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Texas Permanently Bans Taxpayer Funding of Abortion

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed today a bill to restrict state funding for abortion insurance.

The new law will keep Texans from having to pay for elective abortions through their insurance plans.

“As a firm believer in Texas values I am proud to sign legislation that ensures no Texan is ever required to pay for a procedure that ends the life of an unborn child,” Gov. Abbott said. “This bill prohibits insurance providers from forcing Texas policy holders to subsidize elective abortions. I am grateful to the Texas legislature for getting this bill to my desk, and working to protect innocent life this special session.”

HB-214, which the House passed last week and the Senate approved Sunday, applies to “elective” abortions and specifically includes an exemption for cases of medical emergency to save the mother’s life. (Read more from “Texas Permanently Bans Taxpayer Funding of Abortion” HERE)

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JAMES FRANCO Demolishes Princeton Prof’s Pro-Abortion Argument — With One Sentence

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I’m not a big fan of James Franco’s work, other than Freaks and Geeks and the first 20 minutes of Pineapple Express. But I’ve always kind of admired his eclectic interests. He doesn’t let Hollywood tell him what “movie stars” should and shouldn’t do, and he gets himself into all sorts of weird, esoteric stuff. He’s a dilettante, but at least he actually seems to care about the things he dabbles in. His latest venture is a YouTube series called Philosophy Time, where he sits around with academics and kinda-sorta debates various topics for a few minutes. In one recent episode, he jumped right in and stomped on that third rail: abortion.

Here he is discussing it with Elizabeth Harman, a philosophy prof at Princeton. See what you think of her argument for why abortion isn’t immoral:

“I defend the view that there is nothing morally bad about early abortion. So, a lot of people think, ‘Well, it’s permissible to have an abortion, but something bad happens when the fetus dies.’ And I think if a fetus hasn’t ever been conscious, it hasn’t ever had any experiences, and we aborted it at that stage, actually nothing morally bad happens… So, James, when you were an early fetus, and Eliot, when you were an early fetus, all of us I think we already did have moral status then. But we had moral status in virtue of our futures… But some early fetuses will die in early pregnancy due to abortion or miscarriage. And in my view that is a very different kind of entity. That’s something that doesn’t have a future as a person and it doesn’t have moral status.”

“Can’t you only judge that in hindsight?”

I don’t mean to tell the professor her business, but when James Franco derails your argument in about 5 seconds… (Read more from “JAMES FRANCO Demolishes Princeton Prof’s Pro-Abortion Argument — With One Sentence” HERE)

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Infant Who Survived an Abortion at 35 Weeks Saved by Nurse Who Heard Baby Crying Inside Plastic Bag

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News out of China tells the story of a tiny baby who survived an abortion . . .

With that many abortions, it’s inevitable that some of these babies would survive. But what happens when they do? In at least one instance, the baby was placed inside a plastic bag, with the intention of suffocating the baby to death. But instead, the baby was rescued, and survived.

Lili, an 18-year-old teenager, found out she was pregnant, and kept the baby a secret until she was 35 weeks along. At that point, her brother took her for an abortion, performed by midwife Liang Xiaohua. Lili was told that the abortion was successful, and she paid a fee for the disposal of her baby’s remains. But Liang, the midwife, thought Lili’s baby could survive, and when she heard the baby crying, she took the baby out of the plastic bag and hid the baby in a cupboard after providing the child with oxygen and water.

She then sold the baby to her cousin, but it only took a matter of days for villagers to become suspicious. Police were notified, and three days after the abortion, Lili was notified that her child had survived, and was still alive. Midwife Liang Xiaohua was arrested and charged with child abduction.

At this stage of development, week 35 in the third trimester of pregnancy, the preborn baby weighs about five pounds, is practicing breathing, and has almost fully developed lungs, according to WebMD. A baby born at this stage has a 99 percent chance of survival. (Read more from “Infant Who Survived an Abortion at 35 Weeks Saved by Nurse Who Heard Baby Crying Inside Plastic Bag” HERE)

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In Video, Planned Parenthood Medical Chief Tells How to Get Around Ban on Partial-Birth Abortion

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A new undercover video shows a top physician at a Planned Parenthood affiliate discussing how her organization routinely circumvents federal law regulating certain late-term abortions.

