Sick: Activist Uses Photo of Disabled Girl to Promote Eugenic Abortions. The Girl’s Mother Fights Back.

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An advocate for children with disabilities and complex medical needs fought back when a left-wing activist used her disabled daughter’s photo to promote eugenic abortions.

Natalie Weaver, who co-founded Advocates for Medically Fragile Kids NC, expressed outrage over the vile post featuring her 9-year-old daughter Sophia, and urged Twitter to remove it from their site. Sophia was born with Rhett syndrome and has a facial deformity.

The account using Sophia’s photo to promote abortion, @OBSIDIANSMOAK, has since been suspended.

“It is ok to think that every child matters however a lot of them do not hence the amnio test which should be a mandatory test and if it proves negative and the woman does not want to abort then all bills accrued after that is on her and the father,” said the activist’s post . . .

@TwitterSupport Just received an email that Twitter doesn’t think a person using my child’s image as the poster child to ABORT & to weed out all the “defectives” in utero is a violation. Why? Bc they won’t recognize hate toward ppl w/ disabilities in their regulations/reports. pic.twitter.com/PQLLEyQhPy

— Natalie Weaver (@Nataliew1020) January 22, 2018

Later in the day, Twitter suspended the abortion activist’s account.

(Read more from “Sick: Activist Uses Photo of Disabled Girl to Promote Eugenic Abortions. the Girl’s Mother Fights Back.” HERE)

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Satanic Temple Fights Abortion Restrictions, on ‘Religious Grounds’

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The Missouri Supreme Court is considering whether some of the state’s abortion restrictions violate the religious beliefs of a woman who is part of the Satanic Temple.

An attorney for the woman made the unusual argument Tuesday as he asked Missouri’s highest court to block the state’s mandatory three-day waiting period for abortions and requirements that doctors providing abortions give women a booklet that says “the life of each human being begins at conception,” offer them an ultrasound and give them an opportunity to hear the fetal heartbeat.

The woman traveled from southeastern Missouri to St. Louis for an abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic in 2015. The woman, whose name is not revealed in court documents, did eventually obtain an abortion. But in a letter to her doctors that was included in court documents, she wrote that some of the state’s restrictions on abortion conflict with her beliefs to follow scientific understanding of the world.

The Satanic Temple, based in Salem, Mass., doesn’t believe in a literal Satan but sees the biblical Satan as a metaphor for rebellion against tyranny. The group has waged religious battles around the U.S. in recent years, including pushing unsuccessfully to install a statute of the goat-headed idol Baphomet outside the Arkansas and Oklahoma state capitols as counterpoints to Ten Commandments monuments. Members also proposed “After School Satan Clubs” in elementary schools from Oregon to Georgia where evangelical Christian “Good News Clubs” are operating.

James MacNaughton, an attorney for the Satanic Temple member suing over Missouri’s abortion restrictions, told the state Supreme Court that the government “should not be in the business of preaching.” (Read more from “Satanic Temple Fights Abortion Restrictions, on ‘Religious Grounds'” HERE)

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17 Shot at School, at Least 2 Dead

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By CBS News. A 15-year-old boy shot 14 people Tuesday morning at southwestern Kentucky high school, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said. A 15-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl died.

Five others suffered non-gunshot injuries, the governor said. The suspect in the incident at Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky, has been apprehended, according to officials with Marshall County Emergency Management. It was the nation’s first fatal school shooting of 2018.

Police were seen leading a teenager away in handcuffs. The shooter will be charged with murder and attempted murder, Kentucky State Police Lt. Michael Webb said.

“He was apprehended by the sheriff’s department here on site, at the school, thankfully before any more lives could be taken,” Webb said.

Police did not release any identities, nor did they describe a motive. Webb said detectives are looking into his home and background. (Read more from “14 Shot at School, at Least 2 Dead” HERE)

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Kentucky School Shooting: 2 Students Killed and 17 Others Injured

By CNN. A 15-year-old male student was arrested at the scene and will be charged with murder and attempted murder, Bevin said. Marshall County Attorney Jeff Edwards said it’s likely the suspect will be charged as an adult, but his name won’t be released unless he’s indicted . . .

Daniel Austin, a 17-year-old special needs student, was hospitalized. His parents called his cell phone incessantly until someone in the emergency room picked up and said Daniel had been shot . . .

Five male students were taken to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, about 100 miles away by helicopter.

Three of them were shot in the head, one in the arm and one in the abdomen, Dr. Oscar Guillamondegui, medical director of the trauma intensive care unit, said at a news conference. He didn’t identify the students. (Read more from “Kentucky School Shooting: 2 Students Killed and 17 Others Injured” HERE)

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Trump Administration Clears the Way for States to De-Fund Planned Parenthood

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States who manage Medicaid in concert with the federal government will now be able to cut Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood clinics and other abortion providers, thanks to the Trump Administration.

According to the Washington Examiner, the Trump Administration has issued an order rescinding an Obama-era directive from April 2016, warning states that “restricting Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood could violate federal law.”

