Yes, America, the March for Life Is Still Relevant 44 Years After Roe v. Wade

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Of the hundreds of babies callously murdered over the course of years in a flea-bitten torture chamber in west Philadelphia, only seven – identified only by letters of the alphabet – made it to the courtroom.

Alongside their evidence was that of slain Karnamaya Mongar, a 41-year-old refugee from Bhutan, who had died in the same filthy “health clinic” run by mass-murderer and late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell.

While Washington, D.C., just hosted its 44th March for Life on Friday, those still confused or on the fence about the cause for which so many turn up in the annual pilgrimage might want to turn their attention to “Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer” from Regnery Publishing, a new book by documentarians Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney about these atrocities and Gosnell’s criminal trial that followed.

This the latest product of an investigative project that began with a 2014 crowdfunding campaign to raise money for a movie about Gosnell. The film, which will feature Dean Cain as Detective James Woods, is currently seeking a distributor.

The filmmakers recently told The Christian Post that the reason they opted for both a book and film was that some of the material was far too gruesome for the screen.

“After we decided to make the movie we went to Philadelphia and started interviewing people, and we bought the trial transcripts and started going through them,” McElhinney told CP’s Brandon Showalter. “But we thought, people didn’t know them. And the stories should still be told.”

And the stories are brutal.

Page after page, the story delves into excruciating and heart-rending detail about the horrors woman and child alike endured at Gosnell’s macabre hellhole.

One section of the book outlines in a painful, rhythmic list what befell each of the seven babies for whose murders Gosnell was charged. Per The Daily Signal:

Baby boy A was born and murdered on the same day – July 12, 2008. He was so large, even in a clinic where late abortions were not unusual, that two clinic employees snapped pictures of him on their cell phones …

Baby E was the baby that cried – the one that [one employee] said “sounded like a little alien …”

After baby F jerked its leg to its chest, Gosnell cut its neck with scissors.

Baby G breathed. Gosnell snipped its neck.

The stories go on, each more devastating and horrific than the last, outlining decades of ghoulish gore on unsuspecting women and their helpless, innocent children.

But yet, all of this, all of it … ALL OF IT … went ignored by government authorities for years thanks in large part to the pro-abortion politics of officials like former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge and others.

In the process of writing the book, the atrocities McAleer and McElhinney uncovered actually converted the latter to the pro-life cause, she explains at The Daily Signal.

“I never trusted or liked pro-life activists,” McElhinney writes. “Even at college I thought them too earnest and too religious. I thought the shocking images they showed were manipulative.”

“Reading the testimony and sifting through the evidence in the case in the research for this book and for writing the script of the movie has been brutal. I have wept at my computer. I have said the Our Father sitting at my desk,” she adds. “I am no holy roller—I hadn’t prayed in years—but at times when I was confronted with the worst of this story I didn’t know what else to do.”

For those still confused about why so many people would drive or fly across the country to walk in the cold, rain, and/or snow year after year, this is why. You can attribute malice and misogyny; you can rail against some Marxist concept of a “patriarchy” or old-world theocracy. But none of this is correct.

The people who marched Friday, who come to the National Mall every January are out there for babies A through G — for the women harmed and scarred by the yet uncovered Kermit Gosnells out there. And yes, they’re out there for the children who may had their lives snuffed out more sterile environments, but had them snuffed out nonetheless.

They are why we march. (For more from the author of “Yes, America, the March for Life Is Still Relevant 44 Years After Roe v. Wade” please click HERE)

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Dept. Of Ed. Admits More Money Isn’t Fixing America’s Schools. Will We Change Course?

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There’s an old joke about a drunk man, stumbling about under a streetlamp looking for a dropped set of keys. When a helpful passerby asks if that’s where he dropped them, the drunk replies, “No, but the light’s better over here.” It’s hard not to feel that government bureaucrats take a similar approach to tackling the problem of education. They throw money at the problem, not because that’s what works, but because that’s what they know how to do.

A recent report from the Department of Education concluded that, after $7 billion of new federal spending since the end of the Bush administration, student outcomes haven’t improved at all. No Child Left Behind, Head Start, Race to the Top, Common Core, all the ridiculous federal initiatives we were told needed to be imposed on us “for the children” have amount to a big fat pile of nothing.

And we’re $7 billion poorer for it.

This report is not an outlier or an anomaly. Previous research has concluded the same thing. A study from the Cato Institute found that 40 years of increased education spending hasn’t resulted in positive changes in student performance. The Head Start program, in its own self-evaluation, concluded that any benefits conferred by the program on early childhood performance disappear over time.