In the latest hidden-camera video from the Center for Medical Progress, Dr. Suzie Prabhakaran, vice president of medical affairs for Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, talks about using a “checkbox” to get around the 2003 law banning partial-birth abortion.

In the video, released Thursday as the Senate again debates defunding the nation’s largest abortion provider, Prabhakaran speaks with investigators from the pro-life group posing as buyers of fetal tissue from a biotech company.

Prabhakaran is seen explaining that to circumvent federal law against partial-birth abortions—in which the unborn baby is extracted partway and then killed—Planned Parenthood doctors document their intent either to perform a dismemberment abortion or to use a feticide such as digoxin, which kills the baby beforehand.

“Every time you do a procedure, that’s how you document,” Prabhakaran says at 4:02 on the video. “So, like, there’s like a checkbox … So before the procedure, you do your evaluation, you write: ‘I intend to utilize dismemberment techniques for this procedure.’”

The video was shot at a Planned Parenthood conference in Orlando, Florida, according to the Center for Medical Progress, a nonprofit that has released a series of undercover videos targeting the organization’s ethics and morality in the past two years.

In it, Prabhakaran explains that her affiliate is merging with a Planned Parenthood clinic in Orlando that performs abortions up to 22 weeks and six days into a pregnancy. She says the clinic does a high volume of procedures, with “18 abortions at 18 weeks and above scheduled for the next week,” according to a Center for Medical Progress press release.

By marking a box showing intent to perform a dismemberment abortion, in which the baby is removed in pieces, and not use the deadly digoxin, Parabhakaran says at 5:52 in the video, “I’m not doing digoxin, and we’re just gonna document and there’s never been a problem.”

In a clip from an earlier video, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, is seen saying at 3:12 that “laws are up to interpretation.”

“So there are some people who interpret [the partial-birth abortion ban] as, it’s intent,” Nucatola says. “So if I say on Day One I do not intend to do this, what ultimately happens doesn’t matter.”

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which issued a press release attacking Republicans’ “skinny repeal” of Obamacare, did not respond to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment on the video.

Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., tweeted:

David Daleiden, head of the Center for Medical Progress, said in a press release that “the fact that Planned Parenthood has a ‘dismemberment checkbox’ on their abortion forms should tell the public and policymakers everything they need to know about this barbaric abortion business.”

In response to the group’s latest hidden-camera video, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, said in a press release that the nation’s “forced complicity in this atrocity must end.”

Dannenfelser added:

We urge our pro-life allies in the Senate to watch this video today and refresh their resolve to ensure that any health care reform legislation includes provisions to redirect Planned Parenthood’s tax dollars to community health centers and also rolls back Obamacare’s abortion expansion.

Abortion is not health care, and pro-life grassroots elected a pro-life House, Senate, and White House in 2016 expecting these victories. Congress must send a bill defunding Planned Parenthood and undoing the damage of Obamacare to President Trump’s desk for his signature.

(For more from the author of “In Video, Planned Parenthood Medical Chief Tells How to Get Around Ban on Partial-Birth Abortion” please click HERE)

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Eyewitnesses Take You Inside Abortion ‘House of Horrors’

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The police knew there was a problem in the Women’s Medical Society of Philadelphia, but they didn’t realize just what the problem was until they got there.

They thought they were raiding the largest supplier of illicit prescription painkillers in the City of Brotherly Love, but once inside, they found that Kermit Gosnell’s medical office was something much worse . . .

There was blood on the floor and the smell of urine in the air. The two surgery rooms were dirty and unsanitary, completely unbefitting a surgical facility. Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions sat on filthy recliners covered with blood-stained blankets in the waiting room or recovery room.

And then there were the severed body parts of late-term aborted babies displayed in jars over a dirty sink.

And the remains of 47 aborted babies crammed into a freezer and packed into boxes in the basement, all with mysterious wounds across the backs of their necks. (Read more from “Eyewitnesses Take You Inside Abortion ‘House of Horrors'” HERE)

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State to Force Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers to Advertise Free Abortions

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. . .Mirroring a 2015 California law, Hawaii’s edict forces locally funded pregnancy centers to post and distribute to each client a notification that the state offers free abortions, as well as a website link on where and how to schedule a taxpayer-funded abortion.

The mandated signage and disclaimer form must include the following verbiage:

This clinic does not provide abortion services or abortion referrals. Only ultrasounds performed by qualified healthcare professionals and read by licensed clinicians should be considered medically accurate.

