Modern Feminism: Lies, Bullies, and Whiners! Oh My!

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If you want to know how to combat the social justice snowflakes of the liberal-Left, read what they’re writing. As unappealing as this sounds, it really is the best way to understand their progressive sentiments and pseudo-humanitarianism, and eventually dismantle their arguments.

Feminist blogger Luvvie Ajayi recently released her first book, “I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual,” a collection of essays on life, culture, social media, and fame. If you can get past the overuse of alliteration, painfully cheesy puns, and perpetual whining, you will gain insight into what has to be the most confusing, nonsensical social justice cause of our day: feminism.

Ajayi’s chapter on feminism is proof of a movement so progressive that its own proponents can’t even define it: “Believing that people should make their own choices about their own lives is ultimately what I think it means to be a feminist,” she writes.

According to Ajayi, “everyone should be a feminist,” because feminism is really just about “believing that women, and everyone, really, have the right to live life on their own terms.”
Sounds pretty unobjectionable, right? It even sounds, dare I say, conservative. Too bad not a word of it is true.

“Womanhood should be defined by each person for herself, because we are not all the same, and there’s no one way we can define it as a group,” Ajayi writes.

But if feminism is as subjective as Ajayi professes, why do people even use the term — and choose to define their entire existence on such? One word: victimhood.

Like most progressive movements, modern feminism purports to laud equality, tolerance, and freedom of expression as its primary goals. The truth, however, is that feminism promotes two unappealing visions of equality, neither of which could be considered “tolerant.”

Some feminists have attempted to reach equality by disarming and devaluing men. For these women, equality demands that the status and intrinsic worth of men be lowered for the sake of female liberation, independence, and “leveling the playing field.” This is the “fight the patriarchy” and “the future is female” group.

An alternative and more radical form of modern feminism asserts that equality demands total transcendence of sexual and all other differences — complete uniformity in role, in pay, and, consequently, in perceived value. This view not only attacks men, but any person whose beliefs or values challenge the progressive feminist agenda. I call this camp the “feminist fascists.”

“Ideology can go to hell,” Ajayi writes, “when the people who practice it consider themselves the gatekeeper.” Super tolerant.

Here’s the problem with that sentiment: Feminism is an ideology of sorts, which Ajayi even admits. And every ideology, or worldview, makes a truth claim, even if that claim is that anything goes.

The truth is, modern feminists aren’t OK with ideologies that contradict their liberal beliefs. People like Ajayi use the word “equality” to legitimize their claims of victimhood. They have the superpower of finding new ways to be perpetually offended.

Christina Hoff Sommers, AEI scholar and host of “The Factual Feminist” weekly vlog, explains how the feminist movement evolved into something its founders never intended. Instead of defending the dignity of women in the workplace and in the voting booths, today’s “intersectional feminism” unites women “at the intersection of propaganda, neurosis and rage.”

“They are bullying people now,” the “Who Stole Feminism?” author asserted in a recent interview with fellow feminist Camille Paglia.

Luvvie Ajayi notes in her book that the feminist movement has earned a bad reputation by “becoming synonymous with white women and that insidious white privilege.” Hoff Sommers agrees, and to an extent, so do I.

In her interview with Paglia, they discussed how a sort of “bourgeois protection” is being demanded by women who are least likely to experience any form of discrimination. Think: white middle-class college women and celebrities.

Ajayi writes that feminism “has been cruel by not equally prioritizing … the issues of women of color … and basically any woman who isn’t straight and white.” According to the 30-something blogger, people who question the purpose of the feminist movement “live in a dreamland” where “women are already equal.”

The irony here is that Ajayi’s adoption of “you do you” feminism only worsens this problem.

According to Sommers, intersectional feminism actually emerged in the black and Latino communities as a response to a women’s movement that attended “only to the needs of highly professional, middle class, upper middle class women.” Its main purpose was to address problems pertaining to cultural, racial, and economic minorities.

“But,” Sommers noted, “it has been appropriated by mostly middle class white women on campus.”

The term “safe space,” she added, was originally coined by early black feminists who congregated privately to discuss issues without any censorship from white feminists who didn’t have to worry about racism. As Ajayi notes, “They might be called ‘bitch,’ but we get called ‘n*gger bitch,” (edited).

Again, this is a valid criticism of the modern feminist movement, which is why it’s so mind-boggling that Ayayi, a black woman, would ascribe to an ideology that undermines any legitimate claims of oppression.

This is the tragedy of confused liberal feminism. Feminists today don’t want their “dignity” affirmed. They don’t want “justice.” They love their victim privilege too much.