The Obama directive was issued as a rebuke to mostly Republican state legislators who floated the idea of blocking Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicare payments — a key part of Planned Parenthood’s funding — after several Planned Parenthood clinics were caught on video offering to sell fetal tissue and other aborted baby parts for medical research.

The Department of Justice opened its own investigation into Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue sales in December, and an assistant attorney general requested complete copies of redacted documents obtained during a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into the gruesome practice.

It is against the law to profit from the sale of any human organ or tissue. (Read more from “Trump Administration Clears the Way for States to De-Fund Planned Parenthood” HERE)

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Image Consultant Says What Melania Won’t, Reveals a Message First Lady Is Sending with Wardrobe

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First lady Melania Trump is carrying her fashion industry background into the White House.

“Melania Trump portrays this image of a calm, cool and collected woman,” said personal stylist Corey Roche, during a statement to the The New York Post.

“And she does that through her wardrobe.”

Roche, whose clientele reportedly includes celebrities and D.C. politicians, explained that Melania is intentional in how she presents herself to the public, making a point to always appear not only put together, but calm and collected as well. Balancing her husband’s often aggressive portrayal in the media.

Her feminine appearance, often choosing bold pinks or muted white and cream ensembles are a stark contrast to the business wear often sported by other first ladies in recent years.

Roche compared Trump’s style to that of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, whose style remains legendary several decades after her time as the first lady.

“I think she went back in time and pulled out some pieces from the Jackie O style of dressing,” Roche told The Post.

“Her style is pretty and muted, but doesn’t go unnoticed.”

Fashion experts agree that first ladies use their wardrobe to promote themselves in different ways, often using clothing as a way to communicate the role they wish to play in the White House.

Former first lady Michelle Obama was often photographed wearing modern business attire, which made sense for the lawyer. Obama took a notable role as not only the wife of the president but someone who promoted causes of interest to her — notably healthy eating and exercise for children.

Likewise, Hillary Clinton, infamous for her brightly colored pantsuits, would go on to launch a political career of her own.

Nancy Reagan, a former actress, was also noted for her fashion choices during her time as the first lady. The assertive wife of former President Ronald Reagan was known for wearing red.

Other stylists assert that Trump’s fashion choices indicate that the First Lady wishes to remain in a more traditional role within the White House.

The former model is said to use traditional and feminine style to show that she desires to remain the supportive wife of the president, and is less interested in catapulting herself into the political arena.

“It’s very feminine, but the clothes are not the clothes of working women,” said Christina Logothetis, a Washington D.C.-based image consultant. “Part of what she’s conveying is that she’s not in office, she is the wife and very specifically playing that role and only that role. And that is definitely in contrast to her immediate predecessors.”

Fascination with the first lady is nothing new for the American public.

According to the Post, the interest in first lady fashion goes as far back as Dolly Madison, who wore a feathered turban to the inauguration in 1809. Mary Todd Lincoln’s fashion choices and spending are also said to have caused a “crisis” during the Civil War. (For more from the author of “Image Consultant Says What Melania Won’t, Reveals a Message First Lady Is Sending with Wardrobe” please click HERE)

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Doctor Who’s Lived in U.S. Since 5 Years Old Faces Deportation

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A Polish doctor in Michigan, who fled to the US with his family nearly 40 years ago, faces deportation to his birth country after he was arrested at his home by ICE agents and thrown in jail.

Lukasz Niec, who has a permanent green card, was home with his two daughters Tuesday morning when three Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up, placed him in handcuffs and took him to jail.

The 43-year-old internal medicine physician at Kalamazoo’s Bronson Methodist Hospital has spent the past several days at the Calhoun County jail awaiting his fate.

Niec’s family told WOOD TV that there’s a chance the doctor could be deported to Poland, a country he left with his parents and sister nearly 40 years ago.

Iwona Niec-Villaire said her brother is ‘shell-shocked’ about being arrested and the possibility he may be deported. (Read more from “Doctor Who’s Lived in U.S. Since 5 Years Old Faces Deportation” HERE)

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Study Reveals the Most ‘Difficult’ Family Members

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Tired of your mother or sister prying into your personal life? You’re not alone. While the women in our lives often prove to be the most caring and helpful in times of need, a new study finds that female family members also tend to be the most difficult.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Bar-Ilan University in Israel used surveys focusing on the relationships of more than 1,100 adults young and old from the San Francisco Bay Area. Of the 12,000-some personal relationships — including close and casual friends, family members, or colleagues — described in their responses, the research team honed in on individuals whom the respondents flagged as people they “sometimes find demanding or difficult.”

While about 15 percent of relationships were dubbed as difficult, the authors found that close female relatives — mothers, sisters, and wives — led the way in that category. It’s very likely, however, that women ranked more prominently because they tend to be the ones who involve themselves more deeply in a person’s life, while men tend to be more passive.

“The message here is that, with female relatives, it can be a two-sided thing. They may be the people you most depend on, but also the people who nag you the most,” says study senior author Claude Fischer, a sociology professor at Berkeley, in a news release. “It’s a testament to their deeper engagement in social ties.”