Hawaii has public programs that provide immediate free or low-cost access to comprehensive family planning services including all FDA-approved methods of contraception, prenatal care, and abortion for eligible women.

To apply for medical insurance coverage that will cover the full range of family planning and prenatal care services, apply on-line at mybenefits.hawaii.gov.

(Read more from “State to Force Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers to Advertise Free Abortions” HERE)

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CNN Program Lauds Rep Who Refused Abortion

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Washington Republican Rep. Jaime Beutler explained why she refused to abort her baby in a recent CNN piece on “Bada** Women of Washington.”

Beutler discovered she was pregnant with her first child shortly after her first reelection in 2012. However, the happy news soon turned devastating when doctors diagnosed her unborn child with Potter Syndrome, a condition where the unborn baby fails to develop kidneys. Additionally, the fetus fails to properly develop lungs. Doctors told her the condition is 100 percent fatal.

“They took us into a back room and just said, ‘There’s nothing that can be done. Your baby’s gonna die,’” Beutler told CNN. The physician recommended an abortion due to the fatal nature of the condition.

“Being able to hear the heartbeat … we had this gut feeling of there has to be something — I mean, a doctor may say it, but she’s moving. That’s pretty convincing. We know she’s still alive,” said her husband, Dan Beutler . . .

“But what she went through to have — and save — her baby is truly bada**, a lesson in courage from a woman who wouldn’t take no for an answer,” wrote CNN’s Dana Loch. Finally, a doctor at Johns Hopkins University agreed to administer the treatment. (Read more from “CNN Program Lauds Rep Who Refused Abortion” HERE)

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This Medication Could Reverse a Third of Abortions

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The abortion pill has been around for years and has become a highly common form of abortion.

Now, it appears an antidote medication has arrived, and it is already saving hundreds of babies.

The abortion pill (mifepristone, more commonly known as RU-486) has been shown in a new systematic review of literature to be effective at killing an embryo if given in doses ranging from 200 milligrams to 600 milligrams.

But an updated case series, soon to be published, will highlight the success rate of a little-known therapy called the “abortion pill reversal.” This therapy has a 60 to 70 percent success rate in reversing the effects of the abortion pill after it has been taken.

The therapy has already led to healthy births in 250 cases after mothers had taken the abortion pill, and there are currently 100 more pregnant women on this regimen after having taken the abortion pill and changed their minds.

U.S. medication abortions have been on the rise since 2000, when the Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone under President Bill Clinton.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, medication abortions have increased from 6 percent of all abortions in 2001 to 31 percent in 2014, despite the overall decline in the number of abortions in the U.S. during that same period.

In addition, medication abortions account for nearly half (45 percent) of all abortions committed prior to nine weeks gestation.

In 2016, the FDA under President Barack Obama expanded the timeframe for the use of mifepristone to 10 weeks gestation. That move put women’s health and safety at further risk, since the abortion pill regimen is less effective the further along the woman is and carries a higher risk of major adverse events.

With the increase in state pro-life laws placing limits on abortion, and with fewer abortionists now in the medical field, medication abortion has become a convenient alternative to surgical abortions for the abortion industry.

The industry is intent on making medication abortions more widely available. Just in 2014, medication abortions were available at 87 percent of all non-hospital abortion providers.

The Procedure

Medication abortions involve two drugs in order to fully abort the baby—mifepristone and misoprostol.

The first drug, mifepristone, acts to block progesterone, a hormone that not only allows the embryo to implant but also stimulates the delivery of essential nutrients to the growing baby within the mother’s uterus. Without progesterone, the baby starves to death and the placenta separates.

Misoprostol is then taken about 36 to 72 hours after taking the mifepristone, causing contractions that are meant to expel the dead baby.

This process may take a few hours or up to a few days. The mother delivers the dead baby at home without the supervision of a doctor.

In order to work, the abortion pill reversal technique must be started generally within the first 24 to 72 hours of taking mifepristone and before taking misoprostol.

This innovative procedure was discovered by Dr. Matt Harrison in 2006. He realized that if he gave women extra progesterone, it competed with the effects of mifepristone and could save the baby’s life by allowing nutrients to once again reach the growing baby.

Since 2009, Dr. George Delgado has also been involved in the abortion pill reversal. Delgado and others established the Abortion Pill Reversal hotline in 2012. Now, there are more than 350 providers nationwide who are equipped to do the abortion pill reversal technique.