Modern feminism isn’t about improving the lives of women; it’s radical progressivism by a different name.

“I just want women to be able to thrive, and my form of feminism is pretty simple: I do what I want to do and know I have the right,” Ajayi concludes the chapter.

Luvvie Ajayi does a disservice to any legitimate feminist causes by defending an ideology that doesn’t discriminate between special snowflake syndrome and genuine attacks on human dignity. To that I say, “Luvvie Ajayi, I’m judging you.” (For more from the author of “Modern Feminism: Lies, Bullies, and Whiners! Oh My!” please click HERE)

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When Transgender Inclusion Moves From Bathrooms to Basketball Courts

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North Carolina’s legislative body passed a bill mandating a statewide policy banning individuals from using public bathrooms that do not correspond to their biological sex, as opposed to their opinion of their sex.

The law, the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, means people must use bathrooms and other public facilities where occupants can be in various stages of undress according to whether their sex chromosomes are XX, in the case of females, or XY, in the case of males.

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community claims that the use of biology to determine sex is oppressive and limits alternatives. I agree. I all but argued this in a column earlier this year titled “You Are What You Say You Are.”

Let’s look at some possible benefits of freeing oneself from the oppression of biological determinism.

Say that I am sentenced to a five-year prison term for bank fraud. Though confinement can never be pleasant, I’d find it far more tolerable if I could convince the judge that though biologically I have XY chromosomes, in my opinion I’m really a woman and thus my confinement should be in a female prison with a female cellmate.

For the court to fail to take my sexual opinion into consideration would violate our Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, I could say.

The Atlantic Coast Conference, the entire NCAA, and the NBA have threatened to remove important games and championships from North Carolina because of its law denying bathroom rights to males who feel as if they are females and females who feel as if they’re males.

I am wondering just how consistent they are.

Only a few college basketball players have the skills to make it onto a professional team, but most of these players have skills that exceed most players’ skills in the Women’s National Basketball Association.

What if a college basketball star were to claim to be transgender and go out for the WNBA? Would the self-righteous NBA leaders come out and support him if he were to be refused?

Aside from this gender question is the gross pay discrimination between the NBA and the WNBA.

NBA players such as LeBron James (nearly $23 million) and Carmelo Anthony (also close to $23 million) individually earn twice as much money annually than every single player in the WNBA combined. The WNBA minimum rookie salary is $37,950, and the top salary is $107,000.

I bet that if the NBA and WNBA were to permit transgenderism, salaries in women’s basketball would rise dramatically.

It’s not just basketball that would yield benefits for those with XY chromosomes. What about allowing transgender XY people to box women in the Women’s International Boxing Association?

Then there are the Olympics. The men’s fastest 100-meter speed is 9.58 seconds. The women’s record is 10.49. What about giving XY people a greater chance at winning the gold by permitting them to compete in the women’s event? They could qualify by just swearing that they feel womanish or have gender dysphoria.

President Barack Obama’s defense secretary, Ashton Carter, wants to promote sex equality in the nation’s military. I don’t think he’s serious.

The minimum fitness test requirement for 17- to 21-year-old males is to be able to do 35 pushups, 47 situps, and a 2-mile run in 16 minutes, 36 seconds or less.

A weak male soldier might simply claim that he feels feminine. That would mean he could pass the minimum fitness requirement by meeting the female minimums of 13 pushups, 47 situps, and a 19:42 2-mile run. To boot, he would get to reside in the women’s barracks and enjoy all the privileges attendant thereto.

For most of history, homosexuals were persecuted unfairly. They pleaded, “Get out of my bedroom. What consenting adults do is no one else’s business.”

I share that sentiment, and for the most part, homosexuals have won that objective. Had their early campaign against persecution included a demand that males be permitted to use women’s bathrooms, the persecution they suffered would have continued. (For more from the author of “When Transgender Inclusion Moves From Bathrooms to Basketball Courts” please click HERE)

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LGBT Activists Are Coming for Your Children

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Do you need to lock your doors and windows at night because a homosexual predator is coming after your kids? That is absolutely not what I mean when I say that LGBT activists are coming for your children.

I’m talking about educators and government leaders; I’m talking about celebrities and judges; I’m talking about people of influence who want to indoctrinate your children even before they get to school. I’m talking about an all-out war for the minds and hearts of your kids.

Are you equipped and ready to do what is best for these little ones?