So what are we to conclude after pouring billions of dollars into education and getting nothing in return? We know what the Democrats’ answer will be. It’s the same as ever. It’s not that spending doesn’t work, it’s that we haven’t spent enough. Never mind that the U.S. already has the highest per-student spending of almost any country in the world. Only an endless flow of cash can make our children smarter.

Or, we could take a more rational approach, realize that what we’re doing isn’t working, and try something else. Only a fool throws good money after bad. Only a mad man does the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Instead of continuing to tax the people to pay for a bloated Department of Education that doesn’t, and can’t deliver on its promises, we should close down the entire failed institution. Maybe we should let states, localities, and parents decide how to educate their children free from the influence of federal meddling.

Democrats make a big show of being practical, empirical, science-based, and doing what works. How many more studies will it take to convince them that the Department of Education has failed our children long enough? (For more from the author of “Dept. Of Ed. Admits More Money Isn’t Fixing America’s Schools. Will We Change Course?” please click HERE)

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On March for Life Week, Trump and Congress Take Steps to Defend Life

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This was a big week for the pro-life community.

President Donald Trump and the House of Representatives started the week by taking action to defend life and ensure that taxpayer dollars are not entangled with abortion, both at home and abroad. Then on Friday, tens of thousands of Americans converged on Washington, D.C., for the 44th annual March for Life.

On Monday, Trump reinstated the life-affirming Mexico City policy, which ensures that American taxpayers do not fund international organizations that perform or promote abortions. Since 1984, this policy has been enforced by every Republican president and rescinded by every Democratic president.

Trump’s recently published presidential memorandum indicates that not only is he reinstating the Mexico City policy, he is strengthening it.

As explained by The Daily Signal, it is long-standing policy for the United States to prohibit funding for abortion in international programs.

Without the Mexico City policy, abortion giants like the International Planned Parenthood Federation are eligible to receive millions of taxpayer dollars designated for non-abortion-related activities—but, because money is fungible, this frees up other funds for performing or promoting abortion abroad.

The Mexico City policy closes this loophole by requiring recipients of U.S. aid dollars to certify that they will not perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning.

Previous iterations of the policy have applied to U.S. Agency for International Development and State Department funds. The Trump memo expands the policy by instructing the secretary of state and secretary of health and human services to extend the policy to funds “furnished by all departments or agencies.”

Likewise, previous iterations of the policy have applied to nongovernmental organizations that provide services abroad. The Trump memo indicates that the policy will also apply to other international organizations, such as the United Nations Population Fund.

The memo directs the secretary of state to ensure U.S. taxpayer dollars do not fund organizations or programs that “support or participate in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”

Trump is right to include this direction in the memo. During the Obama administration, the U.S. sent over $250 million in taxpayer dollars to the United Nations Population Fund, despite continued assertions that the fund has been involved in China’s coercive two-child policy.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act by a bipartisan vote of 238-183.

In a speech on the House floor, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., explained that the legislation makes the Hyde Amendment and other current abortion funding prohibitions permanent and government-wide; ensures that Obamacare (until it is repealed) conforms with the Hyde Amendment; and until a new plan year begins, ensures full disclosure, transparency, and the prominent display of the extent to which any health insurance plan on the exchange covers abortion to empower people to opt out.

Smith also noted that H.R. 7 passed the House in 2014 and 2015, under veto threat from President Barack Obama. The Trump administration, on the other hand, released a statement saying that if presented with H.R. 7, Trump would sign the bill into law.

The majority of the American people do not support the use of tax dollars to fund abortion in the U.S., and it is now time for the Senate to act and permanently codify this life-saving policy.

The tens of thousands of Americans who gathered for the March for Life on Friday came with a message of compassion, hope, and expectation. They are creating a culture of life in America, and they expect their government to reflect this by passing robust policies that respect the dignity of every human being. (For more from the author of “On March for Life Week, Trump and Congress Take Steps to Defend Life” please click HERE)

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At March for Life, Pence Pledges Restoration of ‘Culture of Life’ in US

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“Life is winning again in America.”

That was the message Vice President Mike Pence told the thousands gathered for the March for Life in Washington, D.C., Friday.

“Along with you, we will not grow weary, we will not rest until we restore a culture of life in America for ourselves and our posterity,” Pence said.

The vice president, who was introduced by the nation’s second lady, Karen Pence, made history Friday as the first vice president to attend and address the March for Life, which has been held annually since 1974.