A Growing Movement

The women who have undergone successful reversal therapy are amazing testaments to the efficacy of the procedure.

Take for example Rebekah Buell, who at 18 years old realized she had made a mistake soon after taking mifepristone in the spring of 2013.

The new option of a reversal allowed Buell to save and give birth to her healthy son Zechariah, who is now a precocious 3-year-old.

Andrea Minichini experienced a similar miraculous reversal. Minichini, then 21 years old, desperately searched for a way to save her preborn son from the moment she swallowed the first abortion pill under pressure from her doctor and her boyfriend.

Although she underwent the abortion pill reversal at approximately 48 hours after taking mifepristone, the progesterone therapy was successful, and she too gave birth to her healthy son Gabriel, a thriving 2-and-a-half-year-old today.

Thanks to courageous mothers and the ingenuity of doctors who are using medicine for good, 250 babies have been miraculously saved from the grip of abortion and have been born healthy. And as mentioned, there are 100 more pregnant women currently undergoing the abortion pill reversal technique.

The abortion pill reversal truly gives moms a second chance at choice and their babies a chance at life. (For more from the author of “This Medication Could Reverse a Third of Abortions” please click HERE)

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Should Fearless Girls Worship the Golden Calf of Abortion?

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The saga of the Charging Bull and the Fearless Girl is back in the news. It seems New York sculptor Alex Gardega objected to feminists’ appropriating the Wall Street icon. So he added something: a pug, relieving itself on the girl.

I couldn’t put my finger on it. But something about the Fearless Girl statue didn’t sit well with me. Social media fawned over the diminutive addition that bravely stood in front of Charging Bull in New York’s financial district. But the statue seemed like a cheap way to score political points. My cynicism grew the more I considered her underlying message.

The plaque at Fearless Girl’s feet reads: “Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference.” “SHE” is both a descriptive pronoun and the NASDAQ ticker symbol for the organization that funded her. Fearless Girl’s message is to promote workplace gender diversity. And to encourage companies to recruit women to their boards. Those pleasant enough politically correct platitudes.

The artist of the Charging Bull has himself complained that Fearless Girl distorted the meaning of his bronze. It transformed the bull from a symbol of strength and prosperity into one of a villain. In response, New York City Mayor de Blasio tweeted, “Men who don’t like women taking up space are exactly why we need the Fearless Girl.”

But there is more to the story than just political posturing and man-shaming. Mayor de Blasio has already made it clear that the statues’ meanings are fluid. So let’s consider what happens when we move these two statues somewhere else in the world. How does changing the context change their meaning?

Move Those Statues to Africa

If Charging Bull and Fearless Girl were on the African continent, people might think they are a Public Service Announcement. “Caution: Wild Bulls.” Locals seeing a little girl in the path of a raging bull might not find it so — well, inspiring. In fact, they would see it as quite the contrary. Any child left alone in such circumstances is a tribal (or village) failure. They know the inevitable outcome.

And what if the bronzes were moved to India or Nepal? There Hinduism is practiced, and all things bovine — including their dung and urine — are revered. Honoring cows is so weighty that U.S. diplomats are warned that if while driving they are faced with the choice of hitting a person or a cow, the better thing to do is hit the person. Perhaps again Fearless Girl might not inspire the same sort of “You go, girl!” spirit. Suddenly, Fearless Girl is no longer a heroine, but merely a bystander while the bull holds center stage.

Of course, worshiping bulls is nothing new. It never leads to anything good. Just ask the ancient Greek queen of Crete, Pasiphae, how worshiping the white bull worked for her. Their coupling created the monstrous Minotaur: the bull-headed man who devoured Athenian. Nor did the Israelites profit from worship of their golden calf. It nearly got them wiped out as a nation.

We have our own sacred cow. The West thinks that equality between men and women can only be reached by erasing their differences. Such “equality” rests squarely on the notion that women must be free from the burden of childbearing and therefore must have abortion on demand — no restrictions.

Worshiping the Golden Calf of Abortion

Abortion was sold as “safe, legal and rare.” But that golden calf has grown up into something fierce and terrifying. Today, worship of the bull of abortion is a rite of passage for any woman who craves power, prestige or fortune. Nearly every public woman in the corridors of influence from New York to Washington to Hollywood has offered her pinch of incense to the abortion behemoth — Planned Parenthood.