By all means, as parents, we should teach our kids to be kind to all, especially to those who seem different and are ostracized by their peers. And we should teach by word and example that bullying is always wrong. In other words, we don’t need to teach gay is good in order to teach that bullying is bad. In the same way, we don’t need to push every boy to be a football player and every girl to be a ballerina to combat transgender activism.

But you better believe that we need to take a stand for our kids — in the schools; in the world of entertainment and social media; in the courts; in the churches — if we want to keep them safe from this destructive and deceptive indoctrination.

Consider that there are YouTube channels dedicated to teaching pre-school children that you can be a boy or a girl or neither or both, also trying to teach them the meaning of words like “queer.”

Kids this age can barely tell the difference between fantasy and reality (they play with dolls and toys as if they were real creatures), and they have virtually no understanding of sexuality or romantic attraction. Some even think they are dogs and like to walk on all fours and bark. Yet activists want to indoctrinate them with the latest LGBT talking points. This is so wrong.

I documented years ago how groups like GLSEN were going after elementary school children with “Terminology Game Cards” that quizzed students and teachers on terms like Biological Sex, Gender Identity, Gender Role, Transgender, Gender Expression, Sexual Orientation, Heterosexism, Transphobia, Asexual, Bisexual, Lesbian, Gay, Transsexual, Intersexual, Androgyny, Cross Dresser, Genderqueer, Gender Non-Conforming, Queer, LGBTQ, Sexual Reassignment Surgery, D/L (Down Low), MSM (Men Who Have Sex with Men).

And the average mom and dad probably have no clue that their little 7-year-old daughter just learned to distinguish between Genderqueer and Gender Non-Conforming in school today.

This is absolute madness.

Of course, I understand what motivates the activists and educators. They want to teach “tolerance” and they want a child who does not appear to be “gender conforming” to realize that their insides might not be in harmony with their outsides.

But that doesn’t make what they’re doing right, nor does it make it helpful. And the best motivation in the world cannot change falsehood into truth.

That being said, it is clear that LGBT activists and their allies have had ample motivation to change the thinking of Americans, beginning with our children, and already in 1995, lesbian author Patricia Nell Warren stated, “Whoever captures the kids owns the future.” (Published in The Advocate, October 3, 1995, p. 80, in the article “Future Shock.”)

How sad that these activists have been far more visionary than many of us who identify as conservative Christians and who claim to care about future generations.

Frankly, I don’t doubt that we care; I do doubt that we have been on the alert.

It is becoming increasingly common for women who partially transitioned to men to give birth to their children and even nurse them — this was graphically illustrated in one of the most disturbing images I have ever seen — while a recent headline stated, “Is this the world’s most modern family? Man who used to be a woman gives birth to a baby by woman who used to be a man.” (Stream note: You can read more about this twisted story in Jennifer Hartline’s new column “Back to Reality, Please: A Man and a Woman Make Babies“)

What effect will this have on the children? How will the child feel as it grows up and marries and has children yet knows that its “father” is actually its mother?

In keeping with this confusion, the hit ABC show Modern Family has now added a transgender child actor to its cast. How fitting (and ironic) that Modern Family will now feature an 8-year-old boy who is actually a girl. And your kids are taking all this in.

Over in Norway, “A proposed bill in the Norwegian Parliament would allow people to change their legal gender online within a matter of minutes.” And the word “people” includes children as young as 6-years-old. Yes, a child that young would have the ability to make a decision officially changing their legal gender. How can this be?

Incredibly, “The bill is expected to pass with few objections when it goes to a vote this summer. Norwegians would just have to go online and simply ‘tick a box’ to change their legal gender.”

Back here in the States, the Obama administration is ready to punish schools that will not force a 15-year-old girl to share a locker room and shower with a 15-year-old boy who identifies as a girl. This is why I say that LGBT activists (and their allies) are coming after your children.

Perhaps we can learn from the people of Mexico who recently rallied in more than 130 cities and drew crowds of over 200,000 in Mexico City alone, as they stood against redefining marriage and family in their country.

And we can do this without hating anyone. In fact, love requires us to act. Our children’s future is at stake. (For more from the author of “LGBT Activists Are Coming for Your Children” please click HERE)

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First Baby Born With Controversial ‘Three-Parent’ Technique

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A technique to make “three-parent babies” was voted into law by the British Parliament in February 2015, but it wasn’t a “three-parent” baby born in the UK that made an ethical splash heard around the world — it was a baby boy born to a Jordanian couple treated in Mexico by a team of U.S. doctors. This procedure, called mitochondrial replacement therapy, is not legal in the U.S., so Dr. John Zhang and his team at the New Hope Fertility Center in New York City traveled to Mexico to treat the Jordanian woman.