“I am deeply humbled to be the first vice president of the United States to ever have the privilege to attend this historic event,” he said.

He also spoke of the Trump administration’s plan for achieving pro-life victories.

“On Monday, President [Donald] Trump reinstated the Mexico City policy to prevent foreign aid from funding organizations that provide or promote abortions worldwide,” Pence said, adding that “this administration will work with the Congress to end taxpayer funding of abortion and abortion providers.”

He also pledged that Trump’s Supreme Court pick would “uphold the God-given liberties enshrined in our Constitution in the tradition of the late, great Justice Antonin Scalia.”

In his remarks, Pence cited the Founding Fathers, saying: “More than 240 years ago, our Founders wrote words that have echoed through the ages. They declared these truths to be self-evident: that we are, all of us, endowed by our creator, with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Alluding to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, Pence added, “Forty-four years ago, our Supreme Court turned away from the first of these timeless ideas.”

Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager turned presidential counselor, kicked off the event by reassuring the attendees that the new administration hears them, saying, “Steps away from here, in the White House, a president and a vice president sit at their desks and make decisions for a nation. As they sit there, they stand here with you.”

“This is a new day, a new dawn for life,” Conway said. She closed her speech with a note of encouragement, saying, “We hear you, see you, we respect you, and we look forward to working with you.” (For more from the author of “At March for Life, Pence Pledges Restoration of ‘Culture of Life’ in US” please click HERE)

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What You’re Not Hearing about the Mini Police States in Public Schools

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School has changed a lot over the last few decades. Once a place of learning, run by teachers and principals, where children were free to play outside during recess and walk home unescorted, public schools now increasingly resemble little prisons. Metal detectors guard the entrances, supervision never relaxes, and armed policemen are a regular presence. In many cases, these intimidating figures are taking the place of the disciplinary roles traditionally fulfilled by parents and teachers.

Reason Magazine reports the now common practice of using police to enforce standards of behavior in schools. Instead of verbal chiding, being made to sit in a corner, or other forms of discipline, children are now more likely to be subject to expulsion or even arrest for petty offenses that would have once merited no more than a stern talking to.

The article includes stories of police handcuffing a student for grabbing his milk allotment out of turn and charging a 17-year-old involved in a consensual relationship with a classmate with sexual assault and child pornography charges that could land him in prison for 40 years. While these cases are no doubt outliers, they indicate a larger institutional problem of inappropriate police intervention in schools.

There are several reasons for this. Part of the problem is the restrictive state laws that govern what teachers can and cannot do or say to students. Fear of litigious parents means that many teachers will do anything they can to avoid actual disciplinary measures, and the police provide a convenient form of outsourcing.

Another issue is the fact that children are crammed together in an increasingly high-pressure education environment based on zip code, with few options for those who are unable to keep up with the lessons or who simply feel out of place among classmates who are not really their peers. A lack of choice, of feeling trapped, leads to acting out and bad behavior, which teachers feel unable to control. Part of the problem is certainly also the parents who wish to use school as a substitute for actually raising their kids and teaching them how to behave.

But perhaps the biggest reason why police have invaded schools is fear. Today, schools are regarded as mass shootings waiting to happen. Numerous high profile incidents of school violence have instilled terror into the population, so much so that they are willing to take any measures, including criminalizing much harmless behavior, to feel a little bit safer. But what no one seems to have realized is that, if schools are so dangerous to begin with, it’s madness to force children to spend so much of their young lives confined within their walls.

Compulsory education laws, combined with a lack of school choice, make children prisoners in a place where, we are told, they are about as likely to take a bullet in the head as learn algebra. Why would we inflict that on people? Surely it violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

If schools are violent, let’s get kids out of them, instead of surrounding them with law enforcement authorities trained to arrest and imprison, rather than aid and educate. This is not to mention the fact that police resources could be much better spent elsewhere, rather than having highly trained officers waste time persecuting children over cafeteria line etiquette or arresting teenagers in love.

Why should parents be forced to subject their children to such treatment? Why should kids whose only purpose at that stage of life is to learn and have fun be intimidated and threatened with criminal charges? Anyone should be able to opt out of such a system, or at the very least, transfer to school with less draconian methods of enforcement.

Anyone who has spent time around children can observe their wonder at life, the joy they feel at learning about the world around them, the hope and promise of life stretching out before them. It’s heartbreaking to me to see all that enthusiasm snuffed out as they are told, “Watch your step, or you’ll end up in a cold, grey cell.” There will be time to be beaten down by the power of the state later in life. Can’t we permit them just a few years of exploration and enjoyment before placing a boot on their small necks?