So what if we moved Fearless Girl and Charging Bull back to New York, but consider yet another meaning for each? What if we see Charging Bull as the abortion juggernaut, and Fearless Girl as all those who worship him?

This new, fierce and ferocious bull devours the innocent like the Minotaur. Instead of 15 males and 15 females a year, the numbers are closer to 1500 males a day and 1500 females a day in the United States alone.

Like the golden calf worshipers of old, the new bovine worshipers are not left unscathed. Tragically, all these women who worship abortion have been frozen as little girls — as if in bronze — never to grow up and become true women, but to forever remain stuck in a feminist frenzy: a vicious cycle of victimization, foot stomping tantrums, illogic, perpetual aping of men, and vulgar pink hats.

Sadly, unlike Africa, there are no more grown-ups in the village to come and protect them, for these little girls are the grown-ups; they are the cultural elite; they are culture makers. And yet little girls they remain — fearless and foolish — and try as they might, unless or until they find healing, there they will remain stuck in the path of the charging bull of their own making. (For more from the author of “Should Fearless Girls Worship the Golden Calf of Abortion?” please click HERE)

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Horrifying Video From Abortion Conference Shows Utter Disregard for Human Life

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Lawyers for Center for Medical Progress founder David Daleiden released a new video on Thursday that exposed horrifying statements from leaders within the abortion industry. The video footage was obtained at National Abortion Federation conventions that took place in California in 2014 and 2015.

The National Abortion Federation describes itself as “the professional association of abortion providers.” It “exhibits and presents at numerous conferences … about topics related to abortion care.”

The video notes that “Planned Parenthood makes up about 50 percent of [the National Abortion Federation’s] members and leadership.”

The video opens with a Planned Parenthood medical director speaking on a panel about “heads that get stuck” and the “hemorrhages that we manage.”

She is later seen telling a panel: “Given that we might actually both agree that there’s violence in here, ask me why I come to work every day. Let’s just give them all the violence, it’s a person, it’s killing, let’s just give them all that.”

A Planned Parenthood abortionist then complains about how an unborn child “is a tough little object” and is “very difficult” to take apart.

A lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union is heard remarking, “When the skull is broken, that’s really sharp!” as the crowd laughs about the difficulty of “getting that skull out.”

Another Planned Parenthood official is seen speaking on a panel recalling that an “eyeball just fell down into my lap, and that is gross!” as the crowd laughs.

A procurement manager from StemExpress is seen commenting that there are “a lot of clinics that we work with that, I mean, it helps them out significantly.”

A Planned Parenthood official later says that “[t]he truth is that some might want to do it … to increase their revenues. And we can’t stop them.”

One would think the state of California would be concerned about what was said at these conferences.

But instead of looking into potential illegal profits from the transfer of fetal tissue, California is charging Center for Medical Progress journalists with 15 felonies for bringing these troubling questions to light in the first place.

California argues that the Center for Medical Progress unlawfully recorded the subjects of undercover videos without their consent.

When the charges were announced, Casey Mattox, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal that even in two-party consent states like California, “It’s well understood as a matter of First Amendment law that people have a right to be able to record their own conversations.”

He added:

These were publicly recorded conversations, they were recorded in restaurants and other places where Planned Parenthood officials should not have expected they had any privacy at all. I find it fascinating that the state of California is apparently very concerned about the privacy of Planned Parenthood officials, and much less concerned about getting to the truth of Planned Parenthood actually engaging in violations of the law by selling baby body parts.

As this concerning case makes its way through court, Americans should remember that Planned Parenthood receives over half a billion dollars from taxpayers each year.

Today’s video once again demonstrates the urgent need for policymakers to end taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, its affiliates, and other abortion providers once and for all.

Funding could instead be redirected to centers that provide health care for women without entanglement in on-demand abortion.

Congress has the opportunity to deny Planned Parenthood certain federal funds in the upcoming budget reconciliation bill to repeal Obamacare by ensuring the language includes a provision (just as the 2015 version of the bill did) that would disqualify Planned Parenthood affiliates from receiving Medicaid reimbursements for one year after the enactment of the bill.

Ultimately, Congress should send the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which passed in the House of Representatives in January, to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature. (For more from the author of “Horrifying Video From Abortion Conference Shows Utter Disregard for Human Life” please click HERE)

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