The woman, identified as Ibtisam Shaban, has Leigh syndrome, which is a fatal disease affecting the developing nervous system, reported the New Scientist. The genes for Leigh syndrome are in the mitochondrial DNA of the mother. While Shaban did not exhibit symptoms of Leigh syndrome, she lost her first two children to the disease at ages six and eight months.

The procedure used to produce the baby, Abrahim Hassan, is surrounded by a flurry of ethical questions. In his case, Dr. Zhang removed the nucleus (which houses the majority of a person’s DNA) and placed it in the “shell” of a donor’s egg containing healthy mitochondria DNA. Another technique is to fertilize both the mother’s egg and the donor egg with the father’s sperm, then replace the donor’s nucleus with the mother’s. This technique destroys one embryo. While the mitochondrial transfer procedure is being hailed as a great accomplishment for those who have or are treating mitochondrial diseases, it also raises several serious ethical questions.

Altering the Germ Line

A child with mitochondrial DNA therapy will have DNA from three people, hence the term “three-parent babies.” Since mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to child, females with three parents will permanently alter the “germ line” by passing the altered DNA to their children and so on. Dr Trevor Stammers, Program Director in Bioethics and Medical Law at St. Mary’s University, said, “Even if these babies are born they will have to be monitored all their lives, and their children will have to be as well. We do not yet know the interaction between the mitochondria and nuclear DNA. To say that it is the same as changing a battery is facile. It’s an extremely complex thing.”

Playing God

Some have charged that experimenting with DNA is “playing God,” and producing “genetically-modified” humans. “These regulations would authorize the crossing of a rubicon for the first time,” said British MP Fiona Bruce who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group. “It would authorize germ line therapy… to alter the genes of an individual. This is something defined by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as effectively constituting eugenics.”

Only Boys Allowed

At this time, the procedure is only recommended to produce male embryos, since mitochondrial diseases are passed down through females. According to Science News, the Institute of Medicine in the United States determined “it would be ethical to produce male embryos using the technique,” but as of this year federal laws still prohibit the method. This means that female embryos would be destroyed in search of a male who would not pass on mitochondrial diseases to future generations.

Risk of Crossing Ethical Boundaries

British MP Jacob Rees Mogg said once the lines have been crossed, there’s no going back. “I think the difficulty is that it starts a process which is very hard to see where it stops,” he said. “Once the germ line is changed at one point you decide that isn’t allowable in other cases … there is a very clear boundary that babies cannot be genetically altered. And once you have decided that they can you have done something very profound.” Bruce concurs, “We … have approved a technique and what that technique could be used for in the future who knows,” she said. “We’re opening a Pandora’s box.”

The concerns around what amounts to having two mothers could present a problem in the future as child custody battles grow increasingly complicated, even as same-sex couples fight for custody of a child who biologically belongs to only one of them. Others worry that the legalizing of this technique will lead to creating “designer babies” on demand. While scientists may not be able to select a preferred eye color or hair color now, selecting embryos based on sex is already being done. Selecting other desired characteristics is only a matter of time. Once the laws are in place to perform mitochondrial DNA transfers in the U.S., the question of designer babies will be a nonissue.

Genetic Abnormalities

Perhaps one of the most alarming findings has to do with the very real possibility of genetic abnormalities for the three-parent babies. “There are numerous serious risks associated with this technology,” said Dr. Paul Knoepfler, Associate Professor at the University of California, Davis. “These include most notably the possibility that developmentally disabled or deceased babies will be produced. Aberrations could lead to developmental defects in babies or also manifest in later life as increased rates of aging [or] cancer.”

Dr. Knoepfler’s concerns are hardly unreasonable. In the early 1990s, embryologists in the U.S. performed a similar technique involving DNA from three people and the results were unsuccessful. The babies who were born later developed genetic disorders, including two infants born with a missing X chromosome and two who later had serious developmental disorders. The practice was banned after the problems were discovered.

Even with the mitochondrial DNA therapy there are no guarantees that the baby will be born without the mitochondrial disease the parents were hoping to avoid. Scientists are aware of mitochondrial carryover during nuclear transfer, also known as Genetic Drift — that is, the mitochondrial DNA of the mother carrying the disease could still carryover to the created embryo and eventually take over anyway, as reported in the journal Cell Stem Cell. Professor Mary Herbert of Newcastle University commented that “we don’t know what it means for development, but it’s alerted us to the fact that we really need to work hard to get as close to zero carry-over as we can.”