If schools are going to be nothing more than little prisons, complete with armed guards, I say, set the children free. (For more from the author of “What You’re Not Hearing about the Mini Police States in Public Schools” please click HERE)

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Pro-Life Feminist Group Had ‘Completely Positive’ Experience at Women’s March

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The Women’s March on Washington removed New Wave Feminists from their list of partners less than a week before the historic march took place last Saturday.

The Dallas-based non-profit was the first of three groups to have their partnership status revoked, simply because they were pro-life.

Many pro-life women responded on social media, saying they no longer felt welcome at the march, even though they had previously planned to attend.

But not Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa. Despite the public snub from the Women’s March, the founder and president of New Wave Feminists was determined to participate.

“If they think that pro-life feminists don’t exist, then we have to show up to say, ‘we’re everywhere,’” she told The Stream.

“Completely Positive”

Still, she was nervous. With the controversy over pro-life participation still hot, she worried there might be violence — and she would be an easy target with her “pro-life feminist” sign. “Please be careful,” her husband said.

So Herndon-De La Rosa didn’t initially hold up her sign when she arrived for the march, hoping to connect with other members of her group rather than advertise her controversial position alone. But when she couldn’t find her fellow pro-lifers, she held the sign up anyway.

Within three minutes, she was approached by a marcher.

“So glad you girls are here,” the woman said. “Thank you for coming out here and being bold and being feminists.”

Similar comments came throughout the day. Some women admitted that even though they were pro-choice, they appreciated pro-life participation.

Other women approached Herndon-De La Rosa’s group, which eventually congregated on the steps of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, to confide that they too were pro-life.

“It was completely positive,” Herndon-De La Rosa said of her experience at the march, “which absolutely shocked me.”

“Awakened a Sleeping Giant”

Herndon-De La Rosa believes the controversy over pro-life participation in the women’s march “awakened a sleeping giant.” Many women previously felt afraid to admit they were pro-life, she suggested, because they’d been told that you couldn’t be pro-life and be a feminist.

For Herndon-De La Rosa, the pro-life movement and feminism “totally correlate.”

“What the feminist movement needs is a life affirming component,” she said. “And what the pro-life movement needs is a pro-women component, a feminist component.”

A New Wave of Pro-Life Activism

While many assume that New Wave Feminists indicates a new wave of feminism, that name actually represents a new wave in the pro-life movement, Herndon-De La Rosa said.

She believes the mainstream pro-life movement often portrays women in crisis pregnancies as victims. She would rather send a message of empowerment.

“I was 16 and pregnant. I thought I couldn’t do it. You can,” she said, adding that community support is crucial — which is why New Wave Feminists helps women find such communities in their areas.

For Herndon-De La Rosa, “the real face” of pro-life activism isn’t the person protesting in front of abortion clinics, though those are the people the media focuses on.

“The pro-life movement is [made up of] the ones who are giving up their nights and weekends, or the extra bedroom in their home for women,” she said. “Nobody understands that those are the people that are really serving women well.”

Herndon-De La Rosa plans to promote such service with a new project — an app called Help Assist Her. The app will pinpoint a woman’s location and reveal all the women’s health organizations in the area. The app includes both government funded and charity organizations that provide women’s health services, but not abortions.

Help Assist Her will be rolled out by state, starting in New York. People can follow its progress by visiting HelpAssistHer.com and signing up for the newsletter.

Herndon-De La Rosa says that Planned Parenthood has positioned itself as a primary provider of women’s health services, despite being the number one provider of abortions. She believes the most effective way to defeat Planned Parenthood is to promote other organizations that provide health services for women, but are pro-life.

“It’s very hard for people who don’t know where to get the life affirming resources to find them,” she said. “We want to offer alternatives so women don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood.”

The Marching Continues

Soon after returning from the Women’s March, Herndon-De La Rosa got up before dawn to fly back to Washington, D.C. for the March for Life, taking place Friday. This year, her eight-year-old daughter will participate too.

As New Wave Feminists posted on Facebook, “Once we start marching we don’t stop!” (For more from the author of “Pro-Life Feminist Group Had ‘Completely Positive’ Experience at Women’s March” please click HERE)

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Abortion Survivor Tells Her Story in New Book

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You Carried Me: A Daughter’s Memoir is an extraordinary tale of survival and transformation. At 14, Melissa (Cross) Ohden discovered that when she first left the womb people were disappointed to see her alive. Her cries were evidence that the late term saline abortion — where a doctor poisons the amniotic fluid in order to chemically burn the child inside and out — had failed.

