David and Goliath revisited

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Sometimes we may feel like we’re in a David and Goliath battle.

Powerful leaders reverse the pro-life progress we’ve made with a snap – measures that took us years to accomplish. And loud voices from the pro-abortion side shout out insults and lies as we try to defend the unborn.

Sometimes we feel alone on the field – a young person with a sling against a giant warrior. We feel discouraged, unprepared, inept, and afraid. We want to give up.

Two of prominent pro-life leaders shared similar feelings during the National Right to Life Convention in June.

Lila Rose, the young founder of Live Action, told a story of her first attempt at pro-life advocacy. When she was a young child, she decided to begin a pro-life group with her friends. Rose enthusiastically planned meetings and projects to help protect the unborn. Then one day, none of her friends showed up.

U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte also works in a lonely position. A freshman legislator from New Hampshire, she is the only pro-life woman in the Senate.

Ayotte was one of the first Senators to speak out in support of defunding Planned Parenthood in the 2011 budget battle and later voted to not give them $300 million, according to the Susan B. Anthony List. But Planned Parenthood still receives government support.

Rose and Ayotte could have stopped trying after those first attempts, feeling discouraged and beaten. But they didn’t.

Rose went on to expose illegal practices in abortion centers, gaining national exposure. Her undercover videos display the sad fact that many abortion providers support sex-selection abortions, sex trafficking and abuse.

As for Ayotte, she is now considered to be one of presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s top picks for vice president. And she promised to continue fighting in the Senate for the lives of the unborn.

Most of us will never be a Lila Rose, a Sen. Ayotte, or a King David. But like them, we can stand firm in the knowledge that our work will restore the value of human life.

We too can save lives in our communities – if we never give up.

Staying informed about the health care law

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You probably have heard about abortion coverage in the new health care law, but how much do you know about it?

If your answer is “not much,” you should read an article on LifeNews.com that outlines the abortion funding and medical rationing provisions in the new law. 

If you want to learn even more details about abortion and the law, you can follow the article link to a report from the Family Research Council; and if you’re really interested, there’s another link to the health care law itself – all 907 pages.

As we pro-lifers continue to speak out against the law’s dangerous implications for human life, we need make it a priority to understand what it requires. A well-informed argument against abortion funding and medical rationing will demonstrate just how serious we are about protecting human life — from beginning to end.

PA Pro-Life Federation Chapters present at the 2012 NRL Convention

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By Michael Ciccocioppo, Executive Director ciccocioppo@paprolife.org

Gary Cangemi, of Scranton, leads a workshop about his cartoon, “Umbert the Unborn.”

Erie People for Life chapter President Tim Broderick and Scranton Pennsylvanians for Human Life chapter Chairman Gary Cangemi were among dozens of workshop presenters from across America at the 2012 National Right to Life Convention in Arlington, VA, June 28 to 30.

Broderick’s workshop was titled, “Chapter Activities: The Importance of Seeing and Understanding ‘The Big Picture.’” He used many photos of various activities performed by volunteers at his chapter to illustrate the difference that a local chapter can make for life. For more info on the chapter, visit www.peopleforlife.org .

Cangemi has become an annual presenter for NRL. His workshop featured the cartoon character he created, “Umbert the Unborn,” to demonstrate the humanity of the unborn child in lighthearted, yet poignant ways. His workshop included many of his cartoon strips, a game of “Unborn Babies In Jeopardy,” the sketching of a new original cartoon strip with audience input and singing distinctly pro-life songs set to familiar tunes in the public domain. For more info on Umbert, visit www.umberttheunborn.com .

PA Pro-Life Federation Reacts to Supreme Court Ruling

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Harrisburg, PA – Today, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision about President Barack Obama’s health care law, which includes public funding for abortion and provisions promoting euthanasia.

Michael Ciccocioppo, executive director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, responded to the ruling’s effects on abortion and euthanasia, saying: “This is a deeply disturbing ruling, which will have profound implications for the right to life. The law is riddled with so many dangerous abortion and rationing provisions that make all Americans vulnerable to any number of life-threatening mandates from the Department of Health and Human Services.

“Therefore, the next president and Congress must repeal the law and enact a new health care reform law that must include clear and unconditional provisions stating that nothing in the law shall be construed to promote, fund or encourage abortion, medical rationing or euthanasia.”

Pro-life group that helps human trafficking victims doesn’t get government money

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A recent government funding issue involving human trafficking and abortion shows just where our politicians’ priorities are.

In an opinion piece written for the New York Daily News on Sunday, Steve Wagner discusses the “highly effective work” of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office of Migration and Refugee Services to help victims of human trafficking.

Wagner, a former director of the human trafficking program at the Department of Health and Human Services, writes the “well-regarded” organization has helped human-trafficking victims from about 64 countries.

Despite its strong record as a leader in the effort, the office’s funding recently was blocked by the Obama administration. Read the article here.

The reason? The organization does not offer abortion-related services. Wagner writes:

“In May 2011, the federal Department of Health and Human Services decided its human trafficking grant-making process would prioritize those who would provide ‘family planning services and the full range of legally permissible gynecological and obstetric care.’”