Following the UK’s legalization of the procedure, MEPs wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron, calling the practice “unethical.” In an open letter, the group warned Cameron that EU law prohibited genetic alterations that will carry on to the next generation. “Your proposals violate the fundamental standards of human dignity and integrity of the person,” they wrote. “Modification of the genome is unethical and cannot be permitted.” The Center for Genetics and Society (CGS) said it was “a historic mistake” and warned the technique “will turn children into biological experiments.”

CGS added, “… [T]hey will result in children with DNA from three different people in every cell of their bodies, which will impact a large range of traits in unknowable ways, and introduce genetic changes that will be passed down to future generations through the female line.” (For more from the author of “First Baby Born With Controversial ‘Three-Parent’ Technique” please click HERE)

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Why This Virginia Tech Student Went on a Hunger Strike for Gun Rights

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A Virginia Tech student, currently on a hunger strike advocating for the allowance of concealed weapons on campus, wants the right of self-defense abided by on his college campus.

“I am advocating for Virginia concealed gun permit holders to be able to carry concealed on campus and in buildings and in the classrooms,” Ryan James Martin, a fifth-year senior studying English and biological sciences at the Virginia university, told The Daily Signal in a phone conversation. “The hunger strike aspect of it was really designed to call attention to the issue.”

Martin, 22, started his hunger strike Sept. 25 at 11:59 p.m. and plans to carry the strike through Friday, Sept. 30, at the conclusion of University President Timothy Sands’ first State of the University Address set to start at 3 p.m. Eastern time.

The Virginia Tech campus is a gun-free zone.

Martin, a concealed carry permit holder in the state of Virginia, said that on his campus no one is allowed to carry Nerf guns or even pepper spray.

“The only legal weapon we’re really allowed to have is a less than four-inch pocket knife and our fists,” he said.

Martin said he has graduated from Virginia Tech’s student police academy, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office’s citizen’s police academy, and is currently in the Blacksburg Police Department’s citizens police academy program.

“Just because I have a gun on me does not make me an evil assailant,” Martin said.

“Just because I have a gun on me does not make me an evil assailant.” —Ryan James Martin, a Virginia Tech student

Martin said he has had his concealed carry permit for a little over a year and said he has passed state and federal background checks multiple times and is also a firearms instructor.

“I take [students] to our local firearm range free of charge and teach them how to shoot safely and effectively,” Martin said.

Martin said that in January he requested a meeting with Sands, the university president, and the university’s Board of Visitors to discuss concealed carry on campus. The meeting was never granted, he said.

Martin sent an email on Sept. 23 to Sands, college deans, community leaders, and local media explaining the hunger strike.

“Our campus is not immune to the ever-increasing acts of violence and terror that happen every day,” Martin wrote in the email to The Daily Signal. “We should know best—it has been 3,447 days since we inherited the title of deadliest college campus in the nation, yet students are still forbidden from even carrying pepper spray as per university regulation.” His email added:

Further, I will be on the steps of Burruss Hall every morning, and every other chance I am able next week, to read aloud the Constitution and Bill of Rights which seem to be ignored on my campus.

“Virginia Tech respects any student’s right to civil protest, provided that person abides by our Principles of Community and incurs no harm to self or others,” Mark Owczarski, assistant vice president for university relations at Virginia Tech, wrote in an email to The Daily Signal.

The university did not comment as to why Sands and the Board of Visitors did not meet with Martin.

In April 2007, 32 students and staff were killed by a gunman in the Virginia Tech massacre in Blacksburg, Virginia.

“What we saw on April 16, 2007, almost 10 years ago, is that 32 students and faculty members were killed, many others shot while they waited for a little over 10 minutes for law enforcement to arrive and the threat was neutralized,” Martin said.

“I truly believe that if one of those individuals had legally possessed a concealed firearm, we’d have less than 32 memorial stones on the Drillfield today,” he said, adding:

I’ve been called many names for claiming that, but in all honestly we’ll never know because they weren’t allowed self-defense that day and we saw what happened. It’s a tough issue. It is sensitive, but we need to talk about it. We need to find some solutions to the problems we face as a campus of 30,000 students.

In Virginia, along with 22 other states, a college or university makes the decision whether to ban or allow concealed carry on campus, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Eight states—Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin—have provisions allowing concealed weapons to be carried by students on public higher education campuses.

To obtain a concealed carry handgun permit in Virginia, a person must be 21 years of age or older or a member of the military.

