uncomfortable for me to even think about. Distressing for me
to actually type. But it should be known.
In our country, even at this late stage of pregnancy, a woman can still legally abort her child. And her husband or boyfriend or family members would be powerless to do anything about it.
Under the facade of “reproductive health care,”
fully-formed, pain-capable babies, just weeks, days, or even hours from birth
can be put to death.
Some believe this only happens if the health of the
mother is threatened. But health can be
widely interpreted.
Doe
v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe v. Wade, declared that the health of the mother may be “exercised in the light of all
factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s
age—relevant to the well-being of the patient,” making abortion legal during
all nine months of pregnancy and for reasons well beyond the life of the
mother.
Some may think that
late-term abortion is necessary to save a mother’s life.
But it is possible to save both lives. If the mother’s life is in jeopardy, a baby can be delivered pre-term and provided with life-saving care. There is no need to kill the child in utero to preserve the mother’s life. Dr. Kendra Kolb, a neonatologist, explains this thoroughly in a Live Action video.
Some may believe such late term abortions are extremely
rare and thus negligible.
But that too is not true. Accounting for about 1% of
all abortions, late term abortions claim several thousands lives each year, viable
babies that deserve protection from invasive and violent tools of destruction.
As I wait in joyful anticipation of a precious newborn grandchild, I also wait with a hopeful heart that all eyes will be opened to the sanctity of preborn human life, so that it is protected in every circumstance. Every single life is a miracle to be celebrated, and miracles never get old.
HARRISBURG, Pa. – The number of abortions in
Pennsylvania increased in 2019 by slightly more than 2% according to the
Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, an affiliate of National Right to Life.
Statistics released by the Pennsylvania Department of Health show 654 more abortions occurred in 2019 compared to 2018. In all, 31,018 abortions took place in 2019, with 25-29 year old women being the largest age group having abortions (29.9%), followed by 20-24 year old women (27%). Abortions for females under 18 dropped slightly to 2.4%.
Abortion among white women dropped slightly, while abortion among Black and Latino women increased. Chemical abortions increased by 4.6%. Over 47% of the women had experienced at least one prior abortion. Eighty-seven percent of the women were unmarried.
Five counties accounted for
83% of total abortions: Allegheny, Delaware, Montgomery, Northampton, and
Philadelphia, which itself accounted for 47% of the abortions. An average of 85 babies died by abortion every day in 2019.
“It is disturbing to see an increase in abortion, especially late term abortion, when we know babies are pain-capable,” said Bonnie Finnerty, Education Director for the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. “And it is alarming that there was a 59% increase in complications from abortions, putting vulnerable women at great risk while sentencing their children to death. Had Governor Wolf signed pro-life legislation such as the Dismemberment Bill in 2017, these numbers would be lower.”
But he and the abortion
industry have no interest in decreasing abortion.
In contrast, Pregnancy Resource
Centers across Pennsylvania have seen an increase in services, providing
ultrasounds, material goods, life-skill classes and daycare referrals. “Women can find authentic care and support
in the Pregnancy and Parenting Support Program, which is administered by Real
Alternatives, Inc. (www.realalternatives.org ),”
Finnerty added.
According to
Kevin Bagatta, President and CEO of Real Alternative, Inc. “In 1995,
Pennsylvania was the first state to provide taxpayer dollars dedicated to
provide free services to women in unexpected pregnancies to encourage
childbirth rather than abortion. To date, the program has served over 325,000
women of the Commonwealth.
“We are grateful to the citizens of
the Commonwealth for the financial resources they provide to the program so 440
counselors throughout the state can serve thousands of women in unexpected
pregnancies. Their dedication led to our
program serving 11% more clients in 2019 than 2018,” said Bagatta.
“We must continue to reach
out to women to let them know that help is available for themselves and their
babies, whether they choose to parent or place for adoption. They do not have to choose between their
child and their future. They can have both,”said Finnerty.
***************************************************************************************The Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation
is a grassroots right-to-life organization with members statewide. As the state affiliate of National Right to
Life, 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.