The Obama administration would rather stubbornly cling to their pro-abortion politics than give money to an effective organization that is caring for victims of abuse around the world.

This issue shows just how little value some government officials put on human life – unborn or enslaved.

 

Choosing hope: Two women take different paths with risky pregnancies

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This week, I read two stories about different women whose unborn babies were most likely to die before birth.

A Miami, Florida, couple almost lost their baby girl in the womb. Doctors found a tennis ball-sized tumor growing on the unborn infant’s mouth, and said she probably wouldn’t survive birth.

The second story came from a heartbreaking blog post from a woman who found out her pregnancy would likely result in miscarriage. Her baby’s heart beat was slow, and it wasn’t growing. After remembering the pain of an earlier miscarriage, she contemplated an abortion.

The Miami couple continued to hope and sought another doctor. They found a surgeon who operated on the baby in utero and removed the tumor – a procedure that was the first of its kind. The child was born several months later, healthy and strong. Read more about it here: http://www.lifenews.com/2012/06/21/worlds-first-surgery-removes-tumor-from-unborn-babys-lips

The blogger’s story ended differently. She decided to have an abortion, concluding that there was no good choice in her situation. Read about it here:  http://boingboing.net/2012/06/20/the-only-good-abortion-is-my-a.html

But I believe she did have a better choice than abortion. She even mentioned it in her blog when she writes:  “I want the doctors to be wrong. I want to have one of those miracles where everything turns out to be okay and I am relieved to find that I haven’t actually lost everything.”

There is no hope in an abortion, a termination. When someone chooses to have an abortion, they erase the chance for a miracle, in these cases for the birth of a child. Hope doesn’t guarantee rosy endings, but it leaves the future open to possibility.

The Miami couple put their hope on the line when they took a chance on a brand new medical procedure. Their hope resulted in something wonderful – a healthy baby girl.

Toomey supports bill to ban sex-selection abortions

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Pennsylvania’s own U.S. Senator Pat Toomey has joined a group of legislators who want to end discrimination against females while they are still in the womb.
Toomey joined about 30 co-sponsors of the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act bill, which would prohibit discrimination against the unborn based on gender or other factors. Sen. David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana, introduced the bill on June 13.
Unborn females are the ones most targeted for such abortions – both in the U.S. and worldwide.
And though most Americans don’t support sex-selected abortions, they do occur.
Just today, Live Action released a new undercover video at two Planned Parenthood facilities in North Carolina. In two different situations, staff supported the client’s decision to have an abortion based on the gender of the unborn child.
The staff members told their clients that Planned Parenthood does not judge any woman because of her reason for an abortion.
Yet, the agency condones a woman’s choice to kill an unborn baby based on its sex.
According to Live Action, six studies in the past four years indicate that there are thousands of “missing girls” in the U.S. because of sex-selective abortion.
Currently in the U.S., only three states including Pennsylvania prohibit sex-selection abortions.

Abortion centers held to higher standard

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Kermit Gosnell

Harrisburg, PA – Stronger regulations for abortion centers go into effect today across Pennsylvania, providing greater protection for women’s health and safety.

“For far too long, abortion facilities in Pennsylvania have been operating with little accountability” said Maria Gallagher, legislative director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. “The Kermit Gosnell tragedy in West Philadelphia, where seven newborn babies and one female patient were killed, was a wake-up call. This new law is an important step in helping to protect the health and safety of women in Pennsylvania.”

Act 122, which passed on Dec. 22, 2011, requires that abortion facilities be licensed as outpatient surgical facilities and subject to regular inspections. It also divides facilities into two categories: Class A facilities perform surgeries with local anesthesia only, and Class B facilities perform surgeries with anesthesia where the patient is not fully conscious.

When facilities were notified of the new requirements in January, 17 submitted exception requests. The Department of Health said Monday it expects 14 of the 22 facilities to qualify to perform surgical abortions.

Of the remaining eight facilities, one voluntarily closed, two have been licensed through hospitals and the rest will only be allowed to perform medication-induced abortions that do not require surgery.

“We are hopeful that the state Health Department will be closely monitoring abortion facilities to ensure that they comply with the new law, and that swift and decisive action will be taken against abortion centers that violate health and safety standards,” Gallagher added.

State regulators ignored complaints and failed to visit Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society for years. In the clinic, which was described as a “house of horrors,” Gosnell reportedly delivered hundreds of babies alive and then killed them by severing their spinal cords.

The Gosnell case showed that greater scrutiny of abortion facilities is needed to prevent such tragedies in the future.

Bad News–Nomination of Pro-Abortion Judge Will Proceed

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We thank all of you who called Senator Bob Casey’s office, urging him to vote against cloture on the nomination of Judge Andrew Hurwitz for the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Unfortunately, Senator Casey–along with 59 other Senators–voted for cloture, and so his nomination moves ahead. Hurwitz has been called the “Architect of Roe v. Wade” for his work as a legal clerk on a Connecticut case which set the stage for Roe. It is apparent that Hurwitz is a judicial activist who will try to impose his radical ideology on the federal appellate court.  For more on this story, go here.