Employees, students, volunteers, and visitors at Virginia Tech “reported or discovered to possess a firearm or weapon on university property will be asked to remove it immediately,” the university’s policy on weapons states. “Failure to comply may result in a student conduct referral and/or arrest, or an employee disciplinary action and/or arrest.”

Exemptions from the policy include certified and sworn police officers or when participating in programs sponsored by the on-campus police department such as the police academy.

This week, Martin said he has limited his hunger strike diet to consist of liquid intake and regular medicine and multivitamins.

Over 34 hours into his strike, “at this point, I’m surprisingly not even hungry,” Martin told The Daily Signal Tuesday morning.

Martin said he possibly will strike longer than Friday if Sands does not contact him, but already considers the hunger strike a success because he’s “got the conversation on campus going.” (For more from the author of “Why This Virginia Tech Student Went on a Hunger Strike for Gun Rights” please click HERE)

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Satanism Rise Fresh Sign of U.S. Fall From God

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Elementary schools forced by the government to allow “Satan Clubs” on school grounds. Statues of Baphomet are erected in major American cities. And a national headquarters for the “Satanic Temple” in Salem, Massachusetts, famous for its “witch trials” during colonial times.

Has America gone to the devil? Christian leaders are speaking out – and they are reluctantly saying it has.

Karl Payne, pastor of leadership development at Antioch Bible Church and the former chaplain of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, said the rise of devil worship is an ominous development.

“Historian Arnold Toynbee famously declared countries crumble from within,” he said. “I believe we are nearing the end of that same course in our country that once represented a light of hope and freedom to the world.”

Payne, the author of “Spiritual Warfare: Christians, Demonization and Deliverance,” said America is no longer a Christian nation. And Christians need to wake up. (Read more from “Satanism Rise Fresh Sign of U.S. Fall From God” HERE)

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Pro-Lifers Protest, Pray as D.C. Planned Parenthood Headquarters Opens

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After months of legal wrangling and pro-life prayer and protests, Planned Parenthood’s new D.C. headquarters and abortion center opened on Monday.

But pro-lifers aren’t giving up. A Sunday evening prayer vigil (disclosure: the vigil was attended by this reporter) drew approximately 30 people, and two events on Monday drew many more. And Lauren Handy, the full-time, self-described “Barefoot Activist,” will remain at the center after others have gone home, praying for women to choose life.

“It’s time to move from outrage to action. I refuse to celebrate the scourge of abortion and I hope our community reflects that as well,” Handy told The Stream. Larry Cirignano, Virginia Director for American Catholics for Religious Freedom and the D.C. representative at Choose Life license plates, noted that the center was built with taxpayer money, and declared it “government waste, fraud and abuse at its worst.”

The center has drawn controversy not just for its abortions and Planned Parenthood’s proven and alleged law-breaking across the country. Its location next to a popular charter school just down the street from homes has led to controversy within the community. Late last year, the school filed a lawsuit against several pro-life advocates it claims intimidated parents and children, and trespassed on school property.

One of those advocates, a felon with mental issues who had planned to bomb an abortion center in Maryland a decade ago, has agreed to stay away from the clinic. However, Handy, who is also named in the lawsuit, hasn’t let it stop her from peacefully attempting to save lives.

She criticized the Monday evening gala held by Planned Parenthood to celebrate the center’s opening, saying,“While Planned Parenthood wines and dines tonight, women and children living on the streets go hungry.”

Planned Parenthood received over $500 million from taxpayers in 2015, despite allegedly using illegal abortions to illegally sell fetal body parts. Many of its affiliates have been accused of breaking myriad state and federal laws, such as an Alabama law requiring health organizations to report possible abuse of minors.

In that case, an abortion center in Mobile, Alabama gave a 14-year old girl two abortions in four months. A state official told LifeSiteNews that he and other officials believe the abortion center did not intend to violate state law.

The new headquarters in the Nation’s Capital replaced one across town that closed last year. Pro-life activism delayed the opening of the new center, which was supposed to open this past spring, by several months. (For more from the author of “Pro-Lifers Protest, Pray as D.C. Planned Parenthood Headquarters Opens” please click HERE)

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Eight Months After Abortion Flap, Lands’ End CEO Out

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Almost eight months after angering activists on both sides of the abortion fight and losing at least two religious schools as customers, Lands’ End CEO Federica Marchionni is stepping down.

In a press release, the clothing retailer’s Board Chairman Josephine Linden said that Marchionni’s “creative vision has helped Lands’ End begin its transformation as a global lifestyle brand with a broader merchandise offering that is more relevant in today’s marketplace. Federica is stepping down at this time, leaving Lands’ End well positioned to continue its evolution and capture the growth opportunities that exist for our iconic brand in this dynamic retail environment.”