Melissa first dealt with this shocking past by turning to “the unholy trinity” of bulimia, alcohol and sex. Today, though, her strength comes from faith in the true Trinity and she is a wife and mother who has made hers a public face for the preborn.

In the book, Ohden chronicles the search for her roots, a journey which brought her eye to eye with the people of her past, people who like her were wounded by the reality of abortion.

Search and Discovery

What her adoptive parents had long kept hidden came to light when Melissa’s older sister faced a crisis pregnancy of her own. In an effort to save their grandchild, they told their troubled daughter about her sister’s circumstances. That decision to embrace the truth helped to save the life of Ohden’s preborn nephew and set Ohden on a path that would help to save many more.

Nevertheless, it first prompted a deep struggle as the teen went from believing that her biological family had made a loving decision to realizing, instead, that she carried the genes of those who wished her dead. Yet, when Ohden found her birthmother years later, she found another victim — a teenager pressed into an abortion that she never wanted and long unaware that her baby had survived.

This almost unbelievable drama is told with raw honesty and detailed documentation. The story twists but ultimately turns in the direction of grace and reconciliation. Now, Ohden heads up the Abortion Survivors Network through which she has connected with over 200 people who can tell a similar tale. These survivors stand as signposts to the always present humanity of the preborn.

Going Public

The decision to go public with her story was not an easy one, though. Surprisingly, the catalyst was a trip to an abortion clinic — as a customer.

“You should be here, not there.” Melissa Ohden heard those words from a pro-life sidewalk counselor at a Planned Parenthood clinic. Ignorant of the other services provided at this heavily fortified compound, she had come as a married woman to refill her birth control prescription, not to get an abortion. But she had just surprised even herself by telling the man with the rosary in his hand that she was an abortion survivor, and then Ohden’s heart told her that, yes, she should be with them.

That was her last visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic. Since then, she has shared her story with thousands and on January 27th, she will appear before tens of thousands more on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. at the March for Life.

Ohden’s is a song that should be heard by more than just the pro-life choir. Indeed, in many ways, she could have blended easily into the crowd at the recent Women’s March on Washington. Ohden put a Masters in Social Work into practice at a state agency assisting victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence and knew the struggles of a working mom. In the pages of her book, Ohden also notes her early admiration for Hillary Clinton and quotes approvingly from the likes of liberal favorites Joseph Campbell, Alice Walker and Arianna Huffington. The first time she shared her story publicly it was under the auspices of Feminists for Life.

Today, however, the left increasingly defends the boundaries of feminism with the litmus test of abortion rights. Ohden may not get past those gatekeepers. (Her Capitol Hill testimony against Planned Parenthood probably guarantees it.) She recently lamented that the media regularly “silences stories like mine.”

The NPR interviews may never come, but her story is a powerful one, powerfully told. It reads like a detective novel but its truth will elicit tears of sadness and joy. You Carried Me deserves to be carried wide and far. (For more from the author of “Abortion Survivor Tells Her Story in New Book” please click HERE)

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Why the March for Life Can Be a Remedy for ‘Fake News’

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Washington, D.C., has had a few days to recover from the inauguration and the vile leftist Women’s March on Washington. But the nation’s capital is already gearing up for its next large, national demonstration with oceans of protestors taking peacefully to the streets … and you probably won’t hear a thing about it on the evening news.

This Friday, mainstream media outlets will have an opportunity to cover a potentially larger event of even greater significance: The March for Life. The event, held every year on or around the Jan. 22 anniversary of Roe v. Wade, features hundreds of thousands of people from across the country marching against abortion. It also enjoys notoriously low media coverage outside of conservative circles and outlets.

This is of course in stark contrast to media coverage of Richard Spencer’s fringe neo-Nazi, alt-“Right” gathering a few months ago, where networks, online outlets, and newspapers went absolutely gaga covering a handful of racists sitting in a multi-purpose room as if they heralded the dawn of a new era. Same with the Women’s March on Washington, which, from a firsthand perspective, appeared to be little more than a chance to wear a pink hat and show off the set of genitals you drew on some poster board. But I digress …

Of course, America’s distrust of the mainstream media is at an all-time high, the reputations built in decades past by figures like Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite have been largely undone by years of grossly lopsided coverage — election cycles rife with blatant bias and salacious, unverifiable stories about Russian prostitutes doing unspeakable acts with the now-president.