Generally speaking, parents, siblings and spouses were named most frequently as difficult individuals. As for who was the least frustrating, participants agreed that friends led the pack, only representing about 7 percent of the bothersome bunch. (Read more from “Study Reveals the Most ‘Difficult’ Family Members” HERE)

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Students Flee as Muslim Professor Starts Bizarre Behavior

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An adjunct professor of astronomy has been suspended for antics in class so bizarre that students fled the room and the police were summoned.

Tarrant County College’s Daniel Mashburn arrived to his class last Tuesday night 20 minutes late garbed in “a cap, a toboggan, a scarf over his face and gloves.”

According to Fox-4, students in attendance said Mashburn “talked about the Koran and the moon and the dark night,” appeared incoherent, “and never discussed anything astronomy-related.”

“Mostly he was talking about different things of the Muslim faith,” [student April] McLeod said. “I was in class for about five minutes. He kept messing with his pocket and you could tell there was an object in the right-hand pocket. And whenever he went to pull out his hand, I started having this really bad feeling and jumped up and ran out of the classroom.” . . .

Inside Higher Ed reports Mashburn has been replaced by a new instructor while the college investigates his conduct. It notes an American Association of University Professors policy which states instructors “should only be removed from the classroom during an investigation of their conduct if they pose a safety risk.” (Read more from “Students Flee as Muslim Professor Starts Bizarre Behavior” HERE)

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New Scientific Breakthroughs Are Having a Huge Impact on the Abortion Debate

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. . .Activists like McGuire believe it makes perfect sense to be pro-science and pro-life. While she opposes abortion on moral grounds, she believes studies of fetal development, improved medical techniques, and other advances anchor the movement’s arguments in scientific fact. “The pro-life message has been, for the last 40-something years, that the fetus … is a life, and it is a human life worthy of all the rights the rest of us have,” she said. “That’s been more of an abstract concept until the last decade or so.” But, she added, “when you’re seeing a baby sucking its thumb at 18 weeks, smiling, clapping,” it becomes “harder to square the idea that that 20-week-old, that unborn baby or fetus, is discardable.”

Scientific progress is remaking the debate around abortion. When the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, the case that led the way to legal abortion, it pegged most fetuses’ chance of viable life outside the womb at 28 weeks; after that point, it ruled, states could reasonably restrict women’s access to the procedure. Now, with new medical techniques, doctors are debating whether that threshold should be closer to 22 weeks. Like McGuire, today’s prospective moms and dads can learn more about their baby earlier into a pregnancy than their parents or grandparents. And like McGuire, when they see their fetus on an ultrasound, they may see humanizing qualities like smiles or claps, even if most scientists see random muscle movements.

These advances fundamentally shift the moral intuition around abortion. New technology makes it easier to apprehend the humanity of a growing child and imagine a fetus as a creature with moral status. Over the last several decades, pro-life leaders have increasingly recognized this and rallied the power of scientific evidence to promote their cause. They have built new institutions to produce, track, and distribute scientifically crafted information on abortion. They hungrily follow new research in embryology. They celebrate progress in neonatology as a means to save young lives. New science is “instilling a sense of awe that we never really had before at any point in human history,” McGuire said. “We didn’t know any of this.”

In many ways, this represents a dramatic reversal; pro-choice activists have long claimed science for their own side. The Guttmacher Institute, a research and advocacy organization that defends abortion and reproductive rights, has exercised a near-monopoly over the data of abortion, serving as a source for supporters and opponents alike. And the pro-choice movement’s rhetoric has matched its resources: Its proponents often describe themselves as the sole defenders of women’s welfare and scientific consensus. The idea that life begins at conception “goes against legal precedent, science, and public opinion,” said Ilyse Hogue, the president of the abortion-advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice America, in a recent op-ed for CNBC. Members of the pro-life movement are “not really anti-abortion,” she wrote in another piece. “They are against [a] world where women can contribute equally and chart our own destiny in ways our grandmothers never thought possible.” (Read more from “New Scientific Breakthroughs Are Having a Huge Impact on the Abortion Debate” HERE)

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Twist: Christians Use Same-Sex Ruling to Protect Their Rights

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In an unexpected twist, a federal civil-rights lawsuit alleges a Michigan school district’s imposition of a transgender-rights agenda on students and parents violates the very rights created by the Supreme Court decision that established “same-sex marriage.”

It is the first lawsuit in the nation claiming a person’s religious identity is protected by the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges marriage case, according to the legal team that filed suit against the Williamston Community Schools public district and its board.

The claim, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, Southern Division, outlines “numerous civil rights and constitutional violations rising from policies recently passed by the school board,” the lawyers at the Great Lakes Justice Center explain.

“Common sense and common decency demand that biologically intact boys should not be showering with girls, should not be allowed to use girls’ bathroom and locker room facilities, or take a girl’s spot on an athletic team,” said David Kallman, senior counsel with the center . . .

Added William Wagner, president of the center: “The Supreme Court in Obergefell recognized that all citizens have a right to privacy, dignity, and personal identity. These rights must be protected by the school district for all students.” (Read more from “Twist: Christians Use Same-Sex Ruling to Protect Their Rights” HERE)

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