According to Marchionni, “I am honored to have led this extraordinary company and proud to have succeeded in providing a vision to expand its positioning in the industry with a multi-dimensional strategy.”

Marchionni was hired in early 2015 to revamp Lands’ End’s struggling brand; the company’s valuation dropped from $1.9 billion in 2002 to $780 million last year. Market Watch shows that the company’s stock has dropped precipitously in the last two years, from over $55 per share in late 2014 to less than $16 per share today, and as low as $14.03 in the last year.

This spring Lands’ End ignited an uproar in the pro-life community when it promoted abortion feminist icon Gloria Steinem in its Easter catalog. The decision cost the company business from at least two schools, and pro-life outrage convinced its executives to apologize and pull Marchionni’s interview with Steinem off of its website.

The reversal made things worse, from the company’s perspective — abortion supporters slammed Lands’ End on social media and traditional news outlets, leading several branding and public relations experts to call the controversy an unforced error.

The stock price dropped in late April, and hasn’t recovered. Over the summer, Marchionni told the abortion-backing fashion magazine Marie Claire that she didn’t regret bringing “women’s equality” into the public eye, though she did say abortion promotion was not intended with the Easter catalog. (For more from the author of “Eight Months After Abortion Flap, Lands’ End CEO Out” please click HERE)

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House Debates Protections for Babies Born Alive After Attempted Abortions

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An abortion survivor urged Americans to “wake up” to the reality that some babies born alive after an attempted abortion are left to die, the survivor testified at a hearing on Capitol Hill last week.

“Many Americans have no idea that babies can even live through abortions and are often left to die, but this does happen,” Gianna Jessen, 39, said at the hearing. “I know this, because I was born alive in an abortion clinic after being burned in my mother’s womb for 18 hours.”

Jessen, who has cerebral palsy due to her attempted abortion, added at a House Judiciary Constitution and Civil Justice Subcommittee hearing on Sept. 23:

My medical records clearly state the following: Born during saline abortion … Apart from Jesus himself, the only reason I am alive is the fact that the abortionist had not yet arrived at work that morning. Had he been there, he would have ended my life by strangulation, suffocation, or simply leaving me there to die.

“Often when I’m in the midst of abortion advocates, they never can answer this one question and it is this: If abortion is merely about women’s rights, then what were mine?” Jessen said.

In 2002, President George W. Bush signed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, making it illegal to kill any babies born alive.

“Unfortunately, incidents involving born-alive children being killed after an attempted abortion have continued after this law [was passed] and into the present,” Arina Grossu, director for the Center of Human Dignity at the Family Research Council, testified at the hearing. Grossu’s written testimony says:

Abortionist Kermit Gosnell operated his dirty and dangerous Philadelphia abortion business and committed horrendous crimes in Philadelphia for over three decades. … His heinous and murderous practices of snipping the spines of born-alive children were only discovered by accident when federal and state authorities raided his facility in 2010, not because he was illegally killing born-alive infants, but because of his illegal prescription drug activity.

Grossu says Gosnell is “not an outlier.”

“Not one person to date has been charged or convicted under the current federal [Born-Alive Infants Protection Act] law,” Grossu testified.

The House passed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, introduced by Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., in September 2015. An identical bill in the Senate, introduced by Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., was referred to the Judiciary Committee.

“The abortion industry has labored for all of these decades to convince the world that unborn children and born children should be completely separated in our minds, that while born children are persons worthy of protection, unborn children are not persons and are not worthy of protection,” Franks, chairman of the subcommittee, said at the hearing.

Franks’ legislation would protect the rights of infants born alive after an abortion and leave criminal consequences for health care professionals who violate the law. The legislation would also require proper medical care be given by the health care practitioner present when an infant is born alive.

The legislation “explicitly requires health care practitioners to treat born-alive abortion survivors with the same care they would treat any other born-alive baby and admit such babies immediately to a hospital.” The law would also hold abortionists accountable for killing born-alive infants, Grossu testified.

President Barack Obama’s administration “strongly opposes” the passage of this bill, according to a statement from September 2015.

“The White House has promised that it would veto the born-alive legislation, citing it would have a ‘chilling’ effect,” Grossu testified. “I cannot think of a more chilling effect than continuing to let U.S. abortionists commit infanticide.”

Grossu urged support for the legislation to stop infanticide, or intentionally killing an infant child, in the United States.