The Federalist’s Sean Davis diagnoses the press’ problem as such:

This country desperately needs a source of information that is deemed credible by people across the political spectrum. It needs a free press that is capable of and willing to hold everyone in power accountable, regardless of their party or their ideology and regardless of their personal feelings toward whomever happens to be in charge. We need a press that believes in the rule of law rather than rule by men. And we need a media establishment that cares more about getting facts right than about anything else.

“Judging by the type of coverage we’ve seen since the election, that institution does not currently exist in this country,” he concludes.

And while the obscene, the salacious, and the unverified get wall-to-wall coverage and lionizing headlines, don’t expect anywhere near the same this Friday. Very few groups in America are as familiar with the consequences of the “fake news” phenomenon as the pro-life movement.

When news related to the unborn isn’t being covered up by mainstream outlets it’s being grossly misrepresented. Take for example The New York Times’ recent coverage of the March for Life, which excluded nearly every reference to the march’s actual name, referring to it only as an “anti-abortion” event (save for the March for Life president’s title).

And even then, the NYT story’s hook wasn’t about the consistently record-breaking crowds, or the actual message, but that Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway would be speaking at an “anti-abortion” event. No, really.

This sort of thing is common practice. On Monday, an annual Marist poll, sponsored by the Knights of Columbus and released in anticipation of March for Life, found that a whopping 74 percent of Americans favor significant restrictions on abortions, with a mere 16 percent believing that it should be allowed without any restriction. While this leaves Hillary Clinton and her extremist abortion lobby cronies in some rather thin company, don’t expect to see this covered outside the usual sources of pro-life news and information.

More than likely, if there’s any coverage of the march by the mainstream media, expect little more than a 30-second clip about some sort of abortion protest on the National Mall that’s heavy on footage of the pro-abortion counter-protestors who, after all, are just out there fighting a bunch of fundamentalists in the name of “women’s rights.”

Perhaps this year ought to be the one to change that — to attend the march and speak to attendees in earnest. To try to truly understand where they’re coming from. To give them as much air time and ink as will be given the pro-abortion protesters annually found at the end of the parade route.

“If the media wants to continue to be seen as a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party, ignore the march as usual. But if journalists are serious about improving their perceived objectivity and serving the American people at large, they should show up this Friday and give the tremendous pro-life crowds the news cycle they warrant,” reads a Monday morning statement from Terry Schilling, executive director of American Principles Project.

“This is a defining year for the pro-life movement. With a Republican House, Senate, and President, pro-life legislative goals are about to become pro-life legislative realities. The story is significant.”

To their credit, a few outlets in the wake of the presidential election have made concerted efforts to expand their horizons to include more voices, either by hiring new talent or realigning internally. While it may be comforting to see some outlets confront their extreme leftist imbalance in their newsrooms – which sometimes look more like North Korean election results – they should know they’re more than welcome on the Mall this Friday. (For more from the author of “Why the March for Life Can Be a Remedy for ‘Fake News'” please click HERE)

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Scientists, Women, the Press Think Trump Is Coming for Them

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A week or so before the election, there was a rumor bumping around the Internet which said Trump, if he were to become President, would immediately begin rounding up LGBT folk and placing them into camps. I replied to one of these exceptionally nervous people on Twitter, “It won’t be so bad. I hear Thursdays will be lasagna nights.” That earned me a blocking. (I have since deleted my account so that I don’t cause any more hurt feelings.)

Over this past weekend, a mob of angry females tromped through the streets of Washington DC. Boy, were they upset. Fuming. Nary a happy face. Trouble was, no one was able to discover why these citizens were displeased. Perhaps the nation is suffering a critical shortage of blue hair dye? Can somebody look that up?

One woman not reduced to incoherent ravings about her cat (that’s what I thought I heard), said Donald Trump was going to come after women and break them up like “puzzle pieces.” Jack the Ripper, look out! It’s Donald Trump, puzzle breaker.

The eminent New York Times writer Ross Douthat isn’t shivering over internment camps or feminist puzzle breaking, but he did wring his hands over the possibility that Donald Trump “will escalate from tweets to Erdoganian crackdowns, that truly independent journalism will be marginalized while the White House breeds a lap dog press.”

It doesn’t do to criticize Times writers, of course, but is it even theoretically possible for the press to more resemble a fluffy white pampered poodle, blind with devotion, madly licking its master, and barring its wee yellow teeth and yipping at intruders than it did during Mr Obama’s tenure?