The Hyde Amendment, also under examination at the hearing, prohibits the use of certain taxpayer dollars in abortion cases, except in rape, incest, or to save the mother’s life.

“Today we will hear testimony on existing statutory language prohibiting taxpayer funding from paying for the taking of the lives of preborn children through abortion,” Franks said. “There is concern that the Obama administration or a potential Clinton administration may intend to reinterpret the plain and longstanding meaning of the Hyde Amendment.”

The Hyde Amendment, an appropriations policy rider that has been passed each year since 1976, has its 40th anniversary this week.

“As a black woman, I am outraged that the morally bankrupt Hyde Amendment has been permitted to persist for so long,” Kierra Johnson, executive director of Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity, testified. “It is a source of pain for many women and should be a source of shame for those who support it.”

“The Hyde Amendment prevents women from even being able to make a decision about their health care,” Johnson said.

While Genevieve Plaster, a senior policy analyst at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, a pro-life nonprofit organization, testified that the Hyde Amendment has saved over 2 million lives since 1976, or approximately 60,000 lives per year.

“America was founded on the concept that our rights come from God,” Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said at the hearing. “When our rights come from God, how would it be possible that those rights would confer a right to kill a baby?” (For more from the author of “House Debates Protections for Babies Born Alive After Attempted Abortions” please click HERE)

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Hey, Hollywood, Want Better Emmy Ratings? Start by Cutting the Liberal Crap

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The 2016 Emmy Awards, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, brought in the lowest ratings of all time. People thought the disaster last year — hosted by Andy Samberg — was bad, but this year was far worse. The Emmys drew in 11.9 million viewers. Last year, it was 15.6 million. This year was lower than 1990, when the Emmys made its first appearance on Fox and attracted 12.3 million viewers.

Award shows, for the most part, have become a cesspool of left-wing propaganda that it’s no wonder so many people are tuning out. Would you want to watch a show where your political ideology was routinely ridiculed and mocked for the sake of stroking the political feelings of other performers in the audience?

The producers of the Emmys may want to take a look at the possibility of letting presenters and recipients know that politics should be left at home. There is a strong likelihood some of the celebrities would object to the point of threatening not to attend, but so what? Would the producers rather have seven to eight million more people watching the telecast or spend time assuaging the feelings of a handful of celebrities who think awards shows are their own personal political platforms?

It starts with the host, and while Jimmy Kimmel was happy to poke fun at Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton went unscathed. Jokes made at the expense of politicians are nothing new but when all the jokes focus on only one side, people will notice.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus in accepting her Emmy award brought everybody tears with a touching tribute to her father who had died only days before. However, she couldn’t resist taking a shot at Trump when she said, “Our show started out as a political satire, but it now feels more like a sobering documentary. So I certainly do promise to rebuild that wall and make Mexico pay for it.”

Jill Soloway, creator of “Transparent,” won the award for Best Directing in a Comedy Series. She finished off her speech by shouting, “Down with the patriarchy!” and then launched into anti-Trump tirade backstage where she said,

He needs to be called out at every chance he gets for being one of the most dangerous monsters to ever approach our lifetimes. He’s a complete dangerous monster, and any moment that I have to call Trump out for being an inheritor to Hitler, I will.

That’s a tad melodramatic. People certainly have differing opinions on Trump, but the idea he is anywhere akin to a man who set in motion events that resulted in the extermination of six million people is asinine.

If the commentary from performers wasn’t anti-Trump, they were certainly happy to express their fondness for Hillary Clinton. Courtney B. Vance, who won for his portrayal of Johnny Cochrane in “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” ended his acceptance speech saying, “Obama out! Hillary in!”

Kate McKinnon, who has done a masterful job portraying Hillary Clinton on “Saturday Night Live,” won the award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She accepted her award and thanked Hillary Clinton personally. Despite her spot-on portrayal, she is a Clinton supporter. Hillary Clinton congratulated McKinnon on Twitter.

A lot of viewers simply aren’t going to tolerate this kind of blatant politicking on an awards show when it is so one-sided. The producers need to be aware of that. They need to stop operating under the assumption that conservatives don’t watch any of these shows and therefore aren’t going to tune in, regardless. It’s not true.

People, including conservatives, like to see their favorite television shows, movies, and musical performers win awards for their work. It’s the blatant left-wing politics they can do without. If producers put an end to that, they’d likely see their ratings increase substantially. (For more from the author of “Hey, Hollywood, Want Better Emmy Ratings? Start by Cutting the Liberal Crap” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.