Fear of an all-powerful Trumpenführer has not been confined to dyspeptics, dye-jobs, and diarists. The officially brightest among us — scientists themselves! — have convinced themselves Trump is going to confiscate their data. Headline at Forbes: “Fearing White House Purge Of Climate Science, Scientists Frantically Copying Data.” The author, James Conca, said:

It’s not like the new administration is going to start burning books or flushing files down the toilet, but website access will disappear, reports will be put in deep storage, and datasets will become more difficult to access, or will degrade in quality, as funding is cut from the agencies maintaining them.

Conca says this data is needed because the United States has been under attack from the Polar Vortex, a beast which he intimates was caused by global warming (which he mistakenly refer to as “climate change”).

Conca is calling these deletions, which have not happened, a “purging of science” which will result in the nation “sliding further into the abyss where truth and lies have equal weight and science is just another ideology to ignore when it’s inconvenient.”

Engadget asks whether the data panic is “irrational.” “Possibly”, they admit, but then they claim the new administration “has been picking climate change deniers for positions in relevant agencies, and has threatened to stop ‘politicized science.’” (Incidentally, no Trump hire has ever denied the climate has changed.)

How Trump will reach into the computers of all those scientists and vacuum up their precious bits hasn’t been specified. Maybe he will hire the Russians who hacked and stole the election from its rightful winner to do the job? Scientists will come in to their offices after a weekend to discover their hard drives have been purged of the proof the sky will soon fall and replaced with JPEGs of Rosie O’Donnell laughing.

Scary stuff! No wonder Harvard is sponsoring an “Archive-a-thon” to begin the backups before Trump comes after them. The announcement doesn’t say, but it’s a good guess the Archive-a-thon will take place in a Safe Space complete with puppies and coloring books to calm the nerves of these great brains. Don’t scoff. It’s got to the point where there is serious talk of scientists having a march on Washington.

Since there is so much angst out there, it is well to review its cause. Progressives assured us, in turn, that Ronald Reagan was Hitler, that George Bush père et fils were Hitler, that Barack Obama opponents John McCain and Mitt Romney were each Hitler, really that every Republican since Goldwater was Hitler, and so none of us would have been surprised to learn that Donald Trump was Hitler, too.

But it was worse! The Left insisted Trump was literally Hitler. Which brings to mind Mr Trump’s inauguration speech in which he spoke of “an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge” — including, as we have just seen, knowledge of the word literally.

After decades of creating and telling themselves horror stories, it was inevitable that the Left would begin believing them. It is thus not surprising that Trump’s election resulted in a full-blown moral panic. We’re in for four (or eight?) years of having everything that goes wrong blamed on Donald Trump. Might as well enjoy it. (For more from the author of “Scientists, Women, the Press Think Trump Is Coming for Them” please click HERE)

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When Pro-Abortion Sentiments Trump Science and Common Sense

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There is a reason why many women contemplating abortion decide not to abort when they see an ultrasound of their baby. There is no denying the humanity of this tiny creature, which is anything but a clump of cells.

As the baby grows in the womb and is seen by ultrasound imaging, it’s common to hear parents exclaim, “Look at those little hands! Look at that adorable nose (it looks like Grandpa’s nose, doesn’t it?)! And look — it’s a girl! (Or, It’s a boy!)”

How amazing it is to see the ultrasound of your baby, especially when it’s your first child. Not surprisingly, both of our daughters, now in their late 30s, had the identical reaction when they saw the ultrasounds of their first babies: How could anyone abort their child?

It is for good reason that pro-abortion legislators fight against laws that would require abortion clinics to show an ultrasound of the baby prior to the decision to abort. They know it would be bad for business (plus, they argue, it adds to the inconvenience of the mother wanting to dispose of the contents of her womb).

It is hard to deny the personhood of the fetus when you see an ultrasound, which is why, during last year’s Super Bowl, Dorito’s incurred the wrath of NARAL (the National Abortion Rights Action League) when it aired an innocent, light-hearted, commercial featuring a very pregnant woman, her husband, and an ultrasound of their baby. According to NARAL, Dorito’s had committed the cardinal sin of “humanizing fetuses.” Oh, the very thought of it!

But there is something even worse than that Dorito’s ad. According to a bizarre article in The Atlantic, pro-life groups are being devious and deceptive when they use ultrasounds to convince women that their babies are human. How low will these pro-lifers go?

The Atlantic’s Ultrasound Deniers

The article, written by Moira Weigel and posted on Tuesday, was originally titled “How the Ultrasound Pushed the Idea That a Fetus Is a Person” with the subtitle, “The technology has been used to create sped-up videos that falsely depict a response to stimulus.” (Its current title is, “How Ultrasound Became Political.” The subtitle remains the same.)

Weigel’s article, which was marred by embarrassing errors (as pointed out by Alexandra DeSanctis on the National Review), not to mention being marred by bizarre claims, denied the reality (and significance) of fetal heartbeats as early as five or six weeks old, downplayed the evidence of ultrasounds and claimed that — gasp! — the pro-life movement was yet another example of patriarchal overreach. Yes, the science of “ultrasound made it possible for the male doctor to evaluate the fetus without female interference.” Those dastardly, duplicitous males! They are at it once again.

For good reason Sean Davis of the Federalist wrote that, “Moira Weigel took a sledgehammer to basic science and then did her best to vacuum its brains out before anyone could figure out what just happened.” The title of his article was as accurate as it was snarky: “Abortion Science: Heartbeats Are Imaginary, Unborn Babies Aren’t Alive, And Ultrasounds Are Just Tools Of The Patriarchy.”

Further underscoring the absurdity of Weigel’s article was this tweet from Denise Russell, which Davis reproduced: “Before ultrasounds, a woman had to wait until delivery to find out if she was getting a puppy, a goat, or a human.” How did we forget that?

Responding to the Republican-led effort to pass the “Heartbeat Bill,” which would prohibit doctors from aborting a baby if a heartbeat was detected (in the words of its sponsor, Congressman Steve King, “If a heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected”), Weigel asks, “What is a fetal heartbeat? And why does it matter?”

Her answer to these questions can be summed up, respectively, in three words, “Nothing” and “It doesn’t.”

The Heartbeat of a Child

Forget the fact that doctors check the baby’s heartbeat during each pre-natal visit, since this is an indicator of health, or the fact that they carefully monitor the baby’s heartbeat during delivery to be sure the child is OK. And forget the fact that doctors look for a pulse to see if someone is still living or the fact that a person is declared dead when their heart stops beating for good.

No. When it comes to abortion, all those facts conveniently disappear, and the heartbeat of that tiny pre-born child is of no significance at all. Indeed, Weigel opines, “Doctors do not even call this rapidly dividing cell mass a ‘fetus’ until nine weeks into pregnancy.” (I must be getting old, but somehow, I don’t recall my wife, Nancy, saying to me decades ago, “Honey, I just got the test results back and I have a rapidly dividing cell mass inside of me!”)

But it is not just fetal heartbeats which have no meaning for Weigel. Ultrasounds also have no meaning for her since … well, since she’s doesn’t believe they should. (If you think I’m exaggerating, read her article.) She notes that posting pictures of ultrasounds on social media has “heightened the social reality of the unborn,” as if this was somehow a bad, misleading thing.

And she points to an American couple who “posted a video of their sonogram fast-forwarded so that their fetus appeared to be clapping in time as they sang, ‘When You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands.’” The implication is that because the video was sped up, giving the false impression that the baby was clapping to the beat, that the more basic impression was also false, namely that there was a little human being in that mother’s womb who was putting its two little hands together. Pretty good for a clump of cells and a mass of tissue!

Although Weigel cites those who claim that pregnant women who see their ultrasounds are less likely to abort, she disputes these claims, pointing to a “2014 study published by the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, which drew on the medical records of nearly 16,000 women seeking abortions” and “found that viewing an ultrasound had a negligible impact on whether they decided to proceed.”

Other studies I have read have come to very different conclusions (see here, for examples), and a pro-life ministry that offers ultrasounds to women considering abortion has also seen tremendous results. But I doubt that all the studies in the world would convince Weigel right now, since her objections seem to be based on ideology more than science. As observed by Alexandra DeSanctis, “The reason that progressives such as Weigel denounce ultrasound technology is … because they want to continue denying the humanity of the unborn child, a humanity that is undeniable whether or not the mother wants the child.”

Yes, “Pro-life activists and parents who want to keep their unborn children will acknowledge this humanity. We all know it. Abortionists know it. Mothers aborting their babies know it. Planned Parenthood executives know it. Perhaps many are able to dull their consciences and convince themselves that it’s “just a clump of cells.” But deep down, they must know. We all do. And that’s why the Left has to work so hard to deny it.”

And the harder the Left works to deny the humanity of the unborn child, the more it exposes its moral and scientific bankruptcy. In that regard, Weigel’s article does a great service to the pro-life cause, and for that, we should be glad. Truth is sweeping away the lies. (For more from the author of “When Pro-Abortion Sentiments Trump Science and Common Sense” please click HERE)

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